D'Arsay Archive

The D'Arsay Archive

The D'Arsay Archive was a spaceborne data-storage facility launched by the D'Arsay over 87 million years ago. The USS Enterprise-D discovered the facility in the center of a rogue comet in 2370.

The records within the archive contained artifacts and personalities from myths within the D'Arsay culture. The facility scanned the starship and began to use the replicators on board to change parts of the vessel into different mythical settings contained within the records in the archive. These settings were from a drama involving Masaka, a sun goddess, and involved locations such as an aqueduct, a temple, and a swamp.

The archive also altered the programming of Data, giving him personalities of key mythical figures, such as a D'Arsay boy named Ihat, an elderly man who portrayed Masaka's father, a victim of Masaka, and Masaka herself. Furthermore, the program turned the internal mechanism of a Photon Torpedo into snakes and turned engineering into an inferno. Captain Jean-Luc Picard sought to remedy this by playing along in the myth, using the persona of Korgano, another mythical figure, to persuade Masaka, and in turn the archive, to restore Data as well as the Enterprise to their normal states.

Following the incident, the archive was placed under study by a Starfleet archaeological team. (TNG: "Masks")