"Star Trek: TNG" (Season 5, Part 1) Quiz

Answer: Chris Hobson

Captain Picard assigns Data to command the USS Sutherland as part of a seventeen-starship task force assigned to patrol the Klingon-Romulan border. Lt. Commander Hobson voices strong objections to the notion that an android is capable of commanding a starship, but Data summarily dismisses these concerns and, after exposing Commander Sela and the Romulan fleet with a series of low-yield photon torpedoes, Hobson is all but cured of his skepticism. Data would temporarily assume command of the Enterprise in the seventh-season "Gambit" two-parter after the abduction of both Riker and Picard. Edward Jellico captains the Enterprise during Picard's Celtris III operation ("Chain of Command, Parts I & II"), while Commander Cavit (whose first name is never revealed) was Captain Janeway's original XO, as seen in "Caretaker" ("VOY"). Max Burke is the renegade first officer of the USS Equinox in "Voyager's" "Equinox" two-parter.

Answer: when the walls fell

The Enterprise is assigned to make contact with the elusive Tamarians, a humanoid species that uses a metaphor-based language indecipherable to the universal translator. The Tamarians kidnap Picard and transport him and the Tamarian captain to the surface of El-Adrel IV, where the two encounter a deadly threat from an indigenous lifeform. In an unorthodox but well-intentioned gesture, the Tamarians hope to facilitate the bonding of the two captains by subjecting them to shared threat; they steadfastly prevent the Enterprise from interfering with this plan. Captains Picard and Dathon essentially reconcile their linguistic and cultural differences, though Dathon is mortally wounded by the malevolent lifeform in the process. The phrase "Shaka, when the walls fell" signifies failure or futility in the Tamarian language. When the Enterprise is finally able to beam Picard up to the Enterprise, the consummately diplomatic Enterprise captain narrowly prevents his ship's destruction by addressing the Tamarian first officer in the XO's native language. Satisfied with the results of their efforts, the Tamarians proudly enter "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" into their lexicon, and the two vessels part on good terms.

Answer: "The Masterpiece Society"

Like the Romulans, the Cardassians have a proclivity for deception and treachery. In "Ensign Ro," the Enterprise uncovers a conspiracy that entails luring a group of Bajoran militants out into the open, enabling the Cardassians to eliminate them. By the time of this episode, the Cardassians had subjected Bajor to a brutal military occupation for nearly forty years.

Although Ro has a sordid history in Starfleet, she proves herself to be a loyal, capable officer by working with Picard to foil the Cardassian ploy and exposing the Starfleet admiral who colluded in it. Ro would ultimately defect to the Maquis in "Preemptive Strike." In "Conundrum," Commander Riker and Ensign Ro pursue a brief romance while stricken with amnesia, while the feisty Bajoran works on the bridge to save a crippled Enterprise in "Disaster." She's also featured prominently in "The Next Phase," where she and Geordi are phased out of normal space and taken for dead by the crew.

Answer: Graviton

A bitter Dr. Marr, who lost her son Renny to the Crystalline Entity on Omicron Theta III in the same attack that abandoned Lt. Commander Data on that planet, changes the Enterprise's graviton pulse to a continuous beam and proceeds to lock out the controls at the bridge science station.

This destroys the entity. Although the scientist's vengeance has been satisfied, she has likely ruined her career. Gravitons are currently theorized to exist as the exchange particles that mediate the gravitational force. Efforts are underway to detect them, as confirmation of their existence would represent a pivotal step towards establishing a grand unification theory. Tachyons are similarly hypothetical, thought to travel at superluminal velocities. By contrast, vertions ("Emergence") and dekyons ("Voyager's" "Parallax") belong to "Star Trek's" ever-expanding sci-fi glossary.

Answer: La Forge and Crusher; Worf and Keiko O'Brien; Troi, Miles O'Brien and Ro

Dr. Crusher and Lt. Commander La Forge are trapped in a cargo bay and must extinguish a plasma fire before it ignites cannisters of volatile quaratum; Counselor Troi, the only senior officer on the bridge, is effectively left in command of the Enterprise, as she, Ensign Ro and Chief O'Brien deliberate over whether to separate the saucer section for fear of a warp core breach; and Lt. Worf is left to deliver Molly O'Brien after Keiko goes into labor prematurely down in Ten Forward. Meanwhile, Lt. Commander Data and Commander Riker, both in Ten Forward at the time of the collision, navigate to engineering and prevent the warp core breach in the nick of time. Perhaps the most memorable vignette in "Disaster" involves an injured Captain Picard and three of the Enterprise's children, who work together to escape a doomed turbolift.

Answer: Yes

Although it was never confirmed on screen that all Enterprise residents had played the game, Cadet Crusher and Ensign Robin Lefler (played by soon-to-be-famous Ashley Judd) suspect that they are the last two individuals who haven't been compromised. This "game," in fact, is a mind-control device which the Ktarians seek to distribute throughout Stafleet in an attempt to subvert the organization.

While both Lefler and Wesley are eventually subjected to the game against their wills, the two manage to repair Lt. Commander Data before they're neutralized. Immediately after the senior staff forces the game on Wesley, Data appears on the bridge and executes a series of a programmed flashes from a light beacon.

This frees the senior staff from the Ktarians' mental control, allowing the Enterprise to take a nearby Ktarian vessel into custody. Wesley returns later in the season for "The First Duty."

Answer: A Romulan guard

Commander Data, who is commonly perceived as "TNG's" answer to Spock, in fact performs the Vulcan neck pinch on Commander Sela. Picard and Data discover that Spock is still very much loyal to the Federation but has been working with a Romulan underground movement in an effort to effect reunification between the Vulcan and Romulan peoples (the latter is an ancient offshoot of the former).

When Proconsul Neral, the highest-ranking member of the Romulan Senate, shows enthusiasm for Spock's plans, the ambassador is rightfully skeptical.

As suspected, Neral, who is collaborating with the elusive Commander Sela, intends to exploit the facade of reunification to launch a Romulan invasion of Vulcan. The Federation trio are successful in exposing the nefarious plot, and Spock elects to remain behind on Romulus in the hope of one day bringing his goal to fruition. Fans are also treated to a brief operatic interlude in "Part II," courtesy of Lt. Worf.

Answer: Dvorak's "Slavonic Dance in Gm, Op. 46, No. 8"

To make matters worse, Data is listening to yet a fourth piece, J.S. Bach's "Third Brandenburg Concerto," a work we later hear played by Captain Picard and Commander Nella Daren in "Lessons." By the sixth season, the Enterprise science officer is analyzing the oeuvre of Antonin Dvorak; we hear the "Slavonic Dance in Gm" in "A Fistful of Datas." By the end of "A Matter of Time," the Enterprise crew realizes that several pieces of equipment have gone missing and immediately suspect Rasmussen. It turns out that the professor is in fact from the 22nd century (from the era of the Enterprise NX-01), having stolen a time machine from a legitimate 26th-century historian when that time traveler visited 22nd-century Earth. Unwilling to contaminate the timeline (a mantra Prof. Rasmussen disingenuously repeats throughout the episode), Picard takes Rasmussen into custody.

After criticizing the security on Deep Space Nine, Odo would remind then-Lt. Commander Worf of this embarrassing incident in "Bar Association" ("DS9").

Answer: Morath

Morath lied to Kahless, his brother, and the former fled in dishonor. Kahless pursued him, and the two fought for nearly two weeks. After Kahless killed his brother, he traveled to Gre'thor (Klingon hell) and brought Morath to Sto-vo-kor (Klingon heaven) (as revealed in "Voyager's" "Barge of the Dead").

A sculpture depicting the epic battle between the brothers can be found in Worf's quarters. Alexander is nearly killed in "New Ground" after being caught in Biolab 4, which has caught fire after the Enterprise is impacted by a destabilized soliton wave. Alexander would finally go on to embrace his Klingon heritage some years later ("Sons and Daughters," "DS9"). Fek'lhr presides over Gre'thor as something of a Klingon "Satan" ("Devil's Due"), while Lukara was Kahless' wife ("The Sword of Kahless," "DS9"). Sompek, a former emperor who massacred the city of Tong Vey, is a celebrated figure in Klingon history ("Rules of Engagement," "DS9").

Answer: A fascination with Spot

"Felis catus" (watch "Schisms") doesn't appear again until the sixth season. Counselor Troi deduces that by copying Data, Timothy is trying to avoid facing the emotional impact of his parents' death aboard the Vico. Though Timothy is convinced he caused the Vico disaster, in which all other hands on that vessel were killed, Data surmises that the Vico was crippled by nebular wave bombardments that increase proportionally with a ship's energy output.

The Enterprise finds itself similarly threatened by this phenomenon but is able to escape the nebula before any serious damage is incurred.

The Ba'ku boy Artim is seen taking a similar interest in the charismatic android in "Star Trek: Insurrection."

Answer: 3

Jev is indeed guilty of mental rape, having invaded the thoughts of unwilling Enterprise crew members and driven them into comas. In two of the three episodes involving Troi, he violates the counselor, assuming the identity of Commander Riker (with whom Troi had a brief romantic encounter one evening after a poker game) in one of the counselor's memories. On the other occasion, Jev, feigning ignorance as to the cause of Troi's recent coma, searches Deanna's memory and leads the half-Betazoid to believe that it was Tarmin, Jev's pompous father, who had raped her. Riker is forced to relive a memory in which he reluctantly sacrifices an Enterprise engineer to secure a containment breach, while Dr. Crusher revisits the day on which she accompanied Picard, then commanding the USS Stargazer, to view her husband's corpse in a morgue. Counselor Troi would be mentally violated in a very similar fashion nearly eleven years later by Praetor Shinzon (via his telepathic Reman viceroy) in "Star Trek Nemesis."

Answer: Genetic engineering

The human colony on Moab IV was designed to be socially and genetically engineered. In a twist of irony, a strategy devised around Lt. Commander La Forge's VISOR is implemented successfully to divert a stellar core fragment on course to hit the planet and destroy the colony; Geordi, a blind man, could never have been born on Moab IV. Genetic engineering is an issue periodically explored in "Trek," from the Augments in "Space Seed" ("TOS"), "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and the "Borderland" trilogy ("ENT") to Dr. Bashir's genetic enhancements on "Deep Space Nine." Overpopulation is touched upon in "The Mark of Gideon" ("TOS"), while the issue of genocide is perhaps most poignantly addressed in "Remember" ("VOY").

Although the AIDS epidemic has never been explicitly referred to in "Star Trek," the Pa'nar Syndrome that afflicts Subcommander T'Pol throughout most of "Enterprise" is an obvious allegory of that devastating illness.

Answer: Samarian sunset

Sounds tasty. When the glass holding a Samarian sunset is tapped, the concoction turns from transparent to orange. Data owes Troi this drink after the counselor beat the android at three-dimensional chess. Having been caught preparing the beverage when MacDuff's vessel initiates the memory-suppressing energy pulse, Data temporarily believes himself to be a bartender amidst the initial confusion.

The Enterprise crew discovers "Starfleet orders," implanted in the Enterprise computer by MacDuff, to destroy the Lysian central command; the Lysians are a race at war with the Satarrans, and MacDuff seeks to use the comparatively powerful Enterprise to deliver a crippling blow to his people's enemy. Picard and company become quickly skeptical of their orders after trivially overpowering the Lysian defenses. Why would such a species constitute such a grave threat to the Federation? MacDuff's insistence on destroying the central command ultimately tips his hand, and after roughing up Lt. Worf and contravening Picard's direct orders, Riker shoots MacDuff and reveals the impostor's alien anatomy. Deanna Troi is also fond of chocolate passion punch, as we learn in "Inside Man" ("VOY").

Answer: Worf

The three prisoners originally impersonate spirits from the USS Essex, a 22nd-century Starfleet vessel that apparently crashed on the moon's surface two centuries prior to the episode. Operating under this guise, the trio petitions Captain Picard to beam up their "physical remains" from the southern polar region of the moon. Picard considers the captors' story unlikely, as Starfleet officers--even disembodied ones--would never exhibit the violence shown by the beings possessing Troi, Data and O'Brien.

The captain authorizes the bridge to beam what turn out to be the remaining Ux-Mal criminals into Cargo Bay 4, where they intend to use the rest of the Enterprise crew as hosts. After transporting the prisoners to the ship, the captain then threatens to decompress the cargo bay; this would kill everyone, corporeal or otherwise, in the room. Outwitted, the treacherous trio abandons their hosts, and the Enterprise beams all the prisoners back to Mab-Bu VI's moon.

The tables get turned on Chief O'Brien several years later, after Keiko becomes possessed by a Pah-Wraith in "The Assignment" ("DS9").

Answer: Livers

In addition to two livers, Klingons have an eight-chambered heart, 23 ribs, two stomachs, three lungs and two layers of pia mater insulating the brain. Dr. Toby Russell, a respect neurologist, joins Dr. Crusher in devising a treatment for Worf. Crusher finds Russell's willingness to subject patients to untested (but potentially promising) treatments questionable, although Russell's use of genitronic replication on the Klingon security officer ultimately proves a success.

In one of the universes Worf visits in "Parallels," it was Counselor Troi's support of him through this ordeal that leads to the pair's marriage by 2370.