i was researching Roland Barthes today and i found the following text here.

Today's class concerned itself with the issue of temporal sequentiality and, thus, with the concerns and parameters of narrative form. Science fiction often tests the limits of time and space (the elements of a diegetic universe) and, so, often raises questions about narrative. The Star Trek: TNG episode, "Cause and Effect," is a perfect example of how science fiction can help us better to understand how we order our lives on a day-to-day basis through narrative. I began by showing the opening scene of the episode and then asked students what is wrong or interesting about this beginning. Here is what they said:

The problem here, as Joe Garcia exclaimed, is that "it blew up!" The problem, in other words, is that we have an effect without a cause or, in yet other words (specifically those of Melissa Reimer), not enough is explained. We want to know WHY the enterprise is blowing up. What caused this disaster? Viewers and readers of narrative want explanations for the events presented to them. In short, we invoke what Roland Barthes terms "the hermeneutic code." We want the mystery solved. We also want to know what's going to happen next. Given the expectations of this t.v. series, in which only secondary characters (in non-command uniforms) ever die, we assume that the core crew must have survived and will be continuing the narrative after the commercial. In other words, we also invoke the other driving force of narrative that Roland Barthes has defined for us as the proairetic code. We might also expect a flashback at this point (termed an analepsis in narratology) since we have found ourselves in medias res or in the middle of things, as Sarah Robinson explained.

I then showed the next sequence, in which we are presented with a mundane day aboard the enterprise: some of the crew are playing cards, Geordi gets a headache, Dr. Crusher cuts some blooms before going to bed, the crew has a meeting about a boring scientific exploration, then the enterprise blows up again, followed by a commercial. Again, the question: what's wrong with this narrative? Of course, the problems are the same as before: there does not appear to be a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the mundane events we see and the explosion. None of the questions are answered. Instead, we are faced with more questions: what's causing Geordi's headache? What are those voices that Dr. Crusher seems to hear when she's trying to fall asleep? That is, the hermeneutic code is further invoked.

Eventually we learn that the Enterprise is, in fact, caught in a temporal loop, endlessly repeating the same sequence of apparently meaningless events, each time forgetting the events of the previous loop, although not entirely (a sense of déjà vu remains). Eventually, the crew gets such a sense of déjà vu that the gamblers in the opening scene are actually able to guess exactly which cards will be dealt out by Data, even though, in the first time loop we saw, he assured his friends that the cards were "sufficiently randomized" (following a friendly jibe from one of the players who accuses Data of "stacking the deck"). Eventually, the crew also figures out the meaning of the voices Dr. Crusher heard in her quarters. They are a slice out of time, with thousands of voices speaking about heterogenous things from throughout the Enterprise (ship operations, complaints, arguments, love-making, etc.). Out of these, Data is able to edit out three significant moments that re-construct the narrative of the Enterprise's destruction. To escape the loop, they attempt to send a message to Data from this loop into the next, a message that is likely to be interpreted by Data as perhaps little more than a subconscious irritation. In that next loop, after we witness yet another destruction of the Enterprise, everything seems to change. Although the gamblers once again think they can predict the cards that are to fall, Data instead deals out four "3s" in succession followed by four "three of a kinds." In fact, the number three continues to pop up throughout this loop until Data manages to save the Enterprise in the final scene when he realizes that the number 3 points to the proper course of action to escape destruction.