“Timescape” is episode twenty-five of season six of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Riker is being treated by Dr Crusher for a deep cut on his forehead that wasn’t from playing parrises squares, Worf’s calisthenics program or anything like that but from trying to feed Data’s cat, Spot, when Worf calls him to the bridge. They’ve received a distress call from a Romulan ship that claims to have suffered complete engine failure and life support is failing. It’s 13 hours until they rendezvous with the captain so Riker orders red alert and to lay in a course.
Captain Picard, Data, Geordi and Troi are heading back on a runabout from a three-day conference. Troi got invited to participate in empirical experimentation on interspecies mating rituals, then bored at a lecture, the captain suffered through an hour of one before the speaker finally realised he was talking on the wrong subject and Geordi is explaining he had a great time when he suddenly stops. Troi looks and sees the other three are frozen. They remain like that for several seconds and then start moving again.
Geordi scans them and can find no physiological anomalies and Data can find no temporal discrepancies. They leave to do a ship wide diagnostic and the captain and Troi are talking. Then she suddenly jolts as the captain waves his hand in front of her face. The other two are back; Troi was motionless for over 3 minutes. Geordi has found something; comparing this tricorder scan with the last, Troi should have aged 23 minutes. She’s only aged 20. As if time just stopped. The captain orders the Enterprise be contacted. When it doesn’t respond to hails, he orders speed increased.
They are travelling when the starboard nacelle cuts out. The antimatter pod is drained of fuel. No containment leak; the fuel is gone. Data says the sensor says the engine was running continuously for 47 days. The captain heads to the rear section and then notices the fruit on the table has gone rotten. He reaches his hand out and is struck by pain; his fingernails have grown significantly. The others come in; his hand had a metabolic rate 50 times normal. The fruit is now a pile of decaying matter and Data detects a temporal disturbance intersecting the table, and the starboard nacelle, where time is moving at an accelerated rate.
Trying to move away from the disturbance results in them impacting another. Geordi reports that they are scattered throughout the region, as if the space time continuum is fragmented. They are increasing in number on a heading corresponding to that of the Enterprise.
The Enterprise isn’t at the rendezvous and a scan reveals something possibly metallic. Following it sees the fragmentation effect increasing and the Enterprise. And a Romulan Warbird. The Enterprise has a beam to the Romulan and the Romulan ship is firing on her. Both appear to be frozen in time.
Data reports they are trapped in a fragment at the centre of the temporal disturbances. The beam from the Enterprise‘s deflector array is focused on the Warbird’s engineering section. If they beam aboard, they will be frozen too. The captain asks if a subspace forcefield, like that used on Devidia II, will work to protect them. Data thinks the emergency transporter armbands could be reconfigured to do this.
Geordi remains on the runabout as the other three beam to the Enterprise‘s bridge. There are three Romulans there who appear to be trying to take control. Systems aren’t working so they need to use the Jefferies tubes to get between decks. Everyone is frozen in place. They need to work out what is going on, especially as the Enterprise is suffering from a warp core breach and will be destroyed, and it seems that the temporal disturbances have a bad effect on the mind.