Riker sends Geordi to fix it, and even though Troi starts wailing about Geordi being in probably definite danger, it turns out Captain Picard is the only person who ever took her seriously and he’s not here. He’s on a shuttle having awkward sandwiches with Wesley. Wesley is nervous about their time together, but Picard opens up to him, telling the story of why he has a bum ticker in the first place, describing scenes that will later be recreated in flashback for a future, better episode of TNG.

On the Pakled ship, things turn sour as it emerges that the Pakleds are actually master criminals. Or at the very least, quite cunning. It turns out they steal their technology, and now they want to steal Geordi too! Riker is flummoxed, Geordi gets shot in the face a few times (phasers are set to the “torture engineer” setting) and suddenly things look a little grim as the Pakleds demand that Geordi upgrade their engines and stuff and then hold him ransom for the contents of the Enterprise’s computer banks.

Shocked by this betrayal, which only Worf and Troi anticipated, the crew attempts to get a message to Geordi by spouting nonsense at him that the Pakleds are unable to understand due to their poor linguistic skills (this is not a joke, this is the actual plot of the episode). Luckily Geordi DOES understand and waits for his moment to strike.

On the space station, Picard goes to have his operation, which is preceded by a chat with the surgeon in which he says, and I quote, “I am 100% certain that there will be no problems and that everything will proceed completely as planned, with nary an ironic twist nor an unexpected change of fortune occurring.” So it’s a complete surprise when Picard’s operation takes a turn for the worse!

Luckily, Pulaski is a fake heart expert (you know, an expert in fake hearts, not a fake expert in hearts) so the station simply calls the Enterprise for help. But they’ve got to rescue Geordi! Riker phones up the Pakleds and shouts some more coded phrases. Geordi picks up on the signal to begin, which means he’s able to do something to a thing and then the Enterprise shoots some red stuff into space, causing the Pakleds to give up and allowing Geordi to beam back home where everything is fixed. I’m going to be honest, I found this scene a little incoherent.