“We’ll Always Have Paris” is episode twenty-four of season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Enterprise is heading for some shore leave and the captain is getting a head start by fencing. Then what he and his opponent both do repeats itself. The captain contacts the bridge and Riker confirms that what happened to the captain happened on the bridge as well.
Picard heads to the bridge and discovers that the entire ship was affected, as well as the computers. Worf is receiving an emergency transmission from a system. The message comes from a Dr Paul Manheim, a name the captain appears to recognise. Worf says that the signal is automated and Picard orders a course be set to its location. Riker asks if he thinks there’s a connection between the distress signal and the time distortion. Picard does. 15 years ago, Manheim was doing experiments in non-linear time. He may have achieved a measure of success.
Riker hasn’t heard of Manheim and Data fills him in. None of Manheim’s theories received wide acceptance and 15 years ago he assembled a team of scientists to expand his research and hasn’t been seen since. Picard knew of Manheim when he was in Paris. Picard also wants to know if the time distortion was localised to the Enterprise. Picard is still in his fencing gear and heads to change when Counselor Troi stops him. She says he reacted to Manheim’s name with strong emotion and warns that unresolved strong emotion can affect judgement. She offers her assistance, noting that confronting deep person issues is not easy for the captain.
Picard has put his sword away and changed and is heading for the bridge when he decides to head to the holodeck instead. He asks for the Cafe des Artistes in Paris, 22 years ago, at a precise time. At the cafe, he wants a specific table. Picard was meeting someone at the cafe. He always assumed he came; he was the one who did not. Two women at a table are arguing, as one is waiting for a man that hasn’t come. When that woman is left alone, Picard talks to her about why the man hasn’t arrived. He sounds to be talking about himself.
Returning to the bridge, the captain is informed that the Enterprise was not the only place to experience the time distortion. Nothing new has been found on Manheim’s research. They arrive at the coordinates to find nothing there. Worf says they have new coordinates; this was a relay signal. They lead to a binary star system, with one star a pulsar.
The signal is coming from a small planetoid, Vandor IV. There’s a small forcefield on the planet but it’s impenetrable. Picard hails the planetoid, but midsentence deliberately doesn’t use his name. A woman responds; she says they are the only two left and Manheim is having convulsions. She shuts the forcefield down and they are going to be beamed directly to sickbay. Dr Crusher is informed and Picard heads to sickbay himself, accompanied by Riker and Data.
The woman is filling Dr Crusher in when Picard and the others arrive. The woman recognises Picard, and says she thought she recognised the name. She is Jenice Manheim and the man is Dr Manheim, her husband. The rest of the crew were working in the second lab when there was an accident and they all died. Manheim was looking into accessing other dimensions. She doesn’t know why Vandor, but they searched for two years to find it. The pulsar would appear to not be a coincidence, nor it being in a binary system.
Manheim was close to proving his theories before the accident. He started taking unusual precautions, even before that, insisting Jenice stay in a protected room. Dr Crusher says Manheim is probably dying, but she doesn’t know why or what’s causing it.
Whatever is happening is getting worse and the effects are spreading. A team needs to get to the planet, but the lab is still protected and it’s not that easy. They need Manheim’s help to get past the security precautions. Dr Crusher, during a conversation, mentions something that suggests she does have feelings for the captain.