Schisms

DVD, TNG S6 (Schisms)

Traditional aliens of the common or garden variety in most sci-fi, the ones that kidnap people from their beds, mutilate cattle, that sort of thing, don't tend to crop up in Trek. There's always a motive that we can understand, usually a way to communicate, and even when it's the Borg, they at least live in normal space for most of the time. Not so with the nameless creatures out of a nightmare world in this episode. There's no chance to get to know them, and wisely they're kept out of the story until the end, building up the strange incidents until we learn that something's abducting people and performing experiments from another universe, perhaps in an effort to learn how to exist in ours, which could mean invasion. There's something of Species 8472 in that, but even they were amenable to communication in the end. I expect if there had been a sequel, the words of Riker that close out the episode are almost asking for one, we would have learnt something to diminish their frightening nature, but there never was and they remain shadowy, distinct enough to provoke unpleasant thoughts, lobster-like in a bad way.

Getting to the point of the episode certainly takes its time and there could have been a lot more scenes of people trying to sleep or responding to things they see that recall the vague experiments carried out on them without their knowledge, but Data's poetry session was enough to give anyone nightmares and I think that should have been their first avenue of suspicion! I quite enjoyed Data's sterile, but oddly fun poems, but then I didn't have to listen to them for more than a few seconds. Having such lightheartedness stopped the episode from telegraphing its style too early, and it's only really in those last few minutes when Riker is taken (horizontally sucked through a vortex!) according to plan and sees this strange alien laboratory filled with dark corners and unpleasant clicking noises inhabited by robed, shuffling figures, that the menace comes to fruition. They could have been even more disturbing if they weren't so humanoid.

The holodeck scene where several of the crew get together and pool their recollections was a little bit unlikely. As the computer says, there are thousands of options, so for the table to be narrowed down so quickly wasn't feasible - it goes from a slanted wooden lump of a table, to a completely different form when all they change are one or two parameters, calling it metal, and the computer comes up with this design that looks remarkably like the Romulan torture chair Geordi was strapped into last season! There should have been a better sequence of changes as they narrowed it down. Still, it was wise not to have it look exactly like the real thing which we see Riker on in his enforced Away Mission.

The direction in the alien scenes was strong, good use of wide angle lenses creating an unreality to the place, the set design very futuristic and different to the comfortable Starfleet technology we're so used to, without aping the Borg too much. The scene with Worf visiting Mr. Mot the barber wasn't particularly compelling, but it did make me wonder if Troi had recently made a visit as her hair looks like it's had some work done to it - maybe they did the cast photo at this time as she's got the frizzy bun hairdo in that, too. It was also fun to hear Picard's Aunt Adele mentioned again, and could this Amargosa be the same as in 'Star Trek: Generations'? You'd think, with all their sensitive technology the aliens would be able to detect if someone was awake - they bring Riker into their realm when he's in full Starfleet uniform and fully cognisant and seem surprised when he gets up and rescues the Ensign, but it wasn't a bad episode on the whole, though one necessarily watched in the appropriate atmosphere, though even in the dark, the Enterprise is so bright it loses some of the ambience of the story.

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