"The Nth Degree" is the 93rd episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the 19th episode of the fourth season. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet crew of the Federation starship Enterprise-D. Rob Legato directed and oversaw visual effects for the episode. He created a 3-D effect where the Cytherian's huge head appears to pop out of the screen, allowing him to have a face-to-face conversation with Picard.
Plot The Enterprise is sent to investigate the shutdown of the Argus Array, a deep-space telescope and radio antenna. Geordi La Forge and Lt. Reginald Barclay take a shuttlecraft to examine the array closely, discovering the presence of an alien probe nearby; the probe fires a pulse as they near it, disabling the shuttlecraft and knocking out Barclay. The Enterprise crew recovers the shuttle and are forced to destroy the probe when it follows the ship, believing the Argus Array was affected by a similar pulse. Barclay recovers, but the crew finds him much more intelligent than before. His IQ continues to increase, and La Forge finds that he has spent the night in a holodeck arguing quantum physics with Albert Einstein. The Array starts to undergo a series of catastrophic failures. Barclay, with his newfound intelligence, casually explains how they can use the Enterprise computers to prevent the failures in only two days, much to his colleagues' disbelief. Barclay's solution works temporarily, but the failure rate increases, and Barclay finds the Enterprise computer too slow to keep up with it. He goes to the holodeck and creates a device that allows him to interact directly with the Enterprise and array computer systems, putting an end to the Array's failures. The crew finds that Barclay has become too integrated with the computer, and when they try to shut down the computer, Barclay sends the ship into a "subspace inversion", sending the ship across a great distance at a velocity significantly faster than conventional warp drive. They arrive at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and are met by a representative of a race of beings called the Cytherians, who are far more advanced than humans and find amusement in their "bipedal locomotion" and "hierarchical collective command structure". They free Barclay from the computer, and, minus his heightened intelligence, he arrives on the bridge to help explain what happened. The Cytherians are friendly explorers like the Federation, but instead of traveling to meet other races, they have launched probes that convey the necessary technical knowledge for other beings to come to them. The probe was unable to reprogram the Argus Array or the Enterprise shuttlecraft, causing them to fail. But it was able to reprogram Barclay, giving him the power to accomplish the task. The Enterprise stays with the Cytherians for ten days, exchanging knowledge that will take decades to fully understand. The Cytherians then return the Enterprise to the Argus Array. Barclay finds himself back to normal, although he keeps vivid memories of his temporary transformation.
Cultural references The website Women at Warp compares the "sidekick-turned-supervillain" situation with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Grave". "While Barclay's run as a supergenius in 'The Nth Degree' is short lived and Willow's progression into a black magic wielding ultra-witch spans multiple episodes, their arcs are strikingly similar. Both Barclay and Willow (particularly in the first 4 seasons) are depicted as meek and shy, cast in their own minds as the 'sidekick' to their more powerful peers. When each is suddenly imbued with a terrifying amount of power, their friends fear how far they will go. Ultimately both must cope with returning to their former, less powerful states, but with the knowledge of the terror they inflicted on the people they cared about." When confronted on the holodeck and ordered by Captain Picard to disconnect from the ship's computer, Barclay responds via disembodied voice, "I'm afraid I can't do that, sir". This is a reference to a line spoken by HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Reception In 2020, Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media ranked this episode as his most favourite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. James Hunt, reviewing for the site Den of Geek, jovially recaps the plot ("...they meet a giant floating head alien who speaks like he was bussed in from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Apparently the race in this star system are so lazy that they like to explore by bringing ships to them, so Barclay did exactly what they want. The Enterprise crew stick around to share information, and try not to think about the array they failed to repair."), remarks on trivia and passes judgment on the episode:
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