The entire bridge-crew of the Enterprise, sans Worf is in 1890s Earth investigating a temporal incursion by aliens from the future. Data arrived first and is independently working on an investigation along with the help of the 19th century version of Guinan while trying to avoid giving Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who had eavesdropped on Guinan and Data and knows what is going on, any more information about their mission or the future.
The rest of the crew arrived separately and a few days after Data and are conducting their own investigation on the actions of the aliens from the future.
The episode's action seems to pick up a few days after Picard and co. arrived in 19th Century San Francisco, where they've managed to get period-appropriate clothing and set themselves up as a traveling acting troupe in a boarding house. They've found a number of sick patients in nearby clinic where there's been reports of many deaths due to cholera. Crusher finds this unlikely as cholera isn't the virulent and further investigation shows that the most recent deceased person died from having his neural energy drained.
It's suspected the aliens feed off of human neural energy and are traveling back to 19th century Earth to collect it, using the time's limited medical knowledge as a cover for the deaths.
Data has built a device that can alert him whenever a temporal vortex is used which only further motivate Clemens to monitor Data and try and to stop him.
After a brief encounter with the aliens in the clinic the bridge crew manages to reunite itself and combine efforts to stop the aliens who're using a nearby mine as the focal point for the time shifts.
The crew prepares to find a way to use the aliens' cane (which was acquired in the clinic encounter) to travel back to the 24th century but plans are thwarted first when Clemens arrives with a pistol to stop the crew and soon the aliens show up too and activate the device.
The activated device opens the vortex as Data holds it, removing his head and sending his body into the future, Guinan is knocked to the ground, hitting her head on a rock and becoming injured. Picard orders the bridge crew through the vortex as he rushes to Guinan's side, Clemens seizes the opportunity and goes through the vortex just before it closes.
The bridge-crew -sans Picard-, Data's body and Clemens are now on the alien planet in the present, once back on the ship Riker orders Worf to escort Clemens around the ship, but Troi offers to do it instead, believing herself to be a more accommodating escort.
Geordi wants to take Data's body to the lab and see if he cannot re-attach the head recovered in the cavern in the 24th century. Though it's 500 years older than Data's body, he believes it may be able to work. Riker begins exploring options on how to recover Picard from the past and to stop the aliens.
In the 19th century cave, Gunian and Picard talk and bond, discussing their future friendship. At one point Picard recovers Data's head, opens a panel on the back of it, and uses an iron filling to manipulate the circuitry inside the head.
In the 24th century, Troi listens to Clemen's take on the future and he seems to not perceive it very well, set-off my not being able to get a cigar. He assumes the ship, while claiming to be one of peace and exploration, is one of conquest. He admits of the marvels of the technology allowing those on the ship to live luxury but wonders of the poor and the more needy planetside.
Troi informs him of the social progress Earth has made in the intervening time which has eliminated poverty, hopelessness and want. Clemens scoffs at this, not believing the men he knows who get where they're going by standing on the backs of the poor and the needy no longer exists and simply that everyone enjoys this bright future.
Troi confirms that this is the case, Clemens laments that maybe that social progress is one worth giving up cigars for.
Riker tries to get information from Guinan on how to proceed forward but Guinan refuses to tell him what else happened in the cave. Riker at first seems intent on trying to recover Picard but is reminded that their mission was to stop the aliens' time incursions on Earth's past. Riker plans to torpedo the cavern site.
Geordi is having difficulty re-attaching Data's head and getting it to work, running a diagnostic he finds the iron filing lodged in the circuitry behind a panel in Data's head and removes it. Soon after he's able to re-activate Data, who informs Geordi the Enterprise's current plan to stop the aliens will have disastrous consequences.
The crew reconfigures their plan and now will alter the torpedoes so that their explosions occur in the aliens' time-dimension rather than the actual one. Riker plans to take the time to reconfigure the torpedoes to rescue Picard but learns their duplication of time-portal is only stable enough for one person. Whoever leaves the ship cannot come back.
Clemens volunteers to go as he's the one that belongs in the 19th century anyway.
Clemens is successful in returning to the 19th century and getting back to Picard. Clemens tells Picard how to activate the device and vows to see that the injured Guinan gets the medical attention she needs and to settle the bill at the boarding house Picard and co. had set themselves up in. Picard wishes he had more time to get to know Clemens, who recommends Picard just read his books.
Picard returns to the present just as the Enterprise begins destroying the cavern and is safely beamed aboard, going to visit Guinan in Ten-Forward where they can now discuss the events that happened half a millennium ago.
In the past, Clemens oversees Guinan being taken out by stretcher, noticing his watch sitting on a ledge Clemens goes to recover it, stops himself, and leaves it behind so that it will be discovered in the future along with Data's head.
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As I said last week, this is one of my more favorite two-parters of the series and I think the resolution works out nicely. Unlike Best of Both Worlds where the show wrote itself in a corner at the end and had to jump through hoops in Part 2 in order to get out of it and to stop the Borg incursion on Earth, this one has a nice resolution to it that doesn't seem forced, contrived or obviously trying to lamely back-track the tension the previous episode ended on as if this was an episode from a 1930s/40s serialized movie.
Where the episode lacks the most is probably in showing more of the connection between Guinan and Picard in the past, it's hard to entirely see how this encounter between the two of them lead to their solid friendship in the present but we could probably argue their strong friendship is based more on current events than the events in that cavern. At one point in the series Guinan says she's always been attracted to bald men since one was kind to her once. It could be in this case it's that a stranger she'd only known for minutes at most risked a chance to go home in order to see that she's okay and gets the help she needs while injured. I suppose that's a solid enough foundation for their strong friendship to be built on when they re-encounter one another in the future.
I also wish we got to see a bit more of Clemens' experiences and thoughts of the future. Though I do like the talk between him and Troi and it really seems like it's almost a type of talk that a fan could have with someone who questions the logic of Trek's depiction of humanity's future.
Clemens says that where he's from men achieve power and wealth by standing on the backs of the poor, not too far removed from how things are even today 150 years later, and he seems skeptical that that's just not how it is anymore in the 24th century.
Troi doesn't try to explain it, justify it, rationalize it or anything. She just agrees. Yep, that's pretty much it. It's just not like that anymore.
It's perhaps a bit cheeky, hokey and even a touch-bit meta but it's really just how we have to look at and accept the series and maybe even look at our own present. We're certainly "better" people and wholly better as a society than we were in the 15th and 16th centuries. There's still a whole host of problems for sure and we've a long, long, way to go to eliminate poverty, hopelessness and despair as they've done in the 24th century but it's not entirely an unachievable goal.
And I agree with Clemens, the 24th century social future is worth giving up cigars for. But, then again, I don't smoke cigars.
It's interesting to see the crew in the 19th century, it's most fun to see Troi and Crusher in the background of shots shifting and holding them uncomfortably in the 19th century women's foundation garments. There's a scene where they're sitting rather up-right and stiff holding their stomachs due to discomfort from their corsets as Picard lounges in a chair by slouching and with his legs "man-spreading."
There's also a touch of a nod at 19th century social attitudes towards black people as an officer takes the cane/alien time device from a well-dressed Geordi and slightly admonishing him, "What do you have there? That's a gentleman's cane!"
A bit of a temporal tongue-in-cheek as Picard hides a device in a lamp, claiming to be making the lamp more earthquake-safe when confronted by a hospital administrator. The administrator scoffs at the notion, saying there hasn't been an earthquake in San Francisco in quite some time. A wink, since those of us at home know that San Francisco is due for a major, devastating, earthquake in 1909, around 10 years from the past-events of the episode.
On the nitpicking front, man, Troi got quite a bit of sun in 19th-century San Fransisco! She's got a glorious tan! (Obviously Marina Sirtis must have gotten a lot of sun between filming the two episodes. Part 1's production likely wrapping up in the fall or winter and Part 2's beginning sometime in the following summer.)
The stardate given at the end of the episode is 46001.xx.
I believe this is the earliest point in a stardate "year" we ever hear. So it's effectively the stardate New Year, which in breaking down the stardate calendar, comparing it to our own and assuming stardate of xx000.0 is midnight on January 1st and stardate xx002.7 is midnight on January 2nd, then the last scene on the Enterprise is in the noon hour on January 1st.
Anyway, a good episode and we now begin Season 6. There's some good, some bad and damn if there isn't some ugly down this road. But we'll get through it together.
