Original air date: May 17, 1994
Ro Laren returns to the Enterprise from advanced training, having just achieved the rank of Lieutenant. Just as she's being welcomed back by Picard, a crisis erupts on the bridge, and they both rush to handle it. A Cardassian ship is under attack by the Maquis, a paramilitary group of Federation citizens resisting the Cardassians. The Enterprise drives off the attackers and beams aboard wounded Cardassians. Picard and Gul Evek exchange warnings that neither side is doing enough to stem the violence in the DMZ. Admiral Nechayev visits the ship and tells Picard that the Federation is eying Ro Laren to act as an undercover operative and infiltrate the Maquis.
Ro agrees to the mission in spite of her hatred of Cardassians, wanting if nothing else to validate Picard's continuing trust in her. She arrives in a local bar on Ronara Prime in the DMZ and makes it look like she's on the run from Starfleet. A bar denizen, Santos, covers for her. She tells him that she's on the run for killing a Cardassian and is interested in killing more. Santos stuns her and brings her to the leaders of the local Maquis cell, Kalita and Macias. She tells the truth about her history in the work camps and in Starfleet, but claims that she went AWOL. While the others check her story, she bonds with Macias over the fact that he likes hasperat, a Bajoran dish her father used to make.
Ro's story checks out, and she's brought into a meeting about Cardassians smuggling biogenic weapons into the DMZ. The group decides on a preemptive strike, but first they'll need medical supplies to carry it out. Ro states that she can use her knowledge of the Enterprise's security codes to steal them. Kalita goes with her on a shuttle. Ro surreptitiously sends a warning message to the Enterprise, and Picard realizes what Ro wants him to do. He allows her to beam the supplies she needs off the ship and then pretend to unsuccessfully fire at her before she escapes.
Ro is hailed as a hero by the Maquis. She slips away back the Enterprise to meet with Picard, who devises a trap for the Maquis, and Ro again agrees in an effort to prove herself to Picard. But back with the Maquis, Ro is growing increasingly conflicted about her traitorous role. When Macias wistfully looks forward to celebrating an end to the conflict with hasperat and belaklavion music, Ro tearfully recollects how her father used to "chase away the monsters" with his belaklavion when she got scared, but after his death, she's learned that the belaklavion isn't adequate to destroy all of life's monsters. Just then, a Cardassian strike team ambushes the colony, and Macias is mortally wounded. With his final words, he tells Ro that he can die happy knowing that someone else will take up his mantle.
Ro meets with Picard in the bar and tries to claim that the local chapter of the Maquis is no threat, but Picard sees through her. She admits that she's become conflicted, and Picard warns her that any deviation from the plan will have harsh repercussions for her. He demands that Riker accompany her disguised as a family member to keep her honest. Ro and Riker prepare to spring the trap on the Maquis during an ambush of a Cardassian convoy, but at the last moment, Ro pulls a phaser on Riker and warns the Maquis off.
On the bridge of the Enterprise, Picard watches his trap fall apart and the Maquis flee. As Riker and Ro's shuttle return to the Enterprise, Picard orders Worf to take Ro into custody upon her return. But in the shuttle, Ro isn't coming back. Before beaming away to join the Maquis, she tells Riker to deliver her apology to Picard. Riker relates her words in his report to a stonily silent Picard before slinking away. Even after Riker is gone, Picard continues to silently stew over Ro's betrayal.
Tropes:
- Becoming the Mask: After infiltrating the Maquis as a spy, Ro joins them for real by betraying the Federation. Although considering her history, it isn't much of a shift - Macias says he knew all along that she was one of them.
- Book Ends: Ro exits the series (and the franchise, at least until 30 years later in Star Trek: Picard) the same way she entered it: As a disgraced Starfleet officer.
- Break the Haughty: A cross-series one for Admiral Nechayev. In her preceding appearance over on Deep Space Nine, Nechayev blew off Sisko's concerns about the Maquis. She arrogantly dismissed them as irresponsible hotheads and a nuisance. In the wake of those events over on the spinoff show, Nechayev here is exhausted, worried, and forced to concede both that the Maquis have become a legitimate threat after all and that Cardassians are not to be trusted.
- The Bus Came Back: Ensign Ro vanished without a trace after the season six episode "Rascals," but this episode reveals that she's been at Advanced Tactical Training. In reality, Michelle Forbes dropped out of the show after refusing to join the cast of Deep Space Nine and alienating herself from the showrunners. She was convinced to come back in a move of desperation by Jeri Taylor, who was dangerously low on script ideas to finish out the final season.
- Call-Back: Picard has apparently continued to serve Bularian canapés to Admiral Nechayev after first doing so in "Journey's End." They seem to have had the intended effect, as their relationship has finally become cordial.
- Call-Forward: The "lieutenant commander from tactical training who left Starfleet to join the Maquis" Ro mentions was canonically intended to be Chakotay.
- Continuity Nod:
- Ro was the first Bajoran in the franchise, and she was established to wear her earring on her left ear. Deep Space Nine later established that almost all Bajorans wear it on their right ear, making Ro a case of Early-Installment Weirdness. In this episode, Riker disguises himself as a Bajoran and wears an earring on his right ear, while Ro continues to wear hers on her left as a personal quirk.
- When Gul Evek and his crew are being treated in sickbay for injuries they received during the Maquis attack, he asks (in a condescending sneer) if Crusher has experience treating Cardassians. Crusher patiently replies that yes, she does. (Although she doesn't go into the details, obviously.)
- When briefing Picard on the current state of the Maquis Crisis, Nechayev updates him on how Starfleet caught the Cardassian Central Command smuggling weapons into the DMZ and thus violating the Treaty.
- Death Glare: Picard's expression at the end of the episode is one of barely restrained fury at Ro's betrayal — or deep sorrow.
- Downer Ending: Ro joins the Maquis and betrays the Federation, and right in front of Riker to boot. Picard, to say the least, is considerably upset upon receiving Riker's report.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Ro does this to some guy at the colony bar while hiding from Worf and Data. She also does it while meeting with Picard in the same bar, though that involves him seemingly buying a sexual favor from her rather than them actually making out.
- Failed a Spot Check: Worf and Data basically look right at Ro during the bar scene but don't see her because of the above. Behind the scenes, Michael Dorn and Brent Spiner were so annoyed at their usually very observant characters missing her that they kept deliberately messing up and joking around during the shooting of this scene much to the director's (who was Patrick Stewart himself) ire.
- Foreshadowing:
- Idiot Ball: The "perfect" choice to infiltrate the Maquis is a Bajoran officer with a history of being used and abused by Starfleet higher-ups, who admits to being friends with multiple Maquis sympathisers, and whose own father was killed by the Cardassians. Some of these are actually given as good reasons for why she would be ideal for this mission as nobody in the Maquis would suspect her, but nobody in Starfleet considers that this would make her sympathetic to them to begin with. Picard was lucky that Ro wasn't secretly a member of the Maquis already.
- In the Hood: The three Cardassians who infiltrated the Maquis camp were in hoods. Of course, this is justified as they were behind enemy lines and had to be covert.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Picard sent his two most unusual crewmembers, a Klingon and an android, to play the role of Starfleet officers searching the local bars for Ro. You'd think he'd send more ordinary-looking security officers, but then Worf and Data would miss out on a scene.
- Never My Fault: Evek and the Cardassian military blame Starfleet for the Maquis Crisis and for failing to rein them in...all while ignoring that it was their attempts to sabotage the DMZ and the Peace Treaty which set off this whole mess.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Usually, Picard says something to wrap up the episode. In this episode, he simply sits in silence, incensed with Ro's actions.
- Parental Substitute: Ro spends the episode being torn between two surrogate father figures: Picard and Macias. When Macias is killed by Cardiassians, just like her real father, that seems to tip the balance.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: Slightly less subverted than DS9's "The Maquis", as this helps lay the groundwork for Star Trek: Voyager. Ro mentions that one of her teachers at Advanced Tactical Training was a lieutenant commander who was sympathetic to the plight of the colonists and recently resigned from Starfleet, all but outright saying that her teacher was Chakotay. There's also a Klingon, a dark-skinned Vulcan and a Native American in the bar where Ro is hiding from Riker and Worf, though they aren't actually Torres, Tuvok and Chakotay.
- Rank Up: Welcome back, Lieutenant Ro.
- Sequel Episode: To DS9's "The Maquis, Part II". This episode continues the cross-series march towards Star Trek: Voyager. In the aftermath of events over on Deep Space Nine (i.e. Cal Hudson's failed strike), the Maquis have regrouped and changed tactics. Starfleet is thus left scrambling to respond and the Enterprise crew get dragged into the quagmire.
- Stock Footage: The matte painting depicting Ronara is a reuse of the Yaderan village painting from the DS9 episode "Shadowplay".
- Take Up My Sword: After the Cardassians attack the Maquis settlement, a dying Macias tells Ro that "When an old fighter like me dies... someone always steps forward to take his place."
- Tastes Like Friendship: Ro and Macias bond over their shared love of a Bajoran dish, hasperat, which looks like a veggie roll-up sandwich straight off the craft services table.
- Tranquil Fury: At the end of the episode, Picard doesn't say a word in reaction to Riker's report on Ro's betrayal. The anger is plainly obvious on his face, though. He is furious.
- The Xenophile: The human Macias loves Bajoran food and music, to the delight of Ro.
- You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Picard's desperation to keep Ro on the side of the Federation comes through when he calls her "Laren" for the first time at the colony bar.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Discussed. The Maquis are not a homogeneous group, with some cells being conservative and others being highly militant.
