Patrick Stewart credited as playing...
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Your next priority will be to retrieve any information you can about this ship's mission. Contact the Operations Officer to assist you.
- Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Aye, sir.
- Ensign Ro Laren: He's in Ten Forward, waiting tables.
- ["Mac Duff" has been revealed as a Satarran bent on annihilating the Lysians]
- Commander William T. Riker: With all the power that MacDuff had, to alter our brain chemistry and manipulate the computers, it's hard to believe he needed the Enterprise.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The Satarran weapons technology was no more advanced than the Lysian. One photon torpedo would have ended their war.
- Commander William T. Riker: It almost did.
- [the Enterprise has "orders" to destroy the Lysian command center - orders that no one can confirm]
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I feel as though I've been handed a weapon, sent into a room, and told to shoot a stranger. Well, I need some moral context to justify that action. And I don't have it. I'm not content simply to obey orders. I need to know that what I'm doing is right.
- Commander MacDuff: So do I. I'd feel a lot better if all the questions were answered. And if you want to abandon our mission until our memories return, that's your choice, but... I must ask you: is it right to risk prolonging this war? To allow the needless deaths of thousands on both sides, solely on the basis of our moral discomfort?
- [first lines]
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: [voiceover] Captain's log, stardate 45494.2. We're investigating a series of subspace signals that may indicate intelligent life in the Epsilon Silar system. We are within sensor range.