4.17 Night Terrors

Rating: 2.5

The Enterprise locates a missing science vessel. All crewmembers have been killed by phasers, except for one catatonic Betazoid survivor.

Comments

Picard does a great job of looking out of sorts. His posture becomes prawn-like, and he looks extremely tired. By the end of the episode, everyone (except for Data, of course) looks like they left the makeup room early. Not all stars of TV series would allow themselves to be seen on camera like this, even if the script called for it, so I give the cast credit for being game.

Nits

It seems amazing that the symptoms of sleep deprivation (which the crew is suffering) would not be in the medical database.

This may not be a nit (more on that later) but it seems that the Enterprise crew’s reaction to sleep deprivation does not seem to get much worse as time goes on. Early in the show, we see Riker seeing snakes and O’Brien sniping at Keiko. Toward the end of the show, O’Brien is still hanging around ten-forward, looking relatively calm. He even tells another crewmember to calm down. This is a subdued reaction compared to the crew of the Brattain, who grabbed as many weapons as they could, barricaded themselves in their quarters, and killed each other. The most this crew can offer up are a few punches in ten-forward. When the security guards show up, they seem under control and are still following orders. The security guards have phasers; why aren’t they going crazy like the crew of the Brattain, shooting at everybody for no reason? Simple: we know this will not happen on NextGen, because things just never get that extreme. We will see a similar reaction again, in the season five episode Conundrum, when the crew no longer know who they are and why they are there, but still continue to go about their duties without a whimper.

It’s also worth noting that the basic structure of this episode has been repeated many times. In essence, the Enterprise encounters another ship whose crew has met a disaster or untimely end; they find themselves in the same predicament, and have to race against time to avoid meeting the same fate. The problem is, they always win the race, and we know they will. But this is probably true of any ‘reset button’ show.

Quotable Quotes

Troi: I’m still here. Do you remember anything more?
Catatonic Betazoid: Double…double.
Troi: What does that mean? Is something doubled?
(I love that counselor; she’s a clever one!)