Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.04

Relics

The Enterprise finds the Jenolan, a transport vessel that has been missing for over 75 years. The Jenolan crashed on the exterior of a Dyson sphere. Commander Riker, Lieutenant Commander La Forge, and Lieutenant Worf beam aboard the Jenolan. Geordi discovers that someone's pattern is still locked into the transporter. Geordi activates the transporter and Captain Montgomery "Scotty" Scott materializes.

Scotty returns to the Enterprise with Geordi and the others. He is very curious about the "new" Enterprise. He asks lots of questions and tries to "fix" things in engineering. Geordi has to educate Scotty as to how things have changed in the decades that he has been gone. Scotty tries to fix things in engineering based on his knowledge of starships from 75 years before. Geordi gets frustrated with the older engineer's attempts to be useful and goes off on him.

Scotty leaves engineering and winds up in Ten Forward. There he meets Data who helps him get a drink of real Scotch and suggests that he give the Holodeck a try.

Scotty has the Holodeck recreate the bridge of the Enterprise, the one that he served on. He is still there reminiscing when Captain Picard comes in to see him. The two captains spend a little bit of time exchanging stories. Captain Picard tells him a little bit about his first command, the Stargazer.

Captain Picard asks Geordi to return to the Jenolan with Captain Scott to see if they can retrieve some of the data from the memory banks of the old ship. Geordi reluctantly agrees to do that. 

The Enterprise, after dropping Geordi and Scotty off, heads to what looks like an opening on the Dyson sphere. They try hailing the Dyson sphere. The gate opens up and a tractor beam pulls them in. The tractor beam is too powerful for them to do anything to resist its pull.

There is a star on the interior of the Dyson sphere. The Enterprise is pulled towards it. Damage done by the tractor beams make it impossible for the Enterprise to reverse direction but they are able to enter orbit around the star.

Geordi and Scotty notice that the Enterprise is gone. They guess that it must have been sucked into the Dyson sphere. They get the Jenolan up and running and head for the doorway into the Dyson sphere. They get the door open and help the Enterprise to escape but the Jenolan is destroyed in the process, after La Forge and Scotty have been beamed aboard the Enterprise.

Thoughts

Scotty tells numerous stories which I am sure are references to episodes of the Original Series or Star Trek movies. The stories came and went fairly quickly. I was not able to pick up on any of them.

This is not the final appearance of Scotty in Star Trek but it is basically the next to last time that James Doohan played the character. His next appearance was in Star Trek: Generations (1994) movie.

Who built the Dyson sphere? What purpose does it serve? How is it that the Enterprise was able to escape just when they needed to, once the door was opened again, and yet before that they only narrowly avoided getting pulled into the star?

I'm pretty sure that I have not seen this episode before. This is the last of the episodes of The Next Generation involving characters from the Original Series that I had yet to see. I enjoyed it very much. I think it is my favorite episode involving a character from the Original Series. It was a lot of fun seeing Geordi interact with Scotty.