“He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic.”
Aside from being the source for the bridge of “The Picard Song,” which would secure its place in Star Trek: The Next Generation history forever, “Timescape” is a pretty good, unusual time travel story in which four of our heroes encounter pockets of space in which time appears to have frozen. Guess what: the Enterprise is in one. And so are the Romulans!
“Timescape” is an extremely cleverly disguised bottle show, in that it makes use of nothing but standing sets from Next Gen and Deep Space Nine (the crew area of the Runabout might have been the only new build) while still telling a large-scale story. The science is completely ridiculous – more Doctor Who than Star Trek – but screenwriter Brannon Braga brushes past it at a brisk pace while still maintaining a set of internal rules that make enough sense for the adventure to take place… barely.
Several of the beats are duplicates from last year’s “The Next Phase,” which also featured a couple of Enterprise crew members skulking about the ship unknown to their else-phased cohorts, complete with dastardly Romulans skulking around behind them. It’s good to see the mystery in “Timescape” resolve itself as something other than “the Romulans were trying to blow up the ship,” and watching the various frozen vignettes undo themselves to provide alternate readings against their first impressions (Beverly getting phasered through the gut by accident is a good example) works well.
I think I’ve mentioned previously that I became aware of an extremely strong anti-Braga backlash that kicked up during the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. “Timescape” was frequently cited as one of his key offenses. Watching it again, I get it: this episode warps logic around itself to arrive at its own story. But as I said, within the context of the story, the logic works well enough (or is elided quickly enough) that it doesn’t interfere with the experience. Besides, I was (and am) a huge fan of time travel science fiction, and Braga had a run of episodes that seemed like exploded clockworks in concept and execution. “Timescape” isn’t as good as Braga’s “Cause and Effect” (or “Deadlock” on Voyager, my favourite episode of that series) but it’s fun to watch.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is in stores. Season Seven will conclude the series, starting with our New Year’s special – the blu-ray is in stores now!