The Enterprise rushes to the aid of a Romulan scout ship sending out a distress signal. With a measure of caution, Picard beams over an unarmed away team to aid the ship that has suffered an unexplained on-board explosion. While analyzing damaged equipment Geordi and Ensign Ro discovered a piece of damaged machinery that needs to be duplicated/replicated back on the Enterprise with the Romulans' permission Geordi and Ro beam over with the piece of equipment.
Some sort of error begins to occur during the transport, while the transporter chief tries to get Geordi and Ro to rematerialize back on the Romulan ship but they don't. Nor do they rematerialize on the Enterprise. It seems as if Geordi and Ro have died in a rare transporter accident.
Picard orders that all transporters be shut-down while they investigate what happens and that shuttles be used to aid the Romulan ship, which now needs a patch-job to replace the now missing piece of equipment. Data and the remaining engineering staff are confident they can provide the Romulans what they need to limp back home but it'll require several hours worth of work and an energy transfer. The Enterprise also offers the Romulans other pieces of equipment as part of the patch job, albeit out-dated equipment to prevent any technological espionage.
As it turns out Ro and Geordi didn't die in the transporter, we find Ro waking up with a headache lying in a corridor outside sickbay. But as she walks around the ship she discovers no one can see or hear her, doors aren't responding to her presence and that she can even pass-through walls, people and other solid objects. She witnesses Crusher filling out hers and Geordi's death certificates. She believes herself to be dead and to now be a spirit and, according to Bajoran custom, she's to make use of this time to make peace with her life before passing on to the afterlife.
She runs into Geordi in Engineering, Geordi is also in the same state as Ro -though they can see and hear one another as well are tangible to one another- but is less convinced they're dead and that something else has occurred and proceeds to investigate while Ro goes on to "make peace" with her life and [former] ship-mates.
While observing Data -who is investigating the transporter accident- Geordi gathers information about what happened and learns of a bizarre energy pattern on the ship that seems to have occurred everywhere he and Ro have been. He hunts down Ro in order for them both to go the Romulan ship on the next shuttle-over in order to investigate further.
On the Romulan ship, Geordi learns of more information and comes up with the theory that the Romulans were working on a new-kind-of cloaking device that "phased" him and Ro. By "phasing" them they're not only cloaked but also intangible to physical matter. While on the ship the overhear to Romulan officers speaking of a plan to send some "feedback" in the energy beam in order destroy to the Enterprise when it jumps to warp. They worry that the Enterprise crew may learn of the experiments being conducted on the ship.
Geordi and Ro flee back to the ship hoping to find some way to not only return to normal but to warn the crew of the impending danger. They're followed by a Romulan officer who also appears to be phased.
On ship, Geordi finds that a ray being used by Data to 'clean up" the particles can "un-cloak" him and Ro with a high-enough setting, him and Ro have being leaving the particles behind as they've interacted with ship surfaces. After an encounter with the phased Romulan officer, sending him off the ship and floating into space, Geordi and Ro go to Ten-Forward where their memorial service is being held, arranged by Data as a rather inappropriately festive party, using a disruptor left behind by the Romulan officer they're able to create enough of a field in the room to be briefly visible when it is cleaned of the particles. Having been seen by Data, Data "puts all of the pieces together" and has the room flooded with the particles, "un-cloaking" Geordi and Ro.
Geordi warns the ship of the impeding danger in the warp core and everyone lives happily ever after.
Having to accept a lot in order for this episode to work it's not a bad outing. And by "accept a lot" I mean you have to accept that this "cloaking" seems to work in a very specific way. Namely it leaves Ro and Geordi intangible but they're still able to walk on the floor, see, hear and breathe; all of which requiring them to be tangible in some way or another.
There's some good moments as we watch Ro deal with her "religious" issues as she copes with having to settle her life but not understanding it -saying she never much believed in Bajoran theology- and Geordi -a human who's presumably shirked religious belief when it comes to the afterlife- trying to solve their mutual problem.
The special effects in the episode actually look pretty good (there's one where Geordi "passes through" the engineering "pool table" and his reflection goes through the middle of the table as it should. And this effect is on the original version, so not just a "remastered" addition) and there's good fun chemistry between Ro and Geordi here, which it's a shame we didn't get more of it, nor didn't get a whole lot more Ro. (I can only think of one or two more episodes after this one that center on her.)
Ro's talk with Picard in his Ready Room is touching and the "sexual tension" -for what of a better term- between Ro and Riker is also good in this episode and really seems to show that the two had a lot more going on between them than we were ever let on. Sadly, this development goes nowhere.
Also interesting is Data's research in how to best provide a memorial service that best reflects the beliefs of Ro and Geordi, obviously being from two different cultures (even if Ro shirks hers) they have different death rites and Data wants to best reflect them. Most interesting in this is his talk with Worf in a shuttle craft where Worf offers his insight on Klingon death rites (where he sees this as a glorious time for Geordi and Ro, having not only died in the line of duty but for perhaps moving on to a greater way of living) as opposed to human death rites (filled with mourning and reflection, as he'd experienced in human funerals growing up with his adoptive human family.)
There are some plot oddities here not related to the cloaking device. Namely the apparent relationship between the Federation and the Romulans here.
In a previous episode a Romulan commander wants to cross The Neutral Zone to recover survivors of a crashed shuttle on a Federation planet (chalking up the incident as being a navigational error) and Picard nearly takes the two sides to the edge of war wanting to defend the Federation border. Here it seems as if a Romulan ship was hanging out either in Federation or unclaimed space and nothing is made much of it.
It's also odd that the Romulans would be so willing to allow on a Federation away team, allow them to beam-away a piece of crucial and sensitive equipment, and to poke around for a couple days to repair their ship. The hostilities between the two sides seems much lessened here. Picard seems very willing and diplomatic towards the Romulan staff here.
Have tensions really eased between The Federation and the Romulans that much? Wasn't it just less than a year ago they attempted an invasion and take-over of a core Federation world?
And what happened after the feedback into the warp core was revealed? Did anything ever come down on the Romulans for this attempt at an attack? Wouldn't that potentially make their "cold war" a hot one? And did it ever dawn on anyone this phase-cloak component is likely on the ship somewhere and could be recovered? (Granted, Riker knows about the dabbling into phase-cloak technology from his time on the Pegasus, but Picard doesn't know about it.)
But, still, in the end and enjoyable enough episode. No real strong feelings about it one way or another. One I can watch and be happy with.
