Trama

Encountering the superior technology of a very ancient race creates system malfunctions for a doomed Federation starship, for the Enterprise, and for an eavesdropping Romulan warbird.

Picard and the Enterprise respond to a distress call from its sister ship, the USS Yamato, where it has faced a number of serious technical glitches, losing eighteen crew members when its computer turned off the force field on an open shuttle bay. Before the Enterprise can assist, the Yamato explodes with all lives lost. The explosion appears as the result of a failure in their matter/anti-matter pods, but Picard suspects it may have something to do with a relic the Yamato's captain obtained at an archaeological dig on a nearby planet. As they are in the Neutral Zone, they are shadowed by a Romulan warbird. With both ships now suffering technical glitches, Picard, an amateur archaeologist, leads an away team to a distant planet to investigate the remnants of that ancient race and rectify their problem - a one-way trip if the glitchy Enterprise can't beam them back.—garykmcd

Responding to his friend captain Donald Varley's emergency call from the Neutral Zone, Picard can only listen to him explain having fallen prey to mysterious system glitches during archaeological research on a planet he believes to be the home of the heretofore mythical Iconian race, whose advanced technology could give the Federation or Romulans preponderance. Suddenly, the Yamamoto explodes, and a Romulan warbird decloaks, ordering the Enterprise to leave instantly. Picard resolves to continue Varley's research, leading an away team to an unknown planet while the Enterprise displays a similar, rapidly-spreading sequence of system glitches (as does the Romulan ship). As Geordi, his engineers and the away team race to explain and cure their dilemma (presumably involving the alien planet's huge probe satellites), Data gets impaired in a subterranean Iconian control room.—KGF Vissers

The Enterprise is called to help a sister ship - in the Neutral Zone - that is having major system problems. They are able to download the ship's logs from a distance. Unfortunately, the ship is destroyed shortly after they arrive, then problems start to happen with the Enterprise's computer systems, and then the Romulans show up.—Anonymous

Picard and the Enterprise respond to a distress call from its sister ship, the USS Yamato, where it has faced a number of serious technical glitches, losing eighteen crew members when its computer turned off the force field on an open shuttle bay. The ship is stranded in the neutral zone and Picard is taking a bold risk by going in there with the Enterprise. Captain Donald Varley (Thalmus Rasulala) of the Yamato tells Picard that this might be a design flaw in the construction of galaxy class star ships. Donald also talks about finding the legendary civilization of Iconia on a planet inside the neutral zone. He says he found enough technology on the deserted planet, that if found by Romulans, it would give them an edge. Donald also found a relic on the planet. Before the Enterprise can assist, the Yamato explodes with all lives lost.

The explosion appears as the result of a failure in their matter/anti-matter pods, but Picard suspects it may have something to do with a relic the Yamato's captain obtained at an archaeological dig on a nearby planet. In his personal logs, Donald spoke about a probe scan of the ship from the Iconia planet. As they are in the Neutral Zone, they are shadowed by a Romulan war bird led by Captain Taris (Carolyn Seymour). Picard decides to travel to the Iconia planet that Donald had discovered and resume his mission. As the Enterprise reaches Iconia, the planet is deserted, and all major cities destroyed 200,000 years ago. The planet launches a probe, which Geordi asks Picard to destroy. If the probe had scanned the Enterprise, there would be no chance to save it. Geordi and Data say that the probe carried a new software that would have replaced the software of the Enterprise. Since the new software would be incompatible with the hardware, it would have led to malfunction and eventually the destruction of the ship.

But the software already got downloaded to the Enterprise when they downloaded Yamato's logs into the Enterprise mainframe. Eventually Enterprise will destroy itself. With both ships (The Enterprise and the Romulan) now suffering technical glitches, Picard, an amateur archaeologist, leads an away team to a distant planet to investigate the remnants of that ancient race and rectify their problem - a one-way trip if the glitches on Enterprise can't beam them back. Meanwhile the Romulan ship and Enterprise continue in orbit and helping each other to stay out of harm's way. Back on the planet Data figures that the planet is deserted. He figures out the language.

Data figures out that Iconians had technology to open gateways to other worlds and they could travel light years as easily as crossing a room. Data manages to gain access, but a bolt from the control panel knocks him out. Picard notices that one of the portals leads to the Enterprise and the cycle repeats every 4 mins. Picard tells Worf to take Data out through the portal to the Enterprise. Data tells Picard that the way to destroy the planet is to destroy the power source by launching another probe, but override the launch doors, so that it cannot launch.

Back on the Enterprise, Data shuts down and Geordi declares that he is dead. But then Data reboots and Geordi figures out that they way to fix the Enterprise is to shut her down, purge the memory files and reboot the computer with a backup saved in the core. Picard executes the probe launch and as he runs out of time, he takes the portal to the Romulan ship. The Enterprise locates him there and beams him back. The Romulan ship is on auto-destruct and can't shut it down, but Riker gives them the instructions to do so.