Yesterday's Enterprise
| "Yesterday's Enterprise" | |
|---|---|
| Star Trek: The Next Generation episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 15 |
| Directed by | David Carson |
| Story by |
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| Teleplay by | |
| Featured music | Dennis McCarthy |
| Cinematography by | Marvin V. Rush |
| Production code | 163 |
| Original air date | February 19, 1990 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
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"Yesterday's Enterprise" is the 63rd episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is the 15th episode of the third season, first airing in syndication in the week of February 19, 1990. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Federation starship Enterprise. In the story, the ship's crew must decide whether to send the time-traveling Enterprise-C back through a temporal rift to its certain destruction, to prevent damaging changes to their timeline.
The plot for "Yesterday's Enterprise" was based on the merging of two story ideas—one featured the crew of the time-traveling Enterprise-C and the other the return of Denise Crosby, whose character had been killed in the show's first season. Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stillwell rewrote the merged story to feature the character of Guinan more prominently. To complete the episode in time for sweeps, the final script was finished by a team of five writers.
Filming of the episode lasted a week, with some elements of the script ultimately not included due to time constraints. In syndication, "Yesterday's Enterprise" outperformed most of the third season's episodes with a 13.1 Nielsen rating, the third-highest number for the series at the time. The episode is cited as a favorite by crew members and reviewers, and is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series.
The starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) encounters a rift in spacetime while on a routine mission. As they monitor the anomaly, the heavily damaged USS Enterprise-C, a ship believed to have been destroyed more than two decades earlier, emerges. Instantly, the Enterprise-D undergoes a sudden and radical change from its current timeline: it is now a warship, and the United Federation of Planets is at war with the Klingons. Neither Worf nor Counselor Troi are seen or referred to, and Tasha Yar – who was killed years before – is now running the tactical station. None of the crew notice the change, but Guinan senses that reality has shifted, and has a meeting with Captain Picard to discuss her concerns. She senses that there are supposed to be children on the ship, which of course is completely impractical on a warship. She suggests that the Enterprise-C does not belong in their time and must return to the past. Picard, who knows that this would be a suicide mission, refuses to give such an order on Guinan's intuition alone.
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