Wanderlust

4.17 — “Night Terrors”

4.17 — “Night Terrors”

Plot: The Enterprise finds a missing ship with all but one of its complement of 35 crew dead. The crew appears to have become psychotic and killed each other. Alarmingly, the Enterprise is becalmed when its engines fail, and its crew starts to experience their own symptoms, caused by an inability to dream or enter REM sleep. Only Data and Troi are differently affected.

Thoughts: This should be a creepy episode, and it kind of is for a while (the morgue is creepy), but mostly it’s a dreary trudge. In retrospect, a storyline that requires everyone on board the ship to act dopey and lethargic does not make for great dramatic television.

There are echoes of other, better episodes that involve some form of mass psychosis: “The Naked Time,” “The Tholian Web,” “Where No One Has Gone Before,” and even the recent “Remember Me.” Speaking of psychosis, remember “All Our Yesterdays,” when Spock traveled back in time and found himself slowly reverting back to a more primitive emotional state?

I’m just filling time here, because there isn’t much to say about “Night Terrors.”

The basic idea isn’t terrible, but it needs something more. Remember how TOS was obsessed with the subject of fitness for command? They should have made this Data’s episode, as he slowly realizes the other officers are becoming unfit, and it will be up to him to relieve them and save the ship. Is Guinan also not affected? Unclear. Data and Guinan could have joined forces. Instead, Data passively waits for Picard to relieve himself (that sounds wrong), and for Crusher and Troi to work out a solution through their brain fog.

Brain fog: not dramatic. Telling dialogue: “We’re adrift!” Yes, a bit.

Interestingly, one of the background Ensigns is played by Brian Tochi, who played one of the possessed children in TOS 3.4, “And the Children Shall Lead.” He also played the voice of Leonardo the Ninja Turtle. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Brian_Tochi 

I should download a screen grab of Troi’s dream sequence and turn it into the new picture for this community. That says “Relive the Majesty,” right?

I’m feeling generous. 2 out 5 shipboard emergency shelter areas.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Night_Terrors

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2 responses to “4.17 — “Night Terrors””

  1. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    2 good moments: Guinan going Full Rambo and Bev encountering zombies.  Other than that, fairly lame episode that could have been good if more had been done with it.  Also if Deanna’s dream scenes had not been so ridiculously filmed.  Perhaps just the eyes without her flying around like a cleavagey Wendy from Peter Pan?

    I think this is the episode where I start to like Beverly more.  Not sure whether Gates is doing something different or the writers are, but somehow her character obtains some gravitas and begins to act like an actual ship’s officer sometime around this episode.  I think having her not cry or look like she is about to cry when faced with Zombies was a good start!  Doctors don’t freak out as easily as she had always been doing.

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  2. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    This one and the next one both have a kind of “we cranked this out, but no one put much love in it” kind of feeling. The cast and art department and directors still do good things, however, and it’s worth repeating that run-of-the-mill on this series used to be a lot worse.

    Beverly has sort of a cadence she uses while delivering her technical lines which has been bothering me lately. I agree her deportment is better.

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