10 Star Trek Episodes That Completely Ignored Convention
6. Cause And Effect
Star Trek: The Next Generation was, in many ways, a straightforward format type of show. Each episode has the teaser, credits, four acts, and a coda. By the fifth season, while there had been some changes that the stories required to this format, most episodes could be expected to fall into a certain rhythm.
Cause And Effect came along to shatter that to pieces. It manages to take that format and turn it back on itself, using a small amount of story to become one of the best episodes of the overall series. From the poker game to Geordi entering sickbay, and to the arrival of the USS Bozeman, the Enterprise-D repeats the same events over and over.
This sounds like the pitch for an episode that is purely designed to save a bit of cash. It could also have sunk in front of an audience, but the insistence to film each segment separately, rather than simply repeating scenes over and over, helps the audience understand that the crew is starting to realize that something is up.
It's always fun to see the hero ships destroyed, as long as there are no long-term consequences from this, so this episode was an absolute gift for the most bloodthirsty fans.