Skin of Evil

The Away Team returns to try and negotiate with the creature, which calls itself Armus. It seems intent on denying them access to the shuttle, merely wanting to amuse itself by provoking the officers to fear and anger. In between arguing with the Away Team Armus drapes itself over the shuttle and talks to Deanna, trying to provoke the same reactions in her. It claims that it is a personification of evil; a race of beings who once lived on the planet learned to take all their negative emotions and purge them in the form of this black "skin".

On the Enterprise, the sensors detect that there is a drop in the dampening field the creature is using to block the transporter each time it become enraged. Picard beams down personally and sends the Away team back to the ship. He confronts Armus, calmly provoking it to anger by offering to transport it away from the planet - and then rescinding the offer. As Armus flies into a terrible rage the dampening field drops sufficiently for the ship to transport both Picard and Deanna up. Picard orders the shuttle destroyed with a photon torpedo so that nobody will be tempted to beam down there again.

As the ship departs the senior officers gather to view a holographic message left by Yar to be viewed in the case of her death. She explains how much being a member of Starfleet meant to her, and gives her thoughts about each of her friends before signing off.

Yar's final message... it treads a very fine line between being moving and overly sentimental. But I think it manages to tread that line successfully... just.

"So you will understand when I say that death is that state in which one exists only in the memories of others. Which is why it is not an end." - Yar's image to her friends.