Time Squared

Captain Picard returns to the Enterprise in shuttle number five. Now they will have a matching set since there are already a Captain Picard and a shuttle number five onboard. The new ones are from the future. Six hours in the future when the Enterprise has blown up. Or will blow up. Can Captain Picard keep that from happening this time around? Find out when we put Time Squared in the Mission Log. Ken, couldn’t you ask Geordi to fix the distortion with his time-phase-distortion-fixer. He has one right in his tool box. This ep has great atmosphere and good exchanges, especially between Riker and Picard. It does not have a point, however. It’s more a “Monster Funnel of the Week.” Once they get past the danger, that’s it. No mystery solved, really; just ‘don’t panic’ I guess. Nothing learned. Never to be mentioned again. Still… cool times on the shuttle bay. Some examples… The argument about turning the ship around is bad logic. What we know is that the ship has gone through a set of events that led to Picard being sent back in time… the first loop did not contain Picard being sent back in time so there was no questioning of continuing forward. So whatever they encounter might be spacially related and to avoid that you should turn around and go another way. Someone then argues yes but we don’t know how many loops we’ve gone through and we could have taken all those options before with the same result… and that’s where it is left and they continue forward. The problem here is that we don’t know how many loops we’ve gone through and so we don’t know if turning around does anything…Whether it is the first time through or the millionth the prudent couse of action is to go a different direction because we know that at least going forward is the bad choice. Then we have the random idea of “Picard is the brain of the enterprise” ok, but which Picard? There is no reason to think one or the other and killing one or the other would do nothing because the other is still alive and thus the Brain from the perspective of whatever is still alive… Also we see that removing the brain doesn’t work because Picard leaves and the Enterprise is destroyed. It was mentioned that Q was supposed to be in this… that would make sense because it can then explain all the bad thinking and why when Picard kills alt-Picard it stops the attacks. Realistically we know that the Alt-Enterprise makes 2 mistakes, continuing forward and launching Picard. These 2 events are the only things we can presume from what we know, therefor they are the only 2 events that need to be stopped or modified. They failed on one and the other they could have tried send a message to the next loop and say what they tried real quick. That is eliminate the alt-picard and launch the shuttle with the message. If the Enterprise is destroyed the shuttle is picked up the next loop has more info. If the Enterprise isn’t pick up the shuttle and continue on. The whys and hows of what happened are inconsequential as all that matter is what did happen to work out the correct solution. You can only kill Alt-Picard if you’ve picked up the Amulet of Power found in loop 3 and then used it to charge the phaser with fairie energy. Then you need the Silver Key of Destiny, the Dirty Socks of it’s not Friday Yet, and The Omelette of of Wisdom. It makes perfect sense. You mean “real” Picard. Alt-Picard is the one we’re left with as the Picard that is first through existed before and the one from this loop only exists as a subset of the choice of the real picard 😛 Original TL PIcard or “OTP” (this should be a common term btw) goes through the events and gets sent back in time. Alternate TL Picard or ATP is the Picard that gets made when OTP goes back in time. Let’s say there is 2 loops so the first ATP, ATP1, is created collects OTP, and then lets OTP go, letting OTP go back intime which creats the second loop and ATP2. When ATP2 kills Picard it is OTP being killed, the “real” one, not the one create