Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 Episode 2

Unlike most fans, I'm not crazy about the character of Barclay. Aside from having a lower level of competence than his crewmates, I never understood what made him particularly noteworthy and I don't think the writers did either. That said, Dwight Schultz portrays him with a certain goofy charm that makes up for the character's limitations.





This one is about Barclay conquering his fears. The scifi premise is frankly uninteresting and doesn't really make sense, but when Schultz is doing his thing, it makes the whole thing bearable. There's also a nice assist from Colm Meaney, who provides plenty of his no-nonsense O'Brien.





Not a great episode, but TNG had far worse.

This Barclay episode develops its phobia story nicely, but nearly flounders in the second half due to the weak visual effects and the weak sci fi premise driving the plot. Like previous Barclay episodes, however, Marina Sirtis (Troi) is given some meaty material to work with, and she takes advantage of the situation, brilliantly playing her part. (The Barclay character seems to open a door to better writing for Troi for whatever reason. And Dwight Schultz and Sirtis have excellent chemistry together.) Beyond these two characters and the unique transporter POV shots, though, this is a forgettable episode.

The “Enterprise” comes across the “Yosemite" which is caught in a plasma streamer. Lt Barclay a fidgety engineer comes up with a plan to reach the Yosemite”. The crew adopts his plan and sends an away team to the “Yosemite”. Lt. Barclay is supposed to beam with the rest of the away team, but chickens out. It seems Barclay is afraid to use the transporter. Troi encourage Barclay to face his fears. Barclay is now ready to transport and does. When Barclay return with the rest of the away team he sees something in the particle stream. Baclay flips out.

Though a simple two dimensional story, I found it to be very entertaining and believable to the point that you wont be asking too many question and can just watch the action unfold.





The moral of this story is one about conquering our greatest fear - whatever that maybe. The journey is shown through the eyes of one of my fav. character (and actors) Reg. Barcaly.





The plot also relies on an accident on a science vessel for that allows the story to have heroic overtones at its resolution.





The locations are limited to the Enterprise transporter room and a few scenes on the USS Yosemite which are cool. Other ancillary scenes are on board the Enterprise, though the plasma stream from planet to sun are pretty cool.





Dialogue as you can expect from season 6 has come far from its early outings. They do a good job of demonstrating Barclays rising tension, paranoia and worrying as his condition from initial contact with the transporter entity gets worse.


Together with his phobia these are the only real sources of tension for the story. They should have really had more focus on the investigation of the missing crew, but it seems like one of those episodes where the most of the primary cast were given time off.





As such the pace is slower than an action packed episode, though it doesnt detract from the quality. No doubt all Still Barclay overcomes his phobia and saves the crew suspended in the transporter buffers.





One of my very favourite episode from the show. Worth a good look, even if only for Dwight Shultz performance as the phobic engineer.