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| Kes at the end of her life, with husband Tom. |
Six years in the future, Kes has reached the end of her brief Ocampan lifespan. She is elderly, she has lost all her memories, and the Doctor is trying an experimental procedure to extend her life by putting her into a bio-temporal chamber. He activates the device...
...and Kes finds herself in her quarters, surrounded by strangers: Linnis (Jessica Collins), her adult daughter, and Andrew (Christopher Aguilar), her grandson. She has no memories of anything other than the moments in sickbay before the device was activated - a device that she is told has not yet been completed. There is a flash...
...And it is now ninth birthday party,as Neelix presents her and her husband, Tom Paris, with a cake. At this point, Kes realizes she is travelling back in time. She is able to convince Tom, the Doctor, and Captain Chakotay, and they piece together that she was exposed to chroniton radiation during an attack by the hostile Krenim, the same attack that killed Captain Janeway and started what is known as "The Year of Hell." The Doctor realizes that his bio-temporal device must have triggered the dormant radiation, starting Kes' time jumps.
Now she has to figure out a way to stop the jumps. Each jump seems to bring her closer to a solution. But each jump also brings her closer to her own birth - which in this case would be not a beginning for Kes, but a final end!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: The nature of the story means that she is left with only a very small role, but Kate Mulgrew's presence is enough to make the most of her scant screentime. When Kes jumps back to the first Krenim attack, Janeway doesn't stop to ask why Kes knows about the Krenim. She can see that Kes has knowledge, and immediately makes use of it. Later/earlier, when everything is resolved, Janeway agrees with Kes' decision to not reveal all she saw of "one possible future," but does side with Tuvok in wanting a full report on the Krenim, in case they're unable to avoid them in the future.
Capt. Chakotay: The episode opens in an alternate future, one in which Janeway was killed in a Krenim assault. This means that the first half of the episode sees Chakotay filling her usual role. He does a capable job, showing the ability to prioritize and to be decisive while still showing compassion.
Kes: Her memories begin as the episode starts. It's a clever conceit, one which allows her to pick up information about the future crew as we do, working backward from the point of her death until she (and the viewer) catches up with the present. Even without memories, her caring nature manifests quickly. Despite the desperate nature of her situation, she takes a moment to spare a word of comfort for her adult daughter. During the Kremin attack, she acknowledges to Chakotay that her situation cannot be a priority for him at this moment. She is also proactive. Having gleaned what piece of information is needed to save herself, she takes action to get that information, crawling through a radiation-soaked tube to reach the Kremin torpedo. Jennifer Lien is given the best material she has ever had on this show, and she is a magnetic presence from start to finish.
Doctor: In the future we glimpse, he picks names for himself - ones based on art, rather than science: "Mozart" and "Van Gogh." When he believes Kes can't hear, he tells her that she is the truest friend he's ever known. His future self seems less prickly in general, showing more patience and warmth to Tom and to Kes' family than "our" Doctor generally shows. Both current and future Doctors retain healthy egos, praising their idea of extending Kes' lifespan with Technobabble technology with words such as "brilliant" and "ingenious."
Tom Paris: We open with the future Tom facing the prospect of losing Kes, who is his wife in the future and with whom he has had a daughter. As he fills in some of her lost memories, he tells her how much she's meant to him, and by three jumps back in time, Kes has started to count on having him in her life... as shown by the nonverbal reaction she has to Tom being with B'Elanna in an earlier time (a reaction she quickly covers). We are reminded of Tom's early attraction to Kes, something that was completely forgotten in late Season Two and early Season Three, and seeds are planted for a relationship that I would have been interested in seeing pursued.
THOUGHTS
After the depths plumbed by the three increasingly bad episodes of the "Trilogy of Terror," Before and After is exactly the kick-start Voyager needed to make itself anything other than a bad joke. Kenneth Biller's script is fast-paced and dynamic, the characters are all written to their strengths, and the regulars' performances are outstanding across-the-board. It's even better than Biller's previous script, the excellent Unity, and this episode and that one have raised my previously-dismal opinion of his abilities roughly a hundredfold... though his ability to do episodes such as these two leaves no excuse for his other, lazier scripts.
The story seems heavily inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Both stories feature main characters jumping back and forward within their own lifespans, though this one largely restricts the time jumps to one direction (backward) until the very end. Unlike weaker literary/film-inspired episodes, however, it expands the series, Star Trek: Voyager. We are given glimpses of future events: relationship between Tom and B'Elanna and Tom and Kes; the possibility of Chakotay as captain; and a genuinely promising new recurring villain in the Krenim, whose appearance in the proper timeline has now become something I'll look forward to.
Unfortunately, some of these hints will never come to pass, thanks to the ill-advised decision to write out Kes in early Season Four. One thing this episode shows is that, as of late Season Three, the writing staff had every intention of keeping her, and even had some ideas as to what to do with her (foreknowledge of the Krenim, evolving relationship with Tom). I'll save serious carping for later. I will say, though, that everything about this episode - from Jennifer Lien's excellent work here to the wealth of hints planted about future directions for her - tells me that dropping her was a mistake. If someone had to go to make room for Seven of Nine, there were at least three better options to choose from.
As it stands, Before and After is a wonderful look at an alternate Voyager future in which Kes stayed. More importantly, as an episode unto itself, it's superb: Fast-paced, energetically directed by Allan Kroeker, and maintaining its energy without sacrificing some of the best character material this series has seen. It's the best Kes episode of the series by a comfortable margin. And while I'll readily acknowledge that Scorpion will probably surpass this, I feel comfortable in saying this will remain the best single-part Season Three episode, as well as being the first episode since The Thaw to earn full marks from me.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
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twenty five years later and I just see this for the first time as I had given up on Voyager. Jennifer Lien is just amazing in this episode and the fact that she was dropped from the series is just incomprehensible. Best Voyage episode I've seen.
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