Tex's TNG Reviews: The Next Phase

This episode is on G4 right now, and it's one of my favorites actually... despite having some of the biggest flaws in all of TNG.

Quick Review: The Romulans are up to no good again, surprise surprise. The Enterprise responds to a distress signal and saves a Romulan ship. Ro and Geordi try to beam from the Romulan ship to the Enterprise with a peice of the warp core to fix it. They never materialize, or so it seems. They are actually thrown into a different phase of matter, lucky for them they wind up on different parts of the Enterprise rather than in Space.

Blah blah blah... you've all seen this one by now, if not then here is the link to the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Phase_(TNG_episode)


Screenshot of them coming back into phase.

The Flaws: Why are they able to touch the floor? If they go through everything else they should fall right through the floor too. Another flaw, how can they breath? Should they be able to breath air from the other phase?

Solution: Ignore that crap and enjoy the episode.

My rating: and a half

Why? Great character development, pretty cool plot.

The artificial gravity generators keep them from sinking through the floor or rising through the ceiling. And why shouldn't they be able to breath?

I watched The Tholian Web recently, and Kirk's situation reminded me of this episode.

The Enterprise wouldn't have had such "gravity generators" on board and we definately know they weren't wearing anything special. They went to a different phase of matter, not the air around them, so what exactly would they be breathing?

The Enterprise does indeed have artificial gravity generators on board. I'm pretty sure they're located between each deck. How else would the crew be able to walk around?

Any of the oxygen they transported with, as well as any other oxygen already out of phase, would still be breathable. They weren't entirely out of phase, since every time they interacted with objects they would create some sort of technobabble disruption and they would be partially in phase with normal matter. Every time they touched oxygen, some technobabble disruption would occur and they were able to breath the oxygen.

those generators are in the other phase... not enough air went with them to the ship to last 2 days... and it wouldn't have moved around with them

There's no reason why the artificial gravity generators wouldn't affect them, since they were never completely out of phase. Their boots hitting the ground would cause the technobabble disruption and allow the gravity generators to push that small part of the boot away to keep them from falling through the deck. Plus, I'm pretty sure the ship wasn't ever moving, so there would be no force moving the ship while they remained relatively motionless.

I also edited my post after you replied to explain why they would still be able to breath.

The one thing that is unexplainable is when they sat down in chairs, but I don't think that happened more than once or twice.

Unless there happens to be gravity generators within the chairs.

Ya... still not buying it. I would buy that there is a molecule of air in the new phase for every one in the old phase, that could explain the breathing... except by that logic they should have been able to drink and eat as well.

The walking thing is just something that you have to ignore for the episode to work, it doesn't make any sense that they could go through everything else, but just not the floor.

So? This is what makes it fun for us nerds.

For the love of god...it's breathe. Thank you.

Oh, Timmy, if your theory about the gravity generators is true then why didn't the Romulan Geordi shoved through the wall into space not just stick to the floor on the edge of the room? Or at least his feet would have stuck to the side of the ship or something along those lines.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a co-worker a while back. When the Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher show about Superman (Lois and Clark) was on, this lady was a big fan of it. However, as we were sitting around the lunchroom talking about it one day, she said that the one thing that really bugged her was that is was OBVIOUS that Clark Kent and Superman were the same guy. She could not accept that anyone fell for his disguise. As she put it, that was "unrealistic."

I responded: "But the whole flying guy from another planet part doesn't bother you a bit?"



I tease. Carry on!

Seems like that would be an extremely vulgar waste of energy!

Actually, if they breathe the same air as everyone else, they should be able to hear them talking.

Since they can't...they can't be breathing the same air.

They can replicate anything out of thin air, who cares about a little waste?

When he shoved him, there was enough force to "unstick" him from the floor, and thus out into space. There aren't gravity generators in walls.

It really makes sense when you think about it. Everyone time Ro or Geordi went somewhere, they left some technobabble disruption trace when they interacted with walls, objects, or floors. That means that every time the technobabble disruption occurred, they were temporarily in partial phase with the normal universe. In fact, they cause themselves to be partially visible by causing a technobabble disruption between each other, as seen in that pic.

Since their feet are constantly touching the ground, the few millimeters passing partially through the floor would be partially in phase, allowing the artificial gravity generators to work properly on that small part of their boot, and allowing the rest of their body to experience normal gravity.

So how about when Ro was running, got shoved up into the air and flew to the floor, she was definately totally separated for a while, so she should have fell straight on through the whole ship.

True dat! It's just so funny that our present day situation challenges us to save a few kilowatt-hours a year and the people on Star Trek routinely do things that must require megawatts of energy.

Us: make sure the faucet is turned off so you don't waste water.

Them: replicate me some water. And a glass to put it in.

Oh, and this was one of two episodes that I recorded on my Talkboy as a child. The '90s were great.

What is a Talkboy?

Data was able to hear them, once he started to look for their technobabble disruptions. It occurred around the time they were in Ten Forward, hugging each other.

Her boots would have been off the ground for a split second, allowing them to temporarily remain in phase for at least that long, until her body hit the ground.

Only the best thing ever.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talkboy

This is true, sure you can throw out some technobabble explanation but really there's only one way to get around it "Ignore that crap and enjoy the episode."

They could touch the floor because of the spacial flux caused by heisenberg shockwaves that interphased the deck plates.

It's sooo simple

That's one of the reasons I didnit like this episode- I can 'suspend disbelief' within the framework of the show's make-believe physics, but this was all just too much.

Plus, on principle, I really hate the shows whose plots stem from holodeck and transporter malfunctions. Except for Mirror Mirror, of course!

Yeah...breathing wasn't a problem when ships normally cloaked.

Though I liked it when, in DS9's Extreme Measures, they acknowledge that tiny Miles and tiny Julian wouldn't be able to process unaltered oxygen.