Night Terrors is a mediocre episode that returns to the now cliché ploy of having the crew behave out of character — as we saw in The Naked Now & Sarek. Indeed, the episode begins in almost the same fashion as The Naked Now with the Enterprise finding a science vessel (the U.S.S. Brattain) adrift with the entire crew dead — by their own hands. But where The Naked Now strove to be somewhat of a comedy, Night Terrors is TNG’s foray into the horror genre. And the results are mixed.

Part of the problem is the premise itself (take a deep breath): What happened to the Brattain is now happening on board the Enterprise. Somehow both ships have become trapped by some rift in space that drains energy (the only way out is to create a massive explosion). Add to that the fact that the crew is slowly going insane — because somehow they aren’t able to have R.E.M. sleep — and R.E.M. sleep deprivation leads to paranoia, hallucinations, and insanity. Add to that the only person who does dream is Troi (she has a repeating nightmare). Add to that she is “speaking” via telepathy to the only survivor of the Brattain — another Betazoid. Who is catatonic. Or something.

(You can exhale now.)

It really is a long way to go in order to have the crew start hallucinating in order to get a few creepy scenes. Picard’s hallucination (that of the turbolift ceiling compressing down on him) is the most entertaining. Riker gets to see snakes on a bed (it’s snakes … on a bed!). But the most effective scene involves Dr. Crusher, a morgue, and some effectively placed reanimated corpses.

But outside of that, the episode is rather dreary.

I suppose I ought to talk about Troi floating. Or flying. Or whatever the heck it is she did that involved some very obvious wires. It was all part of a dream sequence that would have been otherwise very ethereal (two bright lights against a greenish cloud) but became utterly laughable from the moment Troi had liftoff. It’s a shame because the vision could have been kept simply from Troi’s perspective, and we wouldn’t have needed to see Troi bleating “Where are you?” whilst suspended unceremoniously in a cloud (though, now that I think about it, it’s eerily symbolic of her character as a whole).

In any event, Troi’s dream is the key to the crew’s survival. It seems an alien race on the other side of the rift has been trying to communicate telepathically, which was the cause of the crew not getting their R.E.M. sleep. The aliens have figured out how to create the big explosion, but need some help from the Enterprise. Data, who has been unaffected by all of this, oversees the operation. Troi communicates to the aliens through her dreams, and they succeed.

(Yay).

The best part of the episode is Data’s command. Once Picard puts Data in charge, there is a palpable sense of security. Data handles his responsibilities quite well — balancing the need for a speedy solution to their predicament with a compassionate understanding of what is comrades are going through.

Night Terrors is a poor episode that has a few successfully creepy scenes. It is otherwise a cliché contrivance that also contains an embarrassingly preposterous scene. Data’s performance keeps the episode from performing even worse than it did.

Filed under: TNG Reviews