“Now I suppose I’ll never know what you were gonna say about me.”
Finally, Season Five gives us an episode that actually feels like a Next Gen episode. And thankfully, it’s a grand old time to boot, an admittedly flyweight science fiction adventure romp in which Geordi and Ro get “phased,” rendering them invisible to their colleagues, and able to walk through bulkheads, doors, and other people – but not, in classic ghost story fashion, through the floor apparently. No matter. I love this episode because it plays to all of the series’ core strengths: inventive (and VFX-enhanced) adventure; a good sense of fun throughout; and, in direct opposition to many of the other episodes this season, it’s thoroughly rooted in character.
So of course, mopey Ensign Ro mopes and decides she’s actually been killed in action and is now a ghost; while optimistic scientist Geordi refuses to believe he’s dead and goes about trying to solve the mystery of how he and Ro ended up like this. Ro’s apparently enormous burden of self-loathing leads her to like the idea of being dead quite a lot: it gives her a chance to make peace with her former life in a way she’d never contemplate doing in person. But Geordi’s having none of it – “Are you saying I’m some blind ghost with clothes?” – and of course he turns out to be correct, revealing the larger Romulan plot to create a phased cloaking device, and maybe blow up the Enterprise while they’re at it. Director David Carson’s reveal that one of the Romulans has also been phased, and is pursuing Geordi and Ro, is terrifically staged.
Putting Ro and Geordi together is an entirely unique pairing, in that I don’t think the two of them have shared a single scene together till this point; and Levar Burton and Michelle Forbes’ buddy chemistry is very nice. In a nice nod to the sort of tall tales that partially inspired Star Trek in the first place, it even ends with the two officers going fully Huck and Tom by attending their own funeral – a funeral which, in yet another lovely note, is a ragtime-style party, thrown by Data, who volunteered to organize something his best friend would have liked. An early scene in which Data and Worf discuss their feelings on memorials and death is one of the best conversations between those two characters.
I also appreciate the fact that, having done the “mistaken death” thing a few times already (probably best in “The Most Toys”), the episode resists, for the most part, the temptation to watch the Enterprise crew mourn their crewmates at length. And the visual effects hold up surprisingly well on blu-ray, possibly because the blu-ray project crew got to use digital grading techniques to bring bluescreen shots of Geordi and Ro more closely in line with the colour telemetry of the plates into which they’re being projected. It still isn’t seamless, but it’s a lot better than it used to be. I’m a fan of a well-exploited science fiction premise, and in crafting a headlong sprint through the Enterprise irrespective of walls, Carson makes some great choices – including the obvious (running through a female crewmember’s bathroom as she’s getting out of the shower) and not-so-obvious (staging a fistfight in front of a couple having a quiet dinner).
I think I used to undervalue this episode a bit. As I said, it’s pretty lightweight; but now I’m seeing that as more of a strength than a detriment. It’s so competently delivered in pretty much every aspect that it ends up being one of the single best episodes of the year. And I’ve always found the last act absolutely delightful, as Ro and Geordi try like mad to get people to see them – and ultimately succeed, phasing back to life in the middle of their own funeral in front of an astonished gaggle of friends. It’s a final, rejuvenating note for a season that has been otherwise almost unrelentingly dour.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Five is in stores now. You can pre-order Season Six here.