Emergence

Data's rehearsal of The Tempest is interrupted when an Orient Express steam train crashes through the holodeck scene. Moments later the Enterprise leaps to warp by itself, escaping a deadly distortion. La Forge and Data find strange nodes forming throughout the ship's systems, protected by force fields and linked to the holodeck. Their pattern resembles a neural network: the Enterprise appears to be developing a mind. A train full of odd characters carries on a dreamlike journey, and Troi suggests they are fragments of the new intelligence working something out. In a cargo bay, an object is forming atom by atom. Picard chooses to help rather than stop the process. When the vertion particles the life form needs begin to run out, Data joins the train and steers it, and the ship, towards a new source. With the crew's help, the new life form completes itself and flies off into space, and the Enterprise returns to normal.