The Enterprise is charting a unique and unexplored section of space (take a drink!) and faced with this daunting task, Geordi decides to design and experiment with a new sensor system.
Commander Riker over the last couple of nights has been fighting to sleep well and it begins to slip into his ability to do his duties around the ship. Soon, other crewmen including Data, Geordi and Worf also begin to have unexplained phenomenon around them including missing memories and time.
Counselor Troi decides to hold a group-session with members of the crew experiencing these difficulties and have recently had odd reactions to objects on ship. The session winds up in a holodeck where everyone describes a familiar setting to all of them. That of being on a work-table with a restraint over them, flashing lights, and surgical equipment while being surrounded by darkness and strange clicking sounds.
It's determined that Geordi's new sensor design has tapped into a level of subspace connected to another universe, aliens in this other universe appear to be abducting Enterprise crewmen for unknown reasons. They're also sending some "feedback" using Geordi's new sensor design to create a subspace rupture in a cargobay. The rupture poses a risk to the ship and cannot be contained or stopped. The only way to stop the rupture is to shut-it off at it's source (the alien universe) but there's no way to do that without being there since there's a limitless number of subspace universes/levels.
Riker volunteers to carry with him tracking equipment to the aliens' universe, as he's been abducted every night, so that not only can he potentially save an unreturned crewman but allow the Enterprise to close the rupture.
The plan mostly goes off without a hitch. Riker is able to save the crewman from the alien universe and give LaForge the information he needs to close the rupture.
Using tricorder information Riker has from his latest visit it's discovered that the biology of the aliens is more incompatible with our universe than we are to theirs. They seemed to be trying to find a way to either modify themselves to survive in our universe or to create a pocket of their universe in the Enterprise. It's felt the aliens will pose no further risk so long as no other ships try and to modify the sensors into those other subspace bands, though before the portal closed an object left it and flew off into space for unknown purposes to be dealt with on another day.
...
Yeah we never deal with this again.
When dealing with a Sci-Fi show where things like space-travel and aliens exist it's hard to really do a show where aliens pose any kind of threat to the characters beyond largely political ones. Aliens exist. Sure, some of them are assholes but they're not a "real threat" by being aliens, just "by being different people." Even to some extent that applies to The Borg who aren't a threat by who or what they are but simply because they have different beliefs they force on others. But not because they are "aliens."
But, here, the show-creators have managed to do the "alien abduction" story for Star Trek and make the characters seem very afraid and weirded out by what is going on. And it really works.
The scenes with the characters dealing with their residual memories -very similar to real-world accounts by people who claim to have been abducted by aliens- are great and in particular the scene in the holodeck with them recreating the operating/study room is very, very, well done.
It's a bit of a shame more of the episode wasn't like this, there's pretty good-sized parts of it bogged down a bit by technobabble and what's going on. Trying to "explain" this other universe, how it was reached, etc. Seems to me a lot of that could have been vastly simplified and more time spent with this eerie feeling with the abductions and time spent in the aliens' domain.
One does wonder why they were so focused on Riker, who was abducted enough it was severely impacting his sleep patterns. Neither Geordi or Worf seemed to have sleep issues, at least to not the extent Riker was having them.
It's *really* a wonder that they took Data and returned him. You'd think they would have taken particular interest in a sentient artificial life-form.
An opening scene of the episode shows Data's entry into doing poetry and delivering long, rambling, poems to what looks like a pretty damn bored audience. Actually sort-of funny. Though it does look like Picard goes from boredom to interest when Data does his ode to Spot.
It's a good scene, but the holodeck seems to make a lot of its own conclusions when responding to the changes to the "table" everyone makes. It takes several details for the computer to generate the first wooden conference table, but pretty much everything else the computer gets right away.
In the opening scene Riker checks the time on display near his bathroom sink. Not only is this probably the first time I think we've seen a character check a device for the time/date (as opposed to either knowing it or asking the computer) but it has the odd feature of needing to be activated to show the date. Rather than showing it all of the time. It has the same "feature" as early digital watches, it seems.
When Riker checks the time it's nearly 10:30 AM! Man! I know he's been having sleep issues but no one's tried to contact him all morning?!
It's again comforting to know that people in the 24th century aren't living in a time where their every moment and presence is tracked and known. But you'd think people being transported off-ship with no obvious means of exit would cause the computer to at least tell *someone* something is going on.
Picard asks the computer to notify them if anyone leaves or comes on to the ship.... I would *hope* that the computer notifies of intruders (though there's several times where it clearly doesn't.)
Overall, an enjoyable episode. As I said the eeriness of the holodeck scene is very well done and wish there were more scenes like it and a few less scenes of characters spouting technobabble to explain things to us.
