This episode wants really badly to be a good one, and significant portions of it are really engaging. It has an intriguing story idea, really great visual effects, and some (some) solid character interaction, all of which make for what is probably the most enjoyable-to-watch episode of any of the ones to which I have (thus far, at least) awarded only two stars. However, the story definitely suffers from underdevelopment and a lack of satisfying follow-through, and its handling of Picard as a character is very uneven.
Probably my biggest complaint about “Time Squared” is that its entire plot hinges on a nonsensical contrivance that actually squanders most of the potential inherent in the underlying story concept. Picard encounters his six-hours-into-the-future self!…but said future self is “out of phase” or whatever, with the result that he is unconscious for most of the episode, then incoherent once he regains consciousness, then (once they near “his” time, and he therefore becomes more lucid) behaves like a single-minded automaton rather than like himself. The episode needs him to be compromised in these ways so that he can’t simply reveal what’s going to happen, but the consequence is that it is unable to really follow through on the fun-sounding premise of “a Picard from the future.” This makes the episode very frustrating. Also, of course, the “out of phase” business fundamentally makes no sense, and that doesn’t help the episode either. The thing is, I would have been fine with future Picard simply being unconscious for a while, to give the episode some space to dwell (as indeed it does) in a general sense of mystery and looming dread, and to allow for scenes like the one between Picard and Riker in the ready room, in which they puzzle over what’s going on and Riker advises Picard to go against his natural tendencies. But eventually, the episode (to deliver on what it seems to promise) needs future Picard to wake up and actually be a future Picard, who is as much himself as “present” Picard is—and then develop an actual story around his interactions with “our” Picard and crew that works.
Instead, what ends up happening is that the story basically devolves into incoherence. Why does Picard’s shuttle come back in time in the first place? We don’t ever find out. Who or what is behind the vortex, and why does it seem to “want” Picard? No answers. Why is it that heading straight into the center of the vortex is the solution to not getting destroyed by it? Who knows! And even worse than all these unanswered questions themselves is the fact that the whole climactic sequence of the episode revolves around “our” Picard hounding future Picard for the answers, rather than anyone actually figuring anything out about what’s going on and how to survive it. Picard is so keen to learn from future Picard what his “other option” was besides heading out alone in a shuttlecraft—but why would future Picard have knowledge of some “other option” that “our” Picard (and the rest of the characters) aren’t able to come up with on their own? We never see the process by which future Picard arrived at the “head straight into the vortex” idea playing out “again” during “our” iteration of the implicit time loop. The result is that besides being an inherently strange solution that doesn’t make much sense, it also functions pretty much as a deus ex machina; the useless-until-the-final-moment future Picard just somehow knows that it’s “the other option,” so once Picard gets him to spill it, they are magically able to escape from their predicament. Very disappointing.
The other main problem with the episode, as I already mentioned, is its handling of Picard as a character. What we have here is a prime example of the unevenness that I’ve elsewhewre noted in the portrayal of Picard during the second season; he’s fine in some scenes, but too much the ill-tempered, unimaginative first-season captain in other scenes. Also, too much of the episode is spent focusing on the point of his contempt for his future self, and the potential for the situation to prompt him to behave erratically. The debate between Troi and Pulaski about the latter especially doesn’t work for me. (It also features a goofy oversight: Right after being told by Picard to stay with future Picard, Troi argues briefly with Pulaski in defense of how Picard is coping and of his fitness to remain in command; then she walks out in a huff, thereby violating the “stay here” order that was just given to her by the captain whose authority she has just been defending!) Finally, the scene at the end in which Picard kills his future self with a phaser (then calls Dr. Pulaski—presumably to come deal with the body!) is just plain bizarre…as is Pulaski just walking out of the shuttle bay and leaving the body lying there after she has determined that it’s dead.
Finally, some comments are in order about the episode’s teaser before I wrap this up. While I generally appreciate it when an episode opens on an off-duty character moment like the scene with Riker making eggs here, this scene has issues, and I just end up finding it annoying. For starters, it’s the first instance of what will be a frequently recurring motif throughout the show about the alleged inadequacies of replicated food—a notion that I’ve never really bought into. That in itself is not fatal, though, since I do buy the idea that this would be an issue about which people might well disagree in a society that had this technology. My problem, then, is that apart from Data—whose outsider perspective is what gives rise to the others’ comments on the subject—no one in the scene argues the other side (i.e., that replicator food is just as good as food prepared in the traditional way). A good-natured debate about replicators among the characters could have been interesting, but a smug, one-sided harangue on the subject is just annoying, and Pulaski’s way-too-well-rehearsed speech, delivered way too quickly, robs the scene of any realism, and makes it seem like the show is just trying too hard. Oddly, this is an instance of early-Trek preachiness aimed not at twentieth-century society so much as at the presumed norms of the Trek world itself. If the writers feel that food that comes from replicators lacks flair or undermines human interaction, then why do they present us with an “idyllic” future that relies on replicators? Also, is the main issue supposed to be the quality of replicated food, or the broader social and cultural ramifications that Pulaski brings up? The former concern strikes me as flat-out irrational; surely replicators can be programmed to cater to individual tastes, and the idea that replicated food would just inherently not be as good is silly. As to the social/cultural point, it seems theoretically valid, but overblown in context; I just don’t buy Pulaski’s claim that twenty-fourth-century humans have “gotten away from” the sense of community centered around food. The existence of this scene, in fact, itself establishes that people still sometimes cook by hand for the love of doing so, and people obviously still gather to eat together as well. Again, I totally buy that some people might still fret about where things are going in this replicator-centric society—but there’s no genuine debate, and it’s annoying.
Anyway…this episode, as I noted, has a pretty cool premise and some good scenes, and the visual effects for the mysterious vortex are beautiful (and they totally sell the scariness of it)—but the story needed major work, and as is, it just winds up being frustrating and disappointing. Worth noting here is the fact that many of these issues, according to the ST:TNG Companion (by Larry Nemecek), are apparently the results of last-minute rewrites; this episode was originally intended to be the first half of a two-parter, and Q was supposed to be behind everything. This was then apparently somehow going to segue into what ultimately became “Q Who”—which is interesting. I’m not sure what exactly derailed those original plans (or how well they might have worked out if they had been executed as intended), but the episode that we’re left with offers up a story that’s full of holes and that, as I’ve said, unfortunately squanders most of its premise’s interesting potential.