‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Retro Recap – ‘Schisms’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

For the most part, the Star Trek Universe has done its best to steer clear of throwing shout outs to or analyzing viral popular culture trends and it makes sense as to why. Because to do so would be counterproductive to what this saga stands for, since the only ‘cool’ things to do in the 22nd Century and beyond are to work toward a better tomorrow and to be a better person, and by not chasing trends, the franchise has been able instead, to dig deep into heavier matters. Such as commentary on our modern world and the issues that have been plaguing us for decades on end. But despite doing a fine job of steering clear of pop culture trends… now and again the draw of them seemed downright irresistible for some of the producers and they would in fact instruct the writers to inject such stuffs into stories with… rough results. 
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For instance, throwing a little sex appeal into Star Trek: Enterprise, since that was the hot thing to do on television at the time, was off putting to fans, as was trying to be kitschy with famous people in Star Trek: Discovery. Since the mention of Elon Musk as some sort of legendary scientific mind… went sideways when Elon felt the need to offer up some woefully dangerous views regarding the pandemic. If anything, only one show in this storied saga has managed to do a decent job with pop culture references and that just so happened to be Star Trek: The Next Generation. For back in the 1990s, alien abduction stories suddenly became all the rage in popular media and that motivated the production team and writers’ room to assemble a story that toyed with that notion in ‘Schisms’.

Which… seems like quite the odd plot to put in a series where humanity travels the stars and interacts with aliens in a peaceful manner, but the story did manage to assemble a fine way to accomplish this. All by having a species from another dimension, one composed of solanogen, become curious about the crew of the Enterprise when the ship conducted experiments near a massive region of space that had been heretofore unexplored. And they satiate that curiosity by straight up kidnapping several members of the crew to conduct scientific experiments upon them and where this part of the story works well… is in the mystery surrounding all of this. Because it takes hard work from Counselor Troi and those who’ve been abducted to figure out that something nefarious is happening here and that leads to some genuinely eerie moments.

The kind where the audience can experience the fear and horrifying realization as to what’s happening to this innocent bunch in real time and sadly… the truth about the matter and the plan to stop these aliens from poking around further, is where this story begins to falter. Because, it offers little new to the audience. Since we are treated to a by the numbers finale, wherein the crew scrambles to close the door these aliens use to come through and where Commander Riker has to play action hero to save himself and Ensign Regan from a horrible fate at the mottled hands of these aliens and that’s just disappointing to say the least. Since TNG is well-known for always spicing up anything familiar. But alas, all we get here are cliché cop outs, and resolution that is horrendously unfulfilling for certain.

Simply because, in the end; these aliens are aliens of the week. Since we never hear another word about them and that’s odd too. Since this kind of encounter and curiosity shouldn’t be a one off and kudos to Star Trek Online for being the vessel that took the time to explore more about these beings and to offer some kind of a follow up to their story. But all of that aside, this really is nothing more than a so-so episode. One that really did start off strong before puttering out, but it surprisingly, does a decent job of answering the pop culture call. Because it did find a way to create a relevant story in a universe where such things shouldn’t happen and it captured the fear and the zeitgeist of this early 90s Sci-Fi obsession and now that we’ve come to the end of this up and down mission, we can definitely turn our attention to quite the exciting adventure. One that just so happens to feature the return of one of the finest frenemies to ever grace the bridge of the 1701-D, courtesy of a grand a morality crisis for the Q Continuum. Until next time.  

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