UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TNG S2E13 - Time Squared
Comments (46)
This has always been a bit of an odd episode to me. Not bad, just strange, with Picard killing "himself" being the most memorable part of it. What I find strange is that even though you were joking about "season 1 Picard", it really does feel like it's early S1 Picard. The insecurities, the frailty of the future Picard, and just that he's kind of a hard ass like he used to be. Maybe this was Picard's "let the past die, kill it if you have to" moment, shooting the weaker, cowardly, self centered version of himself(though it's his future self, not past), so the more developed character we've come to know can thrive? Yeah, I'm overthinking it for sure. Either way, Picard does feel like the clock got turned back on the character to early S1 for a lot of the episode, and yet otherwise it does feel like a S2 episode in terms of the production quality. So it kind of makes the episode feel like it's of 2 different times, which is fitting. It's not a favourite of mine, but it's a competent episode with some interesting moments.
Absolutely phenomenal episode in my opinion, but then I'm an absolute sucker for time travel shenanigans.
Some say every eventuality for us is played out in every realm, a future episode enhances on this BIG TIME. Having watched this again with you guys, I love this complex episode - gets you out of your skin and realise there is much more to space and time (if it exists) than just our own "reality" :)
O’Brien: Haven’t you people ever heard of closing the damn door? It’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
Your comment made me think of "Will you close the fucking door!" And it made me wish Cameron Mitchell had been in Star Trek. Mike from RLM would cream his pants lol.
I find it funny you guys seem to dislike Pulaski more with each subsequent episode, while I find her improving as a character as it goes.
There is a story about her appearing on LA law prior to being on TNG and that they were so mad when she left the show to join TNG That wrote her out of the show by dropping her character down an elevator shaft However, this is not true as the episode of LA law she met her demise in was called “Good to the last drop”. And was aired on march 21st 19991 After her time on TNG. Diana Mauldaur is quite an accomplished actor. She has sold many characters. The
"never gonna watch those episodes again.." that remark will age like milk ;)
In addition to Manheim being mentioned, The Traveler from 'Where No One Has Gone Before' was mentioned as well
This episode holds my interest, but Trek has and will tell better time travel stories.
"Facsimile? I've never heard of that word" Good lord, I know I'm getting older, but you really don't need to keep rubbing it in!
If you think you're old, I still don't remember them even talking about this... need to re-watch...
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Manheim was the guy who was doing the time experiments...the one married to Picard's ex whom he had ghosted.
"Oh this is Season One Picard..." LMFAO!! Love it.
RE: Facsimile - Alex, you are me the first time I watched TNG. I was 17 when TNG started and learned a HUGE amount of my vocabulary from seven years of these scripts. Soak it up, baby! It's a free "education" (or at least that's how I look at it)
Dude - I remember Worf or Riker saying the word "reconnoiter" once and just being like.. what the hell? That's a word? And this was after having seen the episode in question probably 5 times by then and this was the first time I ever noticed it? Was a weird experience, lol, but I learned a new word! And afterwards, I even heard it a few times in other stuff. I guess sometimes words I don't know just go in one ear and out the other, and other times I notice it and my brain decides to absorb it. 🤷🏻♀️ If any of that makes sense.
I like that they gave Worf something "sciencie" to say...the twist in time thing. Usually Worf doesn't get any smart lines. But the guy graduated from Star Fleet. Near as I can gather anyone who graduated from Star Fleet should know almost as much physics as a modern college PhD Professor physicist.
I don’t know.. Troi graduated from the Acadamy, and as Marina Sirtis joked, must have been getting her nails done during some very basic instruction.
you asked about Mr. Manheim i'm sure you remember him from the first season
It never occurred to me before, but, could it have been the original Picard who died and the now synchronized duplicate who rushed to the bridge to implement the alternate plan, a plan the original did not know about. Something to think about.
The fact that the dead Picard disappeared at the end along with the shuttle craft from his time suggests that the dead Picard was the one who was apart of that time line which now, essentially didn't happen.
I hope you're not taking people's opinions differing from yours as pushback; personally a huge draw of your reviews is that I never know what's going to land well with you. Keep it coming, gents!
Agreed! I genuinely LOVE watching them watch episodes. Their reactions are honest and sometimes unexpected! But it's okay if they're expected, too. And it's okay if they're just flat-out wrong, which they sometimes are. 😀
Maybe the episode works better than I always thought. My frustration with it never quite amounting to a full, realised story might be the result of the cast & crew intending me to experience a similar confused state to future Picard.
Working title: “Time to the Second” (which means the same thing as “Time Squared”). Since Alex and Josh have presumably already seen “The Icarus Factor,” this is not a spoiler: in the cold open, it is interesting that Pulaski is off-camera when she delivers the line, “Oh, your father liked to cook?” The line is present in the revised final draft script, but I still wonder if it was added in post-production to foreshadow the next episode. Temporal scientist Paul Manheim was the husband of Picard’s old flame in “We’ll Always Have Paris.” Picard and his future self (whom the script calls “P2”) have a conversation while walking side by side down the same corridor where Data and Lore did so in “Datalore.” I have seen fans online query whether Picard kills P2 or merely stuns him. It seems clear to me that the shot is fatal from the dramatic emphasis given to it by the score and direction; moreover, after scanning P2 with her tricorder, Pulaski takes no further action and leaves the shuttlebay. The revised final draft script includes a tag scene bookending the opening scene with Riker cooking: to “make amends” for the omelet, Riker makes his friends Alaskan stew (another link to the following episode), which they all love except for Worf. Not much else to say about this excellent but straightforward and focused episode, except that a young writer named Ronald D. Moore visited the TNG set during the episode’s production and gave a spec script he had written to Gene Roddenberry’s assistant, Richard Arnold. This would prove to be a pivotal event in the history of American science fiction television.
That line of Pulaski's REALLY made my eyes roll!! Ugh—that hurt.
When you think about how TV shows were made, especially back then, with all the characters to balance, the effects to complete, the budget to worry about, and doing it week in and out for 26 episodes per season, it's not so much that TNG had some dud episodes as it is that they had so many good ones.
Good point
47:05 It's not explained. Which is a good thing! It's subtly implied that the "vortex entity" somehow did it.
Facsimile = Fax
The Geordi and Data scenes in the shuttlepod are way too long. They could have done that with a couple lines of off-screen dialog and given us something more interesting to watch.
Stardates! the first 2 digits are the year (42xxx being the year 2365). This convention was carried on through DS9 and Voyager.
42xxx for TNG Season 2, 43xxx for TNG season 3, etc. But the dates then continue based on that, even without TNG.
17:38 Stardates indicate the date by the whole number. Each day is its own number. Fractional pieces indicate the time, with 0.5 being the equivalent of noon.
Not exactly. There are 1000 stardates per Earth year, so a pinch under 2.75 per day. Each individual stardate is just under 9 hours. Kind of confusing, and I doubt many people know the current stardate without checking a computer.
Pulaski's comment about future Picard's heartbeat being fine but his pulse is erratic is absurd. From a medical exam perspective, they are the same thing. Bad dialog moment.
It's not *completely* absurd. The heart is the main driver of blood circulation but it isn't the only one. Arteries contract in rhythm to help push blood, too, and if your "clock" is messed up like his was, that rhythm could easily be off.
I wonder if the script called for Riker to make omelettes but given Jonathan Frakes' skills, he could only come up with scrambled eggs.
That part has ALWAYS bugged the hell out of me. 😂 Like.. just change the script to say scrambled eggs! I assume they do some sort of rehearsal, so maybe he was able to make the omelette then but when it came time to film he got stage fright or something? lol
It's time! This week has seriously flown by, pretty sure I didn't fall into a space anus but I could be wrong
Watch out for space gas!!
3:10 Definitely the plot of the next episode should not come up....
I never know if these time codes are for the video or the episode
"Matter of Honor" is in my top-20. "Measure of a Man" is in my top-10.
Accurate.