Star Trek: 25 Greatest Next Generation Episodes

20. Contagion

This episode was, in some ways, another Picard episode in that his passion for archaeology is established for the first time. The U.S.S. Yamato, the Enterprise's sister ship first seen in "Where Silence Has Lease" (or was it?) rendezvouses with them for repairs from a massive computer malfunction that suddenly obliterates the Yamato with all hands lost along the Neutral Zone.

When the attack of a nearby warbird is ruled out, all signs point to a serious design flaw in the Galaxy class starship until an ancient probe from the planet Iconia is discovered in the Yamato log, which implanted a computer virus that caused the malfunctions aboard the doomed ship, and the Enterprise is already well into a total memory dump of the Yamato's computer into their own, and the malfunctions begin.

Will the Enterprise end up meeting the same fate as her sister ship? Well... no, the ship went on for another five seasons and a movie, but I had to get a little suspense in there, right?