Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E24 "The Next Phase"

• Does Geordi’s and Ro’s phase dimension include its own air, so that they can breathe and talk and not be heard by the others?
  • It's plausible that in the same way the chroniton field converted Ro, Geordi and the Romulan that they may have converted air from the Romulan ship and moved it into the phase dimension, particularly if this field was never fully shut off. Depending on how long it'd been running, and assuming that (depending how physics worked in the out of phase state) it didn't immediately disperse, there could have been a decent amount of air in the vicinity of the Romulan ship (which was where the Enterprise was throughout the episode).
  • Other inconsistencies are why their invisibility is one-way (why does being out of phase make them invisible to the universe, but doesn't make the universe invisible to them?) and why they are still able to touch floors (since they are still affected by the ship's artificial gravity, one would expect it to pull them down through each deck and out into space).
    • Maybe the artificial gravity interacts with their chroniton field somehow?
• After Geordi and Ro discover that they're leaving chroniton particles on everything they touch, which are found very quickly by the crew, why the hell don't they try writing a message with their fingers, hands or footprints? For the rest of the episode, Ro and Geordi bounce technobabble off of each other, leave confusing bread crumbs for their shipmates, and yell futilely at people who they know can't hear them, while neither even suggests the possibility of writing a message. Not even when they discover that the ship is in mortal danger. Why in Q's name weren't they quickly writing "RO" "GEORDI" "ALIVE" "ROMULANS DANGEROUS" and "PHASE INVERTER" in huge letters on every surface near someone with a tricorder?
  • They may have been unsure that the scans would be accurate enough to determine the shape of the fields in that manner, particularly since there was no sign of a precedent with anyone observing that the shapes created by the fields resembled humanoid shapes.
  • Yeah, I'd guess they simply can't be that precise.
  • If the sensors were that precise, then La Forge and Ro wouldn't even have needed to write a message. It would be obvious by all the person-shaped patterns on the walls that these chroniton readings are more than just a random natural phenomenon.
• Where does this episode take place? Presumably there's some unclaimed space where both the Romulans and the Federation periodically operate without there being any talk of treaty violations (we see this in other episodes including "Tin Man," "Timescape" and "The Pegasus"). But why would the Romulans be doing this dangerous experiment outside of their own territory?
  • It's outside their territory? As in, if anything happens, their territory doesn't (technically) shrink?
  • There is quite a lot of territory that doesn't belong to either the Federation or Romulans, in fact. The Neutral Zone is just the buffer between them, pretty much there to keep them (theoretically) from trying to edge in on each other. Presumably Romulans could take the long way around to come at Federation space, but not only is that giving the Federation more time and opportunity to detect them, it's... still entering Federation space which amounts to the same thing.
    • No one is disputing the existence of unclaimed space, and he episode clearly doesn't take place in Federation space because then the Romulans being there would be a huge deal. But again, why are the Romulans not conducting this experiment securely in their own space? Even if they were naively not concerned about their own safety, wouldn't it at a minimum be a security risk?
    • They may have considered it dangerous and not wanted to pollute their own space.
    • Picard addressed this specifically in the episode. He suggested they were so far from Romulan space. "to avoid being picked up on Federation long range scans." So basically they didn't want the Federation to figure out what they were doing.
    • Not sure this makes a tonne of sense, though. So they're not doing it in or near Romulan space to avoid Federation long range scans — so instead they do it in a place where Federation starships operate?
    • They didn't expect anyone to stumble into them. The Enterprise only went out there to answer their distress beacon.
    • I think the confusion is why deep space would be any more secure for them than within their own territory. Yes, it's very unlikely that Starfleet would happen across them way out in the middle of nowhere, but in the heart of the Empire it must be virtually impossible. It would be like if Cold War-era US conducted top-secret experiments in Antarctica. Sure, it's far from the Soviet Union's prying eyes, but do you know what's even farther from their eyes? Kansas. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for the Romulans to leave the safety of their home (unless we're presuming Starfleet sensors can scan all of Romulan territory from across the Neutral Zone, which would raise a whole bunch of other questions).
• After establishing that Ro and Geordi can't touch physical objects, the camera zooms in specifically to show Ro's hand touching the back of her chair and then her fingers pressing against her helm terminal. You'd think that this is intentional foreshadowing about what objects they can touch, but it never comes up again. It's apparently just dramatic license.
  • Geordi is also seen sitting on a transporter pad.

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