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Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 Episodes
Season 4 Episode Guide
26 Episodes 1990 - 1991
Episode 1
The Best of Both Worlds Part II
Sat, Sep 22, 199045 mins
Having absorbed Captain Picard and his knowledge, the Borg head for Earth, leaving Riker and the Enterprise desperate for an unanticipated way to defeat them.
Episode 2
Family
Sat, Sep 29, 199045 mins
With the Enterprise in spacedock undergoing repairs following its encounter with the Borg, several members of the crew have the opportunity for shore leave. Captain Picard returns to his home village in La Barre, France to visit his older brother Robert, sister-in-law Marie and nephew René. He hasn't been home in 20 years and has always had a difficult relationship with his brother who considered him a know-it-all; the captain viewed his brother as a bully. They ultimately find a way to get along. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Worf welcomes his adoptive parents, CPO Sergey and Helena Rozhenko, on board the Enterprise. Worf still feels the sting of his dishonor on the Klingon homeworld and his parents know he is hurting. As for Wesley Crusher, his mother gives him an old holographic recording his father made just after Wesley was born.
Episode 3
Brothers
Sat, Oct 6, 199046 mins
En route to the medical facility at Starbase 416 to obtain urgent treatment for a child who's been injured, Lt. Commander Data inexplicably hijacks the Enterprise. He transports himself to a planet and finds his creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, alive and well. Data has no recollection of events prior to arriving on the planet. The elderly doctor has activated a homing device in Data as a way of bringing him home. They are both surprised however when Data's brother, Lore, also appears. The Doctor had no idea Lore had been reactivated and the homing signal intended only for Data obviously called Lore home as well. The doctor tells them that he is dying but that doesn't stop the brothers from bickering. The reason the doctor called Data home was to provide him with a new chip to give him emotions. Lore has his own plans however.
Episode 4
Suddenly Human
Sat, Oct 13, 199046 mins
The Enterprise rescues a small group Talarian adolescents, all wearing uniforms. They were on a training mission and one of them, Jono, turns out to be human. A medical scan reveals several healed injuries leading Dr. Crusher to believe Jono may have been abused. Data identifies the boy as Jeremiah Rossa, grandson of Federation Admiral Connaught Rossa. His parents were killed when the Talarians attacked their colony and the boy was apparently taken prisoner. Although a human, the boy has been fully assimilated into the warlike and highly patriarchal Talarian culture. When the Talarian Captain Endar, who claims Jono as is son, demands the boy's return, Picard refuses.
Episode 5
Remember Me
Sat, Oct 20, 199045 mins
Docking at Starbase 133 for crew rotation, Doctor Beverly Crusher was happy to rejoin her old, widowed mentor Doctor Dalen Quaice, but Computer reports he's not aboard at all, nor has he any Starfleet service record anymore. After four of her medical staff members disappear similarly, Wesley thinks up an experimental warp bubble-effect theory, but Data points out she has no staff and is wrong about the staff size by over 800. Next she barely escapes a vortex, but no sensor recording or anomaly concurs with its existence; Deanna refuses to answer if she's going mad. When Wesley tells her the only one who must know more about warp bubbles is a strange alien, the Traveler, who combined it with mind power to create an alternate reality, Beverly believes somehow that technique must have been recreated during the experiment.
Episode 6
Legacy
Sat, Oct 27, 199045 mins
The Enterprise aborts an archaeological mission, responding to an emergency call from the devastated colony on the home planet of deceased crewmate Tasha Yar, Turkana IV. There two Federation officers are held hostage, captured from an escape pod, by the Alliance which has been fighting for decades against a rebel party, the Coalition, which includes Tasha's sister Ishara Yar, who seems prepared to sacrifice anything necessary to help rescue the officers, and wins Data's friendship, but came with a secret agenda.
Episode 7
Reunion
Sat, Nov 3, 199046 mins
When the leader of the Klingon High Council dies, Picard finds himself in the middle of the struggle for the now-vacant position. Meanwhile, Worf reunites with a past love, only to find he now has a son.
Episode 8
Future Imperfect
Sat, Nov 10, 199046 mins
As the Enterprise conducts a security sweep near the Neutral Zone, Picard thinks there may be a secret Romulan base and pulls Riker from his birthday party to lead an away team. When they're overcome by methane gas, Riker awakens in Dr. Crusher's sick bay and is told there have been 16 years since the incident, and that he is captain of Enterprise.
Episode 9
Final Mission
Sat, Nov 17, 199046 mins
After bringing the good news that Ensign Wesley Crusher has been accepted to Starfleet Academy, Captain Picard decides to go ahead by shuttle with Wesley on a mission to appease troublesome salenite miners on Pentarus V, while Riker takes the Enterprise to the defenseless planet Gamelan V, which believes itself to be under silent attack from a spaceship which causes immense radiation. The miner host pilot Captain Dirgo's shuttle gets into trouble, having to land in a desert without working replicator or supplies, so Picard decides to walk to the nearest mountains for shelter, persisting even when sensor readings suggest possible life. Riker decides not to return for a search before dealing with the radiation source, which is found to be an abandoned barge and soon starts disintegrating while on tractor beam to an asteroid belt. When Dirgo foolishly fires a phaser on a protective column, which mysteriously forms around a fountain at approach, the cave collapses on Picard, and Wesley's ingenuity is their only hope when Dirgo's equally ill-conceived next attempt proves even more disastrous.
Episode 10
The Loss
Sat, Dec 29, 199045 mins
The Enterprise encounters a mysterious entity, which turns out to be two-dimensional and is towing the ship. Just then Counselor Deanna Troi finds herself devoid of her empathic powers, an inexplicable loss of control she finds more than terrifying. Indeed she hands in her resignation. Every attempt to fight the aliens fails, and it's forcing the Enterprise straight to fatal danger. At the last moment Deanna comes up with a 'two-dimensional theory'.
Episode 11
Data's Day
Sat, Jan 5, 199146 mins
Second officer Lt. Commander Data has agreed to speak a complete record of a day in his functioning for the benefit of scientific android engineer Commander Maddox and concludes that his programming must be improved concerning interaction with human emotions - most puzzling given human practices such as irony. Chief Miles O'Brien's human wedding is amply confusing, even for Worf; bride Keiko Ishikawa's gibbers even more illogical. Learning dances and which are appropriate from Dr. Crusher proves easy. Arthur Conan Doyle's logic of elimination Data soon masters, in time to solve a mysterious accident during negotiations with a Romulan admiral.
Episode 12
The Wounded
Sat, Jan 26, 199146 mins
The Federation is on the verge of war with the Cardassians after a Starship under the command of Captain Benjamin Maxwell attacks a Cardassian science outpost, destroying it and killing everyone there. Captain Picard is ordered to find Maxwell and take whatever steps necessary to stop him. The Cardassians are cautious and their captain, Gul Macet, doesn't quite believe Picard will hunt down one of his own. Picard for his part will do his duty but finds it hard to believe that a Starship captain would attack without reason. Chief O'Brien served with Maxwell and knows that his family was killed many years before in a Cardassian attack. He also knows that Maxwell is a very able captain who would not seek revenge. When Maxwell destroys a Cardassian cargo ship, Picard realizes he must be stopped before there is all-out war.
Episode 13
Devil's Due
Sat, Feb 2, 199146 mins
The Enterprise obliges a planet which acutely faces an original problem: the mythic being Ardra demands they honor a contract concluded 1,000 years ago, under the terms of which that world now becomes entirely her property, with all its people as her slaves and everything in orbit, as payment for her settling their ancestors' apparently hopeless problems then with war and environment decay. Picard is told she is known by many names in various systems, all frightening and almost almighty, but he refuses to believe she's the planet's version of the Devil, and decides to challenge her legal claim. Data finds under the planet's law the only possible way is by choosing an arbitrator - she proposes ever objective Data, who warns Picard he will be impartial, and is accepted...
Episode 14
Clues
Sat, Feb 9, 199146 mins
During leave time aboard, Picard obliges a personal promise to Guinan by playing parts in an Al Capone period gangster mystery story, but soon a mysterious energy source takes precedence. It creates a small, unstable local wormhole, causing everybody to be unconscious, presumably for just half a minute according to the instruments. However strange changes are observed, such as spores showing a full day's growth and the ship is even off course, near a planet of another class. Doubts are inevitable, even about Data, as Geordi finds only they two were able to circumvent the computer security program preventing the clock manipulation which is the only logical explanation, and Data is in perfect working order. Geordi proves that the planet image before the black-out is a fake altered from memory banks, only Data could have switched them and staged an apparent wormhole; Data claims to be unable to verify and should be court-martialed, probably the end of his Starfleet career, but why would he accept such risk? A settled fracture in Worf's hand proves someone must have been awake. Picard concludes Data must have had a compelling reason to lie and disobey his orders, presumably answering someone else's, and indeed, when the ship returns to the site of the incident, in the system of the Paxans ...
Episode 15
First Contact
Sat, Feb 16, 199146 mins
Commander William Riker has been on an acculturation mission under an alias for months on the Malcorian planet, surgically altered to appear as a local, but he gets badly wounded, beyond their medical skills to correct because his internal organs are unknown to them. Captain Jean-Luc Picard decides to speed up his official diplomatic approach (a.k.a. First Contact protocols) and intercede on Riker's behalf, but they are told by a fascinated, open-minded Malcorian scientist that her planet's culture is particularly xenophobic and would reject any alien as being unequal to them. The Malcorian government keeps the matter secret but is internally divided: while Chancellor Durken is in favor of Riker's release without his people finding out and establishing friendly relations with the Federation, his powerful security minister, Krola, is prepared to go to any length to preserve their traditional way of life, including framing Riker for murder.
Episode 16
Galaxy's Child
Sat, Mar 9, 199146 mins
While the Enterprise is in a star-base, Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge gets a very special visitor, brilliant engineering designer Dr. Leah Brahms, whom he feels to know almost intimately as a 'hologram version' of herself with 'whom' he bonded; however, the real Brahms proves icy and arrogantly unwilling to consider any of Geordi's empirical findings that could conceivably stand against her theoretically impermeable truth. They take on the challenge to collaborate and learn to know each other better, but when she finds Geordi's hologram version of her, Brahms feels almost pornographically 'abused'. That's one prejudiced insult too many for Geordi. Meanwhile Picard, his bridge officers, and Dr. Crusher have a very different problem, a strange life form which approaches and dies but contains a baby version inside its corpse, which must be separated to stand a chance of survival. When that succeeds, 'junior' instinctively identifies the Enterprise as its mother and locks on, draining energy through the hull, which is only safely sustainable for a few hours. Only after Geordi and Brahms join the bridge does its relevant normal mode of life in an asteroid field become revealed, and the duo come up with an idea.
Episode 17
Night Terrors
Sat, Mar 16, 199145 mins
The Enterprise gets trapped in a Tyken's Rift, an energy-absorbing rupture in space, where all but Data, Troi and Guinan experience rising hallucinations and paranoia.
Episode 18
Identity Crisis
Sat, Mar 23, 199146 mins
Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge realizes that he, his friend Lt. Commander Susanna Leitjen and Lieutenant Hickman who deserted in a shuttle-craft and is now on a suicidal course to a planet were all in a mission made years ago by the USS Victory, the others are missing but more vessels are detected on the same planet. After investigations of the base on the planet it turns out they were affected by a yet unknown, parasitic alien race, which is already in both Gordi and Susanna, how is beyond Dr. Crusher's diagnosis, and starts transforming from a cellular level first her into a blue critter, later him too, while he continues researching Starfleet records and hologram simulation, while closely monitored...
Episode 19
The Nth Degree
Sat, Mar 30, 199145 mins
The Enterprise checks on the Argus array, a giant Federation outskirts astronomical telescope, which stopped signaling data months ago. Geordi and mentally rehabilitated engineer Lieutenant Reg Barclay try to repair it but an intense energy surge from an alien probe of unknown technology electrocutes Barclay and even causes serious damage on board the ship. Barclay soon recovers while the probe follows closely, building up a dangerous field but unresponsive to full phasers. Now Barclay demonstrates surprising insight and knowledge, saving the situation by repairing power and getting photon torpedoes ready which destroy the probe. Reg's useful but inexplicable erudition proves invaluable for telescope repairs too. Even his theatrical, romantic (towards Troi) and formerly non-existent violin performances improve suddenly , thanks to a confidence boost. When Dr. Crusher finds his brain improved more than any human causing unprecedented intelligence, he is also considered a potential risk. Next Barclay surprisingly causes ship and telescope to link and takes control after transferring most of his oversize-growing brain functions into a cutting-edge computer core he devised, taking over the helm, and claims omniscience for a higher purpose, enabling unprecedented space exploration. Worried about his loss of control, Picard orders him stopped by any means, but.
Episode 20
Qpid
Sat, Apr 20, 199145 mins
Picard is visited by his archaeologist acquaintance, Vash, then Q appears, claiming that he owes Picard a debt for helping him back into the Continuum. He decides to repay it by illustrating to Picard the pitfalls of getting involved with someone, placing them all in a fantasy world where Picard is Robin Hood, Vash Maid Marian, and Q the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Episode 21
The Drumhead
Sat, Apr 27, 199145 mins
A Klingon traitor is arrested: engineer Lieutenant J'Ddan, who passed secrets to the Romulans via fluid in a medical syringe, sabotage is feared. Retired female Federation Admiral Satie and her former assistants arrive to take charge of the investigation, with security chief Worf. Meanwhile Data and LaForge look into the sabotage risk. J'Ddan's denial of sabotaging the vital dilithium chamber is credible, which implies another traitor aboard, so the crew is grilled, starting with medic Simon Tarses who gave J'Ddan his injections. After a paranormal counsel believes Tarses a liar, he's tricked by lies into acting guilty, even though the 'sabotage' was in fact found to be an accidental failure, and confesses he lied about his ancestry to hide a Romulan grandfather. Picard objects against the unethical procedure, Satie calls upon Starfleet chief of security Admiral Henry to look for an even wider conspiracy, starting with Picard himself, based on his long-term record, and Worf, based on his father's treason...
Episode 22
Half a Life
Sat, May 4, 199146 mins
The Enterprise has two special visitors: first Counselor Deanna Troi's terribly flippant, meddling mother, Betazoid ambassador Lwaxana Troi, then also top researcher Dr. Timicin, who comes to try to help his home planet Kaelon II revitalize its dying sun with helium emission and photon torpedoes. Both guests prove meeting opposites, falling in love. The experiment is a partial success, only promising scientific progress without immediate results. Alas the minister in charge refuses to allow Timicin to continue: their law dictates he must commit ritual suicide, called 'The Resolution' when he turns 60 in a few days being then considered a burden for the younger generations, despite his excellent condition of mind and body. Picard has no choice but accept under the Prime Directive, Lwaxana tries to convince her flame by emotions and reason, as nobody is better qualified to continue the crucial research, which strikes a chord.
Episode 23
The Host
Sat, May 11, 199145 mins
Doctor Beverly Crusher is secretly in love with Federation ambassador Odan, who is on his way to the Alpha Moon which is rebelling against the planet they were colonized from and causes potentially fatal environmental damage to the Beta Moon. Crusher ignores the fact that her humanoid lover's body has an alien symbiont in his entrails, but Counselor Deanna Troi empathically senses emotional swings which set her on the trail. An unrequested escort vessel from the Beta Moon then approaches and attacks the Enterprise shuttle which Commander Will Riker was piloting to take the ambassador to his destination. When Riker brings Odan back to the Enterprise badly wounded, Crusher's diagnosis reveals the 'parasite' and she learns his true identity. Odan urgently needs another humanoid host to perform his peace mission, for which task Riker volunteers.
Episode 24
The Mind's Eye
Sat, May 25, 199145 mins
Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge eagerly follows orders to travel ahead of the ship by shuttle craft to a technology conference on the planet Risa, until an unexpected Romulan war vessel beams him aboard to be brainwashed with fake holiday memories before returning to the Enterprise with a mission including sabotage and the murder of Chief Miles O'Brien with a spy and mental control E-band device fitted into his visor. Meanwhile the Enterprise is hosting Klingon special ambassador Kell, who doesn't enjoy his mission from the High Council to Krios, a planet on the border of Federation space territory, which seeks independence at a time the Klingon Empire needs its resources elsewhere and therefore prefers to settle, and investigate if they get any illegal Federation help. The Klingon Governor Vagh claims the rebels got Federation issue weapons, but Data and Geordi find it's a replica, probably Romulan solely to estrange the Klingons from their enemy, the Federation. The plot thickens when the ambassador actually has control of Geordi, ordering him to execute an assassination attempt on the governor. However Dr. Crusher's medical examination of Georgi's eye complaints put Data on the track of the sinister plot.
Episode 25
In Theory
Sat, Jun 1, 199145 mins
When the Enterprise enters the uncharted Mar Oscura dark matter nebula, Data is in charge of scientific observations, together with young Lieutenant Jenna D'Sora, who shows a romantic interest in him. The human crew is clearly unable and/or reluctant to give Data reliable advice, and Troi warns him against trusting in literature on the subject, but since Riker says nothing beats true love Data decides to try 'running' a romantic program with her, yet method is madness in a human lover's eyes. Arriving at an M-class planet's coordinates, the Enterprise finds it inexplicably gone, while Worf fears disappearances and unexplained entries aboard constitute a major security risk. Indeed, the next strikes take victims among machines and crew, but according to Data all can result from proximity of so much dark matter causing gaps of space, which the ship phases in and out of. The plan is to send an observational shuttle ahead, which Picard decides to pilot himself.
Episode 26
Redemption
Sat, Jun 15, 199145 mins
The Enterprise goes on the Klingon homeworld to attend the installation of Gowron as the new head of the High Council. Captain Picard encourages Lt. Worf to seize the opportunity to clear his name. However Gowron boards, asking hasty help to prevent a Klingon civil war, claiming the sisters of the late traitor Duras head a corrupt conspiracy supported by at least three fleet commanders, Picard is the only established acceptable arbitrator. Gowron scorned Worf, before he tells Duras' father was the traitor to the Romulans - only to be told it's too late given the Duras faction in the Council. Worf arranges a leave to visit his brother Kurn, serving on a Klingon ship - he feels both old factions must be swept away, four commanders would side with their family. Worf pulls rank as family eldest, ordering loyalty to the confirmed Gowron, only later their support would be made dependent upon family rehabilitation. Picard is about to complete Gowron's installation, but the Duras family - secretly in league with the Romulans - challenges his in the name of a minor, who they claim to be the illegitimate son and heir, a matter for the arbitrator to decide, in his favor. The first hostilities go well enough for Gowron to be installed by Picard. Then a major Duras fleet appears and Picard refuses the military help requested by Gowron and Worf, who then declines to resume his post when leaves are canceled, so he honorably resigns to keep fighting at Gowron's side...
