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That’s what I call brain freeze: Cryostasis in Star Trek

By Ames

We’re due for our coolest blog activity yet! That’s right, we’re talking cryofreezing this week, the easy way for writers to freeze time for characters, so long spans of time go by in a snap! We see it in pretty much everything, from Alien to Aliens. On Star Trek, going into stasis can allow for people from the past to make it to the future, pause the spread of whatever ails you while your doctor logs into WebMD, and make long-distance travel without warp something survivable for someone with a normal human lifespan.

A Star to Steer Her By is digging into the freezer for some frozen snacks, so make sure to check out everything we’ve got defrosting on the counter below and listen to this week’s podcast chatter (frosty discussion starts at 1:07:29).

I’ll say this up front as well: I wasn’t expecting to have to include a minor spoiler for season three Picard after literally the first episode, but here we are.

Cool off!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

“Space Seed”

The villain Khan is just too much for Earth of the past, so he becomes the future’s problem when he flash freezes himself and his augmented followers. The episode in which we first see cryostasis in Trek also paved the way for one of the most popular movies in the franchise, so we’re glad that the plot device opened up the possibility of dragging people into the future. For now.

“The Neutral Zone”

...and I’ve already eaten those words. The three frozen folks from this episode are mainly here to make fish-out-of-water jokes. They don’t understand that stocks and bonds don’t exist in the future. Isn’t that funny? Sure, some of the scenes with an overwhelmed Clare Raymond are a little more intimate and thought-provoking, but this whole episode was just unfocused and tiresome.

“The Emissary”

We all loved K'Ehleyr so much (see how much here!) that it’s easy to forget the rest of the episode in which she was introduced. You’ll remember that a ship of Klingons, all in stasis, is about to get their wakeup call and someone needs to be on hand to make sure they don’t attack the Federation since they’re pretty behind on the news. And who better than our girl K’Ehleyr? Worf helped too, I guess.

“The Perfect Mate”

Sometimes, your mail-order bride comes in a well-preserved package. In the generally squicky “The Perfect Mate,” Kamala is being kept in her little cocoon in the cargo hold until pesky Ferengi accidentally break it open earlier than it’s supposed to be opened. Why did the cocoon need to float in the air where it could easily be knocked down? Hey shut up, the episode needed to move forward.

“Relics”

Do we count being stored in the transporter buffer as an equivalent to being in stasis? Well, “Relics” is on this list, so yes, yes we do. It’s actually a really ingenious plan to effectively freeze yourself using the transporter, even if it seems to only be effective 50% of the time, that we’re frequently flabbergasted that we don’t see it used more often in Trek. You’ll see it a couple more times on this list though.

“Face of the Enemy”

Like in “The Emissary,” it may be easy to forget that the driving force of “Face of the Enemy” is cryo-related, but we get too distracted by watching Marina Sirtis actually getting something really great to do for a change. But the main thrust of the episode is about transporting Romulan defectors out of Romulan space, and that’s achieved by putting them in cryo and moving them around like luggage. Go Troi!

“Vortex”

This mostly forgettable episode from early DS9 also had a mostly forgettable cryo scene. Croden’s daughter is being stored in stasis on some rock or other so that he can go pick her up when he’s escaped his shitty, shitty government. It’s a rather small inclusion, but as we’ve said before: when you’ve got this technology, you might as well use it!

“The Abandoned”

This one’s just a tiny little inclusion in an episode that veers hard in another direction once the sleeping pod element is done with. After Quark buys up a whole bunch of products and he’s started sorting through his wares, he discovers a small pod containing what turns out to be a Jem’Hadar baby. Why was he being transported in a cryochamber? The better question is: why not transport ALL babies in a cryochamber?

“Empok Nor”

We see a lot of “The Emissary” in this horror episode of DS9, especially in that “if someone wakes up, they might wreak some havoc on us” kind of way. In this case, it’s a couple of drugged-out Cardassians that have awakened from their slumber on the space station Empok Nor and the episode turns a little into Jason X: The One in Space. Which we should totally cover on the podcast one day.

“The 37s”

Boy, did we have a lot of shitty things to say about “The 37s” when we wrapped season two of Voyager, and so much of it is because of the very forced and highly unnecessary cryochamber plot. There was already too much going on in this episode, and adding unfreezing Amelia Freaking Earhart to the mix was not only convoluted, but just agonizingly bad as well. Let the poor thing rest in peace.

“The Thaw”

We talked more about this one when we discussed dreams the other week, but it has the added bonus of being a cryosleep episode as well! Like many gimmicks in which the idea is for the characters to get woken up from cryo at an appointed time, something goes terribly wrong for the sleepers and they get stuck in their worst nightmares: dreaming of clowns and not being able to wake up.

“Resolutions”

This is another brief scene, but we do get a moment at the very top when we’re dropped in in media res to see Chakotay and Janeway waking up in their pods on some paradisiacal planet. They were only in there briefly to be transported to the surface without dying of their incurable illness (score one more cross promotion to our diseases post), and then we never see the pods again.

“One”

One of our favorite Seven of Nine episodes so far has been “One” and there’s so much cryostasis that I’m feeling a little freezer burned just thinking about it. It’s such a good premise: the whole crew needs to go into cryo because they can’t survive a span of deadly nebula or other, so Seven has to pilot her sleeping crewmates to the other side without succumbing to cabin fever! Excellent!

“Counterpoint”

Well, we included “Relics” on this list because being stored in the transporter buffer is akin to being stored in a cryopod, so here we are doing it again with “Counterpoint.” Seriously, they really don’t use this technique often enough in Star Trek, but since the telepaths kept in the buffer start to suffer from cell degradation from constant use, maybe that’s a good enough reason.

“11:59”

One of the good things about this otherwise deplorable episode was the story we get from Harry Kim about his uncle Jack. The account goes that Jack was on a sleeper ship (we really don’t see enough of those!) back before space travel was quite so fast, awoke at their destination to find nothing there, so he turned the ship around and went home again. It’s quite a cute and funny little anecdote!

“Dragon’s Teeth”

The episode we covered on the podcast this week hit a lot of the same beats as previous instances from this list. A warlike race gets woken up from their slumber only to try to take over the ship, a la “Space Seed.” Their pods had been scheduled to wake them and failed like in “The Thaw.” And we had nearly no motivation to open the pods in the first place, as has happened a whole bunch!

“Precious Cargo”

An even more egregious retread comes in Enterprise when they basically try to redo the super cringe TNG episode “The Perfect Mate” that you just scrolled past, and somehow continue to be fairly cringe. Same deal: a gorgeous Kriosian woman is being transported while in stasis. Her pod gets damaged and she wakes up and eventually falls for the hunkiest guy in reach. We’ve done all this before.

Into Darkness

Since Into Darkness is just “Space Seed” / The Wrath of Khan but with more lens flare, the movie obviously has to use the cryostasis plot device since it would actually be more trouble NOT to include it and anger the fans [more]. But finding Khan’s crew in cryo inside torpedoes is at least a good touch, and the chilly resolution to the film is somehow kinder than stranding him on Ceti Alpha V.

Rukiya’s story arc

One last one that’s from the transporter buffer loophole that we’ve decided we’re using for this list, but it’s also a really good and quite sweet characterization for Doctor Mbenga to put his daughter into stasis to prolong her life. We ask every so often on the podcast why the medical staff doesn’t put patients in cryo all the time, and it took until Strange New Worlds to really make good use of it.

“Preludes”

Learning Jankom Pog’s backstory in this Prodigy episode really helped shed light on his character in a way that we didn’t realize we needed so badly. It’s a fascinating addition – especially for a kids show! – to have this Tellarite be a blast from the past who awoke accidentally from cryo to find he needed to maintain the ship. And it’s crushing to see him get no credit for it!

“The Next Generation”

Literally right after we recorded this week’s episode, the season three premiere of Picard came along to taunt me. It too contains a scene related to cryostasis. We don’t know much yet about what’s going to come about from this turn of events since, at the time I’m writing this, dear Doctor Crusher has just entered the deep freeze, so watch along with us to see what happens, I guess!

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Let’s get you thawed out so you can enjoy more blogtivities! You should also be keeping up with our watch-through of Voyager on SoundCloud or whatever your podcast application of choice is, hanging out with us on Facebook and Twitter, and just generally chilling out.

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