TNG Flashback: Schisms

With "Schisms," Star Trek: The Next Generation tried for the second time in the sixth season to offer an episode mixing horror with science fiction. But like the previous effort, "Realm of Fear," the episode made some missteps. And this time, Lieutenant Barclay (and Dwight Schultz) wasn't around to compensate.

The Enterprise is charting a dense globular cluster, with the help of sensor modifications by Geordi LaForge. As the ship spends days in the cluster, different crewmembers begin to experience deleterious effects -- an inability to sleep, odd flashes of panic associated with common objects, and periods of missing time. When they begin to share their experiences with each other -- and when a subspace rift is discovered in a cargo bay -- it begins to seem that LaForge's modifications have attracted unwelcome attention from alien abductors.

Star Trek had certainly done a number of episodes in which characters were abducted by aliens, but this was the first time the show took on "alien abduction" in its classical sense. Episode writer Brannon Braga indicated in an interview that he saw this as a chance to embrace "mystery and the weirdness and seeing our people losing their minds, which is not something you get to see very often." It was also chance to introduce some horrific elements into the storytelling, and Braga did make some use of the opportunity. (For example, when Dr. Crusher tells Riker that his arm has been severed and reattached, the idea of that is quite chilling.)

But the pacing of the episode is off. It takes a long time for the characters to conclude that anything is out of the ordinary. Is the audience supposed to be concerned that Riker is losing sleep at night? The teaser doesn't even end in an actual "tease" of a plot -- it's just a self-contained vignette in which Data reads his poetry. (Though "Ode to Spot" is a pretty genius piece of work. It's said the writing staff had been looking for some time for the right episode to insert that into.)

Things start to pick up a bit when the crew finally realizes there's a problem to be solved. But their method of investigation is somehow simultaneously interesting and dry. Counselor Troi takes a group of abductees to the holodeck, using it as a tool to reconstruct the alien environment to which they were taken. It's a very neat idea to use the holodeck as an aid for memory reconstruction, and the scene has some marvelous and moody lighting. But after a time, the constant "computer, change this; computer, change that" starts to feel quite redundant.

The episode builds to a climax that is, again, simultaneously interesting and dry. The idea that Riker will be forcibly kept awake while confronting the people who severed and reattached his arm holds dark promise. But the aliens don't actually do anything to him during the final abduction. The use of odd lenses, dream-like floating camera shots, and harsh shadows is clever, but the fishlike aliens themselves are not at all a scary design. The idea of long scenes without dialogue is a cool departure for the series, but the scene isn't scary, and the harsh restrictions Rick Berman placed on the music kept composer Dennis McCarthy from doing much to amp up the sense of menace.

Ultimately, the writers and producers knew this episode was a misfire. Despite it ending with a cliffhanger of sorts, a tease that the aliens would learn how to find our dimension again, this story was never continued. The writers mainly cited the disappointing look of the aliens themselves as the reason why; as Brannon Braga put it: "I felt they looked like monks – fish monks – and monks aren't terrifying." He also claimed that budgetary considerations forced a scaling back of what he'd originally intended to depict in the final act. Director Robert Weimer said that he should have used more rapid cutting in that abduction sequence, for a less "languid" look -- a time-honored horror film strategy that certainly would have helped.

But the real problem with the climax is that true horror is a genre of visceral thrills, fear and tension. The final act of this episode -- like "Realm of Fear" -- resolves the story with an avalanche of technobabble. There's technobabble about finding the aliens' dimension, technobabble about keeping Riker awake, technobabble about closing the rift. There's virtually nothing about any actual threat to Riker (or Ensign Rager), which puts the emphasis squarely in the wrong place for the episode to be truly effective.

Other observations:

• Going back to Data's "Ode to Spot" for a moment... Brent Spiner noted that he was particularly impressed by the writing. "I couldn't believe it because not only did it rhyme, but it's technobabble and it also had something to say. It had a really sweet point of view towards the cat."

• Mot the Barber makes his final appearance of the series in this episode. (Though Captain Picard would claim to be him in the upcoming "Starship Mine.")

• There are a lot of extras (background actors) milling about in this episode, noticeably more than in a typical episode. I'm not sure why this decision was made, but it feels like money they could have saved for some episode that really needed the sense of more people on the ship.

• As I understand it, Geordi's sensor modifications are said to be responsible for attracting the attention of the aliens. But Riker has been losing sleep at the beginning of the episode, before Geordi has done anything.

• Why does the computer not automatically alert security when someone goes missing from the ship?

There was certainly a neat idea at the core of "Schisms," but its execution simply didn't do it justice. I give the episode a C+.