I remember being fairly scared by this episode, probably more than any other TNG episode. Even today the idea of being taken away in your sleep and experimented on is pretty terrifying. As a kid the scene that always bothered me is when Troi gets the abduction victims together in the holodeck to reconstruct their torture and they are able to reconstruct the exact room from pretty basic descriptions. However as an adult two things felt different to me, first of all the discrepancies between the actual experimentation room and the holodeck recreation are more glaring, and secondly with google the idea of finding exactly what you want from a few search terms seems a little less unreasonable.
The episode opens with Riker waking up looking particularly haggard. he makes it to engineering late for La Forge's briefing. The Enterprise has been assigned the job of mapping a huge globular cluster and it is going to take a long time. To try and speed things up Geordi rigs the warp engine to the deflector dish and manages to significantly increase their scanning power. Data makes sure everyone knows that today is also the day of his poetry reading. Sure the poetry ain't great, but Riker's sleeping problems cause him to fall asleep even more during the poetry than seems warranted. He stops by sickbay and Crusher tells him to have a warm drink before bed which isn't really all that helpful.
Down in engineering Geordi is working on implementing his plan when the alarms go off, there has been an explosion in a cargo bay with people inside! They all rush in but when they arrive everything is fine. It seems that way at least. Afterwards Riker asks Geordi to stop by and wake him up the next day. As soon as Riker's head hits the pillow Geordi is there. Worf seems to be having problems too, he freaks out when he sees the barbers scissors. In the cargo bay Data and Geordi are working when Geordi's visor cuts out so he goes to sick bay. When he returns an hour later Data doesn't believe him, to Data Geordi has only been gone a few seconds. Eventually Troi realizes a bunch of her patients have been having the same dream and brings them to the holodeck where they recreate the creepy scene of their torture.
Crusher confirms their fears, Riker's arm shows signs of having been removed and reattached. Picard asks if any crew are missing and the ship confirms two are. They raise shields but that has no effect. One of the crew returns suddenly and Crusher rushes to his quarters, but it is too late, his blood has been turned into a polymer. Geordi figures out a plan to send a tracking beacon through, but someone has to go with it. Riker agrees to do it and Crusher gives him something to keep the alien sedative from working. As soon as he closes his eyes a portal opens in his room and drags him through. The cloaked lizard like aliens are experimenting on Troi as Riker watches. La Forge manages to trace the tracker and sends off graviton pulses to try and shut the portal. It starts working and Riker sees Data through the portal. He grabs Troi and runs out just as the portal closes behind him and leaves the ship.
Review: This episode still manages to be really creepy and worked better than I remembered. Not sure if the aliens were supposed to have abducted and sedated Data, but whatever, it was still creepy.
7 out of 10
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