Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Time's Arrow Part 1

TNG "Time's Arrow Part 1"

"My brother's positronic brain had a type-L phase discriminating amplifier. Mine is type R." 

"Type R?!"

- Data and Jean-Luc Picard

The Enterprise is recalled to Earth by a project manager who seems to know the conventions of television. Instead of telling Picard and Data up front that they've found DATA'S HEAD, he buries the lede and only reveals it for maximum, end-of-teaser, effect.

The evidence points to Data's death after being displaced in time to 19th Century Earth, which Data reacts to with customary unemotional evenness. Not so his crewmates. This leads to a wonderful first act of the episode, where everyone reacts to the specter of Data's apparent inevitable death with unease. In a hilarious moment, Geordi just sighs and says casually, "They found Data's head a mile below San Francisco..."

But for Data, having knowledge of his death at an undetermined future date is strangely comforting, giving him a mortality that brings his life experience closer to transitory humanity. It's profound stuff, and for anyone who's seen Star Trek Picard Season 1, it should sound a massive signal that certain developments in that show have their exact roots right here.

Soon enough, Data is transported back in time, and the episode takes the left turn in stride. He's winning money in poker, connecting with Mark Twain and the Guinan living in San Francisco at the time, and applying Starfleet resourcefulness to period machinery, "City on the Edge of Forever"-style.

The entire rest of the cast, minus Worf, follow Data into the past. Which begs the question, who's helping Worf run the Enterprise? With Worf as acting Captain, I would speculate that we'd have Ro Laren as First Officer, Reginald Barclay as Chief Engineer, Alyssa Ogawa as Chief Medical Officer, and Guinan as Counselor. Would watch.

It must be said of the science fiction concept of the episode: what were they smoking? The Devidian sequence at the end is truly bizarre, as ghostly approximations of alien forms feed on human life force through their foreheads, and there's a creepy snake too for some reason. It's an eerie Doctor Who-esque setup, aliens targeting Earth's history to feed on humanity.

While the clear highlight of the episode is the warm character-driven Act 1, the episode as a whole balances well affability and true strangeness. 7/10.