History NightmareFuel / StarTrekTheNextGeneration

** Although there's no actual evidence that the "Bozeman" suffered the same time loop, it's possible that they simply encountered a temporal rift similar to the one the Enterprise-C encountered in [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E15YesterdaysEnterprise Yesterday's Enterprise]].

** "[[TwoPlusTortureMakesFive How many lights do you see?]]" The fact that this part is a [[ShoutOut loving tribute]] to the famous "How many fingers?" scene from Orwell's ''Literature/{{1984}}'' (where a Torture Technician villain coerced the protagonist into seeing five fingers instead of four) doesn't make it one bit less nightmarish.

** And speaking of unanswered questions, this is the last episode Ensign Sariel Rager appears in. What happened to her? [[note]]Riker saved her from the alien experiments and dragged her back onto the Enterprise. According to the Memory Alpha article[[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sariel_Rager]], she stays with the Enterprise through to Star Trek Nemesis before transfering to the U.S.S. Titan for the novel series.[[/note]]

** A popular piece of {{Fanon}} (which Creator/JohnDeLancie has voiced support for) is that Q's kid from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' is in fact Trelane, which means Q ''is'' the benevolent (well, less malevolent) parental figure. [[note]] The novel Q Squared[[https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Q-Squared]] establishes that Trelane, while not Q's child (having been written before Voyager), is actually a member of the Q Continuum and became so powerful he nearly obliterates Q. [[/note]]

* Jarok speaks to Data in Ten Forward, remarking how many Romulan cyberneticists who would love to be this close to him. Data says he does not believe that he does not find the idea appealing. Jarok says, in a chilling tone, "Nor should you."

---->'''Crazy Riker:''' We won't go back! You don't know what it's like in our universe! The Federation's gone! ''The Borg is everywhere!'' We're one of the last ships left. ''Please'', you have to help us!
---->'''Captain Riker:''' ...I'm sorry, but we have no choice. If this works everything will go back to--

* A great deal of Ron Jones' score for the episode is quite creepy, particularly the music that plays when the ''Enterprise'' crew get their first glimpse of the Borg cube and when the Borg drone appears in Engineering.

* Karnas's threat that he isn't just going to kill hostages, he's going to do it ''[[ToThePain as slowly and painfully as possible]]''. Which fortunately never happens.

[[AC:[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E1TheChild The Child]]]]
* Troi is forcibly impregnated in her sleep by a non-corporeal life-form, after which she goes through an [[ExpressDelivery accelerated pregnancy]], gives birth, and grows attached to an alien child who then [[DeathOfAChild dies]] within a few days. The creepiest part is that the episode seems completely unaware that any of this is unsettling or traumatic, and plays it all as a heartwarming TearJerker.

** Alternatively, at the end of the episode, Picard remarks that Q may have been doing them a service by preparing them to fight the Borg. It's possible that by killing off eighteen crew members, Q has saved billions or even trillions of lives. Q may be brushing off those deaths as "worth it" without explicitly explaining himself.

[[AC:[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E6Legacy Legacy]]]]
* While something of a BitchInSheepsClothing, Ishara Yar will spend the rest of her life regretting two things, one not going with Tasha when she had the chance, and two, betraying the Enterprise. As she admits in this episode, she has never had a real friend, and she chose to betray the only one she ever knew.

** And more possible NightmareFuel, remember the ''Enterprise'' was destroyed in ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'' and Moriarty's fate has ''never'' been revealed. Though ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' actually has Moriarty's fate as part of the backstory. [[note]]Eventually, the Soong Foundation, a group pushing for hologram rights who helped [[Series/StarTrekVoyager The Doctor]] get rights as a sentient being, found out about Moriarty by accident. His little simulation had been maintained in an isolated lab with heavy security, and the Soong Foundation had been lobbying for his release for years since he could get his wish now, with mobile emitters starting to be mass-produced, but Starfleet Security kept shutting them down by pointing out that Moriarty might not take it well. While they sympathized, they wouldn't let him go because they weren't sure if they let him out for real that he'd be able to handle it and not pull what he did again. [[StartXToStopX It's even implied that Moriarty is literally the reason that the Federation Council is holding back on hologram rights, simply because they fear him specifically.]] And who's to say they're not right to fear him? He is ''Moriarty''; while he'd seemingly abandoned villainous pursuits in favor of seeking freedom from the holodeck, who's to say what goal he would more on to next?[[/note]]. Given his appearance during season 3 of ''Series/StarTrekPicard'', it would seem he did survive the ''Enterprise'''s destruction [[spoiler:(along with the ''Enterprise'''s saucer section itself)]].
** You can't bring up "Ship in a Bottle" and not mention the most terrifying thing about the ending: Picard's musing that all of them might be [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall simulations in an elaborate ruse sitting in a box on someone's table]]...and that's exactly what they are! What if that's all ''we'' are?!
*** Then, just like the show, we'd better do our best to stay entertaining for as long as physically possible. Lest we get cancelled.

* The first crewmember to get the polywater infection once Geordi returns to the ship is Wesley, the first of many times the show would unintentionally highlight the danger of Starfleet's practice of letting starship crewmembers bring their families along.
* Beverly's realizations that her son, and later herself, is infected.

* The simple fact that nobody on the ship spreads the polywater infection with malicious intent, even under its influence. Mostly, the spread is facilitated by the crew's empathy for each other, and the fact that this virus has ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries twice]]'' flown under the radar of the most advanced starships' contamination protocols.
* Tasha brings up her infamous backstory, particularly the rape gangs, in this episode. And what ends up prompting this? Tasha, under the influence of the virus, dragging Data into her room and proceeding to sleep with Data, the virus impairing their ability to consent. There's little wonder that she later chooses to tell him that "it never happened."

* The Traveler and Kosinski's "warp tests" send the ''Enterprise'' to speeds way beyond what warp drive technology can achieve, landing them in a galaxy so far away (2.7 million light years, more specifically) that it would take ''300 years'' for the ship to return home with the technology it has. When they try to return home with the help of the duo, the problem worsens, as they've found themselves exponentially further away from their home galaxy, in what can only be described as an ''acid trip'' at the edge of the universe. As if the possibility of never returning home within any reasonable time frame isn't enough, YourMindMakesItReal kicks in and anything the crew thinks of, such as old pets, long-deceased mothers, and fires, becomes reality. It's only thanks to thinking ''hard'' about returning home that the ''Enterprise'' itself gets out of this mess.

* Wesley may be a CreatorsPet, but him getting ''impaled'' and ''screaming'' isn't something you see every day.

* That ''damned'' Betazoid gift box, especially if you're a little kid the first time you see it.

* A [[FountainOfYouth reverse aging]] serum that allows Admiral Jameson to stand up again sounds pretty awesome at first. Then he starts to visibly get younger and is fit like he never contracted the terminal illness that bound him to his wheelchair, and it becomes frightening. Then he becomes a young adult, and it just seems so ''wrong'' that this was the same man who was old and crippled a few days ago. [[GoneHorriblyRight Finally]], his body seems to become stuck as a adolescent whom Karnas can't recognize at first (but his organs are ''still'' aging backward) before [[DeathByDeaging dying of reverse aging]].
* Karnas's threat that he isn't just going to kill hostages, he's going to do it ''as slowly and painfully as possible''. Which fortunately never happens.

* The Aldeans' abduction of the children from the ''Enterprise''. Particularly the reaction from Alexandra's mother when she is kidnapped.

** And the fact that that was precisely the point of the test! Using your psychological profile to tailor the scenario that will be most difficult, and therefore most terrifying, for you. And they do this to every single officer. Even Worf was still visibly shaken by his test, which presumably took place several years ago.

* The final drone, which the away team stress they are completely unequipped to handle with only three people, is destroyed and/or was beamed away before it can really do much damage, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine just ''what'' it would've done to them and the surrounding area if it had been given the chance.

* Armus, the amorphous and vile remnant of some long-lost race's attempt to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence.

** The ending confrontation with Possessed!Remmick, starting with the {{squick}}y way his neck squirms and throbs. Then Picard and Riker blast off his head, complete with burning his skin off a split-second before it explodes, and a big worm-like parasite explodes from his body, before they fire at it, causing it to explode it as well. (Said big “mother” parasite is the page picture above.)

** The end of the episode, where Data reports that the signal that Possessed!Remmick had been sending appeared to be a homing beacon, aimed at an unexplored region of the galaxy, and sent to direct ''something'' towards Earth. The final shot of the episode is of empty space, and the unsettling, repeating sound of that transmission.

* When Data and Worf examine the satellite, we get several nice views of [[CryonicsFailure rotting corpses whose cold sleep chambers had failed]].

* Troi is forcibly impregnated in her sleep by a non-corporeal life-form, after which she goes through an accelerated pregnancy, gives birth, and grows attached to an alien child who then dies within a few days. The creepiest part is that the episode seems completely unaware that any of this is unsettling or traumatic, and plays it all as a heartwarming TearJerker.

*** Perhaps worse then that, one of the only rules the Q impose on themselves and enforce with any regularity is this: "Do not. Provoke. The Borg." Which brings up some horrifying implications of its own. What happens if a Q gets injected with nanoprobes? Yes, they can warp reality, but their bodies do seem to be solid, given Sisko was able to physically attack him (Q may have allowed that hit to happen, though). Also yes, they can warp reality at will, but they need to do something to make that happen, how long of a reaction time does that require and is it less then it would take for nanites to incapacitate them?

* A Borg drone beams into main engineering and scans the ship's computer. It takes two phaser blasts to kill it, but is immediately replaced by another drone, and when Worf fires again, the phaser blast is blocked by the drone's shields. The drone then starts seriously messing with the ''Enterprise'' systems while staring very creepily at Picard and crew.

* Kevin, the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Douwd]] from the titular episode. TheReveal of what he's done is a major TearJerker, but it's also mind-bogglingly horrific. Posing as a human, he fell for a human woman, Rishon, and lived on a Federation colony planet with her. Being a pacifist, Kevin never used his immense power for any harm, nor did Rishon ever learn the truth, until the savage Husnock, after multiple invasion attempts, killed Rishon along with the other 11,000 defenders of their world. Kevin, upon finding the corpse of the women he loved, became enraged, and finally lashed out with his powers, ''killing every Husnock in the universe '''with a thought'''''. Every single one. A race of approximately 50,000,000,000 beings, utterly erased from existence. So immense is the scope of what Kevin has done, that Picard decides to simply leave him to [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone his grief]] as well as his semi-imaginary wife and leave the planet quickly. After all, no one in Starfleet, much less Picard and the ''Enterprise'' crew, could ever be in a position to judge something of this magnitude.
** And say, is something of that magnitude not enough for you? Add ''Troi'' to that horror-pile as, during the episode, thanks to a nervous Kevin, she gets the melody from a music box implanted in her head. It's an admittedly pretty tune, that plays like an ear worm with perfect clarity in her head, getting subtly louder with each repetition. Again, and again. And again. '''And again. And again. ''And again. And again. And again.''''' Halfway through the episode, Troi is a crying and screaming mess, pleading for ''anything'' to stop it. As a desperate attempt to spare Troi any more pain, Dr. Crusher puts her into a ''medically-induced coma''... and it's implied ''that doesn't work.''
** Some more FridgeHorror: [[EldritchAbomination The Q]] apparently stay away from him. [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter Think about it.]]

* While the overall tone of the episode is melancholy, there's something undeniably eerie about "Marla Aster". Even if her motivations are ultimately benevolent, her unchanging serene expression, her flat approximation of motherly love, and her single-minded obsession with abducting Jeremy and taking him to live with her, the whole situation is downright unsettling. Even her first appearance was characterized with her [[SurprisinglyCreepyMoment appearing out-of-focus in the background complete with a creepy music sting.]]

** While undergoing cybernetic surgery, which included new body parts and the pigment sucked from his skin, Picard is still awake enough to shed a single tear.

* While something of a Bitch in sheep's clothing, Ishara Yar will spend the rest of her life regretting two things, one not going with Tasha when she had the chance, and two, betraying the Enterprise. As she admits in this episode, she has never had a real friend, and she chose to betray the only one she ever knew.

* The amnesia-inducing virus that Riker suffers from in this episode. Imagine an apparently harmless virus getting into your system and lying dormant for years, and then coming alive and erasing your entire memory from the intervening period. In Riker's case, sixteen years of his life simply vanish from his mind. One minute, he's fine, then he skips forward sixteen years without any knowledge of what happened in between. Fortunately, that's not what's actually happening.

** And this mantra drove the one Betazoid on the doomed ship ''catatonic'' '''and''' ''threatened most everyone else with REM sleep deprivation''[[note]]which, over time, degenerates your mental state and abilities, eventually ending with paranoia and insanity[[/note]] -- at least it was ''only'' an attempt to communicate.

* Seeing O'Brien, ''[[NiceGuy O'Brien]]'' of all people, being deeply suspicious that Keiko is cheating on him. It's just so unsettling to see him so openly hostile towards her.

* When Riker and Picard are in the turbolift and begin discussing whether they've had any disturbing hallucinations, Riker comments on going into his quarters sometimes and having an unnerving feeling of someone there, "waiting for [him]." People with anxieties or phobias may relate to this unsettling feeling quite well. It gets even worse when Riker does go to his quarters, intending to rest, and is visibly very uneasy as he seems to be cautiously searching his quarters for signs of someone, and is almost frightened and jumpy with every noise he hears, that may or may not be his imagination...

* InsaneAdmiral Norah Satie shows what happens when devotion to any cause is taken ''way'' too far, to where she starts persecuting loyal Starfleet officers to satisfy her own paranoia. What makes it even more significant to modern-day viewers is that we have yet to encounter the usual ''Trek'' threats like evil aliens or any kind of NegativeSpaceWedgie, but such fanaticism is a thing that really happens.

** Now, here's the FridgeHorror to this - what was underneath that point in the deck below? Because just imagine if she was standing over, say, a daycare section, or someone's quarters, and a pair of legs phase through the ceiling. And then someone has to remove her remains...

* The episode is terrifying enough to watch as a child, but understanding the literal MindRape implications of the telepathic attacks makes it especially horrifying. Especially so for Troi, whose memory of having sex with Riker is turned into Jev raping her. And then after she wakes up, he ''physically'' assaults her.

* Put simply, the ''incredibly'' unsettling notion that the crew's minds could be wiped and the entire crew be turned against a technologically inferior civilization without even realizing it. Just the notion itself is ParanoiaFuel.
** The true form of "First Officer [=MacDuff=]", even though it's only shown for a few seconds.

* The ''Bozeman'' becomes a bit of a running joke, being mentioned or referenced in a number of episodes. The last we ever canonically hear about the ship, though, is in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', when it's being ordered to attack a Borg cube. It spent ninety years in limbo, only to be sent to her likely death a few years later.

* Clara's new {{imaginary friend}} turns out to not only be real, but an evil alien. So you have a cute little girl telling another cute little girl that if she won't play her way, she can just stay and die with all the others.

** Applying FridgeLogic to this episode makes it even worse. It's established that the people who are out of phase aren't able to interact with matter. This means that the out-of-phase people don't need air, or else it would have been a very short episode. Given that they don't need air, we can surmise they probably aren't affected by changes in temperature or pressure. Now apply all this to the Romulan who got shoved through the hull of the ship, last seen drifting off into space unable to counter the momentum of the push that sent him through the hull. Instead of dying a relatively quick death from exposure to space, the poor bastard will instead drift through space until he finally dies of dehydration.
*** Apparently, people out of phase are still affected by gravity and can feel pain. Add into this potential immortality and, well, he's going to have to drift by a star eventually...
** There's some NightmareRetardant here, however.[[note]]Geordi is shown at the end of the episode to have gotten pretty hungry over two days of not having anything to eat, so at least some ordinary metabolic needs are established to exist in the phased state. If you want to go with the "they don't need air in the phased state" explanation, instead of the "writers hand-waved stuff like needing air because otherwise they'd have to have 42 minutes of technobabble instead of a plot", then you also need to account for the fact that the phased characters were repeatedly shown to be subject to gravity, yet also able to ''not fall through the deck''. For that matter, you need to account for the way Ro was able to touch her helm console when she went to the bridge, which blatantly contradicts the very next scene, in which Geordi sticks his hand straight through the pool table in Engineering. It's understandable that the writers hand-waved this stuff, because it would've been hard to make a worthwhile plot starting from "suddenly two major characters can no longer move or breathe, and no one else has the slightest idea what's happened to them". But, given all the glaring internal inconsistencies, it's pretty hard to do any useful extrapolation from the episode's premise.[[/note]]

* The demon worms that Barclay sees inside the transporter beam are creepy enough to the audience, but to someone like him who already has a phobia of transporters, it becomes all the more horrifying as we watch the previously shy and lovable Barclay slowly go insane as he thinks his mind is slipping away. True, at the end, he confronts his fear and learns that the worms are actually people trapped in the beam, but it's still scary to watch it all happen. Troi probably had to put in some serious overtime to handle that one.

** For the arachnophobes in the audience: O'Brien, trying to put Barclay at ease, brings up his own fear of spiders and explains how he got past it - he had to repair a Starbase with an infestation of Talarian hook spiders, whose legs are HALF A METER LONG.

** The specific scene where Riker learns that his arm has been ''severed and reattached'' while he was asleep.

* The episode doesn't end pleasantly, either. When the rift is sealed, ''something'' is shot through the rift and out the ''Enterprise'' before disappearing into space. The crew discusses everything that's happened and what the aliens' motivations were, with Data theorizing they could have just been curious explorers like they are. However, Riker grimly reminds them of the horrible experiments they went through, as well as the above-mentioned crewmember's death for seemingly no reason whatsoever, and says that whoever they were, they weren't just curious explorers. This leaves the episode with a bunch of very nasty questions. Who were these creatures? What did they want? What was that thing they sent through the ship before it left? Was it a probe to lead them there later? And in true NightmareFuel fashion...there are no answers to any of these...

** "How many lights do you see?" The fact that this part is a loving tribute to the famous "How many fingers?" scene from Orwell's ''1984'' (where a Torture Technician villain coerced the protagonist into seeing five fingers instead of four) doesn't make it one bit less nightmarish.

** Moriarty's fate as noted in FridgeHorror, since we later discover that, without regular maintenance, holograms can eventually suffer glitches that threaten to destabilize the entire program. Moriarty and his lady love are trapped in a portable holodeck, and are able to have their HappilyEverAfter... until the program starts to degrade! And they have no way of signalling the crew for help when that happens! ''[[YouMonster You bastards!]]''
*** Keep in mind that this is Professor James Moriarty.[[note]]Not just that; Moriarty with his intellect ''upgraded'' from the original source material. He combines the diabolical brilliance of Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis with Data's ability to process information faster than any human.[[/note]] He ''will'' eventually figure out that he's trapped in a simulation.

* The episode's serious MindScrew.

* If you never thought ''Lwaxana Troi'' could be scary, this episode will probably change your mind. One of the most powerful telepaths in an entire race of telepaths has devoted an incredible amount of time and resources into turning her mental landscape into a minefield for anyone, including herself, looking to find out her [[MyGreatestFailure deepest secret]].

* The entire episode plays on just about some of the WORST fears a parent could have, particularly watching your child die because your attention faltered for a split second and never being able to move on from that fact, evidenced by Lwaxana deleting ''seven years'' of journals she kept up with diligently to erase all memory of Kestra, her deceased daughter and Deanna's sister.

* When a few hundred alternate-timeline ''Enterprises'' pop up in the climax, we get a look at one of the most horrifying [[BadFuture Bad Futures]] in ''Trek'': One where the Borg ''won'', and Riker has been reduced to a [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/b/ba/Riker_gone_mad.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141225201810&path-prefix=en desperate and babbling madman]] piloting the ''Enterprise'' around, trying to run from them.
** Crazy!Riker is so desperate to prevent himself from returning to his own universe that he tries to ''kill Worf and thus endanger all of the multiverse in the process''.
*** Worf is with him. You can see him run from his console to try and fix the one that blows while he's talking. Which adds a weird element of FridgeHorror: Worf was probably manning tactical, meaning that when that version of the ''Enterprise'' was firing on Worf's shuttle, Worf was probably the one actually pulling the trigger.
---->'''Crazy!Riker:''' We won't go back! You don't know what it's like in our universe! The Federation's gone! ''The Borg is everywhere!'' We're one of the last ships left. ''Please'', you have to help us!

---->'''Crazy!Riker:''' '''NO, WE WON'T GO BACK!'''
** FridgeHorror or Fridge Sadness: The Borg were probably able to take over because Locutus was never returned to the ''Enterprise'' during that universe's version of the episode "The Best of Both Worlds" and the Borg used the information in Picard's mind to destroy the Federation.

* The scene just before Data's possession. While a diagnostic is being run on him, he tries to express something to Geordi, but is incapable of finding the words to describe it. When Geordi asks him about it, he replies "I do not know" in a totally uncertain tone that comes as close to real fear as Data has ever come without an emotion chip. Then the kicker, in a spine-chilling twist on Data's character trademark of persistent, endearing, and humorously blunt inquiries about human behavior and feeling:

* "Genesis" is pretty creepy in and of itself, but there is some disturbing FridgeHorror to the episode. Mid-way through the episode, Picard and Data end up finding the corpse of a crewman who had been killed at his post by a member of the de-evolved crew. When the episode ends, the cure has been applied to the ship and everything is back to normal, with little memory, if any at all, of what they were prior. So how many ''Enterprise'' crewmembers killed, and quite possibly [[IAmAHumanitarian ate]], their fellow crewmembers in their de-evolved state without even remembering it afterwards?
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV9lzsV_k6M Worf... open your mouth.]]" What follows is perhaps the single-most disturbing injury any one of the main cast is shown to receive. Beverly gets acidic, paralyzing venom sprayed into her face, causing her to fall screaming to the floor, completely writhing in pain. It takes about four people to hold her down long enough to sedate her and Nurse Ogawa later states that she had to be put into stasis before the venom could paralyze her nervous system and that she would need reconstructive surgery. Thankfully, the episode does not have Picard and Data finding her stasis pod before she's healed.

'''Computer:''' [[AC:[[WhamLine The universe is a spheroid region, seven hundred and five meters in diameter.]]]]

--->'''Computer:''' [[AC:No ship's structures exist forward of bulkhead three-four-two. Hull integrity now compromised on decks three through fifteen.]]\\

'''Computer:''' [[AC:[[RaceAgainstTheClock Four minutes, seventeen seconds.]]]]

** His response to Riker calling him out on the eighteen deaths when the Borg slice out a section of the ship is the truly terrifying thing: "[[ShutUpKirk Oh]], ''[[ShutUpKitk please]]''..." The cold dismissiveness of it... To a being like Q, those eighteen lives were worth less than ants under his boot. And in that moment, you realize that it's not just those nameless faceless unseen characters, but even our heroes who fall under that category. [[BewareTheSillyOnes It's an unsettling reminder that Q, for all his puckish pranks and amusements, is genuinely a threat on his own]], and he is so far above the Federation on the food chain that the lives of a handful of Starfleet officers mean absolutely nothing to him.

** His response to Riker calling him out on the eighteen deaths when the Borg slice out a section of the ship is the truly terrifying thing: "Oh, ''please''." The cold dismissiveness of it... To a being like Q, those eighteen lives were worth less than ants under his boot. And in that moment, you realize that it's not just those nameless faceless unseen characters, but even our heroes who fall under that category. It's an unsettling reminder that Q, for all his puckish pranks and amusements, is genuinely a threat on his own, and he is so far above the Federation on the food chain that the lives of a handful of Starfleet officers mean absolutely nothing to him.

** And more possible NightmareFuel, remember the ''Enterprise'' was destroyed in ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'' and Moriarty's fate has ''never'' been revealed. Though ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' actually has Moriarty's fate as part of the backstory. [[note]]Eventually, the Soong Foundation, a group pushing for hologram rights who helped [[Series/StarTrekVoyager The Doctor]] get rights as a sentient being, found out about Moriarty by accident. His little simulation had been maintained in an isolated lab with heavy security, and the Soong Foundation had been lobbying for his release for years since he could get his wish now, with mobile emitters starting to be mass-produced, but Starfleet Security kept shutting them down by pointing out that Moriarty might not take it well. While they sympathized, they wouldn't let him go because they weren't sure if they let him out for real that he'd be able to handle it and not pull what he did again. [[StartXToStopX It's even implied that Moriarty is literally the reason that the Federation Council is holding back on hologram rights, simply because they fear him specifically.]] And who's to say they're not right to fear him? He is ''Moriarty''; while he'd seemingly abandoned villainous pursuits in favor of seeking freedom from the holodeck, who's to say what goal he would more on to next?[[/note]]

** And it gets worse. Her work with the Cairn, especially Maques' daughter Hedril, brings the memory back to the forefront, causing her to repeatedly start breaking down and becoming more emotionally unstable, despite fighting to keep her usual personality intact. When her subconscious retreats into herself and Deanna has to confront her in her own mind, Lwaxana seems perfectly willing to allow herself to die rather than face the past. This episode shows perfectly how monsters and tense atmosphere is scary enough, but the loss of a child in the most scariest way possible can be way scarier proving that even in the future the most terifign thing in the world is for a parent to lose their child.


[[AC:[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E13SubRosa Sub Rosa]]]]
* Beverly is seduced by an energy being who claims to be an 800-year-old human ghost. It does this by absorbing into her, and she reacts with visible ecstasy. The being ends up taking over her mind and trapping her on his planet, all while claiming to love her and only wanting to make her happy.
** The moment where her grandmother's corpse ''sits up in its coffin'' during a lightning storm ''with demonic, glowing blue eyes''.
** Very fitting, as the script for that episode was based on a story written by Creator/AnneRice.
** The scene where the ghost first appears [[MirrorScare behind Beverly in her mirror]] could induce a heart attack.