Night Terrors (episode)

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Real World article
(written from a Production point of view)

"Night Terrors"
TNG, Episode 4x17 Production number: 40274-191 First aired: 18 March 1991
←	90th of 176 produced in TNG	→
←	90th of 176 released in TNG	→
	{{{nNthReleasedInSeries_Remastered}}}th of 176 released in TNG Remastered
←	197th of 727 released in all	→

Teleplay By Pamela Douglas and Jeri Taylor Story By Shari Goodhartz Directed By Les Landau
44631.2 (2367)
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Brattain personnel

The Enterprise crew is affected when they are adrift in a remote area of space, and find themselves unable to dream.

[edit] Summary

The USS Enterprise-D is given orders to find a lost Starfleet vessel, the USS Brattain. They come upon the ship adrift in a binary star system. Apparently, the entire crew complement (save one individual, a Betazoid and empath similar to Deanna Troi) was murdered, seemingly by each other. Soon after encountering the disturbing scene on board the Brattain, the Enterprise crew begins to experience her own problems, marked by an inexplicable increase in irritability and fatigue. Counselor Deanna Troi tries to reach the mind of the surviving Betazoid, while Data, LaForge and Riker unsuccessfully try to figure out the engine malfunctions.

Doctor Crusher reports to Picard, telling him that there is no indication of a psychological or physiological disease. Together they watch the last log entry of Captain Aheva, which refers to the growing madness onboard the Brattain.

In the meantime, Counselor Troi has entered a rather intense dream. Spoken to by an unidentified voice, she asks her the speaker " where he is". The voice keeps talking about some "eyes", as Troi is drawn toward two lights that are reminiscent of the binary star system in which the Enterprise is currently stationed.

In engineering, LaForge has to reassure a crewman who apparently heard some voices when no one was there. Conflict is spreading all over the ship; when Keiko enters the O'Briens' quarters, she and Miles quarrel, during which Miles displays a great deal of envy towards his wife's co-workers. Miles O'Brien leaves their quarters and enters Ten Forward, where he is warned by Ensign Golesby about the current events. O'Brien brushes the warning off, dismissing it as "ghost stories".

As occurrences of violence aboard the Enterprise continue to escalate, the crew realizes that it is actually trapped inside a space-time anomaly known as a Tyken's Rift. Captain Picard gives the order for the ship to retreat to a safe distance from the Brattain, only to find that all energy expended by the ship's engines is drained by the anomaly, rendering the ship unable to move.

Enterprise, now adrift, begins to mirror the state aboard the Brattain shortly before her crew succumbed to insanity and became violent. With minimal energy reserves and no clear means of escape, Dr. Crusher hypothesizes that the rampant outbreaks of violence aboard both ships are due to lack of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, leading to fatigue, loss of concentration, extreme irritability, hostility and ultimately, death. However, this is not being caused by the Tyken's Rift. Troi notes that she is the only person aboard the ship who continues to be able to dream, perhaps due to her unique telepathic abilities, but that all of her dreams are nightmares.

With the ship's energy reserves reaching critically low levels, Data (not needing sleep at all) and Troi (still sleeping intermittently, but having the same recurring nightmares) attempt to analyze the counselor's dreams, hypothesizing that there may be some sort of telepathic communication from someone else trapped inside the rift. The messages and image repeated each time in Troi's dream, "eyes in the dark" and "one moon circles", are interpreted as the atomic structure of hydrogen (one proton in the nucleus with one electron orbiting it). Data then assumes the role of acting captain of the Enterprise, ejecting hydrogen into the space immediately in front of the ship through the Bussard collectors while Troi attempts to communicate their actions to the unknown beings in a dream.

Just after there is no longer sufficient power to maintain the hydrogen stream leaving the Bussard collectors, an explosion erupts in front of the ship, indicating that Troi was successful. Another alien vessel was apparently trapped inside the rift, and used telepathy to communicate with Troi. It was this telepathy that somehow prevented the crew of the Enterprise from entering REM sleep. Power and life support are restored to normal. As his last duty as acting captain, Data orders Picard and the rest of the crew to their quarters to sleep.

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[edit] Memorable quotes

"This is a little souvenir I picked up from Magus III. That was setting number one. Anyone wanna see setting number two?"

- Guinan, defusing a tense situation

"Sir... As my final duty as acting captain... I order you to bed."

- Data, to Picard

[edit] Background Information

As mentioned in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, this episode is considered to be one of the weakest of the fourth season and many members of the production staff were unhappy with it. The scenes with Troi "flying" were said to be a "terrible" mistake by Jeri Taylor and Robert Legato described them as "horrible". Marina Sirtis commented that her desire for more action scenes had backfired; she had to grapple with an intense fear of heights in order to film them.
Michael Piller noted that the pace of the show was so slow that the episode ran nine minutes over and had to be severely cut. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion)
The explosion of the "rift" is reused footage of the explosion of the Genesis Device from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
John Vickery later played Rusot in three episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's final season and the Klingon Orak in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Judgment".
A room is finally seen behind a seldom used sickbay door that doesn't lead to a corridor or the medical lab. Right after the teaser, Picard and Crusher leave this room which seems to be the morgue and enter the main sickbay room.

[edit] Video and DVD releases

Original UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 46, May 1992
UK re-release (three-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment): Volume 4.6, 6 August 2001
As part of the TNG Season 4 DVD collection

[edit] Links and references

[edit] Main cast

[edit] Guest stars

[edit] And special guest star

Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan

[edit] Co-star

Deborah Taylor as Zaheva

[edit] Uncredited co-stars

Previous episode:
"Galaxy's Child"

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 4

Next episode:
"Identity Crisis"

Night Terrors (episode)

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference

Contents

[edit] Summary

[edit] Memorable quotes

[edit] Background Information

[edit] Video and DVD releases

[edit] Links and references

[edit] Main cast

[edit] Guest stars

[edit] And special guest star

[edit] Co-star

[edit] Uncredited co-stars

[edit] Uncredited stunt double

[edit] References

[edit] Okudagram references

[edit] Dedication plaque references

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