This special is hosted by Patrick Stewart and traced the history of Star Trek from its inception with "The Cage" through to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It also showed brief previews of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and TNG's second season. Also it was principally a container for the premiere of a full color print of "The Cage" which had, according to the special, recently been recovered from Paramount's studio archives.

A racist officer is put in charge of an all-black squad of troops charged with the mission of blowing up an important hydro-dam in Nazi Germany. Their failure would delay the Allies' advance into Germany, thus prolonging the war.