S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command

The Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), receives a message from the Sheliak, a reclusive alien race: Remove the humans on their planet Tau Cygni V within three days, or the Sheliak will exterminate them.

Picard sends Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner), an android, to the planet to coordinate the evacuation, but the colony's leader Gosheven (Grainger Hines) refuses. He argues the colonists have worked too hard to establish the colony and would rather fight the Sheliak than leave. Another colonist, Ard’rian McKenzie, tries to help Data persuade the colonists to evacuate. At one point, she kisses him, telling him that he seemed like he needed it. Data makes several attempts via rhetoric and political maneuvering to persuade the colonists to evacuate, but he wins over only a few.

Gosheven uses the colony's aqueduct as proof of the colonists' ability to overcome adversity. As a show of force, Data destroys the aqueduct with a phaser and informs the colonists the Sheliak are even more powerful, capable of destroying them from orbit, and the colonists would die never seeing their killers. Gosheven reluctantly agrees to the evacuation. Data tells him that the aqueduct is "just a thing", and that "things can be replaced, but lives cannot."

Due to radiation rendering the transporters useless, it will take three weeks to evacuate the planet, but the Sheliak insist on their time limit of three days. In response, Picard exploits a loophole in the treaty between the Sheliak and the Federation: he demands the dispute be resolved by third-party arbitrators, who will not be available for six months. Outmaneuvered, the Sheliak agree to allow three weeks. As Data prepares to return to the Enterprise, Ard'rian comes to say goodbye, confessing that she will miss him, to which Data responds by kissing her, telling her that she appeared to need it. She concludes that he saw she was unhappy, and did what he concluded would make her feel better; Data agrees and returns to the Enterprise.

Aboard the Enterprise, Picard comments on Data's fusion of two very different musicians' styles in a musical performance, as well as his creative approach to convincing the colonists. Data concedes that he has become more creative.