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.