S6E25 · Timescape

Captain Picard, Counselor Troi, Chief Engineer La Forge, and Lt. Commander Data are on a runabout, returning to the Enterprise from a conference. As they near the ship, they encounter pockets of temporal disruptions that have very peculiar effects and could be lethal if they pass through them. They modify their sensors to avoid these and they find the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird frozen in time. The warbird has fired a disruptor at the Enterprise, which had initiated a power transfer to the warbird.

Data and La Forge modify a set of emergency transport armbands to nullify the temporal effects, and Picard, Data and Troi transport aboard the Enterprise to investigate. The crew has been transporting Romulans aboard from the warbird, one of whom has fired on Dr. Crusher with his disruptor. The Enterprise warp engine has suffered a warp breach which, under normal circumstances, would consume the ship in seconds. Picard suffers "temporal narcosis" from standing close to the core breach, forcing them to return to the runabout, and La Forge takes Picard's place.

On the warbird, they find the crew attempting to evacuate the ship with the Enterprise ' s help; its main reactor, which uses an artificial quantum singularity, is undergoing a power surge. Investigating the engine closely, they find the singularity appearing odd and discolored. When Data scans it with a tricorder, time briefly moves forward on the ship (causing a cataclysmic core explosion), but then reverses back to its original point (restoring ships and crews). La Forge spots a Romulan who was not in the same place as before; the Romulan suddenly touches him, shocking them both. The shock is nearly lethal to La Forge, and they disconnect the shield to freeze him in time, hoping to care for him later, while they take the Romulan back to the runabout.

There, they find the Romulan is really a creature from trans-dimensional space. He admits that he and a companion were trying to recover the singularity from the Romulans—their young were accidentally placed there to incubate instead of in a natural singularity such as a black hole. In the process of trying to remove the singularity, they had created a power surge, and the Warbird sent out a distress call to the Enterprise. The creature soon fades away, returning to its own trans-dimensional space.

Picard, Troi, and Data return to the Enterprise. Data readies a remote-controlled tricorder aimed at the Romulan engine core to reverse time a few seconds so he can perform actions to prevent the pending disasters. After the warp core breach is averted in Engineering, Data is about to stop the power transfer, but is attacked by the trans-dimensional creature's companion. He regains consciousness shortly thereafter, but must put a force field around the warp core to prevent it from breaching again.

Picard suddenly appears on the Enterprise bridge near Riker. The crew is surprised, but Picard orders them to continue to evacuate the Romulan ship, including La Forge, and to terminate the power transfer. In sickbay, Troi successfully pushes Dr. Crusher out of the way of the Romulan disruptor blast; the Romulan states he was firing at a trans-dimensional creature that had disguised herself as a Romulan and had not meant to harm Crusher. However, the warbird continues to go critical, and the power transfer from the Enterprise cannot be stopped.

Picard remotely powers the runabout into the power transfer beam's path, disrupting it and allowing the Enterprise to move away, after safely recovering the warbird crew. Just as the warbird's engines go critical, the ship disappears, along with the remaining time abnormalities. As the Enterprise crew repair the ship, Picard promises to return the Romulans safely to their homeworld. At the close, Data is trying to examine human perception of time.