"Angel One" is the fourteenth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In this episode, an away team visits a world dominated by women to search for survivors of a downed freighter, while the crew of the Enterprise suffer from the effects of a debilitating virus.
However, there were problems between the cast and director during filming, and Patrick Stewart sought to have the sexist nature of the episode changed.
Commander Data (Brent Spiner), Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), and Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) beam down to the surface.
He insists he's only honoring the local customs, acknowledges Beata's beauty and claims to find the loose, revealing garb rather comfortable.
Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) relieves Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) of duty after he and most of the crew have fallen ill to a random virus on board, one which emits a scent detected by its victims at time of infection.
When confronted by Data, Yar, and Troi with rescue, Ramsey and his men (having taken wives and started families during the intervening seven years) refuse to leave.
Meanwhile, Riker learns from Beata that their social structure had already started collapsing, though Ramsey and his men have served to accelerate its decline.
Geordi (after a friendly reminder from a sniffling Worf (Michael Dorn)) remembers that in command, he must delegate tasks so as to remain on the bridge.
Dr. Crusher determines that the virus spreads by generating sweet-smelling particulates in order to entice deep inhalation, which then become infectious once inside the body.
After failing to persuade Ramsey and his group to leave with them, Riker contacts the Enterprise in hopes of transporting them without their consent, a severe violation of Starfleet protocol, but Dr. Crusher forbids anyone from beaming up to the ship for fear of spreading the virus.
She does allow Data to return since his android construction renders him immune, and Riker orders him to take command and get the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone before it is too late.
Producer Herbert Wright explained that the episode was to be a commentary on Apartheid in South Africa, with men on the planet representing black people.
[1] The original plot by Patrick Barry would have seen Riker and Data travel to the surface with an otherwise all female away team, which offended the planet's leader to the extent that Yar stuns him with a phaser as a show of strength in order to prevent his immediate execution.
[2] The reverse role society had already been included in Gene Roddenberry's 1974 TV pilot/movie Planet Earth, and Wright described it as "being done a thousand times already".
[4] Michael Ray Rhodes directed the episode as part of a deal with The Bronx Zoo, another television show filmed at Paramount Studios.
[9] Cast member Wil Wheaton watched it for AOL TV, and thought that it started well but soon descended into the appearance of an episode from The Original Series with Riker in the Kirk role.