The Good: Conceptually frightening, Well acted, Well plotted, Decent effects
The Bad: Pacing; Episode comes together too quickly, Lack of character development
The Basics: When members of the Enterprise crew are abducted for medical experiments, one of the most frightening episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation results.
Star Trek The Next Generation rarely did horror episodes, it was primarily a family show. Still, once in a while it would step out and try something truly terrifying. In "Schisms" just how dark Star Trek The Next Generation could go was tested.
In "Schisms," Riker finds himself quite tired and as the Enterprise explores a new area of space, he only gets more and more exhausted. When the Enterprise begins to malfunction, Riker's tired state worsens and the crew soon attempts to find a link. The link comes when others begin experiencing health problems and have the faintest memories of being in another place. Riker discovers that he and other crewmembers have been abducted by aliens from another dimension who are performing cruel experiments on them for unknown reasons . . .
This is a scary episode when you get down to it. After all, we have nightmares as children about monsters under the bed. This is the adult version; creatures that steal us out of our beds with tranquilizers and transporters to perform experiments on us. Perhaps one of the best and most creepy deliveries of the series is when Dr. Crusher informs Riker that his forearm has been removed and reattached with a 2 micron difference. And the crewman whose blood becomes a liquid polymer . . . ick. Frightening stuff and it is wonderfully maintained throughout the episode.
The problem with this is that when the actual problem is revealed, the solution comes way too quickly. The scene in the holodeck wherein members of the crew reconstruct the alien laboratory seems to come far too easily. The episode takes a drastic shift in perspective, from focusing on Riker to admitting all of these other people into an event we did not associate with them. And how quickly they piece together all that happened seems unnatural and inorganic.
This is not the fault of the actors, though. I think that scene, especially, is the result of people acting well with poor material. The rest of the episode is actors working quite well with wonderful material. Gates McFadden plays confusion over her patients' conditions precisely and with great realism. Similarly, when Data becomes a victim, Brent Spiner's ability to be both unemotional and confused is masterful.
The best performance comes in the form of Jonathan Frakes. Perhaps as a prelude to the upcoming "Frame Of Mind," Frakes puts his all into being tired and disoriented. His command over his facial expressions in "Schisms" is impressive, keeping his cheeks relaxed and eyes sunken in an expression anyone who has ever gone 35 hours or more without sleeping will empathize with and recognize. Frakes gives a truly inspired performance here and he deserves all sorts of credit for keeping the tension in this episode high.
Still, even Frakes' great performance is not enough to cover the lack of character development in this episode. He does a fine job acting, but the characters simply experience this one; they do not grow or change as a result. "Schisms" is supposed to be scary and little more. So when it's over, there's a distinct lack of consequences to it; the crewpeople who died are not people we see week to week, there's no growth or change in the crew as a result of this freaky incident.
"Schisms" will be enjoyable to anyone who likes a good suspenseful horror with little gore. Probably a little too slow and scary for children, this is science fiction horror doing things mostly right and it's worth coming back to. Quite accessible for those who are not fans of Star Trek The Next Generation.
[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Complete Sixth Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the penultimate season by clicking here!
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7/10
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© 2011, 2008, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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