Actual Title: “Lonely Among Us”
Enterprise is sent to transport delegations of two waring factions to a peace conference. Actually, that doesn’t matter, it’s just the wrapper plot. The main plot wraps around Enterprise bringing back an unwanted contagious guest that hops from person to person while looking for a host. While Worf, Crusher, and Picard all survive their experiences, one expendable crewman isn’t so lucky, which leads to Data’s first attempt at playing Sherlock Holmes.
Like a lot of first season episodes, this one comes off as pretty uneven, but still planting seeds which will come to fruition in later, better, seasons. Data’s Holmes is more comedic than he will be in future episodes. Even sillier, the writing team somehow forgot about Troi’s empath powers during a single scene where she goes from sensing something off with Worf and Crusher, to being unable to detect when Picard is infected. On the plus side, it’s not an episode where Wesley Crusher, Boy Genius, saves the day.
We end the episode with Picard + Mystery Entity beaming into space because “They’re one.” Now given that we’re only seven episodes into this series, it wouldn’t be difficult to believe that this is Patrick Stewart’s exist from the show and Riker will be taking over as the new captain. Obviously, that’s not the case, but it’s interesting to try and see the show through the eyes of first-time viewers.
Instead, after trying for hours to find their captain (marking a nice level of crew loyalty that we’ll continue to see in coming seasons) and on the verge of being forced to give up, Picard’s energy somehow shows up in the computers. There’s some Treknobabble about reversing the original transport, and viola! Picard is back!
Roll the credits, we’ve learned… um… that in his quest to become more human, Data has chosen to emulate one of the greatest fictional detectives of all literature. Eh, there are worse additions to the canon.