Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Season 5 opens with Worf joining his brother Kurn in the Klingon civil war. Picard and the Enterprise try to expose Romulan backing for the Duras faction, while Data is given command of a ship and faces an officer who questions taking orders from an android. The Enterprise positions itself near the Neutral Zone; its blockade forces the Romulans’ hidden support into view. Gowron’s forces prevail, Worf’s name is cleared, and he returns to Starfleet.
In “Unification,” Picard and Data follow Ambassador Spock to Romulus, where he hopes to help Vulcans and Romulans reunite. Sela has turned Spock’s peace mission into cover for an invasion of Vulcan; Picard and Spock expose the plan, and a warning from the Enterprise stops the disguised fleet. Spock remains on Romulus to keep the movement alive. In “The Inner Light,” a probe makes Picard live as Kamin on doomed Kataan: he raises a family, watches the sun threaten their world, then learns its people sent their memories into space. Picard wakes with only minutes gone and keeps Kamin’s flute.
The season closes with an excavation on Earth uncovering Data’s severed head, already hundreds of years old. The Enterprise traces the find to Devidia II, where an away team discovers a time portal in a cavern. Data has been transported to 1893 San Francisco; the others follow Picard through the portal into the past. The story ends as the crew crosses into an unknown danger, before the away team can reunite with Data.