Investigating an explosion on an M-class planet, Voyager arrives to discover a dead world. Only the ruins of cities give evidence of the life that was so recently there. Janeway, Paris, Tuvok, and Torres transport down to investigate. But soon, temporal energy from the explosion that destroyed life on this world sends Janeway and Paris back in time - to exactly one day before the explosion!
As the Voyager crew works to find a way to retrieve their missing captain and helmsman, Janeway and Paris fall in with a group protesting the city's Polaric power plant. The group's leader, Makull (Nicolas Surovy), knows there is more to these two than they claim. When he decides they must be government agents, and uses their presence to justify moving his timetable for action against the plant to the next day - at about the point when Voyager first detected the explosion - Janeway realizes that their trip through time may have been the trigger that caused the disaster in the first place!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: When Paris suggests that their time travel to before the explosion gives them an opportunity to save this world from destruction, Janeway immediately invokes the Prime Directive to forbid it. Even when Paris points out that any future would have to be better than total annihilation, she stands firm. SFDebris has already dissected the problems with Janeway's position in a Prime Directive video review that is more thorough and entertaining than I could write here, but suffice it to say that Paris' argument seems a lot stronger than Janeway's.
Paris: Apparently, his lusting after the Delaney sisters and chasing off an annoying brat by threatening to eat him are meant to show that he's still a rogue. By that standard, Kirk would be considered a monstrous war criminal by this ship of stiffs... Then again, given Kirk would likely have had a downright unprintable reply to Janeway's Prime Directive argument, that's probably not too far from the truth. At least Paris manages to show a flash of character, before the episode's all-too-predictable progression makes him bond with the moppet and transform into Lt. McBland.
The Doctor: Continues to be treated as just a computer program, and is understandably annoyed at this point. On the one hand, yes - He is a computer program. But he's also the only doctor the ship has, and the only doctor the ship's likely to have anytime soon. It might be a good idea for someone on the command staff to actually brief him about: the overall situation, the crew complement, the medical histories of the Maquis crew, Kes, and Neelix, and other information that would normally shared with the ship's doctor as a matter of course. This is so stunningly, staggeringly obvious that when the doctor is still complaining about the lack of information three episodes in, the overall effect is to make not only Janeway but the entire command hierarchy look like a bunch of morons. Robert Picardo continues to be terrific, and his sigh about how he's landed on "The Voyage of the Damned" is the best line and line delivery of the episode.
Kes: Has mental abilities under the surface, an inheritance from her people, that allow her to sense the residue of the deaths that occurred on the planet. This will hopefully be rediscovered in later episodes to interesting effect, given that the discovery of these abilities in this episode now "never happens." Jennifer Lien manages to make Kes seem more human than most of the rest of the regulars. Oddly, the holographic doctor and Kes - each of whom is a tertiary character thus far - feel more genuinely alive than any of the other regulars, at this point.
Harry Kim: Yes Harry, Tom is a bit smarmy. But he's also right. You're going to be years (best case; decades, more likely) returning home. Your girl back home probably won't be waiting for you, so you might as well enjoy the Delaney sisters. With Janeway's unique command style, you're liable to be dead soon anyway. Harry doesn't really merit comment in this episode, but that scene at the opening reinforced how extraordinarily bland he is. This is a character who got a huge slice of the 2-hour pilot, and thus should be one of the best-established characters. But what's established so far is that he's boring. Matters are not helped by Garrett Wang's performance, which is painfully stiff - particularly in a scene in which he's called upon to deliver Technobabble Exposition.
THOUGHTS
The Technobabble! It burns!
Time and Again is an episode entirely structured around Technobabble. The disaster on the planet was caused by Polaric energy, which through the power of Magic Pixie Dust can transport Janeway and Paris back through time. Not to fear - Harry and Torres can whip up a handy-dandy Polaric shield, plus a gizmo that will open up the fault lines in the Polaric mushrooms and let the Janeway and Paris goodness ooze out again. But you have to roll 2D10 against your Dexterity, because there's an Artificial Tension Generator that will only allow the miracle device (whipped up in about ten minutes) to actually work for about thirty seconds. Meanwhile, Janeway and Paris have Polaric residue on them, which alerts the Polaric protesters (and no one else on the planet) that they aren't what they say they are, which cues yet more Technobabble.
(Thuds head on desk three times, hard.) Ahhh... better.
There's an interesting premise to Time and Again. Not remotely original, but at least interesting as Janeway and Paris find themselves uninentionally triggering the very disaster they were investigating in the first place. If the story contented itself with that little time paradox, and just let the drama play out from there, this might be a good episode. Even Kes' psychic powers could be worked in reasonably enough. But the endless layers of Technobabble and miracle gizmos on top of all that is just too much. Instead of a taut time travel drama, we get a dry recital of fake technology, some of it apparently created on the fly from resources that should be nonexistant to a ship in Voyager's predicament.
Speaking of Voyager's predicament... The last episode opened with a meeting of the senior staff, in which the limitations created by their situation were discussed. Shutting down power to one deck was deemed "acceptable" in order to keep the rest of the ship powered, while Kes started a hydroponics operation to make sure they would have adequate food. One episode later, all of these limitations have apparently been waved away. I can't think of any other reason Harry and Torres can conjure Polaric shields out of thin air otherwise.
With an ending that renders this entire episode a 45 minute exercise in pointlessness, I honestly can't come up with a single reason anyone should actually bother watching this particular Voyager installment. It's dull, it's Technobabble heavy to the point that it becomes unintentionally funny (though not enough so to be entertaining in itself), and within the series' universe it never even actually happens. All in all, a massive waste of time that leaves me wanting the last 45 minutes of my life back.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
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