Lieutenant Ilia served as navigator during the inaugural flight of the refitted U.S.S. Enterprise, when it left Earth to face the incoming V’ger entity. There she was reunited with her former romantic partner, Will Decker, whom she’d met years earlier on her homeworld of Delta IV. As well as performing her duties, Ilia cared deeply for the well-being of her crewmates. When fellow lieutenant, Pavel Chekov, sustained a serious plasma burn during the V’ger incident, Ilia used her innate pain-relieving ability to soothe him, before medical help arrived. However, as the Enterprise ventured deeper into V’ger’s energy cloud, it was Ilia herself who came under attack. V’ger probed the bridge with a devastating beam, which targeted Ilia and vaporized her before the eyes of her friends and colleagues. But this was not the end of her story. Encoded as a data pattern within V’ger’s vast imaging archive, the entity brought her back as a mechanical probe, sent to the Enterprise to communicate with its crew, or “carbon units” as V’ger called them, which it believed had infested the ship. The Ilia Probe was a replica right down to the smallest detail - at least on the outside. But inside it was composed of micro-miniature hydraulics, sensors, and molecule-sized multiprocessor chips. Yet V’ger had created too perfect a replica, because the Probe retained Ilia’s memories and feelings - especially towards Decker - which it began to recall, even choosing to adorn itself with Ilia’s Deltan headband. When V’ger was revealed to be a sentient and augmented 20th-century space probe, which wanted to join with its creator, Decker immediately stepped forward. V’ger merged with Decker, and thus Ilia as well, creating an entirely new form of life. Neither were recorded as deceased, however, but rather missing in action. Now, Ilia lives on within this incorporeal entity, traveling the universe on a journey of discovery.