The Next Phase

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Star Trek: TNG episode
"The Next Phase"
Jordi and Ro are phased in in "The Next Phase".
Episode no. 124
Prod. code 224
Airdate May 18, 1992
Writer(s) Ronald D. Moore
Director David Carson
Guest star(s) Michelle Forbes
Thomas Kopache
Susanna Thompson
Kenneth Meseroll
Shelby Leverington
Brian Cousins
Year 2368
Stardate 45092.4
Episode chronology
Previous "I, Borg"
Next "The Inner Light"

The Next Phase is a fifth-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Responding to a distress call from a Romulan science ship, Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge and Ensign Ro Laren are lost in a transporter accident when returning to the Enterprise with a faulty generator from the Romulan ship.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Enterprise receives a hail that the Romulans need help with their ship, as it is suffering from systems failure. Worf, Riker, Ro, and La Forge beam over, without weapons, to assist. Ro and La Forge beam back to the Enterprise with the Romulan warp engine so that it can be repaired, but the transporter can not sustain their matter stream on the Enterprise. Since the two do not return to the Romulan ship, and their signal cannot be located, it is assumed that they are lost completely.

The transporter is put offline until further notice, with the crew using shuttles to travel back and forth to the Romulan ship. Meanwhile, the away team continues to help the Romulans with their repairs.

Ro wakes up in a hallway; she tries to contact the Bridge, but her communicator does not work. She heads to Sick Bay, where she finds that the automatic doors do not open for her and people behave as though she were not there. She continues to Dr. Crusher's office, where she finds Picard and Dr. Crusher talking about her and La Forge's death. Ro attempts communication with the Captain, but he doesn't see or hear her. Then, as he exits, he walks right through her.

Ro then attempts to talk to Dr. Crusher, but again she is not heard. Ro attempts to slam her fist on the desk in frustration, but it goes right through. She continues to watch Dr. Crusher fill out her death certificate as Riker and the away team transfer power to the Romulan ship. Data, meanwhile, is investigating the transporter accident that has occurred. He also asks if he would be allowed to conduct the services for Geordi's (and Ro's) death remembrance.

In Engineering, La Forge finds that he is faced with the same oddity as Ro. Ro shows up in Engineering, and the two find that they are able to see and hear each other. The two of them talk about their problem and find that they are solid only to each other. Ro tells La Forge that they are dead, which Geordi refuses to believe. Ro confirms that Dr. Crusher has made out their death certificates, saying that they died in a transporter accident. Ro says that the two of them need to make peace with their former lives, but an upset La Forge tells her that she can do whatever she wants, but he is going to Transporter Room 3 to solve their apparent problem.

Data links the cause of the accident with the explosion on the Romulan ship. He detects a chronoton field, which could be the cause of La Forge's and Ro's death. Geordi follows Data to investigate. Meanwhile, Ro is on the bridge - to say goodbye. She touches the chair and the comm panel, without going through them. Riker and Picard appear on the bridge and Ro follows them into the Captain's Ready Room, where they talk about the memorial service. Riker says that he wants to say something about Ensign Ro at the service, which surprises her.

Ro then attempts to make peace with the Captain, by whom she is still intimidated. She says "thank you" to the Captain (who is still unaware of her) for trusting her when no one else would. La Forge finds Ro to convince her to help with the investigation on their supposed deaths. She agrees to go with him to the Romulan ship.

On the shuttle en route, Worf helps Data decide on an appropriate service for their dead comrades. Data had initially assumed that a solemn, dignified service — reflecting human and Bajoran cultures — would be in order (leading Ro to groan at the prospect of having to sit through a two-hour-long Bajoran "death chant"). Worf, however, says he is happy for the lost officers, because they died as valiant warriors and (in Klingon belief) have earned a joyous place among the honored dead.

On the Romulan ship, Data continues his investigation of the chronoton emissions. La Forge finds a molecular phase inverter prototype that also has a cloaking device, based on technology that the Klingons were previously developing. Ro and Geordi deduce that they're cloaked and out of phase with normal matter, and that they could be dephased somehow. A seated Romulan glances at them as they discuss the device. They also overhear the Romulans planning to make the Enterprise explode when they engage the warp drive. As they leave the ship, the Romulan follows them, walking through a table on the way.

La Forge and Ro return to the Enterprise, and the out-of-phase Romulan follows them. La Forge attempts to attract Data's attention as he and a junior officer attempt to track down unusual chronoton emissions in Main Engineering. The locations of the emissions coincide with areas of the ship with solid structures through which Ro and Geordi have passed while in their phased state. Geordi creates more emissions by sticking his hand repeatedly into different parts of the engineering console — all the while talking to Data, urging him to stop thinking so logically and to try using his imagination. At one point, Data's "anyon beam" scanner shines on La Forge's hand and partially (but only briefly) rephases it. Data doesn't notice or hear Geordi, however, and doesn't see any pattern in the chronoton emissions, and eventually he abandons his investigation (to Geordi's great frustration).

The Romulan confronts Ro on the bridge. Armed with a disruptor (which works in their out-of-phase condition because he had been carrying it when he was phased), he says he overheard the "science officer" (La Forge) talk about a way to return them to normal, and he demands to know where Geordi is. Ro takes him to another part of the ship, then attacks him by surprise and flees. The Romulan chases Ro through much of the Enterprise — both of them running through numerous bulkheads along the way (it is never explained how they can penetrate walls and objects but not floors). The Romulan also fires his disruptor at Ro several times, hitting her in the leg at one point. Their activity causes more chronoton emissions, which attract Data's attention. As Data arrives at the crew quarters where Ro and the Romulan are, Geordi slams into the Romulan from behind, sending him sailing through the exterior wall of the room and off into space.

By this time, repairs on the Romulan ship are complete. The Romulan captain thanks an unsuspecting Picard for his assistance, but Picard's order to engage the Enterprise's warp engines is delayed at the last moment because Data's chronoton field sweep is not yet complete. Ro and La Forge hope that the decontamination process might make them visible long enough to attract someone's attention and warn the Enterprise of the danger to the ship from the Romulans' treachery, but their only hope is to go somewhere with a lot of people — namely, their memorial service in the Ten-Forward lounge.

In Ten-Forward, the memorial Data has arranged is much more like a party than a funeral. Data asks Dr. Crusher what she thinks, and she is pleased that everyone is happily sharing their memories of the lost officers. Ro, armed with the disruptor left behind by their out-of-phase Romulan attacker, starts firing at random throughout Ten-Forward; the weapon causes no harm to anyone or anything in the room, but it does register a large increase in chronoton activity. In a final, desperate effort to attract attention, Ro sets the disruptor to overload, and when Data calls for another decontamination sweep with anyon beams, the two missing officers become briefly visible to Picard and Data. Data, finally figuring out that La Forge and Ro are still alive and standing right in front of them (but cloaked), orders a high-intensity anyon flood of Ten-Forward, which finally returns the two officers to the normal phase state. La Forge quickly orders the warp engines to be taken offline — thus averting disaster — and he tells Data he's "never been to a better funeral."

After the "funeral" is over, Geordi and Ro (who hadn't been able to eat anything for two days) are filling up on leftovers. A brooding Ro explains that the experience has left her unsettled and confused regarding life after death and the other traditions of her culture; she then tells Geordi, "I don't know what to believe." La Forge suggests it would be a good idea for the Federation to build its own interphase device: "if it can teach Ro Laren humility, it can do anything."

[edit] Trivia

  • In addition to the above-mentioned inconsistency of the characters being able to touch the floor but not the walls, there is the question of how Geordi and Ro are breathing the air.
  • The very question of why being "out of phase" means you can pass through walls but not fall through the floor is asked on the Stargate SG-1 episode Wormhole X-Treme! (to which the answer was "We're gonna have to get back to you on that one.")
  • In the seventh season of the Next Generation, the episode "The Pegasus" sees Riker involved with a Federation attempt to make a phasing cloak similar to the one the Romulans are trying to make in "The Next Phase." The Pegasus experiment involves a similar phasing accident.
  • The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Vanishing Point" also deals with a crew member passing through solid objects, unseen by their crew mates after being transported, although this has different cause.

[edit] External links

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