Jeremy's Father (Aster)

Jeremy's Father (family name Aster) is the deceased parent of twelve-year-old Jeremy Aster; he died five years prior from a Rushton Infection. Though absent from the present action, his death shapes Jeremy's emotional reserve and motivates Captain Picard's offer of the Enterprise as a surrogate family. The father's status functions as a private locus of grief that the crew references when establishing care and protection responsibilities toward Jeremy, anchoring the boy's loneliness within the episode's moral stakes.