Okay, I'm thinking that there might be a possible explanation for the one major flaw in the plot of "All Good Things...", an otherwise extraordinary episode IMO.
The problem: the Temporal Anomaly� was caused by an eruption of time and anti-time, causing it to grow larger as it propagated into the past. Or, to go the with "normal" flow, the anomaly continued shrinking as it moved forward in time. From a normal Human perspective, it would have disappeared at the moment of its creation.
The plot hole: in the future time period, the first time Picard entered the Devron system aboard the Pasteur, there was no anomaly where there should have been. And when the future Enterprise returned to the same location a few hours later, they found the anomaly in its "formative stages" -- i.e. very small.
Considering that a major plot point of the episode that the anomaly got larger in the past. The Anomaly� should have been seen the first time, and been shrinking until the Pasteur cut off its tachyon beam during the Klingon attack.
I've thought of a possible explanation. The Anomaly� was created through the convergence of the three inverse tachyon beams. Consider the flow of the plot from Picard's (and our) perspective, which I'll call a "meta-timeline," one that's essentially containing the other three timelines inside it.
(After all, the timeline is an artifact of time itself. There must be some continuum of a sort in which time and anti-time react.)
Now, when the Pasteur arrived in the Devron System in the future and saw no anomaly, they had not activated their tachyon beam yet in the meta-timeline. The tachyon beams on the two past Enterprises had also not yet been activated in this meta-timeline.
Therefore, the Anomaly� could not yet exist in the meta-timeline! And it could not be created until all three tachyon beams had been activated and converged inside the Anomaly� which existed in the meta-timeline.
As a result, the absence of the Anomaly� in the early part of the future timeline is not a plot hole at all!
I suppose that metaphysics course I just took this semester is paying off, huh? Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Or it was all in Picard's head, and Q just made a slip-up when he put it there.
Posted by Griffworks (Member # 1014) on :
I've not watched AGT in quite a while, but isn't that pretty much how it's explained in the episode...?
If it's not, I guess that's how I always rationalized it.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
It was on tonight.
And that all makes sense to me. Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: Or it was all in Picard's head, and Q just made a slip-up when he put it there.
Granted, but assuming that's the case, the whole scenario was supposed to convince Picard it was real anyway, and so should be logically consistent.
Since Q thought the whole thing up in your suggestion, it seems really unlikely that he'd make so obvious a slip-up...
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
Was the Anomaly started by the convergence of 3 tachyon pulses from 3 Enterprises, as I believe the show leads us to believe, or is it from the convergence of pulses from 2 Enterprises and 1 Pasteur? Does it make a difference?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Yeah, that never made sense either. The third pulse wasn't from the Enterprise, yet Data claimed it was. All I can figure is that they shot the past scenes, or at least that one, before the future scenes' script was finalized, and couldn't reshoot.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Normally I would laugh at the suggestion that they'd be so unprofessional to start shooting without a finished script, but it was fairly well known that there was a nightmare crush for time at the end, what with getting ready for Generations and all.
However, I think it's more likely that it was a simple mistake that no-one noticed (because they were wrapped up with it being the end of the show, and with getting ready for Generations).
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I don't think they ever actually said it was the three Enterprises... I think they said beams from three ships. Though it was certainly *implied* that it was three Enterprises.
The explanation above is pretty much along the lines of what I've always assumed. There's also a line where future Picard says somethign like "We have to stop it *before it can travel backward in time." This indicates to me that there is probably a formation period where the event follows the normal course of time before reaching a critical reaction that sends it backwards in time.
And as you said, the causal event hadn't occured yet, so we didn't see the anomoly as the Pasteur entered the system. Once it had occured, the anamoly was created and began to grow and react and eventually traveled backwards in time, which we saw in the other two time frames.
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
There seems to be many plot holes from AGT, this one included. Also the fact that Q blames all this on Picard, when it was in fact Data's fault. It was he who first suggested "using the deflector to emit an inverse tachyon pulse to scan beyond the subspace barrier". Yet also it was Q's fault - had he not sent Picard back and forth through time he would not have been able to take the idea of using a Tachyon pulse to the other Enterprises, in which case the Anomaly would never have been born.
Did this also occur to anyone: If the Anomaly is moving back through time, to a point where it would take over half the galaxy millions of years ago, wouldn't the effect of this instantaneously cause Picard, the Enterprise, the Federation and humanity not to exist?
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Red Admiral: Did this also occur to anyone: If the Anomaly is moving back through time, to a point where it would take over half the galaxy millions of years ago, wouldn't the effect of this instantaneously cause Picard, the Enterprise, the Federation and humanity not to exist?
I'm sure Q was manipulating space/time, afterall.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
It would actually destroy everything in the universe. It would continue traveling back until the point in time where the universe came into existance, at which point it would consume everything and likely interfere with the birth of the universe.
Another question... if this disrutpion is so large so long ago... is it effecting other humanoid life too? Given the effect it had on the ships, I would think that a planet caught inside this thing would not fair well.
Seems like a bit much to prove a point against humanity... destroy all life everywhere?
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I saw "All Good Things..." when TNN aired it recently. I made sure to pay attention to Data's lecture on the anomaly in the "present" timeframe. Data says that the amplitudes and other characteristics of the three beams converging at the center of the anomaly were identical. He said it was as if all three were coming from the Enterprise (or the same ship, my memory's a bit faulty there). Either way, he said "as if."
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