TNG Flashback: Realm of Fear

"Realm of Fear" is certainly a provocatively titled episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The name tells you a lot about where the writers thought they were going. But it also highlights the ways in which the episode fell short of the mark.

The Enterprise travels near a stellar phenomenon to investigate a science vessel whose crew has all died or gone missing. The proximity of the nearby stars makes use of the transporter difficult, a situation for which Reginald Barclay has a solution. To implement it, Barclay must face his own phobia about being transported. Once inside the beam, he sees creatures which make him begin to doubt his own sanity.

Through the lens of science fiction, Star Trek would often try to embrace a variety of other genres, presenting heavier dramatic episodes, lighter comedic ones, the occasional mystery, and more. Only rarely would they try straight-up horror, and the writers seemed to take note of this in season six; "Realm of Fear" was the first of a few episodes throughout the season that tried to strike that tone.

The core idea here seems solid enough. Setting aside that Starfleet officers in Gene Roddenberry's future are supposed to be paragons of humanity (and they should set that aside), why shouldn't someone have a phobia of the transporter? Dr. McCoy always joked playfully about the damn contraption (as did Pulaski, who was shamelessly written in McCoy's image). Why not take such a phobia seriously? Enter the recurring character of Reginald Barclay, exactly the sort of person you could imagine fearing the transporter.

Writer Brannon Braga was assigned the script for the episode, and it was a rather personal one for him. He actually hated flying -- the obvious real world comparison to the transporter -- and the staff joked that he was Barclay in this situation. He injected the script with a number of nice touches, from O'Brien's fear of spiders (something many viewers could identify with), to Barclay self-diagnosing with the computer (years before WebMD was the go-to stop for hypochondriacs), to a hint of another horror convention when Dr. Crusher seems to have a zombie corpse on her hands. Braga also ratchets the tension up on Barclay quite nicely. Barclay's behavior is quite relatable, whatever one's particular fear might be.

But then the episode takes a couple of serious missteps -- both of which were acknowledged later by members of the writing staff. Braga admitted that the creatures inside the transporter beam weren't remotely as scary as they were meant to be, and took the blame for it. He noted the "tall order" the script asked of the effects department, to create a creature that was "amorphous, but terrifying." He noted, "it's easy to write that, but difficult to visualize," as the resulting hokey worm arm puppets proved. Meanwhile, showrunner Jeri Taylor admitted that the episode's climax was an unsatisfying wall of technobabble. She felt that after under-explaining the invented science behind "Time's Arrow," they overcorrected by over-explaining things in this episode; the result is a final act featuring two straight minutes of meaningless jargon.

Still, it's hard for an episode to go too wrong when it features the marvelous performance of Dwight Schultz. Once again, he makes Barclay quirky and fun, and easy to root for. Barclay does face his fear in this episode, multiple times, and we like him for it. He even gets to be the hero in the end! Plus, it reflects well on this idyllic future that no one gives him a hard time for his fear. Nor do they give more than the gentlest of pushbacks when he starts spouting about seeing monsters inside the transporter; the crew is almost immediately ready to tear the ship apart to prove him right. (The only character tone deaf to Reg's fears, appropriately, is Data, who late in the episode taunts him unintentionally with the possibility of a transporter-induced death.)

Other observations:

• Seeing the point of view of being transported is perhaps this episode's greatest contribution to Star Trek, fueling the dreams of every fan who wondered what it might be like.

• Knowing that Deep Space Nine was just around the corner, this episode makes a completely unnecessary mention of the Cardassians just to set the stage.

• The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is the real-world obstacle to the actual existence of transporter technology. I love this episode's answer to that: the "Heisenberg Compensator." When Time magazine asked Trek art designer Michael Okuda how the Heisenberg Compensators work, he answered, "They work just fine, thank you."

• When Barclay asks LaForge about his experiences using the transporter, Geordi says nothing strange has ever happened to him. "The Next Phase" didn't leave much of an impression on him, I guess.

I get the feeling that if a truly horrific episode had been pulled off here, it could have been exceptional. As it stands, the episode is something of a disappointment. Still, for me, the fun of seeing Barclay outweighs for me the drabness of the technobabbly conclusion... though I could easily see others having a different opinion. I give this episode a B.