A Matter of Time

As far as I know this is one of the first episodes written by Rick Berman himself. With all the mistakes you think he would have known better. It is after the death of Gene Roddenberry that Berman is now at the helm of Star Trek, and there are some obvious growing pains.

When the time traveller historian known as Rasmussen(Max Headroom/Lawnmower Man 2) claims to be from the 26th century( That's 2500-ish) he creates a plot hole. The Star Trek Timeline which was established off of an episode in the 2nd season I believe should put us circa 2367-9. somewhere in there. He claims to have come back nearly 300 years, yet the maximum would be 230 years which is nowhere near 300 years. Apparently math in the distant future is shaky.

I realize that back when this was aired there was less common knowledge about volcanism, asteroids, and global warming, but when the Captain has to ask Geordi why volcanic eruptions are bad on Panthera IV it's taking it a little far. Picard should know a hell of a lot more than that about the situation. He does spend his time mapping class M planets after all. How they save the planet is all theoretical and based on technology that doesn't exist(yet) so I cannot say whether that would work or not, but it seems like the work of a terraformer, not a flagship.

Furthermore even the slightest change in the past can have the colossal impact on the future. Say Beverly needed that Neural Stimulator in a coming injury, and because she had to have another replicated someone influential dies prematurely. The best course of action for time travelers is to never travel in time in the first place. It's just too risky - they would not, could not interact with such a person or accept them with open arms. Death is the only option.

When Rasmussen takes Data into his ship there is a major problem here. Why would the captain allow him to enter a vessel he doesn't fully understand. He would lose control of the situation. They would escort Rasmussen to the brig or some sort of quarters and strip search him with the aid of a tricorder. While inside, rambling on about his plans like any cliché villain he supposedly holds Data under guard of a phazer yet he takes his thumb off the trigger several times, looks away, messes with his ship...all ample opportunities for an android to move with inhuman speed and disarm/disable the guy. The way they disable the devices was a little too convenient.

Besides, if he WAS from the past how could he have known ANYTHING about Picard or the crew such as their names or anything at all? Or even that Data was an android? In the 21st century there was no warp coil as they knew it. 2063 is the year Cochrane made his first flight in the Phoenix and made first contact with the Vulcans. In the rest of the 21st century nothing more than a warp probe is launched. In fact during half of this century Earth is wracked in World War III and nuclear winter. Soldiers were addicted to enhancement drugs as is detailed the first time the crew encountered Q, it was a barbaric time. There was no way to tell what the future held. There was no way he could have conducted any sort of travel in space without knowledge of it, no would there be any reason for him to suddenly appear light years from the surface of earth in dead space 300 km from the Starfleet Flagship either. Wouldn't he just be in the future on Earth? A simple quiz about the 22nd century would have proved this guy a fake in 5 seconds. Name 10 alien races that were known in this century. GO. How about questions about the Enterprise. What is the fastest warp factor we can achieve safely, GO! No answer? Shoot him! What if because he never made it back to his time he didn't invent the things that could have theoretically resulted in the invention of starships and therefore damaged the present? What happens to the time machine when it goes back in time, adrift, a derelict for any to find and wreak havoc with.

Since there was no record of his existence why didn't they just vaporize him or blow him out of an airlock just for fun? Lock him in a holodeck medieval torture program indefinitely.

This whole episode is utter trash that should have never been put into production. It's just another filler episode on the way to bigger better things. There are simply too many of these filler episodes. Rick Berman needs to stick to production because as a writer he is a noob. I realize that at this point he is all alone, and new at it, but he should have planned for Gene's eventual departure at his advanced age long before this. They should have had the entire series written by this point like we do today. Sometimes it feels like the seat-of-the-pants, fly-by-night kind of pulp fiction writings detailed in a certain episode of DS9. :)

One more thing ILM makes me mad. The atmosphere of most planets is over 600 miles above the surface granted re-entry isn't noticeable until around 75 miles, the atmosphere is still there! The Enterprise according to ILM just sits right next to solid spheroid planets devoid of topography or water half the time, mere dozens of miles above the surface, and yet denies the natural orbit that is stable and easy to achieve around 250 miles above a planet of Earth's size. The Bussard Ramscoop collectors do collect Deuterium fuel for free at warp speeds, but you would tend to want to save wherever possible. It's called efficiency. Another thing, battles in space happen in 3 dimensions not 2.

This episode has the Enterprise on a mission to save a planet from the consequences of an asteroid crashing into an uninhabited section of the planet. The dust clouds raised threaten a nuclear winter type phenomenon.

Geordi on the ground with their leading scientist Stefan Gierasch work on one solution and when that compounds the problem work toward another solution hat will need pin point timing and accuracy.

While all this is going on a man with a futuristic ship beams on the Enterprise bridge Matt Frewer a quirky sort claims to be a historian from the 26th century here to see events. Picard and others suspect there's more to him, maybe less depending on your point of view.

Frewer's quirky character and the race to save the planet make this a good entry.

'A Matter of Time' is a time-travel story, but with one caveat: it's really more about the consequences of knowing the future instead of actually moving through the fourth dimension. Cue the ample deliberation around a conference table scenes, a hallmark of this show.

But there's a key element that really breathes life into this: Matt Frewer, playing a historian from another time. The man relishes his role and adds a charming sense of guile to his scenes. We know deep down we can't trust him, but the guy sure is likable.

All of this is happening while the Enterprise is trying to save a planetside colony from its own geologic imbalance (which lends its own tension) but for me, this all rides on the historian character.

Lesser casting might've crippled this episode.

7/10

Reaching Penthara IV after an asteroid wreaks havoc of catastrophic proportions, the Enterprise crew deals with trying to save the planet. It's the dust cloud left by the asteroid that is the real concern. Could a temporal distortion have anything to do with what's going on?

This episode first aired on November 16, 1991. At the time of writing, that was almost 31 years ago. Of those of us old enough to remember that time, watching this episode now is comparable to something we might have watched in 1991 that was first aired in 1960. The Andy Griffith Show, or My Three Sons, or Route 66. Many shows in 1960 were Westerns and it was usually the case that they also had an influence on other shows of that period.

Similarly, in 1991 we get science fiction shows that tend to follow the format more closely linked to the soap-opera's that were very much in vogue at that time. So we shouldn't be surprised when watching some of these shows now, they tend to focus too much on the crew-related behaviour to certain issues, rather than having anything to do with science fiction. Unfortunately, I tended to phase in and out of this episode at different times, as the show seemed a little unsure of what aspect of the story it wanted to focus on... even saving the planet took only a moment, before we were back with trying to figure out who the historian was, and what he wanted. I didn't really care.

This Episodes Clue: Mayor Jason Hobart.

Max Headroom comes aboard the Enterprise as a time traveler from 200-300 years in the future to watch as they attempt to save a colony world from destruction. Matt Frewer chews the scenery around the Enterprise, not as a mustache twirling villain, but as an unbelievably annoying cad. Without spoiling anything, you know something's got to be wrong with this guy within seconds. That unsubtle approach makes this episode clearly marked out as a light-hearted one, even though a planet faces total destruction, you're not supposed to take things too seriously here.

Still it's an episode I remember watching the first time, way back when it aired on an actual broadcast, likely thanks to Frewer's ridiculous professor and the somewhat interesting twist at the end.