Spoilers for TNG S04E14 Clues
!The Enterprise encounters a planet inhabited by an isolationist species who uses a fake wormhole to knock people out so they can somehow mask their presence. OK, I'm with it so far.
This trap fails on Data who revives the crew and the aliens say they need to destroy the Enterprise to stop people finding out about them. Picard points out that if the Enterprise is destroyed Starfleet will come looking for them. Again, so far so good.
The aliens agree to let the crew live if they can wipe everyone's memory and order Data to never say what happened. This memory wipe takes 24 hours so they modify the computer records to make everyone think a day hasn't passed and they were actually out for 30 seconds. Then they do it again when the crew realises after finding some unforseen clues, so now at least 48 hours has passed. This is where it lost me.
I can understand them not realising straight away if they're in deep space and not communicating with Starfleet, but surely they're going to figure out their chronometer is 2 days off eventually and go back to try and figure out what went on?!<
The year of hell was originally supposed to be a 1 or 2 season on-going story that was teased earlier with Kess. The execs were allergic to such a serialized concept and such drastic impact on the characters so they were forced to cop-out with the time travel.
it's still a petty, tired cop out that only leads to more coping out. Granted, they weren't the ones to bring it into Star Trek. One of the core principles in writing- for anythig- is that there needs to be some feeling of things matter, at least internally to the narrative. The narrative needs to have weight, so to speak.
the "oh and everything is fixed" solution... it would have been better to toss in two episodes of the Doctor pranking Paris with a holographic ...er... companion. (mobile emitter to get her off the holo deck, maybe hiding it in some clothes or something.)
Or maybe a story arc where they all get wasted on gravitational-distortion-induced ethanol and spoofing off The Hangover.
Or, a planet ran by "liberated" borg, which was the Delta Quadrant's version of Risa, but really, the Borg were using it to send discretely-Borgified agents to other planets.
At least any of those options can have funny, witty or bantery call backs.