Cause and Effect

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For other uses, see Cause and effect (disambiguation).

Star Trek: TNG episode
"Cause and Effect"
The Enterprise explodes in "Cause and Effect".
Episode no.	518
Prod. code	218
Airdate	March 23, 1992
Writer(s)	Brannon Braga
Director	Jonathan Frakes
Guest star(s)	Kelsey Grammer Patti Yasutake Michelle Forbes
Year	2368
Stardate	45652.1
Episode chronology
Previous	"The Outcast"
Next	"The First Duty"

"Cause and Effect" is considered by many fans to be one of the best episodes of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.^[1] It features guest star Kelsey Grammer and was directed by Jonathan Frakes from a script by Brannon Braga. It originally aired as Episode 518 on 23 March 1992 (Stardate 45652.1).

1 Plot summary
2 Notes
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The show has a famous opening sequence: The Enterprise-D has suffered heavy damage to one of its warp nacelles, and all attempts to control the disaster are failing. Captain Picard issues the frantic order, "All hands abandon ship! Repeat, all hands abandon..." as the ship explodes.

In the next scene, the episode resumes as if nothing happened. Riker, Crusher, Worf, and Data are playing cards, but a sense of déjà vu allows Dr. Crusher to call Riker's bluff. Crusher then goes to sickbay to treat Geordi La Forge for dizziness, and again thinks she's done the same before. After she goes to bed, she is haunted by strange voices.

Soon after, the Enterprise loses power as a temporal anomaly erupts nearby, and a second Federation ship emerges from it, locked on a collision course. Attempts to hail the other ship prove unsuccessful, so Riker suggests decompressing the main shuttle bay, but Picard takes Data's advice to repel the oncoming ship with a tractor beam. This strategy fails, and the two ships collide. The Enterprise is again destroyed as it was in the opening sequence.

The same scenes are repeated again after a commercial break, but the crew continues to experience a feeling that the same events had occurred before. They determine that they are caught in a causality time loop, and spend the rest of the episode devising a plan to escape it. Data is issued a device which will allow him to send a message to himself in the next iteration of the loop; he does so immediately before the Enterprise is destroyed a third time.

In the final segment, Data begins to repeatedly see the numeral "3", and the rest of the crew's déjà vu becomes all the more vivid. The crew is at first mystified as to the meaning of this subliminal message that Data has received. But, during the final encounter with the mystery ship, he recognizes 3 as matching the rank insignia on Riker's collar, and concludes that Riker's strategy for avoiding the ship must be the correct one. Data depressurizes the main shuttlebay, and the Enterprise evades the incoming ship.

Having finally averted disaster, the Enterprise crew ascertains that they themselves have been stuck in the time loop for 17.4 days. The crew identifies the other ship as the USS Bozeman, a Soyuz class missing for over 90 years. Captain Picard then has the peculiar duty of welcoming the Bozeman's captain, played by Kelsey Grammer, to the 24th century.

[edit] Notes

The production team had hoped to get Kirstie Alley in a cameo role behind Kelsey Grammer in the USS Bozeman shots, reprising her role as Lt. Saavik from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but her asking price was too high for such a small role.^[2] Alley's appearance would have also constituted an in-joke as she was appearing on Cheers with Grammer at the time.

The USS Bozeman is named after writer Brannon Braga's home town, Bozeman, Montana. Although never seen on screen again, the Bozeman was mentioned in dialogue in The Next Generation episode "All Good Things...", and the films Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, all of them co-written by Brannon Braga.

Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) and Kelsey Grammer (Captain Bateson) later appeared together in the 2006 blockbuster, "X-Men: The Last Stand", with Stewart playing Professor Xavier and Grammer playing Beast. Stewart also guest starred on the Frasier episode "The Doctor is Out".