When it comes to technical jargon and scientific psychobabble, this might be the most esoteric episode of Next Generation ever. I had all I could do to keep up with talk of time distortions, sensor array aberrations, subspace particles and tetryon emissions. And then, above all else, this turns out to be a story of alien abductions aboard the Enterprise!! Who would have thought? Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) is actually whisked away to an alien ship to be probed and prodded by what looked like full sized Jawa-like creatures with reptilian faces. Earlier Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) discovered that Riker's arm had been previously amputated and reattached by the inquisitive aliens, who apparently had little regard for their human subjects, having turned Lieutenant Hagler's (Tyce Bune) blood into a liquid polymer. And after all was said and done, the episode concluded with no substantial resolution, except to escape from the solangen based alien life forms. The only thing that could have livened this story up was a Data (Brent Spiner) poetry reading. Oh, wait!
Review of Schisms
