Devil's Due (TNG episode)

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Star Trek: TNG episode
"Devil's Due"
"Picard discusses things with Jared, the Ventaxian leader, as Ardra attempts to take control of the planet in "Devil's Due".
Episode no.	87
Prod. code	187
Airdate	February 4, 1991
Writer(s)	Philip Lazebnik and William Douglas Lansford
Director	Tom Benko
Guest star(s)	Marta DuBois as Ardra , Paul Lambert as Dr. Clarke, Marcelo Tubert as Jared, Tom Magee as Klingon Monster, Thad Lamey as Devil Monster , William Glover as Marley
Year	2367
Stardate	44474.5
Episode chronology
Previous	"The Wounded"
Next	"Clues"

Devil's Due is an episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. In this episode, the people of Ventax II believed in a devil-woman named Ardra (played by Marta DuBois). A thousand years before the episode, Ardra promised to solve all the world's problems. In return, the planet would become hers in a thousand years.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Enterprise receives a distress call from a Federation delegation on Ventax II, where the population is in a state of panic because they are convinced their world is going to end . . . tomorrow.

Captain Picard and his crew discover that, according to Ventaxian history, the planet's leaders entered into a Faustian bargain long ago. Ventax II had been heavily polluted and had civil and political turmoil; under the bargain, society would flourish in peace and prosperity for 1,000 years, but thereafter the people would become slaves to Ardra, their mythology's devil. Recent earthquakes are seen by the Ventaxians as evidence of Ardra's imminent return.

As the Enterprise landing party is conferring with the Ventaxian leader on the planet's surface, a sultry brunette appears in their midst from out of nowhere and announces herself to be the long-awaited Ardra, come to collect on the millennium-old contract and take over Ventax and its people. Since the Enterprise is currently in orbit around "her" world, she also lays claim to the starship and its crew.

Ardra performs numerous seemingly miraculous feats to prove she is who she says she is. Earthquakes come and go at her whim; she transforms her appearance into devilish beings from both human and Klingon mythology; and as Picard and Data attempt to return to the Enterprise in a shuttle, the starship vanishes before their eyes.

Picard — not only incensed by what he is sure must be some sort of fraud, but also offended by Ardra's attempts to seduce him — calls for a traditional Ventaxian arbitration hearing, hoping thereby to expose the woman as a charlatan. Ardra agrees to this, but only if Data serves as the arbiter. Data urges Picard to refuse, since (being an android) he will have no choice but to rule impartially and cannot promise that the captain will prevail, but Picard decides to proceed.

During the arbitration hearing, the Ventaxian leader admits that the legendary Ardra did not actually play an active role in his society's reformation — that the restructuring came from the people themselves and was adopted and implemented over a period of time. At one point, Picard scornfully asks regarding Ardra: "Did she not even pick up one piece of trash?" But despite the captain's suggestion that the Ventaxian society of a thousand years ago had rescued itself by its own efforts, the current leader still cannot shake off his conviction that the woman who has appeared to them is in fact the Ardra of legend.

As the arbitration hearing proceeds, Geordi La Forge (on the planet's surface) takes numerous readings in an attempt to figure out the nature of Ardra's powers. He finally manages to locate a cloaked ship in orbit above the planet — as well as the Enterprise, which didn't really disappear after all, but is still exactly where it should be (albeit cloaked).

Geordi gets word of his discovery to Picard, and after a brief recess, the captain turns the tables on Ardra. He starts an earthquake and challenges Ardra to stop it; when she cannot, Picard stops the quake himself with a snap of his fingers. He makes Ardra briefly disappear, and he transforms himself into the same Klingon demon which Ardra had changed into earlier. Having thus demonstrated "powers" equal to Ardra's, Picard reveals that a team from the Enterprise had captured Ardra's ship and had used her gang's technology to put on a show of their own. When Ardra and her co-conspirators heard about the Ventaxian legend, they found the prospect of cashing in to be irresistible, and the woman had thoroughly studied the stories of Ardra and played her part to near-perfection. The "magic effects" at her command were achieved using her starship technology and included appearing to change her form through holographic projection, appearing and disappearing at will through transporter technology, and creating tremors through the projection of a low frequency tractor beam on the planet surface.

"Ardra" tries to back out of her corner by saying she has decided to release the Ventaxians from the contract (as a goodwill gesture) and will be on her way, but her exit is blocked by the palace guards. With "Ardra" having withdrawn from the arbitration, Data ends the hearing, and the Ventaxian leader thanks Picard for saving his people.

[edit] Trivia

The idea for "Devil's Due" came from a script written for the proposed Star Trek: Phase II television series. by William Douglas Lansford. The story element of having the returning devil be an alien con artist was new to LaZebnik's version, Lansford had the devil figure being created by the planetary leaders.^[1] The Ventaxian people were named after the UK ventilation company Vent-Axia.