quote: “Originally, I was staff writer at the time, and I was pitching to [the late TNG showrunner and executive producer] Michael Piller a Rashomon-style idea I wanted to do,” Braga tells THR about how he came upon what would end up being “Cause and Effect”.
Braga had always wanted to tell the same story from several points of view, one that would unfold several times. But he couldn’t quite figure out how to expand that kernel into a full hour of TV, until it dawned on him: “Why not just tell the same story over and over? That seemed like something I haven’t seen before.”
“The early reactions to the script were similar to the reactions that the audience had when watching the episode, which was confusion,” Braga remembers. “Because you’re reading that script and you’re like, ‘Wait a second. There’s got to be a mistake here. The acts just keep repeating. Is this a joke?’”
posted
It really is a very clever episode, one that (ironically) holds up to rewatching. It’s funny that everyone on the production staff didn’t get the idea at first, either. I loved Frakes’ quote: “Once I realized that [Brannon] wasn’t fucking with me, it was fun.”
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
I vaguely remember right when TNG ended, but also during ST:Generations production, Frakes hosted a top 5 episodes special. Each week they'd air an episode with Frakes doing a pre-episode intro and I'm almost certain this was one of them.
A lot of series, especially sci-fi, have a Groundhog Day episode...the best being the SG-1 episode 'Window of Opportunity'. Except this came out a year before the movie and not sure if there was a term for it.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
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posted
I just wish they had the budget to build a TOS Constitution class ship and bridge for the Bozeman like what was originally envisioned.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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posted
I rewatched this episode today, and there's something I hadn't noticed before.
Both Data and Riker's solutions were necessary to avoid the Bozeman. In the final act, Picard orders the tractor beam -- we hear an alarm indicating it's been activated, and then Data realizes that he's subconsciously been trying to tell himself "Riker" and decompresses the main shuttlebay.
The exterior shot we then see is, after the shuttlebay effect, largely the one we've been seeing several times over the episode, with the Enterprise now pushing forward and avoiding the collision with the Bozeman. The implication is that the tractor beam had activated, and the shuttlebay decompression is what pushes the Enterprise far enought to avoid disaster.
So I don't know if it was deliberate or not, but my read is that if the only solution used had been the shuttlebay decompression, the collision likely still would have happened.
**
Okay: one other thing to note.
After they avoid the Bozeman, Picard orders Worf to check the ship's chronometer with a Starfleet time beacon. But in this and the previous act both crews realized they were in a time loop -- Geordi states that for all they know, they'd been stuck in the loop for years. Picard could have ordered Worf to check a time beacon and they would have known immediately how long they'd been in the loop.
posted
That’s one thing that never made sense to me - the timeline continues unaffected while they’re in the loop. But then it’s equally nonsensical that they remember events from previous iterations, even subconsciously. Or that they hear voices from previous iterations but only when it’s dark.
posted
The thing I always wondered about it is, if it only took the TNG crew a few loops to start noticing all sorts of weird shit going on and figure out that something was wrong, how oblivious was Frasier's crew that they stayed in for decades and came out still thinking nothing had ever been amiss?
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Ninety years of sensor upgrades.
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posted
I’ve always assumed - we’re getting into serious wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey here - that, just like the rest of the universe wasn’t in the loop, the Bozeman wasn’t either. Its entrance into the rift, emergence and collision with the E-D was what created the loop, but for the E-D itself only.
Or rather… I posit that it is not in itself the encounter/collision which generates the loop, but that it is merely the catalyst to restart it. The conditions which make the loop possible are present from the time the Enterprise enters the Typhon Expanse (right at the start of the episode proper, as per the Log entry). And the localised conditions in that area also allow for the premonitions and auditory hallucinations.
Another thing that annoys me is that when the Bozeman emerges from the rift, the crew are all like, there’s an unknown ship, what is this ineffable vessel of mystery? Dude. It’s a fucking Miranda (or variant thereof), you know, the same type of ship you see literally every bloody day (when it’s not a California-class, which are apparently everywhere), even I can see that!
quote:how oblivious was Frasier's crew that they stayed in for decades and came out still thinking nothing had ever been amiss?
You know, I've thought the same thing, but I think there's something that I know I missed:
There's two separate time events happening here.
One is a temporal wormhole, that delivers the Bozeman to the future. But when the Enterprise blows up, that creates the time loop.
For the Enterprise, they're repeating -- I don't know -- maybe a day.
But for the Bozeman?
They're likely only experiencing it for about a minute.
But even if they weren't, they would not have been repeating it for ninety years. They would have only repeated it as many times as the Enterprise-D's crew did.
quote:Dude. It’s a fucking Miranda (or variant thereof)
They were probably stunned by what appears to be a gigantic laser canon off the aft. Turns out it's a giant sensor pod. No wonder the Soyuz class got retired.
posted
That’s one thing that never made sense to me - the timeline continues unaffected while they’re in the loop.
They establish that they're in a sector of space not previously explored by the Federation, so presumably they're fairly far away from the nearest starbase.
I think it's reasonable to expect that Starfleet is probably wondering why the Enterprise keeps sending the same daily update, with a progressively wrong stardate, and is trying to find ships to head out and see if they can figure out what is going on, especially if the Enterprise is on the fringe of subspace communication.
Any investigative ships would be able to break the loop, if they, say, found the Enterprise and said "Hey, ya'll okay? Why don't you stop for a bit."
And then the Bozeman comes out of the wormhole, doesn't crash into the Enterprise, and everything gets sorted.
posted
I also figured that the Bozeman jumped forward in time and only then became part of the loop.
I’ll tell you what *I’ve* always wondered… in one of the later conferences, the crew speculate about whether they should reverse course to avoid the unknown disaster. And Picard dismisses that option because they don’t know what causes the disaster, and reversing course could actually cause it instead. BUT… when the loop started, there was no way they would’ve known about a disaster that hadn’t-will-have-happened even once yet, and so wouldn’t have had a reason to change course the first loop. So reversing course should’ve been a perfectly reasonable way to break the loop.
(I love nitpicking temporal mechanics, even if it gives me a headache.)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
That's a really good point. Of course, if memory serves, by that point they're just about too late to do anything different.
Why didn't they inquire of a time beacon earlier, though, I wonder? Or why not send a message to Starfleet? "Uh, hi, we might be in a time loop. Send help."
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I also figured that the Bozeman jumped forward in time and only then became part of the loop.
I’ll tell you what *I’ve* always wondered… in one of the later conferences, the crew speculate about whether they should reverse course to avoid the unknown disaster. And Picard dismisses that option because they don’t know what causes the disaster, and reversing course could actually cause it instead. BUT… when the loop started, there was no way they would’ve known about a disaster that hadn’t-will-have-happened even once yet, and so wouldn’t have had a reason to change course the first loop. So reversing course should’ve been a perfectly reasonable way to break the loop.
(I love nitpicking temporal mechanics, even if it gives me a headache.)
I get what you’re saying but I think it’s implied they don’t necessarily know when the loop started, only when they started observing artefacts of previous loops. And it would thus be easy to posit that in previous iterations they might have changed course as a result of the phenomena. So it really is impossible for them to know which track to take.
What is harder to swallow is that a) for the duration of the loopings, they were totally out of contact of any Starfleet beacons which would have pinpointed the chronological discrepancy; and b) the complete absence of any such contact (update pings, message transfers etc.) wasn’t noticed or identified by Starfleet either. It’s the bloody flagship not a deep-space explorer.
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