“Time Squared”
Written by Maurice Hurley, story by Kurt Michael Bensmiller
Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan
Season 2, Episode 13
Original air date: April 3, 1989
Star date: 42679.2
Mission summary
Riker decides to cook scrambled Owon eggs the old-fashioned way for his friends, but it turns out that while food prepared by the computer might lack “flair or individuality,” the resulting “artistry” is not necessarily palatable. Only Worf is disappointed when their meal is interrupted by an urgent call to the Bridge: sensors have picked up a signal from a Federation shuttlecraft out in the middle of nowhere, with one human aboard.
They intercept and pull the unidentified craft into their shuttle bay, only to discover that it’s one of their own—the El-Baz, shuttlecraft 5. What! Impossible! They already have one of those. When they open her up, they summon Captain Picard to take a look, because there’s another Picard inside. Inconceivable!
The duplicate Picard is unconscious and displaying some odd life signs, so they cart him off to Sickbay (literally) while Data and La Forge tinker with the extra El-Baz, which shows damage from an antimatter explosion. Man, what could cause an antimatter explosion out there? The only ship around is the Enterprise…
In order to access its logs to find out what happened to it, they have to charge up its drained battery, but their first attempt shorts out as if they’ve plugged in the wrong AC adapter. As usual, the answer is to reverse the polarity. Data patches in a “variable phase inverter” and it works, even though it shouldn’t.
Pulaski’s having some of the same trouble with the Other Picard. His body has the opposite response to the stimulant she gives him, causing his life signs to drop to dangerous levels. Data and La Forge provide a crucial piece of the puzzle: The El-Baz’s chronometer indicates that the shuttle and its passenger are from six hours in the future. Pulaski manages to wake Other Picard, but he’s disoriented, frightened, in horrible pain, and unable to communicate with them. Picard insists he remain conscious in this condition and calls for a staff meeting.
The Bridge crew watches the distorted, fragmentary shuttle log recovered by La Forge, though Picard is wary of spoilers. The sequence of images is disturbing, showing the shuttle departing from Enterprise into an energy vortex surrounding both vessels, mere moments before the starship is destroyed. A portion of the Captain’s personal log sums things up nicely: “I have just witnessed the total destruction of the USS Enterprise with a loss of all hands, save one. Me.” Ominous, much?
No one can understand why Picard will have abandoned the ship in three hours, least of all himself. There’s nothing between them and their original destination, the Endicor system, that would indicate a timey-wimey vortex that would ruin their day like this, but they conclude it’s more or less inevitable. Oh well.
RIKER: When we brought the shuttle and the other Picard on board, we committed to a sequence of events which may be unalterable.
PICARD: Yes, this is not a rock on the trail which once seen can easily be avoided. This is much more complex.
WORF: There is the theory of the mobius. A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop from which there is no escape.
LAFORGE: So, when we reach that point, whatever happened will happen again. The Enterprise will be destroyed, the other Picard will be sent back to meet with us and we do it all over again. Sounds like someone’s idea of hell to me.
RIKER: Well, I know this much. We can’t avoid the future.
To hell with that, Picard says. They’re gonna try, dammit. They just need to figure out what they did last time and then not do it. That should be as simple as making an omelet!
As their rendezvous with destiny approaches, the Other Picard seems to become more responsive. Pulaski explains that his body clock is catching up with the present, or something. Picard is intent on getting answers from his future self, but Counselor Troi asks him to back off. He’s being awfully hard on the guy, who is barely aware of his surroundings. It seems Picard is disgusted with the man he’s going to become in just a couple of hours and what he represents. Pulaski warns Troi that she will declare the captain medically unfit for duty if his judgment becomes compromised by the unrelenting weirdness.
Picard and Riker mull over their predicament, reminiscing about methods of time travel used in previous episodes, including the old slingshot around the sun at warp 10 to go back in time trick. None of them seem to apply, so Riker recommends Picard just…wait for it. Good advice, particularly because only a second later, an energy vortex opens up right under the ship and starts reeling them in. Picard’s log is illuminating: “We have apparently intersected with something.”
It takes all their power just to maintain their position. Troi detects some primal consciousness in the vortex, which zaps Picard—both of them—with an electrical blast. Realizing that the vortex is only after him, as the “brains” of the operation, Picard decides to leave the ship and give Enterprise a chance to escape. On the way to the shuttlebay he swings by Sickbay to pick up his future self, who is now coherent, mobile, and single-minded in his intent.
Picard talks to himself about the best course of action, second guessing his decisions and desperate to do whatever it was he didn’t do the first time.
OTHER PICARD: I have to leave. There’s no other way.
PICARD: There must be.
OTHER PICARD: One. But it would never work.
PICARD: What is it? What would never work?
OTHER PICARD: I have to leave.
PICARD: What was the other choice? We can’t fight, we can’t escape, we can’t go forward.
OTHER PICARD: No. No, we can’t go forward. That would destroy the Enterprise.
PICARD: Was that it? Is that the other choice?
OTHER PICARD: I must leave.
Everyone knows that to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs, so Picard kills the Other Picard with a phaser, effectively preventing him from leaving the ship and avoiding a causality loop. Then he orders the ship straight into the heart of the vortex.
Unbelievably, that works. They emerge from the vortex, back on course as though nothing had happened. The Other Picard and duplicate El-Baz vanish like a bad dream.
PICARD: A lot of questions, Number One. Damn few answers.
RIKER: Maybe none of it was real. Perhaps we were all part of a shared illusion.
PICARD: Or maybe he was thrown back in time, so that we would be able to take another road. Make a different choice. Well, they say if you travel far enough you will eventually meet yourself. Having experienced that, Number One, it’s not something I would care to repeat.
RIKER: I’ll be on the Bridge, sir.
Analysis
Huh. Well. By now you know I have a soft spot for time travel puzzles and inexplicable duplicates, but this episode might be a bit too wibbly-wobbly even for me. I love the setup for this episode—the drama over how Riker’s omelet turns out is one of the most engaging teasers we’ve seen yet. What? Wasn’t that the point of the show? If only the commander had replicated the meal instead of cooking, or used fresher produce, none of this ever would have happened. And the biggest question of all is: Was that supposed to be breakfast or dinner?
The B-plot, about the identical shuttle turning up with a double of the captain inside, that’s pretty cool too. The problem is, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and by the end of the episode, no one really knows what happened, if anything. Everyone also seems incredibly slow on the uptake: Riker has to read the name and number of the extra El Baz—twice—before he gets it. And why wasn’t it broadcasting its call letters along with the distress signal?
When it became clear that the shuttle was somehow negative and the Other Picard responded as if he were from Bizarro World, I thought we had another “The Alternative Factor” on our hands (abort! abort!), or at least some kind of mirror universe mischief. But no.
A slightly out-of-shift version of Picard from six hours ahead is a solid idea, but the concept of him somehow catching up to their time is sheer ridiculous technobabble. (Yes, I acknowledge that we’re talking about time travel here, but at least try to sound plausible, okay?) I was also astonished at how Riker seemed so certain that there was nothing they could do to stop it all from happening again. We’re doomed! Doomed, I tell you!
I liked that Picard had to confront the possibility that his future self at best had made a mistake and at worst was a coward who had abandoned ship. The scenes where he watches himself suffer, and allows it to happen, are truly discomfiting. I’m actually surprised they didn’t delve into his history with the Stargazer more, but there’s only so much room for character development and background in one episode, and Riker called dibs to air out his daddy issues, which are conveniently relevant to the next episode. Putting Picard completely out of his element and forcing him to question his every decision is really compelling stuff, but it was ultimately all for naught. I was most shocked that he out and out killed his double, when surely stunning him would have done just as well.
I appreciated the crew gathering to “break bread,” something they managed more successfully on DS9 (Sisko’s a better cook, too) and even Enterprise; they’re continuing to build a nice sense of camaraderie that often carries the show through even the worst episodes. I was also amused to see O’Brien taking all these strange events in, considering that a similar sort of thing eventually happens to him in DS9’s “Visionary,” only his future self comes out ahead in that one.
With the unresolved plot threads that the vortex might be somewhat intelligent and is after Picard in particular, and all the other seeming coincidences and niggling difficulties in the plot, I have to rate this one a resounding “meh.”
And I’ve only just realized for the first time that the title is a pun. Too little, too late.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: Nothing to see here, move it along.
Best Line: Picard: “Somewhere out there something will happen.” (So bad it’s good?)
Trivia/Other Notes: Okay, maybe the episode title isn’t a pun. It was originally called “Time to the Second,” written as “Time²”.
This episode was originally intended to set up the episode “Q Who,” where it’s revealed that Q has just been messing with them, because of reasons. Yeah.
A deleted scene at the end of the episode would have given us more of “Ion Chef” Riker, who prepares an Alaskan stew for his friends that everyone likes–except for Worf.
This is the first of many times that the Enterprise-D is destroyed on TNG.
The El-Baz is a budget-conscious shuttlepod, rather than a full-size shuttlecraft.
The El-Baz is named after NASA scientist and professor Farouk El-Baz.
Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 12 – “The Royale.”
Next episode: Season 2, Episode 14 – “The Icarus Factor.”
This episode is complete nonsense. Worse than most, in the over-reliance on technobabble and Magic!Science. But setting aside the ready acceptance of fate/the future timeline as unalterable (really guys?) I kind of wonder why Picard’s plan was “Let’s second-guess ourselves all the time!” How’s that even supposed to work? The dialogue (as Eugene quoted) is also very stilted: somebody wanted to put out this complex science-fictional timey concept, and if that means making Worf say things like “there is the theory of the mobius” then by god he’ll say that. It’s just Captain Exposition taking control of a series of mouths in turn. In short, I think 3 is very generous.
Instead of going on grumpily, I will present two (to two-point-five) theories which this episode inspired in me, and which I shall endeavor to test for the remainder of the rewatch:
1) The naturalness of the character moments in the episode will be proportional to the naturalness or plausibility of the plot elements of the episode. So if you have Worf and Geordi completing each others’ sentences with no noticeable tonal shift, you’re probably going to have a plot that doesn’t make sense and one where other character interactions are as scrambled as Riker’s eggs.
2a) The majority of Troi’s lines can be replaced with selections from 1980s through mid-1990s pop ballads without substantially altering their meaning or significance to the plot.
2b) Most of Troi’s actual lines could be used to create a pretty hilarious soft-rock ballad.
(Perhaps we can use “one moon circles” as a chorus, or just write that one off as an Enya tribute.)
I hope you all will help me test these theories as we go forward.
Very generous, Eugene. I think the best I could give them is a Warp 2 for effort. As pointed out, there are a couple of potentially interesting aspects here, but they’re never really explored. The biggest problem is the complete lack of resolution. Proper science fiction needs to at least hint at a solution to the problem or puzzle presented (with the general exception of dystopias, of course). This is like having a mystery where we never find out who the killer is. Frustrating at best. It almost makes me look forward to next week.
I’m with DemetriosX: It’s more of a Warp 2 for me. Maybe it just seems better in comparison to the previous episode.
Star Trek, especially TNG, is primarily responsible for my no longer liking time travel stories. I know that’s harsh, since there’s no reason to dismiss an entire sub-genre due to the poor choices of one show but damn. They do it so often, so poorly.
And this one was definitely one of the worst of the bunch. They give us a puzzle, provide really crappy clues about it and then never really resolve it.
Picard shooting his future self to kill? What the hell kind of act is that? In so doing they took the one remaining decent problem of the episode and just tossed it aside. This might have been okay if Picard had been forced to subsequently deal with his own murder but as far as I can recall, there’s no response to it at all.
Once again, this episode gets placed in the “What a Waste” category.
I liked this episode quite a bit, really, and what I particularly liked was Picard being unable (or unwilling) to recognize himself within the emotions and responses of his duplicate—despite our knowledge that this duplicate really is Picard, time displaced. His disgust at the fear on display really makes this episode.
The idea that Picard A could slowly be catching up with time-displaced Picard B does not really bother me that much if the rift that caused the displacement is dissipating and the space-time continuum is mending and righting itself. Ripples in a pond, calming. Technobabble, sure, but—heck—we’re talking about a series based upon daily and common breaking of physical laws. FTL? Force fields? Give me a break.
For what it’s worth, the skull pounding conundrums and non-sequiturs in this episode never close to approaching those in “All Good Things,” a fan fav.
@1 DeepThought
Heh, “Troi, A Chorus Line.”
@3 Toryx
I got the sense Picard shot the duplicate to disable, but the duplicate died because he was unstable. No particular reason for that sense, other than Picard did not seem particularly malevolent—matter-of-fact, in fact—in his actions. Guess I should watch that part again.
Practically unwatchable.
I don’t understand anything that happens, from what’s wrong with Riker’s eggs (how do you screw up scrambled eggs?!? And why is that his cooking piece de resistance?) to why a duplicate from six hours in the future stays trapped at that moment and does not age in parallel, remaining six hours ahead at all times. I guess it makes as much sense as the rest of the crew remaining completely stagnant, unable or unwilling to do anything but stare at the twitching Picard Prime.
Is it just me, or does Picard wind up sounding a little like a homeland security flunky with his “Somewhere out there something will happen”? Writing, ladies and gentlemen! It’s hard!
Sigh. Like “The Royale,” this episode has no point whatsoever. Picard doesn’t learn anything about himself (“I make mistakes but I don’t have to live with them!”), KILLS himself (with no further discussion or exploration of this idea!), and everything gets reduced to this irritating fatalism that doesn’t have any place at all in the TNG universe.
And then it just ends. Because if you have two options and you know one doesn’t work, you do the other one and you’re a hero.
Rubbish! Warp 1!
@6 Torie: Riker’s inability to cook (and by extension, everyone who’s become wholly dependent on the replicator economy) is one of many illustrations of the inherent weenification of Federation society. Despite demonstrated hypercompetency in virtually everything else, there are these glaring voids in their experience that enable them to, say, be unable to remember anything about money, even though it’s theoretically only been out of use for a century or so.
The whole set-up for this episode is to have Picard unexpectedly shoot himself in a Gordian knot-like solution to the problem, and everything else is by necessity handwaving. I’m inclined to cut them slack for that, but then I have no particular emotional investment in time paradox episodes.
Okay, a couple of points:
I like this episode, despite the unresolved ending, probably because I dig it when the Enterprise runs into oddities in space ( I know, I know; strange new worlds and all that, but I like ‘space’ stuff… I’m a dork ). In a way, it reminds me of some episodes of the first year of “Space:1999” where strange stuff would happen and in the end be unexplained ( you know…’space is WEEEIIIRD!’ ). I know it may be weak dramatic writing, but stories like this play along with the old axiom about space being not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine. I guess I just really like the atmosphere of the episode.
As to Riker’s cooking, I thought the joke wasn’t that he was a bad cook, but that Owon eggs weren’t particualrly palatable after all. Of course, you’d think that someone who was going to cook them would know that ahead of time, so as jokes go, it kind of falls flat .
Finally, about Picard killing Picard; I’m with Lemnoc. I always thought that the killing was unintentional. It was the negative polarity ( or whatever the macguffin was ) of the future Picard that caused the phaser set on stun to kill him. I don’t think that they would have deliberately made Picard that bloodthirsty.
BTW, did anyone else lose track of which Picard was which during those walking to the shuttlebay corridor scenes? It seems to me that the Picards switched sides at least once.
I’ll agree that the whole episode doesn’t amount to much, or at least not what it could have, but I enjoyed it the first time i saw it, and still do upon repeat viewings ( as long as I don’t think about it too hard ). Also in it’s favor, several of the effects shots were pretty cool… especially the Enterprise being sucked down into the TARDIS hole. They were a definite improvement over the first season.
So I guess what happened here was that someone slipped in an unused script from Space:1999 and hoped no one would notice. dep1701 is right. This one has the feel of an episode from that other series. I’m also in agreement that the eggs themselves were the cause of the bad taste.
My view on the Other Picard (How else can we put it? ‘The Picard and The Not Picard’? or ‘Not The Picard!’ followed by a whack with the frying pan?) applies the reversed polarity thing. Not The Picard has been thrown off by about six hours. Because he’s been thrown into the past, he’s aging in reverse (Should I throw in a bad concept joke from Red Dwarf?) while everyone else is aging normally. So, he’s completely out of whack at first because he has (but has not) been six hours with this nonsense. The closer his negative aging takes him to the V.U.E. (Violent Unnamed Event – see Peter Greenaway’s The Falls.) the more coherent he becomes. Think of someone who thinks he can take it when first exposed to this nonsense but becomes what we saw here after six hours of exposure. Now, play that backward in your head. (Time for a repeat of Cat’s experience in the reverse aging planet episode of Red Dwarf.)
While writing the above, I think I’ve figured out how this episode came about. They used the William S. Burroughs writing method. Take a few printed plot outlines and a few bodies of text. Slice the lines apart with a razor then reassemble by mixing lines from each source. And the critics say – well, in this case, not what they said about Burroughs which was ‘Another masterpiece of American literature.’ I’m not a literary critic so I can safely say that along with this episode, I also don’t like Burroughs’ writing either.
@9 Ludon
Yes, that explanation more or less works for me. Both are heading to the same singularity, for one a point of exit. For the other, a point of origin.
And, yes, it is a lot like Space:1999. Maybe that’s why I generally like it. Not every space mystery can or should be explained. Not the most gross time travel hairball TNG will cough up in its run, trust me.
You folks keep telling me it’s going to get better, and every week it’s “only a few weeks more!”
You’re just screwing with me, aren’t you? It never gets better. It’s just
turtlesS3 TOS all the way down.This show’s DVDs should come marked Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate.
/curmudgeonish
@4 Lemnoc
What! “All Good Things…” makes perfect sense!
@5 Lemnoc
Is it possible that a stun setting on a reverse-Picard would kill him? No, that’s just silly. Or is it?
@8 dep1701
I thought the joke wasn’t that he was a bad cook, but that Owon eggs weren’t particualrly palatable after all.
I think you might be right, because Geordi is strangely skeptical of them. “WHAT kind of eggs are these? You got them WHERE?” And it was weird that Riker never takes a bite of them.
@9 Ludon
Because he’s been thrown into the past, he’s aging in reverse
Okay, that also makes sense to me, sort of.
Should I, in fact, see Peter Greenaway’s The Falls?
@11 CaitieCat
It gets better! Soon, but not yet. Really… Do you think we would do this to ourselves if it weren’t all worth it?
This show’s DVDs should come marked Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate.
Bwah ha ha!
@12 Eugene
If you like humor that is low key and drawn out to explore the concept it is a part of, you might enjoy The Falls. It is a three hour mock documentary in 92 parts presenting information on only those survivors of the V.U.E. who’s surnames begin with the letters FALL. (Therefore, the title The Falls.) The concept being explored is the Documentary – the long, drawn out dry documentary trying to keep the viewer interested in something he or she would otherwise likely have no interest in but little tidbits keep coming along making you want more. The survivors of the V.U.E. usually take on bird-like characteristics and/or develop new languages. How interesting is that? But for some, like me, it works.
Peter Greenaway’s films are tapestries woven from the threads of language, visuals and sound/music that are unlike the mass-produced films and TV shows ruling the entertainment marketplace. Even his more mainstream films like The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover stand out as memorable experiences. Even if you don’t like the movie, the memories stand out. Can anyone who has seen the film forget the special event His Wife and The Cook prepare for The Thief?
Worf’s comment about “the theory of the Mobius” was sampled into various music tracks.
One was Shanty – Time’s Trouble on Electronic records.
Another was Orbital’s chill track “Time Becomes”, on Orbital 2. It was played on an episode of Music from the Hearts of Space (which is a really great show) called “Deep Forest“, showcasing the original Michel Sanchez album. It was one of the best they ever did. I hadn’t seen this episode when I first heard it, and when the voice of Lt. Worf came over my headphones I was completely blown away. Perfect.
@ 7 S Hutson Blount
Haha, weenification. I’m not convinced that’s going on here, but I was always very surprised by how infrequently you see people eating. On a ship, you’d think that’d be THE social event of the day.
@ 8 dep1701
You’re probably right, but I still don’t understand why he’d cook eggs he wasn’t sure were edible and serve them to his friends as a demonstration of his cooking abilities. “Hey guys I made some cyanide burgers, want to try?” Though even burgers require more effort than scrambled eggs.
@ 11 CaitieCat
There is hope! I like Q so I am looking forward to “Q Who,” but Season 3 is just around the corner!
@ 13 Ludon
I actually laughed out loud that you referred to The Cook The Thief as “mainstream.” I love that movie, and spent years trying to get a copy of it here in the U.S. where it was basically unavailable through any mainstream channels due to the NC-17 rating. (Just as Eugene finally found me a copy, they decided to release it. Go figure.) I first saw it in college in a (very unusual) class that explored imagery of the mouth: eating, drinking, sex. Needless to say The Cook The Thief hits every one of those notes, and I really haven’t found a movie that better expresses (with visual aplomb!) oppression and sublimation. Also once I give people a warning about the finale no one wants to see it. Wimps.
@ 15 Torie
Another spooky reminder from these discussions (guess this is what happens when I try to catch up to you folks by hitting a half dozen of these at a time).. I came across “The Cook…” on one of the movie channels the other night and stopped to watch the last hour or so. The casting really caught me by surprise; having made quips from time to time about how British TV comedies seemed to have a small group of reused actors, I was surprised at how many big names were in this movie, and how it hadn’t occurred to me at the time. It was odd to see Michael Gambon as the main villain, since now to me he is primarily Dumbledore and ‘the guy with a turn named after him on “Top Gear” ‘.
And now I feel old: I also saw this movie in college.. when it had gone from first-run to second-run status, a few months after its original release. :|