I just watched Cause and Effect. I thought it was a really clever time travel episode, and the mystery with the number 3 was really good. What did you think?
I still remember tuning in at the beginning of the episode and wondering WTF had just happened and being deeply worried that they'd started airing the episode half an hour earlier or such. In short, I love the episode. I recall seeing the trailer the week before and seeing the Bozeman, and it looked similar enough to Reliant that I wondered whether they were planning to somehow bring Khan back or otherwise...well, no idea what they might have been planning.
A really classic episode. I could rewatch it over and over and over. Which is ironic, given the story.
For my money, one of the best and most memorable episodes of TNG, in no small part due to Frakes' excellent direction. The ever-shifting perspective through each time loop, the close-ups, canted and top-down angles, and clever editing tricks create a strong sense of disorientation, effectively placing the viewer in Beverly's shoes.
On initial viewing, it's pretty great and novel and never done properly before, being in a time loop and how to get out of it. (Okay, a Doctor Who story did it for part of an episode but fell pretty flat. C&E does it so much better, to the point it makes it its own.) It's great least until act three where we know what's going to happen, just being dragged out until the solution arrives. But the first 50~70% of the episode holds up pretty brilliantly. Braga would become a stalwart for 90s Trek's high concept sci-fi stories, which Trek needed more of... when you see his name, expect something different, inventive, innovative, and/or cool. Anyone who is aware of Lifecall commercials, and the infamous one from 1989, will easily piece together Geordi almost falling over and grateful Ensign Fletcher was there to save him. I never understood what was funny, apart from cornball acting that's anything but atypical for adverts, but it became a meme decades before memes as we know them today were invented.
Yes, an absolute classic episode, not just for TNG but for Star Trek overall. I recall seeing this episode when it first aired way back in 1992 and being blown away. I couldn't believe how it was unfolding in such as unique way and it predated the movie Groundhog Day by a year!
Oh wow, I was thinking of other sci-fi loop episodes - including the SG1 with hilarious Jack, but I’ve always thought it all traced back to Groundhog Day.
Cause and Effect never interested me beyond the first viewing. It’s repetitive and the ship shouldn’t be so prone to exploding from such a minor injury, so seeing happen over and over is just ridiculous. Everyone’s day is extremely mundane and not worth seeing repeatedly. Either one of the solutions would have been fine if acted on earlier without all the discussion. It’s the inaction that keeps killing them. Hell, they could have done both at the same time. It’s arbitrary. In the end the solution to the problem doesn’t tell us anything about the characters. It’s completely mechanical puzzle solving and so it really doesn’t matter.
Kind of. Look at how Discovery did the time loop. They had specific goals, and part of that meant Bernham exploring her feelings and inner self in order to get the outcome that was optimal. She wasn't just picking between an interchangeable A or B. The solution said something about what she was willing to sacrifice. That matters to her, and it matters to me as far as what's entertaining and what isn't. Stories need human connections. Cause and Effect doesn't have one.
I felt a human connection to the characters. The episode really conveyed the sense of disorientation and confusion that the characters were going through.
The original intent was to have the Enterprise-D collide with a TOS Constitution class starship, but it was deemed impractical to build a brand-new filming model that would only be used for one episode (since it wouldn't be able to be used as a 24th century guest ship). Of course, that thinking completely changed by the time of DS9's "Trials & Tribbleations."
I just re-watched it earlier today. I really liked this genre of episodes, namely the episode where there's something off and the crew has to work together to find out what it is. "Clues," "Night Terrors," "Schisms," and somewhat "Disaster" all work this way. Part of what makes them work so well is that they focus on different characters. I think part of the reason this episode works is that it puts Crusher in the spotlight. Beverly only really had a handful of standout moments, but for a good portion of this episode, we focus on her, as she goes through her day (several times). Part of the reason that some might not like the ending is that the focus shifts away from her and to Data, who, by this point, already had numerous focus episodes and would continue to have them throughout the run. I realized that's why I love "Disaster" so much, it really shook up the cast. Even though we did focus on Data, Picard, and Riker, they're mixed in with different characters, who they don't usually play off of (not that we hadn't seen Riker and Data, but less often than with other pairs). I realized watching today that I like the dynamic between Geordi and Beverly. Putting them together in "Disaster" was smart, because it gave them time together that didn't involve his VISOR. I'm assuming Beverly was off duty (but in her uniform, along with the others for costuming reason) during the poker game. But Geordi comes in and requests her. I kept thinking, "well, that's convenient for the plot," but then I realized she's probably his "go-to" doctor because of the VISOR. If TNG had been serialized, I'm sure Geordi's arc would have involved the bit Pulaski drops about ocular implants and Beverly would have worked with him on getting them. (As an aside, I always thought Geordi felt guilty about the VISOR's role in the destruction of the D, so he decided to opt for the implants at that point)
I'll say this for it: it's one of the very few eps I feel I have watched more often than I actually have. It may be a bit repetitive, but the episode attempts to alleviate that by telling each loop subtly differently so that it doesn't get too boring, which I think is an achievement in itself. I agree that in the end, the solution doesn't tell us much about the characters, but there are more 'problem of the week' trek episodes where the plot ultimately didn't. What I never quite understood is why Data would choose three as the most informative keyword to transmit and pick up again in the next loop to act upon. I get that it had to be very brief, but why not (say) 'R' to indicate Riker? I suppose an android still conceptualises differently from a human .... Oh, and I do enjoy rewatching it every now and then, too.
I think Geordi said they could have even accommodated a word, in which case "Riker." It's lucky Data didn't think "3," I'm the third in the hierarchy, okay, my idea it is!" I was also struck by how they didn't send a message in the last loop. If things didn't work out, then they would have been back to square one, waiting for a loop in which they figured out to send a message ahead again.
Clues is an interesting take on the crew not trusting Data and the insatiable curiosity of human beings. Night Terrors is a personal story for Troi, though it's a bit silly. Disaster is definitely a great character study of everyone involved as to how they would handle a crisis. Schisms is the most like Cause and Effect in that the main character is completely interchangeable and nothing interesting is learned at the end. Riker is being abducted and... ?