Timescape (TNG episode)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Star Trek: TNG episode
"Timescape"

Episode no.	150
Prod. code	251
Airdate	June 14, 1993
Writer(s)	Brannon Braga
Director	Adam Nimoy
Guest star(s)	Michael Bofshever Patricia Tallman John DeMita Joel Fredericks
Year	2369
Stardate	46944.2
Episode chronology
Previous	"Second Chances"
Next	"Descent"

“Timescape” is an episode from the sixth season of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

1 Plot summary
2 Notes
3 Quotes
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In Picard's absence, Riker takes command of the Enterprise and responds to a Romulan ship's distress call. Meanwhile, Picard, Troi, La Forge, and Data are traveling aboard a long-range shuttlecraft known as a runabout, on their way back to the Enterprise from a conference. Suddenly, everyone but Troi freezes in mid-conversation. Seconds later, things return to normal. Perplexed, she attempts to describe the experience to the others when she inexplicably becomes frozen in time herself for over three minutes. Suddenly, the starboard nacelle cuts out from fuel loss, and readings indicate it has been in continuous operation for over 47 days. Picard then notices all the fruit in a bowl has rotted and aged; when he moves to touch it, his fingernails immediately grow quite long. Data then discovers they are traveling through a temporal disturbance wherein time is moving approximately 50 times faster than normal. Their vessel, he finds, is surrounded by several temporal anomalies, and inside each, time is moving at different rates relative to normal space-time. The navigation computer maps the fragments and they maneuver about them, eventually arriving at the Enterprise. They're shocked to discover it trapped in the center of a large disturbance, face-to-face with a Romulan Warbird. Both ships froze in time as the Warbird was firing a disruptor beam at the Enterprise, whose shields were half raised. The Enterprise is also directing a beam towards the Warbird, but it isn't a phaser blast but more like a power transfer beam.

Picard (experiencing temporal narcosis) draws a smiley face in the steam produced by a warp core breach

The four officers adapt their emergency transporter armbands to generate skintight bubbles which will shield them from the temporal effects. Picard, Data, and Troi then beam onto the Enterprise bridge, where everything and everyone around them is motionless in the midst of action. Picard enters the transporter room and finds three Romulans were being beamed aboard by Worf. Picard and Troi join Data in Engineering, where Data has discovered that the source of a power surge is a warp core breach that is progressing at an infinitesimal rate. Data estimates that the explosion will consume the Enterprise in just over nine hours. Suddenly, Picard experiences severe emotional changes: he draws a smiley face in the cloud and begins laughing uncontrollably, becoming dizzy, and panicking. Geordi immediately transports the three back to the runabout, and they determine that the captain experienced a form of temporal narcosis. Keeping him safely behind, Geordi, Data and Troi decide to investigate the Warbird's engine room this time, where they see several Romulan crew frozen in the middle of an evacuation alert. They were attempting to shut down a power transfer originating from the Enterprise. When La Forge reports that the readouts indicate total engine failure, Troi is incredulous. Her experiences on a Warbird taught her that Romulans use an artificial quantum singularity as a power source which, once activated, cannot be shut down. They open the engine core and find a strange green vortex with various black spots. When Data scans it, suddenly things begin moving. The Romulan crew moves forward, then backwards. Meanwhile, Picard watches from the runabout as the Enterprise in normal time explodes from the warp core breach, then seconds later, pieces back together in reverse time and freezes again.

As they look for more clues, a bizarre Romulan male attacks Geordi, putting him in neural shock as Troi releases his armband, placing him in frozen time. The other two return to the runabout with the being, who appears to be totally alien to their space-time continuum. The being explains that he was attempting to rescue a nest of his species' young, which they mistakenly placed in the Romulan core, causing the engine failure. The aliens assumed that the artificial singularity was a natural one, a black hole, which they use as nests. But the eggs interfered with the engines and drained the Warbird's power. When the power transfer from the Enterprise made contact with the nest, the ruptures in time were created. The alien also states that he had a companion that had taken Romulan form. Before Picard can learn anything else, the being phases out in a kaleidoscope effect and vanishes.

The shuttle crew discover that if they reverse the scanning effect of the tricorder, they can cause time to go backwards, then forward. They can save the ship, as well as Dr. Crusher and Commander La Forge. Picard, Troi, and Data position themselves in three areas to make themselves most useful. Picard is on the bridge of the Enterprise, to make command decisions and explain things to Riker. Troi is in Sickbay to save Dr. Crusher from the Romulan disruptor beam. Data is in Engineering to prevent the power transfer. Data adjusts his tricorder, causing the aperture to make time reverse itself to a point before the warp core breach occurred, then go forward again. As time travels in reverse, the female alien that the other alluded to realizes what Data is doing and attacks him, preventing him from stopping the power transfer. Riker sees Picard on the bridge and is confused, but Picard says he will explain later, simply ordering Riker to continue evacuating the Warbird and to beam Commander La Forge from the Warbird directly to Sickbay. Counselor Troi is able to save Dr. Crusher, and the Romulan who fired explains that he was firing at the female alien that had taken Romulan form. With Dr. Crusher and Commander La Forge safe but a warp core breach still in progress, Data erects a containment field around the warp core to delay the breach. Once Riker explains that moving the Enterprise would tear the ship apart due to feedback from the power transfer, Picard realizes the only option is the runabout. Picard remotely moves the shuttle into the power beam. The runabout explodes, not only restoring ordinary time but causing the Warbird to disappear. Picard speculates that the Warbird itself was from a different time dimension and has returned there. Riker is still confused, and Picard says that "It's going to take a little time to explain."

The last scene is between Data and Riker. Riker has come to give Data the updated duty roster, and finds him in the middle of an experiment. Data's recent experiences with time have led him to consider how humans perceive time. Data is testing the saying "A watched pot never boils" by boiling a kettle of water and timing it, both when he watches it closely and when he ignores it completely. When Data stipulates that he cannot observe time any differently than his internal chronometer, Riker advises him to turn it off, since people do not have internal chronometers. When Data says he will try it, Riker jokingly amends, "Just don't be late for your shift!" After Commander Riker leaves the room, Data turns and notices that the water is boiling.

[edit] Notes

The male alien that the crew encountered phases from existence on the runabout. He admitted that he was the one that fired on the Enterprise. However, when the shuttle crew wound time back and forward again, the Warbird fires once again on the Enterprise. The best explanation here is that winding time back brought the alien back to his place on the Warbird.
When Picard uses the runabout to interrupt the power transfer beam, a high pitched whine is heard momentarily before the runabout explodes, as if the engines were overloading. However, the power beam was what destroyed the runabout, unless Picard initiated a warp core breach to help interrupt the power beam.
In the last scene Data says that "in every instance the water reaches its boiling point in precisely 51.7 seconds". In the instance of his experiment we witness in this scene, it only takes about 48 seconds (from 41:20 to 42:08) before the kettle starts to whistle.
If one watches the episodes carefully, there are multiple instances where the frozen crew members must stand still instead of just using a frozen screen. During those scenes, you can see some slight wobbling and other discrepancies. For example, during the scene when Picard first enters the transporter room, you can see a security guard wobble slightly, as well as Worf very slightly smirking when Picard moves his hand.
After the interruption of the power beam, the alien disappears, as well as the Romulan Ship. However, Captain Picard notes in his log, "We are on the way to the neutral zone to return the survivors home," so the Romulans that were rescued must not have disappeared, which leaves the question: are there now 2 of the survivors?

[edit] Quotes

Picard: Dr. Vassbinder gave an hour long dissertation on the ionization of warp nacelles before he realized 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.

Picard [imitating Dr. Vassbinder]: 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.