Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (oh god no)

[daf]

127 | "Realm of Fear"



Reg Fright in 'The Twitch Is Back'

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• The O'Brien Spider Sketch
• Barclay's Bumpy Beam-up
• The Fast-Walk Sketch
• Sherlock Droid Investigates : The Hounding of The Barclay-ill
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Troi's Per-Plexing Pinkie Prod
• Transporter Space-grubs
• Azure Arm Attack
• 3D Chess #11 : Barclay Background Drink Date
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[The Culture Bunker]

Maybe a bit of a nothing episode in many respects, but I quite enjoy Barclay being a hero who saves a few lives. I think a lot of it goes down to Schultz really selling the character's anxiety.

[kalowski]

127 | "Realm of Fear"



Reg Fright in 'The Twitch Is Back'

Chapeau, daf, how do you do it?

[MojoJojo]

The transporter microbes looked a bit like terror fleshlights.

I like that Barclay does well, despite his obvious problems. Although it's a bit coincidence straining that the only guy to see anything weird in the transporter stream is the guy with the transporter phobia.

Weird detail I noticed:in Barclays emergency therapy session, Troi has a stylish bendy sofa. Which I am sure was chosen because it breaks the therapists couch cliche, since you couldn't lie back on it if you tried.

[MojoJojo]

S06E02 - Realm of Fear I don't even know what happened honestly. The crew of the ship turned into transporter microbes.

It's like one line so easy to miss - they basically mumble a wizard did it to have a success. The crew had been trying to do the same thing that Geordi and Co were doing - holding someone in the transporter beam for ages so they could work out how to screen the microbes out. But the dead guy fucked up and kept them in too long. But instead of just being dead, which was the risk to Barclay doing it, their patterns were sustained by the plasma filament or something.

They looked like fleshlights because apparently the visual distortions in transporter space are conceptual rather than geometric.

When episodes get away with shit like this it makes it easier to understand how Threshold got made.

[daf]

Chapeau, daf, how do you do it?

Haha - cheers. My brain is just wired for terrible puns - it's a sickness!

[mothman]

The transporter microbes looked a bit like terror fleshlights.

Once you see it...

They looked like fleshlights because apparently the visual distortions in transporter space are conceptual rather than geometric.

Then there's obviously this whole chunk of Barclay's private life that "Hollow Pursuits" glossed over!

[Lemming]

S06E03 - Man of the People

An alien diplomat boards the ship, and Troi begins to experience bizarre physical and mental illness.

- Red alert for the REKAG BATTLE CRUISERS! We've come to save a ship called the Dorian, by the way. Could this name have any relevance to the plot? Perhaps.

- Some people are beaming aboard from the Dorian, so Troi goes to the transporter room to welcome them. It's a dude and an old woman. The dude is VES ALKAR and his mother is SEV MAYLOR. Star Trek is the best thing ever made for TV.

- SEV MAYLOR rips into Troi right away, and tells her she absolutely cannot have a relationship with VES ALKAR. Weird.

- VES ALKAR meets with Picard and asks to be rushed to his big diplomatic meeting on a shuttle. Because of REKAG BATTLE CRUISERS, his request is denied, and he's told to remain aboard the Enterprise.

- ENSIGN GATES SIGHTING: She's part of Worf's honour-yoga class!


- Troi complements Ves on his success in the stupid yoga class. "I BELIEVE IN A... STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND", he says. It's Creepy Jev all over again.

- After thirty seconds of strained conversation, Ves invites Troi to attend the diplomatic proceedings with him when the time comes. They go to his quarters where his mother pops out and again has a go at Troi, accusing her of wanting to fuck Ves. If she does, she'll regret it forever, apparently.

- Riker comes over to Troi's office later and thrusts the crew evaluation reports upon her. She tells him about the weird shit the guy's mother was saying. Riker smirks at the prospect of an old woman being senile.

- Then Riker reads out an individual crewmember's name. Do they have to do like a thousand individual reports?! Anyway, luckily, Ves' mother is dying, so Riker and Troi get to ditch the crew reports to go watch. Ves doesn't give too much of a shit at DEAD MUM, but asks Troi to take part in a special funeral ceremony thing.

- That night (or day, hard to tell on a starship) Troi and Ves sit down with some space rocks and say silly shit, after which Ves touches his rock to Troi's (not a euphemism). The rocks glow and Troi gets somehow stunned. Later, she's in her own quarters and she's feeling all agitated and fucked up.

- Bev wants to chop up DEAD MUM's corpse but alien customs mean that doing so is verboten. Bev asks Picard if he'll get permission, but he reckons She'll Be Right because there's no immediate threat to the Enterprise.

- Troi does honour-yoga in a hall of mirrors, sadly not the same hilarious room she was doing it in with Bev ages ago. She's getting agitated and overheated again, and starts playing with her honour-yoga robe in a vaguely sensual way. The arousal is getting out of control, so she swans over to Ves' quarters and asks him, in longform formal 24th century way, if he's down to fuck. He turns her down, which makes her storm out.

- Ensign Haircut walks into the turbolift where Troi is pacing, and she gives him a Look. Later, Riker goes to Troi's quarters and finds her in the Sex Gown with Ensign Haircut on the bed. Troi gives Riker a bunch of shit about his simmering jealousy and fucks off the crew reports once again.

- I know it's the funky groovy 24th century, but surely one of your commanding officers walking about in a stupid yoga robe and then dragging you to her quarters is cause for alarm. People get brain-nobbled every single week, you'd think a high-ranking officer acting as unprofessionaly, uncharacteristically and erratically as Troi is here would raise some suspicions. Another one of those moments that happen so much in Star Trek where someone should very obviously be ordered to sickbay immediately, but everyone else just chalks it up as them acting weird.

- While Ves and Picard talk negotiations, Troi has a therapy sesh with Ensign Janeway (!). She's complaining about a coworker who's over-critical towards her, and Troi tells her that she gets where the coworker is coming from because Ensign Janeway is a whiny loser. She tells her to get her sorry ass off the Enterprise and onto a kiddy transport ship, for sad little kiddies. YES!!! This is the kind of therapy I like.

- Losing it at the way Bev just leans over Geordi while he works. This shot lasts like 15 seconds in total silence.


- Troi comes into Ten Forward, visibly older than before and in some wacky Eurovision dress. She accuses one of the other diplomats of wanting Ves' shrimpy dick, just like DEAD MUM did to Troi. Riker drags her out of there and yells at her, because - like everyone else on the ship - he's too thick to realise something's not right here. He drags her into her quarters (or his?) and she starts groping him and flirting. Riker leans in and kisses her, because he's just completely fucking useless. She claws his neck and draws blood, and he freaks and runs away.

- Later, Troi's gotten well old. Ves arrives and tells her he's going to the big negotiation, and that she'll have to stay. She begs to be taken with him and accuses him of trying to run off with the other diplomat from earlier. The to-do spills out into the corridor, where Troi starts shrieking. A crewmember walks past, sees Troi visibly super-aged and losing her mind, and keeps walking. I mean it's just fucking beyond belief at this point. Even if this passer-by is too stupid to report this, you'd think Riker would have reported what happened earlier, given she was visibly aging in addition to displaying severe mental symptoms.

- Riker's in sickbay getting his neck scratches dermal regenerated. It's the next morning and they're still raw, and he's still failed to report anything. Bev, having three whole brain cells (two more than the rest of the crew in this episode), immediately goes to find Troi to check out what's up with her. No need because Troi, now WELL OLD, arrives in the transporter room with a knife to kill the other diplomat and ends up tussling with Picard. I like how Picard loses the fight against aged, weakened Troi.

- Old Troi gets sedated in shitbay and Picard gets his knife wound treated that he sustained during the epic melee. Ogawa discovers that Troi's brain is all fucked up in the same way DEAD MUM's was. Picard at last authorises the autopsy.

- Bev's verdict: dunno what's going on. She's found that DEAD MUM was 30 years old, and not Ves' mother. Troi will keep super-aging until she dies in the same way unless something can be done. Picard calls Worf for backup and prepares to go down to the meetings and kick Ves' ass.

- Just kidding, he's going to have a Firm Talk with Ves. He explains that he's projecting all his Bad Thoughts onto Troi, leaving him with Good Thoughts and making him a shit-kicker of a diplomat. Sadly, the person who receives the Bad Thoughts just fucking dies. His ship was called Dorian, by the way.

- Having learned that Ves is a serial killer and mental rapist, Picard says he's taking him in, but then two people arrive with guns and it's all over for that plan. Plan B is to transport-kidnap him, but there's a SECURITY FIELD.

- Picard tells Bev that Ves will keep using Troi's mind as a "receptacle" until she dies. Bev reckons that killing Troi will force Ves to attack someone else instead, at which point they can resurrect Troi and then swoop to the rescue of the next victim.

- This plan rocks so Picard makes Ves come back aboard the Enterprise to watch Troi die. He brings with him the diplomat who Troi had a go at earlier, who is to be the next RECEPTACLE. Picard gets a transporter lock on her in order to save her from being Ves'd, and then they prepare to revive Troi.

- Ves gets the Psychic Bastard Rocks out to trap the next target. Meanwhile, Bev prepares cordrazine to revive Troi. YES! I love cordrazine. Fall on the hypospray and you go irretrievably apeshit and alter all of history. Great drug.

- Troi comes back to life and this makes Ves' head explode. Picard orders that Ves' next target be beamed to safety, and then the security team arrive just in time to see that Ves is now VERY OLD. Troi gets younger in response. With Troi returned to health, Ves dies of age.

- Later, Troi and Riker have dinner and try to figure out what the fuck happened there. They cuddle and kiss, one for the Troi/Riker fans there.

All the mandatory Picture of Dorian Gray remarks aside, this just feels like a repeat of Violations. We get an uncharismatic Weird Psychic Bastard who attacks Troi, then we watch her suffer and fall into a coma for 30 minutes, then we get an unsatisfying conclusion. What was the point of all this? No real catharsis - yeah, Ves dies, but so what? What was all this about?

As mentioned, it's one of those annoying episodes that relies on this seasoned crew acting as though it's their first trip ever into space and they've never seen anything weird happen before. DEAD MUM's got weird brain shit, Troi's acting weird, duhhh nothing to see here case closed. Plus, like Weird Jev before him, Ves is no cunning master criminal that our heroes must outfox. He's just some useless dunce who dies of a headache.

I don't get the point of the episode, there's hardly a concept to start with and what there is isn't explored. Okay, he shunted all his "dark thoughts" onto another person - maybe you could do an investigation of what this guy labels as "dark thoughts"? Same opportunity they missed with Armus all the way back in the first season.

Why are all his victims female anyway? Is it meant to be allegorical for anything? Some kind of thing about how shit egotistical men ruin everything and use women as emotional pack mules in relationships? That's the only halfway interesting/relevant meaning I can read into it, but I get the feeling that's not what the message was intended to be, if there's a message at all. I dunno. No fun to watch, whatever it's about.

2/10

[daf]

128 | "Man Of The People"



The Picture of Troi-she-gone Grey

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Senile Old Space-Bag
• Worf's Pyjama Prancing Class
• I'm Looking at The Mum in the Mirror
• Troi's Knockout Knockers-out Dress
• The Picard vs. Old Woman Scrappy Scuffle
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• The Dreaded Crew Evaluation Sketch
• She's Possessed You Dummies!
• JANEWAY!?!
• Riker's Sex Scratch Sketch
• De-Nana Troi
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Blumf]

So, if Riker had taken those Klingon females up on their invite (in that ep where he's doing a crew exchange), would we get treated to a quick scene of him scurrying away from their quarters, with a look of panic, after the first bite?

The Virgin Riker vs The Chad Nelix

[mothman]

Wot no It Follows references? Daf is losing it.

Can we determine with any confidence whether Not Mum was warning Troi off for her own good or just because she was senile and overpossessive of her possessing other half?

[Lemming]

S06E04 - Relics

The crew discover an old crashed ship, and manage to revive Scotty from the transporter buffer.

- Damphousse (who's called Rager in this, I think) is back on conn!

- Weird shit in space as usual. Picard is so excited that it might be a Dyson Sphere, which, to be fair, is one of the coolest ideas ever. There's a ship crashed into the side of it, so an away team goes to check it out.

- A bit of fucking around with a computer reveals that a pattern has been contained in the transporter buffer for 75 years. Geordi beams the pattern through and it turns out to be Scotty!

- Scotty is taken back to the Enterprise, where Riker ditches him with Geordi. Scotty marvels at how much nicer the Enterprise-D looks when compared with the hellish grey corridors of the original.

- Picard rocks up to sickbay where Bev is un-fucking Scotty's arm. After the mandatory small-talk, Picard bounds off and assigns Geordi to investigate the Dyson Sphere. Scotty's taken to his quarters, which again are way better than the dingy, soul-sapping rooms of the original Enterprise. There are callbacks to Elaan of Troiyus (terrible) and Wolf in the Fold (potentially the all-time worst TOS episode IMO), two episodes best left forgotten.

- The next day, Scotty wanders into Engineering and demands to be put to work, but it quickly becomes clear that his knowledge is LAUGHABLY out of date. Never letting up with the callbacks, he mentions The Naked Time, and the hilarious special engine technique they used to save the day. WE'VE... GOT TO... RISK A... FULLPOWERSTART!

- Geordi's tired of Scotty's endless TOS-blab and the way he goes around touching shit he shouldn't. Scotty tries to build bridges by explaining to Geordi the mechanics of SCOTTY-TIME, where you wildly overestimate the time it'll take to do anything in order to look like a miracle-worker when you get it done in half the time. Geordi tells him to fuck off, so Scotty wanders off to Ten Forward.

- Scotty is dismayed by SYNTHAHOL. Data helps him by going into GUINAN'S SPECIAL SECRET STASH and whipping out some Monster Energy. Another callback, this time to By Any Other Name!

- Scotty cuts a pitiful figure as he walks around the corridors, gunt flapping about, alcohol in hand. He goes to the holodeck to recreate the bridge of the original Enterprise, so he can sit on it and feel sad while listening to the old sound effects.

- Soon, Picard comes in to find Scotty having his breakdown. Seeing Picard on the original bridge looks so fucking weird. I'm glad they didn't mess about and try to update it or anything, and were content to just leave it looking comically shit.

- Picard regales Scotty with tales of his journeys aboard the Shitgazer. As they both sit there drinking their Monster Energy, Scotty admits that he thinks he's out of place in the 24th century.

- Later, Picard tries to shove Scotty onto Geordi's team to give him something to do and to help him stop feeling like such a colossal loser.

- The Enterprise flies up to some weird hole on the side of the Dyson Sphere and instantly loses all power and gets pulled in by big lasers. Kids in the nursery screaming, shitting, throwing up etc.

- Inside the sphere, they discover a vast landscape. Damphousse announces that the Enterprise is out of control and will soon crash into the star at the heart of the sphere.

- While the Enterprise crew drift to their doom, Scotty notes that both he and the equipment on the Scottmobile are shit, old, worthless, obsolete, overweight, alcoholic, etc. Geordi tries to cheer him up by saying that the tech used today is only somewhat less awful than TOS-era technology. Just as they're bonding over nonconventional Engineering solutions, they realise the Enterprise is not responding.

- Extreme next-level skills allow Damphousse to rotate the Enterprise safely into the star's orbit. Back with the SMART PARTY (Geordi and Scotty), Scotty realises the Enterprise has gone inside the sphere.

- The star sucks and is going apeshit. Solar flares are kicking off and everyone inside the Enterprise will be roasted alive in three hours. That's what you get for checking out the sphere.

- Scotty encourages Geordi to ignore lame safety regulations and just do crazy shit. It works and the Scottmobile comes back online.

- "Mr Data, we have to find a way out of here", Picard helpfully says as the sun begins to rip the ship apart. Meanwhile, the Scottmobile has found the door that the Enterprise was pulled through. Scotty decides to use the Scottmobile to jam the hatch open so that the Enterprise can escape.

- More ace piloting from Damphousse gets the Enterprise back towards the hatch, but the Scottmobile is stuck. It's necessary for the Enterprise to destroy the Scottmobile in order to get through, so Picard orders that Geordi and Scotty prepare to be beamed aboard.

- HOW DID GEORDI AND SCOTTY BEAM OUT THROUGH SHIELDS??? The usual explanation for this and the ambassador beaming down in "A Taste of Armageddon" is that you can beam out through shields, but not beam back in. Good enough.

- Later, continuing in the "let's make really odd choices about episodes to refer back to", Geordi tells Scotty about Galaxy's Child. Scotty brings down the mood by talking about nostalgia again, but the crew have a present for him - a shuttle. Scotty decides it's not time to retire yet, and sets off for new adventures on his shuttle. Troi shows up for the first time in the episode.

Not bad, Doohan's fun as Scotty as usual. His plot is very typical - "oh no I'm old and useless, aha wait no I've regained my love of engineering by being placed in a ridiculous life-or-death situation" - but it works. The Dyson Sphere plot itself is cool although sadly just ultimately comes down to being a deathtrap-of-the-week with nothing really behind it.

I do like how the writers had the courage to bring Scotty back and make him basically an annoyance, at least for the first half. It'd be too boring and fanservicey to have Geordi tripping over himself and saying "OH MY GOD IT'S SCOTTY! MY ENGINEERING IDOL! YOU ARE THE REASON I JOINED STARFLEET!", it's much more subversive and entertaining to have Geordi basically lose his temper with Scotty's nostalgic whining after about five minutes.

6/10, more like 6.5 but we're not getting into decimal ratings, I did that in my FPS NIGHTMARES thread and nearly died from the stress.

[Wonderful Butternut]

There's a deleted (or possibly scripted but not shot, I can't remember which) scene between La Forge telling Scotty he's too busy to update him on 80 years of progress and the Ten Forward scene, where Scotty's in his guest quarters and Troi comes to visit him at Geordi's request. To be fair sending a Counsellor to see a time displaced bloke who is probably about to realise that most of his friends and family are long dead seems like a good idea to me. But Scotty interprets it as Geordi thinking he's a senile old fool and that's why he goes to Ten Forward to get pissed.

Always wonder did Scotty go meet up with Spock and the possibly still alive McCoy.

The Dyson Sphere is cool, but a bit ludicrous if thought about, even by usual Star Trek standards. You'd have to effectively hollow out 100s (if not 1000s) of planets to have the material to build it. And if a civilisation can just replicate that much metal, then they're already capable of producing so much energy, why do they need the Dyson Sphere in the first place anyway?

Maybe the Q put it there for the lulz.

"Hey Q, I made a Dyson Sphere for the humans to find."
"Lol Q, those monkeys will be 100s of years trying to figure out who built it."
"And then just as they realise there's no possible way anyone but us could've done it, I'll make it disappear."

[MojoJojo]

The Dyson Sphere is cool, but a bit ludicrous if thought about, even by usual Star Trek standards. You'd have to effectively hollow out 100s (if not 1000s) of planets to have the material to build it. And if a civilisation can just replicate that much metal, then they're already capable of producing so much energy, why do they need the Dyson Sphere in the first place anyway?

Dyson thought the concept of entirely enclosing a star was the least plausible version.

This episode brings into question the entire point of synthohol - it apparently doesn't taste like alcohol, and it doesn't get you pissed - so what's the point?

Overall I found this a bit dull. I thought Scotty felt out of place in the TNG universe, so his bits didn't quite work for me.

- HOW DID GEORDI AND SCOTTY BEAM OUT THROUGH SHIELDS??? The usual explanation for this and the ambassador beaming down in "A Taste of Armageddon" is that you can beam out through shields, but not beam back in. Good enough.

It would make sense that the shields can be set to allow transport through them. Although now I remember there are some episodes that rely on not being able to transport through the shields as a plot point. I can't remember if they always have an antagonist who could could take advantage of the shields being in "permissive" mode to teleport Picard into space or what have you.

[Wonderful Butternut]

- Soon, Picard comes in to find Scotty having his breakdown. Seeing Picard on the original bridge looks so fucking weird. I'm glad they didn't mess about and try to update it or anything, and were content to just leave it looking comically shit.

Just coming back to this bit, gotta agree:

[Blumf]

I do love the contrast between Scotty's casual seat-of-the-pants attitude to engineering with Geordie's buttoned-up professionalism.

This episode brings into question the entire point of synthohol - it apparently doesn't taste like alcohol, and it doesn't get you pissed - so what's the point?

Ultimately, Scotty knows his booze. The average bar patron doesn't care and just wants a tasty drink. Then you have people's stashes of Romulan Ale and the odd bottle of Chateau Picard, for the veteran drinkers.

Just found this nice rant about Chateau Picard:
https://twitter.com/terronk/status/1132050214775283712

Also, the label on the Chateau Picard states that it's Gran Cru Classé. Are we expected to believe the AOC granted Gran Cru Classé status to a village in fucking LaBarre? This stretches the limits of fantasy in this science fiction series.

[daf]

129 | "Relics"



The Jocks and the Geordis

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• SCOTTY!!!
• Franklin, I can't believe it's not Buffer
• Short-Fuse Geordi
• The Synthahol Scotch Sketch
• "It's Green!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Bridge of Sighs
• Commanding the Stargazer is very much like making love to a Beautiful Woman
• Sphere Sun Starship Sucker
• Sideways Slot 'scape Scramble
• Mr Worf's Scotty Farewell Glower
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Lemming]

It would make sense that the shields can be set to allow transport through them. Although now I remember there are some episodes that rely on not being able to transport through the shields as a plot point. I can't remember if they always have an antagonist who could could take advantage of the shields being in "permissive" mode to teleport Picard into space or what have you.

It's been a plot point a few times, usually coming in one of two forms:
- "Oh no! The resident unlucky bastard (O'Brien, B'Elanna, etc) is trapped on board a decaying deathtrap, but we can't beam them up without lowering our shields, which we can't do because we're being shot at!!!"
- "Oh no! A ship with the guest star of the week on board is about to explode, but they can't lower their shields so we can't beam them out!"
Although I think every series has forgotten the rule at least once. I was watching Voyager recently and there's a particularly bad example, I think in the episode "Gravity", where Tuvok and Paris manage to beam up through shields while Voyager is getting shot at.

• Bridge of Sighs

Excellent, proper belly laugh.

[mothman]

We don't know a lot about energy generation in the Federation, but it's likely that on the Kardashev scale they're just a Type-1 civilisation. The existence of a Dyson Sphere implies the creators were a Type-2. But it's not something that's ever really been explored in Trek, especially as yes they seem to have developed/discovered methods that transcend the requirement to harness the energy of a planetary system's star.

For instance some of the more powerful civilisations out there - the Q, Organians, Iconans, Metrons etc. - could be Type-2s or even Type-3s, but if so they've obviously moved beyond fitting the criteria that define (or limit) the classification.

But it's always amused me that they discover a FUCKING DYSON SPHERE and yet it's never mentioned or seen again.

[the hum]

As ludicrously implausible as it is, I really liked that they went with the full enclosed sphere idea and, on a relatively limited tv episode budget, managed to realise the interior and its surface, albeit it's only seen in glimpses. The whole concept wowed me on at least the first couple of times I saw the episode (hadn't heard of Dyson or the theory before then), and I recall having recurring dreams about exploring its surface.

[Lemming]

S06E05 - Schisms

Members of the crew begin to realise they've been medically experimented on in their sleep.

- Riker can't sleep, so he goes to the mirror to conduct a full face audit. Turns out he's late for work, so he rocks up to Engineering rocking the highly coveted wild untamed look, all ruffled hair and eyebags.

- He's barely managing to stay awake through the day, and things get immeasurably worse when he's made to attend Data's poetry reading that evening.

- Riker utterly ruins the poetry night for everyone, chatting to Troi and falling asleep then waking in confusion and clapping right in the middle of ODE TO SPOT.

- That's the pre-credits teaser. The pre-credits teaser is "Riker is tired". Not exactly on par with "Cestus III has been destroyed".

- He ends up in sickbay being looked at by Bev, who says that his tiredness might be caused by lack of REM sleep. Remember when the entire crew nearly died of that? Good times. Meanwhile, Geordi has developed the LAFORGE SENSOR ARRAY, the unveiling of which is soured by Data asking if his poetry night sucked serious shit, which it did. Geordi tells Data that his poetry lacked feeling, and is mercifully saved from further awkward convo by a MASSIVE EPS EXPLOSION in Cargo Bay Four.

- Security and medical teams calmly and slowly walk to Cargo Bay Four. Expecting to find an absolute bloodbath inside, they're confused to find everything's completely fine. The whole thing is chalked up as the new LAFORGE SENSOR ARRAY being a load of shit which made everything malfunction.

- Riker has a fitful night again. As soon as he hits the pillow, though, he gets his 7 AM wakeup call from Geordi. He doesn't perceive that any time has passed at all, and reckons something's Well Fucked here.

- In much more important matters, Worf's going for a haircut. He suddenly and inexplicably panics and gets an iron grip on Mott's arm as he moves the scissors closer.

- Riker and Geordi have the true coworker experience of just both talking about how tired they are. Additionally, Geordi's VISOR keeps cutting out. He checks himself in to shitbay, where Bev STERILISES his face with a magic laser thing. Over an hour and a half later, he returns to the Cargo Bay to talk to Data, but Data doesn't perceive any time as having passed. Geordi, displaying Starmer-esque forensicness, realises something's up.

- Damphousse is back on conn, with NEW HAIR. Being an ensign, she doesn't have experience with navigating through a globular cluster, whatever that is. Riker strides over. "First time navigating through a globular cluster, Ensign?" he chirps, gesturing for her to stand aside and make way for a seasoned Starfleet veteran. As soon as he sits down he becomes catatonic and is horrified by the feeling of the console. Flustered, he staggers back over to the captain's chair. Bridge crew morale plummets.

- In the cargo bay, Data's tricorder's picked up some mad shit. They follow the readings and see part of the wall has gone all weird. It's some tetryon shit, which apparently can't exist in our universe, and yet it's right there. Picard's called down to the cargo bay to cross his arms and look at it, concerned.

- Riker's ruining Troi's night in Ten Forward by telling her about his shitfit on the bridge. Troi says that other people have reported similar sudden intense responses to mundane things. She assembles a sad little support group in the briefing room, consisting of Riker, someone we've never seen before, Worf, and Geordi. Everyone reports knowledge of some kind of smooth cold table. Riker has a great idea (stopped clock) and says they should use the holodeck to recreate the table.

- Troi spawns a table in the holodeck, and then everyone modifies it according to what they remember about the mystery table they've all seen/felt somewhere. Troi manages to get them to remember things other than the table - darkness, a bright electric light right above the table, weird shit, clicking noises. The result is what looks like a surgical table. Everyone agrees this is a good recreation of the room they were in.

- Wildly off-topic - does anyone know if Jonathan Frakes was wearing a hairpiece during this? The light in the holodeck made it look that way. This is my main hobby, staring really closely at TV and movies and trying to figure out if actors are wearing wigs or extensions.

- Bev finds out everyone's got increased serotonin, and they've got tetryons in them. Panic time. Data's also done a self-diagnostic and discovered that he was whisked off the ship and taken elsewhere while Geordi was in sickbay. Picard asks the computer if anyone's missing right now, and discovers two - Damphousse and Hagler. You'd think the computer would auto-alert you if someone just went missing without authorisation!

- Picard resolves to find the source of the tetryon emissions in order to rescue the missing crew. Super-doc Bev also makes the discover that Riker's arm has been sliced off and then fused back on. Riker sits there shitting it while Geordi and Data go to the cargo bay to find the source of the tetryons. They discover a spatial rupture, which Geordi reckons is being artificially created by someone on the other side.

- Hagler returns to the ship, but dies because his blood has been turned into some weird non-blood shit. The race is on to save Damphousse, who is still missing, so Picard calls a major-league briefing. It's determined that a homing device could be constructed, which would allow them to direct a graviton pulse to prevent further incursions, but there's no way to get it to the tetryon realm.

- Riker, man of the moment, six-foot cock dangling proudly between his legs, speaks up. He volunteers to take the homing device and be abducted by the aliens once again. This carries two risks - the aliens might kill him as they did Hager, or the Enterprise might be forced to send the graivton pulse to save the ship, sealing Riker in the HELL REALM forever.

- Bev devises a way to keep Riker awake during the abduction and render him immune to the alien's sedatives.

- Riker is TAKEN.


- On the other side of the portal, Riker finds himself on one of the surgical beds. He sees Damphousse across from him on another bed, all fucked up and out of it. FISH-BASTARDS patrol the room, one of whom comes over and removes Riker's equipment to prepare him for experimentation.

- They're doing weird shit to Damphousse. Riker watches on in mortal terror. Here's a moodboard of Riker shitting himself during the entire adventure.

Frakes plays bewildered hapless terror so well.

- The homing device kicks in and Geordi pinpoints the FISH-BASTARD realm. Riker's got nine minutes to return to the ship!

- Picard is forced to order the graviton pulse. The aliens try to reinforce the portal in response. In the HELL REALM, Riker sees the portal across the room.

- Riker continues to watch in utter primal horror as the FISH-BASTARDS work to maintain the portal. After sitting there pissing himself for a bit, he finally finds the willpower to get up and move, and rushes over to grab Damphousse and leap through the portal before it shuts.

- He and Damphousse emerge in the cargo bay. GOOD NEWS: Everyone's fine! (Except Hager, who died)

- Later, everyone's weighing in on what the FISH-BASTARDS were all about. Data reckons they're explorers like us, except we don't grab people and chop them up.

Didn't have hugely positive memories of this one but it's actually great, it's got a very season two vibe in the way it gradually ramps up the horror and confusion over the course of the episode and is content to deny the viewer any real explanation of what was happening or what the motives of the aliens were. The holodeck scene is really great.

The episode fizzles out a little bit when you actually get to the HELL REALM, since it's literally just a matter of Riker standing up, picking up Damphousse and walking out, but I like how the room's too dark and the aliens too indecipherable to really get a handle on anything that's going on. It could probably have been made a bit more exciting (the bit where the FISH-BASTARDS start very slowly walking towards Riker absolutely kills the tension because they're so naff and unthreatening), but the climactic trip into the alien's world being very brief and confusing works in the episode's favour, sort of like Xen from the original Half-Life, in that the finale where you actually get to see the aliens and where they come from only ends up adding to the mystery by introducing a whole new level of weirdness.

8/10. Surprised by the high rating because I did remember essentially the whole episode and didn't think my opinion of it would be substantially raised, but it succeeds at building suspense and moodiness a lot more than I remembered it doing.

[Mr Trumpet]

One of my favourite TNG episodes. But yeah I rewatched it recently and the sedate way the first responders stroll towards the supposed disaster site is genuinely hilarious.

[daf]

130 | "Schisms"



Clicker . . . Clicker Consipiracy

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Riker's adorable unbrushed Bed-Bonce
• Data's Duff Doggerell Doze-off
• Ode To Spot : "endothermic quadruped"
• Auntie Adele's Milky Toddy
• Riker & Picard's Synchronised Skidding Knee-Plonker
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Babbling Blue Bolian Beard Barber
• Riker's Console Crack-up
• Calling it now : Mystery Mint Dress Woman = Obvious shapeshifting Baddie!!
• Sherlock Troi Investigates : "The Sloping Table Mysteries"
• Shuffling Surgeons' Sucking Space Shaft
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[mothman]

Another of those storylines that was meant to be revisited but never was.

Also, I think I remember reading that the publicity for this episode in the US went and spoiled the whole thing, removing all the mystery, literally "The Enterprise crew are being abducted by aliens! Tonight at 8 Eastern/6 Central!"

[MojoJojo]

I'm watching Voyager along TNG, so interesting to see this pretty close to Scientific Method - which is pretty clearly inspired by Schisms. I think Schisms is overall more effective, because the conclusion of SM is very unsatisfying - but SM does ramp up the body horror nicely.

The holodeck table stuff dragged a bit.

[mothman]

Yes, one of those magical holodeck sequences where they all describe something completely different and then the computer produces something out of nowhere they all agree with...

[Lemming]

I'm watching Voyager along TNG, so interesting to see this pretty close to Scientific Method - which is pretty clearly inspired by Schisms. I think Schisms is overall more effective, because the conclusion of SM is very unsatisfying - but SM does ramp up the body horror nicely.

The conclusion of Scientific Method is where

Spoiler alert

Janeway flies into the sun

[close]

, right? I always loved that!

The two episodes do feel very similar, and speaking of which, the crucial role of Seven's borg implants in uncovering the aliens in Scientific Method makes me wonder if Data was underused in Schisms, since surely he'd be immune to the "neurosedatives" the rest of the crew are given by the fish-people. I wonder how they wiped his memory and reset his chronometer when they took him from the cargo bay, or how they prevented him from using MEGASTRENGTH to free himself and other missing crew when they had him in the lab.

[Wonderful Butternut]

The two episodes do feel very similar, and speaking of which, the crucial role of Seven's borg implants in uncovering the aliens in Scientific Method makes me wonder if Data was underused in Schisms, since surely he'd be immune to the "neurosedatives" the rest of the crew are given by the fish-people. I wonder how they wiped his memory and reset his chronometer when they took him from the cargo bay, or how they prevented him from using MEGASTRENGTH to free himself and other missing crew when they had him in the lab.

It's worth it for the bit where Geordi tells him he's been gone for over an hour and Data's initial reaction is along the lines of: "silly human, can't tell time," until he checks the ship's chronometer and comes out with a confused: "You are correct."

[Blumf]

S06E05 - Schisms
...
- Riker is TAKEN.

Loved that bit, just the right amount of weirdness with him floating away like that, almost Lynchian.

[mothman]

Most unsatisfying part about the end of "Scientific Method" is

Spoiler alert

you never know whether the head alien experimenter was on the ship that blew up, or not. I hope she was.

[close]