| The Next Generation | |
| 24 | |
| We'll Always Have Paris | |
| 41697.9 | |
A stitch in time may save nine, but a loop in time just confuses everyone! The Enterprise was enroute for shore-leave, but a distress call from Dr Paul Manheim calls for a time-out. Dr Manheim was doing experiments with non-linear time, so they just might be connected... Picard is troubled by the thought of Manheim, and rather than discuss it with the counsellor, he races off to the holodeck for a little past-life regression. He regresses back 22 years to a cafe in Paris, where he once stood someone up. Bollocks.
Arriving at the co-ordinates specified in the distress signal we find precisely nothing - except a relay giving another set of co-ordinates. After playing space-chase for a while they finally end up in a strange star system, with a large potato orbiting a binary star. The spud is unusual in that it is protected by a force-field! Inside are the two survivors, who are beamed to sickbay after the force-field is dropped. Welcome Dr Paul Manheim and his lovely wife Jenice.
Dr Mayhem has been summoning demons, or at the very least, opening windows to other dimensions. He tried to take all the available precautions, but an accident still managed to destroy one of his labs and kill everyone there. It's time to send down a team into the hell infested environment and kick some demon butt! Has he been playing Doom?
While we were riding in the lift, we met some men whom time did shift... Things are getting strange enough that Picard orders an away team to beam down and fix the problem. "I have seen the other side" preaches Dr Manheim. He's opened a crack in reality and the other universe may spill into this one. It has to be stopped! Sounds like a job for Superman, but since he isn't around, we'll just have to send Data.
The Chrome Dome Gnome has been avoiding Jenice ever since she came onboard. Of course it's because she was the one he stood up in Paris all those years ago. She waited all day, so why didn't he come? Because of fear. Ugh. Amazingly Bev is actually jealous. To cap off the gut-churning reflections, Manheim asks Picard to look after Jenice if he should die. It's nauseating.
Data beams down for a game of laser-tag with a security system that Manheim forgot to mention. He makes it into the lab, and finds that the next time effect will occur in exactly 90 seconds. To fill the hole, all he had to do is add antimatter to the crack at exactly the moment of the time distortion. That should be easy.
In the 24th century antimatter comes in convenient buckets, and has been made completely non-reactive to the environment. A triumph for TrekTech™! As Data is about to drop it into the distortion, he notices two other time displaced copies of himself. Which one is at the correct time? Apparently the middle one, and the hole is patched.
Manheim magically recovers from his previously terminal illness, and Picard and Jenice return to Paris to say goodbye properly. That's not how I thought the French said goodbye...
