A Matter of Time

Reaching Penthara IV after an asteroid wreaks havoc of catastrophic proportions, the Enterprise crew deals with trying to save the planet. It's the dust cloud left by the asteroid that is the real concern. Could a temporal distortion have anything to do with what's going on?

This episode first aired on November 16, 1991. At the time of writing, that was almost 31 years ago. Of those of us old enough to remember that time, watching this episode now is comparable to something we might have watched in 1991 that was first aired in 1960. The Andy Griffith Show, or My Three Sons, or Route 66. Many shows in 1960 were Westerns and it was usually the case that they also had an influence on other shows of that period.

Similarly, in 1991 we get science fiction shows that tend to follow the format more closely linked to the soap-opera's that were very much in vogue at that time. So we shouldn't be surprised when watching some of these shows now, they tend to focus too much on the crew-related behaviour to certain issues, rather than having anything to do with science fiction. Unfortunately, I tended to phase in and out of this episode at different times, as the show seemed a little unsure of what aspect of the story it wanted to focus on... even saving the planet took only a moment, before we were back with trying to figure out who the historian was, and what he wanted. I didn't really care.

This Episodes Clue: Mayor Jason Hobart.