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D'Arsay pictographs

D'arsay pictograms.

The D'Arsay were an alien race who originated in the D'Arsay system 87 million years ago.

During that period they built several D'Arsay archives, including one which was later discovered by the crew of the USS Enterprise-D in the center of a rogue comet in 2370, and others encountered by the USS Cerritos. (TNG: "Masks"; LD: "Room for Growth")

The archive contained records of artifacts and personalities from D'Arsay mythology. Using the ship's replicator, the archive transformed part of the ship into the setting of an epic drama involving Masaka, a sun goddess. The archive also altered the positronic brain programming of Lt. Commander Data to portray several characters from the D'Arsay myth. Among the D'Arsay characters portrayed by Data were a D'Arsay boy, Ihat, Masaka, a victim, and an elder who was Masaka's father. The archive transformed parts of the Enterprise-D into an aqueduct, a swamp, and a temple. It also filled a photon torpedo with snakes, and turned engineering into a fiery inferno.

Captain Picard portrayed himself as Korgano, another mythological figure whom he had deduced to be the D'Arsay moon god, in order to convince the archive to return the ship and Data back to their normal states. (TNG: "Masks")

The USS Cerritos encountered more than one D’Arsay archive, including one incident in 2381, in which Captain Carol Freeman was possessed by the spirit of Minooki, and the Cerritos temporarily transformed into her temple, that incident apparently not being the first instance that the Cerritos had been transformed into a D'Arsay temple. During the incident, Ensign Beckett Mariner noted that the incident was the "third ancient mask situation" that the Cerritos had encountered so far. Following the incident, Freeman opined in her log that "Starfleet has to come up with a better way to handle these D'Arsay archive situations." (LD: "Room for Growth")

The species was not named in the episode (which merely explained that the probe came from the D'Arsay system). However they were named by the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 174, which also claimed that they flourished nearly a hundred million years ago. Their fate was unknown. The entry for the D'Arsay pictograms on the same page specified that they were designed by Wendy Drapanas and Jim Magdaleno, who based them loosely on ancient Aztec and Mayan designs. The name of the species D'Arsay may have been inspired by the name of the former bassist of "The Smashing Pumpkins", D'Arcy Wretzky. The names of other mythological characters in this episode, Korgano and Ihat, were similarly inspired by the names of the other "The Smashing Pumpkins" members, Billy Corgan and James Iha, respectively.

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