This always bugged me about the finale...

[woodstock]

I hope I can explain this, but in the future time frame, the Pasteur scans where the anomaly would be, thus triggering it. They get attacked and rescued by the Enterprise, which later goes back to where the anomaly is to stop it, but since it only moves backward through time, any moment further from when the Pasteur first initiated it, it wouldn't exist; and it certainly wouldn't be giving off any energy or whatever it was that the future Enterprise could stop. How do you explain that?

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Yes, that stood out like a sore thumb. A clever writer would have done one of two things:

1. (Obvious) Have the anomaly there already, but when they scan it, it disappears. Let Picard ludicrously stew over it for a while ("Why was it smaller in the future, but it shrunk to nothing when we scanned it??!")

2. (More non-intuitive) They arrive and find no anomaly. Do the scan. Still nothing. Suddenly, someone exclaims: "Sir, ships records now showing the anomaly *was* there since our arrival, but ceased to exist when scanned!" This approach would suggest a "re-written" timeline in the past.

 

[JesterFace]

Perhaps... Like our own universe, the beginning was a battle of matter and anti-matter. Obviously matter won, there was just little bit more of it.

What about the anti-time universe, perhaps it existed in your timeline for a while, enough for the Enterprise to arrive and find it, but after that, maybe anti-time won and the journey backwards began? Maybe anti-time won just hours later, or many years later...

 

[Timo]

Having the anomaly be asymmetric (only expanding into the past) would leave the future folks with too little to do, alas...

So the writers should simply have made it clearer that the rare thing about the anomaly was that it expanded both into the future (as normal) and into the past (an abnormal thing).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[woodstock]

So the writers should simply have made it clearer that the rare thing about the anomaly was that it expanded both into the future (as normal) and into the past (an abnormal thing).

Timo Saloniemi

It was created in the future time frame, but perhaps remains static, not growing bigger (or smaller), and only grows larger as it travels back. Makes sense either way, nice way of thinking about it. I've posted it before, if only for a couple lines of dialogue...

 

[Jeffe525]

I'd say 2 things to that:

1. Since the Pasteur was scanning it moving forward in time, it's possible to explain that the anomaly was created in the Pasteur's near future and then started to grow backwards (like stretching a rubber band 1 way before sending it in the other direction).

2. Whatever the reason, I'm satisfied just knowing that the whole scenario was created by Q to test Picard. Q set the rules, which may not be consistent with normal physics. So it's very possible that the same anomaly wouldn't even happen at all if a similar thing ever happened in "real life."

 

[Trekker4747]

I just say that the anomaly expanded into the future for a while until "anti-time" began to be assertive and concentrated enough in the anomaly to prevent and forward expansion and then it expanded into the past. In other words, has they sat there and watched the anomaly they'd probably observe it to continue to shrink into nothing as the anti-time asserted itself.

 

[InklingStar]

I noticed that as a child twenty years ago and it has bugged me ever since. The other (minor) plot hole is the fact that the creation of the anomaly was triggered by three scans from the same ship at the same time... except that in the future timeline, the Pasteur made the scan, not the Enterprise.

 

[CommanderTrip]

yes yes yes.... but it doesn't explain why the past enterprise had the season 3 -7 captains chair. its more than just a temporal anomaly!

 

[Lance]

^ I guess the answer is that not everything is strictly accurate in Q's anti-time "past", just as not everything is strictly accurate in Q's anti-time "future" (judging by how events really turned out in the TNG movies). The brown bridge lockers and the ships-of-the-line in the obs lounge were back, but the Captain's Chair and the 'unplugged' extra engineering corridors were not.

Whether or not these are indications that Picard wasn't really time travelling, and that it was just some kind of test set up by Q, is down to the individual viewer. But that's certainly how I interpret it.

Bear in mind also that apart from the anomaly, events in one 'timeline' have no affect on the other two. So Picard telling his crew in the 'present' about his time hopping doesn't automatically make their 'future' selves believe him when he says he's doing it there, even though if there were a direct link one would assume that they'd put two-and-two together. The way I see it, all three time zones are mutually exclusive 'pocket timelines', and the anomaly may not even literally exist in any of them -- it's all part of Q's test.

 

[Kor]

The whole thing was a Q illusion.

Kor

 

[Lance]

The whole thing was a Q illusion.

Kor

I do tend to concur.

A lot of people are tempted into trying to treat the 'past' segments as being somehow being more authentic than the future segments, but the reality is that all three time zones seem to be mutually exclusive, and the past section doesn't really resemble TNG season one any more than the future sections resembles anything we actually saw in the TNG movies. The most plausible answer is that all three zones are just fictional figments created by Q in order to test Picard. Which is not to say that the threat isn't real, because if Picard hadn't solved the puzzle, then the Continuum may still have "put and end to their trek through the stars" just as they promised.

 

[JesterFace]

The most plausible answer is that all three zones are just fictional figments created by Q in order to test Picard. Which is not to say that the threat isn't real, because if Picard hadn't solved the puzzle, then the Continuum may still have "put and end to their trek through the stars" just as they promised.

I agree with this.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

While I wouldn't have minded a line to the effect of acknowledging it, I have to figure that it's just that Q was taking pity on the linear humans who can only experience time moving forward - Given that Picard had not solved the paradox until he was on Admiral Riker's Enterprise, the anomaly would not appear, but in order for him to solve anything, he had to experience the anomaly.

Q's involvement is a pretty convenient handwave for any inconsistency. You know, like how the anomaly is supposed to have been formed by the interaction of the Enterprise's scan across the three time frames, but in the future timeline, it's the PASTEUR that runs the scan, not the Enterprise.

 

[trekshark]

My head cannon has it working a bit differently than the characters implied. It grew in both directions from the point of creation and took a while after creation to become detectable in either direction. That's why it wasn't there when they first showed up. The real question is why the pasture's scanning beam was identical to the E-D's since they specifically say talk about three identical scans IIRC.
Ultimately though none of it was real, it was all Q game

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

the anomaly is supposed to have been formed by the interaction of the Enterprise's scan across the three time frames, but in the future timeline, it's the PASTEUR that runs the scan, not the Enterprise.

Actually, it's only a guess on Data's part which ever mentions the scans all coming from the Enterprise. His exact words were:

The two other pulses have the exact same amplitude modulation as our own pulse. It is as if all three originated from the Enterprise.

Since Data is the one who actually MADE the pulse (in all three time frames), then it makes sense they would all have the same modulation. And since present-time Data is the only one who suggests that they come from the same ship, it makes even more sense, since that version of Data obviously can't know of the Pasteur which doesn't even exist yet.

 

[Vanyel]

My opinion is that the future enterprise should never see the anomaly at all.

What would happen then is Riker, in a last favor to his friend, mentor, and former captain, could have the future Enterprise scan the area; the scan sees the build up of anti-time and the rupture but nothing else. The Pasture's sensors could be said to have missed the rupture because it is a hospital ship and doesn't need sensors that are that as sensitive as those on the Enterprise. Data and Geordi figure out they can't see the anomaly because it's traveling backwards through time but they need to stop it because it will interfere with history. Data and Geordi with the help of time traveling Picard devise the idea of the static warp shell. Riker can then take the Enterprise into the rupture, and suddenly find itself in the anomaly and everything happens as it did.

 

[Marsden]

I'm going to say, they didn't want you to notice that.

I'll say, maybe it grows in both directions. But of course, if the future is destroyed we can't see that yet, and if the past is destroyed we never existed to go out into space to cause it..... Irrational, Illogical, please explain.......boom.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

A wizard did it.

(Literally.)