Five-Minute "We'll Always Have Paris"
by KJP

Nameless Lieutenant: Touché!
Picard: Ow! Just for that I won't tell you your name!
Nameless Lieutenant: Aw, have a heart, sir! Can we try that again?
(tape-recorder fweeeeeeep)
Picard: Ow! Just for that I won't tell you your name!
Nameless Lieutenant: That wasn't quite what I meant.

Picard: Data, what just happened?
Data: Cause unknown, sir. Effects are also unknown.
Picard: Mr. Data, I need android analysis, not Betazoid bafflement.

Troi: Sir, you seem to have more issues regarding Dr. Manheim than you're letting on.
Picard: Did your empathic abilities tune you into that?
Troi: That, and the way you knocked the arm off your captain's chair with a rolled-up towel.

Picard: Ah, the Holodeck. No better place to be when there's time warps and spatial anomalies about.
Holo-Waiter: Bonjour, monsieur. Your first time in Paris?
Picard: What, don't you recognize a French accent when you hear it?

Riker: Captain, are the rumors of Dr. Manheim's mental instability true?
La Forge: Arriving at coordinates, and receiving a new message: "Set course for the second star to the right, and straight on till morning."
Picard: No, Number One, not that I'm aware of.

La Forge: Arriving at Dr. Manheim's lab.
Female Voice: Who's there?
Picard: This is the captain of the Enterprise, but definitely not the man who stood you up in a Paris café years ago.
Female Voice: Oh, hi, Jean-Luc.
Picard: Crap.

Jenice Manheim: *smooch*
Picard: You always loved to end long expositional conversations that way.
Crusher: It's only the first season -- should I be jealous yet?
Picard: Nothing is outside the realm of the P/C 'shippers.

Picard: It's us, from fifteen seconds ago!
Picard 2: It's us, from fifteen seconds from now!
Picard: Hmm. I think I'm starting to see what the problem is here....

Data: What we have just witnessed is the Manheim Effect, wherein events regularly repeat themselves.
Riker: So what?
Data: In theory, this could allow us to achieve a full hour episode from only half an hour of story.
Riker: Big deal. We're doing that now by padding it with the captain's love scenes.

Crusher: Dr. Manheim is awake, but not fully aware.
Dr. Manheim: My mind feels like it is floating between two places.
Crusher: He seems to be suffering from an overdose of New Age music.

Picard: We need your help to fix things.
Dr. Manheim: Impossible. To even understand it would require someone who speaks native technobabble.
Data: You called?

Picard: I called this meeting so we can fret over what will happen to the timescape if we fail.
Jenice: May I pull you away for a dull private conversation?
Picard: Sure, why not. After all, we have to justify this episode's title somehow.
Jenice: And here I thought it would involve some misfit Maquis lieutenant.

Picard: Now remember, Mr. Data, when fixing a time anomaly, you have to have an appropriate "time" catch phrase to use at the crucial moment.
Data: Okay, how about... "Time to take out the trash"?
Picard: Ugh. I would think any Starfleet officer could come up with something better than THAT.

Data: Okay, I have dodged the security lasers, evaded the fluorescent bulbs of doom, and now...
Time Distortion: WHOOSH
Data 1: Uh oh, there are three of me now. Hmm....
Data 3: Helloooooooooooooo....
Data 2: ......Hellooooooooooo....
Data 1: ............Helloooooooo....
All Three Datas: Hello.
Data 3: I always wanted to do that.

Data: Time to pour the antimatter.
Time Distortion: What, THAT'S your catch phrase?
Data: No, it is what I am doing. Catch phrases are overrated.
Time Distortion: GAK!

Picard: Before we say farewell and you return to your husband, may I ask what you think of our Holodeck's re-creation of the French café?
Jenice: Very authentic. I haven't seen our waiter in over an hour.

Picard: Set a course, Mr. La Forge. What are you staring at, Number One?
Riker: Oh, nothing, just wondering how I would have handled the situation of dealing with the attractive wife of an eccentric scientist on a remote space station.
Picard: Right, as if that could ever happen again. Engage!
(The Enterprise sails off at Ludicrous Speed)

THE END


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This fiver was originally published on January 19, 2003.

DISCLAIMER: A lot of stuff in here is copyrighted by Paramount Pictures. My intent isn't to infringe on that; I and those like me are just having a little fun in the universe Gene Roddenberry created. I don't think he'd mind.

All material © 2003, Kevin Podsiadlik.