ST:TNG Season Five, Episode Fourteen "Conundrum"

ST: TNG Season Five, Episode Fourteen "Conundrum"
Production Order: 14
Air Order: 14
Stardate: 45494.2
Original Air Date: February 17, 1992

Did I get a Twitter account? Sure as shit sounds like me.

Picard's Log 45494.2: "We're checking out some subspace signals that could mean life in this one sector. Pretty cool."

In Ten Forward, Troi and Data are engaged in a 3D chess match, and I have to give credit to Troi for having the chutzpah to go up against Data. Sure, he played to only a stalemate with Sirna Kolrami at Strategema, but he was a master, and I've never heard of Troi being good enough to beat a walking computer. I don't think it's even been mentioned before that she plays.   
Data, for the sake of bringing the audience in, explains how she's made a bad move, and will lose the game. (This part comes off as a bit mansplain-y, and I've had to re-watch it and mentally dissect it multiple times. It's been brought to my attention that sometimes excited neurodivergent info-dumping looks like mansplaining, especially when the ND info-dumper is male, and the recipient is female, and if I examine Data's character, one might draw parallels between him and neurodivergent people. So this could be an info-dump on his part. Either way, Troi does not appear to be upset, and it seems as though this part was written specifically to note to the audience that Data thinks this move will lose her the game.)
And with her next move, he goes all Surprised Pikachu. Her strategy was not the usual one to his moves, and he predicts that she'll win in another seven moves.

He compliments her for tripping him up, and she reminds him of their wager: he owes her a Sumerian Sunset, a fancy drink, "made in the traditional style."

He agrees, and gets up to make it.

Wait, what would Data have won?

I have questions!

Down in sick bay, Crusher is scanning a patient in a bathing suit, and telling her that she tore some ligaments. They briefly discuss diving technique, and it's revealed that the patient (simply a crewmember known as Kristin) has been swimming on the holodeck.

Wait -- I have questions about that, too! How does one swim on the holodeck? Yeah, yeah, I know: "in the water." But... how is that done? (And what does it look like if you end the program mid-stroke?)

Anyway, Crusher fixes the ligament with her scanny-fixy device, and recommends swimming safer with another program with a wading pool.

And now we're in some corridor, moving fast-paced with Riker and Ro as he chews her out for doing some duty, but in a way that pisses him off. Same shit, different day. They take the lift up to the bridge, where Worf tells Picard that they found the origin of that subspace signal, in the form of a little ship.

The ship scans them. It doesn't have any weapons, and doesn't really pose a threat, so Picard takes a dogs-sniffing-butts posture: no shields.

"Okay, but now they're scanning stuff they shouldn't be scanning," Worf interrupts. "Like, they're sniffing around our computer systems."

"Rude," says Picard. "Shields up."

Picard is relaxed. The Enterprise is a Great Dane, and could easily step on this tiny chihuahua. Except, you know, the Great Dane is unaware that chihuahuas are insane little nightmares.

Back in Ten Forward, Data has made the drink (is he allowed behind the bar? Can anyone just go behind the bar?), and he sets it in front of Troi. The liquid is clear, but when he flicks the side of the glass to make it vibrate, the contents swirl neon red and green before combining into a red-orange.

"I hope you enjoy it," he tells her.

There's a weird neon green flash of light across Data, and he repeats "I hope you enjoy it."

Troi is startled.

Up on the bridge, Worf and La Forge report that the computers are going down, and Ro tells them that the helm isn't responding to evasive maneuvers. The green light flashes across the bridge as well. When it's gone, they all start looking around in confusion.

"I... I don't know who any of you are," admits Riker.

"Same," says Picard. "I don't know who I am, either."

Uh-oh.

Dramatic music! Opening credits break!

We return to the same moment on the bridge, where everyone is standing around, trying to ascertain who they are, and where they are, beyond just "in a spaceship."

"I think I'm the pilot," Ro volunteers. She types in some commands at her station. "Helm's dead."

"Oh!" says Picard. "But you still know how to work it!"

She considers the incongruity of that.

Riker and Worf look at Tactical, and come to the same conclusion: they know how to work the ship, but who they are is a mystery.

Riker counts pips, and sees that Picard has more.

"You're the leader."

"Hang on," says Worf, gesturing to his baldric. "I'm decorated too."

Picard says he doesn't think establishing a hierarchy is important now, but figuring out who they are is.

"What happened to us?" asks Some New Guy.

He's wearing Command Red with three pips, and has had several lines, but we've never seen this guy before.

La Forge checks his station. "The scanner signal is stuck in a holding pattern, or something. It keeps looping. And there's debris in front of us."
"Like from a destroyed ship?" asks Riker.
Together, they form a hypothesis that they were in some kind of battle with another ship, that the other ship hit them with some kind of something that knocked their memories loose, and they fired on the other ship, destroying it.

Picard wonders if any part of their ship took damage, and asks Majel.

No response.

"Oh, I was able to call up the ship's directories," offers La Forge.

They find out that they have life support everywhere, but no means of moving or communicating outside of the ship.

But they can use the comm links.

Picard suggests that others on the ship might have knowledge of their identities, but Ro speculates that there may be a boarding party on board, so they should be careful how they word things.

Worf just takes the initiative to broadcast to the ship: "Hey, have a representative from your group contact the bridge to give a status report."
Yeah, that works.

Down in sick bay, Crusher muses on the thought that other people are also clueless as to who they are. Kristin is just straight baffled.

"Ow," she says, moving her shoulder.

Crusher picks up her scanny-fixy and does the thing, noting that she knows how to use the equipment.

"That's cool for you," Kristin laments, "but I'm a patient in a bathing suit. Do you have some clothes I could borrow?"

Worf is sitting in The Big Chair, and tells New Guy about the tactical stuff he found on the ship while the rest of the bridge crew pours over computer stations, looking for things to jog their memories, or to determine what the situation might be.

"We sound like a battleship," says New Guy.

"I think so?" agrees Worf.

I mean... they're not wrong exactly. The Enterprise, while on a generally diplomatic and fact-finding mission, is armed with decent shields and weapons to defend herself against attack. If you don't know what "armed to the teeth" means in Starfleet, just having this level of defense as a baseline may make it seem like you're on a battleship.

Riker says that the whole crew has checked in now, and Ro is eager to get down to other parts of the ship to find out what's what.

He pumps the brakes, says they need to coordinate and work together, and she states that she doesn't like feeling out of control and needs to do something. It's the same old butting of heads between this pair, but because they don't know that they don't like each other, they communicate better.

Riker tells Worf that they are going together to check the ship, and he agrees, in a very command-like fashion.

La Forge goes with them, and they take the lift to Engineering.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Down in Engineering, they've discovered that the ship works just fine pretty much everywhere, but they can't access the controls at all. The ship has amnesia toooooo!

La Forge has figured out where to go to possibly re-establish those controls, and Ro thinks they should focus on weapons and shields, in case they're attacked again.

"Also, personnel files," adds Riker. "We'd like to find out who we are."

Riker and Ro leave to do crew surveys.

Worf is in the ready room Big Chair, when Picard and New Guy come in to give reports: no injuries or deaths reported from the surveys, and everything is great, but no one knows who they are, and no one can run the ship.

"We should get battle-ready as soon as we have control of the ship," says Worf.

Kahless love you, Worf. You have no idea who you are, but you're ever-ready to beat the shit out of someone.

"Oh. I think we should get the ships' logs first," suggests Picard, "to see who we are."

"Disagree."

Kind of wild to see Picard making reasonable suggestions here, and Worf outright dismissing them. It's a reversal of their power dynamic, where Picard considers Worf's suggestions, but usually takes a different tack. It definitely works better the other way around. I don't think a Picard would get very far under Worf's command.

La Forge calls. He's been able to get control of things via Engineering, and can send that stuff up to the bridge.

"Now we're ready," rumbled Worf.

"Sure, but for what?" Picard adds.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

The bridge is different now. Worf is in The Big Chair again, New Guy is at Tactical, and Picard is at the helm, because Ro is absent.

They start by firing phasers off into space to see if they work right. Once Worf is satisfied, Picard suggests that they run a full diagnostic to make sure all of the systems are running correctly.

"Fuck that," barks Worf. "That would put everything offline again, and make us vulnerable."

New Guy sides with Picard, saying that some of the computer systems were damaged, and Worf sees that this could be a valuable thing. They start the diagnostic.

Maybe I was wrong about the Worf-Picard relationship here.

Crusher comes in, and reports: she's been scanning the brains of crew members, and have found that everyone still has their long-term memories, but that they've been denied access.

"Is there a way to go around those roadblocks?" asks Picard. "To see if we can get at those memories another way?"

"I'm trying," says Crusher, "But I need to compare these new scans with the ones on file. Can I get access to medical records?"

Worf, still salty, gives Picard some side-eye. "We're running a diagnostic, and everything is temporarily down right now."

Picard tells her that they'll make medical records a priority when everything is back up.

Worf is clearly not pleased that Picard has overstepped in promising Crusher the medical files, because he wanted to play with rocket launchers, and also, he's probably in charge.

Riker and Ro are conducting surveys of the living quarters for the crew, and enjoying one another's company. They're all smiles as they head for Ten Forward.
Riker remarks that he'd like to have some fun in the holodeck he spotted, and Ro laughs that he doesn't strike her as the type of guy who needs a holodeck to have fun.

Once in Ten Forward, they meet up with Troi, the rep for this group, who tells them that there are two unusual things here:

- the bartender is an android, whose memory has also suffered the same fate as his biological coworkers;

- and she has the ability to sense emotions in others.

"Also, whoa? I know you," she says to Riker. "Like, I don't know you, but there's a strong connection between us." 

Worf calls the survey team to tell them to return to the bridge - they got into the personnel files.

La Forge has been able to access the personnel files, and while he can't get the full biographical data, they're satisfied with a crew manifest.

There are some surprises: the New Guy is Commander Kieran MacDuff, the executive officer. Riker is the second officer. And Worf is decidedly not the captain. He seems pretty mortified, and apologizes to Picard for assuming that he was in charge.

"It's cool," says Picard graciously. "We're all just trying our best. Don't even worry, bro."

Picard also tells the others that they need to find out all they can from the ship's files and report back, and to grab the communications officer to help them.

Sassy Ro Moment: "He's in Ten Forward, waiting tables."

So now we know something about New Guy - that his name's MacDuff, and for some reason, he has Riker's title. Whenever they introduce a new crewmember that the others know but the audience does not, we are asked to suspend the disbelief that this person never existed before now, has always been part of the crew, and has just never appeared in the stories of the ship thus far. And as Star Trek storytelling goes, that means that New Guys are Redshirts, introduced as friends and coworkers, so that we'll get the feels when they die at the end of the episode.

I'd be willing to go along with the idea that this guy is a Redshirt, and that he maybe works a different shift so we never see him until the story where his death is featured... except he has Riker's job.

So friends, it's time to plaaaaayyyyy....

Villain or Redshirt, the game where we spin the wheel to find out whether MacDuff is the antagonist, or destined to die at the end.

tikatikatikatikatikatikatikatika

Later, the senior staff meets up in the Obs Lounge for the report.

La Forge and Data report that they've learned the ship is named Enterprise.

Yep.

And they're part of a group, the United Federation of Planets.

Okay.

And the Federation is at war with the Lysian Alliance.

Sorry, what?

"The Lysians are a genocidal race, determined to wipe us out," says La Forge.

"The Federation thinks the Lysians have a new weapon which is helping them win the war," says Data.

"And they're using this weapon to easily take Federation ships," La Forge adds.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, interesting. *nods*

Apparently, this weapon uses some kind of wave to shut down ships' computers and give crews amnesia.

"Oh, that's what happened to us," says MacDuff.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.... or should I say "Commander Redshirt"?

tikatikatika

Picard asks La Forge for mission records, to lock down what it is that they're doing out here in BFE, Space. La Forge puts an image of a space station on the viewscreen. The mission is to go into Lysian territory and take out their command station.

"We may have the wrong info," suggests Troi. "Our computers were seriously damaged. We should call Starfleet and check in with them, make sure we're doing the right thing."

"But if we use subspace communication, it'll give us away," Worf points out.

The boys lay things out: they need to maintain radio silence, and take down Lysian central command, which will end the war. There are other ships working in conjunction to help them achieve victory, but nothing will happen unless they take down that station.

Hmmm, convenient.

Picard ends the meeting by having MacDuff set a course for the station.

Troi looks uneasy.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Riker escorts Troi to her quarters, and she invites him in. But once inside, she looks around, and admits that nothing seems familiar, as though everything here belongs to someone else.

"You're the only thing that seems familiar," she says. "but it's not like I know who you are. Just memories of a good feeling, if that makes sense."

She is, however, having bad feelings about this insta-war.

Riker goes to his own quarters, and looks around for a moment, not really recognizing anything. And then he sees that Ro is there, in a nice dress, hanging out.

They're all smiles, like before in the corridor.

Oh, eyeroll. Dude has a fucking horga'hn in his quarters.

Ro says she didn't like the way her quarters were decorated, and that she feels she spent most of her off-hours in his quarters, and it's not subtle that she intends to sleeps with him, and that he does not object.

We go up to the bridge, where a course has been set for the Lysian command center, and helm tells Picard that they're a little less than two days' time from their destination.

Commander Villain Or Redshirt is there in Riker's chair, looking less than at-ease. 

Data reports that there's a vessel ahead, and it matches Starfleet's description of a Lysian destroyer ship, with disruptor weapons. MacDuff gets up and goes to tactical, immediately calling up the phaser array. Why is he doing Worf's job?

"Hang on," says Picard. Dude asks questions firsts, then shoots later. It's not his style to go in, guns blazing. He asks Data what kind of tactical capabilities the warship has.

"Very few shields," Data reports. "And way less fire power than us."

"Yikes," says Riker. "We could blow them out of the sky."

The Lysians hail them.

Picard starts to pick up, but MacDuff interrupts by saying that that could be how they got their memories erased last time, by opening the comm channel to talk.

This sparks an argument: the Enterprise bridge crew wanting to open the channel to talk, and MacDuff yelling that talking could mean that they get their memories erased again. This is why you pick your senior staff, kids - because otherwise people yell at each other across the bridge.

The Lysians stop hailing them, and power up their weapons.

Picard raises shields.

The Lysians fire. Picard gives the order to return it. The Lysians get vaporized, like a fly in bug zapper.

MacDuff, satisfied, sits back in his chair, and congratulates Picard on a job well done.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Later in the Obs Lounge, everyone is in agreement that the Lysian high command has probably been alerted that something went wrong with their warship, and they'll probably be looking for trouble.

Picard asks Crusher if she's found a way to restore their memories.

"Yes, via [science]," she answers. "But I don't want to start anything unless I have the medical files."

"We hit a speedbump on that," La Forge adds. "But Data and I think we found the way to get those, so maybe three more hours?"

Down in Engineering, everybody's favorite chief-engineer-and-android-buddy-combo has hit another file wall.

"It's cool," says Data. "The road has washed out, so I will simply rebuild it."

And he starts doing his Data thing of typing a million WPM.

Sassy La Forge Moment: "You must have been one hell of a bartender."

They consider Data's position, being different from everyone else on board: he's either one of a race of androids, with a home planet and a culture; or he could be built by Starfleet, with a complicated construction, so only one per ship; or he could be unique in the universe.

I'm afraid it's mostly the latter buddy. But you do have a psychopathic brother, sooo... there's that?

"I got in," Data announces. "All of the medical files, personal logs and ship's logs are gone."

"Ugh, that's bullshit," says La Forge.

Troi goes to see Riker in his quarters. She feels weird about the war still, and he says that makes sense, because war sucks, but they have to finish this mission.

Then he tells her that he's been exploring who he is, and shows her a bunch of stuff on the table related to Will Riker. He's surprised that Riker plays music, and climbs mountains. She picks up a book and he tells her to check the inscription: "To Will, All my love, Deanna."

"Explains the connection you feel," he tells her.

They're about to kiss when the door chime goes off. It's Ro.

They try to play it like it's cool, and Troi leaves.

On the bridge, La Forge explains to Picard, MacDuff, Riker and Crusher that he's annoyed with how specific the damage to their computers and memories are. Crusher is as well.

"In both cases, we have skills intact, but no personal connections to who we are?"

Picard asks Crusher if they can do the memory retrieval, and she replies that they can, but she doesn't love that plan. It's risky.

"We should do it," says MacDuff. "I volunteer as tribute."

Shocker. What a hero.

So they set him up down in sick bay, and hook him up to some machine. Wouldn't you know it, he isn't responding until he starts to have seizures.

"You almost died!" says Crusher. "Do you remember anything?"

"No, I'm sorry," replies MacDuff.

She walks away, and he smiles a tiny smile while the music crescendos.

tikatikatikatika

tick

tick

tick

Villain!

Dramatic music!

Later, Picard calls MacDuff into the ready room.

He's really uncomfortable about this war, and the mission that Starfleet has supposedly set them on.  

"Oh, me toooo," oozes Commander Villain. "But our superiors probably feel differently, and who are we to argue?"

"Also," says Picard angrily, "the one enemy ship we encountered, we squashed like a bug. That's some bullshit."

"If you want to stop the mission until we regain our memories, that's cool," shrugs MacDuff. "But by sitting it out until then, we risk the countless lives that could be lost by not finishing this war."

Ugh. This asshole did his homework. Yes, let's drop an A-bomb on the under-muscled Lysians and claim the moral high-ground.

The scene ends with MacDuff leaving the ready room, and Picard staring out the window.

MacDuff is sitting at a table in some quarters (whose quarters did he steal???) when Worf comes in.

Of course.

MacDuff wasn't making headway with Captain Diplomacy, so he's going to appeal to Lieutenant Cowboy instead.

Y'all. I just noticed that he did the Villain Circle, where the antagonist walks around a protagonist while giving a monologue. I never noticed that before. In the scene with Picard just now, he kept his face mostly downward and his eyes averted, as a subordinate might, but got up and faced Picard head-on when spewing his "we gotta do the thing to shorted the war and save lives" speech. Erich Anderson is making some really specific acting choices here.

"We're men of action," MacDuff tells him. "We're not like the others."

Worf agrees, then asks Commander NotMacDuff if he doubts that Picard can handle the situation.

"I just think we should consider the moral implications of not blowing the Lysians out of the sky," MacDuff answers.

Worf says nothing, and leaves. The audience is left in the dark as to how our resident Klingon will choose to act.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

When we come back, the E is sliding into Lysian space, near their central command. They have a bunch of little ships surrounding it, and the bridge crew figures out that they're unmanned sentry pods. And what are these sentries armed with? Some kind of laser, and minimal shields.

Cat toys and two-by-fours. 

Picard is uneasy, so he has Worf lock phasers on some of those little sentry ships, and put up the shields before creeping into Lysian space.

And because Worf is good at his job, he just blows all those sentries out of the sky. Their bitty lasers are doing nothing to the E. Like smacking a line of ants with a flip flop.

Worf is now uneasy as well. "Um, where are the warships?"

Bro, there are none. Commander Liar is fucking with you.

He and Picard decide that maybe there are warships closer to the command center, and they roll up on it, but no warships appear.

There are no sentries now, either.

"Sooo, the weapons on the command center are like, slingshots," Data reports.

"We could take them out with one photon torpedo," cringes Riker.

Troi asks how many people onboard the center, and Data returns an answer of 15,000.

This is too many red flags. Starfleet can move in grey areas pretty easily as far as morals go, but this crew in particular, headed up by this captain, tries to be the good guys as much as they possibly can.

Picard hesitates.

MacDuff, so close to getting the Enterprise crew to essentially begin genocide, is now impatient. He yells at Picard to press the Big Red Button.

"Dude, they're like 100 years behind us, technologically," Riker points out.

"Naw, not doing this," Picard decides. "Open a channel. I wanna talk to them."

Nope. MacDuff has a break, and yells at the bridge crew that the captain is mentally unfit for command, and that he's taking over. He demands that Worf fire all weapons.

Worf stares him down instead of murdering innocent people, so MacDuff punches him. He tumbles over by the science center. Picard and Riker are on their feet, and Riker has a phaser. 

I... was he carrying that on him? Or does the bridge have phasers stashed in little access panels for emergencies?

He fires on MacDuff to keep him away from tactical, and when the phaser washes over him, we get this nightmare fuel:

But it doesn't stun him. He stumbles back, then goes for tactical again. Both Riker and Worf fire on him again, this time knocking him out.

Captain's Log, supplemental: "Going to a starbase. Crusher has started working on a way to restore crew memories."

In the ready room, Picard tells Riker that the Lysians identified "MacDuff" as a Satarran.

Who?

Apparently, the Satarrans and Lysians have been at each other's throats for decades, pretty much evenly matched weapons-wise, but the Satarrans have this clever device that enables them to wipe the memories of the crew of another ship, as well as scramble info in their databanks, so... they just found them a bigger dog in the yard, and convinced him to eat their enemies.

"Yikes on bikes," remarks Riker. "We almost inadvertently ended their war with a photon torpedo."

"Indeed," says Picard, sipping his Earl Grey, hot.

The pirated video player I'm using to watch this episode cuts off the last scene, but Memory Alpha says Riker goes to Ten Forward, and finds Ro and Troi sharing a drink at a table.

Now that everyone has their memories back, it's extra awkward, because Riker and Ro do not get along, but have now seen each other naked.

Ro is all, "thanks for the weird-ass memory, weirdo," while Troi remarks that they may have been acting on subconscious desire.

Way to make it more awkward, Troi.

"Maybe I was just confused," Riker suggests.

Sassy Troi Moment: "If you're still confused tomorrow, you know where my office is."

*******

I really like this episode. It isn't one that really stands out to me, but I do like the elements of it: you have a bit of mystery, some sci-fi tech that doesn't really get explained, but doesn't really have to be, and there's a basic spy component. The idea that you have two warring factions that evenly-matched for weapons, but one has a weird technology that has nothing to do with weaponry, but can be utilized to get some... that's really interesting. We've had inventions like that throughout our own history, why wouldn't another species?

Scientist Ed: I invented a ray that can wipe the memory of someone's identity.

Scientist Steve: That's cool. What do we do with that?

Ed: Dunno.

Bigwig Carl: You idiots are supposed to be thinking up weapons that we can use against the Lysians.

Steve: Yeah, I'd rather invent a life-saving medicine that we can offer to our people at little to no cost.

Bigwig Richard: Fuck that. I have an idea. What if we wipe the identities of another species, one with awesome weapons, and then tell them that their mortal enemy is the Lysians? No blood on our hands, and we can pretty much kill them all quickly and easily. No more Lysians.

Ed: That's evil.

Carl: No one asked your opinion. 

(Okay, not the best example, as Leonardo definitely
 designed weapons, but you get what I mean.)

In addition to the memory-wiping ray-thing, they also somehow had the technology to make one of their own look like a Starfleet officer, and they did so in such a way that not even Crusher and medical equipment noticed that "Kieran" was not from Earth. Sounds like maybe the Satarrans have had priorities elsewhere.

Also, Fake MacDuff had a huge job: he not only had to procure a Starfleet uniform, and take on the mannerisms of someone in an alien military-based organization, but he needed to know a bunch of stuff about humans in general, and Starfleet specifically. What kinds of things was he studying when making his Terran Rogue character sheet? (And was he binge-watching Derry Girls for inspo on his name?)  

It turns out that making an amnesia ray that wipes out someone's identity is really more sci-fi than IRL, because in most cases of amnesia, people still recall who they themselves are, but are generally missing chunks of their past memories, or have trouble making new ones. Seems like you'd have to target a really specific area of the brain to just pick out the identity parts (plus their ray managed to catch Data -impressive). The brain is a pretty wild machine, though. "I can't recall who I am, but I know how everything around me works" still functions as a premise because that absolutely happens. You can wake up from a coma and not remember big chunks of your life, but motor skills still work. You can use hand tools and navigate a space. Something's missing, but it's that one thing. My friend got sick and developed Capgras Syndrome, where you think loved ones have been replaced with imposters. Nothing else wrong, just that.

The gist here is that there were probably too many working parts for the Satarrans to pull this off, but it doesn't bother me. Sure, they'd have to have intimate knowledge of the brains of all of the species aboard the Enterprise, as well as knowledge of how the E's computer banks worked, and that they most likely had to target Starfleet as their Biggest Dog in the Yard, and spend years on their research, but... I think the premise here was interesting enough for me to shrug it off and decide that it didn't matter that much.

Fun Facts:

- The original idea for this episode came from drafting soldiers by rewriting their memories, which is a gross way to get foot soldiers, but could be a thought-provoking story. It's a premise that will be used in a season four Voyager episode, "Nemesis."

- There were three "amnesia" episodes pitched for season four, and this was not polished enough to be made until season five. The others were "Future Imperfect" and "Clues."

- The premise here, according to Brannon Braga, was if everyone forgets who they are, how will they get along, and will they figure out who is who?

- This episode is a bottle show.

- The Lysian central command is a reuse of the Edo god from "Justice."

- When Riker tells Troi that he is surprised that he can play the trombone, he plays a bit of "The Nearness of You," which he had also played in "11001001."

- This is the third time we see Picard take the helm. (The other two are "11001001" and "Booby Trap.")

- Michael Piller thought this episode didn't live up to the original premise.

- Rick Berman said it was "thought-provoking," but not great.

- Brannon Braga thought the mystery bit with MacDuff didn't work well.

- Braga, Ronald D Moore, and Jeri Taylor all spoke highly of the love triangle between Ro, Riker, and Troi. Taylor specifically cited that Ro being involved in a comedic bit hit nicely.

- Michelle Forbes said that she especially enjoyed those parts as well, working with Jonathan Frakes and exploring a different side of an established character.

- This episode won an Emmy for special FX.

Red deaths: 0 (Imposter Alien in Red Shirt doesn't count)
To date: 1
Gold deaths: 0
To date: 0

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

Sassy La Forge moments: 1

To date: 1

Sassy Ro Moments: 2
To date: 2

Sassy Worf Moment: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Riker Moments: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date:  0

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

Sassy Keiko Moments: 0

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

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 3

To date: 34

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 0
To date: 8

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 
To date: 2
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
To date: 1
Picard Maneuvers: 1
To date: 8
Tea, Earl Grey: 3
To date: 6

Mentions of the number 47: 0

To date: 2