ST:TNG Season Five, Episode Eighteen "Cause and Effect"

ST: TNG Season Five, Episode Eighteen "Cause and Effect"
Production Order: 18
Air Order: 18
Stardate: 45652.1
Original Air Date: March 23, 1992

We open on the wildest cold opening we have ever gotten on Star Trek: it's mid-catastrophe. There's something really fucking wrong with one of the nacelles. Major, major shaky cam. People falling out of seats. Data loudly reporting antimatter venting. La Forge yelling that they need to eject the warp core. The warp core ejection is not working. Picard yells to Majel that all hands should abandon ship.

Then the E explodes.

Shit, y'all. Did I just encounter a "we now return to our regularly-scheduled programming, in progress" situation?

Nope. I put the disc in the drive and selected this episode from the menu.

Damn. Then it just cut straight to the opening credits. No chill.

When we return from the credits, we get an exterior shot of the Enterprise, and that "all is well" background music. Are we... doing a Zombie Gallileo premise? Zombie Enterprise? Are we starting from the end, then jumping back to the beginning? "It all started when..."

Picard's Log 45652.1: "Going into an unexplored region called the Typhon Expanse. Gonna do some charting and stuff."

Instead of going to people charting, we're starting out with the weekly poker game. Data shuffles the cards for himself, Riker, Worf, and Crusher.

Riker: "Sometimes I think he's stacking the deck."

Data: "I didn't."

Worf: "I hope so."

Data deals: an 8 for Riker, and ace for Worf, a queen for Crusher, a 4 for himself. Worf elects not to bet, so Data deals another round: 10 for Riker, a 7 for Worf, another queen for Crusher, and Data gets a 9. They begin betting, then Data deals a third time: a jack for Riker, a 4 for Worf, a 2 for Crusher, and Data gets a 6.

Crusher adds 20 to her bet, Data does as well, but Riker calls and raises another 50. Worf is flabbergasted by this, but ponies up. As do Crusher and Data.

Then, as Data deals again, he gives Riker 7 and suggest that Riker may have a straight. Worf gets an eight, and for the second time this hand, Data suggests that Worf's cards suck.

Today is a good day to be disassembled

Crusher gets an 8, Data gets a 9.

Crusher raises 20.

Data folds.

Riker sees her bet and raises 100.

Worf folds.

Crusher raises 200.

Riker sees her 200 and raises 300 more.

She tosses more in the pot, but we don't know how much. Riker sighs and turns his cards over. He did not have a straight, as Worf predicted. Crusher celebrates. She tells Riker he has a tell when he's bluffing, but then says she's just kidding, and that she only had "a feeling" that he was bluffing.

Nurse Ogawa calls Crusher. "Commander La Forge needs to see you in sick bay."

In sick bay, La Forge explains that he got dizzy and almost fell off of a catwalk, but was caught by an ensign. Crusher, taking scans, tells him that he has all of the symptoms of an inner ear infection, but none of the physical evidence.

"Working too hard," she suggests.

He admits to having put in a lot of extra hours on the Typhon Expanse project. She tells him that she's going to give him a shot for the dizziness, but that he needs to find time to relax.

And then she pauses. "Have you had these symptoms before?"

"No. Why?"

"Pretty sure I've talked to you about this, and given you a hypospray for dizziness."

"Not me," he asserts. "Maybe another patient?'

"No, pretty sure it was you." 

They both kind of shrug it off, and he leaves.

Next we see Crusher's bedtime routine: she hums while deadheading her orchids in her jammies, drinks the world's tiniest glass of wine (the glass is only big enough to hold like a shot of liquid), then she turns out the lights and gets comfy in bed. Almost as soon as she's closed her eyes, she starts hearing some garbled noise. She reaches out to turn on the light, knocking over her glass, which smashes on the floor. The noises stop abruptly.

In the morning, we attend a senior staff meeting, minus Worf for some reason. They talk about tests they're doing in the Typhon Expanse, and how equipment is holding up. Crusher is distracted. When La Forge finishes his PowerPoint about Typhon Expanse Stuff, Crusher says she would like to report a weird anomaly.

"I heard voices in my room last night. Ten other people reported hearing the same thing at that same time."

Troi asks what they were saying, but Crusher says she couldn't tell. Data says there were no weird sensor reports, and Riker asks him to check them after the meeting. Troi reports no weird feelings at that time, and La Forge suggests that maybe it's a problem with the comm system.

Worf pages Picard from the bridge. (Okay, now we know where he is, but why he isn't at the senior staff meeting is never addressed.) "Getting some weird readings off the starboard bow."

On the bridge, Ro tells Picard that they didn't sense it until they were almost on top of it, and Worf reports that it's a distortion of the time-space continuum.

"Let's back away," says Picard wisely.

But Ro reports that the thrusters are not responding.

The power goes out.

"The distortion is fluctuating," announces Data.

Riker calls for red alert, and the klaxons begin.

"Ooh, hell no," says Troi. "We need to GTFO, now."

#cloudswiththreateningauras

"Somethings coming out of the distortion," says Data.

It's a hella old Starfleet vessel.

Picard calls for shields, but there are none. No way to move, no way to protect themselves, and they are on a collision course with the other ship.

"Hail them," says Picard.

"No answer," says Worf.

Picard polls the bridge: how do we get out of this?

"Decompress the main shuttle bay," suggests Riker. "It may push us far enough out of the way."

That's not a terrible idea. But Picard goes with Data's suggestion: to use the tractor beam to move the other ship to a non-collision course.

The tractor beam keeps the other ship from crashing head-long into the E, but it glances off the nacelle, causing it to explode.

Damage reports start pouring in - casualty reports, the nacelle venting plasma, the ship losing attitude control.

Riker yells for everyone to hit the escape pods.

They need to eject the core, but the ejection systems aren't working. Picard calls for all hands to abandon ship.

The E spins out of control in space, then explodes.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 45652.1: ""Going into an unexplored region called the Typhon Expanse. Gonna do some charting and stuff."

Instead of going to people charting, we're starting out with the weekly poker game. Data shuffles the cards for himself, Riker, Worf, and Crusher.

Riker: "Sometimes I think he's stacking the deck."

Data: "I didn't."

Worf: "I hope so."

Data deals: an 8 for Riker, an ace for Worf, a queen for Crusher, a 4 for himself. Worf elects not to bet, so Data deals another round: 10 for Riker, a 7 for Worf, another queen for Crusher, and Data gets a 9. They begin betting, then Data deals a third time: a jack for Riker, a 4 for Worf, a 2 for Crusher, and Data gets a 6.

Crusher adds 20 to her bet, Data does as well, but Riker calls and raises another 50.

Then he stops.

A long, uneasy pause from Crusher. "How did you know that?"

"I had a feeling," he replies slowly.

"Me too."

Nurse Ogawa calls. "Doctor, La Forge is in sick bay to see you."

In sick bay, La Forge explains that he got dizzy and almost fell off of a catwalk, but was caught by an ensign. Crusher, taking scans, tells him that he has all of the symptoms of an inner ear infection, but none of the physical evidence.

Another long pause from Crusher. "Have you... had these symptoms before?"

Now he considers. "I think maybe yes. But I don't remember when."
"We've had this convo, and I've given you this exam. Let's check the medical logs."

They pull up his info, and even though she's treated him for VISOR-related headaches, no mention of dizziness or inner ear infections.

"Deja vu?" he asks.

"Both of us?" she counters.

Glitch in the Matrix! Look for the cat!

Next we see Crusher's bedtime routine: she hums while deadheading her orchids in her jammies... drinks a sip of her shot of wine... then she turns out the lights and lies uncomfortably in bed. Almost as soon as she's closed her eyes, she starts hearing some garbled noise. She reaches out to turn on the light, knocking over her glass, which smashes on the floor. The noises stop abruptly. This time, she calls Picard.

She goes to the ready room, and while I understand her feeling the need to be dressed in something that is not her jammies, I cannot for the life of me figure out why she put her uniform back on. Picard isn't even fully in uniform - he's wearing the grey undershirt thing that we sometimes see when he has the cranberry coat unzipped. 

Anyway, he gives her some steamed milk, a recipe that belonged to his Aunt Adele, which he's programmed into the replicator.

... isn't that just the equivalent of saying "milk, hot"? Why... why is there a recipe?

She sniffs it and notes that there's nutmeg in it.

"Whenever I get insomnia, I try to perfect the recipe," he says.

You sprinkled some shit in some milk, then made it warm. And like, you didn't even do it. You told the replicator to do that. How exactly are you "perfecting" this? By adding one more speck of nutmeg than the last time you got insomnia? "Computer, add 14 specks of nutmeg"?

I know this is a dumb thing to nitpick, but it feels like a recipe for how to make ice.

She tells him that breaking the wine glass triggered her deja vu harder than anything else had, like she's been walking around feeling like this all afternoon, but the glass really solidified it for her.

He picks up a book, and tells her that he's been reading it, but it feels like he keeps reading the same paragraphs over and over. He thinks he might have read this book years ago, and just didn't remember doing it.

She's still weirded out by the voices thing, so he tells her that he'll have La Forge and Data run a diagnostic, and they can talk about it at the morning meeting.

At the meeting, La Forge and Data report that there were no auditory anomalies reported by sensors at the time Crusher said she heard them.

"But ten other people reported hearing them at that time," she insists.

Worf pages Picard from the bridge. "Getting some weird readings off the starboard bow."

On the bridge, Ro tells Picard that they didn't sense it until they were almost on top of it, and Worf reports that it's a distortion of the time-space continuum.

"Let's back away," says Picard wisely.

But Ro reports that the thrusters are not responding.

The power goes out.

"The distortion is fluctuating," announces Data.

Riker calls for red alert, and the klaxons begin.

"Ooh, hell no," says Troi. "We need to GTFO, now."

Crusher narrows her eyes. This all seems super familiar.

"Somethings coming out of the distortion," says Data.

It's a hella old Starfleet vessel.

Picard calls for shields, but there are none. No way to move, no way to protect themselves, and they are on a collision course with the other ship.

"Hail them," says Picard.

"No answer," says Worf.

Picard polls the bridge: how do we get out of this?

"Decompress the main shuttle bay," suggests Riker. "It may push us far enough out of the way."

That's not a terrible idea. But Picard goes with Data's suggestion: to use the tractor beam to move the other ship to a non-collision course.

The tractor beam keeps the other ship from crashing head-long into the E, but it glances off the nacelle, causing it to explode.

Damage reports start pouring in - casualty reports, the nacelle venting plasma, the ship losing attitude control.

Riker yells for everyone to hit the escape pods.

They need to eject the core, but the ejection systems aren't working. Picard calls for all hands to abandon ship.

The E spins out of control in space, then explodes.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 45652.1: ""Going into an unexplored region called the Typhon Expanse. Gonna do some charting and stuff."

Instead of going to people charting, we're starting out with the weekly poker game. Data shuffles the cards for himself, Riker, Worf, and Crusher.

Riker: "Sometimes I think he's stacking the deck."

Data: "I didn't."

"I hope -- so," Worf falters.

"Something wrong?" asks Riker.

"I am experiencing nIb'poH, the feeling I have done this before."

Cool, Klingons get that too.

Sassy Riker Moment: "Yes, last Tuesday night."

"No, I've been having the same experience," Crusher agrees. "Deal the cards, Data."

Data deals: an 8 for Riker, an ace for Worf.

"You're going to give me a queen," she says.

He turns over a queen.

"You're getting a 4."

He turns over a 4.

She implores him to deal, even though no one has bet. They are no longer playing a game. She correctly guesses what he will deal several more times. Then Worf correctly guesses, and finally, Riker.

Data notes that the odds of this happening are astronomical.

And none of them can put their fingers on why they would know those cards.

Crusher pauses, then hits her comm badge and asks Nurse Ogawa if La Forge is in sick bay.

"Nope," says Ogawa. "Oh, wait..."

Everyone at the poker table exchanges looks of confusion and concern.

A little while later, Picard strolls into sick bay, having clearly been paged there.

"You been having deja vu?" Crusher asks him.

"Yeah, the last few days. Especially while reading," he says.

"People have been reporting stuff like that. And I've been having it, too," she explains. "Like I had a feeling that La Forge would be coming into sick bay. He has all the symptoms of an inner ear infection... but no infection. So instead of running the same old tests, I ran an optical diagnostic on his VISOR. There are these teeny tiny shifts in the dekyon field that are showing up in his vision as blurry afterimages."

"It could be something wrong with the warp core," says La Forge. "I'm going to run some tests."

This next scene is shot with a handheld camera, which is a bit shaky and kind of distracting. Crusher is going about her bedtime routine, but with the air of someone acting out the motions, because she's studying what's happening. She picks up her trimming scissors to trim her orchids, but something about the scissors seems too familiar. She sets them down and backs away. She picks up the wine/shot glass, but that feels weird, too. She starts to take a sip, but thinks differently. Instead of setting it down on the nightstand, she puts it on another table.

She turns out the light. The garbled voices start. She grabs a tricorder and begins scanning, recording the voices. When she turns the light back on, the voices stop.

Crusher calls La Forge. "I just heard voices in my room, but there's no one here."

"Sensors just picked up something weird here," he replies.

She excitedly tells him that she's on her way, and grabs her lab coat. In the process, her coat sweeps the wine glass off the other table, and it smashes to the floor.

Too familiar. Very uneasy. This all happened before, right?

Down in Engineering, La Forge and Data have plugged the tricorder recording into the computer. They tell her that the sound she heard was real, but doesn't match anything made by the ship, or communications sent in the ship, at the time. It does match up with a distortion in the dekyon field. They try filtering out background noises to isolate the voices.

Data gives it a closer listen.

"It's about... 1000 voices? It's the Enterprise crew. Our voices."

Bro.

BRO. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

To show that this is concerning,

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Everyone reports to the Obs Lounge for a senior staff meeting. La Forge and Crusher apologize for the early start, saying they "couldn't wait for 0700 hours."

Shit, what time is it?

La Forge has a PowerPoint up, showing a layered, avocado-shaped space, and a tiny blip moving along the outside of the avocado shape, then the blip rushing straight across, back to its start point. Over and over again.

"We think we're stuck in a temporal loop," says La Forge. "We keep reliving time over again."

Troi asks if this is what's causing the deja vu. Crusher responds that yes, but deja vu is just a feeling of repeating, where this is real.

"Each time we start over, we forget that we've already lived that, and think each time is the first time," says La Forge.

Riker is alarmed. "We may have had this convo before?"

"Yep," says La Forge. "And because we only have vague feelings of having done this, we don't know how long we've been stuck in this loop. Hours? Days? Years?"

Crusher and La Forge suggest that her hearing voices and him seeing afterimages are echoes of the previous loops played back.

"How did we get here?" asks Picard.

Now it's Data turn. "Okay, I analyzed the voices, and it's us. 150 regular ships' operations conversations. 252 personal convos. 5 couples getting intimate -"

"Dude, the point!" interrupts Picard.

You... you don't want to hear what positions your crew members like, Picard?

"The voices indicate that something bad enough happens that you order all hands to abandon ship." He plays the cleaned up voice recordings:

Worf tells the bridge crew that there's a distortion in the time-space continuum.

Data announces impact in 36 seconds.

Picard tells everyone to abandon ship.

"So we get too close to a time-space distortion," explains La Forge. "We collide with something that causes an explosion, it rips the time-space continuum, we get stuck, over and over."

They come to the conclusion that avoiding the collision could keep them from being knocked back into the loop.

"So we should reverse?" suggests Worf.

"Reversing may have been what got us into this," points out Riker.

"Ohhhh," groans Picard. "No second-guessing. We keep going forward until we have reason to not."

"Gotta rain on your parade," says La Forge. "We may not figure out how to avoid the collision until it's too late to do so. And if we get sent back to the beginning of the loop, we may forget all of this sleuthing we just did."

Ooh, baby. Who wants to watch an explosion and a poker game again? It's Must See TV, y'all!

There's a long-ish science-filled discussion here about how to avoid that, but the gist is, they're going to send a one-word message to Data in the next loop, giving him the information subconsciously.

Down in Engineering, Crusher oversees La Forge fiddling with Data's brain. There's no way to tell if he'll get the message, how he'll perceive it, or even what message to send.

"We may have sent this to Data a dozen times," says La Forge.

"Does it feel familiar?" asks Crusher.

"No."

"Then maybe it's the first time."

Oops. No time for conjecture, or to figure out what message to send. They're being paged to the bridge. Red alert.

This turned out to be a really cute photo of Gates McFadden

They hit the bridge, where Riker is telling Picard that they need to figure out how this went down before.

"Let's back away," says Picard wisely.

But Ro reports that the thrusters are not responding.

The power goes out.

"The distortion is fluctuating," announces Data.

"Ooh, hell no," says Troi. "We need to GTFO, now."

"Somethings coming out of the distortion," says Picard.

It's a hella old Starfleet vessel.

Picard calls for shields, but there are none. No way to move, no way to protect themselves, and they are on a collision course with the other ship.

"Hail them," says Picard.

"No answer," says Worf.

Picard polls the bridge: how do we get out of this?

"Decompress the main shuttle bay," suggests Riker. "It may push us far enough out of the way."

That's not a terrible idea. But Picard goes with Data's suggestion: to use the tractor beam to move the other ship to a non-collision course.

The tractor beam keeps the other ship from crashing head-long into the E, but it glances off the nacelle, causing it to explode.

Damage reports start pouring in - casualty reports, the nacelle venting plasma, the ship losing attitude control.

Riker yells for everyone to hit the escape pods.

They need to eject the core, but the ejection systems aren't working. Picard calls for all hands to abandon ship.

Data, realizing that he has less than no time, uses the emitter on his arm to text himself a message.

The E spins out of control in space, then explodes.

Picard's Log 45652.1: "Going into an unexplored region called the Typhon Expanse. Gonna do some charting and stuff."

Instead of going to people charting, we're starting out with the weekly poker game. Data shuffles the cards for himself, Riker, Worf, and Crusher.

Riker: "Sometimes I think he's stacking the deck."

Data: "I didn't."

"I hope -- so," Worf falters.

"Something wrong?" asks Riker.

"I am experiencing nIb'poH, the feeling I have done this before."

Cool, Klingons get that too.

Sassy Riker Moment: "Yes, last Tuesday night."

"No, I've been having the same experience," Crusher agrees. "Deal the cards, Data."

Again, she names off what cards Data is going to deal to them, and when he does, they come up all threes.

Riker, Worf, and Crusher were all certain that they knew what the cards were going to be, and none of them had guessed all threes. When Data deals again, each member of the game gets dealt a three-of-a-kind.

But before they can ponder on this repetition of threes, Ogawa calls.

In sick bay, La Forge explains that he got dizzy and almost fell off of a catwalk, but was caught by an ensign. Crusher, taking scans, tells him that he has all of the symptoms of an inner ear infection, but none of the physical evidence.

Another long pause from Crusher. "Have you... had these symptoms before?"

Now he considers. "I think maybe yes. But I don't remember when."
"We've had this convo, and I've given you this exam. Let's check the medical logs."

They pull up his info, and even though she's treated him for VISOR-related headaches, no mention of dizziness or inner ear infections.

"Deja vu?" he asks.

"Both of us?" she counters.

This shot's wild. We start in tight on La Forge's face, then pull back,
 away, and down

She elects to do an optical scan, and this time we see it happening.

Picard is the ready room, having a cup of Earl Grey (hot), and reading.

I... is he wearing sweatpants? No shade, because sweatpants are the shit, but I've never really seen him as a sweatpants guy.

(Okay, upon a deeper dive into uniforms, it looks like the "captain's jacket" uniform - designed by Robert Blackman for Patrick Stewart - had a looser trouser that gathered near the ankle, reminiscent of Wrath of Khan-era uniforms. Still funny to think of Picard kickin' it in sweatpants, though.)

He flips frustratedly through his book, trying to figure out if he's read it before.

Crusher pages him to sick bay.

A little while later, Picard strolls into sick bay, wearing the cranberry coat over the charcoal shirt.

"La Forge has all the symptoms of an inner ear infection... but no infection. So instead of running the same old tests, I ran an optical diagnostic on his VISOR. There are these teeny tiny shifts in the dekyon field that are showing up in his vision as blurry afterimages."

"It could be something wrong with the warp core," says La Forge. "I'm going to run some tests."

La Forge and Data are down in Engineering, running diagnostic tests on the warp core regarding those dekyon distortions, but the results keep coming up as 3.

"Not possible," says La Forge.

"That number keeps appearing to me today," Data admits.

There's a distortion on deck 9, and Crusher calls.

"There are voices in my room, but no one is there," she says.

"We're getting dekyon distortions," he replies. "Can you come down?"

She says she will, and we hear the sound of breaking glass. She assures them that she's fine, but sounds like she's saying it through gritted teeth.

When writing out my summaries, I leave a space for screencaptures, then
mark them with a keyword, the episode title initials, and which number
screencapture I'm putting there. I shit you not, this one came up, unplanned,
 as (threes cae33). Lol.

.

Everyone reports to the Obs Lounge for a senior staff meeting. 

"The voices indicate that something bad enough happens that you order all hands to abandon ship." Data plays the cleaned up voice recordings:

Worf tells the bridge crew that there's a distortion in the time-space continuum.

Data announces impact in 36 seconds.

Picard tells everyone to abandon ship.

"So we get too close to a time-space distortion," explains La Forge. "We collide with something that causes an explosion, it rips the time-space continuum, we get stuck, over and over."

They come to the conclusion that avoiding the collision could keep them from being knocked back into the loop.

"So we should reverse?" suggests Worf.

"Reversing may have been what got us into this," points out Riker.

"Ohhhh," groans Picard. "No second-guessing. We keep going forward until we have reason to not."

"So we keep seeing the number three all over the ship," adds La Forge.

"To the tune of 2085 times," says Data.

"That can't be a coincidence," La Forge says, "so I ran some ship-wide diagnostics, and found that Data has some dekyon emissions coming from his brain. If I wanted to send a message from one loop to the next, that's how I'd do it."

"But what does three mean?" asks Picard.

"Run a level-3 diagnostic on our key systems?" suggests Riker.

La Forge agrees.

Ro pages Picard from the bridge. "Getting some weird readings off the starboard bow."

On the bridge, Ro tells Picard that they didn't sense it until they were almost on top of it, and Worf reports that it's a distortion of the time-space continuum.

"Let's back away," says Picard wisely.

But Ro reports that the thrusters are not responding.

The power goes out.

"The distortion is fluctuating," announces Data.

Riker calls for red alert, and the klaxons begin.

"Ooh, hell no," says Troi. "We need to GTFO, now."

"Somethings coming out of the distortion," says Picard.

It's a hella old Starfleet vessel.

Picard calls for shields, but there are none. No way to move, no way to protect themselves, and they are on a collision course with the other ship.

"Hail them," says Picard.

"No answer," says Worf.

Picard polls the bridge: how do we get out of this?

"Decompress the main shuttle bay," suggests Riker. "It may push us far enough out of the way."

That's not a terrible idea. But Picard goes with Data's suggestion: to use the tractor beam to move the other ship to a non-collision course.

But as they prepare to engage the tractor beam, Data slowly looks to his left.

"The tractor beam won't work," he says suddenly. "I'm going to decompress the main shuttle bay."

He does, and... the other ship glides quietly past the Enterprise.

The power comes back on, and Worf announces that they are clear of the distortion.

"Yoooo, what happened?" Picard asks.

"I guessed that number three might indicate the number of pips on Commander Riker's collar, meaning that his plan to deflect the other ship might be the correct choice," Data explains.

"Maybe you subconsciously stacked the deck in the poker game," suggests La Forge.

"Yeah, I may have been responsible for those other occurrences of three," says Data.

"Can someone call Starfleet and find out when the fuck we are?" Picard requests.

Worf does a quick check. "Our clocks are off by a little more than 17 days."

Did they die at least 17 times? How the hell do I count that?

Data changes the clock.

"Incoming call," says Worf.

Oh, now they wanna talk.

"It's the USS Bozeman, Soyuz-class."

"Um, those were retired like, 80 years ago," points out La Forge.

Oh, hey. It's Kelsey Grammer. In a Wrath of Khan uniform.

"Hey, I'm Morgan Bateson, captain of the Bozeman. Can we help you?"

"Um, I'm Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise, and I was going to ask the same question of you. Do you know what just happened?"

Bateson considers. "We saw this temporal distortion, then your ship appeared out of nowhere and we almost hit you."

"Yeah, we've been stuck in a temporal causality loop, and think you have been, too."

"Nah," says Bateson. "We just left starbase three weeks ago."

Picard tries to hide a cringe. "What... year is it?"

"2278, of course," replies Bateson.

"Hmm, yeah." Picard is gonna have to break out the extra-strong Earl Grey for this one. Some top-shelf shit from Guinan's private stash. "How about you beam over to my ship? We have some uh, things to discuss."

Also, please be nice to the security chief.

Hopeful, uplifting music as Picard tells Frasier Crane that he's been Groundhog Day'ing for 90 years.

*******

After last week's episode, this one is a palette-cleanser. Did the writers intend that? Nope. 

Seriously, I just slid through this episode like a hot knife through butter. I honestly don't have a lot to say about it besides the fact that I liked it. It's a solid sci-fi story, and a twist on the time-travel tropes that we've become accustomed to, and a bit bored with. Brannon Braga came up with the concept because he wanted to do a time travel story that hadn't been done before, and couldn't think of one that covered a temporal causality loop. (This episode aired almost a full year before Groundhog Day was released. While the spec script for Groundhog Day seems to have existed before this episode was written, I didn't see any evidence of Braga "copying" the concept. And frankly, the end results are completely different. Comparisons of the two would be akin to comparing Yogi Bear and Cocaine Bear because there are bears involved with both.) Great pains were taken to film each loop in a different way than previous loops, and it shows. Unusual camera angles were utilized, and while you could get bored with watching the same scenes play out over and over, you don't because they're just different enough.

Good job, Star Trek. Help yourself to a Saurian brandy.

Fun Facts:

- A dekyon is a subatomic particle that can be both naturally-occurring, or artificially made. They were invented for this episode.

- Lol, I love this "pancakes and poker" story from Brannon Braga: "I came up with the poker game while I was eating pancakes and pouring syrup. I had no idea how it happened - because it was before the sugar rush. I knew then that the poker game would somehow be utilized for once, and lay it in so the viewer think it's just a poker game and it turns out to be the key to saving their entire existence." And that "utilized for once" comment explained by Ronald D Moore: "The poker games for a while was the cliche padding. If the show was short, it was time to write a poker game. Because we had written it so much, we stayed away from it and now it got used for a reason." Reminds me of Norman Rockwell talking about how, if a painting wasn't going well, he would add a puppy.

- Originally, Riker was supposed to win the poker game with three aces, further indicating that his plan would be successful, but Rick Berman thought that Data would not deal Riker three aces.

- Braga on make each loop unique: "In a way, doing the same scenes over was comforting; it was fun to come up with different takes and to think how I could get that glass to break each time. It wasn't until I got to the final draft that I thought to have the glass break over the intercom on that final loop through. So it was finding those little nuggets and pathways and weave through as we were structuring it. That was a terrific challenge."

- Braga referred to the cold open ending with the ship blowing up "the ultimate teaser."

- When director Jonathan Frakes received the script for this episode, he thought that the writers were screwing with him, as each act appeared to be the same set of scenes.

- Rick Berman told Frakes not to reuse footage of early scenes for later ones, so they shot each set of scenes with different angles. In some cases, multiple cameras were used to shoot the same scene so that it could be edited together differently later.

Double the fun?

- Frakes remarked of getting different angles of the bridge scenes, "I'd watched a lot of directors by then, and directed a few episodes, so I knew all the possible bridge angles - and I think I used all of them." 

- Show runners wanted Kirstie Alley to return as Saavik to play a crew member to Kelsey Grammer's Captain Bateson, but the timing could not be worked out.

- The Bozeman was originally going to be a Constitution-class ship, but the cost of building a TOS-era bridge set, model, costumes, and props was too much. So they switched the ship class to Soyuz, and slightly altered the USS Reliant miniature. This way, they could reuse costumes, props and sets from Movie 6. Mark Okuda and Greg Jein designed the changes to make the Miranda-class Reliant into the Soyuz-class Bozeman. They used the fan-made book "Ships of the Fleet, Volume One" as a reference.

Okuda's notes for altering the Reliant

- Typically, an exploding starship is created onscreen by superimposing footage of an explosion over the top of footage of the model. In this case, they wanted a better explosion, so the FX team dropped the model from the ceiling of the sound stage, filled with pyrotechnics, and filmed by a high-speed camera. Effects Supervisor Gary Hutzel noted that usually, whatever is left of the model is thrown away, but he had a hunch that the pieces of leftover Enterprise might come in handy, so he picked up the pieces and saved them. These pieces were later used in a DS9 episode when another Galaxy-class ship explodes.

- This is the only episode where the main shuttlebay is shown. Science Fiction Modelmaking Associates was contracted to make a maquette of the main shuttlebay. They also made five shuttlecrafts and one shuttlepod. The two shuttlecrafts in this photo were named Berman and Piller, after the producers. Despite having this cool model, it was never used again, and was eventually auctioned off in 2008.

- Also created for this episode was a large model of a nacelle.

- This is the third episode to feature the destruction of a Galaxy-class ship.
- Despite getting a last name in season four, this is the first episode where we hear that Alyssa's last name is Ogawa. Crusher has just been calling her "nurse" this whole time.

- This is the second time that Picard's Aunt Adele is mentioned. In the first case, her recipe for curing the common cold is ginger tea and honey. Boy, Aunt Adele was sure a fan of recipes that involve heating a liquid and adding another ingredient.

- The Bozeman left starbase halfway between Movies 1 and 2. Bateson and his crew wearing the red uniform means that it had been in use in Starfleet for at least seven years before being worn by Kirk & Co in Movie 2.

- This is the first time it is mentioned onscreen that one may eject a warp core. It will be mentioned more times, but not actually seen until DS9.

- This is the first episode to feature Ro's new haircut. (And now I'm left wondering what she thinks of Mott.)

- When this episode premiered, local TV channels were flooded with calls from viewers who were not paying attention, and thought the show was broadcasting the same scenes over and over again.

- Bateson and his crew are featured in the TNG novel "Ship of the Line."

Red deaths: 0
To date: 1
Gold deaths: 0
To date: 1

Blue deaths: 0
To date: 0
Unnamed color crew deaths: 0*
To date: 0*

Sassy Geordi moments: 0

To date: 2

Sassy Ro Moments: 0
To date: 3

Sassy Worf Moment: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Riker Moments: 1
To date: 4

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date:  0

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Data Moments: 2
To date: 2
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Keiko Moments: 0

To date: 3
Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date: 1
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
To date: 3
Sassy Guinan Moments: 0
To Date: 1
Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
To date: 3

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 0
To date: 35

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 1
To date: 9

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 1
To date: 4
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 1
To date: 2
Picard Maneuvers: 0
To date: 18
Tea, Earl Grey: 1
To date: 7

Mentions of the number 47: 0

To date: 2

*Technically 15,419. 

907 crewmembers x 17 explosions, if we're guessing 1 explosion per day. Which then didn't happen after all. Schrodinger's Temporal Causality Loop Explosion?

DO NOT touch Pie's box