Another personal favorite of mine. Mysterious, creepy, Halloweeny. Great stuff.
You know it's going to be a good episode when it starts out with everyone having some spare time for recreation. This is the first time we see Worf's mok'bara class. Beverly is growing moss in this one, which isn't consistent with her later primary hobby of being a playwright, but it's totally believable in someone that works in a scientific field and it's necessary to the overall story. Picard decides to spend time in his Dixon Hill program again, but as with The Big Goodbye, they don't get into the meat of whatever story he's acting out. It's a comic outlet for the beginning of the show. Picard is showing the program to Guinan who improvs nicely, but doesn't really understand the appeal to which Picard explains the fun of solving a mystery, thereby telegraphing the content of the episode. They are interrupted by Data, who is on watch, telling the captain of a class M planet in a solar system that has an unlikely star, so they're bound to investigate.
The sensors also detect an unstable wormhole which, according to Data isn't uncommon. It then appears to open again and in a flash and the next thing you see is the entire bridge crew unconscious on the floor. I love it when the audience is left out of loop of a mystery story and has to deal with the information given at the same time as the characters. Data isn't affected by the phenomenon that knocked everyone else out of course. So he revives everyone and reports that they've been pushed forward from the system a little ways and that they've all been unconscious for only 30 seconds, but since this whole incident appears to be dangerous, Picard orders a probe launched back towards the star as a way of safely investigating the class M planet they'd seen. No big deal. It should've worked out fine. But the probe comes back showing a planet that is not class M, but completely uninhabitable by humanoid life. It's a little confusing, but Data's explanation of the wormhole interfering with the sensors is plausible and easily dismissed as the best possibility.
Then things start getting strange. Beverly questions nurse Ogawa, who is finally given the first name of Alyssa in this episode, on whether or not she tampered with her experiment and then takes it to Picard to show that her moss is showing a full days growth. Data start spouting what is apparently junk science to explain this contradiction as well as the image of the planet and other oddities. It's a mark of good writing and acting that they can convey through all the technobabble that the things Data is saying are suspicious and cause for them to be concerned about his functionality. He agrees to be examined by Geordi who finds nothing physically wrong with him which makes it more problematic. In the meantime, spurred on by the curious circumstances, everyone starts investigating the transporters and other systems to see if they were really out for 30 seconds or a day. They find that the ship's chronometer had been changed.
Now, there's no doubt that Data is in trouble and they have to wonder if he's been compromised in anyway. But he still refuses to answer their questions even with the knowledge that a court martial is imminent and that he could be dismantled to find out what went wrong. It's all very intense. Meanwhile the evidence for a missing day piles on with Worf discovering that his wrist had been broken and reset and Troi suffering from hallucinations when she looks in the mirror sensing a presence behind her face that wasn't her own. Finally the most damning evidence of all - Geordi discovers that that Data had tampered with the probe, planting a picture of a planet from the ship's library to show up instead of the class M planet that was there at the beginning. So they go back even though Data warns them not to because he still refuses to say why.
As soon as they arrive a presence infiltrates the ship and possesses Troi. She goes straight to Data and complains that the plan has failed. Data implores her to do nothing but goes to the bridge to try to talk the captain into leaving again.
Data is then forced to confess that the captain himself ordered him to lie and reveals the truth about the missing day. They'd encountered a race that is xenophobic and keeps others away by showcasing a fake wormhole, knocking the crew unconscious and erasing their short term memory, and pushing them away from their solar system. Most people count themselves lucky to be alive and simply move on. But they had no effect on Data, so they sent a representative to speak through Troi to tell them that since they couldn't fool them, they would have to destroy them. It was great to see Deanna acting so different for a change. She didn't get a lot of opportunities to stretch as an actress and she pulled off the chilling and menacing persona pretty well. It's also a nice touch that in the flashback you see that it's a possessed Troi who breaks Worf's wrist instead of Data who had had so much evidence of guilt stacked against him thus far. The arrangement had been made for Data to change the clock and promote the pretense of a wormhole and take the secret to the grave so to speak which he can do because he's a machine. But they explain to the Paxon representative that they'd left too many clues that sparked the desire to solve the mystery of what really happened. Picard asks for a redo, with the provision that they'll get it right this time and leave no clues that anything was ever amiss. The Paxon/Troi agrees and they set about to do it all over again.
The episode ends almost exactly like it begins. They are all knocked out and their memories erased and when they awake, Data explains again that they've been out for 30 seconds, so they launch a probe and move on with only Data aware of what happened. Of course, there are things wrong with it... wouldn't they know when they got to the next Star Base that there are now two days missing from their ship's chronometer, starting the investigation all over again? And in the rush at the end, the Paxon/Troi deems them worthy of a second chance in that cheesy, classic way that always annoyed me in the early seasons as well as in TOS.... you know, just a little too easy cuz they had to squeeze it into under an hour. But I can't help but love this episode because it is a well written and executed mystery. Four and a half stars because I love it so much.
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