All Good Things...

ST episode
name = All Good Things...


Aboard the USS "Pasteur", scanning the Devron System.
series = TNG
ep_num = 177 (Part 1)
178 (Part 2)
prod_num = 277 (Part 1)
278 (Part 2)
date = May 23, 1994
writer = Brannon Braga
Ronald D. Moore
director = Winrich Kolbe
guest = Colm Meaney
John de Lancie
Andreas Katsulas
Patti Yasutake
Clyde Kusatsu
Denise Crosby
stardate = 47988.1
year = 2370 (2364/2395)
prev =
next =

"All Good Things..." is the final episode of the television series "". It was originally shown on May 29, 1994 and, like the first episode of the series, "Encounter at Farpoint", was a two-hour episode that in syndication is most often shown as two one-hour episodes. "All Good Things..." serves as the closure of the first episode's trial of the crew of the "USS Enterprise-D" (and in a broader sense, humanity in general) by the nigh-omnipotent being Q.

This episode won the 1995 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. [ [http://www.worldcon.org/hy.html The Hugo Awards by Year] , World Science Fiction Society website, accessed 29 January, 2008] Another episode of this series with such an honor is "". The episodes title served for the inspiration for the title of the last episode of "Red Dwarf", "Only the Good...".

Plot summary

It is early morning on the "Enterprise" on stardate 47988, so this episode begins late in the year 2370Fact|date=September 2008. Deanna Troi and Lieutenant Worf are about to kiss when Picard comes from the turbolift and seems disoriented. Picard asks them what day it is, and when he finds out, he tells Troi and Worf that he has traveled in time and doesn't know why.

By the time Picard arrives in Sickbay, he has bodily and consciously jumped back six years in the past, just before he took command of the "Enterprise". The dialogue between himself and Tasha Yar, his then-chief of security, seems to confirm that "Encounter at Farpoint" was the first mission of the "Enterprise"-D.

Another time-travel episode takes him to 2395, where Picard is an old man tending his vineyards and has a respected career as captain, admiral, and Federation ambassador behind him. In the field he meets Geordi LaForge, who is now a novelist with a wife and three children. When Picard hesitates and admits to Geordi that he is seeing and hearing people who aren't there (actually individuals from the 21st century court first seen in "Encounter at Farpoint"), Geordi suggests that Picard's irumodic syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease he has had for years, is responsible.

Subsequent timejumps convince Picard that he is not imagining things, and in 2370 Dr. Crusher finds that within 13 minutes of her time, his brain has stored two days' worth of memories. Orders come from Admiral Nakamura at Starfleet Command to take the "Enterprise" to the Devron system on the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone, where the Romulans are assembling ships in the wake of a suddenly-appearing temporal anomaly.

Back in 2364 on the maiden voyage of the "Enterprise", Picard diverts the ship from its Farpoint rendezvous to the Devron system to investigate a temporal anomaly also forming there. Once he has returned to 2395, he convinces Data, now Cambridge's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Geordi, Captain Beverly Picard (Jean-Luc's ex-wife in this timeline) of the medical ship "USS Pasteur", and Governor Worf to accompany him to the Devron system, which is now held by a hostile Klingon Empire.

The present-day Picard (of 2370) then appears in the trial chamber where Q accused him and by extension humanity of being a savage race six years earlier and relates that Picard destroys humanity. Q has allowed Picard to travel through time to figure out how he does this. Relating his experience to his senior staff (of 2370), he proceeds to the Devron system knowing that the anomaly now forming there is something he caused. In his future, when the "Pasteur" arrives at the Devron system, they find nothing. But on the "Enterprise" of 2364, the anomaly is "larger" than it is in Picard's present. Two Klingon vessels decloak and attack the "Pasteur", which is narrowly saved by the intervention of Admiral Riker on board the 2395 version of the "Enterprise". After they beam off the "Pasteur" due to a warp core breach, Q takes the present-day Picard back to Earth four billion years ago, where the anomaly fills the Alpha Quadrant and prevents amino acids from forming proteins, the building blocks of life on Earth (and likely the rest of the quadrant).

The 2395 "Enterprise" returns to the scene of the destruction of the "Pasteur" and discovers the anomaly forming. Inverse tachyon pulses projected from the main deflector dishes of the 2364 and 2370 "Enterprise"s to study the interior of the anomaly are enabling the anomaly to grow in their own time periods. Time and anti-time are coming together inside the anomalies, and the resultant reaction will destroy everything by causing beings to revert to earlier forms of development. The pregnant Alyssa Ogawa loses her baby due to this cell reversion, and individual DNA is starting to break down due to the anomaly's anti-time effects.

Data and Geordi in 2395 deduce that the creation of a static warp shell in all three time periods inside their respective anomalies will cause them to collapse. Picard communicates this information to his counterparts, and each "Enterprise" enters its anomaly, which in anti-time becomes one anomaly. One by one, warp core breaches destroy the 2364, 2370, and 2395 vessels, and Q's last words to Picard become, "Good-bye, Jean-Luc, I'm going to miss you. You had such potential, but then again all good things must come to an end" just before the "Enterprise" explodes . . .

And the current Picard finds himself in the trial chamber once more. Q explains that sacrifice of the "Enterprise" and its crew in all three timelines, which the Q Continuum didn't think Picard could accomplish ("but I knew better"), has collapsed the anomaly, which now never was. Q reveals that by realizing and solving the paradox Picard has shown that humanity is capable of growing and evolving and that the real journey for mankind is not the limited reaches of space but rather the limitless boundaries of the mind since "the trial of humanity never ends". So the events of this timeline will now unfold in a different direction from the one that created the 2395 timeline Picard interacted with. The show – and the series – ends with the senior staff playing their weekly poker game, which Picard joins for the first time, stating: "I should have done this a long time ago" to which Troi adds: "You were always welcome." The last line is uttered by Picard as Data gives him the cards to shuffle: "Five Card Stud, nothing wild. And the sky's the limit." A direct overhead view of the poker table dissolves to a shot of the hull of the Enterprise, which continues on.

Production notes

*The originally aired two-hour version contains several scenes that were removed for time in the two-part version for syndication.
*During the filming of "All Good Things...," a behind-the-scenes retrospective documentary called "Journey's End: The Saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation" was also filmed, hosted by Jonathan Frakes. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292568/]

References

External links

* (Part 1)
* (Part 2)