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Star Trek: The Next Generation 2x13 "Time Squared" - Full Watch-along (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-10 18:00:06
Imported:
2026-10

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Follow along using your own copy of the episode!

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Star Trek: The Next Generation 2x13 "Time Squared" - Full Watch-along

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This is the captain speaking: So our newly prophesized destiny is "ship go boom" in 6 hours... Crew: Aw shucks, just another crazy week aboard The Enterprise!

Summer

More than halfway through the rollercoaster that is season 2. You are great at noticing details and knowing how things should work. If you consider a TNG uniform think engineering or science

Greg

LOL at the previous comments cause it's all true! This is one of those episodes I didn't like much when it first aired. It felt slow paced and plodding, confusing as to what was going on, and without any clear answers at the end it just made my head hurt. Now that I'm older and watching this again in hindsight I rather do like the episode, although the same problems I said before didn't go away, I'm just able (or willing) to tolerate them now. It's a good premise for a story. I know from our talks Bunny that both of us really enjoy stories dealing with time travel and this is a doozy of one. What it would be like to meet your own self from another time frame is a fun concept in sci-fi and your right in that it's difficult to deal with. I wish the story had been done a different way and that we had more answers at the end, but that's common for Star Trek to not give us all the answers. It's ALSO common for Star Trek to give us good thought provoking episodes like this though. I do wonder what would happened if the other Picard had been allowed to leave the ship since there was now two of them. Would the Enterprise still have been destroyed? I guess that's one of those 'timey whimey' questions we'll never get answered. Since Bunny has already seen the episode I'm referring to, very nice foreshadowing with Riker cooking eggs at the start and talking about his father. Riker didn't do anything wrong with cooking, it's just the eggs had a different taste -- something Worf really enjoyed. I'm not sure why it was called an omelet though when it was clearly scrambled eggs. And your right, most people don't do cooking anymore, as Pulaski says, due to replicators it's a tradition that has fallen by the wayside. Not everyone feels that way, but a lot of people just depend on tech like replicators to solve all their problems. It's why some people rebel against modern life and want to live simple lives on other words, as we've seen in TOS and will see again. One last note -- it's interesting how Riker and Picard are talking in his ready room Riker mentions how in theory time travel is possible with the 'slingshot effect' but that it's only in theory. Did everyone forget how the Enterprise did that in a TOS episode on purpose, and how Kirk did it AGAIN in Star Trek 4 to save Earth?

William Terry

Pretty good episode even though the plot was basic "Wagon Train". Using the warp engines for a game of tractor pull was a little dumb, sort of like "Contagion" where the visuals for the computer virus was the lights flickering like they were playing the Titanic. Lots of Picard and Troi has some good lines so a B+.

Bret Kay

I've always enjoyed this one as it's a time travel episode, though it's a bit different from how we've seen time travel. This one uses a weird model where you can't change your past (the future Picard is locked in to playing out the same events), but his presence changes the future (Picard makes a different choice, Enterprise doesn't go boom). So kind of a weird one in that sense. It also felt like they were hinting at the future Picard and Shuttle being from a parallel universe or the mirror universe with everything working opposite how it should on them. It's not clear why them being from the future would cause that. I guess the were from an alternate timeline at least as their Enterprise blew up. I also enjoyed the character moments. The opening with Riker cooking and the crews reactions was great! I love when they fill in the backstory and we get to see the characters just interacting with each other absent a main plot.

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

Man, I like this one. Tense, kinda creepy time travel stuff, a good Picard/PS acting opportunity, and strong support roles for my girls Deanna and Doc P. Just a whole bunch of fun.

Matthew Graves (Graviton)

A very good episode. It does a great job keeping up the tension by focusing on Picard's personal struggle. It's a very important bit of character building here, further establishing a fundamental character trait: he REALLY does not like having his agency stripped from him. It's been alluded to in things like his personal dislike and frustration with Q, and it's on full display here. One thing that can deeply affect and rattle Picard is making him feel like he has no choice or that his choices don't matter. Riker calls it his "Persian flaw" which is an interesting choice of words. It refers to the myth that Persian rug makers would intentionally place a flaw in their work in the belief that only God can or should create something perfect. Here, I think that the idea is, that while an intense drive to have positive impact is an admirable qnd necessary quality in a captain, it can alst tho be a potential weakeness. It's interesting that in the end, Picard's road to success lies in intentionally ignoring his own judgement. It's also kind of fascinating how this episode plays with the predestination paradox concept. At first, my first reaction when they have the initial staff conference and decide to proceed onward is "what? why not at least try to chart a different course and see what haapens?" The answer is, the don't because they didn't. And, of course, that's what frustrates Picard so much, being stuck in a loop is anathema to his sense of personal agency. It gets strange because if in the end oleur Picard shoots future Picard, and doesn't leave the ship himself, where did future Picard come from since no Picard ever left the ship in the first place (second place?). To quote Austin Powers "Oh, Ive gone crosseyed!" Basically everything leading up to the act of entering the vortex has to be viewed as a self contained temporal moebius strip with the the Enterprise that comes out being a sort of temporal anoboly in and of itself. Does this make sense? In a certain abstract sense. Does it make "realistic" sense? Damned if I know. That's part of why so much feels unresolved at the end. In a sense the point is that it can't be resolved, not really. Now, is that frustrating? Yes, but to me at least it's sort of a "good kind" of frustration. As always, this is gonna be highly individual as to how one reacts to this kind of thing. One other minor point that strikes me about this is the role of ships counsellor here. As a whole, they make pretty great use of Deanna in this episode, but the exchange with Dr. Pulaski is a bit strange. It's firmly established in TOS that the CMO can relieve the Captian from command if she determines he is unfit. But there, McCoy's duties also clearly extend to being "in charge" of the crew's mental health. On the Enterprise D, we have a dedicated ship's councellor. Shouldn't it be Deanna's call as to whether the captain is metally fit for duty? It's her specialty after all. But maybe she only has an advisory role to the CMO (hence the "Chief" part). So is Deanna part of the medical team that is technically under Pulaski in the chain of command? It's all kind of vauge. I mean, I think the idea is supposed to be that having a ship's councellor as a separate role is a realatively new development in Star Fleet, maybe occasioned by the Galaxy class having such a huge compliment (including civilians) compared to previous Federation starships. But it all seems a little fuzzy to me. Maybe there's an answer out there I'm missing. It's just a weird little point that I think of every once in a while.

Muggy

He didn't really travel back in time. He is linked to the time of the destruction of the ship. He is out of time like being out of phase. Like Einstein said "Understanding time can take long than getting the lederhosen off a plump Bavarian girl". (It's better in the original German)

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

I like the discussion around being decisive and command decisions in this one. Picard sitting down in command centre doing the Picard maneuver tunic tug with a very definitive attitude having decided to go in and the "Engage!" is really fun. I like to think that it was a test, the vortex wanted to see if they were smart enough/brave enough/exploratory enough to go forward and that's why it didn't shoot them down for attempting. Obligatory stumping for Troi comment, Marina does the whole "feeling someone else's emotions" thing very well. (Remember when I said y'all were gonna get sick of me stanning Troi in the comment section constantly? I still full intend to try my damnedest to follow through on that threat 😉😆)

TJ

One of my favs from Season 2! You are asking great questions, but I think one of the strengths of this episode is exemplified by what Picard says at the end, "so many questions, damn few answers". Someday, thousands of years from now when humans develop the technology to explore deep space, we are most certainly going to encounter phenomena that our science simply can't explain... I also really like the score in this episode, which was fitting to the story.

Paul Hess

A good fun episode, I look forward to your reaction. Original concept instead of rehashed TOS concepts, with decent character portrayals and a fun mystery. to think about We're in the stage where both good and great episodes will gradually start to be more and more frequent .... great time to be along for the ride with you!

Paul Hess

Thanks for a great reaction. This episode is about inner turmoil and self-doubt and is wonderfully acted by Patrick Stewart. I imiagine it wasn't an easy episode to act. They use a science fiction premise to set up the circumstances for a human drama and then play out the human drama. Not finding out, not getting to the bottom of what actually happened, feels very real. In facing the mysteries of the universe we don't always get that privilege.

Stainless Steel Cat

O'Brien is most interesting to me in this episode. He wanders into the shuttle bay, first time we've seen him this episode, sees a dead Picard* and doesn't freak out and ask Pulaski what the hell's going on. Did they announce to the whole 1000 people on the ship "By the way, we've just found another Captain Picard in a shuttlecraft"? * Should I say Dracip?

Greg

Also notice that when everyone is trying to keep their balance as the ship is making it's escape he doesn't move a inch.

Desmond

O'Brien is just built different lol.

Desmond

Yeah, this episode didn't stand out in my memory, but on the rewatch, I appreciated how sharp the dialog was, how tight the plotting. Just a good look at the TNG crew at their best, solving a scifi dilemma. Even if the episode itself was fairly by-the-numbers.

Joshua Langweil

If I'm not mistaken, in an earlier concept for this episode, it was Q that sent Picard back in time to help them to change the outcome.

bunnytails

Yeah, I would love to see more of characters just interacting as well!

bunnytails

Stan Troi all you want! I love the enthusiasm :D