Istvan Sandor is a solid-holography engineer, who was originally assigned to the Yamato (whose name was later changed to the Argo for reasons which are not quite clear. His face is somewhat disfigured (and his eyebrows and eyelashes missing) as the result of an accident playing with a chemistry set when he was a boy.

While aboard the Yamato, he began work on a holography room dedicated to crew recreation. Using data about their favorite places gathered from individual crew members, he attempted to recreate those places for them as nearly as possible. He was working out how to expand them so that they could be walked through for some duration without repeating when he was transferred to the Trouble at that ship's captain's request.

He is currently building an upgraded "holography room" (nobody likes that name) using the official captain's quarters, which the captain finds too big to be cozy, as it affords greater privacy and freedom from interruption than any of the more public spaces aboard ship.