Paul Stubbs
DoctorPaul Stubbs was amaleHumanastrophysicist in the24th century. He devoted his entire life's work to the study of aneutron star/red giantstar system in theKavis Alphasector. The neutron star was remarkable for the fact that it sucked up matter from the red giant, which exploded every 196years.
Stubbs achieved a great deal of success in his early life, and was dubbed awunderkind. Instead of seeing this as an honor, he believed it was a burden and that he would continually need to top his own accomplishments in order to live up to the expectations of others.
Stubbs was also abaseball aficionado, and preferred to recreate games in his imagination, rather than on theholodeck. He used knowledge of statistics to predict the outcome of games played by the greatathletes of the20th and21st centuries.
Stubbs'smother was a formidable woman and a greatcritic. She wrote an unauthorizedbiography of Stubbs. He claimed to love her dearly, but also would not have wanted to be on the same ship with her, asWesley Crusher was withhis mother.
Stubbs had built a specialprobe, referred to as "The Egg," to monitor the2366 explosion. The probe was the result oftwenty years' worth of research and Stubbs placed a significant amount of his own self-worth on the success of the mission, especially with the pressure he felt to top his earlier successes.
In 2366, theUSSEnterprise-D was assigned to carry the "Egg" to the Kavis Alpha sector in order for it to be deployed and monitor the explosion. Shortly before the experiment was to begin, however, theEnterprise-D was plagued by a series of system malfunctions, caused by a group ofnanites Wesley Crusher had allowed to interact and develop sentience. He suffered minor injuries when theEnterprise-D was nearly hurled into the path of the stellar matter being pulled from the red giant. Stubbs was adamant that theEnterprise-D launch the "Egg," and believedCaptainPicard should place the success of the mission over the safety of the ship and crew, so much so that he would rather have died than leave without any data. When it was learned that the nanites were the source of the problem, Stubbs wanted to destroy them rather than attempt to communicate. He equated them to no more than avirus, and irradiated thecomputer core withgamma radiation against Captain Picard's orders.
The nanites reacted badly to the attack, and began to target vitalEnterprise-D systems such as thelife support system. He inadvertently proved that the nanites were intelligent life, but was still obsessed with his experiment and advocated their extermination. Picard confined him to hisquarters as he had no legal recourse against Stubbs. Stubbs was promptly attacked by the nanites, who electrocuted and nearly killed him.
At the same time,Data succeeded in learning thelanguage of the nanite civilization, and allowed them to use his body as a mouthpiece to interact with theEnterprise-D crew. Stubbs apologized to the nanites and asked for forgiveness, promising to use his influence to secure the nanites their ownplanet if they assisted in repairing the computers in time to launch the "egg". The nanites agreed, and the experiment was a success. (TNG: "Evolution")