Making sense of 'Night Terrors'

While this episode has interesting thing going on there are so many questions floating around they just pile up and it gets hard to accept all the weirdness.

There was a moment when it wasn't possible to replicate explosive materials for the rift. How much energy does the replicator use? If memory serves ”the Borg weapon” was used after that. Replicator uses more energy than a weapon designed to destroy a Borg cube, what? Where did they think they would get the energy for that, it would just be absorbed into the rift.

How exactly was the hydrogen released into the rift? Why wasn't the energy used to release the hydrogen absorbed? For some reason that worked.

Could human body be without a good sleep for 10 days, that's how long they were trapped, at least?

I want to like this episode, is this episode something that you have to skip thinking, just watch?

 

1. Remember the replicators convert energy to matter, something that only happened previously during the Big Bang. So I'd say that would be bigger a power drain than shooting a beam from the deflector. Plus that deflector beam was the crew's "last shot" as they had no other options. It was a desperation move.

2. The hydrogen was released from the Bussard Collectors, which are supposed to collect hydrogen for use in the warp drive. I don't know the specifics of how they work, so I can't tell you why there wasn't any energy loss. I also wonder why the Hydrogen flows in somewhat solid stream away from the collectors, and doesn't just disperse all over. That's also how it happened in another episode, Samaritan Snare, though.

3. Michael Jackson apparently went 60 days without REM sleep before he died, so I guess its possible to last 10 days.

The Tyken's Rift is typical Star Trek space anomaly zaniness. It's a "rupture" of space, whatever that means. It absorbs energy and sends it somewhere, we don't know where. You can "overload" it by making a big explosion, which seems counter-intuitive, but it seems to be the most effective way to...umm..fix it.

 

I recently rewatched and I found it utterly boring. To be honest, I couldn't even watch the whole way through. Those Troi dream sequences are reason enough to skip it.

 

Maybe, but that freak-out moment with Beverly and the corpses is definitely worth watching.

Most people's sanity erodes a certain period without REM sleep. I'm not sure how long; it probably varies by individual. 10-12 days sounds about right.

 

The scene on the Brattain with the spooked ensign is also nice, and Riker in his quarters. TNG had the best creepy scenes

 

There's your answer. Apply that to every single episode of every TV show you've ever watched or ever will watch.

Yeah, I always skip through those but the creepy scenes make up for that. There's nothing like being in a morgue with dozens of corpses and all of a sudden they all sit up.

 

Wouldn't it be cheaper and more rewarding to adopt three cats, and - at every 4PM - open a bag of treats? They'll sit up on cue just as well...

 

But they don't play spooky music.

 

I remember that after Picard and Riker talked about feeling something waiting for them when they entered their quarters. I found it so creepy, creepier than other shows because Picard and Riker are scientific, stoic people.

 

I think the creepiest scene is when Beverly is looking over all the dead bodies and then when she look's behind her the bodies are sitting up and the sheets are still on them. The fear that is shown too - some pretty good acting. Trek became horror.

 

Well, that's what's happening to the heroes, too. So perhaps we don't need to take everything at face value there, despite seeing it with our own eyes?

These ponderings come after they've been stuck for 10 days. For all we know, the heroes have been having these meetings for the past 10 days (I mean, why on Earth would they not have been?!), and the conversation has been running in circles, until it has degraded into this basically meaningless babble where one character goes "Tyken's Rift!" and another "Whazzat?", only the identity of the characters changing from meeting to meeting... All the solutions offered might have been valid, or then invalid, but the heroes would not have the capacity to act on them.

Sure, they thought Data was unaffected. But all we can tell is the android's speech doesn't become blurred. He might be talking nonsense regardless, being a machine whose energy the rift might be draining.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That scene freaked me out, too. I'm getting chills just thinking about it.

 

(A bit odd that Crusher would, though. She's in the very profession of resurrections. Shouldn't she just be delighted that she's making patients recover by her mere presence?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

If she were in her right mind. Somebody being alive on the Brattain shouldn't spook the ensign either. They should be excited to save them. It's clear they are already suffering effects, that make these hallucinations unnerving. Also, the fact that Dr. Bev likely knows it's a hallucination in itself is probably unnerving to her

She might not be thinking "Oh noes, spooky bodies coming to life". She could be thinking "Oh shizzle. I'm losing my bloody mind" lol

 

There were a lot of creepy, unsettling scenes in "Night Terrors".

Riker in his quarters, Crusher in the morgue... but one of the most effective was Picard screaming in terror in the turbolift. PICARD of all people, losing it. And his confiding in Data how losing your mind is terrible was a great scene, and also you feel the terror when Sir Patrick says his lines.

Put me in the camp of those who really enjoys this episode.

 

This is an unsung episode, in my opinion. I love TNG when it is creepy and atmospheric like this.

 

Picard slowly deteriorating is one of the best performances on that entire series. By the end, when he can't even functionally give a response to Data, you really feel like he's damn near dead inside. I think this episode is one of those rare instances of the entire ensemble giving really good performances. I love episodes where the cast gets to "play" something, & nothing is more unsettling than watching everyone get worn down to a frazzle.

BTW, if I had to sleep with my face on Riker's sequined disco pillow, I'd probably have hallucinations of snakes devouring me too lol. I always hated their bedding looking all "Sci-fi". You'd wake up with a face that looked like a waffle. I think maybe the only time they had realistic bedding was Beverly's bed in Cause & Effect

 

I quite like the episode. People that slowly lose their mind, that slowly deteriorate, slowly falling to their own terrors. And I still consider the Beverly morgue scene one of the very best creepy scenes in Trek ever.

But yeah, their supposed contrived predicament and those boring and repetitive Troy nightmares are the weak point of the ep, imho.

 

Although it's obvious from the episode that Humans still need sleep (and good REM sleep at that) in the 24th century, perhaps the more advanced stimulants of the era are able to prolong function without it for longer than we're able to do today.

 

Or then the heroes have already lost their minds and are only aboout three days into their adventure, despite babbling about ten.

After all, why would they be discussing the fairly elementary discovery about the Tyken Rift thing more than a week after being trapped in one? Data would have been doing the analysis, and it would be fairly incredible for it to have taken a full week when the rifts are common knowledge and even Picard knows enough about them to immediately realize what Data is talking of. Generally, Data digs up factoids of that sort in less than an hour.

The story jumps from the very first day of the adventure to "it has been ten days" across a single cut. The level of incompetence displayed by our heroes can't be explained by lack of sleep: they should have achieved more before this became a factor. And perhaps they did, and then lost their minds and started inserting an extra week into their delusions?

Timo Saloniemi