The Pegasus

**** (4 stars out of 5)

It's Captain Picard Day! Delighted children make papier-mache heads and crayon scrawls in Jean-Luc's honour. Then, on to merrily smashing a Pica-nata full of caviar and dusty old pottery shards, before donning fedoras and muttering the traditional "Oh, Stop, my heart" until an early bedtime under a Personal Relaxation Light. For kids!

Cagey but ebullient Admiral Eric Pressman of Starfleet Intelligence swoops in on a mission to recover his long-LOST starship Pegasus. He's LOST his hair, and, you guessed it, LOST his mind.

Seriously, once you're promoted to Admiral they must give out free passes to some island where nothing makes sense.

See, Pressman was Will's first commanding officer. Twelve years ago an accident on a secret mission ended in mutiny. Young Will defended his Captain against the entire crew who turned against Pressgang... uh, Pressman. Why did they revolt, you ask?

The UFP-Romulan Treaty of Algeron prohibits the Federation from developing cloaking technology. And sneaky Pressman built a cloak that was also intangible! It got everyone killed and his ship stuck half-in half-out of an asteroid. Now the Admiral wants it back because... uh... I dunno. Heavy drinker?

Speaking of which, what wing-nut makes a deal to abandon an entire line of defense technology unilaterally? "We're ABOVE all that CLOAKING DEVICE folderol. Oh, you Romulans go right on using them. Here, have some of our colony planets, too. No, no, they won't mind. Why, yes, I AM drinking trilithium! Yes, it DOES taste ghastly, but simply ALL the diplomats are doing it nowadays."

Picard sternly chides his boss, debates the merits of the illegal machine, and uses it to escape the nasty black Romulan anyway. Moral dilemma, shmoral dilemma!

"The Pegasus" once more brings us Riker skipping merrily away from murder charges, madmen in the admiralty, and (as with the Cardassian Treaty) the reminder that Federation Diplomats are simply BEGGING to get screwed over.