All Good Things... (TNG episode)

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"All Good Things" redirects here. For the Nelly Furtado song, see All Good Things (Come to an End).

Star Trek: The Next Generation episode
"All Good Things..."

Episode no.	177 (Part 1) 178 (Part 2)
Prod. code	277 (Part 1) 278 (Part 2)
Airdate	23 May 1994
Writer(s)	Brannon Braga Ronald D. Moore
Director	Winrich Kolbe
Guest star(s)	Colm Meaney John de Lancie Andreas Katsulas Patti Yasutake Clyde Kusatsu Denise Crosby
Year	2370 (2364/2395)
Stardate	47988.1
Episode chronology
Previous episode	"Preemptive Strike"
Next episode	none

"All Good Things..." was the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 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 USS Enterprise-D (and in a broader sense, humanity in general) by the nigh-omnipotent being Q.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It is early morning on the Enterprise on stardate 47988, so this episode begins late in the year 2370. Deanna Troi and Lieutenant Worf are about to kiss (in an alternate timeline, they were married, as shown in "Parallels") when Captain Jean-Luc Picard comes from the turbolift, seeming disoriented. Picard asks them what day it is, and when he finds out, he tells Troi and Worf that he's been time traveling 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 La Forge, who's now a novelist with a wife and three children. Geordi calls his wife Leah, presumably Dr. Leah Brahms, the designer of the Galaxy class starship warp drive systems (featured prominently in two earlier episodes of the show). When Picard hesitates and admits to Geordi that he's seeing and hearing people who aren't there (actually individuals from the 21st century trial scene in "Encounter at Farpoint"), Geordi suggests that Picard's irumodic syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease he's had for years, is responsible.

Subsequent timejumps convince Picard that he's not imagining things, and in 2370 Dr. Crusher finds that his brain has stored two days' worth of memories in a few minutes time. Orders from Admiral Nakamura at Starfleet Command 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 newly-discovered 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's returned to 2395, he convinces Data, now Cambridge's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Geordi, Captain Beverly Picard (the former Beverly Crusher, 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. Troi was dead in this timeline, and Riker and Worf blame each other, because both had romantic feelings for her.

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. Q tells Picard that he will destroy humanity, or perhaps has already destroyed them, and that Q is allowing 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 the 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. Back in the future, 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. Q then takes Picard back to Earth four billion years ago, where the anomaly fills the Alpha Quadrant and prevents amino acids from forming proteins, thus preventing the formation of life on Earth (and likely the rest of the quadrant).

The 2395 Enterprise returns to the Devron system and discovers the anomaly forming. Inverse tachyon pulses projected from the main deflector dishes of the 2364 and 2370 Enterprises 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 bids Picard farewell: "Good-bye, Jean-Luc, I'm gonna miss you. You had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end..."

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 had in him, has collapsed the anomaly, which now never was. So the events of this timeline will now unfold in a different direction from the one that created the 2395 timeline with which Picard interacted. However, the real victory that justified the Continuum sparing Humanity was Picard's willingness to consider existential possibilities outside of his experience to solve the problem. In doing so, Picard demonstrated that Humanity is able to explore the profound nature of existence itself. The show – and the series – ends with the senior staff playing their weekly poker game, which Picard joins for the first time (saying "I should have done this a long time ago.") as the Enterprise warps off into the distance.

[edit] Notes

The Crusher/Picard relationship is explored further, even having them marry in the future. Crusher is the one that 'leads' the relationship on, in the present, at least, by kissing the Captain and telling him a lot of things can happen.

In the 'past', Beverly and Wesley Crusher and Geordi do not make an appearance, the Crushers because they had not joined the crew at that point yet, nor Geordi because he was waiting at Farpoint Station along with Doctor Crusher. Riker, who looks distinctively different, is featured, however this is taken from another episode in the first season, and he appears only on a video screen.

"All Good Things..." won the 1995 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The central event of this episode is similar to that of a later TV mini-series The Triangle. The anomaly that is at the centre of the Bermuda Triangle in The Triangle is similar to that of the temporal anomaly that was a central part of this episode. In the attempt to collapse the anomaly (in both series), it was discovered that it was actually that attempt that would ultimately cause the anomaly, and start its journey back through time. Although the problems were solved differently in each series (in TNG a static warp shell was used to collapse the anomaly, and in The Triangle a lack of action closed it) it is interesting to note the similarity between them.

Although they say that the tachyon pulse seemed to come from the Enterprise-D in all three time-lines, it is actually the Pasteur that does it in the future and, when the Enterprise-D got there they had already realized the paradox and it doesn't send out any tachyon pulse.

In the past and present timeline, the anomaly grows backwards in time, growing larger as it moves through anti-time, thus appearing to shrink from the perspective of Picard and his crew in normal time. However, in the future timeline, the anomaly does not exist until it is created, showing that at that point it is moving forward in normal time and, presumably, backward in anti-time. The reason for this difference is not explained in the episode.

The episode ends with Captain Picard joining the rest of the senior officers at their poker game. He makes a comment that "I should have done this a long time ago". This is actually not the first time Picard comes to their recurring poker game, the other time being in the 3rd season episode Allegiance. However, in that episode the Captain was replaced by an alien, so the first time the real Picard joins is in this series finale. Upon joining he immediately starts dealing 5 card stud.