The Next Phase

Oh no! Ro and LaForge have been killed in a freak transporter accident. Hang about... are they really dead? Or is it just some gnarly interphase malarkey?

The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Romulan science ship that looks quite a bit like a Romulan scout. Ro is not impressed that the Federation is helping out the Romulans, but mean ol’ Riker makes her do it anyway. But when Ro and LaForge try to beam back, the Transporter-Chief-of-the-Week loses their patterns - disaster! That’d never have happened if O’Brien was on duty. Still, they’re dead, oh dear, better have a memorial service.

Except, what’s this? Ro and LaForge’s ghosts are still bumming around the Enterprise, watching their crewmates. They can also mooch on over to the Romulan ship and uncover a plan to make the Enterprise’s warp core explode. Drama! It all sets up a wild interphase chase as an out-of-phase Romulan hunts down Ro and LaForge, before they are finally rescued by Data’s annoying ingenuity.

Words

This episode was written to be a bottle show, and so intended to cut costs owing to the usual lavish expenditures of the season finally catching up. But in a brutal irony, this ended up being one of the most expensive shows in the entire season, owing to the unexpected cost of the shot compositions. As Rick Berman put it:

It was very difficult to shoot in blue screen with people putting their hands through consoles and walls. It looked relatively easy on paper, but took a lot of time to make the visual effects work.

Director David Carson recalled the episode as very challenging:

This was an extremely difficult episode to do, because it dealt with special effects of a type people were familiar with from Ghost, which Star Trek had never attempted before. It was one of the most difficult technical episodes they’d ever done just by the nature of having people walk through people and an environment where people exist in different phases.

He’s not wrong. Every shot like this one involved an awful lot of skill in both the cinematography and the composition.

Both, however, were pleased with how it turned out - even if Berman was never really happy with the title. The writer, Ronald D. Moore, was especially delighted:

The episode was a kick! I really enjoyed the ghost story aspect of it. You know: getting to go to your own funeral, walking around on the Enterprise with people mourning you, watching Riker play his trombone at your wake.

There’s a touch of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at work here. As for the technobabble, our old friend the graviton is joined here by newcomer the chroniton, which doesn’t crop up again in TNG but does yeoman service in DS9 and Voyager, providing all sorts of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey nonsense whenever it’s required.

It’s joined here by the anyon - the plot device used to re-phase Ro and LaForge - which is not a particle made up by a science fiction writer, but rather one made up by particle physicists thinking about what quantum mechanics would do in two dimensions. I always said that quantum physicists had too much time on their hands. It’s probably a surplus of chronitons.

We get our first sprinkling of Bajoran culture since the earring and the family name business from “Ensign Ro” with a mention of borhyas (spirits) and the first appearance of the Bajoran religion. Incidentally, isn’t it odd how many alien planets only managed to support a single religious tradition? It’s like all those amazing single climate planets we stumble upon - desert worlds, ice worlds, jungle worlds... it’s almost as if the entire universe was created solely for the purpose of sci-fi storytelling. Funny that.

Acting Roles

This is an unusual double act, paring Michelle Forbes’ Ro Laren with LeVar Burton’s LaForge, but it works nicely.

Ro’s brusque demeanour is softened here as she is forced to confront her neglected cultural and spiritual formation, while LaForge is his usual no-nonsense self and spouts technobabble with the confidence we’ve come to know and love. The two characters don’t really play off each other very well, but the performers have good screen chemistry and are very watchable, which holds everything together.

Their absence also sets up a whole host of other pairings, from the familiar (Patrick Stewart’s Picard and Gates McFadden’s Dr Crusher) to the unusual (Brent Spiner’s Data and Michael Dorn’s Worf). The character work throughout is great, and very enjoyable to watch - although there’s nothing quite as magnificent as Ro shooting Riker in the head - priceless!

Meet the Romulans! We have Thomas Kopache as Science Officer Mirok (left), Susanna Thompson as Varel (right, name according to the screenplay), and Brian Cousins as Parem (see below - name also according to the screenplay).

Thomas Kopache has a huge career of bit parts, including playing the boot salesman in No Country for Old Men. He played a number of roles in The Practice, and David E. Kelly got him back twice as a judge in Boston Legal - and speaking of legal roles, he was in L.A. Law the year before this role. He’s an okay Romulan in this episode, and they get him back... a lot! He returns in a later TNG episode, plays the father of Nana Visitor’s character on DS9, has another role in Voyager, two in Enterprise, and a small role as a comms officer in Star Trek: Generations. Not bad going!

You might have seen Susanna Thompson in a small role in Malignant, or as Kevin Costner’s wife in 2002's Dragonfly, but even if you haven’t I’ll bet you saw her play the Borg Queen in Voyager for three episodes!

That’s a role that is certainly much meatier than this one. She had a lot of recurring roles in a lot of different shows, including as Karen Sammler in the TV drama Once and Again by thirtysomething creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. She also played the villainous Moira Queen on Arrow, had recurring roles in Kings and NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and played another villain (who’s the mother of the female lead) rather excellently in Timeless. It’s quite the career! Nor is the Borg Queen Mark II her only Trek appearance other than this one, as we have her back next season for TNG, and she gets a DS9 role too. Colour me impressed!

Lastly, Brian Cousins has little to do in this episode except look stern and scary as he chases Ro and LaForge around the ship, but he acquits himself well.

He played the lead character in the dreadful 1993 B-movie Mandroid and reprises this role in its semi-sequel from the same year Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight. Loads of bit parts in sci-fi shows for Cousins, too, including Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Dark Skies, Timecop, and Sliders. He’s back one more time for TNG too, and appears in Enterprise later on. On the back of this role in TNG he landed the gig in the two Mandroid movies and, perhaps more prestigiously, a bit part in L.A. Law, so this is another episode with an L.A. Law exchange programme (Kopache borrowed from that show, and Cousins donated - I think TNG got the better deal here).

What’s going on below decks? Why, we have Shelby Leverington as Transporter-Chief-of-the-Week, named as Brossmer in the credits and screenplay.

She had a long and unremarkable career, although she too was in L.A. Law several years before this episode. Leverington is memorable here simply for not being O’Brien.

Finally, say hello to Kenneth Meseroll as Ensign McDowell who is namechecked by the captain on the bridge.

He must have done a great job pretending to push buttons, as he returns next season having been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. He played Fred Hesse in the sci-fi TV show 10,000 Days and the movie that was spun out from it, as well as Pete in the 2013 Dark Skies movie, but odds are you've never noticed him in anything. He wasn’t even in L.A. Law, I mean, what kind of acting career is that!

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

The studio miniature for the Romulan science ship is, of course, a modification of the Romulan scout. They added a new semicircular section at the aft, while the old curvy cockpit was removed and replaced with a much more angular bridge.

But the real focus of the SFX this week is all the running through walls and putting hands through consoles that racked up such hilarious expense and dashed all hopes of this being a cost-saving episode. Here’s one particularly great sequence to enjoy again!

And yes, that is Jocelyn Robinson (‘Ensign Gates’) having a candlelit dinner with an unnamed lieutenant there!

At least all the expensive SFX was noticed, and this episode was nominated for an Emmy… Actually, it was nominated for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing, so it seems nobody cared about any of the visual effects in the end. Oh well, it’s still a fun episode that gives Michelle Forbes much more to do than show off her new haircut as happened last time she was on the show.