Lieutenant Ilia, a member of a mysterious race known as Deltan, had a brief but brilliant career with Star Fleet. Deltans are completely bald, empathic, and exude pheromones which arouse human males. Ilia trained as a navigator on her home planet, where she met the young Willard Decker, a recently promoted lieutenant sent as an envoy to the Deltan homeworld. They became romantically involved and Ilia remained empathically linked to Decker many years later when she was assigned to serve on the USS Enterprise with him. At some point between their encounters, Ilia took a formal oath of celibacy, which is not mandatory, but generally advised for Deltans who wish to serve among humans. Unfortunately, Ilia's career with Star Fleet was cut short when she was killed by the mysterious alien probe known as V'GER (actually a modified and super-intelligent earth-based artificial intelligence of the Voyager series), apparently as part of a complex experiment in understanding the nature of organic life.