Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Night Terrors”
- Year: 1991
- Format: Television
- Buy It at Amazon.com
- View the IMDb Listing
- Categories: Pet Store Stand-ins
- Posted on September 23, 2006
“Night Terrors” is usually regarded as the weakest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s generally strong fourth season: Troi’s “WHERE ARE YOU?” must therefore be seen as the TNG equivalent of “WHERE IS SPOCK’S BRAIN?” In brief, the entire crew is generally going nuts and hallucinating on account of being denied REM sleep. Riker’s hallucination involves finding a mess of snakes in his bed. (Uncharacteristically, the rishathra-obsessed Riker does not try to seduce them.)
The snakes are, of course, of the usual pet store varieties: I spotted a California Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula californiae) and a Ball Python (Python regius); other species are harder to identify for sure, though they might be more kingsnakes, and possibly duller subspecies of Rainbow Boa (Epicrates cenchria).