In the twenty-forth episode of the first season of The Next Generation, Picard runs across someone from his past. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
I don’t think this is a bad episode. It does what it wants to, but it feels so terribly safe. Despite the threat of the time loops, this episode isn’t dangerous, or risky, or frightening. The loops are bizarre, but we only experience them a few times. I think the challenge here was in building an episode that made us care about what Picard was going through. That’s hard when his ennui is over someone we’ve never met.
Did this episode accomplish that? I’m not really sure. I think Patrick Stewart, Marina Sirtis, and Gates McFadden are all fantastic in “We’ll Always Have Paris,†and they certainly help. My problem is with the story itself. We open with a surreal sequence of repetition and a distress call from a distant planet. It’s a fantastic bit of potential! Why is time repeating? Why is the automated message coming from so far away? What did Paul Manheim discover while experimenting with time? These were all interesting ideas, part of a premise that I was eager to see unfold.
As for the scene in the Holodeck? It’s… okay. It’s a rather common story within this genre, especially when you’re dealing with military sci-fi or any fictional organization that requires someone to suddenly ship out to somewhere else. Someone is inevitably left behind, it’s tragic and sad, and then THEY’RE BACK IN YOUR LIFE! I’ve seen this story a ton of times, and the Next Generation writers don’t do anything to twist it. To make matters more complicated, Picard’s anxiety over Manheim is revealed to be due to his wife. She’s the one who waited for Picard in Paris many years earlier, only to be stood up. So, Picard chose Starfleet over Jenice. It’s messed up, especially since he never showed for their rendezvous. But it’s not like it would ever be believable for Picard to leave Starfleet for someone. So where’s the tension? What’s the conflict here?
Well, there’s the external conflict of the time ripples, but even that is relatively calm considering where the show could have taken it. Again, there are only three manifestations of it throughout these forty-five minutes, and thus, it never felt truly threatening. We don’t see the other dimension that Manheim gained access to. And when Picard and Jenice do finally confront one another about what happened in the past, it still felt… saccharine. Extremely safe. There’s not any dramatic tension in Jenice telling Picard what his fear truly was. Dr. Crusher doesn’t open up to Deanna about her feelings for Picard, either, though she’s clearly wearing them on her sleeve. What we get in this episode, then, is a lot of set-up and very little delivery.
Like, let’s look at the final scene in the Holodeck. After surviving the time ripples, Jenice’s husband declares his love for her once more, promising to treat her better. Picard, on the other hand, brings her to Paris back when they were supposed to meet, which seems like a TERRIBLE idea to me. It’s so uncomfortable! Who would think bringing someone back to the place of a deeply disappointing memory would be cathartic? I mean, it looks like it was to Jenice. She uses it to say goodbye to Picard because when you enter a highly realistic, computerized replication of Paris in 2342, you definitely should only stay there FOR LIKE SIXTY SECONDS. I would have been like, “Thanks, Picard, SEE YA, I’M GONNA GO CLIMB THE EIFFEL TOWER AND HOOK UP WITH SOME HOT FRENCH DUDES.â€
It’s just… meh? again, this isn’t terrible at all, but I wish it had more bite. I wish it took a few more risks instead of giving us such a simplistic story that was easily resolved with little character development.
The video for “We’ll Always Have Paris†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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