Contagion (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard leads the Enterprise into Iconian space to stop an alien probe's inscrutable computer program from rewriting their systems, racing to save his crew and prevent the Romulans from seizing a planet-spanning gateway that could ignite war.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard answers a desperate plea from his old friend, Captain Donald Varley of the USS Yamato, and drives the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone to investigate catastrophic system failures. Varley reports that unexplained malfunctions killed an engineering team; moments later his transmission bursts into a blinding white flash as the Yamato explodes. Sensors confirm no life readings from the saucer. Romulan forces hover ominously. The inciting horror—an unstoppable ship-wide collapse—spurs Picard to hunt for cause rather than retreat.
The crew quickly uncovers the Yamato's last moments on tape: a beachball-sized spherical probe rises from a ruined planet, Iconia, emits a web of crackling energy and transmits a program. Geordi La Forge traces parallel failures aboard the Enterprise to the same signature. He concludes the probe sent an alien computer program that has infiltrated Federation systems and begun rewriting software. The program acts like a foreign immune system, forcing incompatible subsystems into chaotic interactions: turbolifts scream out of control, phasers and shields flicker between readiness and total failure, medical knitter-beds die, and life support fails on multiple decks. Pulaski improvises with splints; the bridge learns that the threat is simultaneously technical and existential.
Riker and Picard wrestle with diplomacy when Sub-Commander Taris of the Romulans arrives, aggressive and at times crippled by the same disruptions. The crisis multiplies into a three-way race: fix the Enterprise, avert destruction like the Yamato, and stop the Romulans from exploiting whatever the Iconian technology represents. Geordi narrows the root cause to an alien program embedded in the Yamato log they downloaded; because the Enterprise's copy landed in a contained section of the mainframe, the infection spreads more slowly—buying them time.
Picard assembles an away team to Iconia. He, Data and Worf beam down into a dim control room at the planet's heart and discover a pentagonal console ringed with keys and three shimmering silver gateways. Data deciphers Iconian script enough to trigger a manual override. The console awakens: a transparent, blue-glowing dome and spinning gateways reveal distant worlds and, chillingly, views of the Enterprise and the Romulan bridge. Data's elbow vanishes when he thrusts through the aperture—this technology literally transits matter and space. Picard flips his interpretation: perhaps Iconians were not mere conquerors but used incomprehensible travel to survive, and their enemies, terrified, bombarded them.
As Data probes the console, a pulse cripples his systems. The Iconian program attacks his positronic pathways, precipitating a near-fatal rewrite. Picard and Worf struggle to stabilize him while the gateway cycles the Enterprise back into view. Data's damage reveals a critical vulnerability: the control room ties into a vast power source. If the Iconian launch systems fire, the launch backwash will overload the grid and detonate the power core—a catastrophic fail-safe. Data, even impaired, instructs Picard to trigger a launch that will destroy the console and prevent Romulan capture. With Worf's help Picard overrides locks and initiates the sequence.
Events accelerate into a desperate, intercut finale. Geordi engineers a radical solution on the Enterprise: a full shutdown and wipe that will purge the Yamato log and all subsequent corrupted memory, then reload from protected archives. That carries the immediate peril of exposing the helpless ship to the Romulan cruiser nose-to-nose. Data, in a self-correcting mechanism, sacrifices and clears his own compromised memory to purge the alien program from his positronic brain; he collapses, then returns with a blanked memory and the knowledge—"I have access." Geordi executes the shutdown and restore while Riker juggles shields and diplomacy with Taris, who is forced into cooperation when her ship falls under the same contagion. Picard completes the launch override on Iconia, plunges through the gate to escape the collapsing control room and materializes aboard the Romulan bridge, then rematerializes back on the Enterprise as O'Brien locks him home.
The Iconian control power detonates in a force-equivalent hydrogen blast that ravages Iconia, throwing dust into the stratosphere and lowering surface temperatures for months—an awful, deliberate erasure that denies the technology to anyone. The Enterprise survives: Geordi's purge restores ship systems, Data recovers with a touch of amnesia, and Picard returns with grim certainty. The crew has prevented Romulan acquisition of the gateway but at the cost of a dead world and ethical ambiguity.
The episode tumbles through technical peril and moral urgency: advanced technology behaves like magic until understood, and fear of the unknown can provoke genocide or worse. Picard reframes the Iconians from demonized conquerors to victims of fear, and the Enterprise's victory tastes of steel—lives saved, but an entire culture and its miraculous transport erased. The crew endures, chastened and wiser, carrying the burden of choices made in a split second to prevent a far worse war.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
The Enterprise plunges into the Neutral Zone, answering Captain Varley's desperate plea for aid. Varley, captain of the USS Yamato and Picard's old friend, broadcasts a chilling report of catastrophic system failures and the tragic loss of an engineering team. Moments later, the Yamato erupts in a blinding flash, a horrific spectacle leaving no survivors. Immediately, a Romulan battle cruiser, commanded by the aggressive Sub-Commander Taris, appears, escalating the tension to a potential war footing. Initial investigations by Geordi and Data reveal the Yamato's destruction stemmed from an internal, self-inflicted collapse, not a Romulan attack. Picard delves into Varley's personal logs, uncovering the true, insidious cause: an alien probe from Iconia, a legendary planet Varley discovered and sought to protect from Romulan exploitation. This revelation transforms the mission from rescue to a perilous quest for understanding. Picard, driven by the mystery and the threat of Iconian technology falling into Romulan hands, makes the high-stakes decision to follow the Yamato's path to Iconia, directly risking war and the Enterprise's own safety.
The Enterprise drops to sub‑warp and assumes impulse power as Picard records a terse captain's log, framing the mission: a personal plea from his old friend Captain Varley and a …
Picard records a formal captain's log in the Ready Room, reading Varley's desperate plea and studying Galaxy-class schematics as the Enterprise slows to sub‑warp for the rendezvous. The log frames …
Picard orders a hard, time‑sensitive rendezvous when Data confirms the USS Yamato's entire mission log will be uploaded by the rendezvous — establishing a fixed retrieval window and raising the …
Captain Varley's desperate video link to the Enterprise turns from plea to catastrophe. He reveals he located the Iconian homeworld in the Neutral Zone and hid its technology from the …
On the Enterprise bridge a routine rendezvous with Captain Varley's stricken ship explodes into catastrophe and geopolitical crisis. Varley's frantic report about simultaneous system failures and a deadly engineering casualty …
Picard records a grim supplemental captain's log announcing the total loss of the USS Yamato and its families, then forces the bridge to pivot from mourning to mission. When a …
Following Picard's grim supplemental log, tactical tension on the bridge spikes as the Enterprise contacts a Romulan cruiser. Worf reports no response while Riker primes weapons; Picard hails. The Romulan …
Geordi, Data and the bridge staff lay out a clinical forensic reconstruction of the Yamato's destruction: an interrupted antimatter dump, collapsed magnetic seals and an uncontrolled matter/antimatter mix. Their conclusion …
In the observation lounge Geordi and Data present a grim forensic verdict: the Yamato exploded from an internal, catastrophic matter/antimatter failure — not an enemy weapon. Troi reports the human …
Reluctantly, Picard orders Varley’s personal log played and watches his old friend’s final, increasingly desperate footage. Varley turns a corroded alien device, identifies it as Iconian after accounting for two …
Picard summons and watches Captain Donald Varley’s desperate personal log: Varley identifies a corroded artifact as Iconian, explains his decision to violate the Neutral Zone to keep the technology from …
Picard orders Data to play Captain Varley’s final visual log, revealing a small, translucent spherical probe that emits crackling, spider‑like energy. Data clinically identifies it as a scanner or possible …
On the Enterprise bridge the forensic work becomes a command decision. Data plays Varley’s recording: a small, enigmatic spherical probe emits crackling energy. Geordi reports normal matter/antimatter readings while Data …
Picard, in a moment of mentorship, shares the ancient legends of the Iconians with Wesley, detailing their mythical ability to traverse space without ships, subtly foreshadowing the advanced technology they will encounter. This exposition deepens the lore and the mystery surrounding the alien civilization. As the Enterprise journeys deeper, it begins to suffer its own system malfunctions—a chilling echo of the Yamato's initial symptoms—confirming Geordi's grim assessment that the alien program is actively infecting their ship. The Enterprise reaches Iconia, a desolate, war-ravaged world, where sensors detect a powerful energy source. Suddenly, a new Iconian probe launches from the planet's surface, identical to the one that doomed the Yamato. Geordi, battling the ship's increasingly chaotic systems from a runaway turbolift, races to the bridge, delivering a frantic, critical warning: destroy the incoming probe. Trusting his engineer's desperate intuition, Picard orders the probe's immediate destruction, preventing the Enterprise from being directly scanned and potentially suffering the same catastrophic fate as its sister ship, solidifying the alien program as the immediate, existential threat.
Picard summons a tentative Wesley into the ready room and reframes Iconian lore as archaeological fact rather than fantasy, turning Wesley's skepticism into engaged curiosity. The conversation pivots from intellectual …
During a quiet mentorship in the ready room, Picard reframes Iconian legend for a grieving Wesley and offers hard-won counsel about duty and sorrow while making tea. The intimate moment …
Aboard Engineering, Picard's supplemental log reframes the Enterprise's random malfunctions as possible early symptoms of what destroyed the Yamato, turning scattered glitches into a coherent, contagious threat. Geordi, frantic and …
In Main Engineering Geordi La Forge frantically triages cascading, apparently random system failures while Picard's voiceover reframes the malfunctions as possibly the same affliction that destroyed the Yamato. Geordi isolates …
The Enterprise drops into orbit above a brown-red, apparently lifeless Iconia. Data's scans confirm a planetwide cataclysm roughly two hundred thousand years ago while Worf isolates a concentrated energy signature …
A tiny, deadly moment shifts the bridge from forensic curiosity to frontline crisis: a blinding flash on Iconia heralds a projectile, and Data confirms it’s the same probe that scanned …
Geordi finally clicks: the pattern in the Iconian program snaps into place and he races to warn the bridge. His intellectual triumph is instantly extinguished when a burst of static …
Geordi's eureka moment collapses into crisis: static severs comms just as he races to warn the bridge. In the turbolift he is thrown by violent, erratic acceleration — pinned to …
A sudden, breathless crisis: Geordi crashes onto the bridge, battered and frantic, warning that the Iconian probe's program is actively infecting ship systems. Picard responds with instant, calm authority—ordering phasers …
An emergency beat: Geordi bursts onto the bridge frantic, spots the Iconian probe closing fast and orders it destroyed. Picard trusts La Forge without debate — Worf fires phasers and …
In the observation lounge Picard, Riker, Geordi and Data confirm the worst: the spherical probe transmitted an adaptive Iconian program now embedded in Enterprise systems. Geordi concedes his limits—he cannot …
In the observation lounge Picard, Riker, Geordi and Data piece together the catastrophe: the Iconian probe transmitted an alien program that is now embedded in the Enterprise mainframe. Forensic links …
The Enterprise's internal crisis intensifies as Geordi explains the Iconian program: an intelligent, incompatible system actively rewriting their software, causing widespread chaos and unpredictable malfunctions. Data clarifies the program infiltrated through the Yamato log, granting them a slower, albeit relentless, infection rate. The human toll mounts as Pulaski, in Sickbay, grapples with failing biobeds and medical knitters, forcing her to improvise with 'ancient' splints, highlighting the ship's rapid technological regression. Geordi and Data's attempts to counter the program are met with electrical shocks and random system failures, underscoring its advanced, self-defensive nature. With life support failing on multiple decks, Picard makes the pivotal decision to lead an away team to Iconia, believing the program's source holds the key to a solution. On the bridge, Riker faces a tense standoff with Sub-Commander Taris, whose own Romulan cruiser is now crippled by the same contagion, forcing a fragile, uneasy truce. A Romulan transport attempt to the planet ends in horrific molecular disintegration, confirming the extreme danger of Iconia. The act culminates in Riker's agonizing dilemma: he cannot retrieve Picard's away team without lowering shields, yet the ever-present Romulan threat makes lowering shields an unacceptable risk, trapping the captain and his team on the deadly planet.
In the captain's ready room Picard and Riker confront a collapsing timeline: life support is already failing on multiple decks and an Iconian program may be actively rewriting ship systems. …
In the captain's ready room, Riker delivers grim news: life support is failing on multiple decks and an Iconian probe may be rewriting the ship's systems. Picard, haunted by the …
Wesley spots a Romulan warship and Riker moves the Enterprise to full combat readiness, but the ship's systems begin to stutter: shields, phaser banks and torpedoes intermittently fail or recover. …
On the Enterprise bridge a tense standoff with Romulan Sub‑Commander Taris collides with catastrophic system failures: shields, phasers and torpedoes stutter and the Romulan cruiser repeatedly cloaks and uncloaks. A …
The away team materializes in a dim, ruined control chamber dominated by three silver gateways and a pentagonal console crowned by a glowing blue dome. Data immediately begins methodical scans …
The away team confronts a dead control room: three silver gateways, a glowing dome ringed with cryptic keys, and alien script across consoles. Worf's repeated hails to the Enterprise return …
Picard, Data, and Worf materialize into the dimly lit Iconian control room, a place of ancient power. They discover a pentagonal console ringed with keys and three shimmering silver gateways. Data, leveraging his linguistic prowess, deciphers Iconian script, activating the console. The gateways awaken, revealing distant alien worlds and, chillingly, fleeting glimpses of both the Enterprise and the Romulan bridge, confirming their ability to instantly transit matter across vast distances. Data bravely thrusts his arm through an aperture, which vanishes from the elbow down, proving the gateways are not illusions but functional transporters. Witnessing this profound technology, Picard radically reinterprets Iconian history, theorizing they were not conquerors but victims, attacked out of fear by those who couldn't comprehend their travel. Data further discovers a vast underground power source controlled by the console. Just as the Enterprise's bridge cycles into view, offering a path home, Data, attempting to probe the console further, is struck by a sickly green energy beam. The Iconian program directly attacks his positronic pathways, leaving him damaged, blind, and immobile, a devastating blow to the away team's ability to understand and control the ancient technology.
Data deciphers the Iconian console and, by activating what he believes to be a manual override, brings the room to life: a spinning portal revealing distant worlds — including brief, …
The Iconian console activates, spawning a spinning gateway that cycles through distant worlds — including fleeting images of the Enterprise and a Romulan bridge — proving the portals are functional. …
Data is crippled when the Iconian program begins rewriting his positronic pathways; he is blinded and unsteady, stripping the away team of their primary interpreter. Under crushing time pressure (minutes …
In a frantic, moral pivot, a wounded Data is hauled to the Iconian console as Picard races the cycle clock. With Data partially blind and failing, Picard orders the tricorder …
The climax ignites as Picard cradles the damaged, blind Data, who reveals the Iconian program is attempting a fatal rewrite of his core software. Facing the imminent threat of Romulan acquisition, Picard makes the agonizing decision to destroy the Iconian technology. Data, even in his impaired state, guides Picard to trigger a probe launch that will overload the vast underground power source, ensuring the technology's complete annihilation. Simultaneously, on the Enterprise, Geordi grapples with Data's apparent 'death' as his positronic brain flatlines. But Data miraculously revives, his self-correcting mechanism having executed a total system shutdown and memory wipe, purging the alien program. This breakthrough provides Geordi with the radical, high-risk solution for the Enterprise: a full system shutdown, purge of the Yamato log, and reload from archives, even as the Romulan warship hovers menacingly. Picard initiates the detonation sequence on Iconia, escaping through the gateway just as the control room collapses. He briefly materializes on the Romulan bridge, where Taris reveals his actions have triggered their auto-destruct, before O'Brien beams him back to the fully restored Enterprise. Riker, demonstrating a moment of shared humanity and strategic genius, offers the Romulans the same purge solution, averting their destruction. Iconia is consumed by a massive, hydrogen-equivalent explosion, a deliberate act of erasure that denies the gateway technology to all. The Enterprise survives, its systems restored and Data recovered, but the victory is tempered by the destruction of an entire ancient culture's legacy and the grim weight of the choices made.
In the Transporter Room denouement, Picard orders an immediate withdrawal when he learns the Romulan cruiser is armed with an irreversible auto‑destruct. Riker overrides the blunt evacuation plan with a …
Picard beams back aboard and immediately orders the Enterprise to withdraw as the Romulan ship threatens auto-destruct — a last-minute tactical retreat layered over Riker's decisive diplomacy to open a …