LogFAQs > #972314185

Episode 24: The Next Phase

Phasing is another really fun concept.

Picard starts fidgeting once they disappear and carries himself with utter solemnity. Nice of him to share a story about La Forge. Certainly has a reaction to the funeral.

Riker still has little tolerance for Ro's comments. Angry and frantic when La Forge and her go missing. Clearly likes Ro, at least a little. Delighted by the party.

La Forge takes to intangibility a bit more calmly than Ro. Angrily rejects the possibility that he's dead and has a lot more hope about their situation. Exasperated with Ro's resignation. Appreciates Data's thoughts. Has a bit too much fun giving him extra work to do. Loves a good party.

Worf seems to have put away some of his Romulan bigotry, since he has a note of severity when mentioning the 73 survivors. Still not happy with them, though. Actually gets listened to for once. Like his honesty of how Klingon culture has uncommon views on death.

Crusher briefly holds on to optimism, but gets on with her job.

Troi cant sense anything.

Data is quite sweet, asking to do the memorial. The brief hesitation is adorable. Genuinely appreciates La Forge's accepting nature and expends great effort to figure out the appropriate way to mourn. Full sincerity mode when he gets his friend back.

Ro is a bit more ready to bite her tongue. Quickly gets annoyed, then panicked when everyone keeps ignoring her. Being regarded as dead seems to hit her particularly quickly. Accepts it even faster and almost has a sense of peaceful bliss over her faith being "proven". Get a decent peak at who she is, from her gratitude over Picard to her shock at Riker maybe being a bit nicer than she thought. Enjoyed her outwitting the Romulan. Doesn't quite get the party. Shooting Riker in the head is the appropriate response to all this ambiguity. Liked her complex thoughts on how not being dead is almost a spiritual disappointment.

The Romulan ship is a claustrophobic death trap. The clear unease of everyone discussing the apparent deaths makes the ship feel a bit like a dream world from Ro's perspective. The lights in engineering when we catch up with La Forge have a similar effect. Bit of a power move to just walk through a computer. Having the phased Romulan in the foreground was some brilliant foreshadowing. Fun to almost voyeuristically peak at private lives during a chase/fight sequence. Phasing through the hull of the ship is a bit of a sudden, bleak fate. Doesn't affect my enjoyment at all, but it does highlight how arbitrary the rules of phasing are.

They don't go as deep into Ro's spirituality as I would like, but I still do appreciate that this experience has genuinely changed her and for the better. Aside from effortlessly connecting with La Forge anyway, that final scene has her at the happiest and most comfortable we've ever seen her and its all on the back of her maybe finding a fleck of faith in her life. I may be down on religion (primarily because I find dogma to be incompatible with faith, which in some people's eyes might be quite the paradoxical statement), but a personal spirituality is a truly beautiful thing and, so long as you feel you have the freedom to add things that are missing and to disregard those that aren't fit for purpose, using a system of traditions or even a religion as the backbone for that framework isn't awful at all. Far more important than maybe proving the existence of Bajoran ghosts (dressing up the explanation and solution in technobabble doesn't change the fact that that is what they are. Hell, Data's scanner is basically an EM reader that ghost hunter types tend to use), though, is her recognising that maybe the Enterprise isn't as hostile as she may have believed (sure, its nicer than anywhere else, but shes still standoffish), especially if even Riker's thoughts are only ambiguous at worst. The joy comes in realising she was slightly wrong in a truly wonderful way. Her readiness to accept being dead quickly veers into what looks like a suicidal death wish, yet seeing how she would be treated once she's gone and immediately clicking with someone who's in a similar position basically gives her a care to live.

I'm long passed expecting the Romulans to reclaim their former complexity, so, I'm happily calling this pretty fantastic.

I'll look into The Inner Light, next.