Night Terrors

In space, the only thing they can think of for Troi to do is scream

Spooky music accompanies the Enterprise as they search for the missing USS Brattain... or is it Brittain? Anyway, whichever spelling it’s supposed to be, the ship is full of dead crew and a Betazoid hiding in a cupboard. It’s a mystery, and Dr Crusher can’t seem to explain why they all turned against each other and used phasers, knives, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down to kill everyone aboard. Then the Enterprise-D is beset once again with malfunctions, with a twist - this time, it’s the crew that are breaking down! It was only a matter of time, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Troi keeps finding herself in a swirling space plughole where she hears a dodgy clue that she’ll have to solve later in the show. It seems we’ve fallen into a Tyken’s rift, an energy absorbing space-time anomaly (we’ve all had that problem on a bad morning, I’m sure). But nobody has reported hallucinations and general craziness associated with such a phenomena - so why are the crew cracking up…? It’s Dr Crusher who puts it all together - nobody is dreaming, except for Troi’s wacky vortex nightmare. Eventually Troi has a breakthrough - there’s another ship trapped on the other side of the rift! She even gets to solve the mystery herself for once, and gets to set off a big explosion in space to free the Enterprise (and the aliens on the other side of the rift), which is what every ship’s counsellor dreams of doing one day.

Words

This seems to have been another troubled screenplay. The story idea came from former intern Shari Goodhartz, who gave us “The Most Toys”, but it had to be rewritten several times. The first of the two screenplay credits goes to Pamela Douglas (about whom I know nothing, as she doesn’t appear to have been part of the regular writing team), but the final pass came from Jeri Taylor, who did not recall her time working on this screenplay fondly:

This was a real tough episode. It was convoluted, it was a little mysterious, technical, quasi-supernatural. It was all over the map and there were a lot of different episodes to try and make cohesive. I rewrote and rewrote it, and I never thought we were ever going to put that one to bed. It was strange. Troi’s dream sequences are not something you get to see every week.

The screenplay brings back the Bussard collectors which were invented for “Samaritan Snare”, and also invents the silly element calendenium, which even warranted its own entry in the pronunciation guide at the top of the screenplay. This week’s pronunciation guides is full of random made-up technical words like the plant ‘cardilia’, the alien species ‘Kaladians’, as well as authentic real world technobabble like ‘entorhinal’.

But it’s not just the writing team making up nonsense this week! We also get treated to Okudagrams with a whole host of invented compounds named after the production crew!

There's Hoffmeisterite (for visual effects assistant Edward Hoffmeister), Hutzelite (visual effects co-ordinator Gary Hutzel), Clancium oxide (visual effects compositor Pat Clancy), and Mooride polyronite (visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore), Moyerite (visual effects editor Peter Moyer), Takemurium lite (visual effects coordinator David Takemura), Neussite (co-producer Wendy Neuss), Bio-Genovesium (script supervisor Cosmo Genovese), and Blitmanite (after Leslie Blitman, who invited Mike Okuda to join the Honolulu Science Fiction Society in 1977!).

For once, the SFX team is having more fun with words this week than the writing team!

Acting Roles

The most fun aspect of this episode is watching the regular crew go quietly insane. Everyone gets something to do, and director Les Landau pulls out great performances from just about everyone. My favourite moment is when Patrick Stewart's Captain Picard is terrified he’s going to be crushed in the turbolift, which then gently arrives at a bemused bridge. Classic!

Lots of guest stars this week, often with very small roles! Let’s start with Jon Vickery’s Betazoid nutcase Andrus Hagan.

This is a small but crucial role, and Vickery does well with it - we’ll see him again in the later seasons of DS9 as a Cardassian, and also on Enterprise as a Klingon, if anyone cares about that.

Lanei Chapman returns for the second and final time this season as Ensign Rager, who gets to go loopy at conn.

She shall return in season six with another two equally unmemorable appearances in this role.

Here’s a tableau of lower decks fun in this episode.

On the left is Duke Moosekian’s Chief Gillespie (rank according to the screenplay), who gets to chat with O’Brien in Ten Forward and rant at Guinan. Next is Craig Hurley’s Ensign Peeples (screenplay name) who hears voices on the Brittain/Brattain, who actually shot some stunt footage for this episode that didn’t make the final cut. And on the right of this tableau is Brian Tochi as Ensign Peter Lin (screenplay name), who in fact was also in classic Trek, playing Ray Tsing Tao in “And the Children Shall Lead”. Here he is being young and technicolour!

We also get not only Colm Meaney’s Miles O'Brien but Rosalind Chao’s Keiko O’Brien as well, albeit only for one scene. Mr O’Brien nearly gets to start a brawl in Ten Forward again, but Guinan poops on his party with a gold-coloured weapon and shuts it down.

Finally, Deborah Taylor plays Captain Zaheva of the Brittain/Brattain, who gets to go crazy on a small screen.

She only gets a few seconds of our time, but she’s wonderfully unhinged in it, and my favourite of the cracking up guest performances this week.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

The story calls for a lot of SFX, but much of it is simple (bodies in the morgue standing up, Freudian snakes in Riker’s bed), and a great deal is done quite subtly with audio effects. That said, there’s a lot of work involved in getting Troi to fly around in the dream dimension. Here’s a great behind the scenes shot of Sirtis’ stunt double, Rosine “Ace” Hatem, in front of the blue screen, dangling on cables like a martial artist in a Hong Kong movie!

Alas, this effect was not popular with the production team at all. Troi hated her part of the wirework, Jeri Taylor and Robert Legato thought the sequences were horrible, but Jonathan Frakes had the most venom for this episode:

That was a yawner, wasn't it? That was a shitty piece of special effects work when Troi was flying with those cloud around her. That was below our standard.

In the enjoyable riot scene in Ten Forward, Guinan fires a gun prop (left) created for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - you can clearly see it in this still from the pilot (right). They spray painted it gold for this episode, which doesn't make it look classier.

But the SFX star of the week is the USS Brattain - or Brittain. The screenplay and Okudagram has the former spelling (after physicist Walter Houser Brattain), but the saucer section of the ship has the latter, so you can take your pick.

It's the USS Reliant from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, of course (the supra-fanonical Miranda class), but all the footage in this episode is freshly shot and beautifully composited. The attention to detail by the effects crew this week really helps elevate this episode, and if it's not the most exciting story ever, it's a beautifully crafted slice of television all the same.