Star Trek TNG We'll Always Have Paris

This is a likeable episode, if a bit strange.

It starts with Picard fencing.  Now this is more like the Captain Picard we all know and love rather than all that dime store, Dixon Hill novel nonsense.  It was always good to see this captain out of uniform anyway because he was always so buttoned-up and formal.  I always appreciate little details like the fact that he wasn't mopping the floor with his opponent just because he was Captain Picard as well.  He wanted a challenge and a real person as opposed to a holodeck simulation to practice his skills with. Every little moment, even if never referred to again, is just another layer added to a character. This scene takes you into the place where the weirdness starts.

And it's actually some pretty cool weirdness this time.  They start experiencing little time blips.  Reliving moments in time.  It's determined that this has been caused by a scientist that had left Earth to perform experiments on non-linear time.  They wanted to combine a time anomaly with the story of a scientist that got mad and left because his theories weren't being accepted.  It was a good idea for a change.  A better science fiction plot than a lot of the previous attempts.  The accident with the experiment not only affects them but other planets report this effect because they are all in its path.  It was a stable base story for the episode.

The scientist responsible for this accident and all of its consequential effects is married to an old flame of Captain Picard's.  This was an important moment for Picard.  They had made him decidedly different from Kirk in as much as Kirk was a ladies man and in love in every other episode.  Thus far they'd allowed that playboy nature to continue in Riker so that it would never be entirely lost.  But the love life of this Captain would have to be different.  There would have to be fewer women that were more than just the flings of a fickle heart.  But from what I read they almost screwed up.  They wanted Captain Picard and his old flame to have a brief tryst while she was aboard the Enterprise.  Patrick Stewart was against that and it and thank goodness.  Not only would it have made his old flame seem like a capricious teenager, it would've set the wrong tone for Picard.  As it was, it was already a tad awkward.  They were going for a Casablanca feel, but it wasn't really connecting like that for me since the circumstances of their break up wasn't like that of the movie.

Troi was being too pushy again and really one could almost argue that she's responsible for his feelings of confusion since she insisted that he try to acknowledge his feelings.

But we do get a cool holodeck simulation of a French restaurant for it.  I'd like to note that all the holodeck simulations look better than all planetscapes and alien cities in the first season and it's rather sad.

Beverly's jealousy is misplaced.  At this point the history between Crusher and Picard is not clear.  He was friends with her husband and had to tell her and Wesley that Jack was killed while under his command, and yet she's in love with Picard now after only seeing him for the first time in no telling how long in the pilot episode.  There's a chunk missing in the middle (which was the friendship and mutual respect that developed between them over following seasons) and this reaction seemed unsettling, almost like a creepy, stalking type of thing. And again, Troi is in the background egging this on. This is just another example of the juvenile writing of the first season and it's frustrating. I have a cousin who claims that Picard is not her favorite captain because he had too many girlfriend problems.  I never saw it like that but in this episode it would certainly seem like he has those problems indeed.  This triangle that they were trying to stir up was nonsensical.

But the insight into Picard's character was worth the soapy bits that were inserted.  He was the one that abandoned the relationship and she did have every right to want an explanation.  It gave Picard a believable flaw... that he was career driven and a workaholic. And he let a good thing get away from him when he was younger. At least that gave some depth to the situation.

But back to the good part of the story - the time distortion.  It killed the scientist's friends and was beginning to kill him as well, but he kept Janice in a protected area.  The science fiction is a little shaky on that, but they make up for it with what they began to call the Manheim effect after Janice's husband which was getting worse and worse.  The solution is simple again - to just shut it down. But it was fun to watch them working it all out.

I kind of go back and forth on my feelings for Picard choosing to send Data alone.  Of course it makes sense since he would be least confounded by the strange time effects, but I never like the scene where he had to explain to Data why it made sense.  I never liked the way they had Data just assume that he was being sent because he was an expendable piece of machinery.  Something about that seemed wrong to me, but I can't put my finger on it.  And I realize what they were doing by having that scene in there... they were reassuring the audience that he wouldn't be utilized as just a tool.  But having Data be self conscious about this never felt right for his character.

The ending is cool with the three Datas.  It was written in such a way that it reasonably made sense. Both Picard and Janice realize that they have no regrets about their relationship ending when it did because they're both where they really want to be, so that all works out like it should.  There's a lot to like in this episode, but I don't think I like it enough to put it in the top star range, so I'm just giving it three and a half.