“Eyes in the dark. One moon circles.”
One of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s infrequent attempts to do a proper ghost story on the Enterprise, “Night Terrors” is one of the more memorable ones for good and bad reasons. Good because it does create a genuine sense of unease through solid plotting and performance, and an unusually involving musical score; bad because it’s the one where Troi floats through green smoke while an alien consciousness tries to convey to her that they need hydrogen. Kudos to the show for foregrounding Troi (and Crusher) as key figures in solving the dilemma; too bad trussing Marina Sirtis up on wires and floating her in front of a bluescreen looks so silly.
Ron Jones’ score in this episode is so substantial a part of the overall effect that it’s almost worth a review all on its own. The best word I can use to describe his motifs here is “sickly” – a nervous blend of minor chords and incomplete phrases, Jones has written what I could honestly call the musical equivalent of that unsettling feeling when you can’t remember something that was just in your head a moment ago. This is appropriate enough, given Picard’s speech about the terrifying prospect of losing one’s mind, and his memories of his grandfather’s deterioration while he was growing up.
“If I can’t find a way to stop it, we will all go insane,” Beverly intones steadily once she’s realized that no one on the ship is dreaming (save Troi) and that the lack of REM sleep is making everyone paranoid and crazy. The vignettes to illustrate this are well-chosen, particularly Riker going to bed to discover a bevy of snakes wrapped around his legs (I’ve had that one), and Beverly hallucinating that the corpses in the morgue have suddenly sat up, all around her. Best of all, I think, is the scene early on where Worf arrives at a briefing a bit late, and only says “I was detained.” One could easily imagine Worf accidentally butchering a colleague and making himself late for the meeting by cleaning up the body.
It’s a strong Crusher/Troi episode overall, suspension wires notwithstanding. I like the scene where Troi talks Worf out of suicide, especially its final image, where the tiny Counselor leads the gigantic, broken-hearted Klingon out of his quarters by the hand.
Four Enterprises out of five.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Four is in stores now.