A Bajoran officer who joins the Enterprise-D.
Ro Laren is a Bajoran Starfleet officer introduced in the fifth-season episode Ensign Ro of The Next Generation, played by Michelle Forbes. She had been court-martialed and imprisoned after a disastrous mission, and she is released to help the Enterprise deal with a Bajoran militant group, then stays aboard as a conn officer.
Proud and guarded, she is scarred by her childhood under the Cardassian occupation, during which she saw her father tortured to death. She finds an unlikely friend in Guinan and earns Picard's respect.
In Preemptive Strike, newly promoted to lieutenant, she is sent to infiltrate the Maquis for Starfleet. Coming to sympathize with their cause, she abandons the mission and joins them, a choice that deeply disappoints Picard. She returns in the third season of Star Trek: Picard as a Starfleet intelligence officer helping Picard against the Changeling conspiracy, and she is killed in that story.