Star Trek Day: “Schisms” and the Real Abduction Stories Behind It

Every September 8, fans around the world celebrate Star Trek Day, marking the anniversary of the original series premiere in 1966. It is more than just a date on the calendar. For many, it’s a reminder of how Gene Roddenberry’s vision of exploration and imagination changed the way we think about the universe and our place in it. Among the many stories that touched on real-world fears, Schisms stands out for how closely it reflected reports of alien abductions.

The episode begins quietly. Commander Riker falls asleep in his quarters but wakes up exhausted, unable to shake the feeling that something has happened during the night. He is not alone. Worf, Geordi, and others across the Enterprise report the same thing: restless nights, fragments of disturbing dreams, and unexplained injuries. Slowly, through shared accounts and unsettling discoveries, the crew realizes the truth. They are being lifted from their beds, carried through a portal, and taken into another dimension, where they find themselves strapped to cold, clinical tables while alien beings perform examinations before being returned to their rooms with their memories blurred. The horror lies not in combat or conflict, but in the uncertainty of what has been done while they were powerless to resist.

By the time “Schisms” aired in 1992, alien abductions were already part of the public imagination. The Hills’ 1961 experience in New Hampshire had introduced the idea, but it was later cases that mirrored the details of the episode most closely.

One of those was the 1989 Brooklyn Bridge Abduction, involving Linda Napolitano, often referred to under the pseudonym Linda Cortile. She claimed she was floated out of her twelfth-floor Manhattan apartment window and into a hovering disc-shaped craft above the East River. She said she awoke on a medical table surrounded by small gray beings who carried out invasive procedures, including inserting a device into her nose while communicating telepathically. What made her story more striking were reports that as many as two dozen witnesses, including United Nations bodyguards, saw her being pulled through the window and up into the craft. Like the Enterprise crew, she was returned to her bed, uncertain at first whether it had been a dream, until she noticed physical aftereffects, a lump inside her nose where the device had supposedly been.

Another famous case, the Pascagoula incident of 1973, also mirrored the details in Schisms, particularly the medical examination. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the banks of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when they saw a glowing craft descend nearby. They claimed they were taken aboard by strange robotic-looking creatures. Hickson later described being placed on a table where he was scanned and prodded by a device, while Parker remembered losing consciousness and waking in shock on the riverbank. Like Riker and his shipmates, they returned with gaps in their memory and a deep unease that would follow them for the rest of their lives.

There are also reports that echo another part of the episode, the strange clicking sounds the crew remembered hearing from their captors. One encounter in 1987 was reported by a woman holidaying in the French Alps. She described hearing clicking before finding herself unable to move as a skylight opened and a cord lowered into the room, with small beings floating nearby. Later, under regression, she recalled being examined on a table inside a transparent dome, just as the crew of the Enterprise had been in Schisms. And like them, she was a highly trained professional, a computer scientist with a background in astronomy, not someone who could be easily dismissed.

The Enterprise crew were not gullible or prone to fantasy. They were experienced officers caught in a story drawn from alleged real-life encounters, which was what made it feel so real. In the same way, some of those who have reported such experiences in real life are professionals, not people easily dismissed as hoaxers or prone to hallucinations. For viewers who had followed abduction accounts like Napolitano or Pascagoula, the parallels were unmistakable. What made “Schisms” work was that it echoed the real reports, people taken from their homes, returned confused, and left with questions they couldn’t answer.