TNG: “Time Squared”

Date: March 19, 2020

Season 2, Episode 13

Setting the Stage: I watched this episode today along with another, but I have to get up early to take Professor Zoom to get his teeth cleaned so I’ve only got time to write up one episode today. It was a fun day of working at home with my new furry coworkers and also husband’s first day working in his office (the bedroom across the hall from mine). He sees the advantages of working from home via way of having his own bathroom and being able to take nap when needed. He does, however, prefer the office environment. I miss the campus environment and seeing my students, but I’m super happy to have my fur babies with me all day. We had leftovers for lunch and went to support another local vendor this evening with prime rib sandwiches, now available for curbside delivery. I’m still listening to El Ten Eleven radio on Pandora, just like yesterday.

Favorite Quote:

Riker: Captain?

Picard: Yes, Number One.

Riker: Are you on the Bridge?

Picard: Where else would I be?

Riker: Well, right now I think you should be in Shuttle bay two.

Riker not believing his eyes and Picard being snark with his first officer.

This episode opens with Riker cooking eggs for Worf, Pulaski, La Forge, and Data. Worf shovels his food down while the others are not so impressed when they get the call that there is a shuttle craft without power. When it gets on board it’s shuttle craft 5 from the Enterprise, but that cannot be possible as 5 is still in the bay, whoa. They open the shuttle craft and an unconscious Picard clone is aboard, double whoa.

Troi explains to Picard that the clone is certainly Picard and boy is this going to get confusing. Pulaski goes to wake the clone and it has the opposite effect, maybe this is Picard from the mirror universe? La Forge and Data find out that the opposite remedies reinstate the power on the shuttle craft and now we have a 6 hour time travel mystery to solve. The log of the craft shows the Enterprise being destroyed as soon as the Picard clone left the ship, but it’s not going to happen until 3 hours from their current time.

3 hours later, a vortex opens below the Enterprise without warning. Picard starts to overthink his actions because he’s trying to not make the same mistake twice. No matter what he chooses nothing is working and Picard and his clone keep getting hit by a strange lightning from the vortex. Picard prime orders Pulaski to release the Picard clone who moves to shuttle bay 2 under the direction of Picard prime. Picard prime talks to the Picard clone about the decision and trying to figure out what the other choice was, then he phasers the clone to death. Picard prime decides to dive in to the vortex and O’Brien reports the clone and cloned craft have disappeared. The Enterprise lives and the vortex disappears and I’m sitting here like the Grandfather in Moonstruck.

So I’m not sure if I’ve ever explained my process to you but here’s what I do when I watch a Trek episode at home. I pull up Netflix on our smart TV and have my laptop out to take notes on Google Drive. Later I move to my office (where I have two monitors) and have WordPress up on one monitor, with several tabs to reference, and the other monitor has Google (for images), Trek Transcripts, and some other tabs for music and YouTube and such. I reference my short hand notes to write the post, publish it, and link to my Twitter and Facebook.

I go through all of that to explain that the only thing I had in my notes was the following:

“What even was the point of that episode?”

I don’t understand what the scene in Riker’s quarters had to do with anything, I don’t understand why Picard’s clone (as I’m calling it because I couldn’t think of another way to reference him) was thrown through time, why Picard prime and the Enterprise got a second shot at making the decision, and where the vortex came from and what its purpose was. There was nothing in the episode of value aside from seeing how Picard reacts under pressure. I’m even a little peeved that counselors in the 24th century still don’t get much professional courtesy and it’s those with an MD always sneering at those with a PhD or lower. I cannot give anything higher than 1 push up and 1 pull up to this episode.

TA Out!