All Good Things... (TNG episode)
Encyclopedia : A : AL : ALL : All Good Things... (TNG episode)
| ' episode''' | |
| "All Good Things..." | |
| Episode no. | 177 (Part 1) 178 (Part 2) |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 277 (Part 1) 278 (Part 2) |
| Airdate | 23 May 1994 |
| Writer(s) | Brannon Braga Ronald D. Moore |
| Director | Winrich Kolbe |
| Guest star(s) | Colm Meaney John de Lancie Andreas Katsulas Patti Yasutake Clyde Kusatsu Denise Crosby |
| Year | 2370 (2364/2395) |
| Stardate | 47988.1 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous episode | "Preemptive Strike" |
| Next episode | none |
"All Good Things..." was the series finale of . It was originally shown on May 29, 1994 and, like the first episode of the series, "Encounter at Farpoint", was a two-hour episode that in syndication is most often shown as two one-hour episodes. "All Good Things..." serves as the closure of the first episode's trial of the USS Enterprise-D (and in a broader sense, humanity in general) by the nigh-omnipotent being Q.
Plot summary
It is early morning on the Enterprise on stardate 47988, so this episode begins late in the year 2370. Deanna Troi and Lieutenant Worf are about to kiss (in an alternate timeline, they were married, as shown in "Parallels") when Captain Jean-Luc Picard comes from the turbolift, seeming disoriented. Picard asks them what day it is, and when he finds out, he tells Troi and Worf that he's been time traveling and doesn't know why.
By the time Picard arrives in Sickbay, he has bodily and consciously jumped back six years in the past, just before he took command of the Enterprise. The dialogue between himself and Tasha Yar, his then-chief of security, seems to confirm that "Encounter at Farpoint" was the first mission of the Enterprise-D.
Another time-travel episode takes him to 2395, where Picard is an old man tending his vineyards and has a respected career as captain, admiral, and Federation ambassador behind him. In the field he meets Geordi La Forge, who's now a novelist with a wife and three children. Geordi calls his wife Leah, presumably Dr. Leah Brahms, the designer of the Galaxy class starship warp drive systems (featured prominently in two earlier episodes of the show). When Picard hesitates and admits to Geordi that he's seeing and hearing people who aren't there (actually individuals from the 21st century trial scene in "Encounter at Farpoint"), Geordi suggests that Picard's irumodic syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease he's had for years, is responsible.
Subsequent timejumps convince Picard that he's not imagining things, and in 2370 Dr. Crusher finds that his brain has stored two days' worth of memories in a few minutes time. Orders from Admiral Nakamura at Starfleet Command take the Enterprise to the Devron system on the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone, where the Romulans are assembling ships in the wake of a newly-discovered temporal anomaly.
Back in 2364 on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise, Picard diverts the ship from its Farpoint rendezvous to the Devron system to investigate a temporal anomaly also forming there. Once he's returned to 2395, he convinces Data, now Cambridge's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Geordi, Captain Beverly Picard (the former Beverly Crusher, Jean-Luc's ex-wife in this timeline) of the medical ship USS Pasteur, and Governor Worf to accompany him to the Devron system, which is now held by a hostile Klingon Empire. Troi was dead in this timeline, and Riker and Worf blame each other, because both had romantic feelings for her.
The present-day Picard (of 2370) then appears in the trial chamber where Q accused him and by extension humanity of being a savage race six years earlier. Q tells Picard that he will destroy humanity, or perhaps has already destroyed them, and that Q is allowing Picard to travel through time to figure out how he does this. Relating his experience to his senior staff (of 2370), he proceeds to the Devron system knowing that the anomaly now forming there is something he caused. In the future, when the Pasteur arrives at the Devron system, they find nothing. But on the Enterprise of 2364, the anomaly is larger than it is in Picard's present. Back in the future, two Klingon vessels decloak and attack the Pasteur, which is narrowly saved by the intervention of Admiral Riker on board the 2395 version of the Enterprise. Q then takes Picard back to Earth four billion years ago, where the anomaly fills the Alpha Quadrant and prevents amino acids from forming proteins, thus preventing the formation of life on Earth (and likely the rest of the quadrant).
The 2395 Enterprise returns to the Devron system and discovers the anomaly forming. Inverse tachyon pulses projected from the main deflector dishes of the 2364 and 2370 Enterprises to study the interior of the anomaly are enabling the anomaly to grow in their own time periods. Time and anti-time are coming together inside the anomalies, and the resultant reaction will destroy everything by causing beings to revert to earlier forms of development. The pregnant Alyssa Ogawa loses her baby due to this cell reversion, and individual DNA is starting to break down due to the anomaly's anti-time effects.
Data and Geordi in 2395 deduce that the creation of a static warp shell in all three time periods inside their respective anomalies will cause them to collapse. Picard communicates this information to his counterparts, and each Enterprise enters its anomaly, which in anti-time becomes one anomaly. One by one, warp core breaches destroy the 2364, 2370, and 2395 vessels, and Q bids Picard farewell: "Good-bye, Jean-Luc, I'm gonna miss you. You had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end..."
Picard finds himself in the trial chamber once more. Q explains that sacrifice of the Enterprise and its crew in all three timelines, which the Q Continuum didn't think Picard had in him, has collapsed the anomaly, which now never was. So the events of this timeline will now unfold in a different direction from the one that created the 2395 timeline with which Picard interacted. However, the real victory that justified the Continuum sparing Humanity was Picard's willingness to consider existential possibilities outside of his experience to solve the problem. In doing so, Picard demonstrated that Humanity is able to explore the profound nature of existence itself. The show – and the series – ends with the senior staff playing their weekly poker game, which Picard joins for the first time as the Enterprise warps off into the distance.
Notes
The Crusher/Picard relationship is explored further, even having them marry in the future. Crusher is the one that 'leads' the relationship on, in the present, at least, by kissing the Captain and telling him a lot of things can happen. Producers were in two minds with what to do with Crusher and Picard. The fans may have liked them to get together, but that would have caused problems with any relationship Picard may have had in the future films.In the 'past', Crusher, Wesley, and Geordi do not make an appearance. This is mainly due to the difference in their look. Riker, who also looks distinctively different, is featured, however this is taken from another episode in the first season.
Early drafts of "All Good Things..." had a fourth timeline, corresponding to "The Best of Both Worlds" episodes. Another draft had the crew stealing the Enterprise from a space museum in the 2395 timeline.
"All Good Things..." won the 1995 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
The central event of this episode is similar to that of a later TV mini-series The Triangle. The anomaly that is at the centre of the Bermuda Triangle in The Triangle is similar to that of the temporal anomaly that was a central part of this episode. In the attempt to collapse the anomaly (in both series), it was discovered that it was actually that attempt that would ultimately cause the anomaly, and start its journey back through time. Although the problems were solved differently in each series (in TNG a static warp shell was used to collapse the anomaly, and in The Triangle a lack of action closed it) it is interesting to note the similarity between them.
It has been speculated that the title of this episode was suggested by a fan on the Fidonet BBS network. At the beginning of the seventh season of TNG, a list of completely fabricated episode titles for the upcoming year was posted as a joke on the Trek conference, the last of which was "All Good Things..." The moderator of the conference maintained that members of the production staff of TNG were regular readers of the conference, and so it is possible that the title was a tip-of-the-hat to that prank list.
In the past and present timeline, the anomaly grows backwards in time, growing larger as it moves through anti-time, thus appearing to shrink from the perspective of Picard and his crew in normal time. However, in the future timeline, the anomaly does not exist until it is created, showing that at that point it is moving forward in normal time and, presumably, backward in anti-time. The reason for this difference is not explained in the episode and could be viewed as a continuity error, in the absence of an explanation. In order to logically adhere to its properties, the anomaly should have appeared to be shrinking until the moment the Pasteur fired its tachyon pulse, at which point it should have vanished. A possible explanation is that the anomaly's creation is a singular point which echoes both forward and backward in time. Another explanation is that since the anomaly was created in the future by the third inverse tachyon beam, the resulting anomaly grew forward in time until enough "anti-time" had accumulated to cause the anomaly to grow backwards.
In the first scene we see with Picard in the future, Picard asks Geordi how long it had been since "we were all together back on the Enterprise." Geordi responds, "25 years." Going from the year of this episode (2370), that would put this future in the year 2395. However, the end of the episode gives no implication that the crew disbands anytime near the episode. Quite the contrary, the timeline moves on with the crew all together. The actual last time the crew was "all together on the Enterprise" would be seen in Star Trek Nemesis. That adventure was the last time the TNG crew is seen all together, until Commander Riker and Counselor Troi leave for the USS Titan. Nemesis is set in the year 2379, which would actually put the future in All Good Things in the year 2404. However, since this episode takes place in a timeline that does not end up occurring, it's possible Geordi was referring to a split-up of the Enterprise crew that took place in that timeline. The events Picard describes to the crew could inspire them to stay together longer. It is at best unclear whether the future time period takes place in 2395 or 2404.
Some would say that the presence of the Enterprise-D in the year 2395 (or 2404) is a continuity error, since the Enterprise-D was destroyed in 2371 in Star Trek Generations. However, in the final scene involving all the officers at the poker table, it is postulated that since Picard has told everyone about the future and the temporal anomaly never occurred, the timeline has been changed. It would seem this change eventually (however indirectly) led to the destruction of the Enterprise-D in 2371.
This episode indicates that, at least in the Star Trek universe, life on Earth began in France. That said, Q could have been referring to Earth when he said France. The European continent would not exist at the creation of life on Earth, or even until the supercontinent Pangaea was divided. It is furthermore unlikely that the terrane that would eventually become France would have existed during the Hadean period, owing to the predominantly ocean-dominated surface in that era (continental buildup is thought to be a phenomenon associated with the 2nd half of Earth history).
External link
- [All Good Things...] article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
| Preceded by: "Preemptive Strike" | Followed by: none |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.