Attention on heck! Don’t try to adjust your viewscreens, person-hell and boo-tenants! What you’re seeing isn’t a creepy clone, a hellish hologram, or a strangely specific alternate universe! For the month of October, we’ll be taking a spine-chilling stroll through Trek’s most horror-iffic outings and spooky adventures! Now why don’t you sit back and try not to let that green blood of yours run cold! If things get a little too intense, don’t hesitate to ask Scotty to SCREAM you up! Hehehehehehehehehe!
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season 4, Episode 17
“Night Terrors” is top shelf Spooky Trek and probably the most unsettling episode of The Next Generation. It’s pretty much the one that inspired this whole annual Halloween feature. The way it slowly builds terror throughout the hour is wonderful, and it uses many effective tropes to create a dire situation for the crew. It showcases how well sci-fi and horror can mesh together while still maintaining a Trek-ian message at its core.
Also, that scene. You know which one.
The episode starts off immediately in spooky mode as the Enterprise approaches the Starship Brattain, a vessel that has been missing for 29 days. The music is quietly eerie and sets a chilling tone (I think of all the 90s Trek series, TNG had the best score). That the Brattain has been out of contact for a month and has not been answering hails creates some creepy suspense. And somehow the distant binary stars (which ultimately become thematically significant) underline the unsettling vibe.
What Riker’s away team to the ship finds doesn’t help matters – the entire crew is dead, having all been killed in various ways. An entire ship full of murdered corpses on the edge of unexplored space? Sign me up for Starleet, Mr. Recruiter!
There is only one survivor aboard the Brattain, a catatonic male that Troi instantly recognizes as Betazoid. Dr. Crusher is disturbed by the way the crew was found dead – barricaded with weapons surrounding them, or with their hands at each other’s throats. Troi attempts to telepathically reach the Betazoid named Hagan, but he can barely form complex thoughts.
La Forge tries to get the Brattain’s engines up and running. Everything seems fine technologically speaking, but the ship can’t seem to move. Crusher performs her examination on the dead crewmembers and can’t find any medical reasons for why they all went nuts and killed one another. She shows Captain Picard the Brattain captain’s final log entry and it’s disturbing – she picks at her hair like a drug addict as she stutters in paranoid sentence fragments about the crew trying to get her.
Troi has a bizarre and haunting dream where she floats in a green cloudy space toward a pair of distant bright lights. It’s one of TNG’s most memorable visual sequences and the SFX are really great. The color and background are super eerie and spiderweb-like threads frame the path towards the lights in an appropriately spooky visual. A distorted otherworldy voice echoes about “Eyes in the dark” and “one moon circles” as Troi is carried forward. The image of the two lights recalls the binary system that the Enterprise and Brattain are in, as well as a third meaning that is eventually revealed. The nebulousness of that and its multiple interpretations are a really smart plot detail and provide a compelling mystery, as well as a couple of effective red herrings.
After four days of trying to get the Brattain’s engines up and running, Picard decides to just tow the ship to the nearest starbase instead. It’s another clever plot detail – the Enterprise crew didn’t notice that their own engines are no longer working because they’ve been spending this time focusing on the other ship.
La Forge works on the Brattain’s bridge with one of his engineers. Ensign John Mulaney seems to hear stuff moving around and thinks that there’s still someone else aboard. La Forge assures him that no one is, and excuses his behavior as spookiness from all the death and murder that happened aboard. It’s brief, but an effectively creepy bit.
O’Brien is irrationally angry with Keiko over some random dude he’s jealous of and storms out of their quarters. Honestly, not too different from a typical day of theirs. He winds up in Ten Forward, where Chief Gillespie chats his ear off about the weird things people are seeing. He talks about someone seeing an officer in an older uniform riding a lift only to disappear at the top of it. It recalls all sorts of ghost stories aboard supposedly haunted ships like the Queen Mary. O’Brien scoffs at it before getting up to leave. The episode is really well-crafted with these moments, and gets a lot of good mileage with these one-off characters to build the creepy tension.
In the episode’s only real lighthearted moment, Picard seems to hear his ready room door chime several times even though no one is outside. He finally hears a knock on it as Crusher and Troi wait outside. Stewart’s befuddled “What-?” when they enter is hilarious.
Not so hilarious: we’re all gonna die! If we don’t leave that is, as the two women theorize that what happened aboard the Brattain seems to be slowly happening aboard the Enterprise. As illustrated, the crew is hallucinating sights and sounds that aren’t there, or just being generally irritable. Crusher urges Picard to move the Enterprise away ASAP, and he replies that they’ll be on their way within the hour anyway. Problem solved…?
As the bridge crew prepares to tow the Brittain, a discombobulated Ensign Rager can’t seem to remember how to do her job, and Riker dismisses her to sickbay. Again, these little moments help to sell how much the situation is deteriorating. Good thing we’re leaving!
Except we’re not. As the Enterprise tries to fire up its engines, the crew discovers that like the Brattain, they too are now adrift. Fun!
In an interesting time jump, 10 days pass. Picard notes that they’re at least two weeks from Starfleet, which heightens the tension of their situation. But Data has at least figured out what’s going on – they’re stuck in a field of space known as a Tyken’s Rift which absorbs any energy they put out. Data speaks of the namesake of the rift, a captain who was able to create a huge enough explosion to overpower the cosmic quicksand to escape. Unfortunately, the Enterprise is not capable of creating the same type of explosion. Not only that, but the original case of the Tyken’s Rift did not include any incidents of abnormal behavior like on the Brattain or Enterprise, so the mystery is only half-solved.
The crew are visibly affected by the phenomena, and in the turbolift Picard and Riker discuss how it’s wearing on them. Stewart’s really great as always, and perfectly captures Picard’s mucked-up brain fog. The hair and makeup is subtle, but also conveys how frayed everyone is. Riker recounts his feelings of irritability and more disturbingly – the unshakable feeling that even when he’s alone in his quarters, he still senses that there’s someone there. Picard confirms the same has been happening to him, and underlines the importance of the two of them maintaining their faculties for the crew’s sake.
The episode is so great at presenting this harrowing situation and then gradually unraveling our normally unflappable heroes as it drags on. That they know how this will end is a disturbing point on the approaching horizon. Picard orders Riker to get some rest in the meantime, and Will seems visibly irritated at being ordered to bed by dad. When he steps off the turbolift, Picard (who already looks like a shell of himself) braces himself against the wall, and we can see how much energy it’s taking him just to look like complete shit.
Riker prepares for bed as Picard hallucinates that he’s being crushed by the blinding bright ceiling of the turbolift. As the doors open to the bridge he screams while curled up on the ground. Riker gets into bed but sees a false image of a bunch of snakes wrapped around his feet. The cross-cutting here is interesting, but an effective choice to show how totally unglued the captain and first officer already are.
Realizing how precipitous their situation is now, Picard confers privately with Data, the Only One Unaffected by Everything. Data theorizes that if they used the main deflector dish to channel energy into the void (much as they tried to use as a weapon against the Borg), they could break free. Because of course it worked so well in that situation…
Picard acknowledges how affected he has been, and Data politely agrees. For Picard, there is an additional dimension of terror to the situation as he recalls how he watched his own grandfather age from a capable and intelligent person to a “frail wisp of a man who could barely make his way home.” It’s a brief but impactful monologue that injects some personal emotional stakes for Picard. The aging process is something none of us can escape and is real life body horror (especially to a child).
Picard, as a very intelligent and sober leader is clearly disturbed by the prospect of losing one’s higher faculties to an invisible ailment. He underlines to Data how important it will be for him to rely on the android from this point forward, and that their lives may depend on him alone.
And then we get to… That Scene.
It’s without a doubt the scariest, most blood-chilling minute in any Star Trek show or movie. It’s almost too much. But it’s an absolutely genius sequence that marries a dead-simple (heh) concept with a no-frills execution (heh heh) for 60-ish seconds of pure terror.
Dr. Crusher performs more examinations on the dead Brattain crewmembers, as their sheet-covered corpses are laid out on individual slabs in an oversized morgue room. You can immediately tell that this is going to be horrific; no good can come from being in a room full of dead bodies!
As she takes some notes, she hears some rustling in the room.
Oh man. Oh man, oh man.
It’s a perfectly staged and timed shot as she pauses for a few chilling seconds and then staggers off to the side to reveal that one of the corpses is sitting the fuck up.
And of course it’s not just one corpse, but all the corpses are sitting the fuck up.
McFadden is wonderful here as she bumps into one of them, drops her PADD, and staggers backward only to discover that the corpses behind her are sitting at attention, too. The score has a wonderfully 80’s-style horror zing to it that really plunges the terror dagger in deeper.
The camera cut to her perspective is gut-churning, and the visual of them all sitting up, motionless, and facing the same direction… well, I just don’t know how to describe it. It’s terrifying. The slightly-transparent body coverings really add to it, as well – that you can definitely see them underneath, but they’re still obscured. Oh man oh man.
If they were to all get up and attack her, that would be horrifying but somehow not as scary as what we do get. To underline the difference between horror and terror, them sitting motionless is true and pure terror. Because you don’t know what they’re going to do, when, or if they’re going to do anything at all. That blood-curdling ambiguity is great here and is what makes the scene so memorable.
The physical staging of Crusher is painfully terrifying, because she’s already in the midst of the corpses. She backs up, but there’s still two on either side of her. Fighting to regain control, she clenches her fists, closes her eyes, and tells the hallucinations to “Go away.” And they do! The music instantly stops, and the overhead shot of all the corpses having returned to normal is a chilling period to this terror-iffic scene.
*exhales*
Crusher meets with Picard in his ready room and asks him about his dreams. It’s really subtle, but the fact that they filmed this scene from the opposite side they normally do is an effective way to illustrate how out-of-whack the situation is. Data standing as Picard and Crusher sit also visually communicates his hierarchy in their deteriorating situation. Ditto with McFadden fumbling around in her pockets for her tricorder. With some help from Data, Crusher hypothesizes that their lack of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep as of late is what’s causing their worsening mental states. Except for Troi, who dreams but only has nightmares.
The deep sleep that causes dreams is what refreshes our brains, and since they’ve been stuck in the Tyken’s Rift no one has been able to reach that restful state. It’s based on real science, and of course we all know how blurry and nonfunctional we can be after one night of crappy sleep, to say nothing of several weeks of it. Crusher can’t explain why it’s happening, and gravely points out that unless she can figure it out, they will all inevitably go insane. Fun!
While tending to the catatonic Hagan in sickbay, Troi nods off and experiences the green nightmare dream again before jolting back awake. He continues to mentally utter unhelpful sentence fragments. Crusher laments that nothing she’s tried is helping the crew reach REM sleep. Troi darkly observes that in the end she’ll end up just like Hagan. Again, so much of the terror here is that we’ve already seen a Starfleet crew (with a Betazoid) succumb to this agonizing hell, and it’s a slow countdown to it happening to the Enterprise.
In Ten Forward, tensions mount as Gillespie has appointed himself King Scared Idiot of the Scareidiot Nation (formerly the U.S.A.). He riles up others with his pet theory that their situation is an intentional experiment by Picard to break them. Guinan, ever the voice of reason, tries to dispel his rumors. But Gillespie won’t be stopped from just asking questions, man! It’s funny how this random dude – a regular low ranking member of the crew – is the de facto antagonist of the episode. It does follow horror movie logic about people becoming the true monsters when society falls apart, as it seems to be on the Enterprise. Deep Space Nine would take perverse joy in pointing out how inhumane humans can be when their creature comforts are taken away.
La Forge and Data are ready to fire up the main deflector dish, and Geordi is barely up to the task, mentally. As it powers up, he forbiddingly tells Data that it better work, since they won’t last much longer.
But it does work. At failing, that is. The beam from the deflector immediately fizzles out in the most unsatisfying way possible. I mean, who could have known that firing a shitload of energy into the energy absorbing rift would fail? Main deflector dish, you need to stay in your lane, buddy. And keep deflecting any real responsibility away from yourself, because you are not it, my dude.
Riker and Picard resemble a couple of wrinkled shirts that have been in the bottom of a hamper for weeks and somehow look more deflated after their attempt fails. Worf just leaves his post, and a concerned Troi follows him to his quarters, where he is apparently at his wit’s end and about to commit suicide with a dagger. Troi pleads with him to put the weapon down and he admits to the paralyzing fear that has taken root in his heart. They’re both great here, especially Dorn as he emotes the terror he believes is waiting for them. She convinces him not to off himself, and tenderly takes his hand to escort him to sickbay.
Data has assumed command of the Enterprise as per Picard’s wishes. Continuing to try and reach Hagan, Troi hears him think “eyes in the dark,” and realizes that they’ve been having the same dream. Except it’s not a dream, but telepathic communication from unseen aliens. The darkness in Picard’s ready room visually communicates their dire situation. Data theorizes that the aliens’ communication could be what is disrupting everyone’s sleep, and that there could be another ship on the other side of the rift where they can’t be detected. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to reach them or block their signals. Except through dreams, and Troi speaks of her experience in helping patients through directed lucid dreaming.
Data’s concrete thinking leads him to conclude that the aliens’ distress signal is an invitation to combine their resources so that they can create an explosion to free themselves. Searching through the ship’s inventory of elements on hand, Troi stops him as she scrolls past hydrogen. She realizes that its atomic structure could be the continual references to “eyes in the dark” and “one moon circles” that her and Hagan have been assaulted with in their dreams. Data wonders if the aliens therefore have hydrogen, or if they need hydrogen? Troi thinks that a distress signal would be asking for what they need, not what they already have.
It all makes a certain amount of linear logical sense, but it’s also a hypothesis built on several extremely tenuous nested assumptions. But it’s an admirable way of setting up the conclusion, so off we go!
Crusher uses a doohickey to put Troi into the appropriate brain wave state. Data informs Troi that she’ll only have two minutes to reach the aliens, since that’s all the power the Enterprise has left. They’ll even have to draw power from life support to enact the hydrogen streams, and Data informs the crew to get to shelter areas.
In Ten Forward, Gillespie doesn’t like the sound of that and refuses to… stay in a safe area so he can stay alive? His anger doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but he is sleep-deprived, and the Scareidiots of Dumbass III are a very mysterious and enigmatic people, with a rich idiotic culture steeped in idiotic traditions… of idiocy. O’Brien tries to shut him up, forgetting that freedom of speech is near and dear to the Scareidiots. The double-fists start flying and Guinan is able to smooth things over with a blast from her hilariously oversized space rifle. Ah, the second amendment! Now that’s something the Scareidiots can respect!
In her dreams, Troi again flies toward those haunting eyes in the dark as they continue to call out to her. It’s a tense sequence as it cross-cuts between that and the Enterprise expelling twin streams of hydrogen with its last bit of energy reserves. As the time left dwindles, Troi seems to finally reach the aliens, as a spectral glowing humanoid outline materializes. It’s such a bizarre and otherworldy image and almost seems more at home in an X-Files episode, but it’s really cool and communicates how weird and scary dreams can be. And how it might feel to touch the mind of an alien species.
The Enterprise’s hydrogen hoses shut off with no effect and just as the dread begins to set in, the viewscreen lights up with a massive explosion. Data plots a course out of the rift, and coming out the other direction is a glowing blue alien ship. Like in the dream, it’s an indistinct shape that doesn’t resemble anything. Combined with the fact that no formal, direct communication is ever established with these beings, they make for one of the most enigmatic aliens in all of Star Trek.
But there’s something very refreshing and memorable about that – with so many bumpy-headed humanoids in the franchise, the idea of aliens can feel a little pedestrian in Star Trek. So it’s nice to shake that up with a species that is totally beyond any normal understanding or communication. These aliens’ method of talking terrorizes telepaths and slowly annihilates the minds of everyone else; there’s an Eldritch Horror vibe to it that’s compelling and scary. It’s like being stuck in an elevator with Cthulu. But they’re not purposefully evil, just accidentally destructive because of their extremely alien nature. Although they unintentionally killed an entire ship’s crew, rudimentary communication and teamwork was possible, and that’s a very Star Trek philosophy at its core.
Troi wakes in a good mood as the Enterprise clears the rift. Data sets a course for the nearest starbase and orders Captain Picard to bed, who dutifully leaves the bridge to get the best night’s sleep of his life. And no doubt Guinan will tuck in Gillespie with a juice box and some animal crackers. It’s a trademark breezy Next Generation ending as the ship happily warps away from the most intense cosmic horror it’s ever experienced. All bad dreams eventually end, and the light of day brings a clear sense of relief.
True to its title, “Night Terrors” is a harrowing nightmare that pushes the Enterprise crew to its mental limits and beyond. The rising terror is expertly done throughout, and even with an almost total lack of gore it still manages to be a chilling and intensely scary hour. But it doesn’t lose sight of the values of Star Trek, and features an alien presence that is more misunderstood than malevolent. Like the basic appeal of terror itself, that ambiguity can be as unsettling as it is mysterious.
Stray Observations:
- Several of the crewmembers have the weird and unsettling feeling that they’re not alone, and that something is waiting for them (a la poor Worf). This seems to be dismissed as just hallucinations and the slow melting of their brains from lack of REM sleep. But in reality they aren’t alone, and the telepathic communication from the aliens is not only disrupting their sleep but is probably also causing that presence in their minds. Troi is the only one who can directly hear it, but it’s also there with everyone, just on the edge of their perception. It’s a nice detail that doesn’t get underlined and is a great aspect of the terror here.
- The Brattain‘s name was misspelled on the model as “Brittain”, and their are several hilariously up close shots that go out of their way to highlight that error. I can’t recall another ship’s name on the hull outside of the Enterprise being so front and center on camera, so of course it’s spelled wrong. LOL, oopsie.
- I never realized before now that this episode aired right before “Identity Crisis,” which is a nice one-two punch of creepy horror. In that episode Worf also (correctly) senses that they’re not alone and being watched by invisible aliens from beyond their perception.
- Troi mentions that Betazoid REM sleep is on a different frequency than humans, hence her altered experience as compared to everyone else. With all the aliens on board, you’d think there would be more people on different wavelengths, and perhaps some that would also be immune like Data?
- The story goes to lengths to isolate the Enterprise to a kind of insane degree. After 10 days of being stuck, Picard notes that because of their distance from Starfleet, they can’t expect a response for another two weeks. Holy hell, how far out are you people? (This far out, maaaaaaan) One would think that Starfleet might coordinate such deep space exploration with an interconnected web of ships so that no ship is more than a few days or a week out of contact with the rest of the fleet. Especially since shit like the stuff in this episode seems common. If the Enterprise is really that distant, than it’s going to be a long-ass journey at the episode’s end… almost a month to the nearest starbase? And since when is the Enterprise a deep space exploratory vessel? It’s the flagship, and full of kids! Stay where we can see you, bubbe.
- The episode is great, but several elements are recycled from other episodes. The ship previously got stuck in an energy-draining region in “Booby Trap.” A doomed Miranda-class vessel full of corpses like in “Unnatural Selection.” And releasing hydrogen during the climax from “Samaritan Snare.” Binary stars from “Allegiance.” A doomed captain’s final log entry from “Contagion” and “Booby Trap.” An ensign having trouble with the helm and Riker not being able to sleep will be plot points in “Schisms.” Everyone being crabby and O’Brien coming to blows with a random dickhead in Ten Forward from “Sarek.” Data and Troi teaming up to figure out aliens’ mindsets from “The Loss” and “Darmok.” The crew going mad and killing each other from “The Tholian Web.” The Animated Series and Voyager also loved them some energy-draining voids in space!
- The physics of the Tyken’s Rift are kind of nonsensical. The guy who first discovered it escaped by creating a chemical explosion that overloaded it. But somehow the Enterprise’s almost 300 photon torpedoes cannot possibly match this much energy? Or any of their antimatter storage pods? They can’t rig some kind of super bomb with all that antimatter? While commanding Voyager, Tuvok once detonated one of these pods like a super-duper torpedo to disable a bunch of Vidiian vessels. If all else fails, couldn’t the warp core be ejected and detonated to break its hold? Or several of the shuttlercrafts? Or separating the ship and blowing up the drive section? Damn, maybe I should’ve gone to Starfleet engineering academy. I see the commercials on in the middle of the day, but I never pulled the trigger on it.
And speaking of “Booby Trap” (and I really don’t like to) – in the climax of that episode the Enterprise gets unstuck by using its thrusters (instead of impulse or warp engines) and successfully dodging the asteroids until it’s free. Since thrusters don’t emit energy, they wouldn’t be cancelled out by an energy-draining force, right? So why can’t the Enterprise just thrust its way ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) out of the Tyken’s rift? There isn’t even anything to dodge! That would seem to be one of the main purposes of thrusters – so that a ship can maneuver when its engines or power reserves are hindered. Sure, it would be slow, but the ship is stuck in this thing for like weeks. Just get that momentum going and ride it out until you’re free!
- The behind the scenes notes on this episode are fascinating, because everyone involved seemed to hate it. The story, the Troi flying sequence, etc. I honestly don’t understand it, and I think it’s a very memorable and well-done horror story! And my tastes are objectively impeccable. To each their own, I guess.
