The transporter science fiction, like that of the holodeck, has always been a little dubious, but since it's not possible anyway, it's not an area I have much complaint about. That's why it's "fiction." It's a good Barclay episode. It's a "for fun" outing and like offerings from the first couple of seasons, it has ties to Twilight Zone. But unlike early episodes, it's actually good. Mainly because it's not made to be taken too seriously (even though that trailer was a little melodramatic.)
The Enterprise is responding to a ship in distress that's caught in a plasma stream. There's some back and forth on what to do about getting over there to help the crew and Barclay comes up with the solution. It reminds the audience that he is, in fact, a competent engineer. He suggest bridging the two transporter systems for a safe transport. Geordi is so impressed that he insists on having Barclay along on the away team, even after Barclay tries to delegate away the task, and that's where the fun begins. Barclay is terrified of transporters and to make matters worse, the complicated nature of this particular transport promises to make the experience a little rough for all involved. Barclay stands to the side, listening to them carry on as though it's business as usual with O'Brien even making jokes about the bumpy ride. Nobody notices how increasingly frightened and sick he's becoming as he watches the away team beam over one by one, since it's too complex for everyone to go all at once. When his turn comes, he panics and runs out of the transporter room.
The Twilight Zone connection is the base story. This is the Star Trek version of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - the episode in which William Shatner plays a man on a plane who is afraid of flying and then sees a gremlin out on the wing of the plane in the storm, later recreated with John Lithgow in the 1983 movie. The writer of this short story worked on Twilight Zone and wrote an episode of TOS as well. In this case, the fear of flying is substituted for a fear of transporters. Barclay is next seen in Troi's office, having gone there straight from the transporter room. It turns out that his phobia is a secret he's managed to keep for years in fear of harming his career in Starfleet. And it's plausible that a person could arrange to log in countless hours in shuttle crafts and always find a way to wiggle out of having to transport anywhere. People with serious phobias can find ways of avoiding their fears. So Troi, seeing that she's in for a big job with teaching Barclay how to master his fears, begins with simple relaxation techniques. She shows him the Betazed method of plexing which is tapping at a pressure point behind his ear to release natural endorphins. He's easily given over to the power of suggestion (and probably also afraid of getting in trouble for not going with the rest of the party) so he gins himself up into thinking that this plexing is making it all better and hurries away before Troi can convince him that overcoming a phobia is a slow process. He taps away at his neck all the way back to the transporter room where O'Brien tells him that he used to have a fear of spiders until he had to crawl through tunnel of them and that this experience helped him to get over his fear. It's not terribly comforting, but Barclay forces himself to stay calm long enough to transport over to the other ship. Riker is visibly irritated at his behavior, but they welcome him over as though nothing happened and they get to work downloading information and collecting fragments of a broken container. Barclay is the last to transport back and it's on this return trip that he has a disturbing experience... seeing a creature in the matter stream with him that looks like a formless floating mouth. It touches him just before his transport is completed. This is the first time we see transporting from the POV inside the stream, by the way. O'Brien continues to stay cheerful with him even though he looks edgy stepping down from the pad because he looks like that all the time.
He confides his experience in Geordi who hadn't seen anything unusual in this transport or any previous transport to date. But Geordi orders a full diagnostic anyway. As they're tending to that with O'Brien they have a conversation about transporters and how they work. A remark is even made about how it's "the safest way to travel." Another dig at flying, I think because the writer of this episode was afraid of flying as well. They assure Barclay with the facts that there have only been a couple of transporter accidents in the last ten years. He can't deny that, but then he remembers a condition called Transporter Psychosis which, as it sounds, was a kind of madness caused by transporting. But they hit him with the fact that there hasn't been a case of that in 50 years. Meanwhile, in sickbay, a body from the ship is acting funny. Heart, brain, and lung activity all appear to start and then stop suddenly. Later, while Barclay is in Ten Forward calming down and perhaps even starting to become convinced that transporting isn't so bad, he has a pain in his left forearm and looks down to see it glowing blue. So, in what can be seen as a look ahead to many a person's searching on WebMD, he plies the computer with questions about Transporter Psychosis and gets a list of symptoms. He scares himself into thinking that he's experiencing the symptoms and begins drinking a lot of water, now convinced that he's contracted this illness. Now, it doesn't necessarily follow that a person with social anxiety (which has been Barclay's only real problem to date) is also a hypochondriac, but it fits in with Barclay's high strung nature.
Crusher's examination of the body finds residual ionization on the body and they hypothesize that the crew had tried to beam over a container that exploded. In engineering, Geordi and Data are working on recreating the beam-in with Barclay, but Barclay is in full freak-out mode now. He's noticeably agitated so Geordi tells him to go get some rest. He begins to power walk through the corridors in effort to make himself tired enough to sleep. He tries to explain that to Troi when she catches up to him, but she relieves him of duty anyway due to stress. So he goes to his room and lights some candles. He tries soft music and the sound of birds to relax him. The reason this episode works better than it would've in one of the early seasons is because of the character of Barclay. Yes, he's been through something traumatic, but also - it's Barclay who embodies a lot the tendencies we all have regarding fear and paranoia. And even though his problems are legit to a certain degree, they're dealt with in a comical fashion that fits his personality. Now, having self diagnosed himself, he's on the wrong track to fixing it. When he lays down to try and sleep, the pain in his arm returns along with the glowing and it's spread over a bigger surface now. So he goes to the transporter room and spins O'Brien a line about being assigned to transport down and back again to study the matter stream. O'Brien notes that he didn't bring a tricorder, so Barclay confesses that he's just doing this to find out if he's losing his mind. He sees the creature again, so this time he decides to report it to the senior staff. Crusher finds the same residual ionization on his arm that was on the body and around the container fragments. So recreating the beam in seems to be the thing to do.
They set up a forcefield in engineering and try to beam the plasma stream into a container within the forcefield. The container explodes while they scanned it, and Geordi sees biomagnetic energy. Barclay collapses and in sickbay he learns that those quasi-energy microbes had gotten into his bloodstream on his transport back from the ship and that this is why he'd been having the strange pain in his arm. The solution is to send him back through the transporter with a special filter to strain them out. So they send him back through and he still sees the creatures. In a moment of understanding, he grabs a hold of one. O'Brien notes that his mass in the matter stream seems to have doubled and when the transport is complete he appears with a member of the crew from the other ship. They both collapse.
Barclay explains that the members of the other crew were trying to filter out the microbes as well, but their patterns became trapped in the matter stream and that there are three more members of the crew in there. So Worf and a couple of others are sent to retrieve them. Barclay is relieved to know that he doesn't have Transporter Psychosis, and he's also saved some lives which is a great self esteem boost. Later he has drinks with O'Brien who he'd always avoided in his efforts to avoid transporters. O'Brien introduces him to his pet tarantula named Christina, demonstrating that he's overcome his fear of spiders. Barclay had mentioned earlier that spiders never bothered him, but as O'Brien walks away to get their drinks, Christina begins to crawl up Barclay's arm, and it starts to make him a little nervous.
Like I said, it's just a fun episode. I think it doesn't get a lot of respect, but they'd just come off a series of relatively weighty episodes at the end of the previous season and a sensational adventure story to start this season. It was a relaxed episode that didn't have to make a lot of sense since the main point was to watch the continuing sufferings of the poor, head-case, Mr. Barclay. For technical merit it probably only deserves three and a half stars, but I'm going with four because I liked it and I always like watching it when it rolls around again.
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