6.2 — “Realm of Fear”
Plot: A ion fluctuation in the transporter beam causes Lt. Barclay to fear that he has contracted transporter psychosis. Why else would he be seeing flying sandworms in the transporter and glowy patches on his skin? The mystery of this transporter malfunction may hold the key to saving missing crewmembers aboard the USS Yosemite.
Thoughts: Dwight Schultz is funny! His mugging totally carries the first half of the show. By the second half I had to ask, is that all there is? The technobabble is so thick in this the script the words must have been written with a trowel instead of a pencil.
Barclay is totally right: the transporter IS terrifying. Geordi insists there have been only 2 or 3 transporter accidents in the last 10 years, but he forgets the time last season in “The Next Phase” when the transporter nearly killed him and Ensign Ro. Let’s not forget “The Enemy Within,” “Mirror, Mirror,” and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Was it “And the Children Shall Lead” when Kirk was tricked into beaming two crewmembers straight out into the vacuum of space? How many horrifying transporter accidents can you remember?
The POV shot inside the transporter field is a first.
We learn that Chief O’Brien is afraid of spiders. So canon is constructed, one brick at a time. And Troi has the authority to relieve an officer from duty. McCoy would have guarded that power jealously, not shared it with someone who isn’t a medical doctor. Crusher, unfortunately, still looks desperately uncomfortable examining patients, at the start of TNG’s sixth season.
sunny jim points out that the controlled explosion experiment carried out by Geordi, Data, and Barclay is conducted about eight feet away from the warp core. What could go wrong?
IMDB solemnly reveals that this is the only appearance of O’Brien’s pet spider Christina.
I enjoy Barclay here more than ever (is Troi really still seeing him as a therapist after his conduct in “Hollow Pursuits?”), but without more meat on the bones of the story this episode scores only three out of five plexes.
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