“The Next Phase” is episode twenty-four of season five of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Enterprise is heading to a Romulan ship that has broadcast a distress call. Once they are in transporter range, Commander Riker leads an away team consisting of Geordi, Worf and Ensign Ro. He tells them to leave their weapons behind; they don’t want the Romulans to think this is an attack. Ro mutters that this is not a bright idea.
The Romulan ship is drifting and fires are being put out onboard when the away team beams over. Riker introduces them and says they understand the ship had a failure with their engine core. Geordi is looking at what failed and says there’s no way to fix it; it needs replacing. They’re told the replicators are offline and the captain is dead. One Romulan introduces himself as Mirok, the science officer. Geordi wants to take the generator back to the Enterprise for replication. He and Ro are beaming over, but not materialising. The transporter chief has to abort, but the two don’t rematerialize on the Romulan ship. They’re gone.
The captain orders the transporters be taken offline until further notice. Data reports that sensors can’t detect Geordi and Ro and Troi can’t sense them. Riker contacts the Enterprise; they’re still looking at a core breach and need more people. The captain tells Data to take a shuttle and two engineers over and have all available pilots and ships ready. And for the Enterprise to be prepared to jump to warp if the Romulan ship looks like it’s going to explode.
Worf reports that bulkheads have sealed them off from the rest of the ship and there look to be at least 73 Romulans still alive. An alarm goes off and the situation is getting worse. They need to dump the core. He’s told it will need doing manually. Riker asks the Enterprise to extend their shields once the core clears the hull. He and Worf are struggling to shut the chamber doors when Data arrives and does it for them. The core is ejected.
Riker fills in the captain on what the Romulans need. The captain then heads to sickbay, walking past someone sprawled on the floor without looking at them. It’s Ro. She gets up; her combadge doesn’t work. She decides to head to sickbay herself. The door doesn’t open for her, so she waits for someone to come out. Inside, no-one is paying any attention to her.
In sickbay, Dr Crusher and Captain Picard are talking. The doctor doesn’t want to do something but the captain convinces her everything has been done that can be done. She knows; she just hates making out death certificates. Neither notice Ro in the room. Then the captain walks through Ro on his way out. She tries shouting at the doctor and slamming her hand on the desk. Only her arm passes through the desk.
The Enterprise transfers power to the Romulan ship, restoring their power grid. They can give the Romulans a new core, though one that won’t be able to do more than warp 2. Data has run a diagnostic on the transporters and detected an anomalous energy fluctuation. He needs to inspect transporter room 3. Data asks a favour of the captain; Geordi was his best friend and he would like permission to plan and conduct the memorial.
On the Romulan ship, Worf tells Riker the Romulans want a computer but giving them Federation technology is an unacceptable security risk. Riker suggests a computer 30-40 years old, one the Romulans are already familiar with. Worf considers that satisfactory. Given Worf’s opinion of Romulans, he’s behaving himself rather well.
Ro finds Geordi in engineering; they are solid for each other. She believes they are dead and this is the afterlife, explaining the reasoning and what she heard. They need to make peace with their former lives and say goodbye to the people in them. Geordi isn’t as ready to believe he’s dead yet. He heads to the transporter room where Data is scanning and talking to the chief. Data thinks the explosion on the Romulan ship interfered with their cloaking device. He’s detected chronotron particles that have been brought over.
Riker tells the captain that there were experimental engine components on the Romulan ship. He thinks a new warp design blew up in their faces. He’d also like to say some words about Ensign Ro at the memorial.
Geordi wants Ro’s help. If they’re dead, it won’t make a difference. If not, he needs her help. Ro herself is rather less prickly when she’s dead. She also doesn’t want the Bajoran death chant at her memorial. Ro would really like to know what Riker is going to say about her, given their relationship is prickly. Except for that time when it really, really wasn’t. Meanwhile, the Romulans don’t want the Enterprise to discover what they were doing.