Remember Me (TNG episode)

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Star Trek: TNG episode
"Remember Me"
Dr. Crusher finds herself in a collapsing universe in "Remember Me".
Episode no.	79
Prod. code	179
Airdate	October 22, 1990
Writer(s)	Lee Sheldon
Director	Cliff Bole
Guest star(s)	Bill Erwin Colm Meaney Eric Menyuk
Year	2367
Stardate	44161.2
Episode chronology
Previous	"Suddenly Human"
Next	"Legacy"

Remember Me is a fourth-season episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This episode should not be confused with the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Remember".

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Stardate 44161.2: The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D docks at Starbase 133. Dr. Beverly Crusher welcomes aboard an elderly friend and mentor, Dr. Dalen Quaice. He talks of the friends he has lost over the years. Pondering these thoughts, she visits her son Wesley Crusher in engineering. He is working on an experiment to create a static warp bubble, but it appears to fail.

Dr. Crusher goes to see her friend, Dalen, in his quarters but there is no sign of him or his belongings. Concerned about him, she checks with Data but no records of him arriving on the Enterprise are in the computer. Chief Miles O'Brien does not remember him, despite beaming him aboard. She runs medical tests on him but finds nothing wrong. However, she cannot locate any of her staff.

Beverly gets more concerned when none of the bridge crew remember her even having a medical staff. As time passes, more and more people disappear and only Beverly has any recollection of them. She confides in Counselor Deanna Troi before going to talk to Wesley. He assures her that his experiment was confined to engineering and could not have anything to do with the missing people.

At some point, a vortex appears which tries to pull Dr. Crusher in but she manages to hold onto something until it dissipates. However, according to the staff and computers, no such phenomenon had been detected.

Soon, everyone but the bridge crew have disappeared but they act as if that is how it has always been. Then there is only Dr. Crusher and Picard left. Crusher uses the computer to monitor Picard's vital signs and as they talk, he disappears suddenly. Crusher is alone on the ship.

Beverly asks the computer to read the entire crew manifest of The Enterprise; the computer responds with "Dr. Beverly Crusher". She asks if she's always been the only member, to which the computer responds "affirmative". She then asks the computer what the nature of their mission is; the computer replies with "To explore the galaxy". Beverly says "Do I have the necessary skills to accomplish that task alone?" The computer, of course, responds with "negative", to which Beverly replies "Then why am I the only person on board"? Of course, the computer is unable to come up with a good answer.

Meanwhile, we see Wesley and the crew in engineering. They are attempting to get Dr. Crusher back from the static warp bubble that was the result of the earlier experiment. Beverly is trapped inside her own personal universe shaped on the thoughts she had at the time: losing loved ones. The vortex was in fact a bridge created to Beverly's universe, but Wesley loses the bridge. He calls on the help of The Traveler who helps to regain it.

Beverly realises The Traveler could help and so sets course to his home planet, Tau Alpha C. However the computer does not recognise the place. She realises places are also disappearing and asks the computer "What is the nature of the universe?" to which the computer replies that it is a spheroid 705 meters in diameter. Suddenly, the bridge shakes and the computer states it was caused by explosive decompression due to a design flaw in the Enterprise (i.e. the ship is too big for the universe). Monitoring the shape of the universe as it collapses, she realises that she is inside the warp bubble and the vortex was the only way out to the 'real' universe. Beverly sets off for engineering where she was trapped. The universe starts to implode around her as she runs to the vortex and jumps through to find Wesley, Geordi La Forge, Picard and others waiting for her. Picard confirms there are 1014 people aboard including Dr. Quaice, which is the exact amount there should be.

1 Trivia
2 Quotes
3 Nitpicks
4 External links

[edit] Trivia

This episode has been described as "the Enterprise flying into the Twilight Zone". The Twilight Zone episode And When the Sky Was Opened has a somewhat similar theme (but without the happy ending).

Beverly is said to have "created her own reality", a New Age catch phrase at the time. Many New Age believers think it is possible to alter consensus reality by concentrated thought.

This episode is directly inspired^{[citation needed]} by Fredric Brown’s 1949 novel What Mad Universe, where Keith Winton, a science-fiction editor is hit by a rocket carrying a new explosive device, and finds himself transported in the universe described in the story he was reviewing at the time of impact.

[edit] Quotes

"If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!" - Beverly Crusher

[edit] Nitpicks

When Dr. Crusher is alone on the bridge the camera dollies right and zooms in; the moving camera boom is visible on a reflective surface to the left of the turbolift doors.
When the vortex appears in sickbay, paper is seen flying around in the wind, even though all data in the future is stored electronically.
Dr. Crusher is on the bridge monitoring the collapsing bubble superimposed on the Enterprise schematic. We see the bridge is dangerously close to disappearing, then after a reaction shot, we see the bubble has apparently grown again.
As Dr. Crusher monitors the collapsing bubble, the sections of the Enterprise that are outside the bubble are still drawn as dotted lines, indicating that the computer is still aware of these sections even though they technically no longer exist.
When Dr. Crusher travels from the bridge to engineering on the turbolift, the background lights go down instead of up.
Geordi says the bubble is collapsing at 15 metres per second, yet Beverly outruns the implosion as she runs along the corridor. However, it is difficult to say what relation the bubble's internal and external measures would have, though it is assumed this is an external measurement. Similarly, Geordi does not specify whether the rate he declared is the radius or the diameter of the bubble.
It is possible, however, that these nitpicks are due to the nature of the warp bubble and Beverly's perception of that reality or a suspension of disbelief.