May 23rd, 1994, "All Good Things"
Ah yes, the day that I taped two VHS tapes. One for the Viewer's Choice Marathon, one for the finale. I used to watch this episode a lot, until I got VERY sick of it. The microsecond Picard realized that events in each time period don't affect the others, he should've told the past crew what's going on. And when Beverly told him that there's proof that he's gathered more memories than is possible without considering time travel, he should've done it in the other two time periods.
Fiver by Zeke
The Episode
WORF: I am glad you approve. I have always found the Black Sea at night to be a most stimulating experience.
TROI: Worf, we were walking barefoot on the beach with balalaika music in the air, ocean breeze washing over us, stars in the sky, a full moon rising, and the most you can say is stimulating?
WORF: It was very stimulating.
Here is where you'd hear the canned laughter and the trombonist doing a "wah-wah" noise.
WORF: Deanna, perhaps before there is a next time, we should discuss Commander Riker.
TROI: Why, is he coming along?
WORF: No, but I do not wish. I mean, it would be unfortunate if he. If you and I are going to continue, I do not wish to hurt his feelings.
It is far FAR too late to be having this conversation. Troi should've talked with Will after the events of "Eye of the Beholder".
PICARD: (in dressing gown) Counsellor! What's today's date? The date!
WORF: Stardate 47988.
About 3 PM on December 27th, 2370.
PICARD: I had this feeling I had physically left the Enterprise. I was in another time, another place. I was somewhere in the past.
TROI: Can you describe where you were, what it looked like?
PICARD: You see, it's all slipping away so fast. It's like waking up from a nightmare.
Given the events of prior episodes, in particular "Cause and Effect", you'd think the crew would be trained to write this stuff down ASAP.
TROI: It's all right. Have you considered the possibility that this was just a dream?
PICARD: No, no, it was much more than a dream. The smells, the sounds, the very touch of things, much more real than a dream.
There's a long screed to be had here, but I'll move on.
LAFORGE: Hello, Captain or should I call you Ambassador?
PICARD: Oh, I haven't been called that for some time either.
I find the idea that Picard would resign from Starfleet to be an Ambassador rather dubious. The captain of the flagship is already expected to be an ambassador at times. Frankly the only career in the Federation that I could imagine Picard having after leaving shipboard duty is Academy Commandant.
A later comic book specifies that Picard was the Federation Ambassador to Vulcan.
PICARD: Good Lord, Geordi. Well, how long has it been?
LAFORGE: Nine years.
PICARD: No, no, no. Since you last called me Captain, since we were all together on the Enterprise?
LAFORGE: Close to twenty five years.
PICARD: Twenty five years.
A lot of people assume that this means 25 years after Season 7, including the
Star Trek Chronology, when this is absolutely not indicated. It could be 25 years after the events of Nemesis for all we know.
LAFORGE: You've got leaf miners. You might want to use a bacillus spray. My wife is quite a gardener. I've picked up a little bit of it.
PICARD: How is Leah?
LAFORGE: Just wonderful.
I can't really imagine Leah as a gardener.
TASHA: Will this be your first time on a Galaxy class starship?
How would he have even had the chance to visit a Galaxy class before now, they're brand new! I guess. The actual building period differs by source, it could've been a few decades, but this is dubious as we know that the warp core was installed shortly before the launch as opposed to early in construction.
Of the original twelve Galaxy class ships only six were launched in the first wave, the other six were kept partially built until after the Battle of Wolf 359. Many more were built for the Dominion War.
TROI: Is there any indication of temporal displacement?
CRUSHER: No. Usually a temporal shift would leave some kind of triptamine residue in the cerebral cortex, but the scan didn't show any.
I find this rather stupid. We've seen many MANY different methods of time travel and consciousness relocation, both from technology and godlike aliens, and I doubt that they all have the same side effects.
CRUSHER: Your blood gas analysis is consistent with someone who's been breathing the ship's air for weeks. If you'd been somewhere else, there would be an indication of change in the oxygen isotope ratios.
This one is more reasonable, but there's no guarantee that his body time travelled along with his mind. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that Q could prevent such changes in the isotope ratios if he wanted to.
CRUSHER: Jean-Luc, I scanned for evidence of Irumodic Syndrome, as you suggested. There wasn't any. But I did find a small structural defect in the parietal lobe.
PICARD: A defect that you hadn't noticed before?
CRUSHER: It's the kind of defect that would only show up on a level four neurographic scan.
And he didn't have such a scan after his Borg implants were refused? For that matter, wouldn't the Borg want to fix such a defect?
NAKAMURA [on monitor]: Our operatives on Romulus have indicated that there appears to be something happening in the Neutral Zone, specifically in the Devron System. Our own long range scans have picked up some kind of spatial anomaly in the area.
The Romulans found the anomaly before Starfleet did? Is it closer to the Romulan side?
JESSEL: (cod English housekeeper) How do you like your tea?
PICARD: Tea? Earl Grey. Hot.
JESSEL: Course it's hot. What do you want in it?
PICARD: Nothing.
Always a funny exchange, although knowing how seriously the British take their tea I wonder what the difference is between the British and French ideas of "hot tea".
JESSEL: If you're really his friend, you'll get him to take that grey out of his hair. Looks like a bloody skunk.
DATA: Jessel. She can be frightfully trying at times, but she does make me laugh.
Look, I'll buy that Data is still toying with his appearance decades in the future, but he always listened to the advice of his friends. This behavior seems weird.
(Troi is back in her mini-uniform but not the bun.)
Which is odd, since the creative staff did whatever they could to duplicate the first season without spending a fortune rebuilding the set (the Ops and Conn stations were a lot closer together in "Encounter at Farpoint", as just one example), but makeup should be easy enough to duplicate.
One thing that I kinda wish they'd done for the past scenes as an Easter Egg was bringing back that ugly skant uniform.
Personal log, stardate 41153.7. Recorded under security lockout Omega three two seven. I have decided not to inform this crew of my experiences. If it's true that I've travelled to the past, I cannot risk giving them foreknowledge of what's to come.
This is weird, because he already changed history. The cat is out of the bag.
PICARD: Mister Worf, initiate a level two security alert on all decks until further notice.
TASHA: With all due respect, sir, I'm the Security Chief on this ship. Unless you're planning to make a change.
PICARD: No, of course not. Lieutenant, security alert two.
Akward.
O'BRIEN: Sir, Starfleet has just issued an alert. It appears a number of vessels are moving toward the Neutral Zone between Romulan and Federation space.
I'm glad that they were able to bring back O'Brien for the past scenes, but it does introduce some questions in the minds of the DS9 viewers.
WORF: Captain, it could be a Romulan trick to lure our ships into the Neutral Zone as an excuse for a military strike.
One thing that they forgot to bring up is that at this point in time the Romulans were still in their isolationist period.
O'BRIEN: You have to realise sir, this isn't exactly my area of expertise. The Chief Engineer should be making these modifications.
PICARD: But the Chief Engineer isn't on board.
NONE of the Chief Engineers are on board, all of them are at Farpoint? Given that the ship just launched and the warp core is brand new, there should be a temp from Utopia Planitia keeping an eye on things until a proper chief engineer takes over.
DATA: Ah. Then to burn the midnight oil implies late work?
O'BRIEN: That's right.
DATA: I am curious. What is the etymology of that idiom? How did it come to be used in contemporary language?
O'BRIEN: I don't know, sir.
Ugh. Data may not have colloquialisms in his immediate use vocabulary, but Picard made it clear that he's a walking dictionary. At worse it should take him a few seconds with a cocked head to pull up any definition.
And incidentally, the idiom goes at least as far back as the mid seventeenth century, I thought it only went back to the nineteenth century rail industry.