Star Trek: The Next Generation innovated several science fiction storylines, and their time loop episode is no exception. In “Cause and Effect”, Episode 18 of the show’s fifth season, the Enterprise crew finds themselves in a common sci-fi situation: the time loop. While the concept of repeating the same day was popularized for American audiences by Groundhog Dayin 1993 and has since become a staple of cinema in movies like Edge of Tomorrow, Palm Springs, and the Happy Death Dayfranchise, Star Trek premiered their episode’s story in 1992, the year before Bill Murray suffered his famous holiday.
What Happens in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect"?
After a scene teasing the destruction of the vessel, “Cause and Effect” follows Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) as she goes through what seems like a routine day aboard the starship Enterprise. She plays cards with Data (Brent Spiner), Worf (Michael Dorn), and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) before she is summoned to the sickbay to help Geordie La Forge (Levar Burton), who suffers from dizziness. Later, during a moment she tries to sleep in her quarters, Crusher suddenly hears voices in the otherwise empty room. The next morning, after a meeting discussing their current voyage, the whole crew is summoned to the bridge where they find that they’re entering a localized time and space distortion field. The Enterprise malfunctions when Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) orders the crew to try and escape, leaving them vulnerable when another ship appears on a collision course with their own. After ignoring Riker’s idea to decompress the main shuttlebay as a way to bounce clear of the other vessel, Picard takes Data’s suggestion to try to redirect the other ship with their tractor beams, only for impact to occur anyway and the Enterprise to be destroyed.
Of course, these events then unfold again… and again… and again, each time with Dr. Crusher and the rest of the crew experiencing stronger feelings of déjà vu as they go about their day. Soon Dr. Crusher and Geordie surmise that the ship is caught in a temporal causality loop (“time warp” was already taken) caused by its destruction at the end of every cycle. The shadows of past timelines have been causing both Geordie’s headaches and Dr. Crusher’s auditory hallucinations. They theorize that with a dekyon emitter, they might be able to send a very short subconscious message to Data in the next loop. When the ship once again is unable to use its tractor beam to move the colliding vessel out of the way, Data quickly realizes that Riker’s strategy was the better option and utilizes the dekyon emitter.
In the next loop, everyone once again is overcome with feelings of déjà vu, although things are slightly different. Instead of dealing out the same hand Data usually does, he deals out four hands of three of a kind. When Data later runs a ship diagnostic, the results appear as a series of threes. The crew meets, unknowing rehashes Crusher and Geordie’s temporal causality loop theory, and agrees that the appearances of the number three can’t be coincidental. Once again the Enterprise encounters another ship on collision course, and once again Picard ignores Riker’s suggestion in favor of Data’s but this time as its being carried out Data notices the three rank insignia on Riker’s collar and puts the first officer’s idea into action. The ship avoids the collision, breaking the loop. The crew soon discovers the other ship houses another Federation ship that should have been out of commission over 80 years now, and that while the Enterprise’s clock is only off by 17.4 days, the crew onboard the other vessel are off by 90 years. The episode ends with Picard offering aid to the displaced crew.
“Cause and Effect” Is One of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Best Twilight Zone-like Episodes
Especially worth highlighting here is the curious way the narrative handles time looping. Unlike Groundhog Day, everyone on board the Enterprise doesn’t know they are in the loop initially and only has a vague feeling of déjà vu instead of retaining all their memories. This approach varies strongly from how we usually think of these stories; rather than having the sort of "am I going insane" narrative focused on one person, the episode highlights the time travel of it all, finishing with a gut punch (the other ship that has been trapped in the loop for years) that reminds the crew they could have been in a much worse position. Entire scenes play out nearly identically, varied only slightly by behavior and cinematography. While the audience may be following Crusher almost the whole time, our observations are not hers, but rather originate from the outside looking in at the situation.
The greatest difference between “Cause and Effect” and the majority of time loop stories comes from the character arcs, or lack thereof. In a post-Groundhog Day cinema landscape, time loops usually happen to one selfish person in order to challenge their personality, and the events that unfold repeatedly force them to be better to fellow human beings. In the case of Murray’s Phil Connors, this is able to break the loop itself. The loops of Edge of Tomorrow, Palm Springs, and both Happy Death Day movies are caused by an external force (time controlling aliens, a quantum cave, and a murderer combined with an experiment gone wrong respectively) that must be dealt with the break the loop, but the protagonist(s) still become better, more selfless people by the story’s end. Being harder sci-fi, this Star Trek episode isn’t interested in dealing with that kind of arc. While the story develops based on the little knowledge of their situation that the crew is able to accumulate, it’s not apparent that any character becomes more selfless by going through these events. Rather than having Dr. Crusher, Captain Picard, and the rest of the crew learn to be better people as a way to break out of this ordeal, they have to use loopholes in their situation and science fiction lingo to break out.
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While not all of The Next Generation’s wacky concept-heavy episodes have aged well, “Cause and Effect” stands as not only a stellar episode, but a retro take on now well-worn trope. Although the concept existed well before the episode was written, revisiting the series in an era where science fiction is much more common (several Star Trek series alone are on the air as of this publication) reminds us what real science fiction is about. “Cause and Effect” is a fun reminder that the plots taking place in the Star Trek universe have always sought out the final frontiers of storytelling’s borders and boldly gone where no one has gone before. Let us hope that Star Trek will continue to do the same.
