Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: We'll Always Have Paris

TNG "We'll Always Have Paris"

"We'll Always Have Paris" blazes a trail for The Next Generation in a couple ways. It's the first "timey-wimey" episode, featuring time distortions (later examples: "Time Squared", "Cause and Effect", etc.). And not counting Beverly Crusher, it's the first Picard's old flame/Picard love interest episode (later examples: "The Measure of a Man", "Lessons", etc.). So cue rote time trickery and Picard wistfully recreating a Paris cafe on the holodeck.

Jenice Manheim, Picard's former lover of 22 years ago, is played by Michelle Phillips, best known from the 1960s rock group The Mamas and the Papas. With all these time distortions, it's a real "Monday Monday" situation, huh? "California Dreamin'"? More like Paris Dreamin'.

... Maybe that doesn't work too well.

The episode runs those two strands in parallel, pioneering their use in the show but in a decidedly workmanlike fashion. One fun aspect of the holodeck program is seeing future production design in the 24th Century French cafe. The Space Fashion Choices for those women scream out the trademark of costume designer William Ware Theiss, lending his talents familiar from the original series to the first season of TNG. It is details like this that make TNG Season 1 an aesthetically liminal transition point between the gaudy TOS and the more austere TNG.

Being a showcase for Picard, he is also seen fencing with an anonymous crew member. Seeing Picard in "dab hand with a cutlass" mode recalls his time as swordmaster Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's Dune - or for that matter, Lord Leondegrance in John Boorman's Excalibur.

Details like that liven up a somewhat routine episode. There is one moment at the episode's close I want to pick out, before a painfully awkward comedy ending. Picard says the Enterprise is due for "much needed" shore leave. Could it be a subtle reference to the loss of Tasha Yar, killed in action in the episode directly prior...?

A decent but unremarkable romance/science puzzle. 5/10.

P.S.: As a Star Wars fan, the Enterprise's trip to Vandor 4 recalls Han Solo and crew's Conveyex heist on Vandor 1 in Solo: A Star Wars Story.