The crew rescues a lone Borg drone and must decide his fate.
The Enterprise rescues an injured Borg drone from a crashed ship and brings him aboard. Picard and his officers see an opportunity to study the Borg, and perhaps to destroy them, by implanting a program into the drone. But as Geordi spends time with the young Borg, who comes to be called Hugh, he starts to see him as an individual.
The episode raises a hard moral question about whether it is right to use a living person as a weapon, even an enemy. Picard, who was once assimilated, struggles with his own feelings. The story is one of the most thoughtful of the series, and Hugh returns in a later episode. It is among the highlights of the fifth season.