The Nth Degree

DVD, TNG S4 (The Nth Degree)

They had to bring Barclay back, he was too good a character not to return, and I'm sure there were very favourable reactions to his first appearance, in the previous season. I like the way they begin this episode with Barclay acting as Cyrano de Bergerac, with Dr. Crusher fluttering around him, because it's meant to make you think he's gone back to his holodeck fantasies, but then the camera pulls back and we see how far he's come - it's actually a play he's acting in, with an audience, something that would have been unthinkable last time we met the nervous, troubled man people were calling 'Lieutenant Broccoli'! He's come into his own, and while he still displays nervous habits, he also continues to contribute to the Enterprise, and that's something encouraging for all of us. 'Star Trek' is often at its best when it inspires us, gives us hope and shows people triumphing through adversity or even better, living with problems, but still fulfilling their potential and not letting such hang-ups hold them back.

Sci-fi is better when it has these foibles to overcome, and doesn't descend into shoot-em-ups or over done plots (no matter how much fun these can be). Not to say the story here is very original. No doubt most sci-fi series do a 'super intelligent person takes over the asylum' story. With this, it's Barclay, one of the weakest people on the ship who becomes the savant, ending up considering his fellow humans as almost insignificant, and wanting to show them great new things and boldly go where no one has gone before! I wonder if the 'Voyager' episode 'Threshold' was partly inspired by this, because it's practically the same story in reverse: that one begins with Paris going faster than ever before, leading to side effects that make him (okay, not super-intelligent, but) more advanced. In this, Barclay becomes super-intelligent which leads to him travelling faster than ever before.

The sequence where they burn it to the centre of the galaxy reminded me of the first season episode 'Where No One Has Gone Before' where they do just that thanks to the mysterious Traveller. The music and effects aren't that wondrous or alien, but there's a strong sense of scale, with both the huge distance covered and earlier in the episode when we see the Enterprise parked near the Argus array. I wonder if the writers realised what connections were going to ensue when they took the ship to the centre of the galaxy and had them meet a powerful being that was represented by a large floating head? It could only be 'Star Trek V: The Final Frontier'! That leads me to question whether the alien being in that film, pretending to be a god, was a Cytherian that had been locked away?

It's such a shame the Cytherians couldn't see fit to include the knowledge of this 'super warp' that allowed the ship to travel 30,000 light years in a few seconds - they wanted to exchange information, it would be the least they could do for practically kidnapping the starship! The questions remains how the Enterprise made it back to regular space since Barclay had returned to his usual self when they first arrived at the centre of the galaxy. The Cytherians must have just given them a really big push. The actor who supplied the big head went on to play the Bajoran Sirah in 'DS9' episode 'The Storyteller' a couple of years later.

Dwight Shultz does a sterling job with the multiple roles he's given in this episode. At first he's playing a neurotic who's acting, then he's playing the 'normal' Reg, then he has to be convincing as a Reg gradually growing more and more intelligent, before eventually having to do voice acting and face acting when he only speaks as the computer. He certainly handles all the changes well, and I imagine the scenes weren't shot in order so it's even more of an achievement and would have cemented him in everyone's eyes as a very reliable guest star. And indeed he was, later appearing in one of the films and with several guest spots on 'Voyager'. The episode ends with a light scene in which Barclay, who never played chess before, looks at a game in Ten Forward and predicts a checkmate in nine moves! It's a fun way of ending as it leaves you wondering if he still has some residual super-intelligence left upstairs, but I think it was probably just the last traces of his transformation back to regular old Reg.

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