Star Trek TNG Schisms

I love Schisms! It's one of my personal favorites! It's one of my favorite uses of the Holodeck as well.

It starts with Riker waking up and finding himself late for his shift. He's got great bed-head, and I think his "tired" performance is wonderful. He makes you believe it. According to the Captain's log at the beginning the Enterprise is getting ready to chart a huge region of space that will take a very long time. So, Geordi wants to speed it up by boosting the long range sensor array. Riker green lights it and Data asks Riker if he will be attending his poetry reading later on.  The poetry reading is, of course, one of the funniest scenes ever, first with Data's pedantic poem about his cat, Spot, and then with poor Riker nodding off. He starts clapping when Troi nudges him before Data is finished, but succumbs to sleep anyway shortly afterwards.

I think part of what I like about this episode is that the unfolding of the story is slow and creeping. It gives you nothing on which you can make a guess at what's happening. Riker goes to see Beverly since his problem with sleeping doesn't seem to be solving itself. He's irritable, which is natural, and he also seems bothered by her putting her tricorder scanner in his face, pushing her arm away. She can't find anything wrong with him and recommends a hot toddy before bed. Meanwhile Geordi and Data have rigged up the sensors to do what they want and after a light hearted scene where Geordi gives Data feedback on his poetry, they discover a grid overload in one of the cargo bays. They rush down and we think we're going to get to see what the problem is, but there's only workers there carrying on with their jobs. Riker asks Geordi to come and get him in the morning since he seems to be having trouble with oversleeping. You see him getting ready for bed. He drinks his hot toddy and dim the lights as he gets into bed. After he closes his eyes you then here his door tone. LaForge has come to get him up for his shift. So we get a literal depiction of how Riker feels... as though he's just closed his eyes and now it's time to get up, only he doesn't feel even a little rested. We've all been there! Still no answers.  Just this looming feeling of fear... like a monster under the bed.

Then we start to see that Riker is not the only one with a problem. Worf goes to get a haircut and is his usual grouchy self, so we have no reason to think anything is wrong, until he flinches at the scissors being held by his face much the same way Riker was bothered by the tricorder scanner. Worf leaves before Mott can even begin the cut looking angry and confused. While Geordi is trying to find out what the problem is in the cargo bay, his VISOR cuts out and he begins to feel dizzy. He goes to sickbay where Crusher finds a bacterial infection on his visual implants but it's not typical. When he goes back to the cargo bay, Data wonders why he has returned when he only just left. Data checks his internal chronometer to discover it's off by 90 minutes. Geordi decides there must be something wrong with the cargo bay and starts running diagnostics. Meanwhile Riker's plight continues on the bridge. Stellar cartography wants a better angle to measure some stuff so he orders the ensign at the helm to maneuver in a certain way. She's very green and needs assistance. So, Riker goes over to show her how to compensate for some interference. When sits in the navigational console he stops short and is obviously gripped with fear. He retreats back to the captain's chair, as confused as everyone else in these scenes. Then Geordi and Data discover subspace particle emissions in the cargo bay and locate a glow up on one of the conduits. Riker decides to tell Troi about his feelings of entrapment behind the bridge console and Troi notes that he's the third person that's complained of these strange sensations. She suggests they all get together for group therapy.

First they meet in a large room like the observation lounge. It's Riker, Worf, Geordi, and a civilian named Kaminer.  I understand they wanted more than just main characters but I didn't think this woman was a very good actress... it kind of took away from the effect a little. As they all begin describing their experiences, they all realize that they're all having similar déjà vu and reactions to objects being held to their faces and the claustrophobia associated with console controls. Riker proposes going to the holodeck to try an recreate a visual of the scenes they're remembering. I love this holodeck scene for the teamwork involved. They begin with a table and each character takes it in turn to change the features of the table until it becomes a cold, metallic exam table that has a bar across the midsection which gave them all the feeling of being trapped and a swinging arm with a pair of strange scissors attached which made them all nervous when anyone placed an object by their faces. They dim the lights and agree on a set of clicking noises that makes the scene like a nightmare from a horror movie. Then they all decide that they've been in this room before somehow. Now the events start to snowball building a panicked intensity in the story. Everyone goes in for an exam where Beverly finds that they've all been given strong neuro-sedatives and that they all have tetryon particles under their skin. Data turns up to confirm that he wasn't on board the Enterprise either at the time that his chronometer was off. Picard asks if anyone else is missing. It turns out that a Lt. Hagler and an Ensign Rager are gone and equally alarming is the fact that Riker's arm appears to have been severed off and reattached. They set about to use the tetryon emissions to try and find missing crew members. They discover that the glow in the cargo bay is a spacial rift caused by the particles so they put a containment field around it and start looking for hull breeches. They then pick up that Hagler has been returned to the Enterprise and when a medical team is sent, Crusher finds him dying and diagnosing that his blood has turned to, essentially, paint.

At the staff meeting Geordi explains that the containment field isn't working and the only way to close the rupture is a graviton pulse at the source, but finding the specific source will be almost impossible since the specific subspace manifold could be in an infinite number of domains. It gets a little technical through this area, but it's delivered with competency. Worf suggests putting a homing device on someone so they can track down the domain when that person is taken. Riker volunteers since it seems likely that they'll take him again and he can't stop them anyway. Crusher gives him a strong neuro stimulant so he has a chance to stay conscious for the trip. They give him a tricorder that will relay a beacon from where it ends up and send him to bed. He stays in his uniform this time and is awake when he's levitated from his bed and sucked into a rift that appears in his quarters. He ends up in a dark examination room with aliens walking around, the clicking noise revealed to be their speech patterns. He opens his eyes to get a look at his surroundings. The table he's on is similar to the one they created on the holodeck, but even more alien looking, with the "scissors" resembling the "hands" of their captors. He sees the missing ensign and also that the aliens seem to be distracted by a machine. He closes them again when one comes over to take some readings on him. It's a nail biting moment.

On the Enterprise, Geordi finds Riker's tricorder signal, but the rupture continues to widen. So they try some different things until they channel all of the graviton energy into a single burst that works. They will have to shut the rift after a certain amount of time whether Riker makes it back or not. The scene switches back and forth between the Enterprise and the alien laboratory often, creating tension as it seems like Riker is laying there for a long time... too long a time waiting for his opportunity. But it comes when he sees the aliens reacting to the rupture and ignoring him. It's clear that they're trying to stabalize the rift, so he gets his things and the unconscious ensign. Holding the aliens at phaser point he jumps through the spacial rupture just before it collapses. The rift then disappears through the hull and out into space.

So, they determine that the tetryon emissions are gone and there have been no more cases of intrusion or abduction. Geordi explains that the aliens were of such a nature that they could only exist on a subspace plain. They'd created a pocket of our space in their laboratory and were also trying to create a pocket of their space in the cargo bay. His theory is that the aliens found them when they tried altering their sensors to speed up the mapping process, so Picard says that Starfleet must be notified so that such alterations won't be made again. They discuss the aliens' intent, wondering if they're just curious explorers, but dismiss that since they seemed to have no qualms about killing the people they were experimenting on.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out one glaring flaw, even though this one of my favorite episodes. Riker's sleep trouble started before Geordi modified their sensor array... so, how did the aliens find them and start tinkering on Riker before that?  It's a small detail, but that's why this isn't a five star caliber episode. But what I love about it is that the story is one that's classically simple. Just good old alien abduction that's been a theme of science fiction since the fifties. There were no social-political motivations either... no face in the sky smugly complaining of how primitive and stupid humans are. Just cold science in a nightmare situation that was gripping to watch along with a realistic use of the holodeck that buttressed the mood and ambiance of the episode. It's probably a four star episode, but I'm going with four and a half stars because it has my heart.