Pathfinder

***** (5 stars out of 5)
Back on Earth, with the war won, a lot of time was spent replicating new lawns over the Breen Burns around Starfleet Headquarters. But no one spent enough time wondering where Voyager got to...

Except a familiar face, a certain staunch Voyager booster who's so lonely without the Enterprise he'll look almost ANYWHERE for new friends. Reg Barclay, who once shook hands with Zefram Cochrane himself, has taken a job with the Pathfinder Communications Project. First testing interpersonal skills on holograms, now reaching out and touching the galaxy. Is there a guy out there LESS suited to do these things?

Anyway, Counselor Troi flies in via stunt cast... uh, shuttlecraft to help Barclay over this latest bout of holo-addiction: he's taken to hanging out in a Voyager sim rather than even try to make friends with his new boss Pete or his co-workers.

Will anyone take our stuttering superhero seriously? Find out tonight: Same Barclay Time! Same Barclay Channel!

From the pens of future ER scribe David Zabel and Trek's veteran Ken Biller, "Pathfinder" is a story I always take deeply to heart. It must be painfully obvious that Barclay is pretty much meant to be the target audience. Missing the Next Generation crew badly, not exactly the most skilled socially, and, lately, one bad date from being a shut-in cat lady. Please consider this review on Barclay's loneliness from the excellent Jammer's Blog.

We love Reg, we want him to succeed, and he does. That's how it's done! (And, yes, his initial attempts to contact the ship were aiming 30,000 light-years too far back: that's just a measure of how imaginative Barclay really IS! When he didn't reach anyone with the first three LIKELY calls, he went for the hugely, optimistically, impossibly UNLIKELY- and got through.)

Realm of Fear

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

Guess what Reginald Barclay is scared of this week? Yup, transporters. You guessed it!

Reg has somehow managed to reach this point in his career without using them. He mostly clings to the safety of slidewalks, shuttles, and space elevators. He even hides if he sees Miles O'Brien coming so he won't have to think about transporters.

But with a great show of bravery and his therapists' Betazoid endorphin-stimulating neck tap (plexing, don't cha know), he beams to the rescue with the away team seeking some missing scientists or something.

On the beam back, however, Barclay spots a wormy grey shape, seemingly on the approach with a horrendous gaping maw. He feels it touch his arm, and although everything checks out, he starts to go a little squirrelly. Well, squirrellier.

Reg decides rather than go to Crusher or Troi he'll just dignose himself on 24th Century WebMD. He immediately concocts or imagines most of the symptoms of an obscure illness called 'transporter psychosis'.

Barclay asks La Forge whether he's ever experienced anything unusual in the transporter.

Thankfully, Geordi adds no fuel to the hypochondriac's fire by saying "Not unless you count the time I became an intangible spectre for two days and everyone thought I was dead. Why do you ask?"

But it's time for the worm to turn. In fact, all the worms have turned! Acting on a hunch, Barclay brings the slugs out of the beam and for some reason they were the missing scientists all along. I'm serious! That happened.

I've seen more logical science on Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

"Realm of Fear" is still quite good. That's because Dwight Shultz and Colm Meaney make everything better.

Next week: Barclay's fear of spiders. And then his fear of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark: The Musical.

The Nth Degree

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Shy Reg Barclay performs a scene from Cyrano De Bergerac for Dr. Crusher's acting workshop.

It's not a performance Data finds impressive, and Worf looks as though he'd rather be shanked with a shiv.

Troi praises Barclay for his social efforts. "You're not just acting. You're interacting."

Out by the Argus telescope array, Barclay gets flashed by a probe. The alien device begins to make him smarter. The probe chases the ship, about to flash The Full Iconian. Enterprise cannot torpedo the meddlesome cylinder because it's following too closely.

Barclay comes up with some astounding high-speed gobbledegook to boost the shield strength by 300%. Also boosted is his acting skill: his Cyrano moves Bev 'The Directing Doctor' to tears. And it boosted his confidence: he asks Troi for a walk in the arboretum.

"I've finally become the person I've always wanted to be. Do we have to ask why?"

Barclay guesses his IQ is over 1200 and climbing. To save the Argus array, Barclay invents and builds a neural scan interface in the Holodeck that links him into the main computer. Indeed, he uploads his considerable intellect into the ship's CPU and begins to function as the computer. Anyone who's seen the movie 'Demon Seed' starts to get REALLY nervous.

Picard asks Barclay to withdraw, and he responds 'I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.' Talking without moving his lips is one thing, but calling the Captain Dave is quite another. Dave's not here, man!

Barclay Big Brain tells Geordi that he understands... everything. That he has been chosen for a great purpose.

Geordi can't stop him. Nor Worf's phaser team.

Without using warp drive, the Reggie-puter creates a subspace bias that stretches them like taffy and drops them off in the centre of the galaxy near the home world of the Cytherians.

Giant Kindly Head restores Barclay to normal.

Cytherians explore the galaxy by bringing other people to them. They wish only an exchange of knowledge. Armchair explorers, Space Mycrofts, Couch Potato Heads. Call them what you will. They chat for 10 days and are sent home with decades worth of knowledge.

"The Nth Degree" is a welcome return for my favorite milquetoast, Mr. Barclay. Kind of a "Neural Relays For Algernon". Like Mr. Barclay, my community theatre endeavors led to some of my favorite interactions, and some of my favorite friendships ever, especially with my wife.

I wonder whether the Cytherians were the ones who imprisoned that Giant Evil God Head from Star Trek V? I only ask because it's the right neighborhood for Big Ol' Floatin' Heads.