“We’ll Always Have Paris”
Written by Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer
Directed by Robert Becker
Season 1, Episode 24
Original air date: May 2, 1988
Star date: 41697.9
Mission summary
The Enterprise is headed to Sarona VIII for some shore leave, but Picard has gotten a headstart by fencing with a lieutenant. Though he loses the first point he wins the second–twice, as time seems to repeat itself in an eerie deja vu effect. The bridge confirms the temporal anomaly, and they pick up a distress signal from a Paul Manheim, reknowned wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey tinkerer who left Earth fifteen years ago to experiment with multiple dimensions and nonlinear time.
Picard reacts strongly to news of Manheim. Because he’s got a few hours to kill before the ship reaches Manheim, Picard goes to the holodeck to recreate Paris twenty-two years earlier. There he runs into a woman waiting for a man who never shows. She asks Picard why her beau did not come, and Picard tells her it was because of Nazis he was afraid. He then chastises himself for indulging in such fantasies and goes back to the bridge.
The ship finally reaches Vandor IV, a planet in orbit around a binary star system that contains a red giant and a pulsar. Picard, not using his name, hails the source of the distress signal and reaches a woman who says Manheim is having convulsions. They are the only remaining survivors, as the other lab and its staff were totally obliterated. The woman and Manheim are beamed directly to sickbay. Manheim’s condition is confusing: he seems to be dying, but Crusher can’t figure out how or why. The woman is Ilsa Jenice Manheim, his wife, and Picard’s ex from all those years ago. She is surprised to see “Jean-Luc” and Picard has trouble confronting his own emotions about her. She seems pleased that he has “done well” and gotten all he wanted out of his life, but he doesn’t seem so sure. In private, he tells her that he didn’t meet her because he was scared. She said she waited all day for him, and they both admit to having thought a great deal about each other in the intervening years.
On Vandor, Jenice explains, Manheim was making exceptional progress on his experiments, but was getting obsessive and predicted that there would be serious dangers, so he took serious security precautions to try and contain the experiment. He’s too ill to communicate, so Picard, Data, and Riker head to the turbolift. There they experience deja vu again, and see their own doubles about to enter the lift as they are in it. The “Manheim effect,” as Data dubs it, is spreading and becoming more serious. It’s clear that someone’s going to have to shut the experiments down, but attempts to beam to the lab are thwarted by a bounce effect–presumably a security feature and not a bug.
Meanwhile, Dr. Crusher is jealous and bitches to Troi.
In sickbay Manheim comes to and tells Jenice that all of his craziness was worth it, because the resistance must survive he’s “been to the other side.” He says he’s in two places (or times) at once, but he worries that he’s created a giant tear in the great security blanket of the galaxy and so other dimensions are spilling through, causing this rift. He tells Picard how to bypass his security measures and shut the thing down, but it has to be done at precisely the moment of the next time wave. Privately, he tells Picard that should anything happen to him, to please take care of his wife. She has put up with his bullshit for too many years and he wants her to have a good, happy life, no matter what. Picard agrees that Manheim isn’t going to win any husband of the year awards and he’d be more than happy to swap in.
Data, because he’s less susceptible to time weirdness, beams down to give the hole the antimatter emergency sewing kit treatment. At the right moment three Datas appear, and they must figure out which one is the “right” one. This apparently takes no time or difficulty and soon the rip is patched and all is well. Back aboard the Enterprise, Manheim awakens. He’s a little shaken but otherwise fine, and more committed than ever to continuing his experiments. Jenice seems nervous, but Manheim convinces her to do it for all those friends he unintentionally killed at the second lab, and she agrees, because guilt is a strong motivator.
Before she goes, though, she meets Picard on the holodeck, where he has recreated that Parisian day to say a proper goodbye. She thanks him for their time together and they part ways, presumably forever.
Analysis
I hadn’t noticed it before, but the two main Picard-centric episodes of the season are pale rip-offs of classic films: “The Big Goodbye” (The Maltese Falcon) and now “We’ll Always Have Paris” (Casablanca). Maybe if he had taken that job at Starfleet Academy he could have run the school newsletter and we’d get a little Citizen Kane?
This is probably the episode I recall liking most out of the whole season, and it really disappointed me. The Casablanca nods are laid on too thick, the temporal anomaly is more handwavy than usual, and I left with more questions than answers regarding Picard and Jenice’s relationship. I’m all for letting viewers fill in the blanks, but it’s an entire episode of blanks. There’s no context whatsoever for their relationship. She seems much younger–was it a May-December thing? What would staying together have meant sacrificing? It doesn’t seem like she’s made any kind of career for herself, so why couldn’t she just join up with him wherever he was off to? What on earth did they see in each other? It was impossible for me to feel anything–sadness, regret, longing–for these two people when I don’t know anything about them. They both seem to have gotten totally over it and there’s no hint or inkling that either regret their decision or would do it any differently if they could. So what exactly is the point of this little reunion, to make them both suffer a little? A good romance, whether it’s sad or not, should at least give us a glimpse at who this person was that was so in love. I don’t feel I learned anything about Picard or the man he was then, and none of this added to my assessment of the man he is now.
The weakness is Jenice Manheim. She has no career, no interests, no personality. She makes no choices. Her husband, without her input or consent, arranges for her–what, guardianship??–should he die. At the end, when it seems like she really wants to get the hell out of Dodge, Manheim guilts her into staying with the favorite line of abusers everywhere, “It’ll be different this time, I promise.” Despite the fact that Picard stood her up all those years ago, he never once apologizes (I double-checked!) and she, in turn, thanks him for their time together. I can’t root for a doormat, and in my most vivid imagination I don’t see why Picard would be remotely interested in her to begin with. The holodeck scene at the end is so selfish, too, a way to assuage Picard’s guilt and give him closure that she seems to have already achieved long ago. The only thing that has stuck with me is Jenice’s line that staying with her would have made Picard feel ordinary. It’s definitely his greatest fear, as we see in “Tapestry.” But again, we don’t know enough about what, if anything, either of them would have had to sacrifice to be together, so it feels hollow.
As for the time stuff, most of that plot was consumed with the “we need to learn to get past security!” subplot, which reeks of pointless filler to me. I did like the echo effect, and I think a better writer could have united these plots more elegantly (the choice that Picard made then paralleling the time rift there now). Mostly it was a serviceable science fictional idea that deserved better than to be shoehorned into a rehash of Kirk’s long lost love story from “The Deadly Years.” (Go back and watch that one–the dialogue between Kirk and Wallace is so, so much better, tinged with regret and sadness and yet a certainty that, ultimately, it was the right choice.) In contrast, Crusher’s random jealousy is unforgivable and baseless. Since when must she “compete” with anyone? She doesn’t even want the prize! Are we supposed to assume that since they fell in that pit together in “Arsenal of Freedom” she’s become a jealous middle-schooler? For shame, Trek writers. For shame.
I doubt I’ll rewatch this mediocrity in the future, but I do feel the urge to bump Casablanca to the top of my queue.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: I can’t seem to find a screencap of the whole outfit, which balloons into hammer pants from the waist to the knees, then comes back in as tights, has an opening on either side for sideboob potential, and flaps heavily down her back. And is a tie-dye experiment gone wrong. This looks like something I would glue to the back of a fish tank.
Best Line: JENICE: You’ve done well. A great starship in the far reaches of the galaxy. It’s everything you’d hoped.
PICARD: Not exactly. Nothing works just as you hope.
Trivia/Other Notes: Michelle Phillips was one of the mamas from The Mamas and the Papas, of “California Dreamin'” fame.
The writers intended for Picard to get down with Jenice, but this was vetoed by almost everyone on the staff, including Patrick Stewart.
When Data has to figure out which version of him is real, he says, “Me! It’s me!” So much for his inability to use contractions.
The Writers’ Guild strike meant that production was shut down while the ending was filmed. Whether this explains anything, I don’t know.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 23 – “Skin of Evil.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 25 – “Conspiracy.”
Yeah, a forgettable episode that could have been done a lot better in a later season when the characters were more familiar and had more depth. Maybe one of the worst aspects of the first season is a strong tendency to tell rather than show, and Picard and Jenice’s relationship is a prime example. Of course, matters aren’t helped by the fact that Michelle Phillips is a mediocre actress. I’m not sure if this was the first instance of the stunt casting that plagued later seasons; she wasn’t really that hot (in the sense of drawing viewers, she’s reasonably attractive in a lifted 80’s way) at the time, not like Bebe Newirth or Jason Alexander were, for example.
The writers’ strike did have an effect on this episode. The decision was made to scrap the ending before the strike started, but the new ending wasn’t fully scripted. A lot was ad libbed by the actors, which explains Data’s contraction and colloquial grammar. (Surely, Data would say “It is I.”)
I too barely recall this unmemorable episode.
But I consider it defensible! It actually deals with some science fiction-y concepts that border on interesting! It has a back story that engages and attempts to flesh out one of the main characters. It broadens the series milieu.
In a lot of ways, this one has a lot in common with the middlin’ ranks of episodes from later seasons. That puts it WAY above most of the episodes this season. It’s like teaching your REALLY stupid dog to roll over just once. Good job, boy! Good job!
I think this episode has a lot of interesting ideas in them.
1. A heretofore undeveloped use of the holodeck: Reliving past mistakes. Unfortunately, this is the only time I recall TNG actually doing this. Personally, I’d have a lot of fun programming past disappointments into the holodeck and improving upon them. There are any number of people from my past whose asses I would enjoy kicking retroactively. The disturbing thing about this episode is that it sort of suggests that Picard already had this program for use. Hmmm…masochistic!
2. Why is it that almost every scientific genius in Star Trek is demented, obssessed and ignoring their wife? I’m sure it happens a lot in real life too, but this is ridiculous.
3. As Torie points out, this is another example where a woman on Star Trek is basically her husband’s supporter. Presumably, she doesn’t even need to do housework. And this is the later 80’s, not the late 60’s. What the hell? This happens over and over again and it irritates me more every time I see it.
I must conclude that emotionally, most Star Trek writers are little boys who want to marry their mother.
4. For some reason, whenever I remember this episode I keep thinking that all the different Datas work together, rather than having an identity crisis. Probably because that’d make a lot more sense.
Maybe the choice was wrong, and a defective counterfeit, time-addled, apt-to-malfunction Data was what the series was left with!
The allusions to Casablanca were perhaps inevitable, probably ordained the moment Picard was described as a French patriot in the writer’s bible, that film being perhaps the most immediately recognizable in American culture that, coincidentally, places the French in an excellent light.
IIRC in the ’80s in particular there was a raging high level of francophobia—probably related to the ascendency of RReagan and conservative (and pro-USA!) thought generally—and, again IIRC, Rodenberry (a WWII guy if ever there was) decided deliberately that the captain would be French just to make the point. The same way, I suppose, he made the point with Uhura and Sulu and Chekhov.
Thing is, who in this playscript, was destined to play the role of Renault? We know who’d play pianist Sam—Vic Fontaine from DS9! For Renault, I’d guess Guinan:
“Shocked! I am shocked to learn there is drinking going on in Ten Forward!”
I recall waa-a-ay back in the early days of Letterman, when I actually watched the darned thing, he brought on an astronomer. Of course, the schtick was the scientist was supposed to just dweeb out there while Dave poked fun at him. Instead, the guy was off-script—brilliant, bright, charismatic, clever, charming and funny, very funny. He had the audience roaring.
He made jokes at Letterman’s expense, and clearly, evidently that did not go over! That was not supposed to happen!… like the monkey-cam capturing a Pulitzer in investigative broadcast. Dave was visibly annoyed.
We like our geeky scientists to stay well inside their stereotypes, thank you very much. Only Carl Sagan gets to wear black turtlenecks!
…in retrospect, I’m not really embarrassed to say I slept through part of this episode on rewatch.
What? It’s been a long week.
This episode always reminds me of reel changes and poorly spliced films. In my work as a projectionist and in TV, I made many manual reel changes and I was very aware of them whenever I’d watch movies in a theater. (Now days, the reels are spliced together and ran as a whole on a platter.) Many times, the reels would have some overlap beyond the out-cue and before the in-cue and being the slightly off on the switch could lead to a repeated word or two. If a damaged film had been repaired by splicing in a segment from another print repeated words or actions could also result. Then you have the quick splice repair in which some damaged frames are removed. This leads to quick skips ahead. When I saw this episode I questioned their way of showing the time wrinkles.
Picard and company are living within that universe and as such should they, like the characters living in the universe of other films, not notice the effects of the time wrinkles? When time repeated or skipped in those other movies (first paragraph) did any of the characters react? True. They are just shadows on a screen projected from patterns on a strip of plastic. But, story universes exist within those movies and the characters within them live briefly whenever the movies are shown. A wrinkle (caused by a splice or a bad reel change) is something beyond the ability of a character within that universe (film) to notice. I, as the viewer, am outside that universe and the wrinkle is clearly noticeable to me.
If the time distortions are happening within a bubble expanding around the lab, would the characters within that bubble be unaware of the distortions? People outside the bubble would notice the effects through events like repeated transmissions of messages or data bearing the same timestamps. Unlike the viewer of a movie, others within that universe but outside the bubble could alert those within and try to convince them of what is happening. (But not within the Stargate SG-1 universe – they told a different story.) Or. Data, the Magic Android, could have been able to detect the wrinkles because of the way his Positronic Brain works. Either way, the time element of this episode could have been different and maybe a little more interesting.
The drama with Data times three at the climax was bogus. All three instances of Data were the correct Data. This was not a time travel story, this was a time distortion story. The “which one of us is the right one?” bit felt out of place to me. Otherwise, if the wrinkles are little time travel cause and effect opportunities, why not have those inside and outside the turbolift all go to Ten Forward and over drinks discuss which ones are correct and which actions they should take.
Funny. My memory never connects the time wrinkle story with Picard’s lost opportunity story. The Picard story makes it clear to me that the writers were a bunch of sci-fi geeks.
Besides the wobbly writing, my first impression upon watching this episode still stands: there is absolutely ZERO chemistry between Picard and Jennice… actually, less than zero. As Torie points out, at least in “The Deadly Years” you did get a sense of mutual attraction and a history.
That’s one way that Kirk trumps Picard ( and Riker IMHO ). Shatner made him a believable ladies man. You got the feeling he really was, at the very least, attracted to most of the women he wooed, and vice versa. When they tried to force Picard and Riker to do the same schtick, it came generally came out hollow and flat. Thankfully, they began to play that card far less than it was done in the sixties.
Frankly, Mannheim himself is not a particularly compelling or dimensional character either, so perhaps he and Jennice belong together. The two vacuums they create cancel each other out.
On another subject, it’s creepy that the holodeck can so perfectly figure out exactly what kind of emotional void someone is trying to plug when they ask for something as innocuous as a restaurant in Paris. I mean, how did the computer realize that Picard was feeling regret and conjure up a jilted woman for him to talk to? Did Picard once post about this particular event on the 24th century equivalent of Facebook ( ’cause once you’ve posted it, it never goes away! )? If the holodeck is that intuitive, then it’s definitely a better empath than Troi. If not, then it’s got a twisted sense of humor. Imagine asking for a beach scene, and when it materializes, the computer has thrown in a beached whale for ‘atmosphere’.
Great write-up. Thanks for doing these.
I’m currently watching “Lessons” from season 6 and you can immediately tell a difference in the Captain’s interaction with his love interest. Unlike our episode above, time was spent thinking of developing characters and details rather than the plot issues pushing a story along. Agree with Demetrios above. Why couldn’t they spend some time making feel a connection between Picard and the wife? After watching, I don’t even believe about the past love interest story thread after watching. I was mildly intrigued by the time distortions but it didn’t seem fleshed out through the story.
Warp 2
@ 1 DemetriosX
She’s made a career for herself as a perpetual guest star, where mediocrity goes to die. But she’s got nothing to work with here anyway.
I wonder if that last goodbye sequence was ad-libbed. “I expect you to always come charging to my rescue”?? What the hell’s that about? That whole scene felt really weird to me.
@ 2 Lemnoc
Yeah, that’s why I gave it a 3. It’s pretty much on par with middling later season episodes. Okay idea, shitty execution, next!
@ 3 Toryx
1. That’s a really interesting point. I’d probably do this a lot: play out scenarios of what would have happened if I had chosen x instead of y. Though this wasn’t a “saved” program–not like Dixon Hill, which had an assigned filename–so I think this was the first time he had ever created/used it. Related: the holodeck could be a great way to test out your options before making a decision. What if Picard had used it to imagine life as the head of Starfleet Academy, before determining it wasn’t the choice he wanted to make?
2. My roommate’s a scientist, and from what I hear–they’re all pretty insane. Maybe not flopsweat-plagued sociopaths, but pretty nutty.
3. There’s just no need for it. Even TOS did this better. Areel Shaw and Janet Wallace at least had careers! There was actually a sense that something would have had to have been sacrificed in order to continue the relationship, and an assessment of priorities that reveals something interesting about the person who made that choice.
@ 5 Lemnoc
Yeah but the French got a pretty big stomping even here, where the language has somehow become extinct in Picard’s own lifetime (he speaks it with his family in flashbacks).
@ 8 Ludon
Hey, a fellow projectionist! I always spliced the reels together, but usually by the time we got them they had been rented to numerous other places and so sometimes dozens of frames had been cut out (presumably as souvenirs). Once a coworker threaded the machine wrong and we lost about 5 seconds of The Saddest Music in the World (no loss if you ask me…). I have some half-melted frames of it somewhere. But the jumps happen and I always notice them now.
You’re totally right about the logical weirdness of them observing their own time loop. The audience should see it, but why are the characters aware? By the “right” Data at the end, I think they meant the correct one for this particular universe/dimension. I assume the dupes go back to their own parallel lives once the hiccup is over.
@ 9 Dep1701
Re: the lack of chemistry, they could have told me that Picard was her old babysitter and I would have found that more plausible. But I don’t think the problem is that Shatner was more naturally a ladies’ man than Stewart, who can be quite sexy. They just built this to fail from the outset, writing/designing TNG to neuter Picard as a kind of asexual wizened old white guy figure. Riker’s supposed to be the ladies’ man (see: “Angel One”) (or don’t), but that just does not work for me in any conceivable universe. I couldn’t tell you why. Compare that to Kirk, for whom passion is a central character trait, one that defines all of his interactions. It isn’t for a while now that they give Picard some passion and some conviction. The young man in “Tapestry” is totally unrecognizable to this incarnation of Picard.
Re: programming the stilted lady, if that’s so common that it appears in cafes everywhere, where are all the aspiring writers on their laptops?
@ 10 ShameAndFailure
Thank you, as always!
I didn’t care for “Lessons” mostly because of the implication that one person must ALWAYS give up his/her career, which really shouldn’t be an issue in the freaking future, but it did at least show (not tell!) some believable reasons why these people were attracted to each other and how they bonded. For once there’s an assumption that people have an intimate, private side that’s not necessarily visible to everyone they work with–not a concept on display here.
Man, the phrase Data, the Magic Android went into an immediate filk in my head…
Data, the magic android lived on Deck Twenty-Three
He’d gone there from the holocaust of the Crystal Entity
Little Tasha drunkly loved that yellow bot
And gave him sex and silly clothes and a toy for his cat Spot!
Sometimes my mind is a terrible thing, wasted.
Jeez can they please not try to rip off classic film? It only makes them look even worse than they already are in this failing first season, I adore Casablanca. When I took the big tour of WB studios three years ago and stood in the same studio where Max Steiner recorded that music I literaly got a lump in my throat. Now don;t get me wrong Casablanca is filled with some terrible plot holes and a woefull lack of undertsanding of the Nazis. (‘Even Nazis can’t kill that fast.’ A line that always make me cringe.) That said, it was a film with memorbale characters, and eternal themes (love, duty, redemption.) this episode was bland, forgetable, and ultmiately, as it has been pointed out, not about futy of ownership. Here the girl is nothing mroe than a prize, a thing to posses, and a second-rate one compared to commanding the Enterprise. Hardly a theme I can get behind.
I couldn’t even bring myself to start this episode the other night, and when Casablanca is one I can’t bring myself to stop it.
@11 “Riker’s supposed to be the ladies’ man (see: “Angel One”) (or don’t), but that just does not work for me in any conceivable universe. I couldn’t tell you why. ”
I can’t either. He just seems too…soft(?) to be a fella that the ladies would swoon for ( I’m a gay man and he’s never done anything for me either ). The only releationship I ever bought him in was with Troi ( and that was waaayy after the icky Decker/Ilia rip-off beginning they gave it ). Maybe a lesbian might be attracted to him ( pre-beard ).
“But I don’t think the problem is that Shatner was more naturally a ladies’ man than Stewart, who can be quite sexy. ”
Ah but Patrick Stewart’s Picard is sexy in a different way than Shatner’s Kirk. Although I’m terrible at trying to define the “je ne sais quoi” of the man, I think it has to do with his innate intelligence, his quiet inner strength, and the feeling that there is a passion, just under the surface. Kirk was more the ‘man of action, heart on his sleeve, fist-fight before diplomacy, man’s man, action hero stereotype. I think that’s part of Riker’s problem. They wanted him to be “Kirk Jr.” but physically and personality-wise, Jonathan Frakes just wasn’t right for the more aggressive role.
@12 Caitie, that made me laugh. Thanks.
I had the impression that at first they wanted Picard to be a Father Figure – that is, someone who you’d want to have as your father. Yet, they got that wrong with him being uneasy around kids. (Or, maybe it wasn’t all that wrong. With him not having any children, they couldn’t do any Courtship of Eddie’s Father kind of stories.) Maybe the problem was that they just hadn’t worked out the character enough to be able to pull this kind of story this early in the series.
Though Picard didn’t have chemistry with Jenice, I enjoyed seeing another side of his character. This is the best attempt at showing something from his past yet and a step in the right direction, and Stewart does an excellent job with what little the screenwriters give him. I enjoyed his side of their repartee anyway. You can definitely see he’s really settling into the role, and I think most of the main cast is as well; part of the fun for me was seeing the bemused and confused looks Riker and Data exchanged whenever Picard and Jenice were together.
I’ve been surprised at how hard they were pushing Dr. Crusher to have feelings for Picard, this early in the show. It seems forced and was the lowest point of the episode for me. I’ve always liked the sequence where Data has to insert the antimatter and gets duplicated in the time stream, but I was disappointed that it was all so simple for him. Still, it was a nifty effect, and I liked the wibbly-wobbly bits, like the turbolift scene.
As for Dr. Manheim, I kept getting the impression that he had appeared from out of a Lovecraft story with his wild-eyed incoherent rambling about being in another universe, and having to close the gateway between dimensions. He was just awful. And ultimately, the time hiccups are secondary to Picard’s regrets about Jenice. Once again, two plotlines that don’t mesh very well at all. You would think that a time travel story could do more with someone who is trying to relive his past. Still, decent use of the holodeck, and at least it didn’t malfunction this time.
Oddly, though I love Casablanca, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it so the pale similarities were not nearly as striking or annoying to me.
This episode is a maddening teaser of how the show will eventually improve in all areas, from the writing to the special effects to the characterization. We still have a ways to go, but it’s another episode down in our slow march to the end of season 1.
Warp 3 from me.
@ 12 Cait
Well said.
@ 13 bobsandiego
You can’t skip out on the bad ones! If I have to watch “The Child” so do you!
@ 14 Dep1701
Riker’s just a dead fish. There’s no passion there, whether it be the bombastic Kirk variety or the quiet, confident Picard variety. I actually wound up liking Thomas Riker because he has this twinge of sadness to him, which is at least more interesting than nothing.
@ 15 Ludon
Good point. If he’s going to hate kids, he has to at least be lovable and crotchety, Bones-style.
@ 16 Eugene
I didn’t like the Riker/Data looks. It was too campy and too obvious, and it made them seem like sniggering middle-schoolers instead of seasoned professionals.
Interesting you note the improvement in special effects, considering the next outing has the worst effects I’ve ever seen on any television show in the modern era.
@ Torie
Oh I only skipped out on a medicaore one, teh truly bad ones are too fun to snark at to skip. Medicaore is harder to tolerate than the truly bad.
:)
@18 – S’truth, my lord!
My sister thought the three Datas were past, present, and future. And the ‘right’ one was the one in the middle: the present.