Cause and Effect (TNG episode)
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Template:ST episode "Cause and Effect" is considered by many fans to be one of the best episodes of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.[1] It features guest star Kelsey Grammer and was directed by Jonathan Frakes from a script by Brannon Braga. It originally aired as Episode 518 on 23 March 1992 (Stardate 45652.1).
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Plot summary
The show has a famous opening sequence: The Enterprise-D has suffered heavy damage and all attempts to control the disaster are failing. Captain Picard issues the frantic order, "All hands abandon ship! Repeat, all hands abandon..." as the ship explodes.
After a commercial break, the episode resumes as if nothing happened. Riker, Crusher, Worf, and Data are playing cards, but a sense of déjà vu allows Dr. Crusher to call Riker's bluff. Crusher then goes to sickbay to treat Geordi La Forge for dizziness, and again thinks she's done the same before. After she goes to bed, she is haunted by strange voices.
Soon after, the Enterprise loses power as a temporal anomaly erupts nearby, and a second Federation ship emerges from it, locked on a collision course. Riker suggests decompressing the main shuttle bay, but Picard takes Data's advice to repel the oncoming ship with a tractor beam. This strategy fails, and the two ships collide. The Enterprise is again destroyed as it was in the opening sequence.
The same scenes are repeated again after a commercial break, but the crew continues to experience extreme déjà vu. They determine that they are caught in a causality time loop, and spend the rest of the episode devising a plan to escape it. Data is issued a device which will allow him to send a message to himself in the next iteration of the loop; he does so immediately before the Enterprise is destroyed a third time.
In the final segment, Data begins to repeatedly see the numeral "3", and the rest of the crew's déjà vu becomes all the more vivid. The crew is at first mystified as to the meaning of this subliminal message that Data has received. But, during the final encounter with the mystery ship, he recognizes 3 as matching the pips on Riker's collar, and concludes that Riker's strategy for avoiding the ship must be the correct one. Data depressurizes the main shuttlebay, and the Enterprise evades the incoming ship.
Having finally averted disaster, the Enterprise crew ascertains that they themselves have been stuck in the time loop for 17.4 days. The crew identifies the other ship as the USS Bozeman, missing for over 70 years. Captain Picard then has the peculiar duty of welcoming the Bozeman's captain, played by Kelsey Grammer, to the 24th century.
Notes
The production team had hoped to get Kirstie Alley in a cameo role behind Kelsey Grammer in the USS Bozeman shots, reprising her role as Lt. Saavik from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but her asking price was too high for such a small role.
The USS Bozeman is named after writer Brannon Braga's home town, Bozeman, Montana. Although never seen on screen again, the Bozeman was mentioned in dialogue in The Next Generation episode All Good Things..., and the films Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, all of them co-written by Brannon Braga.
See also
- Window of Opportunity, a Stargate SG-1 episode with a similar premise
External links
- Cause and Effect at StarTrek.com
- Template:Memoryalpha article