THE NEXT PHASE

'The Next Phase' is a fifth-season episode of . 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.

Contents

Plot summary

Trivia

External links

Plot summary

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 as a non-threatening gesture, 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 fully re-energize them on the transporter pad, despite amplification. Since the two do not return to the Romulan ship, and their patterns cannot be located, it is assumed that they are lost completely.
The transporter is put offline until further notice, and the crew use 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 to gain the Captain's attention, 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 slams her fist on the desk in frustration, but instead it goes straight 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 conducting an investigation of the transporter accident. He asks the Captain if he would be allowed to conduct the services for Geordi's (and Ro's) death remembrance, to which Picard agrees.
In Engineering, La Forge 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 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. She says that the two of them need to make peace with their former lives, but La Forge is certain that they are still alive, and goes to Transporter Room 3 to solve their dilemma without Ro's help.
Data links the cause of the accident with the explosion on the Romulan ship. He detects a chronoton field, which could have affected the transporter beam. Geordi follows Data to investigate. Meanwhile, Ro is on the bridge - to say goodbye. 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, who still intimidates her even in "death". She thanks the Captain for trusting her when no one else would. La Forge finds Ro to request her help investigating the Romulan ship. She agrees to go with him, and they tag along on a shuttle.
On the shuttle, Data asks Worf for advice on finding an appropriate service for their dead comrades. Worf states that a solemn, dignified service is the human custom, but Data does not think that this, or the Bajoran "death chant" (leading Ro to groan at the prospect of having to sit through the two-hour-long ceremony), is appropriate. Worf, however, says he is happy for the lost officers, because they died in the line of duty and (in Klingon belief) are enjoying a place among the honored dead.
On the Romulan ship, Data continues his investigation of the chronoton emissions. La Forge peers inside a box that contains a phase inverter, a continuation of technology that the Klingons had abandoned after several accidents. Geordi deduces that they're cloaked and out of phase with normal matter, and that it would be possible to be dephased. They overhear the Romulans planning to make the Enterprise explode by causing the warp drive to overload. As they leave the ship, an armed 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 dipping his hand repeatedly into different parts of the engineering console while urging Data to stop thinking rationally and use 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 abruptly puts down the scanner (to Geordi's great frustration).
The Romulan confronts Ro on the bridge. Armed with a disruptor (which he had been carrying 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 he 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. The Romulan fires his disruptor at Ro several times, hitting her in the leg at one point. Their activity causes elevated 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 and the Romulan captain thanks an unsuspecting Picard for his assistance. Picard gives the order to engage, which panics La Forge and Ro. However, the acting transporter chief recommends that the chronoton emissions be eliminated before setting off. 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 Romulan sabotage, but their only hope is to go somewhere with a lot of people — such as 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, at one point standing in front of Riker and firing through his head; the weapons fire does register a large increase in chronoton activity, but the decontamination field does not dephase them enough to become visible. In a final effort Ro sets the disruptor to overload. When Data calls for an amplified decontamination sweep with anyon beams, the two 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, orders an unrestricted 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 tells Data he's "never been to a better funeral."
After the memorial is over, Ro observes that Geordi (neither had eaten in two days) has been eating for over an hour. 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 jokes 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."

Trivia

★ In addition to the inconsistency of the characters being able to touch the floor but not the walls, there is the question of how Geordi and Ro can breathe without phased 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.")

★ Andromeda (TV series) episode "Into the Labyrinth" offers a possible explanation to characters being able to touch the floor because of the effect of gravity plating.

★ 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 a different cause.

External links

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