Another of my favorites. I understand the cast and crew weren't happy with it, but I think it was a total win.
This is another episode where a vessel is found adrift. It's a reworking of the Naked Now which incorporates and element from Booby Trap and it's a slam dunk. It starts out much the same way as Naked Now. When they find the Brittain adrift in a binary star system, they find the crew dead by each others hands from some kind of madness. But The Naked Now was just a juvenile copy of The Naked Time from TOS and was a vapid, senseless comedy. Night Terrors is a more serious and scary story of a crew that has all gone crazy and killed themselves and each other. There is a difference in the beginning. They find one person alive on the Brittain; another Betazoid who is in a catatonic state and unable to function. Troi is ordered to try to speak to him telepathically but there isn't much progress to be made.
Later she has a strange nightmare where she's lifted up into an abyss and trying to speak to what looks like the two stars of the binary system they're in. It seems very ghost storyish and I love it. Sirtis is afraid of heights and was put up on wires to film the dream sequences so her real look of fear just added to the effect. Without many other options they lock onto the Brittain and prepare to tow it away when they lose all power and are stuck in this plane of space. It all seems like an inconvenient nuisance. Meanwhile everyone begins behaving strangely. People start hear noises and a general feeling of paranoia begins to affect everyone. Miles and Keiko start fighting over what seems like petty and invalidated jealousy on Mile's part.
Data discovers that they're caught in a space time anomally called a Tyken's Rift which can be broken with a strong explosion. They don't have the elements on board the ship to detonate that kind of explosion. They can't understand why people are starting to behave strangely since there was no report of strange behavior in the first case of a ship being trapped in a Tyken's Rift. They dance all around the problem... they agree that they should all get more rest in order to keep their senses and arrange for shift relief after shorter time periods. Then Picard, alone in a turbo lift, hallucinates that the ceiling is caving in on him. He immediately instructs Data to be prepared to take over in the event that he succumbs to this madness. See, that make so much more sense than The Naked Now where Data is biologically affected by the triggering cause of the phenomenon.
Meanwhile the hallucinations become more disturbing and alarming. Riker thinks he has snakes in his bead. Crusher sees all of the dead bodies in the morgue sitting upright on their own, but she wills the hallucination away because she's awesome.... love Beverly!! Worf is unable to deal with losing his mind so he leaves to go commit suicide, but Troi intervenes in time. It's a very intense episode. Much more believable than a infection of intoxication that causes everyone to party themselves to death.
Others are grouped into shelter areas where the paranoia escalates and fights break out. It's a great Guinan moment since she appears unaffected as well and she keeps the mob settled down with a very strange ray gun. So, the heart stopping horror is broken up with a little humor as well.
Beverly figures out that the reason everyone's behavior is deteriorating is because they're being prevented from entering the REM state, dream sleep, when they sleep at night. Now, this is admittedly not right... Delta sleep is our deepest sleep state and that's the sleep we need to keep our cognitive functions healthy, but even knowing that, I'm happy to go along with this part of the story, because the notion of dreaming in any way always makes for a good story. The only person who can remember her dreams is Troi. Troi realizes that the Betazoid man, Hagan, has the same dreams that she does and they then theorize that they're not the only people caught in the Rift and that there may be other people trapped on the other side trying to communicate with them. So Troi agrees to be put to sleep to try to communicate with the other beings. Picard begins to lose his ability to focus as well, so Data dutifully steps in and starts to help organize all of the actions taken from here on out.
It's seems hopeless since the same phrase is repeated over and over, but Data remembers that an major explosion is needed to break the Rift. He assumes that the others can't produce a large explosion either, but that they could if they had an element that they lacked which the Enterprise has. They determine that "one moon circles" is a call for hydrogen. It's a wonderful little puzzle. Then they have to figure out what to tell the others when she dreams again.
Troi is sent back into her dream to tell them "now." Data releases the hydrogen stream, and they only get one shot at it. In Troi's dream she sees a different kind of visual appear and it leaves you hanging as to whether she gets the message to them in time or not since, like so many dreams, it had been repetitive throughout the show. But there's an explosion and as the Enterprise moves away another strange blue ship is seen moving from out of the void and on its own way.
Humble Data with no ego to corrupt him, orders Picard to bed as his final command as acting Captain since he can pretty much run the ship by himself. Great ending. Great episode. I've always loved it. I love it because it rights a wrong from the first season and it's also just great story telling. Four and a half stars
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