Star Trek Reviews

Return to season list

Star Trek TNG - Season 5 - Episode 26

Star Trek TNG - 5x26 - Time's Arrow, Part I

Originally Aired: 1992-6-15

Synopsis:
Data is transported to late 19th-century San Francisco. [DVD]

My Rating - 7

Fan Rating Average - 5.61

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 34 4 17 1 6 4 12 18 30 27 21

Problems
- Data trades his communicator for three silver dollars. He throws one dollar into the pot as his ante for the first game, but the ante was said to be four bits, which is 50 cents.

Factoids
- The Frenchmen in this episode is played by Marc Alaimo, who later goes on to play Gul Dukat on DS9.

Remarkable Scenes
- Finding Data's head in the cavern.
- Riker: "Your head is not an artifact!"
- Data casually discussing the foreknowledge of his death.
- Troi quoting and imitating his definition of friendship.
- Picard trying to force Data to stay safe and cheat his "upcoming" death.
- Data in 1800s San Francisco.
- Data and the beggar.
- Data: "This is not sleepwear. And I do not have a missus. I am a Frenchmen."
- Data speaking French.
- Data playing Poker to get money.
- Data and the bus boy.
- Guinan making a special chemistry drink.
- Data pretending not to be able to lift the anvil.
- Data fumbling over the figures of speech.
- Seeing Guinan in the past.
- Guinan discussing the concept of alien worlds with Mark Twain.
- Data forcing his way into Guinan's house.
- Guinan's reaction to Data's entry.

My Review
An intriguing episode and certainly a memorable one. Though as a huge cliffhanger, there's not much to comment on. It's certainly fun to see Data interacting with 1800s Earth. It's also interesting to see that Guinan is apparently on Earth in this time period for reasons we're not given.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From DSOmo on 2007-10-06 at 3:09am:
    - As the Enterprise warps toward Devidia II, Geordi tells Guinan about finding Data's head in a cave on Earth. Guinan replies, "That's why the Enterprise is being sent back to Earth." The Enterprise has already been to Earth. It is on its way to another planet when she makes this comment.
    - When Guinan asks Picard if he is going on the away team mission, he replies that it is standard Starfleet policy for him not to go on away team missions. Starfleet policy must have changed. It is Riker, not Starfleet, who has made a unilateral decision that captains should not go on away teams.
  • From CAlexander on 2011-03-30 at 11:45pm:
    I liked Data's encounter with 19th century Earth. It plays out nicely. I also liked the mystery of Data's head, and the weird encounters with the phase discriminator. The one negative for me was that I felt everyone's reactions to Data's death were overacted.
    - The ante seemed rather large compared to the size of Data's stakes. Doesn't give him much room to make decisions and use his poker skill. Was he fortunate, or did he cheat?
  • From Cal on 2017-02-24 at 6:04am:
    Starfleet had had the no captains on away missions rule for quite some time. Riker just enforced it more.

Prove to me that you are a real person and not a spam robot by typing in the text of this image:

Return to season list