What's not to love about this episode? The Enterprise saving some scheming Romulans, check! Hilarious hijinks running through parts of the ship while invisible and able to pass through walls, check! A great fight scene ended with a scheming Romulan being thrown through and wall directly into deep space, check! And to cap it all off a lot of touching scenes with people talking about how Geordi changed their lives. There is even a running gag about Ensign Ro wanting to know what it is Riker will say about her at her memorial. This is one of the best TNG episodes that isn't super dark.
The episode opens with the Enterprise rushing to rescue a crippled Romulan ship. Riker leads an away team over to help and they find that the core is going to explode if they can't get some important parts. Ro and Geordi prepare to beam over with the equipment, but something goes wrong and they are both lost. Data and Riker have to rush to manually eject the core and do so just before the ship explodes. Back on the Enterprise Ro wakes up in a corridor outside sickbay, but when she goes in everybody ignore her. Picard shows up and she hears him and Dr. Crusher discuss Ro and Geordi's death. Then he walks right through her. Data starts investigating but also asks the captain if he can plan a memorial service for Geordi, Picard agrees.
Ro runs into Geordi after some wander, he awoke in the arboretum with the same problem. They start working on a plan. Geordi keeps an eye on Data's investigation and discovers that the solution may be on the Romulan ship so he and Ro sneak onto a shuttle. On the Romulan ship they learn the scheming Romulans are scheming! Who would have ever thought that of the least trustworthy race in the universe? They have done something to the beam of energy from the Enterprise that is keeping them all alive that will destroy the Enterprise if they try to go to warp. Back on the Enterprise Ro and Geordi split up with Ro headed to the bridge and Geordi staying with Data in engineering. Geordi figures out that he and Ro are leaving trails of chronotons where ever they go that Data is detecting and that the radiation used to purge the chronotons will bring them back into phase with reality.
Meanwhile Ro runs into a Romulan on the Enterprise that has the same problem as them. They have one of the most hilarious scenes in all of TNG as they run through various quarters as he tries to chase her down. Geordi shows up just in time to kick the Romulan into deep space and recover is phaser. Data detects the firing of the phaser due to huge chronoton emissions so Geordi realizes it may be a solution. They head to Ten Forward where their memorial service is happening, quite a party it turns out. Ro runs around shooting everything with the phased phaser, but the radiation purge isn't quite enough so they overload it and briefly appear right in front of Picard and Data. Data figures it out and gets them back just in time for Geordi to keep the ship from going to warp and killing them all.
Review: My summary doesn't do any justice to this truly amazing episode. Season 5 has quite great run at the end, which is good because the first two thirds left something to be desired.
9 out of 10
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