Time travel has been an essential part of Star Trek since the show’s first series. The franchise has proved to be particularly good at opening up the potential of the sci-fi staple, from action adventure to moral conundrums and, in the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s ‘Timescape,’ a classic sci-fi conundrum. In a franchise packed with episodes that play with time, ‘Timescape’ pushed the barriers of Star Trek, challenging viewers as much as it did the show’s crew.

By Season 6, TNG was at the peak of its powers, shrugging off its difficult early years to become a TV phenomenon. It’s responsible for setting up Star Trek's peak run during the late 1980s and 1990s. As the franchise produced an increasing number of episodes, subsequent series were accused of technobabble — baffling viewers as they ran away with the science of the 24th century. However, TNG built considerable success by balancing the characters, drama, and science of its adventures. ‘Timescape’ is an excellent example, and also an episode that pushed the boundaries of television sci-fi and set the stall for future series.

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What Happens In 'Timescape?'

‘Timescape’ opens with Commander Riker taking the USS Enterprise to respond to a Romulan distress call after barely surviving an attempt to feed Data's cat Spot. Meanwhile, Captain Picard, Data, La Forge, and Troi are aboard a runabout returning to the Enterprise after a conference when Troi sees her shipmates freeze for a few seconds. When Troi also freezes for 3 minutes, Data finds he cannot contact the Enterprise. After the runabout’s starboard nacelle uses up two days of fuel in seconds, Picard’s hand rapidly ages when he reaches for a bowl of rotting fruit, and the officers discover their runabout is caught in a field of temporal disturbances. These bubbles, in which time is moving at different speeds, lead back to their rendezvous point with the Enterprise.

The runabout finds the Enterprise locked in apparent combat with a Romulan Warbird, literally. The two ships are caught in giant temporal fragments, frozen in time. A forensic examination unfolds as the runabout crew uses emergency transporter armbands to generate sub-space fields that protect them from being frozen on the Enterprise. It looks like the Romulans have boarded the ship in a surprise attack.

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In the sickbay, Troi finds a Romulan shooting Dr. Crusher: a disrupter blast she’s unlikely to survive when the timeline returns to normal. In the transport room, Picard wonders why Romulans were beamed aboard the ship in the middle of a battle when Data contacts him from engineering to confirm that a warp core breach is in progress. Despite appearances, time isn’t frozen, it’s progressing very slowly, and Data calculates that they have less than 10 hours until the irreversible breach consumes the ship.

When Picard is confined to the runabout by a bout of temporal narcosis, La Forge, Data, and Troi head to the Romulan ship to discover why the Enterprise was sharing power with the Romulan craft. They learn the Romulans were trying to turn off the energy transfer after a power surge, and find a possible cause in the vessel’s strangely inactive engine core.

When Data scans the artificial quantum singularity that powers the Warbird and detects organic traces inside, he inadvertently restarts time. Picard observes the destruction of the Enterprise before time reverses to its previous point, unexploding the ship and freezing once again.

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When La Forge tries to access the Romulan bridge, he is attacked by a male Romulan who is unaffected by the freeze. Troi is forced to surrender the critically injured La Forge to the static timestream by removing his armband. Aboard the runabout, the mysterious assailant is revealed as another species not native to their space-time continuum, possessing a Romulan body.

Before he phases away, the suffering male explains he and his partner incubate their young in black holes and mistook the Romulan’s artificial gravity well for one. The Enterprise’s misguided power transfer subsequently ruptured time.

At Picard’s suggestion, the small crew suggests reversing the effect caused by Data’s earlier scan. The successful time reversal reverts the core breach, allows time to pick up La Forge, and saves Crusher. A Romulan explains he was trying to shoot a female Romulan imposter, the earlier imposter’s partner, who by this time has made it to engineering to attack Data.

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With the android unable to stop the energy transfer, Picard steers the runabout into the beam remotely, shorting the transfer and resolving the crisis. The Romulan crew are rescued before the warbird vanishes. As Picard tells a confused Riker:

In a coda, the Enterprise heads to the Neutral Zone to drop off the rescued Romulans while Riker drops in on Data. Still wary of Spot, he finds the android exploring how humans perceive the passage of time. Having boiled a kettle over 60 times with no insight, Riker advises him to turn off his internal chronometer but not to be late for his shift.

Why Is 'Timescape' Significant?

‘Timescape’ covered a lot of ground, fusing the show’s confidence with its ambitious ideas. It opens with a brilliant example of what endeared TNG to many viewers — four senior Bridge officers share jokes and anecdotes about the conference they’ve just left, brilliantly conveying their traits and interests. The opening showcases the show’s likable characters, and it’s superbly written and directed before abruptly launching the disturbing mystery.

Adam Nimoy took the directing reins for this ambitious episode, penned by Brannon Braga from Mark Gehred-O'Connell’s pitch about a starship trapped in time like amber. Braga had previously received plaudits for his well-received script for Cause and Effect, which dealt with a destructive time loop, but with ‘Timescape’ he told Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages that he wanted to “outdo” his previous effort with this a brain-spinning temporal mystery.

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‘Timescape’ is also notable for how well it sits in the season. TNG was very much a peak syndication show. That meant it was sold on to networks that could often show episodes out of order, making soft-resets at the end of each episode the norm and story arcs an impossibility, contrary to the series many genre fans enjoy today. However, the confidence of the production shines through with nods to previous events. Troi has a key role thanks to her familiarity with a Romulan Warbird in the recent episode Face of the Enemy. At the same time, Picard’s solution draws on his experience in the time-twisting two-parter that opened the sixth season, Time’s Arrow.

The Reputation Of 'Timescape' And Its Impact On The Star Trek Franchise

‘Timescape’ has the potential for a tangle of continuity errors and plot holes, and fans have enjoyed putting it under the microscope for years. The complicated time-based plot may inspire a galaxy starship full of questions. Still, as one Redditor says on the DaystromInstitute subreddit, its production makes it feel like a remarkably “fresh and crisp” hour of TNG. Although it’s an episode that, aside from its character moments, heavily depends on time, the science of the fiction doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny. One brilliant scientific post on Reddit has a deep dive into the physics behind the episode, explaining why fans shouldn’t worry too much.

However, ‘Timescape’ has generally stood the test of time and continues to fuel some fantastic fan debate. The disappearance of the Warbird at the end, explained away by Picard, remains the most inexplicable part, but using the Romulans as a red herring is one of its best. It is an excellent use of the race, considering some of their struggles during TNG. After ‘Face of the Enemy’ took Deanna Troi undercover as a member of the Romulan secret police, the Tal Shiar, ‘Timescape’ continues the demystifying of the Romulans that would continue into recent series like Star Trek: Picard.

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‘Timescape’ has been called underrated, most likely because it can be lost in the time-troubling episodes that find an excuse to destroy the Enterprise. The iconic ship was previously destroyed in Season Two’s ‘Time Squared’ and Season Five’s ‘Cause And Effect.’ It’s the writer of that latter story and who is key to the legacy of ‘Timescape.’ Braga has over 100 Star Trek writing credits and would go on to produce Star Trek: Voyager (particularly famous for its technobabble) and co-create Star Trek: Enterprise.

Among his credits is co-writing two Star Trek features. In one of those, Star Trek: Generations, he finally managed to destroy the Enterprise-D for good. In the follow-up, Star Trek: First Contact, he contributed what remains one of the franchise’s greatest time travel adventures.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Sci-Fi

Release Date

September 28, 1987

Cast

Patrick Stewart , Jonathan Frakes , Brent Spiner , Gates McFadden , Denise Crosby , Michael Dorn , Marina Sirtis , Wil Wheaton , LeVar Burton , Whoopi Goldberg

Seasons

7

Creator

Gene Roddenberry

Number of Episodes

178