The Enterprise is serving as host to three members of a telepathic race, the Ullians, in need of travel between star-systems. The aliens' telepathic abilities allow them to help a subject to recall half-remembered or forgotten memories and recall them vividly.
Keiko O'Brien allows herself to be a subject of one of their probes to better recall a faint memory from her childhood as she aided her grandmother in ink paintings.
The one performing the memory probe, an older male member named Tarmin, is eager to perform his abilities on someone else but everyone declines to be probed, he tries again during a formal dinner with the bridge crew causing his son, Jev, to leave the dinner in frustration over his father's eagerness to use his telepathic abilities on others. Troi follows and has a pleasant conversation with Jev in the turbolift enroute to her quarters. Once there and readying herself for bed Troi begins to experience a memory, presumably from her own past, where after a poker-game her and Riker had a near-romantic encounter. Soon in the memory Riker is replaced by Jev who forces himself on Troi, in the real world Troi lapses into a coma.
An investigation is begun as no explanation can be found for Troi's lapse into a coma as she has no physical condition that would have caused one, investigations by Geordi reveal no agent or technological component on the ship that'd cause her coma and Crusher's own medical tests and and analysis reveal nothing but a slight resemblance to known condition but the diagnoses don't line-up 100%.
The only "unknown" in everything are the Ullians, though they aren't carrying anything missed by the transporter's biofilter and Keiko -the only one to undergo a memory probe- is fine. As Riker pursues the issue with the Ullians he falls into a coma while recalling a memory of an impending disaster on the ship, and Crusher too falls into a coma while recalling a memory of her identifying her late husband's body in a Starfleet morgue.
Picard is forced to confine the Ullians to quarters, prompting tensions between him and the Ulllian leader, soon after Troi regains consciousness but cannot remember what happened much past after entering her quarters.
With her consent, Jev offers to help Troi recall that evening where Troi remembers remembering the time after a poker game only this time it's Tarmin who forces himself on Troi, prompting Picard to begin to take the necessary action against him.
During much of this Geordi and Data have continued investigating what's happening and are focusing on cases of unexplained comas on planets the aliens have recently visited.
Before they're set to leave the ship, Jev visits Troi in her quarters one last time to say goodbye and apologize for his father. But Troi's kindness and beauty overwhelms Jev and he begins trying to telepathically force himself on her again. Troi realizes what's going on and takes aggressive action just as Worf arrives with a security detail to apprehend Jev.
During their investigation, Geordi and Data reveal one member of the Ullians was present for all of the instances of unexplained Coma, Jev. Jev had "framed" his father for the crimes he committed -telepathic rape- on the ship.
Tarmin and the Ullian homeword offer their assistance in helping Riker, Troi and Crusher recover from their comas and to heal from the violations the Ullians thought they had grown past as a species. Picard laments that humans, too, have grown past their more aggressive natures from hundreds of years ago but sometimes there are still those seeds that lie in everyone that cannot be weeded out, no matter how much a species might evolve.
Not too terrible an episode, really, the flashback/rape scenes are nicely done with a sort of soft-focus and an almost "fish eye lens" type look to it (Not sure how to describe that type of filming technique) to give it a real eerie feel.
The story isn't too bad but feels padded in a couple of places, most notably a treknobabble scene between Geordi and the computer trying to determine if there's anything on the ship causing the problems. And the aliens are given a bit more than the "bumpy forehead/odd nose" look common to the AOTW and actually have an interesting look.\
There's a really nice, sweet, scene as Riker talks with a comatose Troi in sickbay.
The episode's subject matter is harder to dive into without probably bringing up uncomfortable discussions but it should be clear that calling what Jev was doing to the crew as "rape" isn't being hyperbolic even if there was no real physical violation taking place.
The episode also seems to want to touch a bit on the "evolved humans" idea that's so common in TNG by sort of backing up on it a bit and saying that humans aren't perfect and that sometimes human nature still comes out and bad things happen. No matter how advanced a society is, there's always someone to make you realize how far a society still may have to go.
Pushing up my glasses (obviously held together by tape on the bridge) I'll point out a nice scene with the turbolift where we see Troi and Jev enter it on deck 3 (where the formal dining room would likely be in the bridge island) as they approach the doors to the lift. When the car arrives at it's destination the doors close again on the camera as the scene ends and the doors correctly say, "deck 8", the deck Troi asked for and correctly where her quarters are.
On another hand, this episode must have been filmed not too long after, or the same time as, scenes from Star Trek VI were filmed, or the stage crew for either the movie, the show, or both hadn't gotten around to redressing the sets for TNG.
We see the replicator alcove in Troi's quarters and in Riker's quarters when falls into his coma (and in the flashback to his quarters) and the replicator alcove's control panel has the 23rd century style Okudagram/LCARS display rather than the 24th century one.
Oops.
Along with all of that, maybe we can also discuss in this thread fond memories we have or half-remembered ones we'd like to get more of with the help of the Ullians.
