History Recap / StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms

The ''Enterprise'' is on a routine mission to chart an unusually dense globular cluster. Riker starts the morning feeling unusually tired and arrives late for the morning briefing in engineering. After some technobabble discussion on how best to speed up the charting of the cluster, Data reminds Riker of his poetry recital in Ten Forward. At the recital, while most of the attendees are merely bored, Riker can barely stay awake, and falls asleep in the middle of Data's "Ode to Spot."

* AnotherDimension: Subspace has always been among the most loosely-defined fictional concepts in Star Trek, but this episode takes it to a new level with La Forge's revelation that it contains an infinite number of domains which, based on Riker's experience, have (or at least ''can'' have) their own spacetime dimensions and intelligent life.

* AmbiguousEnding: Much is left unanswered by the end. Who were the aliens? What did they want with the crew? Will they ever try to enter our universe again? The tone of the episode implies a sinister answer to all of these questions.

* ArtisticLicenseMadicine: The technique used by Troi to help crew members remember their experiences is ''exactly'' the way one is ''not'' supposed to interview trauma survivors. Talking as a group encourages people to subconsciously one-up each other. Humans also tend to want to agree with other people who've been through similar experiences, thus reinforcing their stories whether true or not. She also asks a ''ton'' of leading questions. This is a recipe for confabulation, in other words, just making crap up to agree with the therapist and other patients. (It's also very much TruthInTelevision for many abuse or abductee support groups, with therapists encouraging their patients to expand their stories, usually validating whatever theory the therapist favors.)

* AbortedArc: Originally this episode was meant to begin a story arc dealing with the unidentified aliens. However, due to production issues, the crew were ultimately unsatisfied with the final product, leading to plans for further episodes being scrapped, resulting in an AmbiguousEnding.

Riker goes to Sick Bay about his fatigue, where he reports feeling constantly exhausted and on edge despite getting a full night's sleep as far as he can tell. Crusher doesn't find anything physically wrong with him and so sends him home with a recipe for a warm milk toddy and an invitation to return tomorrow if it doesn't help.

* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: In "Ode to Spot," Data makes the first two lines of the poem sound like a question rather than a statement. It is written as "Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature; an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature", but is inflected by Data as "Felis catus. Is your taxonomic nomenclature, an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature?"

* ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Globular clusters are dense clusters of stars in the galaxy's halo, the nearest (Messier 4) being around 7,200 light years away from Earth. Meaning that unless a wormhole was involved, it would have taken the Enterprise at least seven years to get there even at full warp.
** On the other end of the spectrum, they determine that Riker's arm was cut off because it is 0.02 microns off from where it should be. Given that a human hair is a whopping 70 microns wide, 0.02 microns is well within what most would call a reasonable margin of error.

* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: In "Ode to Spot," Data uses the word "obviates" as if it means "makes obvious," but it actually means "removes or avoids." He also makes the first two lines of the poem sound like a question rather than a statement. It is written as "Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature; an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature", but is inflected by Data as "Felis catus. Is your taxonomic nomenclature, an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature?"

* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: In "Ode to Spot," Data uses the word "obviates" as if it means "makes obvious," but it actually means "removes or avoids." He also makes the first two lines of the poem sound like a question rather than a statement. It is written as "Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature; an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature", but is inflected by Data as "Felus catus. Is your taxonomic nomenclature, an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature?"

* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: In "Ode to Spot," Data uses the word "obviates" as if it means "makes obvious," but it actually means "removes or avoids."

* {{Homage}}: The character is Kaminer is named after author and lawyer Wendy Kaminer. One of her books is titled ''Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials'', which sounds like it has some tenuous connection to the plot of this episode but is actually criticizing modern society for favoring belief over reason, a very ''Star Trek'' point of view.

** On the other end of the spectrum, they determine that Riker's arm are cut off because it is 0.02 microns off from where it should be. Given that a human hair is a whopping 70 microns wide, 0.02 microns is well within what most would call a reasonable margin of error.

* HesitationEqualsDishonesty: Data [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this when asking Geordi his opinion on Data's poetry. Since he has no feelings to protect, Data prefers that he were honest.

Riker goes to Sick Bay about his fatigue, where he reports feeling constantly exhausted and on edge, despite getting a full night's sleep as far as he can tell. Crusher doesn't find anything physically wrong with him and so sends him home with a recipe for a warm milk toddy and an invitation to return tomorrow if it doesn't help.

In engineering, Data is discussing his poetry with La Forge before they are interrupted when the sensors report an EPS overload in cargy bay 4. An emergency team is dispatched, but they find nothing out of the ordinary, leading La Forge to hypothesize that it was a sensor glitch caused by their recent modifications. Riker asks La Forge to wake him at 0700 the next morning because of his recent sleep troubles.

La Forge obliges, but Riker has no memory of falling asleep, and refuses to believe it's morning until he checks the clock. Suspicion mounts as further strange occurrences are noticed: Worf and Riker both have panicked reactions to ordinary stimuli, La Forge's visor starts randomly cutting out, and Data, of all people, finds that he has [[MissingTime lost over an hour of time]]. La Forge observes that many of these events took place in the same cargo bay, and sure enough, they find a NegativeSpaceWedgie forming there from a deep layer of subspace that shouldn't be able to exist in normal space.

More evidence appears indicating that random crewmembers are being abducted into another subspace dimension, where they are sedated and experimented upon. To make matters worse, the anomaly in the cargo bay starts expanding into a subspace rift. The senior staff come up with a strategy to stop the rift but need a way to identify the exact dimension where it is originating. Since Riker has been abducted several nights in a row, he volunteers to take a homing device with him the next time it happens, which will allow the ''Enterprise'' to track him as he leaves.

Dr. Crusher gives Riker a stimulant in the hope that it will counteract the sedative used by the abductors. Riker goes to bed, and soon finds himself pulled into the other dimension. There, he finds himself on a surgical table being examined by robed aliens, alongside Ensign Rager, who was previously discovered missing. He feigns sleep until the ''Enterprise'' begins to close the rift, at which point he is able to grab Rager and escape through the rift while the aliens are distracted.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Courtesy of the subspace aliens. It's not complete, however: see the TraumaButton entry. Some of the affected crewmembers use the holodeck to recreate their repressed experiences from bits and pieces of what they can remember, and the results are nightmarish.

* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: Much to the consternation of writer Creator/BrannonBraga, the "next week on" gives away the AlienAbduction plot, which is a mystery until the 5th act in the show proper.