Original air date: December 31, 1990
Deanna Troi is counseling a widow, Janet Brooks, about her grief over the death of her husband. Janet regrets getting rid of all of her husband's possessions to avoid confronting her grief, but Troi reveals that she saved her husband's music box. Janet tearfully thanks her. At the end of their session, Troi becomes distracted and starts suffering intense pain.
On the bridge, the crew puzzle over some strange readings in surrounding space, but decide to resume course. The ship lurches and fails to engage. Instead, the ship is pulled in a seemingly random direction by an unknown force. Crewmen around the ship report injuries and headaches from the lurch. By the time Crusher gets around to seeing Troi, the counselor is feeling better. When Troi arrives for a meeting on the observation deck about their current predicament, however, she realizes to her horror that her empathic abilities are gone.
Troi continues trying to act as counselor. In her next appointment with Janet, her patient claims to have turned over a new leaf. Troi is frustrated that she can't use her abilities to analyze Janet's purported recovery, but still expresses doubt that Janet's good mood is genuine. Troi becomes increasingly upset about living in an empty world of surfaces. She lashes out at others when they try to help, saying that they cannot possibly understand what she's lost.
Meanwhile, Data has discovered that the ship is caught in the flow of strange particles that only exist in two dimensions, which is why they escaped notice until now. The crew don't know if these particles are alive or sentient, and Troi is no help now. They realize that that particles are dragging them into a cosmic string, a sort of two-dimensional black hole. They try firing torpedoes in the particles' path as a warning, then fire directly at the particles, but nothing has any effect.
Troi tenders her resignation as counselor, believing that she's of no use anymore. In Ten-Forward, Guinan tells Troi that she might take the job for herself, as it's essentially the same as her job as a bartender. A frustrated Troi explains that the job involves a lot of additional knowledge and intuition than just listening to people. Guinan points out that this exact intuition had led Troi to doubt that Janet's recovery is sincere. Troi takes her point, but does not change her mind. Later, Janet returns for her next appointment. When Troi tells her that she's no longer seeing patients, Janet reveals that Troi had been right about her false recovery.
Realizing that the ship has only seven hours before it's torn apart in the cosmic string, Picard summons Troi and orders to work with Data to figure out a way to communicate with the particles using her skills as a counselor regardless of her lack of empathy. Troi works through her disability to realize that the particles might be intentionally moving toward the anomaly by instinct, so they should create another stimulus that will instinctively drive them away from it long enough to escape their clutches.
The ship mimics the vibrations of the cosmic string in the opposite direction, causing the particles to shift and change direction long enough for the ship to break free. At the same moment, Troi feels her empathic abilities return to her. They were in fact, simply overloaded by the particles rather than lost. She informs everyone that she will return to her job as ship's counselor.
Tropes in this episode include:
- 10-Minute Retirement: Troi feels that without her empathy, she can no longer be ship's counselor. Defied by both Picard (who tells her telepathy/empathy are not job requirements) and Troi's patient Ensign Brooks (when Troi's reading of her, using only her psychology training and human hunch, proves to be correct).
- Artistic License – Law: Once again, Troi's counseling sessions seem to be public knowledge, and she herself confirms that someone is receiving treatment from her. In the real world, revealing the medical information of patients is considered a major breach of ethics and could result in a medical professional being penalized in a lawsuit.
- The Bartender: Discussed when Guinan expresses interest in taking Troi's job as counselor, noting that it wouldn't be much different from what she does currently. She's bluffing, of course, though in the end she says that she still may make a play at the position in the future because it has "better hours."
- Bottle Episode: All of the drama takes place on, or around, the Enterprise. There are no planets or new sets, and relatively minimal special effects.
- Break the Cutie: Troi does not take her impairment well. To say the least.
- Break the Haughty: How Riker feels about Troi's loss. He says unsympathetically it always made her seem like she felt she was better than everyone else.
- Briar Patching: A variation: The Enterprise crew believes that the Starfish Aliens are committing suicide, lemming-like, by flying into the cosmic string, but the string turns out to be their home and no danger to them at all. (It is still a danger to the Enterprise, though.)
- Brick Joke: Riker is surprised when Data doesn't rattle off the complete time to their next destination, as he's done in the past.
- Brought Down to Normal: Troi loses her empathic abilities because the Starfish Aliens' strong desire to go home overloads her powers.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Troi. Marina Sirtis does some of her strongest acting of the series in this episode.
- Disability Superpower: Discussed when Picard quotes the theory that the other senses tend to sharpen should one sense fail. Troi coldly informs him that this is an urban legend.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Troi makes it clear that she does not want people "walking on eggshells" around her.
- Hint Dropping: Guinan gets Troi to realize that her human intuition and knowledge of psychology can be just as useful as her empathic powers, which Troi had tended to use as a crutch.
- Headache of Doom: Troi has a headache that turns out to be due to psychic brain damage, destroying her empathic abilities.
- Innocently Insensitive:
- Several people try to comfort Troi about her loss, often by pointing out that most people get along perfectly fine without empathic powers, but Troi tells them that this only means that they have no appreciation for what she's lost. Geordi also accidentally reminds Troi of her missing powers when he notes that the ship can't tell whether the particles are sentient. Troi takes that as a direct reference to her disability.
- Even when Troi isn't intentionally lashing out at others, she comes across as a little condescending to those who are trying to help her. When she describes a life without empathic abilities as a shallow existence and wonders "how you people can live like this," it's obvious that her friends are trying not to take offense. To her credit, she does acknowledge how horrible she was being and apologizes for it.
- Jerkass Ball: Troi is at her meanest in this episode. The loss of her powers (coupled with the fact that no one can truly empathise with her situation) causes her to lash out at everyone. She's completely forgiven in the end though.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Guinan notes that the ship's counselor position has "better hours" than manning Ten-Forward. This comes very close to acknowledging how Guinan seems to always be there whenever a scene needs her to be.
- Ludicrous Precision: Lampshaded. Data counts the time to their destination to the nearest minute. Riker asks why he didn't mention seconds, to which Data acknowledges that people get impatient when he does that. Then he offers to provide the complete number.
- Moving Beyond Bereavement: Inverted. Ensign Janet Brooks was widowed five months ago, and her way of coping with her grief is keeping busy and convincing herself that she's over her loss. Eventually Troi helps her realize that she never let herself mourn properly.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The cosmic string, described as a "one-dimensional" black hole. Think of it as a slit in space. This actually gets a Call-Back in next season's "Disaster."
- No Ontological Inertia: When the Enterprise finally frees itself from the Starfish Aliens, Troi's empathy instantly returns—even though its loss had been accompanied by real, observable brain damage. To be fair, they did mention that they can't determine whether the brain damage is permanent, and Troi stated early on that the Betazoid brain has a remarkable ability to heal itself and the condition could fade in time (which it did, but because she's half-Betazoid, this healing was likely delayed).
- Patrick Stewart Speech: Defied; Picard attempts to use one on Troi when she tries to resign, but Troi sees it coming and cuts him off.Troi: Captain, spare me the inspirational anecdote and just accept my resignation.
- Power Incontinence: This is a new one. In the series pilot, it's established that if the emotion Troi senses is strong enough, she experiences it as if it were her own. Here, however, a strong enough emotion actually short-circuits her brain.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Riker gives Troi a big one after she's been lashing out at everyone around her, even calling her "aristocratic" because her powers made her feel superior and in control.Troi: You have no idea how frightening it is to just be here without sensing you, without sharing your feelings.
Riker: That's it, isn't it? We're on equal footing now.
Troi: What?
Riker: You always had an advantage. A little bit of control of every situation. That must have been a very safe position to be in. To be honest, I'd always thought there was something a little too aristocratic about your Betazoid heritage. As if your human side wasn't quite good enough for you. - Sense Loss Sadness: Compounded by the fact that no one else has the sense in the first place, so they find it hard to empathize (hah) with Troi's loss.
- Starfish Aliens: An example a bit closer to literal than normal. They're not starfish, exactly, but they do act not unlike a school of fish. Or lemmings, if you prefer.
- Status Quo Is God: Troi's abilities are back at the end of the episode.
- Stepford Smiler: Ensign Brooks, whose husband recently died on a mission, seems to calmly accept his demise. Troi uses her empathy (before she loses it) and later her psychology knowledge to intuit that the woman is simply masking and denying her grief. Brooks refutes it, but it proves to be true. Multiple times.
- Ticking Clock: The ship has seven hours to escape the two-dimensional particles or get destroyed by a Negative Space Wedgie.
