New type of shield invented by the Ferengi scientist Dr. Reyga in 2369. A metaphasic shield is a series of overlapping low-level subspace fields, which causes the shielded object to partially exist within subspace itself. The first test of the new shielding was in 2369 when a shuttlecraft from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D was outfitted with the shield and piloted into the corona of a nearby star. The test was apparently unsuccessful, but Dr. Beverly Crusher proved that the test had been sabotaged by the pilot as part of a plan to discredit Dr. Reyga and steal the shielding technology. A second test proved that the new shields did function correctly.