Original air date: October 5, 1992
A transport vessel carrying Ambassador Ves Alkar is attacked en route to mediation sessions between the Rekags and Seronians. Ves Alkar beams aboard with his aged mother Sev Maylor and is met by Troi. Maylor instantly starts accusing Troi of wanting to sleep with Alkar and reacts with spiteful jealousy. Alkar smoothly apologizes for his mother and says that she's been ill. He requests an audience with the captain and asks to be transferred to a smaller, less intimidating vessel to take him the rest of the way, but Starfleet won't risk another attack, so the Enterprise will escort him the rest of the way.
Alkar and Troi quickly get acquainted, and there's obvious attraction. Alkar is a Lumerian, a species that is empathic but only between each other. He asks for Troi's help in the upcoming negotations, and she agrees, as long as she gets permission. However, when the pair cross Alkar's mother, she repeats her jealous threats to Troi. While working on some staff evaluations with Riker, the disturbed Troi relates how she sensed malevolent, evil thoughts from Maylor.
But before the old lady can do more harm, she suddenly dies. Alkar asks Troi, as an empath, to help him with a mourning ritual. He and Troi hold up special rocks and intone some platitudes. Then Alkar taps his rock to Troi's while her eyes are closed, causing some magical thing to happen. Troi opens her eyes in surprise, and Alkar thanks her enigmatically.
Troi begins acting strangely almost immediately. In her quarters, she tugs at her clothing and runs her hands over her body self consciously, then cancels all of her appointments that day. Later, she arrives at Alkar's quarters and makes an uncharacteristically blunt pass at him, but he awkwardly refuses her advances, apologizing for any misconception about their relationship. She storms away and starts making sex-eyes at the first ensign she meets in the turnolift. Meanwhile, Crusher is trying to figure out why Maylor died, but Alkar has refused any autopsies.
Troi continues to decline and behave in increasingly hostile and sexual ways. When Riker arrives to continue their staff evaluations, she rubs her recent affair in his face, driving him away. She spitefully dresses down one of her counseling patients. At the same time, she seems to be aging rapidly. She shows up in Ten-Forward in a cocktail dress with graying hair to confront Alkar, hurling the same accusations at a female aid that Maylor made when she first arrived. Riker confronts Troi, and she tries to seduce him before raking her nails across his face.
The ship arrives at Rekag-Seronia, and Alkar meets with colleagues to discuss the important diplomatic work ahead. The gray and aged Troi confronts Alkar again, pleading with him to take her with him to the negotiations, but Alkar, unsurprised by her recent transformation, tells her that she is his "rock," and he needs her to remain on the ship. As he prepares to beam down, Troi rushes the transporter room with a knife, accidentally slashing Picard before she's subdued. In sick bay, Crusher notes the similarity in symptoms between Troi and Maylor. Picard authorizes an autopsy in spite of Alkar's prohibition. Crusher finds that Maylor was not related to Alkar and was in her thirties. Picard beams down with Worf to get answers from Alkar.
Alkar explains that he has found a way to shunt his negative emotions to other people, making him a peaceful and effective negotiator. He refuses to release Troi and has his guards send the Starfleet officers away. Back on the ship. Crusher proposes breaking Alkar's connection to Troi by temporarily killing her. Picard agrees. As Alkar walks away from successfully negotiating the peace deal, he suddenly feels faint. Picard summons him back to the ship, where he justifies Troi's death as serving the greater good of peace.
Alkar returns to his quarters, where he ropes his aide into the same "mourning" ritual to ensnare another victim. When Crusher's staff revive Troi, Alkar reacts in sudden pain. The crew beam his aide to safety, and Work arrives as Alkar stumbles around the room, aging rapidly. He finally collapses and dies. Troi has been returned to normal. She reflects with Riker on her ordeal, and they share a kiss. Riker holds her and assures her that he'll always protect her, even when she's old and grey.
Tropes featured:
- Artistic License – Biology: When Troi ages rapidly, her existing hair turns grey and then white. Existing hair doesn't change color as you age. It just loses color as you grow it. So if Troi were aging rapidly, she would just start showing grey roots.
- "Ass" in Ambassador: It turns out that Ves Alkar is perfectly untroubled by his practice of killing a string of women to make him better at his job.
- Big "NO!": Troi screams this when Alkar abandoned her in her quarters, when he goes to the transporter room to beam down to the mediation sessions.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Alkar is super-zen because he offloads all of his negative emotions onto other people, which kills them.
- Clingy Jealous Girl:
- Poor Troi turns into this, thanks to Alkar.
- And while we're on the subject, Riker doesn't look too happy at the hapless crewman Deanna seduces, though it is greatly downplayed, with the influenced Deanna clearly wanting him to be more jealous than he is.
- Cowardice Callout: Picard calls the villain of the episode a coward for using telepathy to transfer his negative emotions to other people instead of dealing with them himself.
- Damsel in Distress: It wouldn't be a Troi episode unless her empathic nature is used to victimize her in some way, requiring the crew to save her.
- Diplomatic Impunity: When Picard angrily tells Alkar that he intends to make him answer for what he has done, the ambassador smugly replies that the Federation council has promised him safe passage back home, and he expects Picard to honor that.
- Disease Bleach: As Troi gets increasingly unhinged, her hair starts graying.
- Disney Death: In order to save Deanna, Crusher euthanizes her. When the link is broken, Crusher revives her and all of her youth returns.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The way Alkar tricks women into receiving his baser, crueler thoughts under the guise of a private ceremony, and knowing the women will eventually die from the strain, feels disturbingly similar to a man tricking women into sleeping with him and knowingly spreading an incurable, fatal STD.
- The story as a whole is similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray with Alkar's ladies in place of the titular picture. The transport ship that the Enterprise beams Alkar over from is even named the Dorian.
- Femme Fatalons: Riker receives some nasty gashes courtesy of Troi when he rejects her advances.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: After Dr. Crusher has saved Deanna and the crew save Liva, Ves Alkar's negative emotions backfire on him and he ages to death.
- It's All About Me: Alkar remorselessly uses women as dumping grounds for his negative emotions, thinking he's far too important a negotiator to let a little thing like innocent women going insane and dying get in the way of that. As far as he's concerned, it's more important that he maintain a clear mind by getting rid of the negative emotions that everyone else in the galaxy can overcome on their own than that innocent women are left alone to live their own lives.
- Karmic Death: Alkar was about to trick another unsuspecting woman into taking his toxic emotions when Troi's revival forces him to receive those emotions again, and the shock kills him.
- Kill the Host Body: Dr. Crusher injects Deanna with a compound that stops her heart in order to stop Alkar from possessing her, as she can revive her within thirty minutes.
- Kissing Under the Influence: As Alkar's malevolent impulses, including his lust, begin to overtake her, Troi seduces a young ensign.
- My Beloved Smother: Alkar passes Maylor off as his mother, making her jealousy seem like overprotectiveness.
- Narcissist: It's implied Alkar is this, given the nature of some of the thoughts he projects. Maylor accuses Troi of "wanting" him; later, after becoming his new receptacle, Troi makes the same accusation against his female aide Liva, as well as accusing his male aide, Jarth, of envying him and wanting him to fail. It's likely these are actually Alkar's own attitudes toward all three.
- No Sympathy: Alkar towards each and every woman he's used to store his negative feelings, thinking their deaths are a necessary sacrifice in the long scheme. To that end, when confronted with how many women he's probably killed, Alkar only expresses the barest type of remorse but makes it perfectly clear he'll not stop. And when Alkar is finally dying, Worf flips this right back on him.
- Quit Your Whining: Troi, under Alkar's negative influence, does a counseling session with an Ensign Janewaynote . Janeway complains about her superior being far too critical of her. Troi tells her that this isn't Starfleet Academy and that if she can't take things on the Enterprise then she might do better on a transport ship. She tells her that her superior is probably just tired of hearing her complain, that she certainly is, and to get a hold of herself or be prepared for transfer.
- Rapid Aging: Troi, courtesy of Alkar. Then Alkar, when it gets turned back on him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Alkar justifies his actions on the grounds that his negotiation skills are needed and he never asks for anything in return, Picard denounces him as a coward who refuses to face the burden of his own negative emotions.
- The Reveal: Two.
- First, Alkar's "mother" isn't. That leads to the second reveal...
- Alkar can telepathically channel his unwanted emotions into people, which explains Troi's behavior, and her rapid aging.
- Serial Killer: What Alkar essentially is, luring in a string of victims and tricking them into becoming his "receptacles", then murdering them over a period of time. He has done this to Sev Maylor and an unknown number of others before her (he mentions that they "usually" survive for years), and attempts to do the same to both Troi and Liva.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: One minute, Deanna's smirking at a crewmember in the turbolift. The next we see them, Riker walks in as Deanna's in a dressing gown, and the guy's just putting on his boots.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Deanna, while under the influence of Alkar's negative emotions, strides into Ten-Forward in a very revealing dress.
- The Sociopath: Alkar clearly considers himself the most important person in whatever room he's in and puts his own well-being above others. He treats his women as things to be used and replaced once they've outlived their usefulness, and with no moral qualms or sympathy for their suffering.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Troi under Alkar's influence.
- Tranquil Fury: When Alkar refers to the women he brutalises by forcing his negative emotions into simply as 'receptacles', Picard hisses the word back at him, the look on his face one of complete and utter disgust.
- Vampiric Draining: Alkar uses specific women like Troi as "receptacles" for his negative emotions so he would be a better focused ambassador. Unfortunately, this emotional toxic waste also ages his victims to the point of death, while also causing them to become unhinged and, specifically in Troi's case, to unleash uncontrollable passions upon other people.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In his talk with Picard, Alkar claims he's justified in excising his negative thoughts in random women, since The Needs of the Many and whatnot. Picard calls bullshit on that reasoning immediately.Picard: You cannot explain away a wantonly immoral act because you think that it is connected to some higher purpose!
- Yandere: Deanna turns into this while suffering from Alkar's Rapid Aging powers. She becomes clingy and jealous of Liva who Alkar plans to make his next victim and tries so hard to be with Alkar. When he tries pushing her away, saying that she's still useful while on the ship, she starts losing her mind. She even attempts to kill Liva so that she can be with Alkar. Thankfully, she loses this behavior when she's revived.
- Younger Than They Look: Alkar's "mother" was really in her thirties. This is because Alkar has a Rapid Aging power, which can be redirected to another person if a certain ritual is performed. Later, Troi briefly as well, after he does it to her.
