We'll Always Have Paris (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

"We'll Always Have Paris"
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode
A time distortion causes Picard, Data and Riker to see themselves outside the turbolift.
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 24
Directed by	Robert Becker
Written by	Deborah Dean Davis Hannah Louise Shearer
Featured music	Ron Jones
Production code	124
Original air date	May 2, 1988 (1988-05-02)
Guest stars
Michelle Phillips - Jenice Manheim Rod Loomis - Paul Manheim Isabel Lorca - Gabrielle Dan Kern - Dean Jean-Paul Vignon - Edourd Kelly Ashmore - Francine Lance Spellerberg - Transporter Chief
Episode chronology
← Previous "Skin of Evil" Next → "Conspiracy"
List of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes

"We'll Always Have Paris" is the 24^th episode of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Overview

Picard meets an old flame, whose husband has created a haywire dimensional experiment.

Plot

The crew of the USS Enterprise, along with other ships in the sector, experience a localized time distortion, and soon after receive a distress call from Dr. Paul Manheim from the nearby Vandor system. Riker recalls that Manheim was ejected from the Federation Science Institute for conducting unauthorized experiments. In the Vandor system, they find the distress signal coming from a facility on a planetoid surrounded by a force field. When they make contact with the facility, a hysterical woman requests the Enterprise's help to save her husband, Dr. Manheim, and lowers the shields.

The two are brought aboard, and while Dr. Crusher tends to Dr. Manheim, Picard discovers his wife is Jenice, Picard's former love from Paris before he decided to join Starfleet. Jenice warns that her husband was working privately in his laboratory but does not know what he was doing. Jenice also alerts the crew to numerous security protocols that her husband has installed at the facilities. As the crew prepares to send an away team to investigate the laboratory, they experience more time distortions, labeled by Data as "Manheim effects", and hurry their efforts. They find that they cannot complete a transporter beam to the facility due to the instabilities. Dr. Manheim recovers long enough to explain that he was doing experiments involving time, gravity, and funnels to other universes, and suspects his last experiment is running out of hand. He provides the crew with proper coordinates to beam down to avoid the security fields. Picard admits to Jenice that he worried about losing her again after he left her in Paris, and vows to correct Dr. Manheim's experiment.

Data is sent down alone and disables the remaining security measures before entering Manheim's laboratory. He finds a column of energy emanating from a dimensional matrix, the source of the time distortions. Data, though briefly affected by the time distortions, is able to add anti-matter to the matrix, causing the matrix to stabilize and halt the time distortions. Dr. Manheim fully recovers, and he and Jenice thank Picard and the crew for their help. Picard and Jenice use the holodeck to recreate one more encounter at a Paris cafe, before she returns with her husband to the planet.

Notes

• The title of the episode is a reference to the famed 1942 film "Casablanca." When Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) tells Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) she needs to get on the plane with Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), she asks, "But what about us?" Rick responds, "We'll always have Paris."

The Blue Parrot Cafe on Sarona VII that the Enterprise bridge crew plan to visit has the same name as Signor Ferrari's (Sydney Greenstreet) bar in "Casablanca."

References

• Star Trek The Next Generation DVD set, volume 1, disc 6, selection 4.

External links

• We'll Always Have Paris at the Internet Movie Database
• "We'll Always Have Paris" at TV.com
• We'll Always Have Paris at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• We'll Always Have Paris at StarTrek.com
• We'll Always Have Paris rewatch by Keith R.A. DeCandido