Skin of Evil

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Counselor Troi survives a shuttle crash when returning to the ship from a conference. The team sent to rescue her encounter a lonely and malevolent entity bent on torturing the crew.

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Air Date	11 January 1988
Production Number	40271-113
Stardate	41901.3 (a.k.a. 41601.3)
Gregorian Calendar Date	Friday 14 February 2364 05:17:48 GMT
Primary Arc	House of Yar
Secondary Arc	n/a
Tertiary Arc	n/a
See It or Skip It	See It!

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Previously on Star Trek	Order	Next Time on Star Trek
The Big Goodbye	Chronological	The Neutral Zone
Symbiosis	Air Date	We’ll Always Have Paris
The Arsenal of Freedom	Production	Symbiosis
Haven	Primary Arc	The Measure of a Man
n/a	Secondary Arc	n/a
n/a	Tertiary Arc	n/a

Stardate Sidebar: “Skin of Evil” cannot possibly occur on the stardate stated in the episode as it takes place before four other episodes in which Tasha Yar is present. My head cannon is that the Enterprise-D went through four chief engineers in its first year (Argyle, MacDougal, Lynch, and Logan) because the computer experienced several technical issues that led it to giving the crew the wrong date when they were recording their logs. Thus, it actually is stardate 41901.3 (and not 41601.3 as stated in the episode.)

The alternative is some time travel shenanigans where the crew are tossed back in time after stardate 41997.7 but before stardate 42073.1. In which case, the later dated episodes where Natasha is still around (“Angel One,” “The Battle,” “The Arsenal of Freedom,” “Symbiosis,” and “The Big Goodbye”) follow on after the events of “Hide and Q”, but the episodes “We’ll Always Have Paris,” “Conspiracy,” and “The Neutral Zone” only occur after a time travel incident. That little trip sends the ship back in time to some point just before “Skin of Evil,” where a separate stream of events unravel. However, that would mean that there would be two of the starship Enterprise running around the galaxy for several months due to the causality loop this theory creates.