Trekipedia

Sloane, Lily

Lily Sloane was a Human female in the 21st century who survived World War III to become a renowned member of a scientific community hidden away in remote Bozeman, Montana, North America. Though she remains relatively unsung in the annals of history compared to her famous colleague, Zefram Cochrane, she played a pivotal role in shaping the future of the United Federation of Planets and of Humanity.

Sloane used her engineering skills and tenacity to help Cochrane develop the Phoenix. As she was living in a time of barbarism following the world war of 2053, it took all her resourcefulness and ingenuity to scrounge materials for the ship from former military hardware stores; it took her six months just to find enough titanium to build a four-meter cockpit, while much of the rest of the ship was made, ironically, from a nuclear weapon. Her motives, however, were not purely for the advancement of the Human race; like Cochrane, she hoped all her hard work would make her wealthy.

Though slated to join Cochrane in the first-ever warp flight for humans on April 5, 2063, Lily found herself in space a day earlier on April 4, when the timeline was altered by a Borg attempt to assimilate Earth. When the abandoned missile complex housing the Phoenix was attacked, Sloane’s first response was to protect the ship, but she was overcome by extreme theta radiation leaking from the damaged vessel. She was found unconscious by an away team from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E, who transported her directly to the ship’s sickbay. Dr. Crusher intended to keep Sloane unconscious while treating her radiation sickness, but the Borg invaded sickbay and the doctor was forced to bring Lily out of sedation in order to make an escape.

Unaware that she was in orbit, Sloane became convinced she had been kidnapped by a hostile faction from Earth called the Eastern Coalition of Nations, or ECoN. She made a quick decision to escape from Dr. Crusher’s medical staff, but soon encountered Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who was running from an onslaught of Borg drones. Confused and frightened, Lily grabbed Picard’s phaser and told him to show her how to navigate her way out of the maze of Jefferies tubes.

Picard was anxious to get them both to safety, but he had to find a way to educate Lily about their tenuous situation. When he took her to an umbilical docking port on Deck 16 and opened the hatch to reveal Earth below them, her bravado disappeared, and she handed back his phaser.

Lily was understandably frightened when first confronted with the Borg, but she quickly gained trust in her new ally Picard, and was full of curiousity about the Enterprise and the future of technology.

When Picard took her into Holodeck 4, and ran the holonovel “The Big Goodbye” in order to entrap and kill the two Borg drones he had goaded into a chase, Sloane had a hard time resisting the urge to gawk. But, when Picard ordered her to look natural, she effortlessly fell into her role, and joined in the fight when required.

But Lily showed she had a conscience, and when she felt Picard’s desire to kill the Borg had overcome him, she called a halt to the fight. And when it became clear to everyone on the Enterprise that the battle was with the Borg was lost, Lily challenged Picard over his decision to keep fighting a hopeless battle. She realized that he was out for revenge, instead of saving the Human race as he claimed, and managed to break through his obsession with the use of a literary comparison to Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick. Her bluntness, unencumbered by the respect the crew held him in, got through to Picard. He finally decided to abandon ship, and ordered a self-destruct sequence.

Luckily for everyone, the Borg were eventually defeated, and Zefram Cochrane made his first warp flight, albeit without Lily. She had a strong desire to live in the kind of world Jean-Luc Picard knew, and her experience of humanity’s future gave her the courage to face the incredible changes and challenges that were to confront her during the rest of her lifetime on Earth.^[1] Portrayed by Alfre Woodard.