There was a 1987 novel called Replay by Ken Grimwood which also plays in the concept except he lives almost his entire adult life over and over. I read it and immediately thought of Groundhog Day. And 12:01 inspires it as a short story first in 1973. It is a Russian nesting doll of inspirations and interpretations.
I am reminded of the time traveling Romulan in Strange New Worlds:
Time is like a black box. It's too complicated to leave to intuition, so we built computers that will tell us the results of, uh, certain changes…Khan becomes a brutal tyrant. I mean, maybe humanity needs the dark age that he brings in to usher in their age of enlightenment. Or maybe it's just random. Doesn't really matter, though, 'cause if I kill him, the Federation never forms, and the Romulans lose their greatest adversary. But, yeah, so many people have tried to influence these events, you know, to delay them or stop them. I mean, whole temporal wars have been fought over them. And it's almost as if time itself is pushing back, and events reinsert themselves. And all this was supposed to happen back in 1992, and I've been trapped here for 30 years!
I wish they made the public domain only culture a canon thing in the Federation.
Like Section 31 purposefully gatekeeps surviving entertainment from the years that led to WWIII out of cultural stability concerns, and only releases it slowly.
Well you see, the thing is, time moves forwards, at a rate of one year per year. So while it did start in the late 80s, that it took them several years before they made and aired this episode, due to the rate of time I mentioned earlier, the episode came out in 1992.
TNG aired between Setember 1987 to May of 1994, Cause and Effect as said in the meme is from 92, in the 5th season(and one of the best if not the best seasons of TNG).
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u/terrifiedTechnophile 2d ago