Original air date: September 28, 1992
Part three of the "Barclay Saga"
The Enterprise finds the lost USS Yosemite, which disappeared while studying a plasma stream. Sensors can't tell if there are life signs aboard because of the plasma's interference, and any attempts to pull the ship out with the tractor beam would be equally futile, so Picard contacts La Forge to ask if beaming an away team to the Yosemite would be feasible. La Forge is at first hesitant to try it for fear of getting the away team stuck with no way of bringing them back, but Lieutenant Barclay suggests bridging the two transporter systems together to improve the transporter strength. La Forge likes this idea and gives the go-ahead. He asks Barclay to join him on the away team, a prospect that Barclay clearly has trepidations about. Seems he's got a bit of Bones' mistrust of the idea of being torn apart and hurled particle by particle across the vacuum of space. He agrees to go along, but before O'Brien can beam him over, he chickens out and dashes out of the room.
He heads straight to Counselor Troi to talk about it. She agrees that on paper the whole idea of the transporter sounds downright terrifying, but tells him he can overcome his completely rational fear by tapping a sensitive spot behind his ear to stimulate his endorphins and calm down. Armed with this technique, which he constantly uses for the rest of the episode, Barclay faces his fears. After confessing to his own phobia of spiders, O'Brien beams him over to the Yosemite. The investigation of the ship is going smoothly, but they can't figure out what happened to it. There are signs of an explosion on the transporter pad, though the transporter is still operating normally. The ship's engineer is found dead and covered in burns, but Dr. Crusher doesn't think the burns are what killed him. And there are four crew members completely unaccounted for. Picard gets a tip-off from Starfleet that the Cardassians might have been involved, but they don't find any evidence that proves it. They all beam back over, but this time while Barclay is mid-transport, he sees a hideous leech-like creature floating in front of him, which draws closer and touches his arm.
They run a diagnostic on the transporters, but find nothing wrong with them. O'Brien and La Forge try to assure Barclay that transporters are completely safe, citing that only a handful of accidents have ever occurred with them. Barclay counters that there is a condition known as transporter psychosis associated with them, but they tell him that there hasn't been a case of it in ages. Barclay then notices a strange feeling in his arm. He asks the computer to list the symptoms of transporter psychosis, becoming convinced that he's suffering from the disorder.
La Forge theorizes that the Yosemite attempted to transport a sample of plasma onto the ship and it exploded. They look into it, but Data notices that Barclay seems preoccupied with his physical condition. They let Counselor Troi know that he's acting strange, and she responds by temporarily relieving him of duty. He tries to take it easy, but can't get his mind off the transporter. He checks the transporter logs and finds an ionic fluctuation that occurred during his transport to the Yosemite. He wakes O'Brien in the middle of the night and tells him to beam him to the Yosemite and back again and recreate the fluctuation, claiming that La Forge wants a tricorder reading of the phenomenon. O'Brien notes that Barclay didn't bring a tricorder with him, and Barclay admits he was lying, but O'Brien understands and does it for him anyway. Barclay sees the leech thing in the matter stream again, and he orders O'Brien to wake the senior staff.
The senior officers hesitantly decide they believe Barclay's story, and Crusher examines his arm to find traces of ionization similar to what they found on the Yosemite. The engineering crew recreates the accident on the Yosemite, and Geordi's visor picks up life signs in the plasma. They decide that microbes in the plasma must have gotten into the transporter stream and onto Barclay's body, and that the life form Barclay saw was probably a magnified image of one of those microbes. They decide to decontaminate Barclay by suspending him in the transporter stream so that the technobabble can technobabble. Barclay doesn't like this idea one bit, but they tell him it should be perfectly safe, unless his signal degrades and he's lost forever, which could totally happen.
They suspend Barclay and run the decontamination. Barclay sees the life form again. This time, he grabs onto it and pulls it out with him. It turns out that it's one of the crew members of the Yosemite, accidentally lost in the matter stream when they'd tried to decontaminate themselves the way Barclay did. After the other missing crew members are retrieved, Barclay chats with O'Brien in Ten Forward, casually mentioning that he's not afraid of the transporters anymore. O'Brien one-ups him by showing off his pet tarantula, which starts crawling on the nonplussed Barclay's sleeve as O'Brien fetches their drinks.
Tropes featured in "Realm of Fear":
- Bait-and-Switch: Barclay initially refuses to transport to the Yosemite; however, he eventually relents and beams over. Once on board, Riker barks out his name, leading Barclay to think he is about to be reprimanded. However, Riker breaks in to a grin, and welcomes Barclay aboard. Doubles as a heartwarming moment.
- Blatant Lies: Barclay wakes O'Brien up to perform a transporter test, claiming that he needs to take tricorder readings for Geordi. O'Brien quickly points out that Barclay didn't bring a tricorder.
- Cassandra Truth: Barclay spends much of the episode trying to convince the officers that he saw some strange lifeforms during transport. As it happens, Picard is willing to trust him since he knows Barclay wouldn't make such a claim without believing it (knowing how fragile his reputation already is). Picard also notes that after everything he's already seen with the ship, he's not dismissing something just because it seems impossible.
- Cowardly Lion: Barclay in this episode regarding the transporters. Ultimately, he's able to muster up the courage to re-enter the transporter and rescue the missing crew members.
- Face Your Fears:
- Though deathly scared of transporters, Barclay finds that in order to solve this mystery, he has to have himself transported.
- O'Brien tells Barclay about how he himself had to face his own arachnophobia.
- Foreshadowing: The discussion between Picard and the Admiral mentions increased Cardassian activity in the sector, possibly alluding to the events seen a few episodes later in "Chain Of Command" Parts 1 and 2.
- Here We Go Again!: Just after Barclay has overcome his fear of transporters (we hope), O'Brien introduces him to his pet tarantula. O'Brien goes to get a couple drinks...and Barclay's eyes widen at the sight of the spider crawling on his arm.Barclay: Uh...chief?
- Induced Hypochondria: Barclay asks the computer to list the symptoms of transporter psychosis, which include "sleeplessness, accelerated heart rate, diminished eyesight leading to acute myopia, painful spasms in the extremities, and in most cases, dehydration". As each one is recited, he instantly becomes convinced he's suffering from it (suddenly squinting when the eyesight thing is mentioned).
- Up to this point, Barclay had been suffering most of the symptoms mentioned (while the first two could be attributed to stress, the last two matched actual symptoms of what was happening to him). The only one he hadn't really suffered at that point was the diminished eyesight. Data later notes that Barclay has continually been testing his vision since the incident.
- Nightmare Fuel: The science behind the transporter—being taken apart at the subatomic level and reconstructed, with absolute precision necessary—is this In-Universe for Barclay.
- No OSHA Compliance: Once again, Geordi and Data conduct a dangerous and potentially explosive experiment within sight of the warp core.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- When Barclay barks an order at O'Brien, you know he's in extreme circumstances.
- One scene later, he has all the senior staff woken up to deliver his concerns, noting that he wouldn't have taken such extreme measures if he weren't completely sure of himself. Given how timid Barclay is, it says a lot.
- Oh, Crap!: Barclay's reaction when Geordi taps him for the repair team on the Yosemite. It's pretty much his default state of mind throughout the episode.
- P.O.V. Shot: A rare look at what being transported looks like from inside the matter stream.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Barclay insists there is something wrong with the transporters, even though he lacks any real proof of it. Captain Picard responds by ordering the transporters taken off-line and thoroughly checked down to the individual components.
- Spiders Are Scary: O'Brien tells Barclay about his arachnophobia, and how he overcame it. In spite of the fact that Barclay claims that spiders have never bothered him, he looks extremely uncomfortable when one starts crawling on him.
- Teleporter Accident: Lampshaded really. Long-time Trek viewers would know that transporter problems just affecting ships named Enterprise have been common enough as to stand out. There's really no reason to think that other starships have it any better.
- That's an Order!: When O'Brien starts to question Barclay over his transporter experiment, Barclay actually pulls rank.
- Trapped on the Astral Plane: Lt. Barclay thinks he's seeing things while being transported and thinks he has Transporter Psychosis, but he's actually seeing some people trapped in whatever they transport through when using the transporter. Barclay grabs one of them and hauls him back into reality, and then some security officers are sent in to rescue the rest.
- Tuckerization: Zayra IV is one of several things named after writer/producer Jeri Taylor's assistant Zayra Cabot.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Fortunately for Barclay, Picard does.
- You Won't Feel a Thing!: Geordi assures Barclay that the transporter decon process won't hurt a bit.
