Time Squared
After a shuttle from six hours in the future arrives carrying a dazed duplicate of Captain Picard, Picard must confront a sentient temporal vortex and choose a risky gambit to break a loop that will annihilate the Enterprise.
The crew of the USS Enterprise jolts from domestic ease into uncanny crisis when a spinning Federation shuttle drifts into tractor-beam range — and they recover not one but two identical shuttles, one bearing an unconscious duplicate of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Pulaski reports Picard Two’s physiology as "out of phase," Data confirms both shuttles show abnormal power signatures, and Geordi finds the shuttle’s clock screaming that it is six hours ahead. The shuttle logs reveal a vision worse than any sensor reading: in a future three hours and nineteen minutes the Enterprise is torn apart, leaving only one survivor — the man now strapped to Sickbay’s biobed.
Tension snaps into focused investigation. Data and La Forge wrestle alien power-phase incompatibilities; Troi probes the duplicate’s chaotic emotions and discovers a man trapped between times, terrified and driven. Riker counsels caution and frames a grim possibility: retrieving the future shuttle may have fixed a sequence that now repeats like a moebius loop. Picard watches himself in the raw and responds with a mix of command fury and personal horror — the man in Sickbay resembles him outwardly but radiates doubt and a splintered will. Pulaski warns that the captain’s unique pressure could incapacitate him; Troi insists doubt is necessary, not pathological.
The crew peels through evidence from the damaged onboard camera and hears Picard’s own terrified audio log from the doomed future: the Enterprise is destroyed in a maelstrom of swirling energy, and the last sound on the recorder correlates with the shuttle being flung backward in time. Data reports that the shuttle was physically displaced six hours into the past, bringing Picard Two with it. As the two-Picard paradox unfolds, the ship encounters a monstrous, living vortex that seizes the Enterprise like a cosmic hand. Probes vaporize. Energy strikes hone in on Picard, and the entity behaves as if the ship is a single organism and Picard its brain. Small filaments of the vortex wrap Picard Two in Sickbay and then lash at Picard on the bridge — the attention is personal.
As the vortex tightens its grip, debate becomes action. Picard initially agrees with Riker to gather information and not to panic. When the vortex evolves into a direct, suffocating pull, the question becomes not what the entity is but what it wants. Troi senses instinctive life, not intellect; Riker and Data articulate the mechanical facts. Picard learns that when Picard Two was thrown out of time his internal rhythms went haywire and now, as the timeline narrows, those rhythms are re-synchronizing. Picard Two’s responses flicker between incoherent terror and crystalline conviction: he insists the vortex "wants" him, that it recognizes him as the Enterprise’s mind and will be satisfied only if he leaves. He believes his departure will distract the entity long enough for the ship to escape.
The ship’s engines strain under the pull. Geordi warns that sustaining counter-thrust will overtax warp systems. Picard faces the stark moral geometry of the situation: will he send himself away to save his crew, or will he refuse a choice that mirrors suicide by command? Picard Two’s single-mindedness perplexes and enrages him; the duplicate’s posture of self-sacrifice reads like cowardice dressed as heroism. In Shuttle Bay Two, Picard finds the man who might once have been him, now consumed by a fixed decision. When Picard Two moves to board the shuttle, certain he must leave, Picard fires his phaser — not to kill as punishment, but to break the loop of inevitability.
Picard then executes a counterintuitive order: instead of fleeing the vortex, he points the Enterprise toward its heart and pours every watt of power into the engines. The ship drives into the maelstrom. Energy slashes the hull; the crew braces for annihilation. The Enterprise thrusts through the vortex’s core and triggers an implosion. In the sudden silence,Pulaski and O’Brien report that the shuttle and Picard Two have vanished and the whirlpool collapses. Systems check out; the ship continues on course to Endicor, intact.
Aftermath focuses on unsettled psychology more than neat answers. Picard confesses that the man he saw was "not in the slightest" the person he thought he was, except for appearance. Riker suggests the future Picard may have been flung back to give them another choice, a moral course correction; Picard allows that perhaps time has handed him a chance to right a wrong. Pulaski’s pragmatic warnings about command stability linger as a foil to Picard’s solitary burden. Troi identifies the heart of the episode’s tension: identity, the corrosive doubt that arises when you meet a version of yourself who behaved differently under pressure.
The final images return to small domestic ritual: Riker, still the ship’s reliable second, invites the crew back to his quarters, cooks a course that lands better than his earlier omelet, and offers a quiet counterweight to cosmic terror. The crisis resolves without full explanation. The Enterprise survives; the duplicate disappears; the vortex yields. The story closes on Picard’s admission of unease — he will not soon forget the moral decision he made, nor the way time itself seemed to conspire to test command, consequence, and the line between willing sacrifice and cowardly flight.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
The Enterprise, jolted from routine, encounters a derelict Federation shuttle. Initial confusion transforms into profound shock as Riker discovers not one, but two identical shuttles, each bearing the same registration. Inside the first, an unconscious duplicate of Captain Jean-Luc Picard lies slumped at the controls. Picard arrives, confronting his own uncanny reflection, his mind grappling with the impossible paradox. Pulaski reports the duplicate's life signs are 'out of phase,' defying medical logic. Data and Geordi wrestle with the shuttle's damaged systems, their efforts culminating in a chilling revelation: the shuttle's internal clock screams that it is six hours in the future. Picard absorbs the implications, the presence of his future self a haunting premonition, signaling a crisis that warps not just space, but time itself. The ship's crew grapples with the immediate, unsettling reality of a duplicate captain, a duplicate shuttle, and a timeline violently fractured, setting the stage for an unraveling mystery that threatens their very existence. The discovery of the temporal displacement elevates the situation from a mere anomaly to an existential threat, forcing the crew to confront the unsettling possibility that their future is already written, and their present is merely catching up.
Riker turns a simple omelet into a tactile ritual: a deliberate assertion of identity and control in the middle of a ship under temporal strain. His solitary cooking is interrupted …
Riker's private ritual—meticulous, tactile omelet-making—becomes an impromptu crew gathering when Data and Geordi arrive with a jury-rigged burner and Pulaski brings ale. Conversation teases out Riker's need for control and …
Riker's private ritual — making an improvised omelet in his quarters — becomes a small, revealing gathering when Data, Geordi, Pulaski and Worf join. The scene stages a collision of …
Riker stages a small, old‑fashioned ritual — whipping eggs and forcing a moment of communal warmth — to stave off the ship's clinical routine. Conversation peels back layers (a rare …
Captain Picard's terse announcement that an automated Federation shuttle signal has been picked up jolts the bridge from routine to alarm. Riker's disbelief—there should be no ship this far—turns the …
On the bridge an automated distress ping from a lone Federation shuttle converts curiosity into urgency. Picard orders hails opened, but Worf's report — the shuttle is dead and utterly …
The Enterprise drops from warp into uncharted space as a derelict shuttle suddenly appears, tumbling violently and with no apparent origin. Worf calls the contact; Picard orders it up on …
An urgent operational pivot: as the Enterprise drops out of warp a violently spinning shuttle appears and the bridge snaps from stunned observation to coordinated action. Data calculates tractor-beam range …
A derelict Enterprise shuttle is hauled into Shuttle Bay Two only to reveal an impossible duplicate: a second, identical shuttle bearing the same NCC-1701-D registration and an unconscious Captain Picard …
A derelict shuttle is winched into Shuttle Bay Two and the crew's curiosity turns to dread when Riker reads its registration: it is the Enterprise's own shuttle — twice. Inside …
A derelict Enterprise shuttle is beamed into Bay Two carrying an unconscious duplicate of Captain Picard. Pulaski's scans register the duplicate's brainwaves as "out of phase," while Data discovers the …
Terror seizes the future Picard as Pulaski revives him; his body stutters, his face a mask of silent agony, witnessing a horror from which he cannot escape. Picard observes his own fractured self, a primal sound escaping him at the sight of such impotence. The staff gathers, and the shuttle's logs unleash a devastating vision: the Enterprise, engulfed by a maelstrom of swirling energy, is torn apart in three hours and nineteen minutes, leaving only one survivor—the very man now strapped to a Sickbay biobed. Picard's own distorted audio log confirms the ship's destruction, followed by the chilling sound of the shuttle being flung back through time. Riker articulates the grim possibility: retrieving the future shuttle may have locked them into a "moebius loop," an inescapable, repeating sequence of events. As the timeline converges, P2's internal rhythms dangerously realign. Troi, attempting to probe P2's chaotic mind, is seized by his flailing hands, screaming as she senses his overwhelming, desperate need to abandon the ship, a chilling echo of the doomed future. The weight of this predetermined catastrophe crushes the crew, forcing Picard to confront not just an external threat, but the terrifying implications of his own future actions.
Approaching Sickbay, Picard abandons tentative explanations and explicitly names the arrival of his duplicate a setup. By rejecting coincidence he forces Troi to shift from empathetic puzzlement to investigative focus. …
Outside Sickbay Picard sheds the last thin veneer of calm and reads the arrival of his dazed duplicate as an intentional provocation. He forces Troi to stop treating the incident …
In Shuttle Bay Two, Geordi and Data struggle to marry Enterprise power with the anomalous shuttle. Every sensible correction increases oscillation; when Data issues a deliberately paradoxical negative adjustment the …
In the shuttle bay Geordi and Data wrestle with an apparently impossible power problem: every logical correction increases instability until Data orders a counterintuitive, negative adjustment that immediately stabilizes the …
A shuttle from six hours in the future delivers a dazed duplicate of Captain Picard into Sickbay, collapsing clinical distance into a personal crisis. Geordi's comm reveals the impossible timestamp …
In Sickbay the abstract fear becomes concrete: Geordi's com confirms the shuttle's clock is six hours ahead, proving the stunned duplicate—P2—is literally Picard from the future. The technical revelation converts …
As the Enterprise hurtles towards its rendezvous with destiny, the timeline tightens its grip. P2 gains a fragile coherence, his mind struggling to pierce the veil of his nightmare. Picard confronts his future self, demanding answers, his frustration a raw, palpable force against P2's disoriented silence. Troi intervenes, explaining P2's terror-stricken state, trapped between dimensions, filled with remorse for a witnessed catastrophe. She identifies the corrosive doubt P2 embodies for Picard, a potential paralysis for command. Pulaski, ever pragmatic, warns Troi of the unique, personal pressure weighing on Picard, asserting her duty and authority to relieve him if his judgment falters. In the ready room, Riker advises Picard to suppress his natural inclination for decisive action, urging him to wait and observe, for the enemy is not a person or place, but time itself. Suddenly, the Enterprise shudders violently, thrust into the swirling maw of the energy vortex, the very maelstrom that destroyed the ship in the future logs. The waiting ends; the confrontation begins, forcing Picard to reconcile his internal turmoil with the immediate, overwhelming external threat now bearing down upon his ship.
In Sickbay Picard learns the shuttle — and the terrified duplicate inside — are temporal refugees displaced six hours forward. Pulaski rouses P2, who awakens a mute, stuttering embodiment of …
In Sickbay Picard watches a six-hours-from-now, broken duplicate of himself convulse between dimensions — mute, terrified, and physically present yet trapped. When Pulaski moves to sedate P2, Picard violently refuses, …
In the observation lounge the crew watches a recovered shuttle camera feed that shows the Enterprise being engulfed by a violent temporal maelstrom and literally torn apart. Data announces the …
The observation lounge reels as the shuttle's distorted logs play: the Enterprise is torn apart by a temporal maelstrom and an audio supplement reveals only one survivor — Captain Picard. …
In Sickbay Pulaski delivers a cold, clinical diagnosis: the duplicate Picard's physiology is 're‑syncing' with the timeline — when the two times intersect the body will normalize and there will …
In Sickbay Troi makes direct empathic contact with the dazed Picard Two and is violently thrown by the texture of his terror. Pulaski's clinical diagnosis—that P2's internal clocks are realigning …
The vortex clamps down on the Enterprise, its unseen force a cosmic tractor beam, straining the ship's warp engines to their breaking point. Troi senses an instinctive consciousness, not intellect, driving the entity. Picard, wrestling with the weight of future knowledge, oscillates between investigation and retreat, haunted by the possibility that 'staying too long' was the fatal error. The Enterprise attempts to break free at maximum warp, but the vortex's grip tightens, pulling the ship deeper into its swirling abyss. A launched probe vaporizes instantly, confirming the entity's destructive power. A sliver of energy lashes out, striking Picard on the bridge and encircling P2 in Sickbay, revealing the attack's intensely personal nature. Geordi warns of imminent explosion as the ship's systems fail. Troi confirms the entity's focus has narrowed entirely to Picard. Faced with annihilation, Picard realizes his future self's desperate act of leaving the ship was a desperate, doomed attempt to distract the entity. He orders a shuttle prepared, preparing to make the same impossible choice, a grim echo of the future he witnessed, plunging him into the heart of an ethical dilemma that tests the very core of his command.
On the bridge the crew braces as Picard's supplemental log crystallizes the crisis: the Enterprise is on course to rendezvous with itself. Worf's dry, clinical status—"nothing unusual"—only makes the threat …
On the tense bridge, Picard's supplemental log frames the crisis — the Enterprise is closing on a rendezvous with its own future. The crew braces; routine orders and flat reports …
Picard enters Sickbay and is forced to confront a shattered, six-hours-hence duplicate of himself (P2). Clinical questioning slides into urgent pleading as P2, a Goya-like figure of pain, alternately avoids …
In Sickbay Picard confronts the living echo of his future: P2 is present but unreachable, trapped in nightmarish images that make him perceive Picard not as a person but as …
In Sickbay Picard confronts the dazed duplicate while Troi and Pulaski translate what science cannot: this P2 is not a mere copy but a psychic weapon—an embodiment of doubt and …
Picard and Riker methodically strip away every familiar explanatory framework for the shuttle's six‑hour displacement — warp anomalies, the Traveler, Manheim — until only one terrifying possibility remains: the phenomenon …
In Picard's ready room Riker strips away comforting explanations and names Picard's compulsive need to act — the 'Persian Flaw' — forcing the captain to confront that his instinct may …
A sudden, swirling energy vortex blossoms on the main viewer and clamps the Enterprise at its center. Picard and Riker step out of the Ready Room to confront it; Worf …
On the bridge the unseen threat finally names itself: a sudden, living energy vortex has wrapped the Enterprise and there is no warning. Riker's sardonic, cathartic line — "now at …
At the vortex's eye the Enterprise is immobile and being crushed: Data calls the phenomenon a super-powered tractor beam while Geordi warns engines are pushed to the brink. A launched …
A decisive turning point: the living vortex annihilates a probe, lashes the bridge and encircles Picard Two in sickbay, proving the phenomenon is not random but focused on Jean-Luc. Troi …
On the bridge, the vortex reveals itself as an instinctive, sentient force and narrows its attention on Picard. Troi identifies the entity as non‑intellectual but focused; Data and Geordi confirm …
The Enterprise plunges deeper into the vortex's suffocating maw. In Sickbay, P2, now terrifyingly lucid and synchronized, insists he *must* leave, convinced the entity "wants" him and his departure will save the ship. Picard, witnessing his future self trapped in a loop of inevitable, futile sacrifice, challenges P2, demanding to know the "other choice"—the path not taken. P2, frozen by his predetermined fate, can only reiterate his single, desperate solution: self-sacrifice. As P2 moves to board the shuttle, Picard, with a surge of command fury, fires his phaser, not to kill, but to shatter the relentless cycle of inevitability. Returning to the bridge, Picard issues a counterintuitive, audacious command: not to flee, but to drive the Enterprise directly into the vortex's heart at maximum power. The ship streaks into the maelstrom, energy tearing at its hull, crew bracing for annihilation. The Enterprise bursts through the core, triggering a cataclysmic implosion. In that instant, P2 and the shuttle vanish, the monstrous whirlpool collapses, and the Enterprise emerges, intact and on course. The crisis resolves, yet a profound unease lingers. Picard confesses the future self he met was "not in the slightest" the man he thought he was, except in appearance. Riker suggests the temporal anomaly offered a chance for a moral course correction. Picard, though victorious, carries the weight of the choice, forever marked by the harrowing encounter with his own potential failure, a testament to the corrosive doubt that arises when one faces a version of oneself who faltered under pressure.
As the Enterprise slides toward the energy vortex, Picard confronts a dazed, barely-synchronized future version of himself (P2) in Sickbay. P2 is single-minded — ‘‘I must get to the shuttle’’ …
Picard deliberately breaks rank and clears Shuttle Bay Two, overruling Pulaski to create a solitary, sacramental space in which he can face the terrified duplicate of himself. As P2 insists …
In Sickbay Picard forces eye contact with a terrified future duplicate (P2), deactivates the forcefield and clears the ship so the confrontation can be private. P2 insists the vortex "wants" …
A dazed, future Picard (P2) bursts into Shuttle Bay Two, single‑mindedly determined to board a shuttle and 'leave' — a fatal compulsion he insists will save the Enterprise. Picard refuses …
In the shuttle bay Picard confronts a terrified, rigid future duplicate (P2) who insists on leaving — a compulsive, sacrificial act that would save the ship only by erasing himself. …
The Enterprise rams the churning temporal funnel and punches through the vortex core; the maelstrom catastrophically implodes. As the whirlpool collapses, O'Brien watches the shuttle and the dazed duplicate Picard …
The Enterprise punches through the temporal maelstrom and the vortex implodes; sensors register no damage, but O'Brien reports the future Picard and shuttle have simply vanished. In the stunned silence …
In the hushed Observation Lounge Picard and Riker sit in the brittle silence left by the arrival of a terrified, future duplicate of the captain. Riker offers pragmatic reframes—shared illusion …
In the quiet aftermath, Picard and Riker sit amid the stars and try to name what they saw: a broken duplicate of the captain, a shuttered future that refuses tidy …
After the future duplicate is returned to the Enterprise, Picard and Riker stand in the observation lounge and try to make sense of what happened. Riker proposes the encounter might …
In the quiet aftermath of the temporal crisis Riker stages a low-stakes dinner in his quarters as a ritual of repair — an explicit apology for his failed Owon omelet …
Riker stages a modest, domestic ritual—an Alaskan stew cooked in his quarters—to reclaim morale and make amends after an earlier culinary fiasco. He admits the meat is a computer-improvised hybrid …
Riker stages a low-key, domestic ritual—an improvised Alaskan stew—to patch crew morale after the temporal crisis. He frames the meal as both diversion and amends, serving fabricated ingredients and risking …
Riker stages a quiet, reparative ritual — an Alaskan stew fabricated by the ship's computer — to lift the crew's spirits after the temporal crisis. Pulaski and Geordi find the …