Jammer's Review
Star Trek: The Next Generation
"Cause and Effect"
Air date: 3/23/1992
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
A starship emerges from a mysterious void. It's on a collision course with the Enterprise, which is dead in space because of power disruption. The crew has only a few seconds to make a decision on how to avoid the collision. They try to deflect the other ship with a tractor beam, but the ship hits one of the Enterprise's warp nacelles. A cascading catastrophe results in a core breach that destroys the ship.
And then, after the commercial break, repeat.
"Cause and Effect" is like the Groundhog Day of Star Trek (it aired a year before Groundhog Day itself was released), and its one of my favorite TNG sci-fi mysteries. It's a time-loop story featuring subtle nuance in its details, intriguing clues, and foreboding atmosphere. It utilizes the characters sensibly. And it also has the Enterprise blowing up four times. How awesome is that? (Sure, the Enterprise exploding should've been more spectacular, but with 1992 visual effects whaddaya gonna do?)
This is the sort of lightning-in-a-bottle sci-fi high concept that Brannon Braga would try to recapture again and again on TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise. It would eventually become his reputation (often not in a good way), though I think that reputation may be somewhat unfair. It's reminiscent of second season's "Time Squared" in that it depicts a time loop, but it goes one step further in showing the time loop as played out over multiple iterations, where the crew becomes slightly more aware of the loop as the story progresses.
Lots of nice details pull together to create some memorable atmosphere. The poker game, for example, begins as innocuous off-hours recreation, but by the end, as the players are able to predict the cards, it becomes downright eerie. (Data has the line of the night regarding these predictions: "This is highly improbable.") Geordi shows up in sickbay, and Crusher has deja vu. People throughout the ship hear strange whispers at night; what might they be?
And in my favorite little detail, Crusher cannot seem to escape the fate of breaking the glass in her quarters, even when she has a premonition that she's going to break it and tries to take action to avoid it. This detail hints at the notion that perhaps the Enterprise itself cannot escape the fate of its own destruction (though obviously it ultimately will).
Scratch that — my favorite detail is that once the crew discovers what is happening and that they can send a very short message (no more than a single word) from one iteration of the loop to the next in order to warn themselves of the disaster, Data sends the number "3" to his future self and then the 3's show up all over the ship in places he subconsciously planted them — including stacked in the poker hand he deals. Neat. (The 3 refers to the rank insignia on Riker's collar, allowing Data to realize Riker's suggested course of action may be the correct one to avoid the crash.) "Cause and Effect" has no deep significance or important message. It's simply an ingeniously conceived, well executed sci-fi yarn, where the truth is in the details.
Previous episode: The Outcast
Next episode: The First Duty
Season Index
35 comments on this review
This one is okay on first viewing, but after you know the payoff, then whatever. It's not horrible on repeat viewings, but certainly not one I'd sit and watch happily numerous times.
But what really angers me about the episode is the suggestion that the crew of the Bozeman is so utterly clueless that they have no idea that anything is even wrong. The brilliant Enterprise crew figure something is wrong in a matter of days--the Bozeman has been in the loop for DECADES and think everything is hunky dory. Obviously, the Bozeman doesn't have Data to solve the problem, but they should have been aware something was not right.
When the Enterprise contacted them their first communication should have been "Something is very wrong with our ship!"
I also agree with both posters above regarding this episode. It was brilliant and new when first aired, and it deserves to be remembered fondly. However, you can really only bring it out every 5 years or so, due to the wash-rinse-repeat nature of the plot. Altho I never got tired of Patrick Stewart bellowing out "ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP!" in that rich voice of his.
Finally, this is one of Jonathan Frakes early directing jobs (fourth?) and you can really start to see how gifted he is at directing. I remember that one long, tracking shot from high above the conference table in one of the later loops. You don't see the faces of the crew as they discuss the problem, and it only adds to the eerie tone. Subtle directing from Frakes, and you can see why he was later picked to direct 'First Contact' and is now a skilled, seasoned director.
One thing always bothered me a bit though(just a nitpick really). Data's "sign" he sent to himself is a bit ambiguous, wouldn't you agree? Riker and Data both have three pips on the collar. Why did he conclude that the threes pointed to Riker?
This episode would be perfect except for Braga's mistake of assuming this is a time loop situation. It isn't. They're not "trapped" for 17 days; at least, we never see them "escape." More sensible to think that Enterprise is caught in some kind of time-current, the same one that snagged Bozeman, and that luckily they were only 17 days away from the endpoint. (Or, more sensibly still, omit the "17 days" detail.) To put it another way, our heroes only lived through the situation one time -- the final iteration -- but they benefited from hearing information transmitted from parallel iterations, information which amplified itself each time until it could not be ignored.
My otter counterpart raises a fair point about Bozeman's blase attitude. However, there's no indication that Bozeman received the same echoes from parallel iterations. They don't even explode; in every iteration other than the last, their reaction would've been "Whoa! We hit something and it blew up! And now our clothes are out of style!"
While serious issues and moral dilemmas are nowhere to be found in "Cause and Effect," the episode has stuck with me.
Also, I award it extra points for making Dr. Crusher the POV character. That alone is going beyond the obvious.
I had forgotten one thing about it that made it fun:
"No help for the Klingon"
But other than that, since I knew the payoff, I was pretty bored. It was a problem-solving episode with no character development. As Jammer would say, this one had a "reset button" embedded in it. And there was no, as Grumpy said, "grace note of mythological depth or character revelation."
Grumpy: I really appreciate your idea that they weren't "trapped" and the posit about why the Bozeman wouldn't be alerted--fair points! (and lol at "otter counterpart!")
I stand by my initial reaction--yes, this is a very good episode of TNG--but only the first time you see it.
But I like Deanna--what do I know? :-)
That is all that matters then. The reviews are for how good the episode was, not how they stand up to multiple viewing... I would assume.
For me, the "multiple viewings" argument is simply the difference between "good" and "great." This is, indeed, a good episode, but in order to be great, I feel it would need to be just as enjoyable on repeat viewings.
That was my first thought too, but years later I watched it again and I started to think the Bozeman was only in the loop for 17 days as well. They fall into some sort of time slip, go forward in time decades, then hit the Enterprise and repeat that for 17 days. Or to put it another way, the Enterprise and the Bozeman have to go through an equal amount of iterations, or else what was the Bozeman hitting before the Enterprise came along?
But I can replace that mindbender with another one...the story implies there's some kind of bubble around the area that's rewinding, since they get time stamps from an outpost nearby, so the rest of the universe kept on going as normal. What would happen if someone came across this situation? Presumably they could change the course of events and stop the loop?
A bunch of us at work watched 4 episodes back to back one night when this came out. The next day we all had Beverly Crusher's little song in our heads. Even thinking about that episodes brings up the sing she hums to herself as she goes to bed.
I also love the spooky camera work on the final run through as Beverly is too paranoid to go to bed normally.
I always liked this episode and thought it was rather clever.
Spot on! That bugged me the first time I watched this ep and every time since. Neither Riker's nor Data's suggestion is incorrect - they're just implemented belatedly. In fact, why wouldn't you decompress the shuttle bay AND alter the Bozeman's trajectory with a tractor beam? Moving both ships in different directions would surely be more effective.
That said I thought Frakes did a masterful job as director - besides having to shoot variations on the same scenes in every act, he was making a bottle show so he had only the regular cast and the regular sets to work with and he still managed to make every scene different and interesting.
After some soul searching--I realized I am not as jazzed about this episode as others because I really hate Beverly Crusher. (yes, more than Wesley) She is my least favorite character on ALL the ST series that I have seen, and any episode that features her has to really rise above to overcome the hatred.
For me, the minute I saw her in her nightie with a bow in her hair, the episode was irredeemable.
I even forgive the absurdity that Riker's (a normal HUMAN being solution would be more correct than DATA'S (a SCIENCE android capable of seven million calculations per second lol)
Also, I can't remember if it is this one or not, but I think this is the one where I think all throughout, Gates just looks beyond lovely.
Finally, I'm a bit confused as to why the final time loop did NOT involve Data again wearing the armband just in case they failed and had to send another message. I figure that idea would have popped up in the final time loop as well. But none of that really takes away from the greatness of this episode. 4 stars.
PS: regarding the solution: 1) I figure that Data ought to have been able to calculate whether the tractor beam or decompression would have a greater avoidance effect before he suggested the beam. 2) I'd expect the generic "tractor beam" suggestion to move the other ship from Riker, and the seemingly unconventional "decompress the shuttle bay" suggestion from Data - it's not something the crew normally does. 3) Why not try both?
This one was a lot of fun. I took it that he Bozeman had catapulted ahead in time, not that it was stuck in a loop for 100 years. It joined the loop at the same time as the Enterprise. Might even have been the proximity of another ship and it's warp field to the temporal whatever that brought the Bozeman forth at that particular moment.
I guess I missed that...I suppose that works.
Another thing that didn't sit well was that the Enterprise crew was having intense deja vu after what was only 17 days in the loop, but the Bozeman crew seemed absolutely clueless after a century. If the deja vu moments the Enterprise crew had in two and a half weeks were extrapolated to the Bozeman,I'd think they'd have been driven into madness after that long.
also
pviateur:
'the Bozeman must have been crewed by a bunch of dummies (no offense ladies, but judging from the bridge personnel, the captain was the only male aboard)'
If you look over Frasier's right shoulder it's clear that the officer at the back is no lady.
Way too much of a mess here to rate 4 stars. Four stars is saved for episodes that have a good story, follow logically, and correctly follow any canon that they happen to reference.
I always thought it would be an interesting twist, if they had showed Data taking Riker's suggestion and the Bozeman still collides with the Enterprise, to show that they were both wrong, and the correct solution was to do both actions. But, time was limited so there was only so much the writers could do in a hour.
And while it's a bottle episode, it's one of the best in a franchise who's most memorable episodes tend to be the bottle episodes. If you're going to reduce it's score just for that, you're going to have to also ding a lot of the greatest episodes of Trek.
Frankly, the only serious logical flaw here is that the Bozeman is sucked into the future at the end just for a cameo. Otherwise it could be rationalized that they were in the time-loop just as long as the Enterprise, and we could wonder about what they had tried and who they were. But it's still a time-paradox episode and those are never really convincing anyway, so this seems like a minor infraction to me.
As for the message, it makes perfect sense. If data chose something else, it might be misinterpreted. Something like "three" was vague right up until the end, just when Data needed it to solve the mystery. It's also possible that he had to send it as a "command to himself", and not just as a simple word. Maybe what he really sent was the command to "do things in threes", and sending a more complex command or program to himself was impractical given the situation, even for something like "retreat" or "shuttle".. maybe he'd wind up taking a shuttle out or doing something even weirder..
Submit a comment