This is a pretty good second season episode. I've always liked it. It isn't the most perfect use of a time anomaly, but it's not bad. And Patrick Stewart was improving Picard more and more with each episode. You can tell at this point that it wouldn't be long before the show would really break out and start excelling in almost every episode.
The teaser scenes at the beginning were getting better. Sometimes they would telegraph the plot of the episode or sometimes not. In this case, there was a little forward thinking going on when Riker mentions his father. I don't know if they'd planned to make the episode with his father at this point... most likely they did because it's the next one - it was probably even filmed first - but it was an example of how these throw away scenes could be used for later episode fodder, especially in the area of character development. It's a funny scene and a nice lighthearted start to the otherwise exciting and eerie episode.
They come across a drifting shuttle craft that turns out to be one of their own shuttle crafts with Picard inside. This makes for some good mind-bending which makes the episode appealing. It's a genuinely good reason for the crew to be freaked out and for Picard to be incensed. It's still on the simple side. The shuttle craft is from six hours in the future and a lot of time is spent wondering and worrying about it. Then you find out that the Enterprise was destroyed and Picard was the lone survivor in this shuttle craft. And again, we spend a lot of time pondering and speculating. I'm not complaining too much this time. I'm just pointing out that the full potential of an episode hadn't been reached yet. As the series goes on, they'll manage to pack more and more detail into episodes even when the plot is simple. This concept of time distortion and a coming disaster is tweaked and improved upon later on with more detail and intensity than just that of the characters looking freaked out and worried with a lot of dramatic pauses. But this is a very good first try.
This is one of the first really great Picard episodes. The Measure of a Man was the best of Picard so far, but you only got a small dose of that in the trial scene. But this episode is obviously focused on him from beginning to end. Up till now, for the most part, whenever Picard was offended or irritated, it seemed overdone considering the situations. I felt like he was wound up too tight and a little on the snobby side. But in this episode, his discomfort and anger are justified. He's a proper captain that wouldn't abandon his crew to a disaster so that he might survive and you see how the thought of that embarrasses him and strengthens his determination to find out what really happened. Although, the audience knows he would never save himself first and you have to wonder why you see doubt in the rest of the crews' eyes as they spend all that time worrying and speculating. That never seemed right.
Patrick Stewart gets to stretch his acting legs a little. His confused and disoriented future Picard is truly shocking. It's the first time you see Picard really lose control (I absolutely do not count The Naked Now; it was an abomination) and it's almost heartbreaking to see his present self have to look at it. I was a little uncomfortable with the way he badgered his helpless doppelganger for information, but I think that was by design as well... this effect on the viewer supported the drama displayed by Pulaski and Troi. It made it appropriately terrifying. Nicely done, over all. As the episode progresses, it turns out that as time goes forward towards the catalyst event, the future Picard becomes more and more aware of his surroundings and is able to function.
The space effects were so beautiful. I guess it must have been easier than setting up nice looking planet scapes in the first two seasons. And I'm glad they went to the trouble of the CGI animation for the strange phenomenon that touches off the sequence of events that leads the future Picard back into the past. It gives the episode a good flow
Then all of a sudden towards the end of the episode it all starts to go together. The disturbance in space starts sucking the Enterprise inescapably inward and firing energy bursts at Picard specifically... for no reason. That's one of those first two season type of cop outs that are so very annoying to me. However, it's forgivable to a certain degree because Stewart makes the rest of the story so entertaining. This is obviously why the other Picard decided to abandon ship so as to save the crew. He decides to allow his future self to start playing out the sequence of events as they'd already happened since, although he could function now, he apparently wasn't aware of the fact that he was in the past. The purpose was to find out if there was ever another option on his mind. And it turns out there was.
His other idea would've been to go through the disturbance instead of trying to escape it. So he kills his future self and decides to go with this other option which works. Then the future shuttle and Picard disappear. Like I said, it's not perfect. This Star Trek series was usually more careful when dealing with time travel, because it's so easy to blow holes in it. In this case everyone remembers what happened even though that would probably not be the case if it'd really happened. But, no matter. It's one of the better episodes in season two.
I'm torn on how to score it. I like it enough to award four stars, but the typical irritants that litter the first and second seasons (time wasting, things happening for no real reason, wrapping up without much preamble in the last 10 minutes or so) are a little more prominent than I'd like them in what could've been a really great episode. I'll go three and a half on this one, but with a note that this one could've easily been four starts as well.
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