Star Trek: The Next Generation — 7x06 — Phantasms

Aired 1993-10-25

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:5.23

Synopsis

Data's first bad dream turns into a real-life nightmare.

Remarkable scenes

Picard lamenting about being invited to a dinner with a bunch of admirals.
Data staring at his cat.
The Troi cake.
Data "oversleeping."
Riker: "Talk about going nowhere fast."
Picard trying to be useful in engineering.
Data stabbing Troi.
Worf attempting to command Data's cat to come to him.
Data: "And you must talk to him. Tell him he's a pretty cat. And a good cat."
Troi's Data cake.
Data: "I wonder what Dr. Freud would say about the symbolism of devouring oneself."

Review

This episode features good continuity with TNG: Birthright, when Data first discovered his dreaming program. It's nice to see more about this program. I'm glad they don't just sweep the whole incident under the rug like certain other episodes. The Enterprise's engine troubles were thoroughly fun to watch. Every time they try to go to warp the engines blows! Hilarious. Overall the episode is entertaining despite a rather weak plot.

5 reader comments

I think that for these data dream episodes, the writers employed one of their teenage sons that trips out on acid all the time. The dream sequences are so extremely bizarre, I'm glad I've never experienced something that messed up.
by Pete Miller | 05/28/2006 at 1:33 am

I could only give this episode a 3. As the previous comment said, dream episodes in Star Trek tend to be quite bizarre and surrealistic and I suppose that throws my senses off a bit. I particularly dislike the warped camera views but that only happened briefly during the dream sequences. It was interesting that the dreams meant more than simply Data's imagination developing strange scenarios but were actually tied into this alien presence. However where these "creatures" came from, the lack of the prime directive in dealing with a new life form, and just general plot line seemed a bit absurd to me. Sometimes I know that just to develop a new episode the writers obviously search for a plot and a few times these plots have been quite poor.
by Robert Koenn | 06/23/2011 at 11:35 am

I thought this was one of the better episodes. It's nice to have some surrealism instead of soap opera. It was a little like that 80's movie Videodrome.
by thaibites | 12/19/2012 at 3:21 am

For me this episode falls flat on it's arse for one reason the unrealistic character representation in the way of Geordi, throughout all seven seasons he has less pussy than Data's cat and here he has some hot young ensign throwing herself at him and he is acting like she is an annoyance that he doesn't have time for
by Rob UK | 02/25/2015 at 10:25 pm

I like the intent of this episode, setting up a major mystery and a minor mystery, and solving it by figuring out the symbolism of Data's nightmares. But I find the end product doesn't come together that well, it's just OK. It hurts that the final solution is pure technobabble and most of the symbolism just isn't that important.
by Christopher Alexander | 04/08/2019 at 6:02 am