Picard, Troi, Geordi and Data are returning to the Enterprise via runabout after attending a series of conferences on another planet. Their good-natured conversation about the conference is suddenly interrupted by a series of temporal anomalies.
First, Troi claims to have witnessed the other three freeze in time for a few seconds, then the three say the same about Troi for 3 minutes. (Neither is aware of any interruption in time.) Then power cuts off in the starboard nacelle, and an investigation shows that it had been running continuously for 47 days and ran out of fuel when in reality it had not.
Scans reveal numerous ruptures in the space-time continuum in their sector of space and the runabout is encountering them, they cannot contact the Enterprise and cautiously proceed to a rendezvous point, once there the ship hasn't arrived but is soon found some distance away.
One approach they see the Enterprise frozen in time in an apparent battle with a Romulan warbird, wanting to investigate further the group finds a way for an away team to board the ship without being integrated into the frozen time continuum. Exploring the ship only raises more questions, on first investigation it appears the ship was ambushed and then boarded by Romulans but there's also conflicting signs of a non-aggressive boarding. That the Romulans were being transported on by the Enterprise crew as part of an evacuation.
A couple of problems are also encountered, as Troi discovers Crusher being the victim of a disruptor-place at close range and Data discovers a warp-core breach in progress in Engineering. He's able to detect that time isn't frozen but is moving at an infinitesimal rate. The breach will consume the ship in a matter of hours and it being frozen offers no way to stop it. It's at this point Picard begins experience side-effects of the temporal discrepancies (which Data likens to nitrogen narcosis experienced by deep-sea divers who surface too quickly) and needs to be beamed back to the runabout.
There they regather their thoughts and plans and decide to investigate the Romulan ship, Geordi goes in Picard's place as Picard is still recovering from his "temporal narcosis."
The Romulan ship seems to confirm the theory that the Enterprise was evacuating them while also attempting a power transfer. Investigation of the Romulan warp-core (made from an artificial black hole) shows some more clues as to what happens, scanning it with a tricorder seems to cause time to resume for a moment before it reverses back to where it was and freezes again. Trying to investigate further from the information they got while time was moving forward, Geordi is attacked by a Romulan and is sent into fits from an extreme case of Temporal Bends. Troi removes the band he's wearing to allow him to freeze in time, hoping he can be saved when time when a solution is found.
The Romulan is unconscious, but Data is unsure it is a Romulan. Talking with it on the runabout, it reveals itself to be an alien lifeform not indigenous to this universe's time continuum. The aliens "nest" their young in gravity wells and mistook the Romulan engine core for a suitable one, not realizing it was artificial and wouldn't nest their young properly. They were causing problems with the Romulan warp-core which necessitates their distress call which the Enterprise responded to. The Enterprise's power-transfer put the nest back in danger so the aliens attacked the Enterprise causing the energy overloads and warp-core breach.
Picard and Data come up with a plan to reverse time far enough to prevent all of this from happening, hoping to save the ship and crusher. Although there's a stumble between another temporal alien and Data delaying the plan, they're eventually able to stop the beam using the runabout. Time in the area is restored to normal, the aliens disappear back to their own continuum, Crusher is saved, the ship is saved, the Romulans are rescued and returned home and -since he's back next week- Geordi is rescued and healed.
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An enjoyable episode that's fun in how it plays with the notion of time. Also great practice for all of the cast as well as the extras and such to put their "frozen blocking" from their acting classes to use. Everyone does a good job of holding their positions during the frozen-time portions as well as the reversed time ones.
The opening scenes with the Picard and co. talking about their conference is fun and interesting in seeing everyone talking "like normal people" with their hair down. (so to speak.) Especially interesting in seeing the normally rigid and formal Picard even taking the piss and imitating the speaker at a lecture he attended.
Also neat to see the runabout -first seen in DS9- on TNG. I remember around when the episode coming out people wondering where they parked the thing, and I having to point out that the Main Shuttlebay could more than accommodate the runabout. I believe this is probably the only instance in both shows where we see the rear cabin of the runabout (at least with it in passenger configuration.) The rear cabin is quite comfy looking and for some reason I get a kick out of cramped-looking, utilitarian, bunks offered to sleep in. Also humorous to me is watching people enter the cockpit and having to negotiate around the transporter pad which dominates the center of the room. This is opposed to them just simply walking through the damn thing. While I doubt there's any real technological reason or risk to not walk through it, there may be some "better safe than sorry" or even a "superstition" notion of not doing it.
Does this episode count as "one of the times Riker was in control of the ship and nearly gets it destroyed?"
The group struggles with a way to prevent the destruction of the ship due to the warp-core breach. Data insists that it being frozen changes nothing and beaming it out of the ship isn't possible because the runabout doesn't have the power to erect a proper containment field around it.
Couldn't they pop open the ejection hatch and push the thing out of the core-shaft? Certainly the various fuel lines/injectors could manually be closed, clamped off, or whatever and when time resumed the ship would automatically erect any necessary atmospheric fields.
I made a slight crack about this in my recap, but it would have been nice to have been tossed some line about Geordi's recovery during the closing log entry. And why did the Romulan ship vanish? Had it been completely evacuated? Why did it need to vanish in order for the aliens to get home?
So, Troi spends a few days as a Romulan intelligence officer on a Romulan ship and now she's qualified to lead an away team around Romulan engineering?
Anyway, it's a fun episode.
Next week? Season finale and a struggle. Then into Season 7 which is also a struggle.
