From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.info
Subject: Synopsis, "Realm of Fear"
Followup-To: rec.arts.startrek.current
Date: 4 Oct 1992 00:24:50 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Reply-To: tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu
Summary: == synopsis
Keywords: TNG, Barclay, transporters

WARNING:  The following post contains particularly frightening spoilers for 
this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear".  Those afraid of spoilers should 
either get over their fears or skip over this post.



The Enterprise locates the derelict science vessel USS Yosemite, which had 
been observing a set of "plasma streamers."  The only safe way to travel 
between ships is to link up the two ships' transporter systems, which is 
done.  However, Lt. Reg Barclay abandons the mission temporarily out of a 
sense of extreme terror over using the transporters.  After some quick 
counseling from Troi (who recommends a relaxation technique), however, he 
manages to transport over and begins to work.

The team finds four crewmembers unaccounted for, and the rest all dead.  All 
signs point to an explosion in the transporter console, yet the transporter 
works perfectly.  One of the bodies and a shattered sample container are 
beamed back to the Enterprise for study, and the away team returns.  However, 
while Barclay is in transport, he sees what appears to be a wormlike creature 
*in the matter stream* with him, which then approaches and touches his left 
arm.  When he arrives on board the Enterprise, he is decidedly shaken.

While Barclay and Geordi try (and fail) to reconstitute the Yosemite's 
scrambled logs, Barclay hints at what he saw in the transporter, leaving the 
story vague on specifics.  Geordi and O'Brien check out the transporter in 
question, but find no problems whatsoever.  Further, Geordi and O'Brien both 
reemphasize to Reg how safe transporting really is as a mode of travel.  
Meanwhile, Beverly's examination of the corpse results in a sudden, 
short-lived heartbeat, and similar occurrences in the brain and lungs.

Later, Barclay is relaxing in Ten-Forward when his arm suddenly flares with 
pain and begins to glow.  Panicking, he covers it as it fades and hurries out 
of the lounge to his quarters.  There, he listens to a description of the old 
disease "transporter psychosis" and becomes convinced that he's a victim of 
it.  

After Beverly gives her report on the Yosemite crewmember (residual 
ionization in the body caused those sporadic occurrences), the suggestion is 
made that the ship might have tried to beam aboard a piece of a plasma 
streamer for study, and that an explosion of that nature might have caused 
all the damage they've seen.  Geordi, Data, and a very jittery Barclay check 
the container and find the same ionization traces.  They decide to repeat the 
same experiment under better-controlled circumstances.  However, Geordi, 
tipped off by Data as to Barclay's odd behavior, calls in Troi to help calm 
him down.  Troi then, based on her observations, relieves Barclay of duty.

Barclay tries to relax in his quarters and fails.  Then, trying to sleep, he 
once again sees his arm begin to glow.  This time, he goes to the transporter 
room and orders O'Brien to beam him to the Yosemite and back again, this time 
manually re-creating an ionic fluctuation that occurred during his original 
beam-back.  When O'Brien does so, Barclay *again* sees the wormlike creature 
in the matter stream, and this time has the senior staff awakened for a 
briefing.  Picard orders that one transporter disassembled for analysis 
initially, and Beverly finds with a microcellular scan of Barclay's arm that 
the same ionization patterns as in the dead Yosemite crewman are now in his 
body.  This time, all transporters are taken offline, as Barclay returns to 
Engineering to carry out the experiment previously arranged.

The streamer is beamed aboard inside a container, and the container is 
further enclosed in a containment field.  However, during a resonance scan 
the container explodes; the field, however, remains intact, and Geordi spots 
patterns indicative of *life* in the streamer.  That excitement fades, 
however, when he finds that Reg is now unconscious, with much of his *body* 
glowing the way his arm was earlier...

When Barclay revives, he's told the news; there are small, "quasi-energy" 
microbes inhabiting the streamer, and he must have seen one of them caught in 
the pattern buffer, grossly distorted in size.  Sadly, the microbes are also 
infesting his body, and slowly killing him.  The only possible way to remove 
them would be to hold his body in transporter stasis and try to pick out a 
pattern that the biofilter could recognize.  It might work, but it also runs 
the risk of pattern degradation; Barclay might never emerge from transport.

Barclay, with little option, accepts the risk, and as the suspension begins, 
he once again encounters the lifeform in the matter stream.  As Geordi, 
O'Brien and Beverly work frantically to screen out the microbes, the lifeform 
approaches Barclay.  They discover the right patterns just in the nick of 
time, but as the beam-in commences, Barclay spies a *second* lifeform and 
grabs onto the first, playing a hunch.  He rematerializes intact on board the 
Enterprise, holding on to *one of the missing four Yosemite crewmembers*.  
Apparently, they had also been infected with the microbes, but the limits 
were pushed too far in the same attempt to cure them, thus losing them to the 
pattern buffer.  Worf and a security team, using the same technique, manage 
to recover the other three missing crewmembers; and having returned the 
microbes to their proper homes, the Enterprise moves on.

NEXT WEEK:

Troi ages quickly and becomes either domineering, possessed, or both.  Pardon 
the jumping to conclusions, but I *really* hope this is better than it looks.

Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"You know, I think this is the first time we've talked outside the 
transporter room."
"Well, to be honest, I've always avoided you."
--
Copyright 1992, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...