Star Trek (TNG): Schisms

[StrangeDevice]

Like Chuck said, if they'd just made the alien room *darker* they probably would have worked really well. Or blacklight the room.

I think it's that sense of dimension that kills it. Remove the sense that it's a room (or that what Riker is walking on is a floor) and it becomes a hell of a lot more scarier. Babylon 5 did it rather well with Londo's abduction. It would've been interesting to see what a director like Rob Bowman would have done with that set.

[J!!]

You know what could have been really freaky: turn it from an operating room to an operating theater. Imagine the slow realization as Riker's eyes adjust and he begins to make out dozens of hooded figures in the shadows, surrounding his little island of light, Looking down at him, watching impassively as the surgeons prepare for the operation.

[Durandal_1707]

That would have made the escape at the end less plausible, though.

[StrangeDevice]

It's still one hell of an image though. Maybe it's not dozens of hooded figures, but instead one giant organism. Riker looks up at the ceiling and sees it start moving. More than that, it's turning, the whole thing twisting to look at him and then we get the surgeons responding.

[Nessus]

The funny thing about Schisms is that if you ever played that god awful Star Trek: OnLine, you would know that this EP becomes the main plot point that leads to Delta quadrant witch as you all know is where Voyager went to. And where the Dyson Sphere that Enterprise found Scotty. Yes that Dyson Sphere is now in Delta quadrant, because I have no clue. As well as finding other Dyson Spheres. But they say that all the Dyson Spheres where made by the aliens in this EP. I kid you not.

Well, if you want to be pedantic about it, the things in this episode are servants/tools of the Iconians, who are the main bad guys of most of STO. The Dyson sphere Scotty crashed into is also a gateway to another Dyson sphere in the Delta Quadrant. The main problem is that the one in the Delta Quadrant is also being claimed by the Voth, so it leads to a bit of a turf war between the Alpha Quadrant powers, the Voth, and then the Vaadwaur.

It's only when the creatures from Schisms' masters come back, the Iconians, does everyone stop fighting each other and start fighting the Iconians.

Been a while since I played it, but I thought the guys in STO were these dorks from the Enterprise episode "Fight or Flight"?

[FaxModem1]

That's the Echani. The Iconians are a bit like the First Ones from Babylon 5, in that they take less advanced races and make them into servants. The Echani you fight all the time, the race from Schisms you only encounter in a few times.

[Eishtmo]

That's the Echani. The Iconians are a bit like the First Ones from Babylon 5, in that they take less advanced races and make them into servants. The Echani you fight all the time, the race from Schisms you only encounter in a few times.

Elachi is the actually spelling. The way it was put is that the Elachi are the Iconians soliders, the Solanae (Schisms aliens) are their scientiests, and the Bluegills (those bug things from way back in the TNG episode Consipracy) are their tools.

I like how these one shot aliens all were gathered together to form a larger entity, regardless of the specific failures within the story. The Solanae are kind of the low end, you do only encounter them briefly (and they run like hell when you do). The Elachi are total assholes though considering what they do to anyone they capture. It was a daring move to link them all up, and it worked pretty well in the end as far as I can tell. Of course, if you don't like "we come in peace, shoot to kill" don't play STO, you really won't like it at all.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

That would have made the escape at the end less plausible, though.

Not if they're in a clearly separated observation region. They wouldn't need to be within reach of Riker, just watching him is enough.