Okay, so this is a milestone episode... kind of. It's episode 80 which surpasses TOS's 79 episode total... except that there have been two two-parters and one of them is counted as one episode (making this 81?), so I don't know. You do the math.
It's not one of my favorite episodes, but it's got one of the best opening scenes. Data is becoming better at bluffing so Riker decides to pull a magic trick on him for the rest of the chips. Being a machine, Data can explain the slight-of-hand movements afterwards and claims the pot because of it. Of course this, like most of the poker games, is a foreshadowing of the episode to come.
They get a distress call from a Federation freighter which is orbiting Turkana IV, the birthplace of Tasha Yar and the planet that had often been likened to the violent streets of the inner city of your choice. They race as fast as they can to get there before the freighter's warp core explodes, but they're too late. However, some of them got away in an escape pod so they send an away team down to find them.
All of the colonies on the surfaced are destroyed and the people live underground now. But that doesn't stop them from setting off proximity alarms. They are met by armed men that take them to their leader, a guy named Hayne. We then get the brief summary that there are two factions struggling for control - onc called and Alliance and one called a Coalition. Hayne is the head of the Coalition and explains that the members of the Alliance have the freighter crew as hostages. He offers to help rescue and return them in exchange for weapons. Hayne claims that they're needed to "keep the peace" but the Alliance would return them for a ransom of course. It's a no win situation and Picard naturally wants no part of helping either side. In the midst of the conversation of how awful the place is, Crusher mentions off hand before they leave that they know all about this planet from a former crew member. So, Hayne presumably investigates how this can work to his advantage but they don't show it. Then the audience gets a surprise when he contacts them again and introduces them to Tasha's sister Ishara Yar.
Hayne appears to understand that he can't get weapons from them but offers Ishara to help them anyway just so that they don't pay the Alliance the ransom they are demanding because that would be detrimental to their cause too. Of course, they don't believe it right away, but they welcome her on board since they have no choice but to accept any offer of help to get their people back. She explains the recent history of the political situation; of how there is no discernible government anymore, but only the two militant factions. The fact is, they're equally matched to the point that neither side will ever be able to win a decisive victory over the other and take control. And they all have proximity detectors implanted in their bodies that would detonate if any attempt was made to remove them, permanently binding them to their cadres for life. Although Tasha died in the first season and they gave her a better send off in Yesterday's Enterprise, I think they made this episode with the intent of developing her character some more, but from her sister's point of view, which wasn't flattering. Naturally Ishara has a lot of anger and resentment, feeling like Tasha had abandoned her in this hell hole and a lot of time is spent correcting her misconceptions of Tasha's character. And we see in Ishara what kind of zealous security officer Tasha could've turned into had she stayed on the show and developed naturally.
She submits to DNA testing without any objection and insists on helping them in the first part of their mission to put an amplifier onto the escape pod so they can dig them out later. She suggests to several objections that they send her in as a decoy since her proximity detector will draw the Alliance's attention while the away team sets up the amplifier. She is damaged, but not killed and they risk their lives to bring her back with them.
Of course, this garners trust with the crew and they're all impressed, so when it turns out that she actually is Tasha's sister via the DNA test, nobody is surprised. She latches onto Data for more intimate details of Tasha's relationships on the ship. She then turns reflective and contemplative and wishes to have her proximity implant removed so she can follow in Tasha's footsteps, go to the Academy and leave this futile lifestyle. It's at this point that the episode loses traction with me. I think it's obvious to everyone in the audience that she's playing the Enterprise crew for suckers. You just get a bad feeling as their gearing up for the final part of the
plan to recover the freighter crew that this isn't going to have a
happy ending. And I get it - that they want to believe in her intentions because they all loved Tasha, but for the entire cast to be taken in without any suspicion seems unlikely. Well, Troi sensed a conflict of feelings, but she should've been able to sense her duplicity also. So, in a way it turns out to be almost as much of a bubble popper as Tasha's original death.
So they dig a hole and go, all undetectable now, to get the hostages, Ishara helping to navigate the area. When they're spotted, Ishara appears to draw their fire again and slips away. But she's really going off to the Alliance base's power core to compromise it and deactivate all of their defenses so the Coalition can finish them off. Data, who is the one who could be believably fooled by her actions as reinforced by the opening poker scene, finds her and has to stop her because she has essentially tricked the Federation into ending their conflict for them which would put the Federation in a compromising postition. When Riker and Worf catch up they disarm her and realize that her phaser was set to kill and she wouldn't have had any mercy on them in the pursuit of her goal.
After some objection they decide to send her back (even though she can just be sent in undetected now to do exactly what she was planning to do anyway.. so...?) and she awkwardly tries to make up with Data concerning her deception. He has no feelings of course which always confuses the person who's trying to make an impression, deflating their ego a little. But Data is left to ponder trust and betrayal and tries to gain understanding of it all from Riker, who was the most emotional of the group in this episode. But even though it's kind of a predictable downer, I think the opening and final scenes and lessons learned from Data's perspective make it a worthwhile episode. But I think I would've chosen a better one for the milestone of the 80th episode.
Three and a half stars.
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