Summary[]
Dr. Dalen Quaice, Beverly's old mentor, comes aboard the Enterprise. Contemplating Dr. Quaice's recent loss of his wife and the death of her husband Jack, Beverly enters main engineering, just as Wesley is performing a warp field experiment. The next day Quaice is gone, and no one except for Beverly remembers him. Moreover, Enterprise crew members keep disappearing until only Beverly is left, all alone on the big ship.
Beverly learns from the ship's computer that the entire universe has a diameter of 705m. She is actually trapped inside a static warp bubble that Wesley created. On the other side, Wesley and the Traveler, who has come to help, generate a vortex through which Beverly is supposed to escape, and finally she realizes that she must not avoid but use this exit.
Errors and Explanations[]
The Nitpicker's Guide
Next Generation Trekkers
Volume 2[]
Plot Oversights[]
- After the Traveler appears to help rescue Crusher from the warp bubble, Picard makes a log entry stating that the Enterprise will return to the precise location where the subspace bubble formed. Subsequent shots show the Enterprise reentering the spacedock. Is this right? Isn't everything constantly moving in the universe? Picard is referring to the location in relation to the spacedock.
Equipment Oddities[]
- Given the number of times aliens pop onto the Enterprise- as the Traveler does here – shouldn't Worf have some sort of sensor array that would alert him immediately to an intruder? Many aliens may not show up on the sensor.
Continuity and Production Problems[]
- The case Quaice carries when he comes aboard resembling a Sharp compact video camera case. Perhaps the case is only for immediate essentials, and the rest of his luggage has been transferred to the cargo bay.
- As the warp bubble becomes known to Dr. Crusher, she asks the computer what the nature of the universe is. The computer replies that the universe is a spherical structure 705m in diameter. Shortly after this, the bubble begins to collapse and a time estimate for "how long life support can be maintained" is given as about 4 minutes. (We can assume this is loosely applied in Dr. Crusher's "reality", even though the ship does report decompressions on forward decks as the bubble collapses, indicating a continuity of physical interaction with the "edge of the universe".) Geordi LaForge then gives a concurrent estimate of the time that the shrinking bubble will be maintained and a rate of collapse as "15 meters per second." If we are given that these realities have congruent timelines and the size of the bubble is congruent in each universe, then either Dr. Crusher only has 47 seconds (not 4 minutes as the computer and Geordi estimated earlier), or the "real" bubble is actually over 3.6 kilometers in diameter when it begins its final collapse. Explain that. The bubble may have only appeared to be 705m in diameter from the inside.
Internet Movie Database[]
Continuity[]
- When Dr. Crusher first disappears, she is not wearing a lab coat, but when she emerges from the "gateway" at the end, she is now wearing one, a coat she apparently put on in the alternate reality. But since she was able to keep her clothes from the first reality to the second. In the alternate reality, her closet would have still had the lab coat for her to put on and it is conceivable that she could keep what she was wearing from the alternate reality back to her correct dimension.
Nit Central[]
- Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Monday, July 23, 2001 - 3:19 am: Why isn't Wesley trying this experiment on the Holodeck? Isn't creating a warp bubble while in spacedock a potentially dangerous idea? Perhaps he did the initial research on the holodeck, and the part we see is the next stage.
- Halfway through the show there's just Picard and Dr. Crusher left, Dr. Crusher mentions Will Riker and without checking any records, Picard simply says he can find no evidence for a Will Riker. If he didn't check the records then how does he know that there is no evidence for a Will Riker? This Picard has no memory of Will Riker.
| The Next Generation Season 4 |
| The Best of Both Worlds Part 2 I Family I Brothers I Suddenly Human I Remember Me I Legacy I Reunion I Future Imperfect I Final Mission I The Loss I Data's Day I The Wounded I Devil's Due I Clues I First Contact I Galaxy's Child I Night Terrors I Identity Crisis I The Nth Degree I Qpid I The Drumhead I Half a Life I The Host I The Mind's Eye I In Theory I Redemption Part 1 |