TNG Rewatch: 6x05 - "Schisms"

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.

 

Could've been anything really. His personal physiology, or the location of his quarters on the ship, etc...

Well, it stands to reason that when they found life forms different to their own, their goal was to study them. So, it could be assumed they just saw him as some kind of tech, and not integral to whatever their purpose was. As the episode progresses, it becomes clear that they are using their research to create a "Pocket" of their subspace domain onboard the ship. Clearly this was their goal. I can imagine that they'd find nothing specifically useful in Data to progress that research. They were interested in the biological life forms and the relationship to the special domain

 

Wait, they're exploring a new and uncharted region of space? I thought the flagship of the Federation with its mission to explore strage new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and so on, was to hold diplomatic conferences and settle trade disputes? You're telling me these diplomats have been moonlighting as explorers, too?

 

Indeed. To insert realism, we could argue the scene features cuts. But it could simply be that the computer is very good at reading people, and just takes a bit of time to "warm up" to a specific user. Supposedly, there's computing power to burn. Why not apply it to doing extensive sociological calculations as to when exactly to open the doors of the Ready Room when Picard strolls towards them, or how quickly to move the turbolift for the maximum romantic effect for the two occupants, or the like?

The average holodeck entertainment simulation already involves the holodeck making constant good guesses at high frequency. This more workmanlike simulation should be no different, really.

We don't know that he would be expected anywhere, really. It's not necessarily his shift: when he wanders back to the land of the living, it may be just his habit of strolling around before his actual working hours start.

Irregular shifts might be expected to wreak havoc with Riker's system to start with, so the abductions ought to have no extra effect! But futuro-people might be dealing with the rigors of shift-based work by popping suitable pills - and those could be so idiot-proof that when sleeping problems or fatigue issues develop, nobody suspects the pills would be failing to do their job.

That phrasing does suggest the computer is only expected to monitor the known means of arriving and departing - airlocks, shuttles, the ship's own transporters, outside transporters emitting their trademark signature, and hull breaches. It would not monitor mere presence or sudden pauses in that presence. A good compromise between privacy and security, plus possibly a more practicable system overall than actually constantly tracking the whereabouts of people (at least if one isn't tracking just one person!).

OTOH, both Riker and Data would be "life forms different to their own". Why would one be more interesting than the other? The aliens ought to have no idea that Riker is common and Data is rare. Both types of life are found where they want to establish their beachhead; both might need to be studied in detail.

In the pilot episode, the E-D was supposed to embark on a mission at (and perhaps beyond) the limits of known space. Q intervened, and subsequently there were zero episodes where the ship would explicitly have gone where no one (from the UFP) had gone before - except by accident.

Does this mean the ship was originally assigned exploration duty, but Q gave Starfleet cold feet, and they made the E-D the Federation Flagship instead? Or was the original idea that the Federation Flagship would do a bit of exploration (thus impressing potential new allies and giving fright to new enemies) and a bit of local diplomacy and shows of force (thus impressing members and vassals and scaring known enemies)? Or does the Federation Flagship title rotate from ship to ship every once in a while, and was not held by the E-D during "Schisms" and other "non-representative" missions?

Each interpretation has its merits. I believe it's "Sarek" that first mentions that the E-D is the Federation Flagship, in a decidedly diplomatic context; other episodes follow suite. But ST:GEN has the Klingons call the E-D the Federation Flagship in a context totally unrelated to diplomatic representation - indeed, they use it as synonym for "the most badass piece of fighting gear in Starfleet".

In the nitpicking department, "Schisms" does not establish the E-D would be exploring virgin space. She's tasked with "charting", a job that might be seen as follow-up on the first daring thrusts of exploration into the region.

Similarly, "Encounter at Farpoint" does not support the idea that the E-D would be sailing into unknown space. Rather, and despite Picard expressly being addressed as "great explorer" there, the ship is just to show the flag at Farpoint, a location where other Starfleet starships can explicitly be seen. Her orders might be to do the evaluation of Farpoint and then turn back to continue the flag-showing stuff.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Nice use of the holodeck in this episode. That scene was really well done, despite a line from Deanna that nearly undermined the whole thing: "have you had any dreams about scissors recently?"

Between Q Who? (Picard and shuttle) and this episode, you'd think the ship would alert the bridge when people and equipment randomly vanish automatically.

 

kind of like how a smart phone will correct texts.. it has a base start with its own database, but it soon learns the habits of a specific user

 

But so is Riker - it's slightly different technology, built out of organic molecules rather than positronic circuits, but both might well be equally different from both what the aliens consider "life" and what the aliens consider "technology".

Their examination table is built of what looks like metal. If that means they associate metals with artificial constructs, and if Data contains lots of metals, then the aliens might deduce that Data is a machine. But that is far from said - the aliens themselves might be made of what looks like metal, their examination table and their "technology" might be close to their "biology", the "metal" claw might be fundamentally dissimilar from whatever makes up Data, etc.

Then again, possibly not, as they find Riker so fascinating and Data less so. And they don't appear interested in stealing instrumentation or weaponry from aboard the E-D, at least not in noticeable quantities.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I really like this one, a stand out episode for me. If they ever have sets where you can order just the episodes you want, I would get this one.

 

Good episode, another well done "thriller", and a naturally evolved mystery and one that got increasingly unsettling.

On the "technobabble", look, it's a starship with scientists and engineers. Particularly with Geordie and Data, that's exactly the type of rational mindset I expect from them. It grounds the events in a way I find immersive, and dramatically if makes me feel like I'm on board a real functioning ship. This isn't the Outer Limits, it's a somewhat plausible and developed real world future. There are parallels with NASA or something; you ever listen to those guys talk?

The comments about why Data wasn't more of a curiosity, well to me that's simply so it doesn't become another Data episode. Being an artificial lifeform naturally would make him the most curious being an alien might be interested in, but that would just put too much focus on him. This isn't the only episode where this has happened.

 

Oh, I get and understand that, even accept it. It's how I rationalize the use of it and why it is there. But there are times when it makes sense for it to be there, dramatically, and there's times when it seems like it's there to mostly pad-out the episode or something.

It's one thing if it's a quick moment while something more important is going on, or if the technobabble elements aren't central to the story.

A good example of this is in the episode where Q is turned human and is aboard the ship. There's a few scenes with technobabble in it but, in reality, it's not being done to half-assedly explain away the plot of the episode or even the focus of a scene. As the plot of the episode and the focus of the scenes is usually dealing with Q. During a scene the crew is trying to use the tractor beam to move an asteroidal moon and there's some back-and-forth between Geordi, Data, Q and the bridge on what's going on with the tractor beam. Q even gets in on some of the technobabble. Nothing they are saying matters. What matters is how Q is behaving, he's not acting as a subordinate to Geordi's command in the area or as a member of the team. This plays into his "arc" in the episode of him "learning to be human." The words they're saying don't really matter, what's happening around those words is the point.

There's a scene in Darmok with the crew in Engineering spouting off technobabble in order to adjust the phasers or something to disrupt the Tamarian ship's attempts to prevent beaming to/from the surface of the planet. The episode deals with the problems Picard has with communicating with this race, and this scene -I feel- shows how "inefficient" our language could be. There's a lot of back-and-forth to do a simple task. But from our limited experience with the Tamarian race we see that a single word -Darmok- means an entire mythology to these people and sets of a series of events.

Here? An entire scene that's a minute or two long is basically just technobabble and not a word of it matters to what's really going on. It's a sort-of half-assed way of trying to "explain" where these aliens are and how we've opened up this doorway to them but it's a very complicated and meaningless way of trying to "explain" it when it's something that maybe doesn't need to be explained to that much detail. Especially when that detail is gibberish so is meaningless. It'd be just as easy to have the events be a mystery and Geordi saying something like, "we must have tapped into another universe with our modified sensors, now we must find a way to seal the door again."

That's pretty much all that's needed. Not a decently-sized scene of saying made-up words.

 

Exactly. If they hadn't been handling this the way they did, I'd have been taken out of the show, because it would've been unlike them. That's what they do, is analyze the crap out of stuff. For this type of story to get that kind of treatment made it fairly unique as well

My point is that you can explain that away, if you focus on the fact that this alien race was most interested in creating that doorway into our domain, so to pass though it. It can stand to reason that studying biological life on "our" side would be a better means to that end, than studying the artificial ones, and as such be more of a priority, assuming that they themselves are also biological life. Comparing the similarities & dissimilarities would be a integral step in understanding what would be involved in coming here, one could assume

 

I did not know that. Thank you, sir.

They owe me $5.00 anyway.

 

Imbue implies an intelligence at work. in this case the idea that we are imbued with intelligence

 

It was actually misquoted too. It was me he was trying to correct.

Instill, infuse, ingrain, impart, imbue. It's all synonymous with introducing something into something else, as in the sentience put into Data by his creator. We can maybe debate the credit being Soong's alone, for that, but I was pretty confident in my vocabulary. lol & I was just going to leave it alone

 

my problem was the implication that we were imbued with intelligence, not Data.

 

But Data was all I was ever talking about being imbued with sentience...... as a comment on why the aliens in Schisms might not have been as interested in studying him as much as Riker or the other crew, because he's not a naturally occurring, biological life form in our domain

Given that you quoted me via Timo's comment, maybe you might have been conflating my comment with the one he made (That echoed Picard in the Measure of a Man) about Riker also being a machine of a different nature?