Jammer's Review
Star Trek: The Next Generation
"Timescape"
Air date: 6/14/1993
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Adam Nimoy
Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
When returning from a conference, Picard, Data, Geordi, and Troi attempt to rendezvous with the Enterprise, but before they do, they discover strange things happening in the space-time continuum. Troi experiences everyone else in the room freezing in time for a few seconds. Later, Picard reaches for a bowl of fruit that has suddenly gone rotten, and screams in pain as his hand suddenly ages several weeks in a few seconds. (In a nice touch, his fingernails have grown to an alarming length.) Time in this region is moving at different rates within variously sized pockets of space. When their Runabout finally reaches the rendezvous point, the Enterprise is frozen in time, apparently in the middle of a battle with a Romulan warbird.
"Timescape" takes the idea of time travel to its logical next step (note that I did not say "logical conclusion," as there is likely always room to go further) by having space-time shattered into multiple levels of backward, forward, accelerated, and decelerated. Geordi engineers a way to surround the bodies of the Runabout crew with a technobabble field so they can visit the Enterprise without becoming frozen in time. This allows them to walk around the decks of the frozen Enterprise (in scenes reminiscent of TOS's "Wink of an Eye") so they can try to figure out the mystery of what went wrong. Frozen Bad Things Happening include Crusher being phasered, the bridge apparently under siege by a Romulan boarding party (but things are not as they appear, as we learn), and a warp core breach in progress in engineering.
Like a lot of other conceptual sci-fi examples of what I like to call Good Brannon Braga (see also "Cause and Effect" and "Frame of Mind") the truth of "Timescape" is all in the details. Like the most entertaining of TNG tech adventures, this story knows that to keep us engaged it can't shy away from some fairly involved details that clearly explain what's going on. But at the same time, it has to walk a fine line so it doesn't drown in pure exposition. Data is always perfect for this task, as in the scene where he explains the Enterprise is not actually frozen in time, but moving forward extremely slowly. Apart from tech details, some zany humor sure doesn't hurt. Qualifying as a classic moment in my book is when Picard, experiencing a moment of "temporal psychosis," draws a smiley face in the gas cloud of the warp core explosion, and then laughs maniacally.
The story is honestly more fun as an unsolved puzzle than it is once all the reasons for the shattered space-time are made clear. (For the record, an alien race from another time continuum mistook the Romulan engine core for a black hole, which they attempted to use to incubate their young, which had a disastrous shattering effect on space-time after the Enterprise attempted to initiate a power transfer into the Romulans' engine. Feel free to go back and read that sentence again; I'll wait.)
The story's momentum flags somewhat in the last couple acts once all these answers come at us. And, of course, the complexities of shattered space-time ultimately become very easily manipulated, as, I suppose, they must. (You haven't seen anything until you've seen a tricorder essentially become a rewind button.) But then, this storyline also means that we get to see the Enterprise explode, and then unexplode when time rewinds. What more could you ask of the guy who blew up the ship four times in "Cause and Effect"? "Timescape" is a fun and well executed sci-fi yarn of space-time zaniness done in the TNG tradition of procedural investigation. It doesn't mean much of anything, but, hey, that's perfectly okay.
Previous episode: Second Chances
Next episode: Descent, Part I
Season Index
17 comments on this review
Brannon was always great at incorporating and remembering little details in all his episodes and this was no different(the rotting bowl of fruit, Picard's fingernails, the runabout running out of fuel, the dialog among the crew in the teaser, the idea of temporal narcosis leading to a plausible threat to the crew, contuinity touch by mentioning the Devidians and phase discriminators).
I loved the misdirection with the Romulans and Brannon finding yet another way to blow up the Enterprise and bringing it back in one piece smartly. I also appreciated Brannon remembering Troi's time on the Romulan warbird earlier in the season and putting her front and center and to effective use again.
A definite highlight of Season Six.
Also loved the continuity with the Devidians as well as the TNG crew using a runabout (never did get its name).
It's also interesting to note that this was the only time we ever saw the aft section of a runabout.
Also, why were they in a runabout? For the previous six seasons, crewmembers would have used standard shuttles. It's a weird decision -- especially considering the crew never uses a runabout again.
It gets 4 if only for the wonderful opening sequence--that was some of the best of Trek-- combining humor, humanity, and mystery.
And of course, thinking Bev might possibly die THIS time makes it all the more worthwhile. . .
I'd imagine they used a runabout for this episode because for as much as they had to shoot not aboard the Enterprise, and with four characters, and considering the geography of the shattered time spheres within the runabout itself -- I just can't imagine a shuttle would've been enough room to do everything the story needed. Usually a shuttle scene is just a couple people talking (unless Beverly is karate kicking some alien in "Suspicions," but never mind). Here they used the whole aft room of the runabout, something never even shown on DS9, as Sxottlan pointed out.
Clearing away the transporter from the cockpit was a good idea to give it more space, but then we never saw where the transporters went. Just somewhere in the back.
Supposedly the middle and aft were modular. Once years ago I found a website where someone designed all these different modules for the runabouts. There was one that functioned as a medical rescue ship, another was a transport and another had a balanced suite of quarters, medical bay, science lab and armory. Essentially since the runabouts were actual starships with a class and name designations, it only made sense.
In DS9's second season episode "Paradise" O'Brien mentions that runabouts are a new class of vessel that had only been in service for two years. So of course we'd never seen the Enterprise crew use them since they didn't exist before. It seems believable that the flagship would be equipped with a few of them. I always liked that they had a runabout here because it helped build continuity between the two shows.
That said it would have been cool if they'd used the NEVER SEEN Captain's Yacht that's docked on the underside of the saucer section.
Well I didn't mean to imply that runabouts made shuttles obsolete. They certainly stayed in service and there was no evidence that Voyager had anything but shuttles until Tom built the Delta Flyer. But why couldn't Picard and Data been flying a runabout back to the Enterprise in "Genesis" for example? I'd only be guessing but it could be that the runabout forward interior set was too often unavailable. Remember that during "TNG"'s seventh season "DS9" was concurrently in production on its second. The Defiant hadn't been introduced yet so the runabout set was in use a great deal.
Anyway, as you say Jammer, this ep fits into the ‘Good Brannon Braga’ category.
Though GBB is, for me, still usually pretty ordinary.
About 2 stars imo (ie. about 4 times better than Frame of Mind).
The bunk beds that are to the left and right of the entrance to the aft pod appear to be same bunk beds used in the crew quarters on the Defiant, so it seems by the time the Defiant was introduced the aft set had been disassembled/cannabilised.
It also pointed out the aft set may appear once, in a manner of speaking. During The Visitor as Jake leaves DS9, there's a shot of him looking out a Runabout window as DS9 disappears into the distance. Given the way the shot works, it would have to be one of the rearmost windows in the aft section (the ones that are on the model itself). Of course the shot is tight enough that they only needed a generic sloped Starfleet window to make it work, but there you go...technically that one shot in all of DS9 would appear to occur in the aft section!
Regarding "Timescape," I thought this was a fanastic mystery episode. Mysteries is a sub-genre that TNG does quite well, in my opinion, and is golden BB material. Like Jammer mentioned, take a look at "Cause & Effect" and "Frame of Mind," where the mystery is what keeps the viewer engaged until the very end. THAT is successful television writing.
Also, I enjoyed the twist where the viewer finds out that Romulans aren't the bad guys. It takes a second or two to fathom this notion since you a seemingly destructive beam between the Enterprise and the Romulan ship. And the viewer is accustomed to thinking that Romulans are always the bad guy. That's what makes the twist and entire episode so successful.
The concept of aliens-from-another-dimension-nurturing-their-newborn-in-the-Romulan-warp-c ore-mistaken-to-be-a-black-hole IS very hokey and far-fetched. That's probably why I took away half a star in my own rating. However, to the story's credit, it does serve as a fantastic vehicle for a humorous and engaging episode. Can you think of any other instance where you see Picard insanely laughing while drawing a smiley face into a cloud of smoke? I certainly can't.
My rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars
Submit a comment