With Captain Picard assimilated by the Borg, the enemy is able to totally vanquish a Starfleet/Klingon armada at Wolf 359, leaving Riker in command of the Enterprise and forced to go one on one with his former captain.

drydock at Earth Station McKinley, the Enterprise is undergoing extensive repairs while the crew, most notably Captain Picard, recover from the Borg invasion attempt. Picard returns to France for a less than warm welcome from his brother Robert, while Worf's human foster parents beam aboard, concerned about Worf's feelings since his dishonor from the Klingon Empire.

While rushing a young boy to a Starbase medical facility after his older brother played a cruel practical joke on him, the Enterprise is suddenly diverted from her course and headed for an unknown, out-of-the-way planet. What no one realizes until it's too late is that Data is responsible for this, having been taken over by a homing signal that leads him to his creator, Dr. Soong, who had been thought dead for many years. Data has been called home to be given an upgrade - emotions - but the unexpected arrival of his jealous android "brother" Lore at Soong's hiding place puts Data's upgrade and his creator in jeopardy.

Finding a Talarian training vessel in deep space, the Enterprise crew discover that one of the ship's crew is actually a human teenager. Dr. Crusher's examinations reveal that he has been injured in the past as well - and it's likely that these came about on purpose. When the boy's Talarian foster father appears to reclaim him, Picard is left with a choice - either return the boy to a society whose people may have abused him, or face the possibility of starting a war.

Dr. Crusher's old friend, Dr. Dalen Quaice, is leaving his former home on a sStarbase to retire after the recent death of his wife. He mentions his slowly deteriorating memory, a thought which remains on Dr. Crusher's mind when she visits engineering to watch Wesley finish a warp field experiment. But when the Enterprise becomes ready to leave the starbase, Wes hastily finishes his experiment, but his mother completely disappears. She, however, is on the Enterprise - so she thinks - and she helplessly watches the entire crew disappear one by one. She is, in fact, inside a warp bubble, and the real crew on the real Enterprise must enlist the help of the mysterious alien known as the Traveler to pull Dr. Crusher back into reality before her warp bubble shrinks into nothingness.

Rushing into dangerous territory on Turkana III, a planet whose government once warned that any Federation personnel would die if they visited there again, the Enterprise is looking for an escape pod containing two men who left a critically damaged vessel. The pod has landed on Turkana III, requiring an away team to visit. They find two "cadres" - urban gangs so large they have replaced the government and now conduct their street fighting on a warlike scale - one of which is willing to help find the Federation shipwreck survivors. The Enterprise's liason to the cadre is the younger sister of the late Tasha Yar, and no one knows whether or not to trust her.

The Enterprise is intercepted in deep space by a Klingon battlecruiser occupied by K'mpec, leader of the High Council of the Klingon Empire. With him is K'ehleyr, Worf's former lover, who has visited the Enterprise before. This time she acts as Picard's aide in a role K'mpec has chosen for him - the neutral arbiter to oversee the handover of the dying K'mpec's powerful position to one of two contenders: Duras, whose cover-up of his father's actions cost Worf his honor; or Gowron, a Klingon "outsider" about whom little is known. But sabotage, including the assassination of K'mpec, begins to point toward evidence of Romulan involvement...and Worf must deal with the possibility that his son (by K'ehleyr) may lose his honor if Worf reveals his relationship to him.

While investigating suspicious energy readings on Alpha Onias III - a planet that would be ideal for a secret Romulan base - Riker, Geordi and Worf are overcome by toxic gases. Geordi and Worf, however, are rescued via transporter, while the Enterprise loses all trace of Riker. Riker awakens in the sick bay of the Enterprise, told by an older Dr. Crusher that sixteen years have passed since that event, and that a virus he contracted on the mission to Alpha Onias III recently became active, causing him to lose all memory back to that event. He is now the ship's Captain, Data is First Officer, and Picard - now an Admiral - is completing the final arrangements for the signing of a peace treaty between the Romulans and the Federation, and Riker has a teenage son as well. But glaring mistakes soon point out to Riker that this scenario is not, in fact, happening, and that it's all a nearly perfect simulation. But the question remains - who's behind it, the Romulans...or someone else?

Picard reveals that Wesley has been accepted into Starfleet Academy. Wes's final assignment on the Enterprise is to accompany Picard on a trip with an independent miner, Captain Dirgo, to settle a dispute between mining colonies. En route, Dirgo's battered shuttle breaks down, forcing them to land on a desert world - but help is nowhere near because the Enterprise is attempting to move an abandoned freighter whose highly radioactive contents threaten the Enterprise and a nearby planet.

Shortly after counseling crewmember Janet Brooks over the loss of her husband, Troi begins to experience severe pain, and at the same time, the Enterprise is suddenly unable to go to warp speed. Data and Geordi determine that they're caught in a field of steadily moving two dimensional particles that seem to be alive, while Troi realizes that she's lost her empathic sense. When it is discovered that the entities are heading toward a black-hole-like cosmic string and carrying the Enterprise with them to destruction, Picard relies on Troi for an answer, although she has lost confidence in herself.

Data records his observations of an average day in the Enterprise to be relayed to Dr. Bruce Maddox, a Federaton cyberneticist who once expressed an interest in disassembling Data to learn about how the android works, but now is content to let Data reveal that for himself. But as the day progresses, from the nervous, soon-to-be-married couple of Chief O'Brien and Keiko to the transport of a secretive Vulcan ambassador to the Neutral Zone, Data finds out that this isn't going to be an ordinary day.

Captain Maxwell of the U.S.S. Phoenix has severed contact with Starfleet and the Phoenix has been raiding the vessels of Cardassians, a race once at war with the Federation but now peaceful under an uneasy treaty. Picard discovers that Captain Maxwell believes he has good reason to continue these attacks.

The Enterprise arrives at Ventax III to retrieve a Federation anthropological team, only to discover that the planet is in a state of chaos and the team has been taken hostage by the Ventaxians, who believe their peaceful way of life is about to end with the "second coming" of Ardra - the devil. But when Ardra takes a dangerously personal interest in Picard, he must quickly find some way to discredit her.

The Enterprise is on a routine mission, giving everyone a chance to relax, when an investigation of an unknown clasM planet sends the Enterprise through a wormhole that appears without warning and renders everyone but Data unconscious. But as the rest of the crew investigates what happened, they begin the discover that someone's keeping secrets from everyone...and that someone happens to be Data.

Riker, having undergone facial surgery to look like a Malcorian and beamed down to Malcor III to coordinate other surgically disguised cultural observers from Starfleet, is injured in a riot and taken to a hospital, where his true nature is slowly deduced by Malcorian doctors while Riker remains out of touch with the Enterprise. Picard and Troi try to find open-minded individuals among that planet's leaders and scientific minds, but discover that, like on late 20th century Earth, such people are few and far between.

Geordi is delighted to welcome Dr. Leah Brahms aboard the Enterprise, having already gotten to know her - so he thinks - through a friendly holographic simulation in a crisis situation in the past. But the real Dr. Brahms is nothing like her holodeck alter-ego. Meanwhile, the Enterprise inadvertantly destroys a free-floating space creature and helps to deliver its newborn child, but the child thinks the Enterprise is its mother and attaches itself to the hull to "nurse" energy from the power reserves - and Geordi and Dr. Brahms are left to find the solution to this problem...if they can cooperate with each other.

The missing starship Brittain is found by the Enterprise, but Riker and an away team find that the entire crew of the Brittain went berserk and murdered one another, leaving a single survivor - a Betazoid who can't speak and whose telepathic "ramblings" to Troi are puzzling. When the Enterprise is immobilized by a dangerous natural phenomenon, no one suspects that the survivor's riddles may have some meaning, and members of the crew begin hallucinating slowly edging toward the same kind of madness that drove the Brittain's crew to kill themselves.

Starfleet officers who were on an away team five years ago investigating a mysterious migration of previous explorers to the planet Tarchannen 3 are beginning to mutate into alien life forms and migrate to the planet themselves. Among them are Lt. Commander Leitjen, visiting the Enterprise, and Geordi La Forge. While Dr. Crusher keeps Leitjen in sick bay when her mutation begins, Geordi's mutation goes unchecked and, more alien than human, he beams to the surface to join the other members of the away team, who have fully mutated.

Shortly after very nervously performing a scene from "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Dr. Crusher, Lt. Barclay is assigned to accompany Geordi on a close examination, via shuttle, of an alien probe that has impeded the functioning of a subspace telescope array. But after being scanned, the probe somehow singles Barclay out to receive a massive mental "upgrade," doing away with the lieutenant's legendary reclusiveness and shyness, and replacing those traits of his personality with knowledge and learning abilities beyond human experience...and arrogance.

Picard is readying a speech on the subject of the planet Tagus 3, whose archaelogical digs are off-limits to outsiders, to be delivered to a group of distinguished archaeologists, and is surprised to find that Vash, a very fondly remembered acquaintance from his visit to Risa, is present as well, no doubt to fulfill her nefarious urge to go treasure-seeking. She and Picard seem to be able to agree on nothing, which catches the attention of Q, who, to force Picard to admit that he does indeed love Vash, sends the crew, Vash, and even himself, into Sherwood Forest. Picard, of course, becomes Robin Hood, his crew become Robin's merry men, Q becomes Guy of Gisbourne, and Vash, naturally, is the damsel in distress...a role she doesn't play willingly, or, indeed, correctly!

After an apparent sabotage of the Enterprise's warp drive committed by Klingon exchange officer J'Ddan, Starfleet sends Admiral Nora Satie out of retirement to investigate the possibility of a Klingon faction cooperating with Romulans. But Satie goes beyond that, accusing a shy junior crewman of Romulan collaboration and even accusing Captain Picard of aiding Romulans and the Borg.

Kalon scientist Dr. Timicin has beamed aboard the Enterprise to travel to a star much like his planet's own sun to conduct tests of a modified photon torpedo that could reduce the level of solar activity - something that needs to be done within decades, or Kalon II's sun will explode, eradicating his people. When the test fails, Timicin continues, but he is due back on Kalon II so he may carry out the Resolution - a traditional Kalon ceremony in which one ends one's life by painless suicide at sixty. Lwaxana Troi, also visiting the Enterprise, tries to convince Timicin to continue living, although his request for asylum from his people could result in war.

Ambassador Odan is being transported to the Peliar Zel system to attempt eleventh-hour mediation between civilizations on two moons. One society's new power source may mean lonterm pollution and deterioration of the other society's world. Odan intends to settle the dispute, and on the two week trip he and Dr. Crusher have fallen in love. But when a faction of radicals attacks the shuttlecraft Odan has insisted upon taking to the surface of one of the moons - he refuses to use the transporter - Odan is severely injured and is forced to reveal that he is, in fact, an alien parasite within a humanoid host body. When Odan's fellow Trills cannot send another host in time to save the parasite's life, and a countdown to war begins on the two moons, Riker risks his own life to serve as a temporary host.

En route to an artificial intelligence conference on Risa, Geordi, alone in a shuttlepod, is kidnapped by Romulans, who send a "copy" of him to Risa. Under the supervision of a female Romulan who remains in shadows at all times, Geordi is tortured and brainwashed to obey, without question, instructions transmitted on a certain wavelength to his VISOR. When he returns to the Enterprise - with "memories" of his trip implanted into his mind - Picard deals with a belligerent Klingon colony governor who accuses the Federation of assisting a rebel political faction. In fact, however, there is another Klingon responsible for this, and he is relaying Romulan instructions to Geordi, who may unwittingly become an assassin.

During the Enterprise's investigation of a dark-matter nebula, Lt. Jenna D'Sora, recently having broken up with a longtime boyfriend, becomes attached to Data, who at first protests that he has no human feelings, and then attempts to emulate emotions. In the meantime, the density of the matter in the nebula pulls off an astonishing disappearing act - making an entire clasM planet fade from existence. And whatever caused that is in the path of the Enterprise.

Picard balances his Federation and Klingon duties as new Klingon Chancellor Gowron faces a civil war. Worf and his brother Kurn fight to regain their father's honor.