Alien abduction is an age old premise in sci fi but that's because it has a lot of potential in the storyline. Unfortunately this episode doesn't deliver on that potential with too long of a buildup to discovering crew members are being abducted, and too little found out about the aliens and their reasons for abduction. The way the episode ends it's like they are setting this up to be a new longer term enemy, "they had a reason for what they were doing" says Riker, but then it ends and we never revisit these aliens again. Too little payoff for too much viewer suffering in the first half of the episode, especially Data's uncomfortably long poetry reading.
Review of Schisms
