Episode of the Week: 4x05 "Remember Me"

Finally, an episode of TNG where the female character takes the lead in carrying the story and it doesn't involve the predictable one-shot romance that goes nowhere and does nothing. Nothing can bring this episode down!

We open our episode with the Enterprise D arriving at a very familiar station where Beverly is awaiting the arrival of her long time friend Dalen Quaice. While escorting him to his quarters, the two reminiscent about those they have lost, with Dalen being his wife, and Crusher with her husband. This all culminates with Dalen ending the conversation with this.

Dalen: You know what the worst part of growing old is? So many of the people you've known all your life are gone and you realise you didn't take the time to appreciate them while you still could.​

There's something about that line that doesn't work, but I can't figure out what it is... Bah, it's probably nothing.

Our episode continues with Wesley and Geordi in engineering where Geordi has developed a random hated of Wesley all of a sudden. I mean, he's really lashing out on him to get the engines back online, even to the point where he tells Wesley what would happen if Picard orders warp and the engines aren't ready yet. Yeah, because that kind of thing has never happened before. After feeling a bit empty with the previous conversation with her old friend, Beverly comes in to check and see how Wesley's doing. Wesley is about to do something when a certain flash occurs and Beverly is gone. Dun dun dun!

What comes next is pretty cool. We follow Beverly back to Dalen's quarters to check up on him, but he isn't there. When security looks into the situation, they find no records of Dalen ever coming aboard. Even O'Brien says that when Beverly was in the transporter room to greet him, all she did was say hi to O'Brien and leave. Well Beverly isn't going to take this mystery sitting down so she orders O'Brien to sickbay for further examination. It's here that she learns that her assistants are gone, along with a huge number of the crew. Unfortunately, every time she tries to tell someone this, their response is.... well, confusion. Everything that is going on appears to be the way it always was for the crew. Even when Worf goes missing, no one acknowledges that there ever was a Klingon crew member.

As the situation gets worse and worse, Beverly begs Picard to return to Starbase since she believes that's where the whole mess started. After some time passes, Beverly finds that Picard is the only crew member on the bridge, which leads to this exchange.

Beverly: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
Picard: We've never needed a crew before. ​

Welcome aboard the USS VENGEANCE D! It all makes sense now! Beverly isn't traveling through dimensions where everything and everyone are disappearing. She's simply phasing into the JJ Abrams Universe!

All kissing aside, Beverly tries to open up more towards Picard in order to get him to understand what she's going through, only to realize that the moment she looks away, he's gone. And it gets worse too. Not only is everyone gone, but everything outside the immediate area of the Enterprise is gone too.

It turns out that during Wesley's experiment in engineering, Beverly got stuck into the warp bubble which caused her sudden disappearance to Wesley, but not for herself. Wesley, along with the sudden arrival of the Traveller, devise a plan to try and get Beverly back.

This is where I give high points to this episode. Despite the scenes where Beverly is practically begging Wesley to save her, we do see her attempt to solve this mystery on her own, and to my utter surprise, actually figures it all out on her own! The Vortexes that were pulling her earlier were not trying to kill her, but bring her back to her dimension. So when Beverly figures out that the Vortex will most likely appear in engineering, she hurries along before the ship completely vanishes and makes it back.

We learn that the cause of everyone disappearing was because her emotional state on losing everyone was literally manifested in the Warp Bubble. It seems odd that such a thing could happen since... wait. Now I understand why that line from Dalen didn't work! Isn't Star Trek supposed to be set in this super optimistic future where humanity has accepted death as a part of life and NO ONE GRIEVES over one's passing? How did something like this get passed Gene Roddenberry's approval? Something else must have distracted him but I can't figure-

Traveller: It is time Wesley. Begin by letting go of your guilt, Wesley. Focus on the present. Now close your eyes. Trust yourself.
Wesley: I can't. I can't do it.
Traveller: When the time comes, you will, Wesley. You will. You must open yourself. Let it all go. There. There it is. We're moving into phase now. There's your warp bubble, Wesley. ​

Well doesn't that just explain everything. I guess Gene's love of Wesley is more powerful than his insistence on portraying the future as a carefree society. I know I edited out some of the words from the dialogue that mentions mathematics and his mother, but come on. The Traveller's tone is so intimate sounding that it really comes off as the Traveller literally seducing Wesley, complete with lines from Wesley sounding so inexperienced.

CONCLUSION:
For a season that started out so heavily male oriented, it's great to finally see an episode where Beverly not only carries the story from beginning to end, but also show that she's capable of figuring out problems on her own. Despite the very creepy vibe of the Traveller, it was kind of cool to see a character return from Season One for the sole purpose of wanting to help out. The episode may have problems, but Beverly isn't one of them.

STINGER:

 

I love this episode. And there are two stand out lines for me.

"If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!" - I just love her leap in logic here. From now on, everytime I get into a situation that I feel is not my fault I am going to utter this line.

There is also a really tender moment between Picard and Crusher in his ready room - I cannot recall the precise line having watched this last night, but it is something along the lines of "I'd do anything for you Bev, I trust you."

 

my fav thing about this episode was all the talk crusher had with the computer, how well all of that was thought out. i always thought they did the computer stuff very elegantly.

 

A good episode. It's a shame they couldn't figure out how to use McFadden more effectively more often.

 

As a kid, I thought this episode was boring. I found all the Troi/Crusher episodes boring. Unless it was a Picard/Data/Worf episode, yawwwn. As I grew up, I gained an appreciation for good stories, even if they had no 'splosions. This is one of those.

It felt like after Crusher was out in the second season and returned in the third, the writing staff didn't know what to do with her. The sexual tension with Picard established in season 1 was mostly gone after she returned, though it did come back in a few episodes when the story needed it.

 

An episode I really enjoy and really don't think I can think of much wrong to say about it unless I get very, very petty. Some great lines in this episode and great moments. I love the moment when the camera pans from Crusher on the faux-bridge, through the "warp bubble" wormhole into Main Engineering on the real ship when Wesley stands in the light from it in silhouette. The stance Wesley takes in that shadow just has a very epic and Sci-Fi-y feel.

There's also great interactions between Crusher and the computer when she's alone on the ship (even more amazing when you realize McFadden was reacting to the computer's lines being read by the director or some grip off-screen and not Majel.) I love the bit when she basically talks the computer into a logic loop and nearly blue-screens it.

"Do I have the necessary qualifications to perform this mission alone?"
"No."
"Then why am I the only one on board?"

The the computer makes a series of beeps and noises implying the strain it's having on trying to answer the question.

Just a good, good, episode.

If there's one quibble it's I wonder how old her mentor was supposed to be. She expresses some concern over his age and health but given the medical marvels of the 24c I doubt he was in "that" bad a condition unless he was a centenarian in which case he fared better at that age than Leonard McCoy did physically. But if he was just in his seventies or even eighties it strikes me as unlikely he be of poor health and/or "frail". again, given what we know about life spans and health in the 24c. (And, of course, not taking into consideration he may have had some disease making his age more of a factor with his health.)

But, yeah, just a good, good episode.

 

If I'm remembering right, the line was Picard saying "Your word has always been good enough for me." Nice moment.

Great episode! This was at a time when, for me, the show could still pull rabbits out of its hat and surprise with something unexpected. I remember thinking when it was on that something was up when I realized the bulk of the episode had no exterior shots of the ship. When the warp bubble 'reveal' scene that Trekker4747 mentions came up, I was like "Wtf is going on?!" Then the "She's gone." line. After the commercial, what should pop up but a shot of the ship! It was all set up so well!

It was also this episode when I realized how gorgeous Gates McFadden was!

 

This episode is so good. Definitely a favorite Crusher episode of mine.

I love Patrick Stewart's delivery on this line: Picard: We've never needed a crew before. Like it's the most natural thing to have a ship with 2 people on it.

 

True, true...but I suppose you could say that's how Beverly perceived Picard to be: understanding and supportive.

Sort of like Riker in Future Imperfect, where he apparently saw his team-mates still plugging away at their same old jobs sixteen years later.

 

Well, it's possible that the warp bubble manifestation of Picard was as "real" as the actual Picard. Given the hand waving that we don't really know how these things work, but apparently Picard and everyone else was acting "normally" enough for Beverly to not be suspicious of them. (Their behavior outside of not noticing the changes in the "universe", that is.)

So this could be "a" "real" Picard in some way or another created in a pocket universe that existed on its own for a few hours or whatever the length of time in the episode was.

 

This is one of the first TNG episodes I ever watched. I loved it from start to finish.

 

That's the one - thankyou

This was definitely Beverley's finest outing.

 

The Warp Bubble created a universe based on her thoughts of the time of creation. The experiment Wesley did was along the lines of the warp experiments done on the ship in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where The Traveler's harnessing of thoughts took the ship to the "edge of the universe" where thoughts manifested themselves into reality.

At the time of the bubble's creation Beverly's thoughts were on losing those around her, inspired by her mentor talking about being recently widowered, thinking of her husband Jack's death and probably Wesley's impending leaving of the ship to go to The Academy. These thoughts created the Warp Bubble "universe" with everyone around her disappearing without much more than a second thought by everyone (again, probably inspired by the way people "forget" about lost ones over time.)

We could probably argue that as the Warp Bubble "collapsed" this pocket universe got smaller and smaller and could maintain less and less persons in it. But the "Beverly's thoughts created this situation" is the "read-into it" explanation the episode was aiming for.

 

"If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"

I've always loved this episode.

 

It's a little bizarre but it works really well. It would have worked just as well with anyone else as the lead, but I suppose it lends some strength to the Traveler subplot.

 

I watched it tonight after dinner. It holds up pretty well. About the only thing that stuck out to me was one line Gates delivers (but that one line has always bothered me). Otherwise, it was quite enjoyable.