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
Like this site? Support it by buying Jammer a coffee.
89 comments on this post
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 12:18am (UTC -5)
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.
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 2:21am (UTC -5)
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.
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 3:09pm (UTC -5)
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 4:18pm (UTC -5)
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.
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 5:12pm (UTC -5)
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. . .
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 8:13pm (UTC -5)
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.
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 11:37pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:48am (UTC -5)
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.
Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 9:00am (UTC -5)
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.
Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 3:08pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 3:57pm (UTC -5)
Fri, Sep 14, 2012, 1:51pm (UTC -5)
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.
Sun, Sep 16, 2012, 11:35pm (UTC -5)
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).
Wed, Sep 26, 2012, 6:18pm (UTC -5)
Sun, Jan 13, 2013, 10:18pm (UTC -5)
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!
Wed, Jan 16, 2013, 3:36pm (UTC -5)
Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 1:37pm (UTC -5)
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-core-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
Fri, Jul 5, 2013, 10:14pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 11:30am (UTC -5)
DATA: Geordi, may I make a personal inquiry? It concerns my poetry reading.
LAFORGE: Sure, Data. What is it?
DATA: I noticed that many spectators seemed distracted during my presentation. Was my poetry uninteresting?
LAFORGE: Well, it was very well constructed, a virtual tribute to form.
DATA: Thank you. And?
LAFORGE: And what?
DATA: Did it evoke an emotional response?
LAFORGE: Well.
DATA: Your hesitation suggests you are trying to protect my feelings. However, since I have none, I would prefer you to be honest. An artist's growth depends upon accurate feedback.
LAFORGE: Well, your poems were clever, Data, and your Haiku was clever, and your sonnet was clever. But did it evoke an emotional response? To be honest, no, I don't think so.
DATA: Then I did not succeed in my efforts.
LAFORGE: No, it's not that you didn't succeed. You accomplished a lot, but, if you want to touch people, don't concentrate so much on rhyme and metre. Think more about what you want to say instead of how you're saying it.
Braga is not going for an emotional response, exactly, but in "Frame of Mind" and "Cause and Effect" he manages to be funny and frightening in equal measure (well, the balance changes between the episodes), and "Schisms" is another episode that I think manages to be unsettling in a deep way. This one, I find mostly clever but in a way that leaves me cold -- though I still think it's clever enough to warrant 3 stars.
"Frame of Mind," at core, touches on on the fear of losing one's sanity, the difficulty in trusting oneself and one's own instincts over authority, and the question of how to discern what reality itself is. While I'm not sure how much these apply to Riker-the-character (though I think they are relevant to him; one of these days I will try to piece out why I think that's a good Riker show), they are universal human experiences. "Cause and Effect" superficially has less of a major theme, but it still bases an episode around (essentially) deja vu, existential dread about the inevitability of death (c.f. Beverly's broken glass), and grounds it all in the mundane reality of the ship's everyday operation.
This one *does* have a real-life-inspired theme -- Troi, at the beginning of the episode, and Data at the end make a connection between the time distortions and the human (/Betazoid) experience of time seeming to slow down or stop or speed up depending on one's own experience. And some of the episode's impact does come from those moments; the uncanny, creepy scenes aboard the ship in which the Enterprise's destruction and Beverly's death and so on come down to a slowly mounting disaster that the episode's central characters feel helpless to avert. Like "Cause and Effect," I think this taps into fears about the inevitability of death, though I think here the catastrophe is one in which it's impossible to stop a disaster from affecting others. But the sense of dread that permeated "C&E" was maintained throughout the episode, partly because of the fact that the crew's awareness of what was going on reset at each act break; here, once it becomes clear that the tech tech tech tech it's just a matter of applying the tech to stop badness from happening and go on their way. The episode opens with discovering the crew had been at a space psychology conference, and so it's somewhat a shame that the episode's attempts to produce psychological horror are so arbitrary -- Troi's dizziness, Picard's sudden acute dementia. Though, I will say that Picard drawing a smiley face in a slowly spreading warp core breach is one of my single favourite images from the whole series.
Anyway, I like that the episode's end reveals that the Romulans were not responsible for the problem, and reverses several of the apparently disastrous images (the Romulan was not aiming at Beverly in sickbay, but hit her by accident, e.g.), and in some ways this makes this the reverse of, e.g., "The Next Phase" in which the Enterprise crew looks rather stupid for not recognizing that the Romulans are evil to begin with. Here, the Romulans genuinely didn't do anything wrong, and the aliens themselves were acting in self-protection; I like the Trekkian optimism, not necessarily in every story, but in many of them.
Anyway, I think the early scenes on the Runabout and on the Enterprise earn the episode 3 stars, but whereas other Braga scripts do, I think, get at some core idea about the human condition to propel their apparently meaningless stories forward and to get a real response, this one only touches on an interesting topic before moving on to a clever but arbitrary tech plot.
Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 11:37am (UTC -5)
Sun, Dec 22, 2013, 3:38am (UTC -5)
Not a classic but 3/4 is a good score.
Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 5:22pm (UTC -5)
The smiling explosion was a treat.
Of course I get the greatest joy from altereed time episodes. Manipulating time provides a multitude of interesting opportunities.
Excellent episode!
4 stars
Wed, Feb 19, 2014, 12:26pm (UTC -5)
Sat, Aug 9, 2014, 10:29am (UTC -5)
Thu, Aug 14, 2014, 10:12pm (UTC -5)
The only major plothole (and its a big one) is why the Romulans had disruptors on them in the Enterprise, especially in sickbay? One would expect better security, even during a mission of mercy. Security seemed tight in the transporter room, after all. OK, I also agree with Jack that the ending (with the Warbird mysteriously vanishing) was rushed. That actually seemed to be a pattern in Season 6, with very little in the way of an ending after the climax. See Frame of Mind or Schisms as other examples.
But other than that, I don't have much to say, because this was just a really fun episode that was ultimately meaningless. And like Jammer said, that's perfectly ok.
I also want to say that TNG seemed to have some really good time travel episodes. Instead of running through the typical time travel cliches, they seemed to be more inventive with them. Really, Time's Arrow is about the only "typical" storyline: conveniently ending up in Earth's past, having an easy to solve paradox, running into famous people, etc. But then you have creative episodes like Cause and Effect (which came out before Groundhog's Day) or Timescape, which played around with time rather than just had a simple travel. And, of course, two of TNG's most popular episodes (Yesterday's Enterprise and All Good Things) used time travel as a background, but the focus and energy was on greater matters. Time travel can be fairly trite or it can be very effective, and I think overall TNG was in the effective category. Only Time's Arrow and Time Squared were on the weak side. I guess you could include Matter of Time and Captain's Holiday as well, but the latter barely dealt with time and the former I thought was reasonably clever as well.
Thu, Sep 4, 2014, 10:21pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:26pm (UTC -5)
The smiley face in the warp breach smoke was very cute. I also liked the multiple instances of misdirection. Everything is made to look like a Romulan attack when in fact it wasn't even them.
The blow up and rewind didn't work as well as "Cause and Effect" and this is just a less enganging episode overall.
Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 5:13pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Oct 1, 2015, 11:19am (UTC -5)
Jammer is absolutely right - it's nothing but a simply little TNG adventure yarn that hits all of its notes perfectly. It keeps the action flowing smoothly, it gives us the necessary information without getting bogged down in it, it's got some nice humor ("I thought it was a topic you were interested in." = LOL) and it gives us our only look at a runabout's aft interior.
Really, what else is there to say about it? There really isn't any meat to sink your teeth into here. It's really just a candy-sweet diversion of an episode. But, like Jammer says, that's perfectly okay.
I suppose I could point out that it makes no sense whatsoever for the alien impersonating a female Romulan to attack Data in Engineering. The aliens were trying to stop the power transfer so.... she adamantly wants them to stop the process of ending that transfer? Huh?! Obviously she only attacks him to keep the suspense/drama going a little longer in the final act. But, that's a truly minor nitpick and one I'm more than happy to overlook.
7/10
Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 6:17am (UTC -5)
But still, it contains one moment of WTF lunacy when the maniacally laughing Picard draws a smiley face in the warp core breach. It's entirely tangential to the story, but what's not to like about that? 3 stars.
Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 7:05pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 10:13pm (UTC -5)
Thu, Jan 5, 2017, 11:04pm (UTC -5)
Fri, Jan 6, 2017, 12:36am (UTC -5)
There's really nothing special, the actors are just standimg still. It's called a tableau. It's taught fairly early in acting class, though it can be difficult in some aspects, such as not looking like you're breathing.
There's actually a game called moving statues where a group of people can't move while another roams through the crowd. If they see you move, you're out. It's really fun to sneak up on the guy while their back is turned only for them to freak out when they turn back around. Basically Weeping Angels, minus the time displacement, if you get that reference.
Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 1:54am (UTC -5)
Not too crazy about the aliens - I thought they were trying to stop the power transfer as well, which was what EVERYONE was trying to do, including Picard's team, so why attack Data and Laforge? I get that it makes for suspenseful viewing, but still a bit silly. Still though that's only a minor nitpick which I'm willing to forgive as the episode is so good. Troi's hair extensions were so obvious that I was distracted every time there was a close-up profile shoot of her, but considering that this was the 90s, I suppose I shouldn't be complaining too much.
Fri, Apr 28, 2017, 9:04pm (UTC -5)
Thu, May 11, 2017, 11:32am (UTC -5)
It was also fun to see a mystery unfold; at first it seems like a standard Romulan plot, only to be revealed that the Romulans are just as much victims as the Enterprise crew.
One final thing I like about this episode is the unusual away team. Picard, Troi, Geordi, and Data is definitely not the normal complement but they work really well together.
4 Stars
Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 1:43am (UTC -5)
The best part was the Romulans acting so unlikely the ones from Next Phase. Always good to see other races/species having different individuals - actually presented differently to us - rather than having them be monolithic.
Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 8:24pm (UTC -5)
Coming up with a fresh inventive sci fi mystery is no easy feat so when I see an episode as well done as this I must stand back in pure awe.
The whole episode is so well crafted with the laid back runabout chit chat then carefully starting to unfold the main plot with little intriguing mysteries and moments from everyone but Troi frozen to Troi being frozen in time to ripened fruit to the runabout fuel depletion to the realization time has fractured into pockets where time moves at varying rates is perfectedly done. Brannon always gets the little details rught in those moments
TNG didn't do a lot of callbacks so I enjoyed the reference to the devidiians , the Romulans using a quantum
Singularity on their ships and troi's time on Romulan warbird. I also enjoyed the added complication to the plot with the idea of temporal narcosis or the neat wrinkle that time was moving so slowly initially that they mistakenly concluded time had totally stopped until the warp core breach clued Data. Neat touch Also another nice touch was removing Geordi's armband and integrating him into the much slower timeframe so crew could have better chance at saving him. Loved seeing Troi having more central role. Loved the idea of the solution to the crew's predicament by modulating time causing it to rewind then resume moving forward. The image of everything in motion including Data moving out of the way of the crewmen was a sight!
The ending with data watching a pot never boils perfect! Tng great at these closing scenes that play nicely back to the episodes recent events
Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 3:11pm (UTC -5)
Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 8:09am (UTC -5)
When Picard, Data, and La Forge are frozen, Deanna moves from her seat. Even if Geordi and Jean-Luc didn't notice her suddenly being standing from sitting (which I don't believe anyone sane could not notice), Data definitely would have.
Making out like they had to prove Deanna right, instead of it being immediately apparent to everyone there was a problem, really bothered me in this episode.
On the whole, I liked this episode a lot. I could suspend my disbelief for most of the technobabble and questionable science, but things like Deanna's sudden relocation, or Suspicions where a murder on a Federation ship isn't investigated with or without the family's consent, are not believable and ruin the whole premise of an episode.
Wed, Nov 8, 2017, 4:54pm (UTC -5)
Braga's worst habit is that episodes tend to not really be about anything but the central mystery. Here they aren't even about the characters. Replace the central quartet of Timescape with four other characters and would the episode have been any different? Maybe the script needs Geordi and Data's technical expertise to credibly spout off technobabble, but that's about as deep as its interest in these characters goes.
And the central mystery, while compelling, ends up being spread thin over an entire episode. This is why Trek episodes are often made up of an A and B plot. Without anything else going on and without much concern for these characters as people, Timescape's middle acts are a bit of a slog, using an excess of technobabble more as filler than to serve its ideas.
As far as the science fiction itself goes, this episode treats time travel much the same way that Braga's episodes on evolution treat biology. His primary concern is always the emotional resonance and visual interest of his ideas, not their science, internal logic, or larger implications. I think that's fine. But there are a few commenters implying that this episode is an example of the headier, more science fiction-y side of Star Trek. Not so much. It's certainly one of the more visually interesting episodes of season 6, though.
I give it a somewhat generous 2.5 stars mainly because I think it starts so strong and has such strong imagery.
Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 3:37pm (UTC -5)
I'm not a fan of Braga, but "Cause and Effect" and this episode are 2 that I like -- there's much more work he did that's not to like, for me.
A couple of episodes I'd compare this one with are TOS' "Wink of an Eye" and also "The Next Phase" with Geordi and Ro. The latter is what comes to mind mostly due to the Romulans. All 3 are generally fun episodes with a bit of urgency required by our protagonists.
This one requires a bit of handwaving and is heavy on the technobabble (I like how Jammer puts it: "a way to surround the bodies of the Runabout crew with a technobabble field").
When Data explains the Enterprise is moving in a very slow time, that helped. (I didn't think you could transport into a field that time is frozen -- don't ask why I thought that.) So the episode does a decent job of explaining some things, which I liked.
I must be mistaken but I thought Geordi (in the end) was on the Warbird when the Runabout crashed through the energy transfer beam. So at the end of the episode I was wondering what happened to Geordi.
Pretty spooky atmosphere created when Picard etc. beamed on the Enterprise and it looked like the Romulan boarding party was taking over. I think there are inconsistencies in that -- why would Romulans be allowed on the bridge and why would some carry weapons with them?
3 stars for "Timescape" -- good examination in the early part of the episode of the problem of the temporal fields. The effective creation of the WTF atmosphere in going on aboard the Enterprise -- Picard's smiley face and laughter only added to the weirdness. An enjoyable hour of TNG sci-fi.
Tue, May 22, 2018, 1:59pm (UTC -5)
Though I missed the ten forward "get together" with their new Romulan friends.
Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 7:37pm (UTC -5)
"Basically Weeping Angels, minus the time displacement, if you get that reference."
Yes! I love that episode.
Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 9:04pm (UTC -5)
I also wasn't much sold on the "mystery" aspect, which only shifted into gear for 5 minutes at the end and felt tacked-on to me. However, I did like the opening banter on the runabout, Picard's maniacal laughing, and the concept of a warp coil incubating the young of another species.
For my money, I'd have preferred that the episode be about the runabout going for 47 days without anyone on board being aware of it, running out of fuel, and then the crew having to find their way back home. That could have been interesting and it's where I thought it was going. Alas, no. 2 stars.
Sun, Jul 1, 2018, 6:35am (UTC -5)
Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 8:17am (UTC -5)
For example, when Picard, Data, and Troi bean over the bridge, Data makes a comment that the equipment is no longer working, which makes sense given that time is “frozen” (or moving infinitesimally slowly as we later learn). However, Picard marches right up to the top of the arch and starts tapping away, complete with standard computer sound effects, and learns all of this information. They go to the transporter room and Picard happily types away. They go to engineering, Data happily types away.
Crusher gets shot, time rewinds, and Troi is suddenly there to point a phaser at the romulan. Crusher is unphased by the sudden appearance of Troi: a) her apparent best friend on the ship, and b) a member of the senior staff who’s been away at a conference for a week. Then she goes on to say “oh, it’s ok, he wasn’t shooting at •me•, he was shooting at an alien.” How did she know he was shooting at all? How did she know there were fake romulans? Both Crusher and the romulan seemed to be aware of the time rewind.
Geordi stresses that their armbands are only good for an hour or so. Picard asks Geordi to beam them to engineering, Geordi says “can’t, low power. Walk there instead.” Walking to engineering, through the Jeffries tubes, turbo lifts that don’t work, going around (in)conveniently placed crew members, would take most of their hour. Then, after Picard’s temporal psychosis, we are beaming back and forth every 10 minutes. What happened to the low power concerns?
Why leave dying Geordi on the warbird?
I appreciated the callbacks to previous episodes and the writers realizing that the crew should remember and go back to things they learned before. But the crew should also remember things they said or did earlier in this same episode.
These simple errors were enough of a distraction for me that it seriously hampered the episode. 2 out of 4.
Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 9:54am (UTC -5)
Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 12:53am (UTC -5)
Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 10:51pm (UTC -5)
Btw... Riker wounds looked like more realistic if he had a brawl with the tail (used, for defence, as a whip) of a big iguana... Wait, Spot IS an iguana. "Genesis" rules :-)
Very good episode, anyway
Tue, Dec 18, 2018, 10:57am (UTC -5)
Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:57am (UTC -5)
Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 2:01pm (UTC -5)
^
Marina Sirtis lapsing utterly into her natural english accent and sounding exactly like an Essex girl defending her pissed-up-on-sambuca mate from a lairy geezer at the local nightclub. You tell 'im, dahlin!
I recall seeing an interview with Sirtis where she said she basically bullied the writers into giving her decent lines, and she specifically recalled the "use a quantum singularity as their power source" line. Amazing it took them til season 6 to a_ put her in a uniform and b) make her a properly functioning starfleet ossifer!
Wed, May 8, 2019, 5:05pm (UTC -5)
It had a ton of technobabble which of course I notice more now thanks to you others on this board. Was there as much technobabble on DS9? I don't thnk so.
9/10 since I am having a glass of wine while watching this.
Thu, Aug 29, 2019, 4:14pm (UTC -5)
Timescape is the title of a seminal science fiction novel by Gregory Benford.
This episode couldn't hold a candle to that novel but despite a dreadful start ( That darn cat) and the overdone Data as the ingenue
unable ,even after six years, to pick up on the juvenile sexual dialogue about some lecherous creep of a scientist who was trying to get into Troi's knickers we are presented with a reasonable mystery which is let down by the lazy use of alien deus ex machina.
I think the 'we laid our eggs in someone's artificial black hole ' plot element is unintentionally hilarious.
Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 2:20am (UTC -5)
I never understood why the warp core breach was the only thing visibly moving. The Warbird disruptor shots probably should have been and/or the shimmering of the power beam. I imagine the strobe of the lighting would have been detectable. Crusher's torso should have been gradually chewed up while we watched it. Why was she rubbing it after time reversed? And then there was the stuff mentioned earlier like the computer consoles still working, which should have been a dead giveway.
The time reversal shot made it really, really obvious they simply overlayed an explosion animation over the Enterprise model.
Anyway, these are nitpicks. I always liked this one. I used to fantasize about all the cool time traveling things you could do with the "time pockets" those armbands created.
Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 3:12am (UTC -5)
"Every time I watch this episode I think about what would actually happen to the objects if they were manipulated at something approaching the speed of light."
It would be far far more destructive then you can imagine.
Check out this analysis of a baseball hitting a bat at 90% the speed light:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
Spoiler: It doesn't end well for batter. Or the pitcher. Or the audience. Or anybody who happens to live nearby.
So yeah, that would be a pretty major nitpick. :-)
Still one of my favorite TNG episodes, though. I just love time-related craziness.
Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 10:25pm (UTC -5)
Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 11:56am (UTC -5)
So basically Picard and team successfully ward off the aliens and stop the warp core breach but leave a trail of fusion explosions in their wake.
"The ball is going so fast that everything else is practically stationary. Even the molecules in the air are stationary."
I thought about this before but not while I was posting: "How are they breathing?" There cannot possibly be enough oxygen inside the pocket and the carbon dioxide would build up. It's not like you can suck or blow air across a barrier where time basically does not move. I guess maybe the pocket is semi-permeable. We know it was for Picard but that seemed like an accident. Still, I'd imagine it'd be like sucking air through a straw. Maybe the armband doohickeys did life support, too.
While we're at it, how can they even see? All the photons would be suspended. Or, moving very slowly. It seems like it would be the smallest unit of brightness above absolute darkness and visual perception would be absolutely nothing resembling normal. I guess if the pocket is permeable, you could suck in the photons but then you probably could see only while moving and then encounter darkness when standing still. If you occupied the same spot twice it'd be dark because you already "used" the once suspended photons and time is moving too slowly to put new ones there.
Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 4:35pm (UTC -5)
Apparently, Picard and Co aren't just "accelerated". They were carrying ""an artificial pocket of time" around them.
So it actually kinda makes sense. They can breathe because the air from the outside gets inside as the pocket moves. When they touch things, the thing they touch is interacting with the pocket before it interacts with their bodies. When they actually move a console, the console itself is already in their time frame (or at least the time differential has gone down to something manageable).
The iffy part is the initial interaction between the external objects and the pocket. But since these pockets are a fictional concept anyway, we could give them any attributes we want.
Another interesting tidbit:
The devices used to create these time pockets are called "subspace isolators". At first glance this might seem like just another example of random technobabble. But it is actually an aptly-chosen name: Subspace is the basis for warp drive. It is the "stuff" that allows ships to create a bubble of warped space, so why not use the same thing to create a bubble of warped time?
Tue, Oct 6, 2020, 9:29pm (UTC -5)
And Picard drawing a smiley face in the warp core breach cloud may well be the most honestly earned crazy tripadelic scene in TNG history.
Thu, Nov 5, 2020, 1:59pm (UTC -5)
I was quite interested by the "runabout", which - although it looks externally much like a shuttlecraft - seems unusually roomy. But that's pretty much the only thing that piqued my interest in this one.
The spectacle of two ships apparently frozen in time could have been the basis of an interesting mystery, but here - it wasn't. The story underpinning it was just too dumb.
Thu, Nov 5, 2020, 5:14pm (UTC -5)
The runabout is the main shuttlecraft of Deep Space Nine, which started airing concurrently with Season 6 of TNG after the "Chain of Command" two-parter. By this point we'd recognize it. Interestingly, this rear interior runabout set only appeared as the runabout in this episode, though in DS9 it was used for other things. Thoe cockpit, howrver is a mainstay on DS9.
Fri, Dec 4, 2020, 6:06am (UTC -5)
Mon, May 3, 2021, 4:02pm (UTC -5)
The frozen time effects in 'Timescape' are extremely eerie and effective (however they were achieved), and the mystery, shock revelations and confusion are marvelously portrayed and played. The pacing is excellent too, as is the misdirection concerning what the Romulans are doing on the Enterprise in the first place.
I particularly enjoyed the round table critique of the conference by each character on the runabout at the start (Troi's impression particularly), which very elegantly gives way to the frozen time set-up.
All in all, 'Timescape' is just a wonderfully executed episode in almost all regards, and a very satisfying hour.
Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 11:16am (UTC -5)
I enjoyed this episode but I am confused about one point. As the runabout explodes both the second alien and the Romulan warbird disappear. Then Picard records in his log that they "successfully evacuated the crew of the Romulan ship. We're on course to the Neutral Zone to bring them home." I can't get my head around the fact the Romulan warbird disappeared, but then they evacuated the Romulan ship and were bringing them home. I don't really understand why it disappeared in the first place? When did it come back? Why did it disappear and then (apparently) come back? What am I missing?
Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:21pm (UTC -5)
I think the ending is supposed to portray that when the aliens were removed time was reset, i.e. moved backward at an extremely fast rate, probably to the point where the aliens went into the Romulan engine core maybe? That would explain why the Romulan ship disappears (that our perspective sees time going backward quickly to before the ship was there). But the script completely leaves out the fact that, presumably, the Enterprise went o seek out the Romulan ship, wherever it was, to see if it was ok, which it seems it wasn't! Why it wouldn't be ok, despite the aliens being gone, I don't know. It's almost as if Braga got confused about his facts...impossible!!!
Now when handed a zany and sloppy script I would expect at minimum for the director to make some visual sense of it so that we have a concrete narrative to follow. I agree with you, Pamellllaaa, that the ending was not only rushed but practically hand-waved away by the director, Mr. Adam Nimor. Highly illogical.
Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 6:10pm (UTC -5)
Thanks for trying, Peter G. I was surprised that I couldn't find any reference to this in the comment thread (of course it's possible I missed it and someone mentioned it at some point). It seems like such a glaring issue but perhaps it really was done on purpose. I guess we'll never know.
Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 6:18pm (UTC -5)
Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 6:46pm (UTC -5)
It seems to me that the Romulan ship vanishing is part of the timey-wimey conceit and isn't so out of place. But that epilogue about helping the Romulans off their ship is the wtf moment. Left out a few little details there, didn't you...
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:34am (UTC -5)
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 9:42am (UTC -5)
As for why the Romulan ship had to disappear at all, I think the aliens needed to take the ship away into their own realm to extract their young. Maybe they needed to do it to fix the time distortions, if they have that capability. I assume an alien that incubates their young in a black hole and has a semi-corporeal existence is likely quite powerful, if not Q-like. Ok they could've just taken the warp core itself and not the whole ship, but maybe their babies were getting into the nacelles or plasma conduits or whatever else feeds the energy around the rest of the ship. I assume the power transfer beam was a threat to their babies or otherwise preventing them from taking the ship away without destroying it.
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 10:01am (UTC -5)
If that was what Braga intended in his script then it's even more slapdash than I thought. I still think it was meant to indicate time resetting and going back to how things were before (hence why the warp core breach is reversed as part of this process; it never got into the situation where it would breach in the first place. Likewise, there should be no Romulans on the Enterprise at all at this point, which is really too bad, since dialing back time on a friendly cooperative venture with the Romulans is sort of a big diplomatic loss.
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 12:43pm (UTC -5)
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 12:49pm (UTC -5)
Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 12:54pm (UTC -5)
That makes sense but then why did the Romulan ship disappear? Option A - the Romulan ship should not have disappeared, was dead in space and the Enterprise was there to evacuate its personnel. In the meantime the aliens could rescue their young. Option B - the ship should disappear and evacuation was not necessary as there were no Romulans to evacuate. Instead we got a mix of both options that doesn't seem to work.
Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 2:09am (UTC -5)
Not the only time in Trek that a shuttle returns to a frozen or dead ship, but I can’t remember the other, except that it was almost a Gothic horror!
Not much to say. 3.5 stars.
Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 9:16pm (UTC -5)
1) I realize that a conference on the long-term effects of deep space assignments could cover a lot of ground, but how could it possibly relate to touching a plasma field? Was there just nothing actually on topic for the engineers at the conference to do, so they came up with a session with some cool audiovisual aids? (As someone who has actually had to try to give talks on spirituality to gym teachers who had to fulfill their faith formation requirement for the Catholic schools where they happened to work, I know how hard it can be to come up with something to hold the attention of the people who don't know why they're at a specific conference in the first place.)
2) Wouldn't Data have instantly noticed that the fake Romulan wasn't there before time reset? Why would Geordi be the first to notice?
3) Even though this isn't solely a "Troi episode," Troi has a bigger role in this one than usual. I don't think she has a single "He's hiding something" line, and she both acts like an officer worthy of respect and seems to receive that respect from the other members of the away team. Not only does Picard recall that she knows her way around a Romulan ship better than any of them, when she suggests he stay behind and recover from his "temporal narcosis," he accepts her judgment as if he actually considered her (gasp!) an expert on mental health. (In many other contexts, he would simply have said "Agreed," turning it into HIS judgment.)
Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 11:48pm (UTC -5)
Well one thing I like about this episode is that it treats the shuttlecraft members as actual professionals who do something other than save the ship each week. Sort of similar is Worf in Parallels, when he's participating in something for himself *gasp* exterior to the Enterprise. From that standpoint Troi is automatically given an upgrade since she's part of a regular conversation and can say what she likes (from the POV of the writer) rather than having to be a mouthpiece for her character bible all the time. The doctor says doctory things, the empath says stuff about emotion, etc.
As far as plasma fields go, I guess it's a sci-fi show so any issue going on in space is going to involve technology one way or another. You could almost just assume by default that any topic can include engineering as a related topic. Want to talk about botany? Well that has to include how to establish botanical conditions...in space. Want to talk about politics? Well it's going to include how different races relate to each other...in space. You get the idea. Maybe one of the test subjects in a study on deep space depression was a plasma field specialist. I mean...why not?
Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 11:15am (UTC -5)
It's what SCIENCE FICTION is supposed to be.
Four stars.
Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:21pm (UTC -5)
Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:26pm (UTC -5)
Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 2:29am (UTC -5)
Almost as if they knew they'd run into this specific comedy-of-errors problem.
Sun, Sep 4, 2022, 11:27am (UTC -5)
Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 2:10pm (UTC -5)
If you're moving so much faster than everyone else that they appear frozen to you, wouldn't they notice something weird going on? Bridge displays suddenly moving on their own. Worf is standing their working the transporter and suddenly something moves his hand at lightning speed. Probably so fast it would injure him. If Picard stood in one place long enough would they be able to see him for a moment? I'm reminded of the TOS episode where Kirk is sped up and Bones can hear him buzzing around like a fly.
Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 6:58am (UTC -5)
1) Why were there Romulans on the bridge? Even if they were being evacuated and the interaction between the two crews was always benevolent, Riker would never allow them that close to vital command functions. Maybe if it were one visiting representative with a couple of accompanying officers or bodyguards (e.g. like with the Cardassians in “The Wounded”) but definitely not while their entire crew is being brought aboard. And why did one of the Romulans take over the helm after the Enterprise crew member was injured in an explosion? It’s not your ship, dude!
2) One of the aliens admitted he was the one that fired on the Enterprise in an attempt to stop the power transfer, but after he disappears and the final plan is put into action, the warbird still fires on the Enterprise. This is after time was reversed for several seconds from the point that we see the weapon blasts suspended between the two ships. Was the command input to fire still just queued in the Romulan weapon systems that whole time?
3) This one is more about confusing dialogue, but after everything resolves, the alien and the warbird both vanish, and are mentioned by Picard and Data in the same conversation as though the same thing happened to both. Data mentions “they have returned to their own time continuum”, but it’s unclear whether he’s talking about just the alien or the alien and the warbird. But then, in the next scene, Picard mentions they successfully evacuated the Romulan crew and are bringing them home. We know there were still several on the ship running around while the power transfer was still occurring, so how did they manage to beam them off in such a short time? Better yet, why did the Romulan ship need to vanish at all?
Despite all this, still a fun episode.
Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 4:29pm (UTC -5)
Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 1:39am (UTC -5)
Submit a comment
◄ Season Index