Second Chances

The Enterprise visits Nervala IV to recover data from a research station abandoned eight years earlier. Riker led that evacuation, as a lieutenant on the USS Potemkin. On the planet the away team finds a man who is identical to him, and who has been stranded there ever since. Geordi works out that a transporter beam split during the original escape, creating two Rikers: one beamed to the ship, the other reflected back to the surface. The stranded Lieutenant Riker is just as genuine, but frozen at an earlier stage of life, still devoted to Deanna Troi. He tries to rekindle the romance his double gave up, and the two Rikers clash. When a walkway collapses during a final attempt to retrieve the data, Commander Riker saves his double. Reconciled, the lieutenant takes a posting on another ship, calls himself Thomas, and leaves with Riker's trombone, while Deanna decides to stay.