TNG · SEASON 77×18

Eye of the Beholder

NOMADIC PICK · FUN PICKA shipboard mystery with a psychic edge.
FIRST SHOWN (US)
28 February 1994
ON
First-run syndication
STARDATE
47622.1
DIRECTED BY
Cliff Bole
PRODUCTION NO.
270

WRITTEN BYTeleplay by René Echevarria; story by Brannon Braga

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

When a crewman inexplicably leaps to his death in a warp nacelle, Troi and Worf investigate, and Troi begins experiencing disturbing visions from the ship's past.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

Lt Daniel Kwan, a seemingly contented engineer, throws himself into a plasma stream in one of the Enterprise's warp nacelles. Troi and Worf find nothing in his life to explain it. At the scene, Troi senses an empathic trace and begins having vivid visions of events from eight years earlier, when the ship was being built at Utopia Planitia. She sees a woman, a jealous red-haired man named Walter Pierce, and another man. Troi and Worf grow close and spend the night together. When a skeleton is found hidden behind a bulkhead, Troi believes she has uncovered a murder, and suspects a crewman still aboard. Then her visions overtake her completely: she sees Worf with another woman, kills him in a jealous rage and heads for the nacelle herself. Worf pulls her back in time. Pierce, who was part Betazoid, had killed Finn and her lover years ago and died with them, and his emotions left a deadly psychic imprint.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01The episode gave Star Trek its first look inside a starship's warp nacelle, the only one until Star Trek: Enterprise's “The Catwalk” in 2002.
  2. 02The flashbacks are set during the Enterprise-D's construction at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards, first mentioned in “Booby Trap”.
  3. 03Pierce is revealed to be part Betazoid, which explains how his feelings left an empathic imprint aboard the ship.
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