The Hunted
Captain Jean-Luc Picard leads the Enterprise crew to contain Roga Danar, an escapee soldier engineered to survive and kill; they must stop his breakout while exposing Angosia's culpability and avert political catastrophe.
A tense and morally charged hunt propels the Enterprise crew into the heart of a political scandal. The episode opens as Picard and Riker escort Angosian Prime Minister Nayrok through a stately senate rotunda; the mood shifts when Nayrok reports that a prisoner has escaped Lunar Five, a maximum security penal colony. Sensors briefly pick up a half-ship hiding over the planet's pole; Data recalibrates the instruments to pierce magnetic interference and reveals a tiny craft. The vessel seems lifeless, but a cylindrical escape pod materializes and deposits Roga Danar aboard the Enterprise. The Transporter Room erupts into violence as Danar—fast, desperate, and ferociously strong—fights the security team before finally being overwhelmed and detained.
The crew's initial victory twists into unease. Data and the computer register no biosigns and then, disturbingly, report that the detention cell is empty. Troi visits Danar and feels something paradoxical: the man who killed two guards and toppled five officers reads as nonviolent, cerebral, and deeply injured. Danar tells Troi that his transformation began in the war—he volunteered, then trained under men who called themselves counselors. Doctor Crusher's analysis confirms Troi's intuition: Danar's cellular structure bears biochemical tampering—cryptobiolin, triclenidil, macrospentol—and electrical shielding that explains why sensors missed him. Troi and Beverly trace a horror: the Angosian military turned idealistic recruits into perfect soldiers, then exiled those who became problems to Lunar Five.
Political tension escalates as Picard confronts Nayrok via viewscreen. The Prime Minister deflects responsibility, insisting the resettlements served the public good and invoking national security. Picard challenges the ethics: "Even the most comfortable prison is a prison," he says, forcing the Angosian government to face the consequences of its own choices. Meanwhile, Danar and Data find an unlikely kinship; Data, an android, and Danar, a man altered by programming, compare the difference between coded instruction and human will. Danar confesses remembering every face he has killed; he is built to survive at any cost.
Security frays. During a carefully supervised transfer, Danar leverages his conditioning and a momentary system vulnerability to leap from the beam and vanish. He reappears inside ship systems, overriding controls, disabling containment fields, and stalking through Jefferies tubes and cargo bays with a scavenged phaser. Data suspects misdirection: Danar leaves a trail meant to be followed while pursuing an unknown objective. The Enterprise responds with surgical countermeasures—sealed decks, anesthetic gas in cargo bays, forced routing of turbolifts—but Danar's tactical ingenuity repeatedly outmaneuvers them. He exploits sensor blind spots, jams subsystems, rigs phasers into transport circuitry, and finally beams aboard an Angosian transport ship, escaping orbit.
The crisis metastasizes. Nayrok reports that Danar has attacked Lunar Five in a stolen shuttle, triggering riots and a breakout of hundreds of veterans. The veterans—wounded, desperate, and armed—storm the Angosian capitol and confront the senators who once engineered them. Danar and his comrades march into the rotunda, bloodied and furious. He demands what has haunted him: "We want our lives back. We want to come home." When an Angosian aide lifts a weapon, Danar fires a warning shot, shredding plaster behind the Prime Minister and forcing a standoff that threatens a massacre.
Picard steps between government and veterans with cutting moral clarity. He refuses to fight Angosia's battles for them, and he exposes the hypocrisy: a society that creates super-soldiers and then abandons them cannot expect help without accountability. He offers a stark choice to Nayrok—either welcome the veterans back and try to repair what has been done, or suffer the political and communal fallout. Picard evacuates his away team, refuses to drag the Federation into coercive interference, and makes the punitive pivot of a true diplomat: he will report the facts and, should the Angosian government survive its crisis, the Federation will offer assistance to reprogram and rehabilitate the veterans.
The episode resolves without a facile cure. Danar's immediate rebellion forces Angosia to confront its moral bankruptcy; Picard refuses to rescue a government that cast aside its own soldiers but pledges tangible remedial support should they accept responsibility. The Enterprise charts for Starbase Lya Three, leaving Angosia to choose its future. The story closes on a grim, humane note: engineered warriors and political expedience collide, and a captain's duty compels him to protect lives while insisting that justice and healing must come from the culpable society itself. Themes of culpability, the ethics of wartime engineering, and the limits of technological and political solutions animate the narrative: power built into flesh demands moral reckoning, and survival programming cannot substitute for citizenship.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
The Enterprise arrives at Angosia, a planet eager for Federation membership, whose serene facade shatters with the escape of a dangerous prisoner, Roga Danar, from Lunar Five. Captain Picard and Commander Riker, initially impressed by Angosian tranquility, find themselves drawn into a high-stakes pursuit. Danar, a master of misdirection, skillfully evades the Enterprise's advanced sensors and tactical maneuvers, forcing the crew to adapt. His capture culminates in a brutal, desperate struggle within the ship's transporter room, revealing his formidable strength and violent conditioning. This opening act establishes the central conflict, introduces the enigmatic Danar, and immediately challenges the Federation's ideals of peaceful intervention, hinting at deeper, unsettling truths beneath Angosia's calm surface.
During a ceremonial tour of Angosia's senate, Prime Minister Nayrok's cultivated image of pacifist intellectualism is publicly shattered when aide Zaynar reports a violent escape from the Lunar Five penal …
During a ceremonial diplomatic visit to the Angosian senate, Prime Minister Nayrok's polished veneer of reason is brutally ruptured when his aide interrupts to report a violent escape from the …
During a tense bridge sequence Riker orders the stolen transport detained and Data brings the ship to bear. Sensors briefly register only a drive section and wreckage on an asteroid …
On the Enterprise bridge, Riker orders the intercepted transport detained while Angosia's Nayrok warns the crew the escapee is deadly. The small vessel appears to be reduced to a single …
On the Enterprise bridge Data admits he followed procedure yet cannot account for the escaped prisoner, instantly turning a tactical puzzle into a diplomatic crisis when Prime Minister Nayrok warns …
On the Enterprise bridge, Data turns conjecture into a fix: after Riker suggests Angosia's polar magnetics could hide the fugitive, Data recalibrates sensors to ignore polar interference and reveals a …
On the Bridge Picard and Riker parse Data's bafflement as Nayrok's conciliatory message intensifies the diplomatic stakes. Data recalibrates sensors to pierce polar interference; Riker's hunch is confirmed when a …
As Roga Danar materializes on the transporter pad his rifle fails; a stunned calm snaps into animal panic. When ordered to stay he launches in a blur, overpowering security with …
On the transporter pad Roga Danar materializes and, when his rifle fails, erupts into a sudden, animal‑quick assault. He evades phaser fire, mauls a security officer and throws the engineer …
On the bridge Picard fields Angosia's carefully measured plea for time and containment while Prime Minister Nayrok alternates conciliatory diplomacy with a cutting aside about Riker's injuries—a small, revealing stab …
On the bridge, a routine diplomatic handoff collapses into alarm when Enterprise systems reveal a paradox: the stolen transport shows no life signs and, moments later, the detention cell is …
Counselor Troi, drawn back down the corridor by an empathic flare, finds Roga Danar waking in a maximum-security cell. Their charged eye contact produces an intimate pause before Danar alternates …
Deanna Troi follows a spike of psychic pain back to Roga Danar's detention cell and meets the engineered soldier at the border between sleep and waking. Their charged, intimate exchange …
Act Two plunges deeper into the mystery of Roga Danar, as the Enterprise crew grapples with his inexplicable ability to evade sensors. Data's diagnostic reveals Danar possesses no life signs, baffling Picard and Riker. Counselor Troi, sensing profound mental anguish, confronts Danar in his detention cell. Their intense conversation peels back layers of his violent reputation, exposing a detached, cerebral man haunted by his past. Danar, a former soldier, reveals he was imprisoned for simply 'doing everything they asked him to do' during the Tarsian War, hinting at a darker truth about Angosian society. Troi's growing empathy for Danar clashes with Picard's pragmatic duty, setting the stage for a moral dilemma as she uncovers his military record, which shockingly contains no criminal charges.
In the Observation Lounge Troi dismantles the lone-fugitive narrative: Roga Danar was an idealistic recruit who was psychologically conditioned and biochemically altered into a 'perfect soldier.' Beverly reads off obscure …
In the observation lounge Troi and Crusher lay out a devastating case: Roga Danar was not a criminal by choice but a product of his government — psychologically rewired and …
In the Ready Room Picard quietly dismantles Prime Minister Nayrok's euphemisms about Lunar Five, forcing the Angosian to choose words that reveal culpability. Troi watches as Picard reframes 'resettlement' as …
Picard presses Prime Minister Nayrok for truth and humanitarian alternatives for Roga Danar, offering medical and non‑lethal options. Nayrok stonewalls, recasting Danar as an agitator and invoking Angosian sovereignty to …
The shocking truth explodes in Act Three: Roga Danar and others like him are not criminals, but genetically and psychologically modified super-soldiers, created by the Angosian government during the Tarsian War and then exiled to Lunar Five when their enhanced abilities became a societal threat. Doctor Crusher confirms the irreversible cellular alterations, while Data explains how these modifications allowed Danar to bypass sensors. Picard's rage builds as he confronts Nayrok, who dismisses the soldiers as 'agitators' and insists on their return to prison. Faced with the Angosian Prime Minister's unwavering stance and Federation non-interference protocols, Picard reluctantly prepares to transfer Danar. Danar, however, makes a desperate, violent escape attempt from the transporter beam, refusing to return to his prison, leaving the Enterprise crew stunned and his fate uncertain.
In the detention cell Data and Roga Danar share a disarmingly calm, philosophical exchange that lays bare their different 'programming'—Data's ethical, non‑lethal constraints and absence of feeling versus Danar's biochemical …
Picard and Troi deliver the official order: Roga Danar is to be returned to Angosian custody. The exchange crystallizes the moral impasse — Picard constrained by protocol, Troi empathetic, Data …
Following Worf's alert, Picard moves the Enterprise from crisis mode into tactical containment: general quarters are sounded, targeted decks are sealed with security fields, and Data executes orders. Riker proposes …
Picard orders general quarters and seals key decks while Riker suggests reactivating the turbolift network as deliberate bait. The bridge's tactical gamble is immediately tested: Roga Danar, calm and practiced, …
Act Four transforms the Enterprise into a hunting ground as Roga Danar, now armed, launches an elaborate, ship-wide escape attempt. Security forces scramble, sealing decks and turbolifts, but Danar's cunning and enhanced abilities allow him to outmaneuver them at every turn. He uses a phaser to disable a security guard, overrides containment fields, and infiltrates Engineering. Data, impressed by Danar's adeptness, attempts to stall his progress, revealing Danar's plan to restore power to Shuttlebay Two. However, Data deduces Danar is employing misdirection, purposefully leaving a trail. The chase culminates in a brutal hand-to-hand combat between Danar and Worf in a cargo bay, where Danar, after disarming and incapacitating Worf, jerry-rigs a phaser into the transporter console, beaming himself aboard the Angosian transport ship, successfully escaping the Enterprise's grasp.
Worf and a security guard wait at a turbolift ambush and find the car empty but for an overloaded phaser shrieking on the floor. Worf improvises a field fix, silently …
A compact, escalating turn: Worf and a security guard foil an overloaded phaser in a staged turbolift ambush—Worf's quick technical fix averts an explosion—while, elsewhere, Roga Danar silently incapacitates a …
Danar engineers a deliberate false lead by simulating a shuttlebay power restoration while actually ascending the reactor core and slipping away into the ship’s Jefferies tubes. Data, increasingly impressed, covertly …
Data's rapid diagnostics confirm an alarming truth: Roga Danar has outmaneuvered the Enterprise's systems and is moving deeper into the ship. As Data admires Danar's technical skill and overrides a …
Shaken but lucid in Engineering, Geordi reports that Roga Danar moved with terrifying speed—his initial stun a clear tactical success—and the breach is no longer contained. Data picks up an …
Shaken from a phaser stun, Geordi warns the bridge that Danar moved with impossible speed and urges doubling security as Data flags an open access panel on Deck 30. Worf …
Act Five ignites with Roga Danar's full-scale assault on Lunar Five, then the Angosian capital, leading a riot of fellow programmed veterans. Prime Minister Nayrok, terrified, pleads for Federation intervention. Picard, accompanied by Troi, Data, and Worf, beams down to confront the escalating crisis. In the Angosian Senate, Picard delivers a scathing indictment of Nayrok's government, accusing them of creating and discarding their own 'sons and brothers.' Danar and the veterans burst in, armed and wounded, demanding their lives back, not just survival. A tense standoff ensues, with Picard stepping between the two factions. He refuses to intervene further, stating the Federation cannot interfere with Angosia's 'natural course of society's development,' effectively forcing Nayrok to choose between violent suppression or reconciliation. Picard's decisive action leaves Angosia to confront its moral failings, with their Federation membership hanging in the balance.
Worf discovers a missing pressure suit in Cargo Bay Three, prompting Picard to order emergency airlocks and torpedo coverage across key decks. As Worf closes in, Roga Danar reveals himself, …
In the cargo bay Worf surprises Roga Danar, but a timed phaser overload in a Jefferies tube knocks out lights and external sensors. Seizing the moment, Danar disarms and incapacitates …
In the cargo bay ambush Worf corners Roga Danar, but a staged explosion in a Jefferies tube disables external sensors and creates the split-second opening Danar needs. He disarms Worf, …
With the Enterprise's sensors repaired and tactical systems coming back online, the bridge regains operational control even as Roga Danar remains at large. Immediately, Prime Minister Nayrok hails to report …
A tense, game-changing transmission from Prime Minister Nayrok shatters Angosia's calming diplomatic posture: Roga Danar has attacked Lunar Five, ignited riots, and—crucially—was created by Angosia itself. Picard hears the confession …
Picard conducts a terse, clinical assessment of the engineered Angosian veterans' programming to pin down the stakes before they act. Troi and Data confirm the soldiers are engineered to survive …
Picard verifies—through Troi and Data—that the escaped Angosian veterans are engineered to prioritize survival and will not kill unless they perceive existential threat. His dry, uneasy remark underlines the moral …
Picard, Data, Troi and Worf materialize in the Angosian senate to confront a government that engineered soldiers and then cast them aside. Data and Troi expose Angosia's ethical failure while …
Bloodied, engineered veterans led by Roga Danar storm the Angosian senate rotunda. Picard, Data, Troi and Worf confront a defensively armed but morally compromised government; Data forces the Prime Minister …
In a tense rotunda showdown Picard physically interposes between Roga Danar's bloodied veterans and the Angosian senators, exposing the government's role in creating and abandoning engineered soldiers. As veterans demand …
On the bridge after the standoff, Picard closes the mission by offering help on a single, non-negotiable term: the Federation will provide technical and rehabilitative assistance to reprogram Angosia's engineered …
After confronting Angosia's manufactured crisis, Picard closes the mission with a measured, moral maneuver: he instructs Riker to record that Federation technical and rehabilitative aid will be offered only if …