Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 6, Episode 5
Original Air Date: October 19, 1992
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| via Memory Alpha |
Our heroes aren't getting enough sleep. There's also a weird, shiny subspace thingy in one of the cargo bays. Coincidence? Apparently not.
It's an alien abduction story! Star Trek doesn't usually go in for those. In fact, this is the first time. Interestingly, my freshman writing seminar in college was about UFOs, abduction stories and such. There's a fascinating cultural history around such phenomena. Before Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there were great variations in encounter stories. After the movie, they became astonishingly uniform. Aliens always looked like the ones in the Spielberg film. Memory gaps were common. The slicing, probing surgical work portrayed in "Schisms" became the norm, too. And this is long before social media took hold of our collective psyche, folks!
Overall, I'm not a fan of the episode. It gets points with the critics for being spooky but that's not enough for me. The highlight is "Ode to Spot," Data's poem about his cat.
Acting Notes
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| via Memory Alpha |
Ken Thorley played Mot, head barber aboard the Enterprise. "Schisms" is the actor's third of four NextGen appearances, his second of three as Mot. Thorley also made a guest appearance on NYPD Blue. Film credits include Ghost in the Machine, Men in Black and My Favorite Martian.
I actually really like this one. It speaks about the people here who believe they were abducted. I found it eerie and scary especially the sounds they heard. This is one time that Troi was able to showcase what she actually does I. A great way than just the typical, “I sense...”
ReplyDeleteThat's fair. I hadn't thought about the story from her perspective.
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