Now this is an episode from my childhood of which I have vivid memories. For some reason the scene where Picard reaches for the bowl of fruit and his fingernails grow instantly and the fact that Romulans use artificial black holes as a power source were super important to me as a kid. Also the concept of aliens that lived in black holes, but honestly using them to power a ship was always more interesting. I really enjoyed the episode today because while it deals with time not working like we are used to, it isn't exactly a time travel episode. Also their concept of what was happening between the Romulan ship and there own evolving through the episode is fun to watch. I don't think they ever explained by the Romulans were firing on the Enterprise, but maybe it was the aliens disguised as Romulans?
The episode opens with Dr. Crusher treating Riker for what she describes as a fairly serious cut to his head. As an EMT I can tell you any head wound in that doesn't release huge quantities of blood is pretty minor, but whatever. After hassling him to cut back on the athletics he tells her he got it from Spot, Data's cat he is taking care of while he is off the ship. Riker is called to the bridge by Worf, they have detected a distress call from a Romulan ship. After raising shields and going to red alert they head in to help. We cut the a runabout (the first appearance of one in TNG I believe) where Picard, La Forge, Data and Troi are returning from a conference on the effects of being on a long duration assignment in deep space. While enjoying dinner together something strange happens, all three of them other than Deanna appear frozen for a few seconds and then go on as if nothing has happened.
Geordi and Data work together to find out what happened, but they aren't able to find anything until the opposite happens, this time Deanna is frozen and wakes up with the three of them standing over her. Picard has them hurry up to meet the Enterprise but suddenly one engine is out of fuel. Picard goes to the back of the ship to check on the fuel when he notices the bowl of fruit on the table has decayed, when he reaches for it he pulls his hand back in pain, his fingernails show several weeks growth. This time Geordi is able to discover the cause, there is a bubble of distorted spacetime stuck to part of the ship. They manage to get free but discover that local space is saturated with such bubbles, they finally find the Enterprise, in apparent combat with the Romulan ship and frozen in time. Geordi rigs up the emergency transporter bands to let them travel onto the Enterprise without being in the stuck time but he stays behind in case there are problems.
On the Enterprise they find signs of possible combat with the Romulans but also signs that they were transfering energy to the Romulan ship and beaming injured people aboard. Data finds that the warp core is in the process of breaching when Picard freaks out and they return to the runabout. Data, La Forge and Troi beam to the Romulan ship and find its engine core acting strange, when Data scans it time suddenly rushes forward, they watch the Enterprise explode, but then it goes backwards to where they were with everyone frozen. Well, everyone but one Romulan who grabs Geordi and almost kills him forcing them to remove his band and freeze him in time. From the apparent Romulan they learn he is an alien from a different spacetime who is trying to save his young from being trapped in the Romulan artificial singularity. They come up with a plan to reverse time to before the engine breach and then reenter the Enterprise time scale and stop the breach. It works and they get everyone off the Romulan ship in time to watch it disappear.
Review: I really like this one, not for its epicness but for its solid storytelling and interesting science fiction. It is also nice to see Federation/Romulan relations continuing to gradually improve.
8 out of 10
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