Episode with people frozen in decks?

I remember a TNG episode where something went wrong, possibly with a transporter accident, and some crew members were frozen with half their bodies through the decks. It was really scary as a kid and I'd like to watch it again. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

thanks,

Rom

 

The first thing that comes to mind is "In Theory" in season 4. There's a scene in the B-plot where a crewmember gets frozen halfway through the deck. The main story is sort of a romantic comedy with Data and an officer named Jenna D'Sora.

It's not a great episode but the image of the crewmember half-frozen in the deck traumatised me as a kid too. It was a bit underwhelming watching it when I was older though.

 

Are you referring to this scene from "In Theory?"

 

I always found it stupid, even as a kid. Getting sliced thru the middle doesn't mean instant death, but I guess they had to show it like that because more realistically it would have been too gruesome for TV.

 

It's not just the deck, though. That poor gal was also impaled by air. That is, if her midbody became fused with deck structures that previously existed safely below her feet, her brain must by the same token have received an unhealthy dose of oxygen and nitrogen that previously existed safely just below her groin.

Instant death would probably be the logical consequence. Even being frozen that way, with fingers extended and the neck straight and rigid, might be expected - a variation of the bends, a muscular spasm instigated by the gas bubbles in the tissue.

Timo Saloniemi

 

When I saw that scene, after I recovered from the shock, I yelled, "Duh, people! TRANSPORTER!"

 

Why? I always figured that whatever caused that, would be lethal by itself.

 

I would have answered The Next Phase. Where LaForge and Ro get to run through walls yet mysteriously don't fall through the floors....

 

Well, walls are solid because of electromagnetic interaction. The floor is solid because it has gravity plating. The phasing phenomenon might sidestep EM interaction but not gravitic...

Indeed, backstage books describe shields as being a gravitic phenomenon, and shields stop transporters which are a phasing phenomenon (not to mention phasers which also are a phasing phenomenon if the name is any indication!). Makes weird sense.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That one STILL makes me beat my head against the wall.

 

Except she didn't phase into the floor like Kitty Pryde of the X-Men. The area of space they were in opened a hole in the deck plating that she fell into, and then the hole went away, killing her instantly by massive cellular trauma.

 

Somehow, I've always imagined the deck below this one to be far less tidy looking, depending on how much space exists between decks. Nevertheless, I imagine a bloodbath wherever the lower half of her ended up

 

But the hole would not be only opened in the deck. The spatial anomalies of the week were spherical in shape, not flat: a hemispherical hole would also be opened in the air above the deck. And when that hole went away, the victim's head, upper torso and upper limbs would indeed be impaled with air, just like her waist would be impaled by the deck, and her nether parts with whatever circuitry or conduitry lies below the deck.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Shock and panic alone could likely kill someone in that situation. No matter your training, I defy even a Vulcan to keep from freaking as all that happened.

For me, this was TNG's answer to TOS's 'By Any Other Name' in terms of gruesome-by-implication fates.

Ouch---I just had a thought--maybe she struggled as the anomaly opened up. If she hadn't, she might have just fell right through. But her struggle caught her as she was halfway to righting herself.

The ProNovel with Picard time-jumped onto Cestus Three before the Gorn attack had a man chopped in half by a closing tunnel entrance. Of course, the one behind him was Reg Barclay.