This is a good little episode. It references technologies from several previous episodes to give it credibility which is always appreciated in any story involving time anomalies. I try not to get into the weeds too much with the technology when reviewing these episodes, but there's a lot of technobabble in this one. Still, it won't go over the head of even a new viewer to Star Trek, or science fiction in general, and that's what makes it so good.
Always beware when things start out light hearted and silly. It's usually a sign that things will get heart pounding serious before long. Riker is being treated for a couple of gashes on his head. Crusher makes a couple of wrong guesses as to how he got them. Parrises Squares? Worf's calisthenics program? I'm sure the audience would assume a rowdy holodeck program. But no, he was trying to feed Spot for Data and the cat attacked him. So Beverly offers to do the job for him and he gives her a phaser for her own defense. Worf calls him to the bridge and he's informed that a Romulan ship is sending out a distress call. It has total engine failure and failing life support. The last time this happened was in The Next Phase so they're always wary of a trap when it's the Romulans. However, they're not due to rendezvous with the captain for another 13 hours so they go to check it out. But they go to red alert first. Then we go to a runabout that Picard, Geordi, Data, and Troi are traveling in; the only runabout to be seen on TNG. I thought it was a nice combination of characters. Although Geordi and Data are often paired, the addition of Troi and Picard and the fact that they hadn't been on a mission of great importance lent an air of randomness to the episode and really made the series of events feel like a freak accident. They're on their way back from a conference and each is describing different seminars they attended. Geordi is the only one who got anything useful out of his time spent there. Picard and Troi cut up by imitating the people that they'd seen. Picard tells of a lecturer who droned on for an hour about one subject before realizing that his speech was supposed to be about something else entirely. Troi is still floored at a prominent, but ugly scientist who was flirting with her by asking if she'd like to study interspecies breeding. Data doesn't get it of course, and asks her if she would be pursuing that. It's a really nice moment to see Picard loosened up and the characters not behaving as if they were on the job. Geordi takes a turn talking about his experience and Troi is looking at her food when she notices that Geordi's voice has stopped. She looks up and sees everyone around the table is frozen still. Picard with a cup of tea raised to his mouth and Geordi in the middle of hand gesticulations. They don't respond to her at all. It only lasts for a moment before they unfreeze, completely oblivious to what has just happened. They can see that she's unsettled by something though and ask her what happened.
She tells them what happened and Geordi scans her to find nothing amiss. Data's internal clock also matches up with the ship's so there's no discrepancy but they start running diagnostics anyway. She's just starting to calm down and even consider the possibility that she was just tired and seeing things when she jumps suddenly to realize she's being scanned again. Data tells her that she was frozen for about three minutes. Now they compare the scans taken of her which were 23 minutes apart and discover that she's only aged 20 minutes. They now know something is wrong and try to contact the Enterprise to hasten their rendezvous. But they're not responding so they decided to speed up to reach them. They're then hit by sudden engine failure which stops their vessel. Geordi is amazed that the antimatter pod is reading as completely drained and then Data discovers that it's because it had been active for a lot longer than they'd been gone to the conference and back. They separate to try and solve the mystery. Picard goes into the cabin to check the consumption logs and sees the bowl of fruit, which was fresh only moments ago, has rotted completely. He reaches down to touch the fruit and draws back instantly in pain. The others rush in to see his fingernails now show several weeks growth. When Data scans him, he determines that there is some kind of spherical temporal disturbance surrounding the fruit which has now turned to dust. They try to back away from it by moving the runabout in a different direction and hit another disturbance that stops them again. It appears that the space-time continuum has been shattered and after further examination they can see different pockets of time disturbances scattered through their course. They can navigate through them but slowly; impulse power only. When they get to the rendezvous point the Enterprise isn't there, but Geordi picks up a faint signal. The pockets of temporal disturbance increase as they go along, but eventually they find the Enterprise and look on in stunned disbelief as they see their ship and a Romulan Warbird frozen while the Warbird is in the process of firing upon it.
The two ships are caught in one of the time bubbles and from the way the other pockets converge around it they guess that the phenomenon must have started here. They assume it was an attack by the Warbird since the Enterprise had suffered damage but the Warbird had not. However, there's also an energy beam being emitted from the Enterprise that is aimed at the Romulan engine core. They can't make much sense of that and scan for life signs. The situation makes it impossible to find anything so they work out how to get over to the Enterprise. They deal with the time situation using the same methods used in Time's Arrow in the cave that lead to 19th century Earth. Instead of pattern enhancers, they work the technology into the emergency transporting armbands used in I Borg. Theses scenes take a while to go by since the conversation is more detailed, but I always love to see previous writing built upon even when it's the technical jargon that turns off people who don't like science fiction. It demonstrates that not all creative development revolves around characters and I like seeing it used to move their purpose forward. They rig up their communicators so that they can stay in touch and Geordi stays behind on the roundabout to monitor them. Once they're in their own protective fields, they sway with dizziness, but then are ready to transport. When they get over to the Enterprise they see scenes of utter chaos. There are Romulans on the bridge and Riker is down to the side. Nothing is working, but the readouts indicate a power surge in Engineering and security teams had been dispatched to the transporter room and sickbay. So they split up. Picard want's Geordi to just transport them to the different destinations, but it's too risky so they go through the Jeffries tubes. Troi goes to sickbay to find several Romulans and everyone watching while one of them is firing point blank at Crusher. Should time resume, she would die. When she leaves we see another person is moving around... a female Romulan who isn't frozen like everyone else. In the transporter room, Picard sees Worf beaming over unarmed Romulans and can tell from the controls that he beamed the Romulans into sickbay as well. Picard and Troi discuss this mystery after Data calls them both to Engineering to show them that a warp core breach has occurred. Picard asks if it can be fixed but Data explains that it's already happened and that it is continuing to happen, but time is moving so slowly that it's imperceptible. They continue to wonder why the Enterprise is sending power to the Romulan ship when Picard begins laughing at a smiley face he's drawn in the cloud of the breach. He falls down dizzy and begins to panic. When they get him back to the round about Geordi determines that due to their method of moving Picard had suffered from the space version of the bends. They decide to stick together from now on and limit their time on the ships. The next stop is the Romulan ship's engine room. Troi's presence proves important - her input is valuable since she'd spent time on a Romulan ship in Face of the Enemy. But Picard has to stay in the round about this time because he's still not fully recovered. It's looking less like an attack all the time. The Romulans are not at battle stations but appear to be evacuating. There is a feedback going through power transfer beam they're getting from the Enterprise, but instead of it being purposeful as it was in Next Phase, it appears to be an accident. Geordi and Data open the engine core to discover a vortex that's made an aperture in the space-time continuum and caused all of the strange time pockets.
There are also dark spots inside which could be life forms so they watch for a while to observe. As they watch, time resumes and everyone starts walking around but doesn't notice them except for one male Romulan. From the runabout Picard sees the breach destroy the Enterprise, but then time reverses and it pulls back together while the Romulans also begin walking backwards as Data, Geordi and Troi watch. After they all freeze again, Data concludes that their tricorders caused this and they also notice that the Romulans were trying to eject their core and stop the energy feedback. Then Geordi notices that one of the frozen Romulans is out of place; the same one that was watching them. He lunges forth and attacks Geordi and they both fall back. Geordi is dying so Troi removes his arm band and leaves him in this frozen time so that they'll be able to save him later. They take the Romulan, who Data doesn't think is a Romulan, back to the runabout to question him. He's an alien that's taken the form of a Romulan to survive in this time continuum and he's there to protect the young of his kind that are nested in the artificial gravity well, which is the Romulan's engine core. They needed its quantum singularity to incubate the brood. But their addition to the core caused it to stop which is why the Romulans made a distress call. When the Enterprise tried to transfer power, it hit their engine core and the space-time continuum was disrupted endangering the nest which is why the alien was trying to attack the Enterprise. He mentions that there's another like him around before he phases out. So with the destruction of the Enterprise looming, Picard asks if they can beam its core out. Data says they can but they'd need a subspace field around it that the runabout is too small to create. So Picard suggests using the tricorders to reverse time again to a point before the breach so they can prevent the Enterprise from preforming the power transfer. Data thinks this is doable and that's what they set out to do.
So they fan out again. Picard goes to a science station on the bridge of the Enterprise. Troi goes to sick bay to cover Beverly, but doesn't notice the missing female Romulan that had been there earlier. Data goes to engineering. He puts the tricorder in front of the Romulan engine core and operates it by remote to move time back to before the core breach and before Beverly is hit with the blaster. Then he resumes normal time. Before he can stop the power transfer he's attacked by the female Romulan and he falls down stunned with the female alien. By the time he wakes up he's too late to stop an ensign from starting the power transfer so he orders a containment field over the warp core. On the bridge the Romlans are working with the humans to stop the Warbird from attacking. Picard continues the evacuation procedures and orders that Geordi be beamed to sick bay. In sick bay Troi fends off the Romulan that had fired at Beverly but even Beverly knows that he wasn't firing at her. She explains that he was firing at the female alien that had taken Romulan form. So they couldn't prevent the power transfer and they can't move to stop it. But Picard has the brilliant idea to remotely navigate the runabout between the ships. The runabout is destroyed while stopping the energy transfer beam. After that happens everything returns to normal. The alien and the Warbird both disappear as the aliens have returned to their own time continuum.
They lighten the mood at the end as Data is seen studying the perception of time by testing the adage that a watched pot never boils. It's not working though because whether he watches it or not, it always takes the same amount of time according to his internal clock. Riker suggests turning it off since humans don't have internal clocks. He does so and appears surprised when the water starts boiling after Riker leaves.
Okay, so of course, time stories are always a little dodgy. By all rights when the Romulan ship and the alien disappeared at the end, nobody should've remembered anything that happened. And I don't know how the situation with the alien nest could fix itself since one of the aliens was dead and the other injured... perhaps she was okay to just take the babies and go back to her continuum. But it doesn't matter because this was an exciting, puzzle solving episode. And for all the technobabble laced throughout, it's simplified at the end so anyone can understand what went on. There's also no moral to the story weighing down the action because there doesn't always need to be one. It's just good, fun, straight forward Star Trek. Four and a half stars.
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