Happy new year, everyone!
“Yesterday’s Enterprise“
Written by Trent Christopher Ganino & Eric A. Stillwell and Ira Steven Behr & Richard Manning & Hans Beimler & Ronald D. Moore
Directed by David Carson
Season 3, Episode 15
Production episode 40273-163
Original air date: February 19, 1990
Stardate: 43625.2
Captain’s Log: Worf is drinking in Ten-Forward with Guinan when a strange phenomenon appears near the ship. Worf reports to the bridge as the Enterprise examines what appears to be a rift in space. A ship comes through the rift—
—and everything changes. The bridge becomes darker, the crew wearing much more militaristic uniforms with sidearms and sashes. The command center has only one chair, with the first officer’s position next to tactical behind the captain, and there are additional consoles all over the bridge. We also see that Ten-Forward is changed: brighter, everyone in uniform (nobody in civvies), and way more crowded. Captain’s logs and stardates are now military logs and combat dates. And instead of Worf at tactical, the station is staffed by none other than Tasha Yar. That last bit makes sense when it’s revealed that the Federation has been at war with the Klingons for two decades.
However, nobody notices that anything’s amiss—nobody, that is, except for Guinan.
Yar identifies the ship that came through the rift as NCC-1701-C, the previous starship to be called Enterprise, but it was believed lost with all hands twenty-two years before. Captain Rachel Garrett sends a distress call, and so, despite the risks to the timeline, Picard agrees to send a team over. He instructs Riker to avoid any mention of when and where they are.
Apparently, Riker forgot to share this with the rest of the team, since Crusher examines Garrett and immediately says she needs to get her back to the Enterprise, which rather confuses Garrett. However, once she’s in sickbay, Garrett—not being stupid—realizes that the uniforms are different, and sickbay is far more advanced. Picard goes ahead and tells her that she’s 22 years in the future, and that history has no record of their battle with the Romulans to save the Klingon outpost at Narendra III.
The only other survivor of the bridge crew is the helmsman, Lieutenant Richard Castillo. He works with Yar to get the Enterprise-C up and running. They only have nine hours to do so before Klingon battle cruisers arrive—if they can’t, the ship will have to be scuttled.
Guinan is convinced that everything is wrong, that the Federation shouldn’t be at war, that there should be children on the Enterprise-D, that the Enterprise-C shouldn’t be there and should go back. But if they do go back, they’ll be destroyed instantly by the four Romulan warbirds they were fighting.
Picard decides that it’s worth the risk and explains it to the bridge crew. They mostly all object, with Riker saying that Picard is condemning 125 people to a needless death. Data points out that it may not be meaningless, as the Klingons would consider the sacrifice of a Federation starship to be a significant act.
The final shoe drops when Picard quietly explains to Garrett that the war is going very badly, worse than is generally known. Starfleet Command predicts that they’ll have to surrender in six months. Garrett has a revelation of her own: a lot of her crew still wants to go back, even knowing the risks. And if they do go back, it might make a difference, for the reasons Data states; if they stay, they just face being one more ship in a losing cause.
Shortly after Garrett officially gives the order to return, a Klingon bird-of-prey attacks. The two ships drive it off, but Garrett is killed during the firefight. Castillo insists on returning to the past even without the captain—and Yar requests a transfer to go with them after Guinan reveals to Yar that she died a senseless death in the proper timeline. She wants her death to count for something.
This being television, the Klingons attack as the Enterprise-C is going into the rift. The Enterprise-D gets the crap pounded out of it, though they do destroy one of the three Klingon ships attacking them. But they’re hamstrung by their need to protect the Enterprise-C. Several bridge officers, including Riker, are killed, but when the Klingons demand the Enterprise-D surrender, Picard mutters, “That’ll be the day,” and operates the tactical console while the Enterprise-C goes through the rift —
— and everything changes back. Picard asks Worf for a report. He says there was a sign of a ship, but then it disappeared, and the rift is now collapsing. The Enterprise-D moves on to its next assignment, after Guinan confuses everyone by calling the bridge to ask if all is well.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: The rift that sends the Enterprise-C forward does not have a noticeable mass or event horizon, and may or may not be a wormhole. After the ship comes through, Data theorizes that it’s a Kerr loop formed of superstring material.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi’s entire function in this episode is to sit in her chair during the opening and closing. Personally, I think they missed a bet—a battleship that had been fighting a twenty-year war would absolutely need a counselor. But she also wouldn’t have a bridge position, as she’d likely be booked solid with sessions all the live-long day.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf is also only in the beginning and the end, but his bit in the teaser is simply brilliant. Guinan introduces him to prune juice, which he proudly and without (deliberate) irony proclaims to be “a warrior’s drink.” Worf’s love for prune juice would remain a running theme throughout not only TNG, but Deep Space Nine (there’s a scene in “The Way of the Warrior,” Worf’s first appearance on DS9, where Worf orders a prune juice, and Quark laughs hysterically, cutting it off when he sees the yes-I’m-serious-don’t-make-me-have-to-kill-you look on Worf’s face). Guinan also criticizes him for always drinking alone, and he repeats his comment, made to Riker on Edo, that humans are too fragile. Guinan respectfully disagrees, pointing out that you never know until you try, and Worf smiles and says, “Then I will never know.” It’s a great scene, beautifully played by Michael Dorn and Whoopi Goldberg, and is perhaps most notable for being the first time we see Worf laugh.
If I Only Had a Brain…: The script originally called for Data to be electrocuted during the climactic battle, but it was cut for time and budget.
The Boy!?: Surprisingly, Wes is part of the crew in the altered timeline—but he’s a full ensign in a red uniform (and in which he looked so good, they put him in one at the end of the season). The script also called for him to be decapitated during the battle, but it, too, was cut for time and budget.
Syntheholics Anonymous: Guinan is the only one who notices that the timeline has been altered, and she has impressions from the original timeline—to the point that she knows that Yar died and that it was “a meaningless death.” And she notices when it’s been changed back, after which she asks La Forge to tell her about Yar.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Yar and Castillo hit it off immediately, making it all the way to first base before they go through the rift. After a day, and Yar calls him “Lieutenant” again, he asks to drop the ranks—”I won’t salute if you won’t.” He says that his friends call him “Castillo” and his mother calls him “Richard.” Yar calls him “Castillo,” and then he decides that he’d rather she called him Richard, which is probably not creepy.
I Believe I Said That: “Captain, if you want my opinion—”
“I believe I’m aware of your opinion, Commander. This is a briefing, I’m not seeking your consent.”
Riker raising an objection, and Picard slapping him down, making it abundantly clear that this is not the happy-shiny Enterprise we’re used to.
Welcome Aboard: The biggest guest is supposed to be the return of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar, but mostly this episode serves to remind us how little she’s been missed. The excellent character actor Christopher McDonald does a much better job as Castillo.
And Tricia O’Neil is superb as Captain Garrett. She only has a few scenes, but firmly establishes Garrett as a worthy addition to the pantheon of Enterprise captains. O’Neil will return as a Klingon scientist named Kurak in “Suspicions” and on DS9 as a Cardassian Obsidian Order agent named Korinas in “Defiant.”
Trivial Matters: This is the last episode that features all of the original cast. While Crosby will return in “Redemption,” “Unification,” and “All Good Things…” Wil Wheaton was not in any of those episodes.
The episode was scripted over Thanksgiving weekend, based on a fusion of two different story pitches by Ganino and Stillwell. Each of the three sets of writers (Behr, Manning & Beimler, Moore) took a different plot thread. Michael Piller did an uncredited polish on the final draft.
Dr. Selar from “The Schizoid Man” is one of the people paged to sickbay.
Some details of the Enterprise-C’s return to Narendra III will be revealed in “Redemption Part 2” at the top of the fifth season, including the fact that Yar survived the attack, was taken prisoner, and had a daughter by a Romulan soldier, who would grow up to be a commander named Sela.
Garrett reappears several times in tie-in fiction. Her first mission as captain of the Enterprise-C is chronicled in “Hour of Fire” by Robert Greenberger in Enterprise Logs (an anthology of stories about captains of ships called Enterprise from the Revolutionary War all the way to Picard). The Lost Era novel Well of Souls by Ilsa J. Bick focuses on Garrett and the Enterprise-C. She also appears as a commander in the Stargazer novel Progenitor by Michael Jan Friedman. The battle at Narendra III and its aftermath is shown from different angles in the novels Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz and your humble rewatcher’s own The Art of the Impossible. (The latter also features Garrett as first officer of the U.S.S. Carthage before taking on the captaincy of the Enterprise-C.)
The novel The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett establishes that Guinan’s ability to perceive time with more complexity is related to her experience in the Nexus, chronicled in Star Trek Generations.
Another version of this timeline appears in Q-Squared by Peter David, though it has several significant differences, not least being that Picard and Riker do not have the contentious relationship they have in this episode.
The sash/belt look on the altered timeline uniforms is very similar to the Mirror Universe Starfleet uniforms seen in “Mirror, Mirror” on the original series (and later in “In a Mirror, Darkly” on Enterprise).
Make it So: “Let’s make sure history never forgets the name Enterprise.” This episode has consistently been at the top of people’s lists of best episodes of TNG and best episodes of Star Trek in general as a franchise and it totally deserves it. It’s a wonderful look at the crew by putting them in an unfamiliar setting. This Picard is harder, nastier, and has an adversarial relationship with his first officer (at no point in the alternate timeline is Riker ever referred to as “Number One”). Crusher comes across as almost permanently fatigued and frustrated, while Wes is hyper-competent, a highly efficient officer.
In addition, we get a great look at the history between the shows, as it were, as we see the ship that preceded the one we follow every week, and a fine captain in Garrett. When I first watched the episode twenty years ago, I remember being thrilled that they established a woman Enterprise captain, and being devastated by her death. She’s a wonderful character, and it’s frustrating that she’s taken off the playing field just to give Yar a TV death.
Which brings us nicely to the episode’s primary flaw, made all the more annoying by the fact that it’s in many ways the episode’s purpose: it brings Yar back to give her a TV death. A clichéd-up-the-kazoo, tiresome, predictable, manipulative TV death. She gets to fall in love, she gets to help save the ship, and she steps in valiantly when Garrett is killed. It is, in short, a scripted death, and you can see the marionette strings.
As I said when we did “Skin of Evil,” Yar’s death was effective because it was pointless and sudden and frustrating and capricious. This just felt constructed, and it took away from what was otherwise a brilliant episode.
(The punchline, of course, is that after going to all the trouble to give her a TV death, they took it away by establishing in “Redemption” that she survived the battle at Narendra III long enough to sire a daughter. But we’ll get to that in due course.)
On top of that, all bringing Yar back does is show up how mediocre Denise Crosby is. Her line readings are stilted, her emotions unconvincing. Worf provides more depth of character in a single conversation with Guinan in the teaser than Yar can manage in the entire rest of the episode, making it abundantly clear that the show was better off with the direction it took.
Luckily, the rest of the cast takes up the slack. Whoopi Goldberg is magnificent here, as Guinan knows something is wrong and is frustrated by her inability to be more specific to Picard. Sir Patrick Stewart’s Picard is at once exactly the same and completely different (thanks to circumstance) than the Picard we know. And I can’t praise O’Neil’s turn as Garrett enough.
Despite its flaws, and a script that occasionally shows signs of being written over a long weekend, it’s one of the finest episodes of the entire franchise.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido set up the entire political backstory of the Klingons and Federation in The Art of the Impossible so that the Klingons and the Federation are indeed on the brink of what could be war if not for the Enterprise-C’s sacrifice. He also enjoyed writing Garrett, who remains a favorite character of his. Go to his web site for links to his blog, his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, not to mention ways in which you can buy his incredibly awesome books like the fantastical police procedurals SCPD: The Case of the Claw and Unicorn Precinct.
Keith, I’m delighted that you finally reached “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” which I consider probably the best episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (although it sometimes gets edged out by “The Best of Both Worlds”). I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to tell you that “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is the reason I started watching Star Trek again. I hope you will indulge me.
You might recall that I mentioned in one or two of my other responses to your re-watches that I missed much of the early Next Generation episodes and eventually had to catch up with them in reruns and the like. There’s a reason for this. TNG premiered in syndication the same year I entered college, and given how busy I was, if I was going to make a point of watching any television show on schedule it had to captivate me. Not only would I have to give it my time because I was getting accustomed to a college workload (studying Physics, already a tough field that required a lot of study), but I would also have to find the show on a channel in an unfamiliar city.
The fact that there was a new Star Trek show on did interest me of course; how could it not? My memory tells me that I did manage to catch “Encounter at Farpoint,” “The Naked Now,” and one or two other episodes from season one when they were first broadcast, but I found them, well, lacking. In the end, I wrote off the new Star Trek series as not worthy of my time or attention. Ironically, channel 56 in the Boston area still showed the original series in syndication five nights a week, just before dinner time, and my roommates and I tended to watch it before traipsing off to the dining hall. The new show was there, but we were still much more interested in re-watching the original.
Flash forward to my junior year. I found myself at home in New York City during some break (perhaps it was spring break? I don’t recall) and if I recall correctly, my brothers weren’t at home, just my parents, so I had a lot of free time. Glancing through TV Guide, I noticed that Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to be on in the afternoon on channel 11, and since I did like science fiction and Star Trek and I had nothing better to do, I decided I might as well catch the episode. I went upstairs to my bedroom, where we had a small color television set, and I lay on my bed and watched the show.
The episode was “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
The moment the teaser ended, my jaw hit the floor (metaphorically speaking). I said to myself, “Okay, this is interesting,” and watched the entire episode, my eyes glued to the set (again, a metaphor). As the final credits rolled, I realized that the show had become good, possibly great, and I made a point of keeping up with it from then on.
I often think about the inflection points in life, the events that change our pathways and set us on certain courses. It’s possible that had I missed that broadcast of the show, I might have come back to TNG anyway; but had channel 11 been showing an episode like the previous one, or a season one repeat, I might very well have simply given up on the show again. And while Trek is not necessarily the reason I became a science-fiction writer, as I did read and watch a lot of other SF, I can’t deny that it has had a lot of influence on my path.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” was tailor-made to appeal to me. I love time-travel stories, and one in which an entire alternative timeline is posited and then erased, with no one the wiser, resonates with me more than almost any other type of science-fiction conceit. I’m still sometimes amazed that they managed to pull it off.
— Michael A. Burstein
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Michael, and sorry my internet troubles at home kept me from uploading this in time for it go live yesterday as planned…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The one thing I wish they’d done in this episode is have the lines from the Klingon commander in the final “altered timeline” scene delivered by Worf…
Just when I had decided to write off TNG, along came “Yesterday’s Enterprise” to break my pencil.
This is not a safe, sweet episode. I liked the stretching of boundaries and the occasional >break
This is just the nitpicker in me, but one thing that always stands out for me in Yesterday’s Enterprise is the fact that the final scene in Ten Forward with Guinan and Geordi, Geordi is wearing a uniform from the altered history. (It has an extra black patch on the sleeve which doesn’t exist on the regular uniform.)
@IanK,
Too cutesy. In the altered time line, Worf’s family would be killed at Khitomer (2 years after the battle at Narendra 3) and he probably die after being buried in rubble and not rescued by Starfleet. At best, he would be rescued but would be an orphan from a disgraced house, doubtful he would be accepted in the military, much less rise to command.
@richf
Bah. Continuity, shmontinuity.
Sometimes I think you’re a little too critical of an episode for really minor flaws. You’ve already seen it so many times, I’m sure, so you have the opportunity to sit and judge even the smallest mistakes.
I’m guessing that at the time, you thought this episode was amazing and perfect. Sometimes you need to just let the story sweep you away and never mind that it’s a little cliche.
There are perhaps only half a dozen episodes that I would be willing to rate a 10, but this is absolutely one of them. This episode is one of the best.
This and “Inner Light” are my favorites… my only regret is it took them three years to get here. I love the bit when Picard leaps the railing to take over at Tactical. (He’s so non-plussed when Riker takes one for the ship).
Only thing it lacked was Q’s gloating…
Hmm, I must be the only person to have appreciated the appearance of Yar. Yeah, she’s not the best actor ever, but there was a LOT of really cruddy acting back in Season 1-2. Everyone got better — with the possible exception of Patrick Stewart, who was already at the top of his game. Denise Crosby would have grown, too, but instead her career languished. I always thought Yar was an interesting character, and perhaps the fact that we barely got to know her always made me more fascinated. For the same reason, I also really enjoyed Ezri Dax later, and Kes, both interesting characters who never quite reached their full potential. So, I loved getting a chance to get another glimpse of her here. And, as everyone else has pointed out, the rest of the episode is spectacular — I’m also puzzled why this only gets a 9.
Keith,
Your rating of 9/10 is two points LESS then I would have given this episode. Very simply, this is one of my two favorite hours of TNG (the other being “Tapestry”, for me). I love time-travel/alternate reality stories, and I believe that this one comes closest to capturing the spirit of “City on the Edge of Forever”, which is the highest compliment I can pay it.
The teaser is great, rivals “Cause and Effect” for my favorite TNG teaser. The transition from our reality to the alternate one was expertly done, visually (they didn’t repeat this greatness at the end of the show, but that’s a minor complaint).
This episode is also exhibit A of the theory that Star Trek actors had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning any Emmys for there performance. I believe Leonard Nimoy got 2 nominations for the Original Series, and Frank Gorshen got a nomination for his guest role (TNG got a best series nomination for the final season, which I think was Emmy’s way of saluting the whole series). Now, I’m not going to go back and look up the 5 nominations for outstanding guest performance in a drama for the 1989-90 Emmys, but I have a tough time buying that there were 5 better guest performances that year, then the one by Whoopi Goldberg in this show. She was awesome. They way she told Tasha about her fate in the regular timeline, had me shivering along with Denise Crosby, because I certianly would not want to be told that, no matter how true it is. I’m also left wondering if Guinan knew/knows more then she let on, which adds a nice air of mystery to the show.
Incidentally, I had no problem with killing Tasha Yar in this way. I didn’t mind her death in “Skin of Evil”, and I didn’t mind it here. You do not have to like one or the other, IMO. Now, what we find out in “Redemption part 2” is another story, but I’ll save it for then.
I thought Denise Crosby was fine this episode, just the other 3 guest stars were so great, that she gets lost in the shuffle.
The line you quote in Make It So is probably my favorite TNG line ever. Stewart’s great in this, a much different Picard then the one we are used to seeing, one that thinks that hesitation at all could mean the loss of the Federation. I also liked his side conversation with Garrett, which convinces her to go back.
Bottom line, one of my two favorite TNG episodes ever (please don’t ask me to seperate them 1-2).
@8:
‘I love the bit when Picard leaps the railing to take over at Tactical.’
Hell, yeah!
This episode blew my 10-year old mind. I thought about it for days and days afterward. The only part which lets it down for me (*nit picker alert*) is how passive the Enterprise is during the battle. There are three Klingon cruisers facing the ship down, and what do we see? A couple of bursts of desultory phaser fire, and (IIRC) one – that’s one, count ’em – round of photon torpedoes. (I know how costly SFX are, but still. End of nitpicking.)
It is, however, still fabulous – one of the few episodes I never get tired of. The exchange between Picard and Guinan is absolutely riveting. We get to see Picard as an individual who is angry and frustrated after years of fighting a war he knows to be unwinnable, and on the other side is Guinan, unimpeachable in her certitude. Breathless stuff.
Keith, in the end, it gave me more time to consider my comments.
My wife pointed out to me that someone is the wiser in this episode: Guinan obviously knows that something happened; otherwise, she wouldn’t call the bridge at the end. (Later on, we know she knows a lot more when we meet Sela, but as far as this episode is concerned, that ought to be considered irrelevant.)
I too liked Crosby’s performance as Yar in this episode, and having her appear and having the character get a meaningful death felt right to me. (This episode is also where I became a big fan of McDonald’s; I’ll watch him in almost anything.)
I also would rate this episode as a 10, not a mere 9, but I’m not Keith. :-) (The other episodes I would place there include “Best of Both Worlds” and “Inner Light.” Maybe “Parallels” too.)
— Michael A. Burstein
radynski: You would guess totally wrong. :) I felt the same way about this episode 20 years ago that I did now: that it gave Yar a stupid TV death. Seriously, ask any of my college buddies (one of whom is now producer of The Chronic Rift, the pop culture podcast that I’m part of). It was my one problem with the episode then, and it remains my problem with it now.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
… and we have to give mad props to David Carson for this one as well. Everything is shot like it was “DAS BOOT”… i don’t know who was the lighting director and cinematographer, but it set the proper tone. We see this again in Carson’s direction of “Generations”… although not the best of all Trek films (still better than V, i’m sure), I was so impressed with the hard key lighting in the first part of the movie.Picard’s ready room lit with only the light from his bay windows gave a stunning look.
“The novel The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett establishes that Guinan’s ability to perceive time with more complexity is related to her experience in the Nexus, chronicled in Star Trek Generations.”
I can’t take the credit for that. It’s from the script of Generations, but it was cut from the final film. In the scripted scene, Guinan says, “I began to realize that my experience in the Nexus had changed me… I knew things about people… about events… about time…” And Picard replies, “Your ‘sixth sense’… I’ve always wondered where it came from.” In fact, at the time I wrote The Buried Age, I thought that exchange was actually in the movie. Maybe I read it in the novelization? Whatever the case, I was surprised as heck the first time someone attributed the idea to me.
Anyway, Guinan’s magic timey-wimey sense has always struck me as a lame and contrived way of cluing the characters in to the temporal shift. I bet it would’ve been even better if instead, Garrett and her crew had decided on their own to go back in time and try to avert this awful future, and if she’d been the one to convince Picard that it had to be done. That would’ve been so much less stupid than Guinan saying “I feel our reality is wrong because the script says so.”
And I agree about the wrongness of “correcting” Tasha’s death to something more “noble.” To repeat a comment I made in the Rewatch for “Skin of Evil”: “I disagree completely that Tasha’s death was meaningless. Armus’s decision to kill her was meaningless, but Tasha’s death was in the performance of her duty, the result of an effort to save her crewmates, and that is profoundly meaningful. Whether she succeeded or not doesn’t matter; what matters is that she tried, that she acted selflessly and devoted her life to helping others. Bringing Tasha back later to give her a more conventionally ‘heroic’ sacrifice just cheapened her original death. It rejected the simple, realistic message of ‘Skin of Evil’ — that exploring space is dangerous and any one of our heroes could be killed at any time — in favor of a more romanticized, sanitized, grossly dishonest view of death and danger, where redshirts can be casually tossed aside without a thought but main characters get a special exemption and only die if it’s glamorous and uplifting enough.”
Still, the episode does have a lot going for it. It’s a strong story aside from its glaring flaws, and Picard’s climactic moments are impressive; I particularly love Dennis McCarthy’s score, the way he uses his Picard leitmotif (which was rarely used anymore at this point as Berman pushed the composers further away from motif-driven music) as a stirring, heroic fanfare in those final moments.
And as I’ve said before, I loved it how the science actually made a modicum of sense at this point. A “Kerr loop” is a real thing, aside from the informal phrasing; a Kerr ring singularity could theoretically function as a time warp (though there are lots of practical problems with that). The “superstring material” was a bit less accurate, though. They probably meant cosmic string material, the sort of ultradense matter that could produce a Kerr-type ring. But “superstring” is short for “supersymmetric string theory” and has nothing to do with cosmic strings.
Turns out of lot of us like the cliched TV death!
@@@@@#16 Rootboy,
If it’s plausable, and well-done, then whatever they decide is OK by me (though I admit, Picard granting her request for transfer might not be plausable – I think they should have had Tasha just stoeaway on the Enterprise-C). This one was well done enough to hook me in, and like I said above, it doesn’t come at the expense of disliking her earlier, “non-cliched” death, at least not for me.
I never liked Yar in this episode either and really hate where that story goes from here in Redemption, etc. MacDonald is awesome though and if having Crosby back gave him a few more scenes than he would have received then it balances out. This is definitely a top five episode and I think about it all the time in real world terms. Like if I had not helped that old lady with her groceries when I was fourteen would I have a devious goatee now? Can’t wait to get to the other four episodes in my top five.
I have to agree to disagree with most of you here. I have several TNG episodes on perma DVR and this is not one of them. I love several things about the episode but Denise Crosby is a terrible actress. I have a hard time giving any episode she is in a grade higher than a 7.
One of the things I really liked about this episode is the different perspectives on the characters. Here we have this warm, friendly crew in a posh, peaceful, utopian future we’re used to and WHAM we see these gritty, war-hardened versions of them . The alternate versions serve to highlight what we like best about the originals by both contrasting them and showing their similarities.
I didn’t know about Data’s death and Wesley’s death getting cut out. They should have been left in. {Insert obligatory Die Wil Weaton Die joke here :)}. It would have been memorable, as it would be the only time Wes Crusher gets killed in the series(If I remember correctly); which would pleased his hate mongers to no end. Maybe that is the real reason it got cut. Don’t make the hate mongers happy?
If, by chance this gets read by Mr Weaton. I consider myself a fan of yours, and I follow your twittering, and enjoy listening to you on Nerdist podcast, just to name a few.
Denis Crosby seemed rigid and uncomfortable, I don’t know how else to descripe her acting.
I agree, one of the best episodes of all Star Trek.
@@@@@#21,
I believe Wesley “died” in “Hide and Q.” One of the “animal things” stabbed him, and Worf, to death.
Everything I thought has already been said. Bunch of geniuses here, apparently…
But a special thanks to Christopher L. Bennett for calling out Guinan’s main purpose on the ship, and how (even) better writing could obviate the need for her special intuition. Blech.
I feel somebody must’ve really liked Denise Crosby to bring her back after her David Caruso pre-impersonation.
> she survived the battle at Narendra III long enough to sire a daughter.
Was gender reassignment surgery involved? Perhaps they do things differently in Starfleet…
*Very* good point upthread that the decision to go back could have been made by the ‘old’ Enterprise crew based on the world they see around them, rather than Guinan’s mysterious plot sense. That would have made an already good episode much better – first by getting rid of Guinan’s New Age twaddle, and secondly by showing us the irony of the modern Enterprise trying to prevent the old Enterprise going back in time, trying to do what they thought was the right thing.
I don’t mind Guinan’s “New Age twaddle”. At the time this episode was broadcast, she was meant to be mysterious — the stuff about the Nexus was retconned later. I would have been just as happy if it had never been explained — her time sense, her antagonism with Q — not every mystery needs to be explained.
And I’m not sure it would make sense for the Enterprise-C crew to voluntarily go to their deaths defending Klingons from Romulans. Even if the Federation had an honor culture, which it doesn’t, from their point of view they didn’t dishonorably desert the battle, they got caught in a temporal anomaly. I’m not sure it would have been reasonable for Garrett (with or without Picard) to decide that their disappearance was the cause of the war, without some external information. But YMMV of course.
all I would say has allready been said except the following superficial comments.
1) I loved the simple segue from happy shiny Enterprise to darker, grimmer Enterprise without any signal to the audience – no flash or weird sound, it simply is, then it isn’t.
2) the red tunic and black slack uniforms looked pretty sharp in the movies as long as they have the undershirt underneath. Without the turtleneck that picks up the colored accent on the jacket/tunic, they looked ridiculous and undignified. Kirstie Alley’s Lt. Saavik uniform with it’s deep orange turtleneck, for example, looks damned sharp and military These look like they have all been woken up and dressed hastily and forget the whole kit.
STNG would trot them out time and time again sans turtleneck (for flashback scenes, like Crusher’s husband) and they look awful.
edit:typo – without the turtleneck, not with the turtleneck ;)
@@@@@ strongdreams
I’ve been rewatching with my kids, and I’m really enjoying the early mysteriousness of Guinan; it feels like the writers are setting her up to be a great, if strange, power. I’m ignoring the stuff they did later.
I think she’s a time lord.
@25: “I don’t mind Guinan’s “New Age twaddle”. At the time this episode was broadcast, she was meant to be mysterious — the stuff about the Nexus was retconned later. I would have been just as happy if it had never been explained — her time sense, her antagonism with Q — not every mystery needs to be explained. “
The problem isn’t that it’s mysterious, the problem is that her mysteriousness is used as a contrived, deus ex machina way of getting around a plot hole. They needed the characters to figure out that the timeline had been altered when they had no valid way of knowing that, so the writers just conveniently gave Guinan the random ability to sense when history had been altered. It’s one of those cases where you can see the puppeteers pulling on the characters’ strings, and that’s weak writing.
“And I’m not sure it would make sense for the Enterprise-C crew to voluntarily go to their deaths defending Klingons from Romulans. Even if the Federation had an honor culture, which it doesn’t, from their point of view they didn’t dishonorably desert the battle, they got caught in a temporal anomaly. I’m not sure it would have been reasonable for Garrett (with or without Picard) to decide that their disappearance was the cause of the war, without some external information.”
Why wouldn’t they have external information? They’re Starfleet officers. They’re curious and skilled at finding things out. They’d want to know how things had degenerated to this point, and they’d do the research. And “honor” has nothing to do with it. Garrett could’ve realized that if they went back and fought to defend a Klingon colony 22 years earlier, it would change UFP-Klingon relations for the better and might avert the war. Heck, that was the argument Picard used to convince Garrett, so why wouldn’t it have worked as the argument Garrett used to convince Picard?
@26: I agree about the movie jackets without turtlenecks. I think the reverse would make more sense. I find it ridiculous the way the fancy-schmancy, retro-Hornbloweresque TWOK uniforms were used as standard duty wear in the movies. I could buy them as formal dress uniforms, but for everyday fatigues they should’ve dropped the jackets and just gone with the turtlenecks with rank and insignia pins attached — much like the TOS pilot-era uniforms.
LadyBelaine: Thank you for mentioning the weird turtleneck-free costumes, as I totally forgot to do so….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@28,
Why wouldn’t they have external information? They’re Starfleet officers. They’re curious and skilled at finding things out. They’d want to know how things had degenerated to this point, and they’d do the research.
I realize I’m in the position of trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but if we really think this through…
The Enterprise-D wouldn’t have a crew of 1000, living in spacious apartments, they’d have 2-3000, in small quarters with 4 or more to a room, so that there would be a full 24 hour staff to keep the ship repaired, maintained and battle ready. They wouldn’t send 5 people to fix the Enterprise-C, they’d send 500. Capt. Garrett would almost be an afterthought. They might honor her command, in which case they would put her into intensive briefings on the current situation. Or they would simply relieve her of duty on the grounds that her skills, equipment and knowledge are 20 years out of date. (What do you think would happen if the USS Yorktown had disappeared from the battle of Midway and shown up in the Sea of Japan in 1965?) On top of that, we have an (artificial) 9 deadline to either restore the C’s warp drive or scuttle her.
In any case, studying what to Picard would be ancient history, would be just about his lowest priority. (Going back to the Yorktown, do you think the captain would be able to persuade the captain of the Bon Homme Richard to drop everything else and give him a lesson on the Berlin blockade and the start of the cold war?)
And even if Garrett decided to do the research on her own, she can’t access the E-D’s computers without Picard’s permission.
Then think about whose character do you want to develop. Alternate Picard, who will revert back to normal in 44 minutes? or Garrett, a one-shot guest star? Or Guinan, who at least is a recurring role. Plus, I’d say that the alternate hardcore Picard would wouldn’t waste any time entertaining alternate history theories unless someone he’d known and trusted for more than 20 minutes, and if Garrett came to him with a plan to destroy a trillion-dollar warship in a suicide mission to try and make the Klingons like them, he’d relieve her of duty on the grounds of mental instability.
I get your basic point, but I’m not sure you don’t create as many improbables as you solve if you try to have Garrett come up with the idea on her own.
@27: I thought at the time she was an Organian monitor.
“El -Aurian?” Oh, well.
I completely agree. Also the Enterprise episode was “In a Mirror, Darkly” not “Through the Glass, Darkly”. :) I can’t believe there are 31 posts and no one mentioned this yet.
@28: “The problem isn’t that it’s mysterious, the problem is that her mysteriousness is used as a contrived, deus ex machina way of getting around a plot hole. They needed the characters to figure out that the timeline had been altered when they had no valid way of knowing that, so the writers just conveniently gave Guinan the random ability to sense when history had been altered. It’s one of those cases where you can see the puppeteers pulling on the characters’ strings, and that’s weak writing.”
Agree 100%. This keeps this from being a 10 episode for me. I just rewatched it a few weeks ago and I thought the very same thing. Guinan’s “I can now feel changes in time even though I have never done that before” just seemed made up to make the plot work.
And I also agree with Krad- though I love this episode, it showed me how much I didn’t miss Tasha.
Rewatching this episode in recent years, I see a few traits of Garrett that got passed on to Kathryn Janeway.
I’m not a fan of Yar, and especially not the dead end Sela plotline, but I didn’t have a problem with her appearance here. It fit the alternate timeline theme and gave the character a chance to go out on top, without taking momentum away from the episode’s main story. Guinan having a time sense isn’t a violation of her mysterious background, either.
This episode is a great example of what Enterprise lacked. In one hour it manages to pay homage to older Trek, flesh out Federation history, and generate lots of tension and character moments, without drowning in exposition. And it doesn’t have to throw away continuity or fill the episode with bland banter to get there. If Enterprise had taken even half as much care with its universe and stories from the beginning, it might have been worth watching.
Agreed that the final stand in this episode is curiously passive. Picard seems to wait for everyone around him to die before finally getting serious. It doesn’t stand out on first viewing, though.
Wesley died on camera in the second Q episode. If you want more, these two clips are satisfying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJessyuf8lA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxopd_qSVKo
Okay, I’m going to go into nitpick mode again. I know that the Enterprise-D is suppsed to be a craft of exploration, but it gets it’s ass kicked very frequently. I can sort of live with that in the normal universe, but in the military universe, this should be a much stronger ship. I agree with the previous poster that the Enterprise is pretty passive… no repeated phaser bursts (either shown or ordered), only one round of photons- it only destroys one smaller ship and gets destroyed by the other two. I think this is some legacy of Gene Rodenbury’s “Shiny Happy Starfleet” which gets corrected in later seasons and much more with DS9/Voyager- we realize later that the universe is still a dangerous place and that starships need to defend themselves. But in early DS9, the Galaxy class comes across as somewhat easy to attack.
My fav TNG episode. No matter how many times I watch it, when Yar reads out the other Enterprise’s registration, I get goosebumps. Just done really well.
Even as a kid watching this (the first couple of times) I remember being satisfied with how they gave Yar’s character a “second chance” and make her mean a bit more.
And how about Shooter McGavin as Castillo!
@28, @33,
I understand your side of the argument but I think you are too quick to dismiss the problems with your preferred scenario.
Guinan’s “I can now feel changes in time even though I have never done that before” just seemed made up to make the plot work.
Exactly when would this have come up before? And at this point we do know that Guinan is mysterious, long-lived, and has a history with Q.
You would prefer that Capt Garrett spend time researching the history of the war and realize on her own that the Enterprise-C’s disappearance could have sparked the war. Remember first that she has 9 hours to fix her ship or else scuttle it, is it reasonable that she would spend some of her time in the library? Then, she has to go to Picard and suggest a suicide mission — not diplomat Picard, but battle Picard. Woud he be more likely to approve her suicide mission (125 people and a trillion-dollar starship) or would he relieve her of duty on the grounds of mental fatigue and give Riker the command? And don’t forget that making Garrett a brilliant, insightful commander who sacrifices herself and her crew for an unverifiable theory wastes all that character work on a guest star who will never return to the show. At least having Guianan persuade Picard to take a chance based on her “feeling” does add something to the Guinan-Picard relationship.
I’m just suggesting that your alternative is not as clear-cut as you think.
I love the twists Trek takes when they delve off into another ‘mirror’ universe…and though this isn’t that universe that we saw later in DS9, it makes me wonder if that’s what they had in mind. I loved Picard’s conversation with Guinan in the lounge, when he basically tells her Starfleet has a few months’ worth of fighting left, and then it’s obliteration. How cool! And set with that impressive map at Picard’s back, showing fleet locations and strategic points…things like that really help set the tone.
I wish we could’ve seen more of this from TNG. I know the writers didn’t often revisit ideas, but in the later episode (season 7?) when Worf is traveling through dimensions, it would’ve been cool to see this Enterprise appear.
I’m actually surprised no one mentioned how the look of the military Enterprise is almost exactly how the Enterprise would eventually look in Star Trek Generations with the stations on the side of the bridge and the raised command area. Also as I recall, Diane Duane used this episode as the basic idea when she described the ISS Enterprise-D in her novel “Dark Mirror.”
Frankly, allowing the existence multiple omnipotent otherdimensional energy beings who can alter the nature of reality with a snap of their self-constructed “fingers” makes giving Guinan a “timeline sense” seem utterly tame in comparison.
leandar: Both “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and Generations had the same director, David Carson, interestingly enough.
Of course, in the movie, the reason for killing the lights on the bridge was because the sets built for television would look incredibly chintzy on the big screen…..
I have to disagree with Keith about the “stupid tv death” bit. I happen to have found moving the idea of being able to choose when you die, and what you make of your life before then. (This is a development, after a fashion, of a theme introduced at the climax of “Where Silence Has Lease,” when Picard asks, “how long to prepare to die?”)
Why does the first screen shot make me think of either “PacMan” or “You sunk my battleship?”
Some trivia: Christopher McDonald was Thelma’s unloving husband in “Thelma & Louise.” Before this episode aired, I had this dream where I was discussing “Star Trek” with McDonald. Freaky or what?…at any rate, he got to play Mr. Sensitive Guy in this one.
43 comments and no one has made the connection to the movie The Final Countdown? A ship travels through time and changes/maintains the course of history? I thought it would have been obvious.
I’ve always wondered something. In “Redemption,” it seemed like the Romulans had learned everything about Tasha Yar when they interrogated her — that she came from the future, the name of her commanding officer, etc. Sela knew it all, which means that the Romulans have known it all for twenty years. Now, obviously, this timeline was averted, but did the Romulans’ strategy of splitting the Federation-Klingon alliance come from their knowledge of this alternate timeline.
It’s always interesting with a big episode like this one what we choose to nitpick over and what makes us wilfully suspend our disbelief.
I agree with the 9 rating as the drama is just that good.
I have no problem with Guinan’s “special” ability. I don’t consider it a deus ex machina, as it was pointed out by strongdreams that she’d already been set up as being mysterious, long-lived, and having had an adversarial relationship with Q. That’s enough for me to believe that her word would eventually be “good enough, dammit, good enough,” for Picard, to paraphrase his outburst. Nor do I have a problem with Tasha “resetting” the conditions of her death. I thought it was a neat idea (provided that she actually died, which she did, but not re-oh never mind). I don’t have a problem with Garrett’s decision, relative crew complements, or anything much else (except Garrett’s death).
No, the nit I’d like to pick is called the Tomed Incident. It was established in the season 1 episode The Neutral Zone that Starfleet had heard “almost nothing” from the Romulans since said incident occurred 53 years ago (55 by the time the events of Yesterday’s Enterprise happened). I’m sorry, but I don’t consider the Federation’s flagship charging to the rescue of a Klingon outpost, being destroyed by 4 Romulan warbirds, and resulting in a lasting peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire “almost nothing.” I see no reason why, for continuity’s sake, the Narendra III incident couldn’t have taken place before the Tomed Incident. At this point in the established timeline, it can still be Enterprise-C, it can still be Klingons vs. Romulans, it can be everything the episode says it is except that it’s not 22 years they jump forward, but somewhere around, say, 56-60 years.
/end_nitpick
Watching this episode again the other night, and then seeing Christopher McDonald on an episode of Harry’s Law the next night, I was reminded of Castillo’s line to Yar about keeping an eye out for a man in his late 50’s looking at her (had she stayed and he survived).
I went to look up the original airdate of the episde (which is when I first saw it, barely into my teens) and was amused to realize it was February 1990 — exactly 22 years now, just like the Enterprise C’s time jump. No need to imagine now what Castillos hypothetical older self would look like!
@40, the extra stations on the side and the raised center chair bear similarity to the Generations bridge, but it is not almost identical. This bridge has a series of steps all the way across, replacing the ramps, with only Picard’s chair in the center and raised so high as to go above the tactical station. The Generations bridge still has ramps, it’s just that the sides of the ramps are raised for the sake of the side stations. There are only about two steps on a raised platform jutting out from the command section, and all three bridge chairs are present.
Also, in Generations the lighting is merely dimmed; here it’s dimmed because the ceiling lights are blue.
Then of course, the two have a number of smaller differences.
I’m not trying to destroy your comment or rain on your parade–just saying.
Also, I have some comments on the Galaxy-class-should-not-be-this-wimpy discussion, but I think I will save that for “Rascals”.
Don’t know if anybody will see this, but I do totally agree about Yar’s death in Skin of Evil (and I believe I did comment on that in that post) – I never found her death sensless or empty and I think it highlighted the randomness and pointlessness that violence can have. But it wasn’t meaningless for HER – she was doing her job. And even if was just a freak accident (like, for example, Lt. Aster in the Bonding)…sometimes life is like that.
I agree with you Lisamarie, why was Yars death in “skin” meaningless? She was trying to rescue hostages…I can think of few more noble ways to die? I think people are saying that because they just don’t like that episode. But yeah, it has always bothered me. Further on this point, since we don’t see how Tasha died (not that she did anyways) when they went through the rift, how do we know she didn’t have to go to the bathroom and have a bulkhead crush her? We don’t, be we KNOW she was trying to rescue troi when an entity killed her. Yeah, I am mystified?
But YES, this episode is absolutley incredible. There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said already accept the music was great too. At this point McCarthy was already sounding boring and terrible, yet this was his last, great, episode soundtrack. Thank God this episode wasn’t in season 6 or 7 when the music would have been dulled down to suicide level.
Sire a daughter?!? No, sorry, women bear children. Men sire them.
About the TV death: Technically its an entirely different Tasha who goes back in time aboard the Enterprise-C; the Tasha we know still dies at Vagra II, so this doesn’t cheapen that realistic death by Armus at all. Its just a great story which gives us a chance to see what maybe Denise Crosby’s Yar would have been like had Crosby stayed with the show. Just an awesome awesome story overall, a great oppurtunity for Crosby to come back and (finally) do an awesome episode where Yar actually matters to the story. To me. it was finally a chance for Yar to be in the foreground instead of reliably in the background at tactical. Definitely a 10.
@15 Christopher, you’re thinking like a book writer, but this is a tv show. Would you really give the pivotal plot decision, on which the fate of the universe turns, to a one off character? In a book perhaps, where you have time and space to develop such a character, such a choice would be valid. Even in a book series you can devote entire POV sections to a previously unknown minor character which you are temporarily elevating to such a high status. But in a tv series, no, not without compelling reason. Garrett is a fine character (due as much to the guest star’s talent as anything else, and poor casting could have derailed the episode), but Picard and his crew are the stars. Would the series be better served providing insight into her character, she who will be gone forever by the time the credits roll, or Picard’s character, who, though he is a different version of his usual character, is still essentially him and will return time and again?
For me this episode has always been fanservice and a bore. Most of that is because of Tasha’s return but I never found Garrett or Castillo noteworthy. The only element of interest that which was added to Guinin’s mystery. Worst of all, we learned from “The Deadly Years” that Romulans don’t take prisoners. Yet, Alternative Tasha becomes a mistress and her daughter a Romulan Commander? Ridiculous!
My favorite thing about this episode is the nuanced, precise performance by Patrick Stewart. He did an amazing job of portraying a Picard who has lived through 20 years of war instead of peace, without betraying the essence of the original character. He’s a bit more aggressive and short-tempered, but underneath he’s still that calculating, reasonable man. My least favorite thing about this episode is that I simply cannot take Castillo seriously – that’s not a Starfleet lieutenant, that’s Shooter McGavin!
Just my two cents worth:
This is the very first episode of TNG I can actually remember watching. I would have been about 5 years old at the time.
I had no idea who Tasha Yar was, only that seeing her made my older brother and sister (10 and 12) very sad for some reason. So keep in mind that I saw “heroic TV death” Tasha first please :P
First, KRADeC – I love your recap of this episode, but I personally think this episode is perfect (ain’t personal bias wonderful :P ) Well from a story perspective anyway… the reused CGI and somewhat yucky looking “old” uniforms did kind of bug me after a lot of rewatching this episode as I got older (we taped it on the VCR because there was no way in hell my parents would let any of us kids stay up till midnight to watch TV, even if it was Sci-Fi… we didn’t record the earlier seasons because they actually showed them in a non-ridiculous time slot, but from season three onwards the approximately 60% that my father actually remembered to tape became some of our most prized possessions).
Anyway, I’ve now seen every episode of TNG and every other spin-off (working through TOS now) and I feel that this is in my top five favourite episodes of TNG, if not of all Trek I have watched. Massive statement I know, LOL.
Agree with everything you said about Troi in her section, however I’m not entirely convinced that if there was a counsellor on board it would necessarily be her. My logic for that statement is, that as an empath it would likely send HER crazy dealing with that much of everyone else’s mental anguish and other issues (like anger and probably constantly wanting to kill shit – think Lon Suder from Voyager times a thousand or two in her head “all the live-long day” :P )
Actually, I agree with everything you said other than the bits about Denise Crosby. I like her and you obviously don’t. Chalk it up to the ignorance of youth or something… But we can agree to disagree, right?
MABfan – the last paragraph of your first post is exactly me too.
Oh, wow… I just realized most of my favourite episodes involve time travel (“City of the Edge of Forever”, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Cause and Effect” to name a few of my favourite TNG eps)… LOL
Agree with everything in your second post, except the bit about “The Inner Light” but that’s more because I found it a bit boring and have never been able to sit through the whole thing in one sitting, rather than it being an inherrantly bad episode.
Ian K – That would have been an amazing touch, but I think it may have stretched credibility a little too far.
Strong dreams – I respectfully beg to differ on your interpretation of post-Narendra III events in the alternate timeline. In fact, I would go as far as saying that the Khitomer attack never occurred in the alternate timeline. Bear with me here.
At Narendra III the Klingon gets attacked by “someone”. Enterprise-C gets a distress call and turns up there. They get attacked by Romulans and disappear… The Federation knows that the C went to Narendra III, and presumably the Klingon’s do too. However, the only people who are aware of the Romulan’s involvement are now 22 years elsewhere, err, else-when. So the Klingons would then assume one of two things; either the Feds are dishonorable cowards who ran from a fight, or they were the ones who did the deed and then high-tailed it out of there. In any case, not a good look for the Feds and the Klingons aren’t exactly known to be the forgiving type about either behavior. Thus the Klingons and the Federation have a big bust-up… And the Romulans are happy, because if the UFP and the Klingon Empire are fighting, they pretty much get left to their own (nefarious) devices. Why attack an enemy that is effectively fighting your other enemy to the death? It would be stupid. Let them weaken each other while you bide your time and amass your forces to destroy the winner. The Romulans would be even more stupid/crazy to attack Khitomer, than Hitler was to invade the Soviet Union when he still hadn’t technically defeated Europe. It would be like kicking a bee-hive, ie. asking for trouble.
So, theoretically, it could have been Worf they were fighting :P
Wow, my comments are turning into quite an essay :P
(Also, I spelled inherently wrong last post… don’t know if I can fix it or not)
Bob A – I agree with everything you said. I now have a vision of Q doing exactly that, LOL.
Gilbetron – Yes! Just yes.
Mike S. @10 – See my comment directly above for Gilbertron :P
Seryddwr – :D. I agree, that battle did feel stilted. It felt like a naval battle where huge ships lumber around because of their large mass, and the smaller ships turn quicker/better. In space, with inertial dampners (or whatever), I would have thought the difference in mass would be negated if they had enough energy (like DS9s “Emissary” when they move the station). Mind you, I think Babylon 5 spoilt me in my expectations for special effects when it came out.
CLB – I love your writing BTW, and though I haven’t read the DTI stuff yet, I’m very much looking forward to it.
Due to my commentary becoming ridiculous in it’s length, I’ll do bullet points for the rest of my thoughts.
# I love Guinan’s “timey-whimeyness”. I can totally see her as a Timelord, LOL (maybe The Doctor compared to Q as The Master?). As an aside, it really doesn’t take all that much from information given in “Generations”, along with watching the series, to conclude that the Nexus was the source of her “time sense” after watching the movie. Obviously, that’s why that dialogue ended up on the cutting room floor (I believe it was actually filmed but didn’t make the final cut). It may have been better to leave her “mystique” intact, but whatever makes the Hollywood bucks, right? :P
# The Lost Era uniforms made me uncomfortable. It took many years, and many rewatches, to determine that: (a) it was TWoK uniform sans undershirt and (b) the lack of undershirt made them feel somewhat naked.
# The alternate timeline modern uniforms were amazing!
# The battle log and combat date thing were very nice touches.
# Every single time (including the first) that I have seen this episode, when Yar reads out the Cs details I get chills up my spine. Actually, it’s right when she says C, and as she says USS Enterprise my blood runs cold. Every time! Creeps me out with the predictability of that response. No idea what it is about it that makes me react that way though. Maybe it’s the “someone just walked over my grave” feeling people talk about.
# AMAZING teaser! Equal first with “Cause and Effect” IMHO. (But hey, I’m totally biased, and proud of it) :P
# In retrospect, Guinan’s ability to sense the timeline being changed never seemed to be contrived to me. She’s an alien who only appears human (and until “Generations” the only member of her species we’d seen). How are we to know that all her species can’t do that? (At that point in the show’s run I mean) Heck, let’s not forget that Q, of all people, is afraid her for some inexplicable reason! That indicates to me she’s pretty powerful, but she just doesn’t like to show off like a certain aforementioned, so-called omnipotent being. Actually, the Nexus reveal made me feel they weakened the character by attempting to define aspects of her power. Mysterious characters are lame when they no longer have mysteries IMO.
# I am absolutely certain I’ll get flamed for this, but to quote a sage from another universe “many of the truths we cling to, depend on our point of view”. From a certain point of view, Tasha’s death was meaningless. Her death helped no-one, saved no-one, and ultimately had very little influence on historical events (that we’re shown, anyway). In part, Guinan telling alternate Yar of her counterpart’s death and apparent meaninglessness of it’s manner, could be a subtle manoeuvring of events to ensure the success of the C upon their return to Narendra III restoring the original timeline. (Note: My siblings and I have discussed at length whether this episode has two distinct timelines or three. There is an argument for the different parts of the episodes to be labelled timeline A, timeline B and timeline A’, where A’ is a imperceptibly slight variation of A. Or as my big brother would say, “Is this really an example of a self-causing, self-eliminating temporal paradox?”. Yep, massive nerds my entire family :P ) By her being there at Narendra III, the battle is influenced for their better. Staying where she is almost certainly will doom both crews. By going to the C, Yar was making a difference. To me, I think the character herself would think that dying without making a difference would be a waste. The fact that she was ultimately fated to die an as equally unfulfilling death as her counterpart cements the tragedy her life really was. I think why Guinan said it was meaningless because from Tasha Yar’s own perspective it was.
Finally finished now. Thank you for your time! :P
I feel like the little love story between Tasha and that guy was really shallow and unnecessary. It would have been better, more powerful storytelling for her to make the decision simply because she felt it was what she had to do. Maybe have her interacting with multiple members of the C crew, but not forming any [i]particular bond, because that’s not what it’s about. I feel like it reduces Tasha’s character somewhat to toss in this half-baked ‘love’ story as her motivation.[/i]
The two things I never got about this episode were the supposed militaristic elements of it. I know they wanted to differente this universe from ours, but substituing “military log” for “captain’s log” and “combat date” for “stardate” seems contrived to me. Despite two decades of war, I don’t think the Federation would become so militaristic to mark time with “combat dates” and “military logs”. The other is the battle sequence itself. For being a Galaxy-class warship built to combat the Klingons during war, it made a pathetically weak showing. I know they were really just drawing cover for the Enterprise-C and being in a defensive position against moving targets puts a combatant at a disadvantage, but they waited for the Klingons to open fire before firing a volley of photon torpedoes that barely scratched the bird-of-prey (ordinarily one or two torpedo hits obliterate a bird-of-prey). Only after the Enterprise-C was converged on, the Enterprise-D was being outflanked and had damage to deck 14, the loss of the starboard power coupling and one of their containment generators was off-line, did they outleash a full phaser volley. If I was ever in command of a Federation battleship fighting against an enemy, I would try to cause A LOT more damage than Picard did.
@krad Again, I’m amazed at your guts for calling a TNG cast member “mediocre”; when you might meet them face to face. :)
I love this episode, and I love that Lt. Castillo is a white Hispanic; Holywood (until very recently) seems to forget that we exist. Yes, it’s not as valid as a complain from other minorities, but it’s always bugged me, as a white Hispanic (and my country, Uruguay, is full of those), that every time a Hispanic character appears he’s a generic dark-skinned dark-haired dark-eyed guy. It’d be like making all US characters blonde and blue eyed.
On the Tasha subject, I never cared for her, but I did like this plot and the resulting Sela plot. Having the mysterious Romulan commander plotting against them be Tasha’s daughter and look-alike makes it all the more poignant in the end.
About Guinan, I don’t mind that she gets the ability to sense temporal shifts, it fits the mysterious character established thus far.
@cityguy: However, if TNG’s make-up crew had aged 30s McDonald to play 50s Castillo, then he would have looked anything like 50s McDonald’s. Star Trek has a horrible track record when it comes to aging actors with make-up. :)
@drewatl: Saying “Romulans don’t take prisoners” because one episode says so is reducing them to “one planet, one race, one culture”. Why couldn’t ONE Romulan decide to keep an attractive human as a love slave? Plus, even if they don’t “take prisoners”, not keeping them captive for a while to interrogate them would be just stupid.
@JohnC: Sir Patrick Stewart’s performance here is amaazing.
@30: The Enterprise D was shown to have been much more crowded. As for the D being easy to beat, we really didn’t see what other weapons the ship or the Klingons had. If they were winning the war, they’d probably have more advanced weapons, too. Also Riker’s argument for allowing Garrett to stay was pretty slim. Garrett’s ship was twenty years out of date and already doomed.
Meanwhile, would Guinan even be there if the Enterprise was a fully military vessel? But I still think Picard would have sent Garrett back in time simply because she doesn’t belong there and would be of little use being so out of date. Data could have made the argument for sending her back after studying the anomaly,
Note: Worf was supposed to have been the Klingon telling Picard to surrender in the original script. I always assumed his not being there was because he’d been killed by the Romulans along with his parents, and that Troi was dead, as well. Wesley being there was a nice touch and I like to think he and the rest of his classmates from Nova Squad were fast-tracked through the Academy or maybe drafted outright.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who liked Crosby’s performance. It was much better IMO than her earlier ones.
Stewart does a great job of playing a man hardened by years of combat. And his quote about remembering the name Enterprise was what he would do. And I like to think of Worf introducing prune juice to the Klingons.
That isn’t a sash. It’s a Sam Browne belt. Same with Mirror NX-01.
Was a great episode.
My favorite episode of any incarnation of Star Trek period. I never get tired of watching it and if it was possible to wear out my Blu-ray disc that contains it then such would be the case.
The second time Castillo and Yar say goodbye to each other (in the transporter room) makes me all teary-eyed. I love that there’s a love story at the heart of this episode amongst all of the strange time travel phenomena and brutal war going on. While I wouldn’t argue that Denise Crosby is the strongest actress especially compared to her cast mates and guest stars, her performance here was more than adequate and some of the best work she’s done. And she had amazing chemistry with Christopher McDonald who himself was put in a stellar performance. He was so dashing and handsome as Castillo that it made me wish I could see more continuing adventures with the character.
The episode score is among the best Next Gen ever did and I personally think Dennis McCarthy’s best work. I bought the CD of the soundtrack back in the 90’s and still have it to this day.
Love all of the alternate timeline changes, from the bridge design and darkened lighting to the more militaristic uniforms.
Though limited by budget and 90’s FX technology, I did and still find the final battle between the Enterprise-D and the Klingon ships to be deeply exciting. I agree as others have stated that the Enterprise-D did seem a bit passive when it came to firing on the enemy ships. We’ve seen it far more aggressive previously in the season with it’s battle with the enemy ship in “The Survivors” and at the end of the season against the Borg. Perhaps they could have added a line that the Enterprise-D was already damaged or low on power after a recent run-in with the Klingons.
I’m not bothered by the deus ex machina of Guinan sensing something is amiss. It depeens the mystery and intrigue of her character. But even if that story element hadn’t panned out or Whoopi Goldberg wasn’t available, I think you still could have had the senior officers weigh the pros and cons about sending the Enterprise-C back and Picard ultimately deciding that it had to go.
I don’t think if anyone has ever pointed out this particular nitpick before or not but I’ve always thought it was such an improbable coincidence that in both timelines that the viewer is witnessing on screen, that the Enterprise-D is present at the wormhole when the Enterprise-C comes through. If that sounds confusing, think of it this way: when the Enterprise-C comes through the wormhole into the future, our friendly E-D that we know and love should really be off in some other part of space doing it’s thing and then the universe blinks and everything is changed. But I understand that dramatic conceit of why the E-D is right by the wormhole in both timelines when the events occur.
I read that Rick Berman had wished he saved this story for The Next Gen cast’s movie debut and the Enterprise-C would be swapped out with the Enterprise of Captain Kirk’s era and crew. But I’m glad we have this episode instead. It made for a perfect and classic hour of Trek television.
I don’t understand preferring bad writing because it’s more “realistic.” The point is that Tasha Yar’s death was meaningless in the plot in which it happened. It didn’t further the threat. It didn’t make us worry that anyone could die. It didn’t make the villain any less comical.
Yes, they use it in the B-plot of the episode, to talk about death, but, in the A-plot, it feels like it was tacked on–as if she wasn’t originally going to die. And while that’s almost certainly true, it shouldn’t be so obvious.
The point is Chekhov’s gun. Everything that happens in a story has to further the plot. Even a red herring furthers the plot, by creating suspense. And, while you may think having a heroic death where you simultaneously embrace and rewrite your destiny is cliched, a cliched death is better than a poorly written one.
Skin of Evil just doesn’t accomplish anything about the pointlessness of death. It has a meaningless death a subplot that tries to make the death meaningful–but fails since that meaning has nothing to do with the plot. It could have been any death.
Great episode in just about every way. The large flaw for me was how much of an awful Mary Sue it shows Guinan to be. She just magically knows something is up and Picard trusts her vague feeling that she can’t even describe. I get that Picard is meant to trust her very much but that is not shown to us, we’re just told that because Guinan is so great, she knows this stuff and because she’s so great, Picard trusts her 100%. This part could just be more to do with Whoopi Goldberg’s acting ability, but she also exhibits no guilt, remorse or conflict about sending about 150 people to almost certain death based on a feeling. We’re just meant to accept that Guinan is special, that she’s amazing, that she’s treated differently from everyone else in a bizarrely unrealistic way.
If Wesley had said “Sir, I think this is a bit weird. I don’t know why but it’s odd. Let’s kill 150ish people,” Picard would quite rightfully have told him to shut the hell up and probably put him in for some counselling. Even if it was someone that Picard trusts enormously, like Riker, it would’ve been the same. I felt like I was reading Twilight or something like that where a certain character is just amazing and everyone should listen to her and she’s always right. What makes it even worse is that the whole episode hinges around that BS. If it wasn’t for old Mary Sue there, everyone would’ve accepted it was normal and carried on with their lives as they’d been for the past 20-odd years.
Fortunately, the other stuff is so compelling that I can kind of block that out and just enjoy the rest of it. It’s just that with the (as KRAD says) somewhat orchestrated feeling of Tasha’s re-death, it combines to give this a kind of fan fiction feel. What if TNG was darker and more edgy? What if Tasha had a cheesier Hollywood death, ’cause I didn’t like that other one? What if I was this amazing barmaid that knows everything and even Jean Luc listens and obeys my every command? Yep, Guinan is basically the awkward self-insert.
I agree with the review regarding Tasha Yar. If this was the last we’d see of her, okay. But since this ‘alternate timeline’ does have it’s effect on the original timeline, this is NOT the last we see of this.
Her death was so efective because she really died and only lived through the memories of others. Seriously, the only way they could have done this any worse if Yar’s death was only a dream of one of the crew members.
Way late to the party I know but just found this rewatch recently and I love it! I hadn’t seen this episode in years and only remembered disliking it but not why so I was shocked at the positive reviews. Going back and rewatching it myself I found that the only thing that stood out as to why my initial viewing response was so negative was the premature goodbye between Yar and Castillo in the transporter room. Really? Big kiss goodbye in front of other personnel by s senior officer on a military ship? NFW! Totally eliminated my suspension of disbelief on first watching. I can get past it now and the rest of the episode is really, really good but, geez, I thought they would have gotten past that kind of thing after Kirk hugged Rand on the bridge in TOS.
…Denise Crosby, mediocre? What?
There are so many subtle touches by the director/cinematographer/lighting designer/colorist that can make or break things. There were scenes in this episode that felt and looked like a feature, not a tv episode. But the moment that gives me the chills each time is when the crew of D is leaving the conference room after a meeting with Picard about the alternate timeline. Geordi says “Who knows if we’re even dead or alive.” As he walks past out of the frame Yar moves forward into it with Data eventually entering out of focus in the background. They both pause, and then acknowledge each other as they enter the turbolift together. It was such a subtle nod to Data and Yar’s relationship in the other timeline and a foreshadow of Yar’s eventual growing uneasiness. It was tremendous blocking, focal switch, music, and timing by the actors. It could have been such a cheese moment/typical trope if there had been too much focus on Yar sitting there pondering or if she laughed it off or something. It also had that weird butterfly effect for me. But for that one event who knows what your relationship might have been or how your life might have been different, even with the person who just enters the elevator with you.
Just having Tasha Yar back one more time is goose-bump level stuff. 10/10.
There’s one fundamental concept about this episode that apparently no one has picked up on. That is, which is the “correct” and which is the “altered” timeline? At the beginning of the episode the Enterprise encounters the temporal rift. They did nothing to create it; it just appeared by itself. Later, once they are in the “war” timeline, Data surmises that the rift may have been created by the exchange of phaser fire in the heated battle. Therefore the rift must have been created in an an unaltered past. Indeed, every event that had taken place prior to that moment and from that moment on was “as it was supposed to be.” The Enterprise C’s escape through the rift couldn’t have changed history, because it hadn’t been written yet. The events that followed were in a timeline where the Enterprise C didn’t go down defending a Klingon outpost, and the war with the Klingons soon followed. Fast forward 22 years when the Battleship Enterprise D observes the C emerging from the same rift it escaped through. Guinan’s intuition that the war timeline was somehow “wrong” and that the emergence of the Enterprise C changed history was inaccurate. It is more reasonable and consistent to argue that it was the C’s return back through the rift that changed history, and that the entire TNG universe from episode 1 is actually the altered timeline. In addition, the opening scene of the Enterprise D arriving at the rift when C emerged was merely an astronomically unlikely coincidence and did nothing to the continuity of their timeline. Anyone have any thoughts?
Just one thought on the final battle sequence. There have been comments questioning why the Enterprise D is taking so much punishment and dishing out so little. Would this have something to do with the fact that Geordi mentions that the “power-coupling” was severed when Picard asks for all remaining power to be diverted to defensive systems? Yes, they really should have fired more photon torpedoes and it did seem like they were just a sitting target most of the battle, but perhaps Picard knew that he only had to hang on for a minute or so before the Enterprise C entered the rift, so why bother?
I don’t like Tasha Yar, let me get that out of the way. She has always been my least favorite main character of any Trek show. However, the hatred of Denise Crosby’s acting is totally unfair. She’s not a great actor, but she’s hardly as bad as people here are saying. Anyways, great episode, top 10 of all time for me. The only thing that bugs me is Guinan’s claim of 40 billion deaths in the altered timeline. That seems ludicrously high to me. How could there possibly be anyone left to fight this war if there were that many dead? I have to wonder all these years if that was supposed to be 4 billion and Whoopi Goldberg flubbed the line (that’s not a criticism, it happens).
@76. 40 Billion is a high number, but in an extermination war it is not unreasonably so. The Federation is said to have 150 member planets (not including colonies, outposts, etc) and if each of those members has about 4 billion inhabitants (rough average, figure some lower some higher, but 4billion is a good back of the envelope figure) that gives a total of about 600 billion total population of the Federation. 40 Billion deaths in a full on war of conquest, with no prisoners taken and including civilians; a war the Federation is losing, starts to actually sound a bit low if anything.
random22 is correct — 40 billion is not an unreasonable casualty number for a nation that includes hundreds of planets to have suffered in a protracted war.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This is a great episode – maybe just slightly overrated, but I say that only because a number of people rate it above several of my favorites, not because it doesn’t deserve praise.
I’ve never had a problem with Crosby’s reappearance, at least not in this episode. Yeah, it’s not a great performance, but not bad. What I do have a problem with is Sela, who is sort of spawned by this episode. But that’s another story. At the end of the day, I feel like this gave Yar the end she deserved (if only they’d left it there).
If I have a problem with this episode, it’s that Guinan’s hunch doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that everyone would buy into so easily. At least Riker sticks to his guns; I just feel like there would have been more objection. That said, the idea of sending the 1701C crew back does up the stakes, and it’s not like suicide missions have no basis in reality. Ultimately, “your mission is to go back and die, my psychic thinks you need to” is just one of those things that’s only easy to buy into because it’s the only way the story works.
One other quick thing I have to throw in, I disagree about “needing” a counselor. How many protracted wars are there in our history where the troops couldn’t take the strain without a shrink to help them through? Then, come to think of it, I find it a little remarkable that hundreds of years in the future – when people have supposedly evolved to be more mature, peaceful, and capable – ship’s counselor is a key and relatively high-ranking position. Everything is so much better! But people still can’t cope! But I digress.
The two things that really make this episode great are the unique (and likely groundbreaking for the time) alternate universe storyline, and the attention to detail, something that really shows up the more you watch it. So many differences, obvious and subtle: “combat date” instead of “stardate,” different set layouts, even different sound effects for the doors. There was a significant amount of attention paid to sell the idea of a protracted war. I hadn’t even thought about the shifts in the characters. Obviously Picard does a great job of coming across as authoritarian, but he’s still equitable. There are other, more minor shifts (like Riker as a “ra ra, fight the Klingons!” sort) too, if you look for them. The climax is great, giving Picard two great lines: “Lets make sure history never forgets…” and the John Wayne throwback “that’ll be the day.” Finally, seeing Picard jump in at tactical to continue firing is immensely satisfying.
Yesterday’s Enterprise is an easy 9, even on re-watch. The details and bits of the performances you didn’t notice on the first (or first several) runs keep it interesting, and the weak spots don’t drag it down. Yet another hit for season 3.
@60:
I’ve been listening to broadcasts of WWII-era radio programs, and in them, you hear terms like “Eastern War Time” (to refer to what we would call “Eastern Daylight Saving Time”) – and that’s civilians talking after a couple of years of war.
An impactful part of this one for me, was that I contemplated this Tasha Yar’s past and was horrified. “Rescued” from a world of anarchy and violence, she finds herself instead on the front lines of an interstellar war. This Tasha never got to experience the comforts and beauty of the Federation at peace–only second-hand through other people’s rapidly fading memory of it.
“Redemption” only served to double my horror. Now the peaceful Federation exists, but she was a captive of the Romulans and couldn’t reach it.
@74, I also referred to the improbable coincidence you mentioned in the last sentence of your post in my previous post (#64). In a longer episode or theatrical movie, then perhaps that coincidence wouldn’t be necessary, but here in a 45 minute or so episode, it’s a dramatic conceit that was probably less confusing for viewers as to the effects of the Enterprise-C coming through the rift than if it wasn’t depicted this way.
I do like your analysis that the timeline of the Enterprise-D that we’re all used to is in fact the real “alternate timeline” and it is only through Guinan’s interference and her preference for the less bloody timeline that the “normal” war-torn timeline is changed to what we’re accustomed to. I kind of joke to myself when I think of the episode “Cause & Effect” that here we have the U.S.S. Bozeman emerging from the temporal rift from around a century earlier, presumably altering the timeline in its own way because of its absence all those previous decades, and yet we don’t have Guinan or anyone else for that matter demanding that ship be returned to the past. But maybe the adventures of the U.S.S. Bozeman in the 23rd century didn’t really amount to all that much so Guinan and Picard and gang didn’t feel compelled “to send it back.”
Regarding how alternate timeline’s Yar’s death as told by Sela negates the heroics death that Yar supposedly here to make up for the “senseless death” of Skin of Evil, maybe Sela was lying. Or maybe Sela believed Yar was executed but didn’t actually witness it. So maybe on the forthcoming Star Trek: Picard we’ll see a very elderly, but very much alive alternate-timeline Tasha Yar who’s been rescued from captivity under the Romulans.
@70 – yes, the transporter room kiss between Yar and Castillo was “unprofessional” but I was never bothered by it because for dramatic TV purposes it was very satisfying (at least to me anyway) and for an in-universe explanation I would just say “C’mon! Tasha and the Federation as a whole have been through hell in a brutal intergalactic war raging for decades! One could forgive her having a brief moment of levity with a fellow officer. ;o)
“Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: The rift that sends the Etnerprise-C “
Etnerprise? How did none of us notice that for 8 years?
@85: Fixed, thanks!
Sigh.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, shaking his head ruefully
The one glaring thing about this episode is that Counselor Troi disappears in the alternate timeline, and there is no explanation for her absence from it. What happened to her in it and did it imply she had died?
Another thing I will add: I agree Denise Crosby just does not fit in on this series. By coincidence, last week I saw her as a guest star from an episode of Diagnosis: Murder filmed in the mid 1990s. She was a bit better on that show playing a fitness instructor, but she doesn’t have the gravitas to play a hard-boiled security officer.
@88
I thought Troi’s absence was making the point of how this was no longer the kind and gentle universe where a ship’s counselor would sit next to the diplomatically minded captain. I assumed, if she was aboard, she was spending all of her time in her office counseling those with PTSD.
rms81: Yeah, I assumed that Troi was on board, but her office was in sickbay seeing patients suffering from trauma.
Truly, that should’ve been the counselor’s post all along. It was always ridiculous that the ship’s counselor would be a bridge station.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A diplomatic officer trained in xeno-anthropology and psychology and expert in first contact protocols should have a bridge station. A psychotherapist trained to counsel the mentally injured and distressed not so much.
princessroxana: You may already know this, but in the Titan novels that S&S has been doing since 2005 have Troi’s position on board as the former.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Krad: There was a Mirror Universe novel (“Dark Mirror”) in which Troi’s position makes a lot more sense – Mirror Troi is a political officer keeping an eye on the senior staff. Her empathic sense can detect the beginnings of treasonous thought and she’s willing to use torture as well (and an empath can tell what really hurts, too).
@90:
I think the writers of the series had no idea what do with Counselor Troi until the last 2 seasons of the show. In the first 2 seasons they wrote her as a damsel-in-distress who mainly helped conduct diplomacy. In the middle seasons, they made her into more of a psychotherapist and showed her with an office helping crew. By the 6th season, perhaps due to all of the trauma she was subjected to, she became a tougher, more commanding officer who used her understanding of behavior to make decisions for crew and resolve conflict.
I think if the series were ever rebooted her character would be much more useful, as there have been huge advances in mental health science since the 1980s and early 90s, particularly in the treatment of substance abuse and sexual dysfunctions.
@95
I don’t dispute that. They certainly struggled with Troi, but Marina did her best with what she was given, bless her.
If we had it to do over again, I would make her something like the role she was forced to take in “Face of the Enemy.” Make her a spy or, as was suggested above, a first contact specialist. Something more exciting.
@91/krad:
The thing is, the title of “Counselor” is a bit ambiguous. It can mean someone who is involved in mental health treatment, or it can simply mean someone who counsels others, as in giving advice or being a confidant. Kellyanne Conway has the title of “White House Counselor” but she is not involved in administering mental health care.
I agree it would have made more sense to have Counselor Troi as a member of the medical crew using evidence-based mental health treatments to people in sickbay. There is a huge amount of psychology and psychiatry that can be incorporated into science fiction and it would have been much more interesting to use those skills to treat illnesses and make command decisions than simply giving advice to the bridge crew.
In the last two seasons, I feel the writers used Troi much more effectively as a character, especially after she started wearing the standard Science uniform.
This was the episode that made me understand all the complaints about Crosby. I liked the IDEA of Tasha Yar — survivor of a horrifical dystopian childhood, toughens up at Starfleet, ends up as security officer with bad-ass martial arts skills (which I always thought should have been emphasized more) aboard the most highly esteemed ship in the Fleet — but until this episode, I never really realized how stiff Crosby’s acting usually was. (Although I do agree with those who’ve argued that her “original” death wasn’t meaningless or empty at all — she died in the line of duty, defending her fellow crew members, which was exactly what she’d signed on for. She knew the risks, and — as Worf would no doubt have put it — she “died well.”)
I also think Guinan knew a lot more about what was happening here than she let on. Remember, the minute Worf was called to the bridge from Ten-Forward, she looked out the window and saw that wormhole-or-whatever-it-was, and she looked as if she recognized it immediately — She muttered “No!,” obviously thinking, “Uh-oh, I know what this is, and it isn’t good!” From that point on, I thought that her entire “I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s not right here” routine was disingenuous — for some reason, almost as if she were under orders to do it that way, she had to convince Picard to send the other Enterprise back by using hints and obfuscation, instead of coming out and telling him what I’m very sure she knew. And I’ll even go so far as to suggest that sending Yar back to die [again] was an integral part of her determination (“mission”? “assignment”?] to prevent whatever catastrophe it was that she knew she had to head off.
I feel that this can never be stated enough: Denise Crosby is a grossly deficient actress and Lt. Natasha Yar (as “acted”) may be the single most grating main character of all the Star Trek series. Terrible. Just terrible . . .
@99: Couldn’t agree more. I recently watched a late-80s nuclear-war themed film called “Miracle Mile” during the pandemic lock down. Crosby had a small part in the film and true-to-form, she was absolutely horrible in it as well. The woman can’t act.
A couple funny outtakes from this classic episode:
https://youtu.be/_MRr1Lmtcxw
One thing that always stuck out for me regarding this episode is it’s the only time we ever see in the history of the series the entire senior staff crammed into Picard’s ready room for a briefing instead of the actual briefing room. It’s an interesting blocking choice that isn’t necessarily bad but I think was done perhaps for the immediate following scene: as the staff departs the ready room the camera focuses in on Yar who in one continuous shot freezes upon hearing Beverly and Geordi converse and then she pivots to go into the adjacent turbolift. Since this same type of camera shot couldn’t be composed if the staff was exiting the briefing room as the nearest turbolift (at least apparent to the viewers) is across the bridge, my guess is the director therefore decided to use the ready room instead for the more fluid close-up on Yar.
It’s an interesting question which is the “original” timeline. Depending on your model of time travel, it might not have a meaningful answer. But what this reminds me of most is the time travel model used in the animated episode “Yesteryear”, where it seems that mere proximity to a temporal anomaly is enough to cause changes that must be repaired.
Something I just noticed after rewatching Yesterday’s Enterprise was that if Tasha hadn’t transferred to the Enterprise-C, she would have died in the battle with the Klingons. But in this timeline, Riker’s the one who gets killed instead because he was manning her station. Is that an example of The Butterfly Effect?
Tricia O’Neil would have made a great Captain Janeway and she makes Captain Garrett’s death extremely affecting. I would have much preferred to see her lead the Enterprise-C back into battle. And the more contentious relationship between Picard and Riker foreshadows the similar one between Riker and Jellico in Chain of Command. Is this the first example of Guinan sensing a disturbance in the Force?
I seem to remember Guinan sensing a disturbance when Q briefly kidnapped Picard in the first Borg episode.
This pandemic year ( still in semi-lockdown where I am )has been my first viewing of any Star Trek series. I’ve first watched the original Star Trek, and greatly enjoyed it. After series one of the Next Generation assumed the show would remain a camp space fantasy, I didn’t know enough about the shows to realise it would become serious science fiction. I love the contrast between the fabulous fable-like mirror dimension in TOS, and this grown up version of it; a dark alternative history where people are so recognisably themselves, just with harder lives. It’s like a declaration of maturity.
@106: How very exciting for you! Enjoy your immersion into all things Trek! You’ve got a lot of content to get through, the majority of it good. Hehe.
I’m with those who appreciated Yar in this episode. Whether it was the military bearing, her clear role on the bridge, better dialogue or all three, this was more impressive than her original appearances.
I watched a YouTube video recently that reminded me of the comments for this episode, specifically the dislike of the Robert Fletcher ‘monster maroon’ uniforms without their turtlenecks and belts. While I agree they look sloppy without them, the video suggests this may have been a subliminal effort to show the Starfleet uniform gradually streamlining to suggest a slow evolution into the William Ware Theiss jumpsuits from TNG’s first two seasons. Though I always wished they had dug out those field uniforms from STV (though I know there was no chance they wanted to remind anyone that that particular movie had happened!). Anyway, a link to the video is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYRuh02DeiU
This episode is one of those rewatch landmarks that I’ve almost dreaded purely out of fear that they won’t live up to memory. No such trouble here: What a great hour of Star Trek.
I echo the hate of those II-VI movie uniforms without a turtleneck underneath or some kind of collar. I don’t mind the manipulation of Yar’s sacrifice in concept, but find the romance with Castillo they shoehorned in beyond unnecessary. I absolutely love the implicit trust in the relationship between Guinan, whose perception that things are not as they should be totally works for me, and Picard. (Stewart is almost criminally good.)
Has anyone besides David Carson directed scenes aboard three separate Enterprises — distinct registration letters, I’m talking, not alternate-timeline or parallel-universe versions of one iteration?
Arben: I think you’re right about Carson (this episode and Generations), though if you count the aircraft carrier in The Voyage Home, then Leonard Nimoy counts, too (the original in The Search for Spock and both the carrier and 1701-A at the end of The Voyage Home). Jonathan Frakes (various TNG episodes and both First Contact and Insurrection), Roxann Dawson (“E^2”), and Allan Kroeker (“These are the Voyages…”) have all directed scenes on two Enterprises.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thanks, Keith. I did think of the aircraft carrier after posting but left my question as it stood; of course, anyone interested in keeping track of this kind of thing would at least mention it parenthetically.