TNG Flashback: Cause and Effect

"Cause and Effect" represented a bit of a departure for Star Trek: The Next Generation. There's no moral allegory presented. No character is put at the center of any emotional drama. It's just a straightforward sci-fi adventure.

The Enterprise collides with another starship and is destroyed! ... only to appear again intact, en route to a little explored region of space known as the Typhon Expanse. Throughout the ship, people experience subtle sensations of deja vu. But before they can get to the bottom of what's happening, another starship appears out of nowhere and collides with them, destroying the Enterprise! ... When the Enterprise again begins its journey into the Typhon Expanse, the crew begins to sense they have become trapped in a repeating loop of time. But with sharp memories of their experiences wiped out every time the loop resets, how will they learn what they need to do to escape?

Staff writer Brannon Braga created this episode as a personal challenge: he wanted to tell a time travel story, but without falling into standard time travel cliches. Over a year before the movie Groundhog Day was released, he hit upon the idea of repeating the same day over and over again, with our heroes unknowingly trapped inside.

Without doubt, it makes for one of the most spectacular teasers in seven seasons of The Next Generation, if not all of Star Trek. Watching the Enterprise be destroyed in the first 60 seconds certainly makes you sit up, take notice, and ask "what the hell is going on?!" The visual effects team gave appropriate weight to this moment by not superimposing an explosion over a model shot as they normally would; instead, they built a special model of the Enterprise specifically to be destroyed for this episode.

But ending nearly every act with the destruction of the Enterprise is only part of the clever writing in this episode. It makes the regular poker game, often used as a time-filling device, a key part of the plot. It introduces several "touchstone" moments that repeat in each loop, while offering subtle variations each time through. (My favorite is the almost Hitchcockian suspense that develops when Crusher tries to avoid breaking her wine glass, only to end up doing it anyway despite her precautions.)

Actually, though I noted earlier than no one episode is really the focus of this episode, Beverly Crusher comes close. She's in almost every scene (and in the few where she doesn't appear, her voice still comes through on the comm). Interestingly, she was also the focus of another effective episode with a big sci-fi premise, "Remember Me" -- though that episode did have a significant and personal character element to it too. Perhaps there's an inherently good match in putting the doctor character at the center of the most high concept stories?

As fun as this idea is, and as generally well written as it is, the episode still wouldn't have worked without very strong directing. In the director's chair this time: actor Jonathan Frakes, helming his fourth episode. There were several new challenges for him here. His three previous outings were all quite character-driven. His own character, Riker, appeared on screen here significantly more than he had in those other episodes. And he'd been given a very specific mandate from producer Rick Berman.

Following the disaster that was "Shades of Gray," no one wanted to do another "clip episode" of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Rick Berman was reportedly very concerned that this episode might be misinterpreted as one, and told Frakes that he should not reuse any footage in any of the repetitions. (Berman wasn't entirely off base in this concern. When the episode originally aired, several local TV stations apparently received phone calls from fans complaining that they were repeating the same section of the episode after the commercial break.)

Jonathan Frakes took Berman's directive and ran with it in wonderfully creative ways. He uses a far broader array of camera setups than you see in the average episode, and reserves different techniques for different iterations through the time loop. The second full loop is marked by prominent close-ups, particularly in the poker scene. The third is marked by zoom-ins on characters as they deliver dialogue. The final loop contains several "one-ers," long single takes without any cuts. (It also uses a unique overhead view of the conference room, and a conspicuously handheld camera as they came onto the bridge after that conference.) These inventive camera change-ups work subconsciously to maintain interest despite the repeating plot.

There are a few more fun developments in the final minutes of the episode, when the Enterprise finally escapes the loop. First, we see the one and only appearance of the main shuttle bay in the entire series; a special model with a "roll-top desk" style door was created for the sequence, complete with shuttles visible inside.

We also get a memorable appearance by Kelsey Grammer as Captain Morgan Bateson. The TV series Cheers filmed on the Paramount lot, next door to Star Trek. This proximity had already led to Trekker Bebe Neuwirth appearing in an episode. Here, Grammer came over for a day to film the episode's final scene. Originally, the writers also wanted his co-star Kirstie Alley to appear at his side as her Star Trek II character of Saavik, but scheduling conflicts prevented the completion of the Cheers trifecta.

The set of Bateson's ship, the Bozeman, was a reuse of the bridge from the recently completed Star Trek VI, as were all the uniforms worn by the actors "from the past." This was a necessary budget shortcut to compensate for all that model work on the exploding Enterprise and its shuttlebay. This was also not part of the writers' original plan. Original series fan Ronald Moore had desperately wanted to make the Bozeman a Constitution-class ship like the original Enterprise, recreating the ship, its bridge, and its crews' uniforms in the style of the original show. (He would get to fulfill that wish in part next season, when James Doohan appeared as Scotty in the episode "Relics.")

Though the episode is a lot of fun and well made, it does still fall a bit short in a few areas. I personally wasn't quite satisfied by the "3" message which Data ultimately sends himself. Couldn't he come up with a slightly less ambiguous message? ("Riker," perhaps? Though admittedly, that might have been harder to depict in subconscious ways like the 3s shown in the final act.) You also have to question how utterly clueless Captain Bozeman and his crew must be to get stuck in a loop for 90 years that only took our heroes 17.4 days (so, maybe 10 iterations or so?) to get out of. Still, these are rather minor quibbles.

Other observations:

• In the first full loop, I got a kick out of the way Crusher bluffs Riker in explaining how she can tell he's bluffing.

• In a way, I think it's this episode that finally makes Ensign Ro feel like a real main character. That's because this is the first time she appears without actually having a substantial role in the episode. She just shows up at the helm for a few lines that could have been given just as easily to a no-name character.

• Nurse Ogawa picks up her last name for the first time in this episode.

• The starship Bozeman was named for Brannon Braga's hometown in Montana. Its otherwise random use here would receive later justification in the movie First Contact, when it was established as the place Zefram Cochrane launched his first warp flight.

• Rick Berman's sensible request for variety in camera work was counterbalanced by a rather bizarre demand of the writers. Originally, Brannon Braga wrote the first "3" reveal at the poker game by having Data deal Riker three Aces to win the hand. (Not only a instance of 3, but an additional hint that Riker's later suggestion should be followed.) For inexplicable reasons, Berman felt that while Data could stack the deck of cards, he could not give Riker three Aces.

• The Blu-ray collection of season five includes a commentary track on this episode by Brannon Braga and a rather strange partner: Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. MacFarlane is a longtime Star Trek superfan who did actually appear in two episodes of the series Enterprise, but otherwise has no real reason to be here. Still, the commentary is both fun and informative. Between Stewie voices and impressions of Patrick Stewart, the two talk about the virtues of a live orchestra in soundtrack music, praise The Next Generation's "fearless sentimentality," and reveal a little trivia. (For example: the book in Picard's ready room is "The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare: The Complete Works" -- and was apparently open to a different page in each episode.)

Ultimately, the fact that this episode doesn't have any strong character drama keeps it out of grade A territory in my book. Still, this is about as good as a pure adventure episode of the show can get. I'd rank it high among the B+ installments.