ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Eighteen "Identity Crisis"

ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Eighteen "Identity Crisis"
Production Order: 18
Air Order: 18
Stardate: 44664.5
Original Air Date: March 25, 1991

We start out a little differently this week, watching an away team recording a log from five years earlier. The ship the team is with is the USS Victory, and the guy doing the recording says he is Ensign Brevelle, and that Lt Susanna Leijten (lighten) is in command. They're on Tarchannen III, trying to figure out what happened to all the scientists on this outpost.
Hey, it's old-school La Forge!

Producers were smart enough to put the away team in season one uniforms and give them all Type 2 phasers. La Forge is also wearing an older version of his VISOR. Props to those props people!

Getting back to the action, La Forge tells Leijten that he can't find any signs of a struggle, or weapons fire or anything, just that the whole outpost seems to have disappeared. Another team member calls them over and shows them a shredded Blue uniform.
In the present day, Leijten pauses the recording. She is in the Enterprise Obs Lounge, telling Picard, Riker, and La Forge what their current mission is: peeps from this hella old away mission are going missing. Brevelle (the dude behind the camera) wasn't feeling well for several days, then he took a shuttle and went AWOL. Mendez was last seen on her ship (the Aries) an hour before she went missing, but she was acting normally. Hickman just passed a physical.
"This is crap," says La Forge. "Hickman has two kids and is totally stable. He wouldn't desert like that."
"Yeah, but a supply ship saw him going back to Tarchannen III," argues Leijten. You know they're friends because she calls him Geordi and he calls her Susanna or Suse.

Picard brings up the fact that nobody ever figured out what happened to the Blues at the outpost: 49 people just disappeared into the wind.
"Yep," says Leijten. "And now the away team that went looking for answers are all doing the same. It's just me and Geordi left."

Everybody looks all serious! Dramatic music! Opening credits break!

Picard's Log 44664.5: "Going after the shuttle that Hickman stole. Hoping we catch him before he hits Tarchannen III."

Leijten and La Forge go to Ten Forward to catch up on old times and share a drink. They laugh about stupid crap and have a good time in general, like you do when you haven't seen a good friend in years. She tells him about some dude she almost married, then she asks about his love life.
"I enjoy the bachelor life too much," he responds.
Liar.
"You liar," she laughs, and refers to him as her "little brother."
Apparently, he used to ask her for advice on romance.
No, can we not do this? I do not like discussing Geordi's love life. Like, does anyone?
Instead, the mood changes, and they talk about how freaked out they are that their former crewmates are disappearing like those outpost Blues from five years earlier. They decide that they're going to solve this shit together, and Susannna calls them "the Leijten and La Forge Show."

They get paged to the bridge - the E has found Hickman's shuttle.
Up on the bridge, the shuttle has been found heading for Tarchannen III, but Hickman is not responding to hails.
"So hey," says Data. "The shuttle isn't pointed at the right angle to enter the planet's atmosphere, so if he doesn't change that in like, a minute or so, the shuttle is going to blow up."
Hickman is not in transporter range, and too far for a tractor beam to yank him back, so Picard tries calling him again.
Leijten and La Forge stand horrified as they watch the shuttle blow up in the atmosphere.

"Hey, I see no life signs on the surface, but most def another Federation shuttle," announces Worf.
"Fuck a duck," says Picard. "Do the thing, Riker."
Riker picks La Forge, Worf and Data to go with him, and Leijten requests to be added to that roster, so down they go.

Riker tells Leijten and La Forge to check out the shuttle nearby while the others check the perimeter. Leijten immediately identifies the shuttle as the one Mendez took from the Aries, then follows some non-human footprints away from the area. Paranoid Worf tells Riker he thinks they are being watched, but Data says there are no life signs here except for themselves. La Forge brings them Mendez's shredded uniform.
"Where is Leijten?" asks Riker.
They all shrug, so he pages her. No answer.
(He also calls her Susanna once, but that strikes me as weird, because it is not established that they have ever met before this, nor are they friends. Doesn't chain of command dictate that he calls her Lt Leijten?)

They begin searching. La Forge notices the weird footprints, and supposedly Leijten's own near them, so he follows that path as well, yelling her name. When he clears some brush, she quietly calls him over to her, then tells him that Mendez and Brevelle are still alive, near them.
He takes a scan. "Dude, there's nobody here."
"They are, though..." She starts to walk away.
"Hey, where are you going?" He reaches out and touches her shoulder, but she jumps and yells at him to go away.
Realizing something is wrong, he grabs her and holds her while she struggles, calling for a beam-up to sick bay. "Medical emergency!"

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

When Leijten comes to on a biobed later, she and La Forge joke that she feels like shit.
"So you had some kind of weird anxiety reaction," Crusher tells her. "And your blood chemistry is all fucked up."
"That sucks," says Leijten, "but we have to finish this investigation."
"Hell no," Crusher responds. "You're not leaving the ship until we figure out if this is related to the missing officers."
La Forge agrees. Leijten argues with them both about wanting to go back to the surface. Picard, who has The Last Say, comes into sick bay and tells her that she's sure as shit not leaving the ship.
"We already finished our surface stuff, anyway. We're ready to hang out in orbit and look at the info we got."
La Forge convinces her to come with him to just look at Data's report. She agrees.

After they leave, Picard asks Crusher about La Forge's scans.
"Totally healthy," she confirms.
"Yeah, but that's what Hickman and Mendez's physicals said, too."
A super-meaningful look!

Leijten and La Forge are moving through the corridors, while Leijten tells La Forge that she thinks what needs to happen is dozens of away teams on the surface, covering large areas quickly to find the others. He stops her, and they both notice that her fidgeting is more than just being amped up from the situation. Girlfriend is shaking. She starts to panic.
"What happened to the others is happening to me, too!"
He gives her a big ol' friend hug and tells her that he won't let that happen.
I mean, that's nice and all, but Leijten has been established as An Old Friend We've Never Seen Before, and never heard of, which means that according to Star Trek rules, she will probably get the Red Shirt Treatment.
Sorry, dude.

At the science station on the bridge, Data tells La Forge and Leijten that he found alien skin cells on the shredded uniforms, but they don't match anything in the databanks. It would take them forever to figure out what those came from.
"Fortunately, we also have these footprints that also don't match anything," he says.
Okay great, Data.
"We didn't see those footprints five years ago," says Leijten.
"There are a lot of sandstorms on that planet," Data points out. "Anyway, Crusher and I are going to check out these footprints and DNA samples some more."

In the lift, Leijten and La Forge talk about why the away team ended up going back to Tarchannen III. La Forge suggests compulsion or post-hypnotic suggestion.
"We should go back through the records and see if there was anything we all did," says Leijten. "Maybe we all touched the same thing, like a plant or the sand."
"It could be something we ingested, or the air itself," says a disappointed La Forge.
Which means the new away team is at risk as well.
Screwed.

Data and Crusher are in her office going over information, and Data says it's important that they get this figured out quickly, because they are running out of time.
Crusher thinks this is sweet and asks if Data is worried about Geordi.
"I'm an android. It's not possible for me to be worried."
But he does concede in the most Data way possible:

La Forge and Leijten go back to Engineering to go over the recording and see if there was something that the team all did to end up this way. Leijten starts getting fidgety again.
"We're wasting our time. We need to go back to the planet."
"Not an option," La Forge reminds her.
"I gotta get off the ship!"
She starts to run away, but then turns and seizes slightly.
He and another Gold rush to her, but when he picks her up, he sees some worrying shit on the back of her neck.

She looks up at him, terrified, and puts a hand on his shoulder.
Rut-roh, Raggy.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

In sick bay, Crusher tells Picard that Leijten has developed an extreme sensitivity to light, and they're trying to keep her comfortable while they figure out what her deal is.
She's now covered in the blue vein-y things and -
- oh, hell no!

La Forge attempts to console and rally his now-creepy friend. She's struggling, because this shit is inside of her and she has no way of fighting it.

La Forge goes to Crusher's office, where she's telling Picard that the cells from the uniform matched Leijten's changing cells. She thinks that the people from the Tarchannen III outpost didn't go missing, that they morphed into whatever Leijten is morphing into, and the other away team members probably morphed into those things as well. She doesn't think that Leijten can give it to others on the E, but La Forge is at risk of changing too.
"I had two scans today, you said I was fine," he argues.
"Yeah, Leijten was fine, too," she points out. "But Brevelle was sick for a few days before he left, and Mendez was normal an hour before she took off. Looks like it affects people differently. You have maybe days, or maybe hours."
"Ugh, this is such bullshit," says La Forge. "I need to get back to work, then."
"No, you need to stay here in sick bay so I can monitor you, and we can make sure you don't go back to the planet's surface."
They argue, and La Forge asks Picard what he would do - hang out in sick bay, or try to figure it out?
"You can put me under house arrest," says La Forge. "Twenty-fourth century ankle bracelet, have Majel track me on the ship to make sure I don't leave."
Crusher agrees with the stipulation that he comes back for a scan in a few hours, and returns if he has any symptoms.

La Forge is in Engineering again, arguing with Majel over the video, when Data asks how he is doing. La Forge answers by yelling at Data, because he's tired and frustrated and finding nothing while trying everything.
"Dude, get some sleep," says Data. "Or eat a fucking Snickers or something."
"No. I mean, you're probably right, but I just have to keep plugging away, because we're running out of time."
"Do you want help?" asks Data.
"No, because I don't even know what I'm looking for." La Forge sighs. "If I figure it out, and need help, I'll give you a jingle."
Geordi, that's... that's so fucking stupid. You admit you're tired and not thinking well, and A GUY WHO DOESN'T NEED TO SLEEP JUST OFFERED TO HELP YOU AND YOU TURNED HIM DOWN.

Nurse Ogawa calls Crusher in to see Leijten, and shines a flashlight on her face. Leijten's skin mimics the light. Also, her body temp is way down, and despite treatment, her transformation is speeding up. Crusher does a scan. Leijten is here and alive, but her life signs are barely registering on the equipment. She orders a genetic scan to look for tiny anomalies.

La Forge is watching that same video, over and over again, driving himself nuts. He watches without sound. He runs it slower. He freeze-frames. He enhances. He zooms. He... finds a weird shadow.
"Hey, Majel. Whose shadow is that?"
"Dunno."
"Can you isolate those shadows?"
"Okay."

"Huh. What's making that shadow?"
"Dunno."
"Can you scan everything in this video and make a holo-program of it?"
"Yeah, but only of the stuff that you actually filmed."
"Great. Send it over."
OKAY.
Now, La Forge using the holodeck to recreate scenes that he can walk around in to solve a weird crisis is actually an awesome idea. He can see the bigger picture and figure out what's added or missing or strange. But post-Galaxy's Child, La Forge using the holodeck for these kinds of projects causes me weird show anxiety. Like, is someone going to falsely accuse him of fucking the mystery shadow six months from now?
La Forge goes to the holodeck and reaches up to set up the program via touch panel and sees that his hand has already started shaking.
Looks like someone is going to be reborn as a scary light monster.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

La Forge goes into the holodeck and starts telling Majel what he wants, but the holodeck-video-whatever is running too fast at regular speed, so he slows it down. Then, instead of setting it back to where it needs to start, and having Majel disappear and reappear the people, he has her reverse it.
Those poor actors, having to walk backward as normally as possible, and learn those lines in reverse.
He has Majel remove Command Red Geordi.
Then Leijten.
Then Mendez.
Now it's just him, and holo-Brevelle, and -
FUCK THAT SHIT.

"Majel, who is that?"
"Dunno."
"Can you make the shape and place it where it would have to be in the space to make that shadow?"
"Not really."
La Forge is starting to sweat. Not feeling well and arguing with an obstinate computer will really speed up a person's transformation into a light-mimicking monster.
"Okay, what if this thing was like, my height?"
"Cool."

NO. NOT COOL. FUCK THIS WHOLE FUCKING SHOW.
And before La Forge is able to do more than make a WTF? face, he starts to collapse. He reaches back to feel the back of his neck, and there's blue slime on his hands. Hands that are now kind of flippers.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

In sick bay, Crusher has finally found her tiny intruder in Leijten's chest cavity, which is pumping out instructions to make more of itself, like a shitty virus or cancer or something.
"We need to have unaltered DNA to fix her," Crusher says.
"That sucks," replies Ogawa. "There's isn't a lot left."
They rush to turn on some things and get some regular Leijten DNA.

A little while later, Crusher calls the bridge to tell them that she and Ogawa were successful with the surgery, that they managed to remove what was causing her DNA to alter, and it'll take a few hours for them to see what kind of results they'll get. Then she tries to call La Forge.
No answer.
"Majel," she asks, "where is La Forge?"
"Not on board."
"Um, bridge? See if La Forge has left the ship."
Worf and Riker confirm that no one has transported off, and no shuttles are missing.
"Fuck," says Crusher. "He went chameleon."
Majel tells them that the last place she saw La Forge was in holodeck three.

Riker and Worf station a pair of security Golds outside the holodeck and go inside to find... the outpost on Tarchannen III. There's Brevelle with his lighted camera, and... that thing. Riker prepares to go inside by putting on his best WTF face.

They venture in, and while Riker is trying to figure out what this program is doing, Worf finds and brings him the shredded uniform of Geordi La Forge.

A transporter chief is minding his own business in transporter room six when the doors open. A thing in the doorway looks like... people-shaped water?
It knocks him the hell down, sets the controls, then hops on the pad. The chief screams for security through his comm badge.
On the bridge, Data tells Picard that the security lock-out on that transporter has been broken. He is unable to re-establish.
La Forge transports down, and we briefly see him before he's gone.

*shudder*

Concerned music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 44668.1: "Crusher says we have about an hour before La Forge is permanently transformed into some kind of comic book swamp monster thing. We can't find him via sensor array because he's like, invisible or something. Sucks to be him. Sucks to be us."

On the bridge, Data says that if La Forge beamed down by the outpost and is still in the area, they might be able to find him with UV light. Riker asks him to alter an emergency search light to UV.
Soon, Data is busy altering the emergency light, while Worf and Riker argue over search strategies.
They take off.

In sick bay, Leijter wakes up mostly herself and talks frantically with Crusher: there was no parasite. The Tarchannens reproduce by implanting DNA strands into other species and transforming them. She asks where La Forge is, and Crusher admits that he has gone down to the planet, but says an away team is looking for him. Leijter panics.
"I'm the only one who can find him!"

Riker adds Leijter to the away team, and they beam down. Leijter tells the team that the creatures will run from regular light, but UV is beyond their spectrum, so they won't see it. Data shines his light where she directs, and three creatures appear. She insists one is La Forge. They all run away, but Leijter calls out to her friend.

He pauses.
That shit's terrifying.

Leijter tells a freaked out La Forge that they managed to help her back from the brink, and they can help him, too. Mendez and Brevelle are too far gone, but she knows some of his humanity still exists. She holds out her hand, and there's a long pause, but he finally reaches out and takes it before they embrace.
Ugh, does he have goat-eye contacts?

Later in sick bay, La Forge is mostly cured. Picard asks Leijter if Mendez and Brevelle are save-able at all, and she confirms that they are completely gone.
La Forge agrees: in another few minutes, he would not have recognized his friend's voice or gone with them.
Crusher asks if La Forge was communicating with the species, but he tells her no, that they're pretty much all lizard hind-brain.
"Okay," decides Picard. "We'll put some beacons in orbit and on the surface, warning people not to go there. That way, no one will else will have to go through this."
Picard and Crusher leave and La Forge thanks Leijter for saving him.
"I didn't know who you were," he says, "but I trusted you. Thanks for not giving up on me."
Guess Leijter bucked the trend of previously-unknown-old-friend-dies-to-give-the-audience-the-feels. Good for her.

*******

To the Families of Mendez and Brevelle:

Hey, how's it going? Starfleet here.

Are you sitting? You should sit.

So, like five years ago, your family member went on this away mission to find some people on a planet, and they didn't find out what happened, but you know how your peeps recently went missing? So, yeah. Turns out the planet slowly turned them into these invisible Swamp Thing monsters. It's like, the way that planet's animals reproduce or something. Not saying an alien animal had sex with your family member or something. But, you know, kind of.

Anyway. Space is weird, and they can never come back, and you can't go visit, because then you'll become an invisible Swamp Thing too. There also isn't enough left of their humanity to recognize them, or for them to recognize you. I guess you're stuck in that limbo of them being dead but also not? I dunno. Have a funeral or something if you want.

Don't sue us, tho.

Love,

Starfleet

To the Family of Lt Hickman,

Ya boi blowed up in a shuttle. Maybe suicide. We dunno. Sorry and stuff.

Starfleet

Kayso.
I don't like this episode.
Is it bad? No.
Does the writing or story suck?
Nope.
Do those fucking contacts make me want to hide behind my hands and whimper like a little kid who has snuck downstairs to watch Tales of the Crypt against their parents' wishes? YES.
This episode creeps me the hell out. Horribly, this episode started out far creepier, so a big thank you to the writers for turning that shit down a bit.
Psychologically, destroying a human face and especially the eyes is something that other humans find disturbing. Congrats, Star Trek! This crap is disturbing!
Interestingly, when I rewatch an episode that my brain has deemed "creepy," it always seems to recall that creepy part happening way more than it actually does. In my memory, "Night Terrors" features that hideous eyes in the dark voice constantly. I remember this episode containing way more glow-in-the-dark goat eyes than it actually does.
Some good stuff:
- LeVar Burton's performance as the terrified Tarchannen thing was well-done. I've seen feral cats do the same things.
- One idea they ditched early on was hooking up La Forge and Leijten romantically. Thank fuck they got rid of that. The writers ended up deciding that they didn't want to drag the audience through the muck of another Ill-Fated La Forge Romance so soon after "Galaxy's Child." Nobody needs that.

Questions I'm left with:

- Sooo, all of the people who went down to the planet from the E got checked out, right? Riker and Worf and Crusher? Yeah? Presumably they all have this problem now too, right?
- How have the Tarchannens been reproducing prior to this? Do they take over the other fauna on the planet? If they had never changed over a human before this, what do the original animals look like? Do they have the creepy blue veins and glowing eyes?
- Isn't La Forge's VISOR capable of picking up the kind of light that would make those things visible?



- Fun Facts:

- Ensign Graham is played by Mona Grudt, Miss Universe 1990. (Lol.)

- Amick Byram, who played Lt Hickman on the away team video, will appear in TNG season seven.

- The Aries was the ship that Riker had been offered in "The Icarus Factor."
- The original script involved two non-regular crew members going through the transformation.
- The original story was also a lot creepier, with more creatures on the surface, and La Forge did not make the change. Brannon Braga, who did the rewrite, felt that La Forge needed to be included to make it work.
- In a single frame of this episode where Leijten and La Forge are working in Engineering, the TNG logo appears on a computer screen behind Leijten. I was never able to find it, so it may have been a pre-remastered version.

- It took four make-up artists working for six hours to turn LeVar Burton into the swamp monster thing with the glowy veins. It holds the record for longest make-up application on TNG.
- The neural stimulator that was used on Riker in "Shades of Gray" is hauled out again for Leijter's surgery.
- Three other species for two more Star Trek shows will reproduce the same way the Tarchannens do, by infecting other species with their DNA.
- This episode was nominated for an Emmy for Make-Up.
- Along with Miss Universe, this episode also featured Los Angeles radio DJs Mark and Brian, as the other Tarchannen aliens. After filming their scenes, the DJs interviewed multiple cast members for their show.

Red deaths: 0
To date: 0
Gold deaths: 0
To date: 0

Blue deaths: 1 (Hickman)
To date: 1
Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
To date: 11,000

Obnoxious Wes moments: 0
To date: 1

Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Geordi moments: 0
To date: 2

Sassy Wes Moments: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Worf Moment: 0
To date: 2

Sassy Riker Moments: 0
To date: 7

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date: 7

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
To date: 1
Sassy Data Moments: 0
To date: 2
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date: 2
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
To date: 4
Sassy Guinan Moments: 0
To Date: 3
Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
To date: 3

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 1
To date: 23

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 0
To date: 15

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
To date: 0
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
To date: 1
Picard Maneuvers: 0
To date: 17
Tea, Earl Grey: 0
To date: 6

Morna and Uhura are planning a hit on me.

ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Seventeen "Night Terrors"

ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Seventeen "Night Terrors"
Production Order: 17
Air Order: 17
Stardate: 44631.2
Original Air Date: March 18, 1991

I don't like this episode, and neither does anyone else.
The end.




Alright, I'll do the thing. Geeze.

*******

Picard's Log 44631.2: "So we're cruising through this uncharted binary star system, and we think we might have found the USS Brattain, a science ship that went missing a month ago."

They roll up on the Brattain, and Data says that everything that has to do with propulsion is shut down. Troi says she's getting life signs, but like, weird ones? Not as many as she should for the ship's complement of 35.

Riker forms an away team, and Troi insists on going. 

Riker grunts his assent, like, "Not my idea, but I won't stop you."

They beam over: Riker, Crusher, Worf, Data and Troi. Data checks the computer and says there's nothing wrong with the main systems, and somehow, no one noticed until now that all of the bridge crew have died grisly deaths:

Riker surmises that the killer may still be on board.
"Naw, there's like, one person," says Troi. "But he didn't do it."
She goes to a side door, and opens what looks like a broom closet.
"I think he's Betazoid," she tells the others, then asks the guy who did this.
He appears to be catatonic, and refuses to answer.

Dramatic music! Opening credits!

When we come back, Crusher and Picard watch a Blue cover a corpse with a sheet, and Picard asks how the autopsies are going.
"Like, okay? But it's really complicated, because they died all over the ship from different things. Some were found in corridors, obviously engaging in hand-to-hand combat, and others were barricaded in their rooms with weapons. The one fried guy on the bridge was hit with a phaser set at a high setting."
Please tell me that you're not going to announce that they were all drunk. Because we've done that twice now.
They go through a door into sick bay proper, and it's surmised that they were in the ship's morgue, because we've seen that door before, but have never gone through it.
The catatonic guy is on a biobed. He's Andrus Hagan, the Brattain's science adviser, and the only one of the crew left alive.
"I'm getting disconnected words from him," says Troi, meaning telepathically. "But nothing that says how things got like this."
Picard tells Troi to stick with Hagan and keep trying, then he and Crusher leave.
Hagan tells Troi that there are voices in his head, saying "both things," because what the hell does both things mean?
She's confused, but reassures him that she'll keep trying to figure out what he's communicating to her.

On the Brattain's La Forge has gotten the engines up and running, and tells Riker and Data that it can go back to the nearest starbase under its own power. They try to start the engines, but the ship refuses to turn over.
"Bullshit," says La Forge.

Picard is reading in his ready room.
Check out this plexiglass sailing ship. Pretty freaking sweet.

Crusher comes in. "The autopsy reports are pretty freaking creepy. No drugs, no aliens. The entire crew of 34 killed each other with knives and phasers and bare hands. Look at Captain Zaheva's last log."
Zaheva is clearly out of her mind. Crusher says that her logs started getting weird once they were stranded, and she started talking about conspiracy theories and mutinies. Zaheva pulls on her hair in a disconcerting way and rants that someone named Brink and "his men" were behind that engines failing, so she had to "eliminate Brink." Lovely.

Troi walks into a foggy space, then she starts flying, because why not?
Oh, it's a dream sequence.
Then there's a voice that sounds like someone using a voice changer to tell people that they kidnapped a loved one.
"EYES... IN THE DARK..."
WTF?
"ONE MOON CIRCLES..."
Yeah, that's not creepy at all.
"Where are you?" asks Troi.
She never asks, "who have you kidnapped?" just "where are you?"
The voice repeats the two hideous phrases while Troi continues to ask where they are.
At the end of the sequence, multiple voices chant "eyes in the dark, eyes in the dark."
Yaaaay. I never noticed multiple voices before. That's not unnerving.

Troi sits up with a start, because that wasn't a shitty dream AT ALL.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 44635.8: "Been here four days, and still don't know what's going on with the Brattain. So we're gonna cut our losses and tow the thing back to the nearest starbase."

La Forge and a skinny young ensign are back on the bridge of the Brattain, setting up the tow and trying one last time to see if they can get the engines going.
The ensign hears a clanging sound.
"There's someone left on the ship!"
"Dude, there's nobody here," La Forge answers. "They searched the ship tip to tail."
The ensign realizes that maybe he didn't hear the clanging, and admits to it.
"It's cool," says La Forge. "This ship is creepy. Thirty-four people were murdered here. I totes don't blame you for imagining things."
The ensign nods and thanks La Forge for not calling him crazy.

There's a short scene where Troi goes back to Hagan, but all he can say to her is "bright... out there."
She is baffled.

We get another scene with the O'Briens, and while I think the writing staff is really milking the fact that we have a married couple on board now, I really don't care, because I like their dynamics and it's interesting to see how Marriage in Space works.
Miles is pacing the floor when Keiko comes in. He's clearly pissed off, but Keiko had a shitty day and doesn't notice at first. She tells him about stress at work, and in an accusatory tone he asks if that's why she was late.
"No, I had a meeting that could have been an email."
"Was Tom Corbin there?"
"Huh?"
"Tom Corbin from the science lab! You use any excuse to see him!"
In not so many words, he basically accuses her of having an affair, then storms out, leaving Keiko completely nonplussed.

Miles stalks down to Ten Forward, where he encounters his friend Gillespie.
"Surprised to see you here, and not in your quarters, smooching on the wife," says Gillespie.
"She's busy!" barks Miles. "She's head of plant biology!"
"Weird stuff going on down there?"
"The fuck are you on about?"
"Peeps are seeing weird shit all over the ship. Like a dude in an old-school Starfleet uniform riding the lift near the warp core. Nobody on it when the lift hit the top. Lots of talk about crap like that."
Miles is pissed at Gillespie now. "Seriously? Ghost stories?"
He walks out of there as well. First, unconfirmed affair suspicions, now Ghost Adventures in Space. Miles does not have the spoons for this shit.

Picard is at his desk in the ready room when the door chimes. He yells "Come!" but the door doesn't open. It happens three more times, with no one responding when he yells for them to come in. He finally gets up and goes to the door, only to find no one on the other side. Probably a malfunction. He sits back down. The door chimes ring once... twice... three times, as Picard sighs, knowing that this is his life now, listening to the damn door chime for no fucking reason.
There's a knock. Is it g-g-g-ghosts?
"Come?"
Nope, Troi and Crusher.
"WTF?" demands Picard.
They come in and sit down.
"We're worried that whatever happened on the Brattain is happening here now," says Troi.
"Yeah, people are behaving oddly and hearing things that aren't there," confirms Crusher. "We should GTFO, like now."
"We're prepping the Brattain to tow to the nearest starbase," says Picard. "Gonna leave in like, an hour?"
Crusher nods.

Up on the bridge, they're getting ready to fire up the tractor beam and leave. The ensign at the helm fidgets, then admits to Data that she can't remember how to enter coordinates. She's sent to sick bay. The ensign who replaces her steps on the gas, but the Enterprise does not turn over. Picard calls La Forge.
"No go," replies the Chief Engineer. "Dead in the water. No propulsion at all."
"Yaaaay," says Riker. "Adrift like the Brattain."

Dramatic music and zoom-in on Riker and Picard! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 44639.9: "Twiddling our thumbs here for ten days now. Sent out the usual SOS, but we're way the hell out in BFE, Space, so we won't get a response back for two weeks. FML."

A senior officers' meeting is called in the Obs Lounge, and Data says he's been going over logs from both ships and checking out data, and he think's they're caught in a Tyken's Rift.
It's a thing that Star Trek made up, so the writers kindly had Crusher ask what the hell that was, so Data could explain:
"So this captain, Bela Tyken, got caught in this space anomaly that sucks energy from the ship, pretty much rendering it without propulsion."
Worf comes in late and gripes that he was detained. Why, I don't know. It doesn't figure into the story in any way for Worf to be late to this one meeting.
"Anyway," finishes Data, "dude figured out that a big-ass explosion would punch a hole through the anomaly, allowing him to escape. He was carrying two kinds of elements on his ship that he could dump into the rift and make the explosion happen."
"Ugh, bullshit," says La Forge. "We don't have anything like that on board. Like, not even our photon torpedoes could make something big enough."
"Can we replicate the ones Tyken used?" Riker asks.
"Noop," says Data. "We don't have enough power to make complicated elements anymore. We gotta figure out a way to do it without using traditional methods."
"Did the crew on Tyken's ship exhibit any strange behavior?" asks Crusher.
"No."
"What about nightmares?" asks Troi.
"Nope."
"So what the fuck is up with us?" asks Crusher.
Shrugs all around.

Riker and Picard get in the lift, noting that only Data does not seem to be affected by any of this crap. Data actually makes a really great control group for weirdnesses like this shit. If he's not affected, then the crew knows something is wrong biologically. If Data is affected by something as well, then they are completely fucked.
"Are you hallucinating?" Picard asks.
"No," admits Riker. "But I feel off. Like, I keep wanting to yell at people, and when I go back to my quarters, feels like there's someone there waiting for me."
"Saaaame," says Picard. "Nightmares?"
"No."
Picard comes to a conclusion: that one of them needs to be in control in case the other goes down. He instructs Riker to go take a four-hour nap, then come to relieve him on the bridge. Riker looks like he wants to argue, but agrees. They're both talking a little slower, breaking off mid-sentence. Picard looks like he's shrinking into himself.
Riker gets out on a crew quarter deck. Picard sighs and clings to the wall of the lift.

Riker goes to his quarters and stares down the room like he's going to kick the ass of every piece of furniture in it, while suspicious music plays.

On the lift, Picard's senses tell him that the ceiling is coming down hard to crush him. He falls on the floor, screaming "NOOOOOOOO!" That is what the crew members on the bridge see when the lift doors open. He stands up, regains his dignity and tells them to go do space stuff. But he calls Data into the ready room.

Now in his jammies, Riker continues to give his quarters the stink eye. He climbs into bed, determined to sleep with one eye open, gripping his pillow tight. Suddenly, he rips back the covers.
Oh, no! Motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking starship!

Okay, but not really.

In the ready room, Data says that he and La Forge could probably use the same energy burst here that they used against the Borg.
"Um, with the thing?" Picard kind of gestures. "Deflector dish-thingy?"
"Yeah."
"Okay." A pause. "So Data, it seems that I am also losing my faculties."
"I noticed," admits Data.
"I'll probably need your help from here on out." He talks briefly about watching his grandfather succumb to the raves of old age and losing his mind bit by bit, and how awful it was. "We may need you to get us out of here."
Ever the chipper chipmunk, Data answers "alrighty" before exiting.

I really have to slow-clap for Patrick Stewart here. His body language going
forward is subtle, but projects volumes. Picard's confidence is gone, and he
radiates uncertainty and shakiness, a complete lack of composure.

Crusher and another Blue are in the morgue, and Crusher tells the Blue she wants to look at some corpse brains.
"Go get the things set up, and I'll figure out which ones I want to look at it," she instructs.
The Blue leaves, Crusher removes a sheet from a corpse, and looks at her padd. She hears a noise and looks up.
Nada.
She goes back to her padd. Hears a noise and looks up.
Nothing.
Goes back to her padd. Hears a noise and looks up.
OH FUCK THAT SHIT. FUCK THAT SHIT IN ITS ENTIRETY.

I would run from the room, then toss a kerosene-soaked torch in after me.
BURN THAT SHIT WITH FIRE.
Instead, she backs against the wall, squeezes her eyes shut and says slowly but firmly "GO. AWAY."
This seems to work. All the corpses have laid back down. No fires today.

An unnerved Crusher goes to the ready room later to talk to an unnerved Picard. Data is in attendance because he needs to assist Picard now.
"Can you remember your dreams from the last ten days?" she asks Picard.
"I never remember that stuff," he says, clearly not himself.
"Yeah, I'm willing to bet you haven't dreamed at all. Nobody on this ship is. Except Troi. Who is having nightmares. Okay. I did like... brain scans and things from the people. You know the people?"
"From the Brattain," adds Data, who is now having to prop up both Crusher and Picard mentally.
"Yeah, them. And also the people here. There's a weird chemical imbalance in both. It's dream deprivation. And this is bad, because dreaming is the good."
Data has to jump in again. "She's talking about REM sleep, when humans dream. Humans need to dream in order to keep their brain chemistry right."
"Yeah, that," says Crusher. "No dreaming: hallucinations and stuff. Insanity. We know how this ends."

WE'RE FUCKED music! Commercial break!

Troi is back in sick bay, sitting by Hagan. She falls asleep sitting up, and that creepy kidnapper voice tells her again about the EYES IN THE DARK and ONE MOON CIRCLING.
She sits up with a start and tells Hagan that she's still there, to which he telepathically replies, "double."
"The hell does that mean?" she asks him.
No answer.
She goes to stand next to Crusher, who tells her that she keeps trying to give the crew drugs and treatments to get them to dream, but nothing is helping.
"You're the only one dreaming."
"Yeah, and I'm having nightmares. I can't hardly sleep at all lately. In the end, gonna become like Hagan."

Down in Ten Forward, people are getting restless.
"Picard is running an experiment!" shouts Gillespie. "He's stranded us here on purpose! He wants to see how long we can take it before we go out like the crew of the Brattain. I don't wanna die alone in my quarters! I wanna go out fighting!"
"You're fucking nuts," says Guinan. "Picard isn't doing anything of the sort."
But others in Ten Forward are insisting that they want to go out fighting, too. This is what happens when military people lose their minds.

The crew preps to do the deflector dish thing. Data is now finishing sentences for many people.
"This better work," La Forge tells Data. "We're running out of time."
They tell Worf to throw the switch on the deflector dish, which he does.
The beam shoots out of the ship, and the rift goes OM NOM NOM DEFLECTOR DISH JUICE.
"Crap," says Riker. "Can we do the thing again?"
"Nope," says Data. "It'll eat up the last of our life support power."
"Hooray, we're fucked," flatlines Riker.
Worf decides to just leave the bridge.
When he passes by, Troi's like, "Ooh, shit. Felt that."

Worf goes back to his quarters and tries to make himself the first casualty of this crap. Troi rushes in and catches him, screaming through her comm badge for security Golds. Then she and Worf have a real shitty convo about how this fear is an illusion, and it doesn't matter that Worf feels like something is waiting for them that he can't fight, because it isn't real.
"Knowing that you're feeling fear makes you stronger," she says.
He puts down the knife.
The Golds bust in, but she waves them off, telling them everything is fine.
She talks Worf into letting her take him to sick bay.

Worried music! Commercial break!

Acting Captain's Log 44642.1: "Data here. Picard had me take over. The crew is losing it, and life support is going down."

Frazzled-looking Blues tend to frazzled-looking crewmates in sick bay, and Troi sits with Hagan again.
"You said double before," she says. "What's double?"
"Twins. Mates. Can't leave the twin."
"You don't want to leave?" she asks.
"Help! Help Help!"
"You do want to leave, but you can't?" she guesses.
"Eyes in the dark."
"Holy shit!" says Troi aloud. "That was totes in my dream!"
Hagan starts to cry and nods.
"You heard that over and over in a dream?" she asks.
More nodding.
Troi goes to Crusher, and they snap at each other. "The nightmare isn't a nightmare! It's a message! I know what's going on!"

Troi, Crusher and Data go to the ready room. Data is Kinda-Captain, but they still want to keep Picard in the loop.
"Betazoids dream at a different frequency that other humanoids," says Troi. "I think there are aliens on the other side of the rift that are trying to communicate telepathically at that frequency, and only Hagan and I are getting the message."
"Them communicating at that frequency might be interfering with the REM sleep of everyone else," adds Data.
"Can you tell them to knock it the fuck off?" asks Picard.
"I guess?" replies Troi. "I can do directed dreaming, send them a message to stop. But they're asking for help. Eyes in the dark might mean this binary star system."
"Hey, wait," says Data. "There might be another ship we can't see on the other side of the rift, also trapped like we are. We could send them a message, and work together to free ourselves."
"Do the thing," says an exhausted Picard.

Troi and Data go to the science station on the bridge.
"If we work together," says Data, "then the two ships can make an explosion bigger than just one could. You could memorize the catalog of elements that we have on board that could cause an explosion when combined with another element, and communicate that to them."
"Are you shitting me?" asks Troi as they scroll through thousands of pictures of elements. "Dude, it needs to be SHORT and SIMPLE."
They keep scrolling, and then she says, "Ooh, stop!"
(Okay, seriously: there's no way she saw something when Data was scrolling that fast. But we'll go ahead and give it to her.)
She points to the hydrogen atom, which has one electron circling one proton. "That's one fucking moon circling!"
"Hydrogen mixed with like, calendenium would make a big-ass explosion," Data agrees. "But if they're thinking like we are, does that mean they have hydrogen, or want us to provide it?"
"If it's an SOS, you would ask for things you need, rather than things you already have," reasons Troi.
"Okay, so we can tell them we'll shoot some hydrogen into the rift, and it will explode."
"Ugh, how the fuck do I say that?" Troi laments.
"Easy," says Data. "We just reached the place where they've been for a while. They already know what to do. Just say NOW."

Troi goes to sick bay, where Crusher shakily puts a cortical stimulator on her, to keep her in REM sleep.
Data calls. "You got like, two minutes to give them the message once you hit REM."
"That's it?" demands Troi.
"Yeah, we only have enough power to shoot hydrogen particles into the rift for that long."
"Shit. Okay. Gotcha."
"We gotta borrow power from life support to do the thing," Data tells Picard.
Picard is all like

"Okay, then," says Data. He turns on the all-call. "Hey. This is Kinda-Captain Data. Go to the designated shelter areas of the ship. Only those areas will still have life support. Also, don't breathe too deeply when you get there."

In Ten Forward, this announcement has confirmed Gillespie's fucking stupid conspiracy theory that Picard is making them lab rats. He starts yelling about being trapped in Ten Forward.

"Calm your tits," says Guinan. She goes behind the bar and calls for security Golds.

"STFU," says O'Brien to Gillespie.

"No way! I want answers!" And maybe Gillespie thinks that the answers are lodged in O'Brien's sinus cavities, because he fucking punches him out of nowhere.

The Golds bust in, and a fight breaks out.

And like a madam in old-time Western films, Guinan grabs a big-ass gun from behind the bar and shoots a hole in the ceiling. The punching stops.

"WTH?" asks Gillespie.

"You wanna see setting two, or you wanna sit the fuck down and shut up?" asks Guinan.

Crusher monitors Troi in sick bay, then alerts Data when she has gone into REM sleep. Data turns on the hydrogen and shoots that shit into the rift.

In the dream, the creepy voice starts repeating EYES IN THE DARK blah, blah,blah, and once again Troi asks where they are. 

Let's go, Troi. Quit screwing around.

"I have to find you," she pleads. "I have to tell you..."

Okay, that's not the word NOW, Troi. Get your shit together.

But this is Star Trek, so they have to drag it out until the last second.

Some fuzzy humanoid-shaped silhouette appears in the dream in front of Troi.

On the bridge, Data tells Picard that they're out of juice.

"The counselor failed," he states.

Yeah, or -

"Oh my fuck, let's get out of here," groans Picard.

Data turns and hits the gas, and they rush forward, almost running over a fuzzy ship-shape going in the opposite direction.

Troi wakes up in sick bay and smiles.

Data announces to Picard that warp engines are back up and running normally.

"Sweet," says a groggy Picard. "Set a course for like...you know."

"Doing the thing," says Data, setting the course for starbase 220.

Picard wearily goes back to the Big Chair, but Data turns and says his last act as Kinda-Captain is to order Picard and the rest of the crew to bed.

Picard smiles and goes to the lift, leaving Data to do this kind of superhero stance on the bridge.

The E warps away.

Um.

You... you were gonna tow the Brattain back to the starbase.

You gonna leave it there? Cuz it's possible it was thrown clear...

No?

Alrighty then.

Some things I liked:
Firstly, Troi's make-up at the end of the episode. She keeps getting more disheveled as time goes on. The others do as well, but Troi looks like she walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and back out again. Points to the hair and make-up crew for their work on Troi this episode.
Secondly, Patrick Stewart's subtle acting choices once Picard leaves the Obs Lounge meeting. This is his turning point where he starts hallucinating, and his state of mind starts showing up on his features. Where Troi's evidence is in her facial expressions, Picard's comes across in his body language. He is smaller, especially next to Riker and Data, both of whom are taller than he is. You forget that Stewart is shorter than his coworkers because Picard's confidence and personality are so large. Here, it's played up that he is shorter. His shoulders are hunched, and he holds his hands in a fidgety way. You almost don't notice it, but these acting choices completely change Picard.
Third - the science is good. If you're unable to hit REM sleep and dream, you really will lose your mind.
Fourth: Worf choosing suicide sounds about right. If a Klingon loses his mojo and succumbs to fear, it feels as though he has no honorable way out besides suicide. A good writing choice for Worf.

No thank you:
The voice in Troi's dreams that sound like kidnappers with voice changers - why? (I seem to recall this episode as being rife with that voice, though in rewatching it, I realized that it came up less often than I remembered. It probably had to do with my strong aversion to it. I projected more screen-time with it because I didn't like it.
The scene where Miles accuses Keiko of cheating on him feels kind of out of place. I mean, yes - sleep deprivation will cause irritability and paranoia, but it was one of the first things we saw go awry, so it felt disingenuous to me. Misuse of Rosalind Chao: minus fifty points.
Those dream sequences, ugh. You mostly see a lot of clouds and Marina Sirtis' ass. Like, her ass is nice, but it was seen so often it was starting to feel like a plot point. She couldn't walk through the clouds? They had to spend the money on rigging and a green screen? Okay then.

Weird questions/thoughts brought up by this episode:
- What things has science not confirmed in the 24th century? We have tons of science now, but there are still things we don't have definitive answers for, and humanity has a tendency to make up supernatural answers when we don't have more concrete ones. Like, do people in the 24th century still believe in ghosts? Or was Gillespie certain that the coworker who mentioned the mysterious guy on the lift, was actually hallucinating?
- I bet having a Betazoid doctor/nurse/caregiver is helpful when you're in a coma. People who have come out of them have reported being aware of things while in those comas, and having someone there to telepathically communicate with you until it was over would be super handy.
"Doctor, what does my husband say? That he loves me and wants me to remarry if he dies?"
"No, he says the bottom of his left foot is itchy, and he called you a morbid bitch for burying him before he's dead."



- Fun Facts:

- First episode filmed in 1991.
- This episode came in as Scariest TNG Episode in a startrek.com poll. http://www.startrek.com/article/poll-says-scariest-tng-episode-was
- Director Les Landau dislikes this episode so much that he refuses to talk about it.
- Writer Jeri Taylor thought the script was convoluted. She had to rewrite it over and over, and was mostly unsatisfied with it.
- Michael Piller found the pacing of this episode to be slow. Nine minutes had to be cut out of the finished episode so that it wouldn't run over for time. he blamed it on the fact that it was the first episode filmed after Christmas break, and energy was lacking. Added on top of that, the crew is supposed to be dream-deprived.
- Jonathan Frakes called this episode "a yawner," "below our standard," and called the special effects "shitty."
- Marina Sirtis liked the concept for this episode, but was not fond of the dream sequences. She had asked to do more action scenes, and had received flying scenes instead. She notes that the terror on her face in those scenes is real, as they had her on a rig in front of a green screen, and she is afraid of heights.
- Some of the rigging scenes were filmed by a stunt double.

- My roommate Legolas works for a mortuary, and I asked him what the sheets they put over corpses are called. "Kirkland," he joked. Yep, mortuaries buy plain ol' bed sheets in bulk at Costco. So that's a thing you know now.
- The Brattain is named after Walter Houser Brattain, one of the inventors of the transistor.
- Brattain is misspelled on the ship model as "Brittain" but spelled correctly everywhere else.
- The USS Brattain model is a re-use of the Reliant from Wrath of Khan.
- The motto on the Brattain's dedication plaque is "... a three hour tour, a three hour tour." Yeah, it's a Gilligan's Island joke. 😑 That they put on a ship that got "stranded at sea."
- The location of the Tyken's Rift is labeled on a map in stellar cartography in the seventh Star Trek film.
- The chart of the rift will show up again on Picard's desktop monitor in another episode later in this season.
- The rift explosion is a re-use of the Genesis Device explosion  from Wrath of Khan.
- John Vickery, who played Andrus Hagan, will appear in a recurring role on DS9 as a Cardassian, and as a Klingon on Enterprise.

- Brian Tochi, who played Ensign Peter Lin (he replaced the ensign at the con who couldn't recall how to enter coordinates), played Ray Tsing Tao in the TOS POS "And the Children Shall Lead." (Okay, but it is actually kind of cool when people end up playing parts on Star Trek episodes filmed decades apart.)

- Brian Tochi is best known for playing Toshiro Takashi in the Revenge of the Nerds movies, and for being the voice of Leonardo in the first three live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. (Not that stupid Michael Bay crap.)
- According to Memory Alpha, the Brattain was last seen trapped in the Rift. So it was either thrown clear and sucked back in, or never broke free to begin with. Seems weird that Starfleet would just leave it, though.



Red deaths: 0
To date: 0
Gold deaths: 0
To date: 0

Blue deaths: 0
To date: 0
Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
To date: 11,000

Obnoxious Wes moments: 0
To date: 1

Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Geordi moments: 0
To date: 2

Sassy Wes Moments: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Worf Moment: 0
To date: 2

Sassy Riker Moments: 0
To date: 7

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date: 7

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
To date: 1
Sassy Data Moments: 0
To date: 2
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date: 2
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
To date: 4
Sassy Guinan Moments: 1
To date: 3
Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
To date: 3

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 1
To date: 22

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 1
To date: 15

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
To date: 0
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
To date: 1
Picard Maneuvers: 1
To date: 17
Tea, Earl Grey: 1
To date: 6

First kittens of the season...
Mama Elinor with her heterochromia (two different colored eyes)

 ... and her kittens, who may have heterochromia, too!
(This is them at six days.)

That being said, it is kitten-making season.

FIX YOUR FREAKING CAT.