An instance of
time behaving in an
abnormal manner; speeding up, slowing down, running backward, or looping in on itself. More specifically, a
plot device in the various
Star Trek series that serves as an all-purpose excuse for
weird crap to occur. This practically became an
epidemic in the later seasons of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, when it appeared that the
Enterprise was encountering one of these things at least once a month.
In the Next Generation novel Q-Squared, it was revealed that Trelane was responsible for the swarm of TAs that plagued the ship. They were experiments of his, and they clustered around the Enterprise because his encounter with James T. Kirk and his crew in the original series left such a deep impression on him.
This is pretty stupid, and reminds me of the time DC Comics attributed the origin of The Flash to the intervention of a magical elf. I suspect the Trelane/anomaly connection will be conveniently forgotten in the future.