5.18 — “Cause and Effect”
Plot: The Enterprise explodes. Later, it explodes again. And yet again. Can the crew find its way out of the time loop?
Thoughts: Clever episode, but there’s something I can’t let slide. Worst depiction of poker ever! Worse even than Bond and Le Chiffre.
The game is 5-card stud. Worf absolutely cannot refuse to bet in the first round showing an ace. He does.
THEN, in the second round, after Worf catches a 7 and Crusher pairs her door card to make two queens, she makes a plainly insufficient single-chip minimum bet.
Despite this weak bet, Data holds 4-9 and cannot possibly continue. What does he do? Calls, like schoolchild playing for M&Ms. Has he never heard of math?
When Crusher bets again in the fourth round, Riker raises her bet showing 8 T J. Come on now. The best hand he can possibly hold is a pair of jacks, insufficient to beat Crusher’s open queens. If he has a 9, he could also be drawing to a straight. His foolish raise allows Crusher, who can see she’s holding the best hand, to reraise and make it impossible for Riker to call. His straight draw, if he has one, is a 5:1 dog. If he holds a pair, it’s worse than 8:1 to improve. A simple bet of one-third of the pot would make his position unprofitable (although I wouldn’t stop at that size).
What happens? Not only does Crusher fail to reraise, but Data and Worf, impossibly, flat call Riker’s raise as well. Monstrous! They should all be wearing bibs and sucking binkies.
This, unquestionably, is the most unrealistic scene in the whole episode.
Moving on, we learn that there are escape pods on the Enterprise and that the ship is capable of ejecting its warp core. The teaser is good. Jonathan Frakes’ direction is much more credible than his character’s poker playing.
The premise is too juicy to be bogged down by logic, but I don’t know why not dying is more successful at breaking the time loop than dying, or, even if the explosion is the cause of the time loop somehow, why Kelsey Grammar’s ship is stuck, or for that matter, freed. Presumably eternity gives him a long time to sing selections from The Pirates of Penzance, which is all I ever want to think about him doing.
The Internet claims that the original plan was to have a Constitution class ship stuck in the time vortex, just like TOS’ Enterprise, complete with the old-style bridge and costumes. The budget wouldn’t allow it after accounting for the special effects needs of the script.
4 out of 5 pairs of peach colored pajamas.
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