Cause and Effect
The Enterprise is destroyed in a huge explosion - but only a moment later the senior officers are playing their regular poker game as if nothing was wrong. Dr. Crusher feels like she already knows the present situation and what will happen next. When suddenly another starship appears from an anomaly and is about to collide with the Enterprise, Picard follows Data’s advice to alter the other ship’s trajectory with the tractor beam rather than decompressing the main shuttlebay as Riker suggested, but this doesn’t suffice. The Enterprise is destroyed in a huge explosion - but only a moment later… The ship is caught in a time loop, and the crew -except for Data- notice this by déjà vu experiences which become the stronger, the more often they run through the time loop. Aware that something terrible will happen and there may be little time to avoid it, they give Data the possibility to remember a specific small piece of information in the following loop. It is the numeral “3″ which to everyone’s surprise frequently appears during this loop. The “3″ refers to the number of Riker’s rank pips, and when the collision is about to occur again, Data follows Riker’s suggestion and opens the main shuttlebay too, which eventually breaks the time loop. The Enterprise was caught in the loop for seventeen days while the other ship, the U.S.S. Bozeman, has traveled 90 years to the future, only to get stuck in the time loop too. summary by Ex-Astris-Scientia
Uhuh! That one’s definitely my Star Trek. Everything I love about it I love! Time loop at its best! And actually quite a clever way out, IMO.
Two scenes I will always remember: The second (or third) poker game when Beverly realizes she knows the cards and Beverly in her quarters, cutting the dry flowers. About the only thing I was wondering is why it was Dr Crusher who seemed to have felt something was wrong and not Troy with all her intuition? It should have been the counselor.