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Recap / Star Trek: The Next Generation S6E23 "Timescape"

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You may laugh now, but it gets dark quick.

Original air date: June 14, 1993

Riker is getting a cat scratch treated in sick bay after a disastrous attempt to feed Data's cat Spot. Data, along with Picard, La Forge, and Troi, are all out at a three-day science conference. Riker gets called to the bridge, where he learns that a Romulan vessel has sent out a distress call due to engine failure. Riker plots a course with shields up, wary of a trap. Meanwhile, the conference-goers are journeying by runabout back to the ship and discussing how boring it all was. Suddenly, Picard, La Forge and Data all freeze for several seconds, leaving Troi confused.

Troi explains what happened, and the rest of the crew investigate the phenomenon. Then it's Troi's turn to freeze, this time for several minutes. The other crew scan her and realize that she's three minutes younger than she should be. Time is stopping and starting, seemingly at random. It's time to get the hell back to the ship, but suddenly one of the runabout's engines goes offline, reporting that it has been running for 47 straight days. In addition, Picard notices that a bowl of fruit has gone rotten. When he reaches for it, his hand starts aging at an accelerated pace. Data figures out that pockets of time distortion are littering the area. The runabout is almost hemmed in, but they can carefully maneuver around them to get to the rendezvous point. Except when they finally find the Enterprise, it's frozen mid-battle with a Romulan warbird.

The warbird is firing on the Enterprise, but the Enterprise is shooting some sort of energy beam at the warbird's engines, which doesn't look like an attack. The crew will have to figure out what's going on. Spouting some Techno Babble, La Forge and Data rig up some armbands that will render them immune to the time distortion. Picard, Troi and Data beam aboard the Enterprise. They discover Romulans on the bridge, one standing over a prostrate Riker in a menacing fashion. Picard judges that the Romulan attack took the crew by surprise. Troi discovers that one Romulan is in the process of shooting Crusher with a disruptor, a fatal blow. She doesn't notice that one of the Romulans is not frozen in time.

As the crew continue their investigation, they notice other clues that don't point to a Romulan attack. In the transporter room, Worf is beaming aboard unarmed and wounded Romulans. But that all takes a backseat to the fact that the warp core is in the process of exploding. The ship was transferring energy to the warbird, which resulted in a backfire. Data reveals that time isn't actually stopped, just very slowed down. He can actually see the warp core explosion moving, and it will conclude in nine hours. As Data is talking, Picard draws a smiley face in the smoke and begins laughing. He's gone time-mad. They all beam back to the runabout, where Picard quickly recovers. La Forge advises that they limit their excursions to ten-minute intervals.

Investigating the Romulan ship, they discover more evidence that the Romulans were not attacking: They're in the process of an evacuation, and they're trying to stop the power transfer. La Forge and Data investigate the ship's engine, and Data discovers that it's the nexus of the time fragments littering space. Further, Data notices organic organisms floating in the artificial black hole that powers the ship. When Data scans the engine, time suddenly starts moving at normal speed for several moments, then reverses again to its original point. Everything is pointing to the idea that the Enterprise was supplying a power transfer for their stalled engines, but it caused a backlash, and the Romulans were trying to stop the transfer and evacuate before their ship explodes. As La Forge is deducing this, he's suddenly attacked by the unstuck Romulan. Troi takes off La Forge's armband to freeze him in time and delay his death.

The crew question the Romulan, who turns out to be an extradimensional being. He reveals that his species places their young into quantum singularities to develop, but mistook the artificial singularity of the warbird for a real one; when they realized this, they tried to get them back, but caused the Romulans' engine failure and the disastrous chain of events and all the time distortions. After the alien phases out of existence, Picard reasons that if they can make time move forward and reverse, then they can do the opposite and make it go backwards and then move forward, giving them an opportunity to change the past. They all get into position and get to work.

Troi stops the Romulan from firing at Crusher. It turns out that he was firing at one of the time aliens, and Crusher just accidentally got in the way. On the bridge, Riker falls over, and a Romulan helps him to his feet. Picard orders Riker to continue evacuating the warbird and beam La Forge directly to sickbay. Data is ready to stop the energy transfer, but he's attacked by a second time alien, stunning him just long enough to fail to stop the transfer. Picard remotely pilots the runabout into the beam's path, blowing it up and stopping the transfer. Crisis is averted, and the warbird is successfully evacuated just before the time aliens phase it out of existence to reclaim their young.

Some time later, Riker cautiously arrives at Data's quarters, nervous of a Spot attack, to deliver some new personnel assignments. Data is testing the human perception of time, how it slows or speeds up based on your activity. He's literally watching a pot boil, but notes that nothing he does affects his perception of time. Riker suggests taking his internal chronometer offline to get a more human experience but warns him not to be late for his shift. As Data ponders the idea, the pot starts to boil, taking Data by surprise for the first time.

Tropes featured in "Timescape":

  • Anti-Villain: The aliens posing as Romulans. They're only trying to save their young.
  • Artistic License – Biology: When Picard put his hand into a region of accelerated time, his heart couldn't have provided enough blood flow to keep the tissue in his hand alive for several weeks. His hand should have developed gangrene and fallen off.
  • Bathos: Juxtaposition of a warp core breach in progress, which basically means that the Enterprise and all souls on board are as good as dead — and a smiley face drawn in the gasses venting out of the breach, frozen in time.
  • Big "NO!": As Picard succumbs to temporal narcosis, he starts screaming "NO!" very frantically.
  • The Bore: Dr. Vassbinder, according to Picard.
    Picard: Doctor Vassbinder gave an hour long dissertation on the ionisation effect of warp nacelles before he realised that the topic was supposed to be psychology.
    La Forge: Why didn't anybody tell him?
    Picard: There was no opportunity. There was no pause. (in monotone voice) He just kept talking in one long, incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt. It was really quite hypnotic.
  • Brick Joke: In the opening scene, Riker is being treated in sickbay as a result of injuries sustained while trying to feed Spot. In the final scene — where he visits Data in his quarters — he looks around the room nervously before entering and asks where "that cat of yours" is.
  • Brief Accent Imitation: Picard and Troi both do this while describing some of the people at the conference.
  • Call-Back:
    • Troi's time on a Romulan vessel in "Face Of The Enemy" is referenced, and the knowledge of Romulan technology she gleaned from that comes in quite useful here.
    • Picard suggests using the subspace force field devices from "Time's Arrow" to protect themselves from the frozen time stream.
    • When Crusher is treating Riker's wound, she asks if he got it from Worf's calisthenics program. Riker and Worf were first shown using that program way back in Season 2's "Where Silence Has Lease."
    • When Troi tells Picard of the first instance of the time anomaly, she gets nervous and starts tapping behind her ear. She showed the same move to Lt. Barclay in "Realm of Fear" to calm him down before transporting.
  • Car Fu: When they ultimately prove unable to prevent the energy transfer beam from endangering the Enterprise, Picard takes their runabout by remote control and uses it to interrupt the beam.
  • Cats Are Mean: The cold open is Riker getting treated for some nasty-looking cuts. Crusher asks if he was using Worf's exercise program — no, he was trying to feed Data's cat.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: When time briefly starts running forward aboard the Warbird, the camera suddenly focuses on a shifty-looking Romulan who has just run into Engineering. After time reverses itself, he's suddenly standing near the console La Forge is operating, when he wasn't before...
    • Earlier, on the frozen Enterprise bridge, you see him in the background moving slightly. It's easy to dismiss it as the actor not quite standing still, but it turns out to be the alien Romulan not quite standing still.
  • Completely Off-Topic Report: According to Picard, Dr. Vassbinder mistakenly presented a physics dissertation at a psychology conference. And nobody was able to alert him to his mistake because he simply never paused long enough to be interrupted, if at all, resulting in an hour of him droning on about warp nacelles before realising what the topic was supposed to be.
  • Continuity Nod: Picard and the gang are flying back to the Enterprise in a runabout.
  • A Day in the Limelight: While this is not a character episode, Troi gets to do a lot here which she wouldn't in most episodes. Her previous experience on a Romulan warbird allows her to make a significant contribution to solving the mystery, her quick thinking saves La Forge from dying, and she takes a phaser to Sickbay to keep Dr. Crusher from being shot.
  • Deader than Dead: Dr. Crusher would have ended up this way, as Troi finds her in the midst of being disintegrated by a Romulan's disruptor beam, mere moments before the entire ship would have been destroyed by a warp core breach and scattered into atoms. Fortunately, that timeline is averted.
  • Enemy Mine: The Enterprise is trying to assist a Romulan ship which is having engine troubles. And, unlike in "The Next Phase", the Romulans here are genuinely grateful and cooperative.
  • Failsafe Failure: Once again, the fail safes set up in the event of a warp core breach fail.
  • Gallows Humor: Picard making a smiley face on the exploding warp coolant cloud (which will destroy the ships), but his Laughing Mad giggling makes the scene Nightmare Fuel.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: Interesting that the Enterprise crew allowed one of the Romulans to be armed even though they were trying to rescue them. In Sick Bay, no less.
  • Hyper-Awareness: While on the Romulan ship, La Forge watches as time returns to normal and then, after a short period, reverses back to where it virtually stopped before. As the away team is amazed at what just happened, La Forge notices one of the Romulans seems to be out of place from where he was before. He's right. Oddly enough, Data, who should have the most Hyper-Awareness (and perfect memory), doesn't notice a thing.
  • Laughing Mad: Picard, as he undergoes Sanity Slippage due to the temporal dissonance.
  • Negative Space Wedgie:
    • The 'time displacement' bubbles.
    • It's established here that Romulan ships use an "artificial singularity" as their power source.
  • No OSHA Compliance: The "artificial quantum singularity" that powers the Romulan ship is in a tube in a corner, behind a very thin hinged panel with no locking mechanism. La Forge simply walks up and easily opens the panel, and the quantum singularity is just floating inside the tube. If it's the power source for the entire Romulan ship, it must contain an extreme amount of energy. Being so easily accessible leaves open the possibility of someone interfering with it, either on purpose or by accident. And if it emits radiation (as implied in other episodes mentioning Romulan ships), being behind a very thin panel and so near to the crew in the engineering section means the radiation emission wouldn't be properly mitigated.
  • No Time to Explain: Picard says this to a rather surprised Riker upon restoring the normal flow of time.
  • Not Me This Time: Turns out that the Romulans had nothing to do with the Enterprise exploding.
  • Not What It Looks Like: There are several of these all over the time-stalled Enterprise:
    • The Romulan Warbird is firing upon the Enterprise, but only with the intent to disrupt the energy transfer beam, and it's implied this is caused not by the Romulans themselves but by the aliens, who are controlling the Romulan Warbird's systems while the real Romulans evacuate;
    • There's a Romulan on the bridge, looming over a fallen Riker, but Riker actually fell down due to the ship shaking when it was fired on and the Romulan was bending over him to help him up;
    • A second Romulan is on the conn implying that the bridge takeover was in progress, but only assumed the station after the actual conn officer was knocked out by Explosive Instrumentation.
    • And worst of all, Dr. Crusher is in the middle of being fatally shot by a Romulan who was actually shooting at an alien intruder in front of her, and Crusher got hit by accident.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Picard, is normally The Stoic, but has just learned that a) Dr. Crusher is being fatally shot with a disruptor and b) the Enterprise is experiencing the first nanoseconds of exploding. So, in his abject despair, Picard draws a smiley face in the explosion cloud and starts laughing at it. As it turns out, he's suffering from temporal narcosis, and his laughter soon turns to psychotic panic, struggle, and screaming.
  • Recycled In Space: Brannon Braga describes this episode as The Abyss IN SPACE!
  • Red Shirt: The helmsman on the Enterprise catches an exploding console in the face, but it's not stated if he's killed or just slightly burnt.
  • Rewatch Bonus: At the end of the episode, Data tests the aphorism "a watched pot never boils," by boiling a kettle of water. He tells Riker that each time, it takes precisely 51.7 seconds, whether he observes the kettle or not. As they discuss this, Data starts the kettle again. Careful observation of the timestamps of the "click" of the kettle going on and the whistle of it boiling reveal that... it indeed takes 51.7 seconds.
  • Rousseau Was Right: When the away team first reaches the time-frozen Enterprise, they find a number of things that indicate hostility — the Warbird firing, a Romulan standing over a downed Riker, another Romulan shooting Crusher. We also learn that unknown aliens are the cause of the Time Crash. However, nobody is acting with malicious intent; the timey-wimey aliens want to save their offspring, whom the Enterprise's power-transfer beam is accidentally harming, and have opted for a direct solution; the Romulan on the bridge is reaching out to help Riker up; and the one with the disruptor was trying to shoot said timey-wimey alien, and has the grace to look embarrassed about his egregious lack of gun safety once Deanna rectifies the situation.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: A very short-term version: Picard and co. find the Enterprise frozen with a warp-core breach in progress, amongst other problems. They need to find a way to rewind the time bubble and prevent it from happening.
  • Starfish Aliens: The two "Romulans" who are unaffected by the time bubbles — they're actually aliens from another time continuum who use gravity wells to incubate their offspring. The trouble started when they accidentally used the artificial singularity in the Romulan warbird's engine, causing it to shut down.
  • Terrible Pick-Up Lines: Apparently, Troi got hit on at the conference by a Ktarian scientist who called her "Diane" and whose idea of an opening line was to invite her to join him in some empirical research for his work on interspecies mating rituals. Data can't understand why she turned the offer down — he thought it was a topic she was interested in.
  • Time Crash: On a very small scale. The power transfer from the Enterprise to the warbird, combined with the manipulations of the hidden Starfish Aliens, shatters space-time around both ships.
  • Time Stands Still: Played With: Some of the Space Wedgie bubbles cause time to speed up considerably, while others cause time to slow down to the point that it appears to stand still (but doesn't actually stop). Fortunately, our heroes are able to Move in the Frozen Time thanks to a little improvised Techno Babble.
  • Wham Shot: After seeing Crusher being shot in Sickbay, Troi leaves while running past all the frozen people — and one Romulan woman suddenly starts moving.
  • Year Inside, Hour Outside: On the way back to the Enterprise, the runabout that Picard, Data, Troi and LaForge are using hits multiple smaller time distortions that wreak havoc with their vessel.
    • One anomaly engulfs an entire engine, and the crew reads it as having lost power due to extreme fuel depletion after running for several days straight, in what was apparently a matter of seconds.
    • Later, Picard reaches for a bowl of fruit on a table in the crew cabin, and his hand almost instantly gains several weeks of fingernail growth before he can pull it back in pain. Data finds that the distortion intersects part of the table, the nearby bulkhead and the outer hull.

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