"Transfigurations" is the 25th episode of the third season of the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the 73rd episode of the series overall.
The Enterprise discovers a crashed escape pod in an unexplored star system. Investigating, they find there is one critically injured passenger in the pod, and the crew brings him aboard the ship. Dr. Crusher determines the survivor will live due to the stranger's own amazing recuperative powers. Crusher also notes that the survivor's cells are mutating in some way.
A couple of days later the stranger finally awakens, but has no memory of his life or identity. The crew decides to call him "John Doe". Some time passes and John has recovered physically, but still has amnesia. In addition, from time to time he suffers from severe pain which is somehow tied to his ongoing mutation. He also begins emitting strange, bright energy bursts. John soon learns that he is able to use this energy to heal injuries, as witnessed by Crusher when he aids a patient in her Sickbay.
Michael Lawson Bishop (born November 12, 1945) is an American writer. Over four decades and in more than thirty books, he has created what has been called a "body of work that stands among the most admired and influential in modern science fiction and fantasy literature."
Bishop was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Leotis ("Lee") Bishop (born 1920 in Frys Mill, Poinsett County, Arkansas) and Maxine ("Mac") Elaine Matison (born 1920 in Ashland, Nebraska). His parents met in the summer of 1942 when his father, a recent enlistee of the Air Force, was stationed in Lincoln. Bishop's childhood was the peripatetic life of a military brat. He went to kindergarten in Tokyo, Japan, and he spent his senior year of high school in Seville, Spain. His parents divorced in 1951, and Bishop spent summers wherever his father happened to be based.
Bishop entered the University of Georgia in 1963, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1967, before going on to complete a master's degree in English. In 1969, he married Jeri Ellis Whitaker of Columbus, Georgia. He taught English (including a course in science fiction) at the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968 to 1972. After his service career, he taught composition and English literature at the University of Georgia in Athens. A son, Jamie, was born in 1971, and a daughter, Stephanie was born in 1973. Bishop left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer. In those early years of freelance writing, he would occasionally work as a substitute teacher in the public schools and as a stringer for the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus.