Original air date: November 15, 1993
The Enterprise is searching for a missing medical ship, the Fleming, in the Hekaras Corridor, a region of space known for its unusually dense tetryon fields. The fields will make it difficult for the ship's scanners to locate the missing vessel. Only one ship has passed through this area recently, a Ferengi trader, and the crew wonder if the Ferengi attacked the Fleming for its valuable medical cargo. Meanwhile, Geordi is busy trying to max out the efficiency of the ship's warp engines, while Data is pondering how to train his cat, Spot.
The ship locates the Ferengi trading vessel, seemingly disabled, but when the Enterprise moves to investigate, it attacks. The Enterprise fires back and neutralizes the threat. They establish a comm link through the interference, and the captain, Daimon Prak, accuses the Federation of being the aggressor and instigating an act of war. Picard convinces Prak to transport over and talk things out. Prak relates how his ship encountered what appeared to be a Federation signal buoy but was actually a disguised mine, which disabled his ship with a veteron pulse. He also admits to passing by the Fleming several days ago. Picard agrees to help Prak fix his ship in exchange for the data on the Fleming's heading.
The Enterprise follows the Fleming's path and encounters a debris field. A hidden mine in the debris disables the ship with a veteron pulse, just like the Ferengis. Helpless, the crew watch as a small ship appears, and two people beam directly into the Enterprise's engine. The invaders are Serova and Rabal, two Hekarans who announce that they've attacked the ship to send a message: warp fields are killing their planet.
Picard sternly but reasonably demands that the siblings explain themselves. Serova claims that her research shows that warp travel through her system and others like it have a cumulative effect on the fabric of space and will eventually cause a subspace rift. If ships keep traveling at warp speed nearby her planet, it will soon become uninhabitable. Serova has tried to get the Federation to listen before, but her research was too preliminary. She agrees to help the ship make its necessary repairs in return for the crew reviewing her latest findings.
As the Hekarans help make the repairs, Rabal apologizes for his sister's zealousness but assures the crew that her findings will make believers out of them, just like they did for him. But when Data gives his review of her report, he states that her findings are compelling but still unproven and suggests more research is needed. Serova feels that any more delays are unacceptable. Before they can argue further, Picard learns that they have located the Fleming, which is adrift after being caught in another Hekaran mine.
As the ship moves to help the Fleming, Serova takes her ship out into space and initiates a warp core breach. The ship explodes, and the intense warp field causes the subspace rift she'd warned everyone about. That could have massive ramifications for the galaxy, but first, they need to rescue the Fleming from the rift. La Forge figures out a technobabble solution to alter the warp drives and plunge into the rift. But the Fleming has ignorantly engaged their warp drive, causing the rift to grow and trapping both ships inside. The Enterprise evacuates the Fleming, but its hull is barely holding together. La Forge and Data come up with solutions of "surfing" the distortion waves of the ship to guide them out. The ship manages to safely emerges from the rift just before its hull can be ripped to shreds.
Some time later, Rabal gives a grim report of how more rifts will appear within 40 years if the problem is left unchecked. Picard receives a communication from Starfleet command that all warp travel through the Hekaras Corridor will be forbidden except for essential travel, and all ships must now abide by a speed limit of warp 5 except in dire emergencies. Picard glumly notes to La Forge that he never thought his career in exploration was doing harm, but La Forge assures him that there is still time to find a solution.
Tropes:
- Cassandra Truth: Serova feels this way with nobody believing her.
- The Extremist Was Right: Discussed; while Serova's theories are proven to be entirely correct, Data points out that her behavior in the course of trying to prove her theories was, if anything, counter-productive.
- Filler: The early scenes with Geordi and Data concerning Spot the cat and Geordi's friendly rivalry with the chief engineer of the Intrepid, which were added solely to pad the runtime. Since they wouldn't be likely to be discussing trivial matters once the main crisis of the episode had set in, both plots had to be wrapped up within the first twenty minutes and aren't mentioned again.
- Foreshadowing: Geordi references a new ship named Intrepid which, given the timeframe, is presumed to be the first of the Intrepid-class and thus the sister of Voyager.
- Green Aesop: The "pollution" from warp engines is a thinly-veiled reference to other forms of pollution in the real world, especially the types caused by automobiles and other vehicles of various types. As a result of this episode, the Federation imposes a speed limit of warp 5 on all starships except for cases of extreme emergency, until a more permanent technological solution can be found.
- Insufferable Genius: Serova. Her scientific skills may be spot-on, but her people skills are terrible.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Serova is pushy and uncompromising, and she gets pissy anytime someone questions her theory. She turns out to be right.
- Layman's Terms: Geordi rattles off a string of Technobabble on how they can escape the rift, which he simplifies by comparing it to surfing.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Data and Geordi, the science officer and chief engineer, spend the first two acts doing maintenance that should be a junior officer's job. Justified in this instance, as Geordi is in a competition with a rival engineer on another ship to reach ever-higher efficiency ratings to one-up each other, so he's performing maintenance that isn't really necessary and thus wouldn't be assigned to his engineers who would be assigned to routine maintenance elsewhere.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Serova's extreme method of proving her theory creates the Negative Space Wedgie that she and her brother had been trying to prevent, both endangering two Federation starships and messing up the climate on her home planet decades before anyone's ready to deal with it.
- No Warping Zone: The Hekaras Corridor becomes this thanks to the proven threat of another Negative Space Wedgie.
- Red Herring: The crew wonder whether the Fleming was robbed by Ferengi for its valuable cargo. When they encounter the Ferengi vessel, it attacks them... but it's just another victim of the Hekaran mines.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Serova (red oni) is passionate, stubborn, and antagonistic while Rabal (blue oni) is calm, reasonable, and diplomatic.
- Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Near the end, the consequences of heavy ship traffic through the corridor is projected on a map like this. Within mere decades, the entire sector would be a minefield of the type of subspace warp rifts that Serova caused.
- Start X to Stop X: Serova proves that warp fields can cause subspace rifts by creating a rift herself. She does so a good distance from her home planet, but it still causes problems.
- Status Quo Is God: The idea that warp engines could be dangerous to the fabric of universe is not mentioned again in The Next Generation or other Star Trek series. The warp 5 speed limit is referred to a couple of times in the following episodes, but after that it disappears too with no explanation. Most fans just Handwave it away with the assumption that someone simply invented a safe warp drive and everyone converted to it.
