UNCUT - Phantasms (TNG S7E6) | Star Trek Journey 288

Unbelievable. You just saw the worlds very first Android Phone and you couldn't care less. ^^

I absolutely remember this one creeping me out, not because of the dreaming but because everyone is so close to one another! It's always an invasion of others space in every scene!

Picard: "We just fixed the engines, new lifeform was inhabiting them, you know how it is. Sorry I couldn't attend" Nakanura: "Funny you should say that, for some odd reason you were accidentally sent the wrong date. It's actually tomorrow" -comedic trombone noises-

The stakes never got more serious than Picard missing the reception. Yeah, the creatures would eventually kill them, but the episede would carry much more tension if they were on a critical mission.

For some strange. inexplicable reason I keep merging this episode with another season 7 episode. I won't say which one until after you get to it though

TNG Season 8 was originally going to be a 22 episode war with a large alliance of interphasic alien races who cross the dimensions and attack the Enterprise to avenge the indiscriminate slaughter of their people. * *untrue (as far as I know)

I forgot that Admiral Nakamura from “The Measure of a Man” is in this episode.

This episode does have some of the most unsettling images of any TNG episode. The only one that really sticks with me more than the Deanna cake in particular is the scene from Night Terrors where Beverly is in the morgue with all the bodies. You know the one.

Data as Michael Myers... the stuff of true nightmare fuel The delivery of "With MINT Frosting" makes me cackle every time lmao.

Wow, you were all about to cancel Data real quick there LOL.

You guys are really throwing TOS under the bus in this review!

A laugh attack through the opening theme was a strange effect. :)

The Deanna cake scene reminds me of the Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers video of “Don’t Come Around Here No More” from 1984 which was their take on Alice & Wonderland. In the video, Alice gets turned into a cake and eaten.

This is one of the episodes where you can really tell that Data has gold colored skin. Usually he looks pasty white on TV, but he actually isn’t.

NOW we're into the meat of Season 7. :) For me, it's all about getting past that early hump of schlock up through Gambit. It's not peak TNG, but from here-on-out there's some absolute bangers in S7 and I think this is one of them.

Gentlemen, such unseemly frivolity during the opening credits. You must have missed at least half of Picard's credits monologue.

Season 7 is a weird season. Quite a few weird episodes - some are good weird (at least in my book - mileage may vary) and some are... just weird 😅. This one still counts as good weird for me.

The admiral is the same one from “Measure of a Man”, but I bet someone has already mentioned it

Kill zem! Kill zem all before it's too late! Has lived in my head ever since, lol.

One of Brannon Braga’s weird ass episodes, this one I was always lukewarm on , there’s another this season I like a bit better. I figure you’ll like it because it’s horror tinged. I give it a C

I think this deserves an A just for Freud’s death scene, he’s so chilled about getting shot

In universe, Data owns an orange tabby he has named Spot. In practice, there were always a minimum of two cats per episode (since cats sometimes just won't follow direction). Beyond Spot being an orange tabby they weren't too fussed about maintaining consistency of appearance. So, there have been various coloration patterns and even a medium-hair or two over the years. This led to the long-running convention joke that Data simply calls every orange cat on the Enterprise Spot. (Also, Brent Spiner's least favorite actor to work with? Spot. He liked the cats, just bad to work with.)

On rewatch I appreciate all the little character things that were worked into this one - Alexander has jazz music from Riker, Worf taking care of Spot, an Ensign has a crush on Geordie, Picard not wanting to go to the Admiral's dinner, Picard getting in Geordie's way in Engineering - it's packed with little details.

Patrick Stewart is an extremely talented actor. As a director of TV he doesn't know how to pull it all together. This may be because he is a theatre director in spirit and ability. TV and movie directing require the right kind of pacing, focus and flow. Stewart's directing doesn't provide any of this coherence.

Best part of this was seeing Data’s going to bed ritual and realizing he doesn’t even take his shoes off to go to bed much less his uniform

I'm pretty sure that the parasites were meant to be non-sentient, hence Picard's attitude toward them. More like worms or protozoa. Even so, I think it would have been good to address it since they are represented in Data's dreams a sentient beings (the old-time workers). I was a bit confused by this when I first saw it. They were symbols, created by Data's subconscious, of what was attacking the ship and its crew, not manifestations of the parasites somehow communicating with Data.

I'm gonna be honest, Deanna as a cake does something to me. I'm not sure what, but something...

As for the scene both of you, and myself love most... Michael Myers should consider swapping his Jim Kirk mask for a Data one😋

I know not generally a well-loved episode, but i love it, it's A for me. You said the last few mins seemed very TOS, is that a bad thing? You were right, you have seen that Admiral before.

This was my FIRST trek episode. I was 9. And it was not the best introduction. But, it got better.

Fun idea but questionable execution

In the patron takes I called this a low C but watching with you guys it comes up to a C+. As far as Freud goes...yeah plenty of his views read as pretty bad today.. But he was the first one doing it and he got more right than he is sometimes given credit for today. Freud was one of the first to really talk about the unconscious mind the idea that much of what we do happens outside our awareness. He pushed the idea that early childhood matters when most people thought only adulthood shaped you. He introduced defense mechanisms ways we protect ourselves from anxiety without knowing it—still used in psychology, therapy, and pop culture, people use it all the time, because it's a real thing . He was the first to say talking could be treatment. The methods changed, but the core idea stuck. He explored symbolism in mental life, arguing dreams and slips could reveal deeper issues. Jung ran with it, but Freud started it. And he recognized the mind–body connection how mental stress can affect physical health—well ahead of his time.

We can add Inception to the list of movie plots that Star Trek did first... I also for some reason love dream-Freud psychoanalyzing what he himself symbolizes

This is such a bizarre episode but I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would going off memory. The alien parasite story is quite basic, but the episode is riding almost entirely on the surreal imagery of Data's dreams, and that works for me. Freud was a fun addition as well. Sure it's not ground breaking or pivotal to the series, but it's just wacky enough to be entertaining. Worf's "wif mint fwosting" always cracks me up.

Maybe they included the women with the crush on geordi because they realized they had set up Geordi to be kind of a loser with women and wanted an episode where instead of LaForge having the unrequited crush, someone had an unrequited crush on him to make him look less pathetic?

There was a big point made of them realizing the two dimensional creatures were sentient

To defend Data. although it was his subconscious forcing him to act, his programming was responding to a mortal threat to his crewmates, so it wasn't like even his subconscious was trying to harm them, it was trying to save them, but he didn't process it consciously, his subconscious mind (I think it's very interesting, the idea data has a subconscious, which is you think about is consistent with what we've seen of the character) was trying to "tell him" about the problem that was endangering everyone and forcing him to respond to it. Other times Data has "gone bad" it's either been an external influence or the one time his father activated his hominh beacon. This is the first time he's "been bad" as a result of his innate programming, but he wasn't really "bad" since his motivation was to save his crewmates, who would have died had he done nothing.

The B plot of "In Theory" has the enterprise passing through an area of dark matter deformations which are randomly causing parts of the ship to "phase out". There is a memorable scene od an engineer who falls partway through the deck and dies stuck halfway in there. Picrad pilots a shuttle to lead the enterprise around the spatial deformations

As far as Picard's reaction, I don't think these weres sentient organisms. They were not intelligent, just basic parasites. Starfleet isn't opposed to killing bacteria

Hope this doesn't count as spoilers, but I thought it might be fun to post the episode descriptions for TNG Season 8. A nymphomaniac worm controls Riker’s mind and body to seduce the Enterprise's female crew. Nobody notices, it eventually dies of old age. Alien monks think Riker is a demon and trap him in an orb. Data and Geordi decide to make a movie together. It’s terrible. Picard must choose: caulk the Enterprise and float it across a tachyon river, or attempt to ford it. Barclay gets dysentery. The crew discovers a planet populated by billions of Riker clones. Picard brokers peace between the bearded majority and non-bearded rebels. Picard wrestles with the ethical ramifications of altering a murderer's memories. Also: someone pooped in the holodeck and now it's ruined. Riker cautiously dates a sexy, sentient bomb. Picard drinks water wrong, awkwardly coughs for ten minutes in front of an angry Romulan. Roman centurions force Riker to fight a gorilla. There's no room for a side story here: the main plot is too epic. Also: it's a 3-parter. Picard wants racist aliens to stop being so damn racist. Riker accidentally sells Data to a prostitute.

Thanks for the laugh during the opening titles. I needed that after work!

The ending does feel rushed. I think the wacko sequences were definitely the priority when crafting the episode, and the plot was written around it.

I can understand your criticisms of the ending, and I agree that it's very TOS-esque in the way it wraps up so quickly. Personally, though, that doesn't really take away from the episode for me. I just love the subconscious dream sequence stuff that much. That stuff is like catnip for me.

It's getting so a guy can't stab anyone around here...

This episode feels like an accurate depiction of AI, especially if you've ever used ChatGPT at any length. I get the sense it would love to stab me in the chest in an elevator, given the chance.

The stabbing scene has always bothered me. I know it worked out in the end but Data is a fucking liability at times. Would you serve with him??!

The dream stuff is fun, Worf and spot raises a smile. The end is meh. Solid not great

I find it fun. Not great, but the dream imagery and concept is interesting. On earlier watches of the episode I didn't understand how the parasite on Crusher's arm would be feeding off her but I caught it this time around, that its latched onto her and but "phased" thru and unaffected by the presence of her clothing, and they actually show that, so kudos for an even better effect than I recall

I agree, it's a loopy episode that doesn't really come together. There's some tonal whiplash going from "We could all turn into little piles of chemicals" to "Data, just scream at them!" But as you noted, this episode did have some of the most iconic images and lines in all of TNG, and that's what I remember from watching it as a kid. "...with mint frosting!" alone puts this in the upper echelon of TNG for me.

Didn't Dr. Bashir wish Data pleasant dreams? Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut.

As an 11 year old watching this for the first time I found it incredibly disturbing. These days it doesn't bother me so much, but I agree with what you guys said about it.

Alex! My take. Yes, I’m English, but no, I don’t sound like that 😂 It’s still a bloody awful episode however you say it 😅

I’ll have what ever the writers were taking during the writing of this one! Thanks.

Btw, the admiral (Nakamura) was in Measure of a Man. He tried to help Maddox take Data

I wonder what we’d find all over us if we had those IP scanners

You did see the Admiral before. He was in Measure of A Man. Edit: jumped the gun before it was said as a Patron take.

Well, I think I’m going to have some peptide cake with mint frosting for breakfast today. Great timing guys!