2.13 Time Squared

Rating: 2

A duplicate Enterprise shuttlecraft, containing a duplicate (but unconscious) Picard arrives from six hours in the future. The present time Picard has to try to figure out a mystery that has not yet happened.

Comments

Time travel, with its paradoxes and easy plot contrivances, is probably my least favorite style of script.

Nits

Riker says he is a talented cook, yet he makes two huge mistakes. First, he says he is going to make an omelet, then he scrambles the eggs. Second, part of being a good cook is that you do not subject people to something you have not tasted yourself, especially when working with a new ingredient. Yet he scrambles up a batch of foul-tasting Owon eggs without trying a little bit, either in advance, while cooking them, or even after! How can he even adjust his recipe for the next time if he doesn’t sample any?

Could there really be more than one Picard occupying the same area of space? How did he multiply? Shouldn’t he disappear as soon as he reappears in this timeline? And why is Picard #2 ‘out of phase’? No one else who has time traveled seems to have this problem.

Pulaski contacts Picard on the bridge to say that her patient is more coherent. Yet when Picard comes to sick bay, her patient is mute and just looks around like a scared baby. In my dictionary, coherent means ‘consistent; logical’. The time-travel Picard cannot even speak yet; how can he be consistent and logical without speaking?

Memorable Moments

•    The heartbeat background music when the second Picard wakes up.

Quotable Quotes

"Delicious"
– Worf’s atypical reaction to Owon eggs.

"Captain’s log. We have apparently intercepted with…something."
– Picard

Picard: Release him!
Pulaski: Do you know what you’re doing?
Picard: No. Release him.

"Well, they say if you travel far enough, you’ll eventually meet yourself. Having experienced that, Number One, it’s not something I would care to repeat."
- Picard