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| Barclay (Dwight Schultz) faces his greatest fear. |
The Enterprise comes to the aid of the Yosemite, a science vessel that was investigating a plasma streamer. The ship is found drifting in space, its chief engineer dead and the rest of its crew missing - apparently vanished without a trace. Geordi requests that Barclay (Dwight Schultz) accompany the team beaming over to the ship. Despite his terror of the transporter, Barclay eventually agrees.
When beaming back, the nervous engineer sees a worm-like creature within the transporter field - one which seems to swim toward him and bite his arm. He then becomes obsessed with the idea that he might have transporter psychosis, a condition that was once a possible side effect of transporting but which hasn't occurred in decades. He suffers what he believes are hallucinations of his arm turning a metallic color and worries that he is going insane.
When he finally decides to face his fears and recreate his transport, however, he discovers that he's not crazy. There really is something in the transporter beam: Something alive!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Listens with concern to the admiral's worries about a Cardassian attack having caused the explosion. He clearly takes the admiral's speculation seriously, but does not allow it to limit his investigation. When Barclay comes to the senior staff with his transporter observations, he sees that the engineer is serious and refuses to dismiss him, ordering a full diagnostic of every piece of affected equipment. His insistence on trusting his crew and keeping his mind open allows the problem to be fully solved, making Picard's admittedly small role in this episode a vital one.
Geordi: Levar Burton is not at his best here. There is something very forced about the couple of scenes in which Barclay comes up with an engineering idea that Geordi appears not to have considered. Maybe because it diminishes Geordi's own engineering abilities to have Barclay come up with solutions that, in any other episode, Geordi would have provided. Burton is far better in the scenes where he's acting as Barclay's friend and supervisor, but this is still a rare "off" day for him.
O'Brien: Responds very sympathetically to Barclay's transporter fear, telling the skittish engineer about his own fear of spiders and how he had to once do a critical repair around a spider infestation. The story doesn't actually do much to soothe Barclay, but it is a nice gesture. Also reinforcing O'Brien's basic decency is how obviously he sees through Barclay's story about collecting tricorder readings. After Barclay confesses, O'Brien agrees to send him through the ionized transporter beam in any case, acknowledging his understanding of the man's need to know whether he is going crazy or whether something really is there.
Barclay: After sitting Season Five out, Dwight Schultz's Barclay returns for his third episode. Though his work confidence has greatly increased from his first appearance, he remains a tense ball of neuroses. "Perhaps ignorance really is bliss," he muses, reflecting that he might be less afraid of things like using the transporter if he didn't know so much about how they worked. He also knows just a bit too much about himself. He's aware that he tends to be jumpy and nervous, so he assumes that the effects of transport are all inside his own head. Of course, if Barclay were to seek help as soon as problems began, then this episode would have difficulty sustaining its full length.
THOUGHTS
Dwight Schultz's twitchy, nervous, yet intelligent Barclay has been a nicely human addition to the fabric of this series. The only problem I've really had with Barclay up to this point is that he's been showcased in episodes that I've found to be... somewhat less than compelling. Hollow Pursuits had good character work but a weak story. The Nth Degree had nice visuals and concepts, but didn't quite connect for me on some level.
Realm of Fear finally provides me with a Barclay episode that I can say I fully enjoyed. It's not the series at its best by any means, but it's solid entertainment. Schultz's performance is particularly good, Colm Meaney's O'Brien gets a nice supporting role, the special effects are eye-catching. It's all definitely enjoyable.
It is just as definitely a "B" episode, mind you, one that doesn't leave a lot of meaty material for me to discuss. One of the more interesting moments is one that's completely irrelevent to the actual story, as the admiral wonders if this could be the work of the Cardassians. Given that the Cardassians aren't even mentioned again here, I suspect that throwaway is there to keep them alive as a threat for later shows. And, of course, for Deep Space 9, whose launch was not far off when this episode aired.
As a piece unto itself, Realm of Fear doesn't leave me with a lot to chew over. But it's engaging and fun in the moment. That's enough for me to rate it a successful episode, even it's one I'm likely to forget within a few weeks of watching.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Previous Episode: Time's Arrow
Next Episode: Man of the People
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