“Phantasms” (7×06)
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This is a weird mishmash of an episode. The A-story is a horror story, complete with nightmarish visions, slasher sequences, and invisible vampires. The B-story, with Picard trying to get out of a tedious social function, is an uncooked comedic farce. The two are tonally at odds and fit together awkwardly.
I really liked how the episode presented Data’s nightmares. The lens choices feel wrong, in ways that distort our perception of space and distance. The imagery is not simply disturbing; it’s also just plain weird. The dream logic felt like how my nightmares feel. Troi is a talking cake that gets sliced up and consumed by her crewmates. Crusher is drinking out of Riker’s head like a giant mosquito. The miners don’t seem to have any connection to anything else at all.
And the cause of Data’s nightmares and the new warp core’s malfunctions are genuinely creepy. Invisible vampire stories have a way of sticking with me: “The Invisible Enemy” from “The Outer Limits” and “Folie à Deux” from “The X-Files” unnerved me for a long time after I first watched them.
The invisible vampires here are more like leeches that are out of phase with our normal perception of reality. If Data hadn’t violently attacked Troi while sleepwalking, they probably wouldn’t have been discovered until it was too late. While the violence is tame by today’s standards, it is still pretty shocking compared to the show’s usual norms.
Picard’s story was far less effective for me. I can believe that he would find a social gathering with the top brass tedious, but I didn’t buy that Picard would have skipped out on it for six years running. Picard, at this point in his life, was nothing if not dutiful. And Admiral Nakamura, suspicious of his spotty attendance record, trying to compel his attendance just felt like a cheap and easy gag.
It was nice to see La Forge have an admirer in Ensign Tyler. Without a doubt, the show had dragged out the “unlucky in love” shtick with La Forge to the point of staleness by this point. At the same time, I’m glad the episode didn’t have him reciprocating her feelings, given the power imbalance at play with him being her boss in Engineering.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
Data’s ability to dream originated in the “Birthright” two-parter, when a medical device that Julian Bashir had obtained from the Gamma Quadrant activated dormant circuits in Data’s neural net.
This episode features another appearance of Data’s cat Spot. I still find him tedious, but he wasn’t as bad here as some of the other appearances because he was used to add color to scenes rather than dominating a storyline. And yes, I know Spot is really a “she,” but Data was still using male pronouns in this episode.
This is the second of three appearances by Clyde Kusatsu as Admiral Nakamura. Given his shared history with Picard, having served with him aboard the USS Reliant, I would have liked to have seen him used more. Still, other than Nechayev, he’s probably the admiral that appears the most on the show without ultimately being revealed as corrupt or evil.
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