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 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.
"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.
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
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Blue deaths: 0
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Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
To date: 11,000
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Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
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Obnoxious Wes moments: 0
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Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
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Sassy Geordi moments: 0
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Sassy Wes Moments: 0
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Sassy Worf Moment: 0
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Sassy Riker Moments: 0
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Sassy Picard Moments: 0
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Sassy NPC Moments: 0
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Sassy Data Moments: 0
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Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
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Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
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Sassy Troi Moments: 0
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Sassy Guinan Moments: 1
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Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
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Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
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Sassy Troi Moments: 0
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Sassy Guinan Moments: 1
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Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 1
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Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 1
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Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
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Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
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Picard Maneuvers: 1
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Tea, Earl Grey: 1
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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.
I mostly remember Brian Tochi as Tee Gar on Space Academy, where he was the doctor and had super strength in an early episode before they forgot about that.
ReplyDeleteI sort of only vaguely recall that show being a thing, but it was made by Filmation, who rarely made more than one season of a show. Actually, only Star Trek: The Animated Series ever got more than one Filmation season.
DeleteIt looks like you can watch Space Academy in a bunch of different places online though, so that's pretty sweet.
I absolutely love your blog! Thank you for the time and energy you put into it!
ReplyDeleteThanks, friendo!
DeleteDo you by any chance have a venue where we may give you moneys for tea/blogging supplies? (Also, I love the kitties at the bottom of each post). :)
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