Aquiel
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 1 February 1993
- ON
- First-run syndication
- STARDATE
- 46461.3
- DIRECTED BY
- Cliff Bole
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 239
WRITTEN BYTeleplay by Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore; story by Jeri Taylor
Investigating a missing officer at a remote relay station, Geordi falls for her through her personal logs, but nobody is quite sure what happened to her or her colleague.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
The Enterprise arrives at a subspace relay station near Klingon space to find both officers, Lt Aquiel Uhnari and Lt Rocha, missing, along with a shuttle, a dog and a strange patch of organic residue. Aquiel's logs suggest she feared a hostile Klingon, Morag, and Geordi becomes attached to her as he studies them. Then Aquiel turns up alive, and suspicion turns to her. She says Rocha attacked her, and it emerges that she had tampered with his logs to avoid a disciplinary report. Geordi stands by her as the evidence mounts. Crusher eventually discovers that the residue belongs to a shapeshifting organism that absorbs other life forms and copies them. It had killed Rocha and taken his place, and it is now hiding as Aquiel's dog. It attacks Geordi, who destroys it. Cleared, Aquiel turns down his offer of help so that she can earn her own way.
- 01Michael Piller said it was inspired by the 1944 Otto Preminger film Laura, in which a detective falls for a supposed murder victim.
- 02In early versions Aquiel was the killer, an idea dropped as too close to the recent film Basic Instinct.
- 03Co-writer Ronald D. Moore later named it, in a 1997 AOL chat, as an episode he would have avoided writing.