5-24. Relativity.

Seven meets a future version of herself
who is on a mission to save Voyager!

Original Air Date: May 12, 1999. Teleplay by: Bryan Fuller, Nick Sagan, Michael Taylor. Story by: Nick Sagan. Directed by: Allan Eastman.


THE PLOT:

The USS Voyager is undergoing its final round of maintenance at the Starfleet dry dock in Utopia Planitia before its launch. Admiral Patterson (Dakin Matthews) is giving the young Captain Janeway a tour of her new command... while Seven of Nine runs scans, searching for something while attempting to avoid Janeway's attention.

Seven is actually working with the crew of the Relativity, a Federation timeship from the distant future under the command of Captain Braxton (Bruce McGill). A time traveling saboteur has planted a device on Voyager that will result in the ship's explosion five years into its mission. The bomb is invisible to the naked eye, but it can be detected by Borg implants - which is why they have recruited Seven.

The Utopia Planitia jump has allowed them to identify where the bomb was planted. Now they need to find out when it was placed, so that they can catch the saboteur in the act and remove all disruption to the timeline. The most likely time period comes when Voyager was in the midst of a Kazon attack, with the criminal using the chaos to mask the infiltration.

This time, Seven is able to intercept the saboteur - only to be shocked by the villain's true identity!


CHARACTERS:

Capt. Janeway: We see three versions of Janeway: pre-Caretaker and fresh to her new command; in late Season Two, on edge over constant conflict with the Kazon; and the current version, the veteran captain. Fresh-faced young Janeway is eager to get out into space, to test what her new ship can do, and (unspoken) to prove herself. Season Two Janeway is adjusting to the reality of losing people during an ongoing situation that has to have her doubting her own choices and whether she'll be able to get the ship through the crisis. It's the current, more experienced Janeway who is the most relaxed. Even when she learns of time distortion affecting her ship, she seems calmer than the Kazon-era version in dealing with the situation.

Seven of Nine: I should be annoyed that this makes three Seven-centric episodes out of the past five... except I'm not, because Jeri Ryan's Seven is one of the best-written and best-acted characters on the show! She holds the focus of this very busy episode, treating the story with suitable seriousness while making the most out of her character moments: brushing off Lt Carey's awkward attempts at flirting, for instance, or pleading with Kazon-era Janeway to trust her even though doing so isn't logical. Her most prominent trait is her refusal to give up. As she tracks the saboteur across three different time streams, she is advised that each shift puts a greater physical strain on her. She curtly replies that she's aware of the risks, and she still insists on continuing even when she can barely manage to stand.

The Doctor: The middle part of the episode settles on the present-day Voyager. This portion shifts focus from Seven to the Doctor, who is the first crew member to discover that things aren't as calm as they seem. It starts small, as several crew members come down with bouts of "space sickness." As crew members continue appearing with complaints, he realizes that something is wrong - and after he's called to a medical emergency only to find that it hasn't happened yet, he realizes that time distortion is involved. This is all well executed, and Robert Picardo seems to enjoy the chance to play detective.

Capt. Braxton: Has dealt with Janeway before, and he ended up stranded on 20th century Earth as a result. After years of "rehabilitation," he's been recast as a bigger name actor and given a new command. Despite his past issues with Janeway, he seems dedicated to stopping Voyager's destruction. When his second-in-command points out how much danger he's putting Seven in, he responds that doing nothing will result in the deaths of Seven and her entire crew, and he's as crisp and efficient as Seven while administering the mission. He does let his resentment toward Janeway show when Seven asks about involving her, however. "That woman has been responsible for three major temporal incursions... She's reckless. She has no regard for the integrity of the time frame... Avoid contact!"


THOUGHTS:

I actually feel a bit sorry for the villain of the piece - or at least, the earliest version of the villain. Like Janeway and Seven, we see multiple versions from the present and the future. The thing is, it's the present version who is first arrested... and this individual has done absolutely nothing wrong and has no intention of doing anything! The arrest is made for "crimes you're going to commit" - meaning that, very likely, this person's entire life is ruined because of a timeline that hasn't happened and that, by the episode's end, has been averted. Nice that Voyager is saved; I guess it just sucks to be the entirely innocent version of the person arrested for the troubles!

Outside of that, I really enjoyed this episode. Relativity juggles multiple versions of multiple characters across multiple time frames, and it does so without getting bogged down in exposition or technobabble. It's fast, fun, and exciting - and actually rather well-structured.

It opens in the past, rapidly establishing multiple mysteries: Why is Seven present before Voyager's launch? What is she investigating, and who are the people she's communicating with? A few answers are quickly given when the Relativity and its far-future crew are introduced. Only then, close to fifteen minutes in, do we move to the present Voyager as Janeway and the Doctor grapple with the time distortion mystery.

This middle act, which is in many ways the true beginning of the story, is well placed. It's the slowest portion of the episode - but by this point, the mysteries of the first Act propel us along. It's also the one part of the episode not focused on Seven. Spotlighting Janeway and the Doctor for a ten-minute stretch keeps this from feeling like "The Seven of Nine Show," which has become an intermittent pitfall. The time distortions themselves create some engaging scenes: a ping-pong ball that hangs in midair, Chakotay phasing into three versions of himself for a second while expositing to Janeway, and the moment with the Doctor being called for an emergency before it actually happens. The action rises until the ship finally seems doomed...

At which point we return to Seven on the Relativity, with us now feeling the urgency of her mission after seeing the consequences if she fails. It's an effective structure, made more so when we return to familiar scenes at the end, and the sturdy overall construction keeps the plot on track even as individual bits happily indulge in time travel nuttiness.


OVERALL:

A part of me can't quite get past the injustice visited upon the episode's villain (well, the innocent version of the villain, at least). Outside of that, though, Relativity is good, fast-paced fun, a rare Voyager episode that didn't bore me for even one second. It's the Star Trek equivalent of a well-made summer blockbuster, and I was happy to go along for the ride.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

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5-6. Timeless.

The starship Voyager, in its icy grave.

THE PLOT

On a desolate, ice-covered planet, a ship has been discovered. Under a layer of ice lies a lifeless husk that had the misfortune to crash on this world 15 years earlier. The ship's designation: Voyager!

15 years earlier, the Voyager crew prepares to use the finally-ready slipstream technology to travel directly home. The crew is celebrating - save for Tom Paris, who has discovered a phase variance in the slipstream system. He and Harry test this out in the holodeck, and simulation after simulation ends with Voyager's destruction.

Harry comes up with a plan, however. If he flies ahead of Voyager in the Delta Flyer, then he can send phase corrections back, allowing the starship to compensate for the variance. Janeway authorizes the plan, with Chakotay piloting the shuttle as Harry works on the math. And so the great ship's fate is sealed...

15 years later, an older, guilt-ridden Harry and Chakotay have come up with a new plan. Salvaging Borg technology from Seven of Nine's remains, they now have the ability to send a message back in time. Harry made a mistake in his calculations, leading to the ship's destruction. If he can send the correct calculations to Voyager just before the accident, then he can save his crew - and alter the course of history!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Chakotay believes Harry's plan is too much of a risk, and Janeway admits that by the book he's correct - But the responsibility for the crew weighs heavily on her, and she decides to take the chance. This ties in with her depression in Night, in which she shut herself away and blamed herself for every day and every death that the crew had experienced in the Delta Quadrant. Chakotay's right about the risk being unwise - But Janeway so badly wants to get her crew home, that her guilt overrides her judgment.

Chakotay: Just as determined to alter history to save Voyager as Harry is - But he isn't as guilt-ridden. He's actually moved on with his life, starting a relationship with Tessa Omond (Christine Harnos), who assists him and Harry on the mission. He even voices reservations about moving forward with a plan that will erase their relationship from the timeline, though that does not stop him from going through with it.

Doctor: When Chakotay and Harry investigate the wreckage of Voyager, they discover that the Doctor's program is still working, as is his mobile emitter. This allows them to bring him along to assist their efforts. The choice to include the Doctor is an inspired one. It makes sense for him to be "alive" when the rest of the crew are dead; and since he's been out of commission for the entire 15 years between the crash and the discovery of the wreckage, all the backstory can be explained to him without it feeling like a forced infodump. Finally, it allows the Doctor to act as a foil for Harry, urging him to abandon the doomed effort to get the ship home and instead settle for simply saving it from destruction.

Capt. Geordi LaForge: Sent to stop Chakotay and Harry from changing the past. He is genuinely sympathetic to the Voyager survivors' desire to save their crew. But as he points out, his duty is to protect the last 15 years of history, a history in which Voyager was destroyed. Throughout the conflict that follows, he gives every chance for Chakotay to drop his shields and be beamed to safety, and it's clear that he takes no pleasure in targeting the Delta Flyer. At the same time, his position is absolutely justified, and he does his duty.


HARRY KIM AND TIMELESS

OK, where did this Harry come from, and can we keep him?

A handful of previous episodes have shown that Wang is more than capable of giving a good performance when the writers can be bothered to give him good material. The Chute and The Killing Game both showcased an edgier Harry, beaten down and left weary and angry. Those traits are built on with the brusque, embittered future Harry of this episode. The result is something I'd have sworn was impossible - A Harry Kim who is a genuinely compelling character.

Since it's clear Wang is at his best playing a Harry with a bit of en edge, why not make that a permanent part of his personality? The couple of earlier good Harry Kim episodes made it clear that the problem with the character was never the actor. Timeless shows that the writing staff knows how to make Harry work... Which means that, going forward, there is no longer any excuse for him to continue being a failed character. If he goes back to being wallpaper (which I unfortunately expect will be the case), then the blame belongs solely to the writers.


THOUGHTS

Timeless is a terrific episode from top to bottom. It's easily Season Five's best episode to date, and is among the highlights of the entire series. Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky have delivered an outstanding script, and director Levar Burton makes the transitions between the Voyager of the show's present and future seamless without ever being confusing.

The episode opens with the discovery of Voyager under the ice - a fantastic visual flourish that takes us to credits, eager to discover exactly what is going on. The entire first Act continues in the future, with the disaster that befell the ship imparted piece by piece as backstory. Only with the revelation that Harry and Chakotay plan to change history does the episode finally move back in time to "our" Voyager, on the eve of its fateful slipstream flight.

Act Two follows the Voyager of the series' present, with our knowledge of the ship's fate hanging over the proceedings. Harry's desperate attempts to first deny the phase variance, then to improvise a risky solution for it, explains much about Future Harry's guilt. His eagerness to get back home leads him to pushing for reckless action. But the blame isn't ultimately his. Janeway is as affected by guilt as the future Harry is, and her ongoing sense of responsibility for stranding her ship leads to her authorizing a plan that she knows she shouldn't.

The rest of the episode intercuts present and future until, at last, they fully merge. With the sending of the messages through time, Future Harry interacts with Present Voyager, with Geordi's intervention raising the stakes and the suspense for a highly effective climax.

There's a tag scene, and it's a good one. Janeway gives Harry a message from his future self, one that loops back onto an earlier scene and provides additional context for it. The final word belongs to the Harry from a future that now will never be, sending us out of the episode on a very strong note.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

Previous Episode: Once Upon a Time
Next Episode: Infinite Regress

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4-8, 4-9. Year of Hell.

Janeway, alone on the bridge of the crippled starship Voyager!

THE PLOT

"Past, present and future: They exist as one. They breathe together..."

Voyager has entered a region of space belonging to the Zahl, an advanced civilization whose claim is disputed by the Krenim, a once-formidable enemy whose weapons technology relies on temporal science. But the Krenim are a shadow of their former selves, one the Zahl ambassador describes as merely an "annoyance."

Then a wave of temporal distortion hits, and everything changes...

There are no more Zahl, and Voyager is being pummeled by the suddenly highly advanced Krenim ship. The Krenim captain sneers that Janeway's vessel is in their space, which is all the justification required to attack. Voyager manages to escape, but is heavily damaged - and this is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will see the starship pushed to the brink of destruction.

The change in the timeline was the work of Annorax (Kurtwood Smith), a Krenim scientist in command of a weapon ship that exists outside time. Annorax has been methodically wiping civilizations out of history, trying to restore the Krenim Imperium that existed before his first use of the weapon. This latest "incursion," the elimination of Zahl, has restored the Imperium to 98% of its full glory. But that last 2% includes his own world, his own family, which he is determined to restore. When he sees Voyager, and recognizes it as a rogue element throwing off his calculations, he makes it his next target - Determined to not just destroy the ship and its crew, but to make it so that they never existed at all!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: At the start, she is determined to keep her crew together at all costs: "We're stronger as a team. One crew, one ship... I say we make our stand together." But reality forces her to split the crew up by the end of Part One, so that at least some of them might survive. "Asking you to stay would be asking you to die." As the situation continues to worsen, she makes rash decisions that even Tuvok admits are logically flawed. One incident leaves her burned and visibly scarred - and when the Doctor threatens to relieve her of command, she snaps that she'll switch off his program.  She is finally left alone on the bridge of an empty ship, fighting with what is quite literally her last breath. Kate Mulgrew gives the best performance she has yet given, her work even better because she doesn't ask for the audience to side with her as Janeway becomes rawer and rasher - She simply makes sure that this emotionally on-edge woman feels consistent with the more collected Janeway we are used to seeing.

Chakotay: Part One sees him once again approaching Janeway in private to offer an alternative to her current course. He presents the option of splitting up the crew, an idea she summarily dismisses at this point - but which she will reluctantly follow by the end of the episode. Part Two gives him more good material, as he is paired with the tortured Annorax. Seeing that the Krenim scientist is an intelligent man who has full appreciation of the power at his disposal, Chakotay decides that he can reason with him.  He even begins to taste a bit of Annorax's obsession with finding the perfect calculation to undo all the damage of the past year. Robert Beltran is surprisingly excellent, particularly opposite Kurtwood Smith.  Given the strong run of episodes he's had over the past half-season - with [B]Coda, Scorpion, Nemesis[/B] and now this - I'm forced to revise my opinion of both Beltran and Chakotay, both of whom have come into their own in a big way.

The Doctor: There's a fine moment in Part One, when an attack causes an overload in sickbay. The Doctor has to rapidly evacuate his patients before the entire deck is destroyed. In a nod to classic submarine movies, he must close a hatch to seal the explosion within that deck - which means closing that hatch on two crewmen who are simply too far away to make it in time. It's a nonverbal beat that lasts mere seconds, but Robert Picardo insures that the moment is unforgettable.

Tuvok/Seven: In one of the few scenes that shows the writers even remember Before and After, Seven is in the Jeffries tube with an unexploded Krenim torpedo, exactly as Kes had been in the earlier episode (Seven very literally replaces her in this instance). She is able to scan it for information they are able to use to create temporal shielding... but when the torpedo finally goes off, Tuvok is blinded while shielding her from the blast. Tuvok and Seven are paired for the remainder of the two-parter, Seven acting as Tuvok's sight guide to enable him to continue performing his duties. Thanks to some modified instruments, he remains effective at his post - his determination and self control such that he even continues to do his own shaving, with a straight razor. In a story with many fine moments for many characters, Tuvok's farewell to Janeway just before the final battle is a standout.

Annorax: Speaking of standouts, veteran actor Kurtwood Smith gives a superb performance as Annorax, a character deliberately modeled after Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Like Nemo, he has cut himself off from his world - in his case, from time entirely - on a ship of his own invention, performing incursions that have devastating consequences on a world that he is no longer a part of. Like Nemo, he is a cultured and intelligent man, who strikes up a mentor/student relationship with Chakotay that mirrors the Nemo/Aronnax relationship from the book. The character's every appearance is spellbinding.  I particularly love the scene in which he muses to Chakotay about time's intricacies: "Each time you pull out a new thread, another one begins to unravel. You can't imagine the burden of memory that I carry. Thousands of worlds, billions of lives - Gone, brought back, gone again..." Annorax is not just the villain of this story - He also provides it with its soul.

THE YEAR OF HELL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

The shadow of what might have been hangs heavy over Year of Hell. Kes' glimpses of the Krenim attacks in Before and After were meant to serve as a teaser for an extended period of darkness that would push the crew to its limits. It was exactly what the show needed - A true test for Voyager and its crew, something that would make the triumph of their eventual survival that much stronger.

But this is Voyager, where lengthy arcs and challenging storytelling are frowned upon, and so Year of Hell ended up being produced as a two-parter with a reset button. For my own tastes, I don't know that I really would want a full year of this story. But just because a year passes for the characters, it doesn't mean the show had no choices beyond "season arc" and "reset button story." Writer Brannon Braga evidently was pushing for four episodes, which is closer to my own inclination (I would have gone for about six, with one or two standalone episodes within the arc).

Above all, I would have liked these events to have actually happened for the crew. They are pushed to the edge of their endurance, and for all their raw nerves, they end up rising to the occasion, pushing themselves ever further to keep their ship together. This is really the crew's finest hour - making it all the more frustrating that it ends up being reduced to an ultimately meaningless diversion.

THE YEAR OF HELL THAT IS

For all that I wish Year of Hell had been anything other than a reset button story, it must be said that Braga and co-writer Joe Menosky have done everything possible to make the reset work. Annorax's time meddling is made part and parcel of the story from the opening seconds, and his conversations with Chakotay about the nature of time weave the idea of altering events into the piece in a way that not only isn't intrusive, it actually becomes the focus. As much as I hate this being reduced to a reset, I will acknowledge that the reset is done well and will let it (and the many ways in which this two-parter doesn't line up with Before and After) go for the remainder of this review.

Braga and Menosky may be forced to rabbit through the story, but they do a fine job of keeping it focused. The story of Voyager's year of hell is framed (and caused) by the story of Annorax (Kurtwood Smith), the Krenim scientist manipulating time ostensibly to restore his empire to glory, but in reality for more personal reasons. Annorax's obsession wears on his crew, his mission dragging on for centuries within his time-shielded weapon ship.  No result restores his home world, and he comes to believe that time itself is getting revenge against him for his hubris.

Part Two draws a parallel between Annorax's obsessive behavior and Janeway's. Voyager hides in the safety of a nebula to make repairs. But when B'Elanna reports that it will take weeks to bring the warp drive fully on-line, Janeway insists on leaving the nebula rather than staying to complete repairs, even though this leaves the ship all but defenseless. Seven of Nine tells Tuvok that the captain's logic is faulty; despite his defense of Janeway as someone he trusts completely, Tuvok acknowledges that Seven is "perhaps" right. Later, the Doctor threatens to relieve Janeway of command on the basis of her mental state - and her first instinct is to snap that she will deactivate his program, before simply settling for an Andrew Jackson-like, "You've made your decision; now try to enforce it."

The epilogue, in which the "normal" timeline is reset, manages to avoid falling completely flat, largely because the parallels between Annorax and Janeway persist even here. With the normal timeline restored, a relaxed Janeway responds to the initial Krenim warning that "this is disputed space," by simply agreeing to divert around the problem area. Meanwhile, a work-obsessed Annorax is drawn into a relaxed moment by his wife (Lise Simms), who well knows the man she married as she very accurately observes:

"There are always 'a few more calculations.' It's a beautiful day - Spend it with me."

Overall Rating: 9/10.

3-8, 3-9. Future's End.

Voyager visits 1996 Los Angeles.

THE PLOT

A 29th century Federation Time Ship appears and, without warning, begins firing on Voyager. Some quick maneuvers buy enough of a break for Janeway to communicate with the ship's pilot, Captain Braxton (Allan G. Royal). Braxton claims that Voyager caused a catastrophe in his century, one he is here to avert by destroying the starship. He attacks again, Janeway counters, and both ships are pulled into Braxton's temporal field when he tries to escape.

Voyager's crew finds itself in orbit around Earth. Not their Earth, however, but the Earth of 1996. Subspace readings reveal technology that should not exist in this time. Janeway and Chakotay beam down, along with Tom and Tuvok. They find Braxton - a much older Braxton, whose ship was thrown by the rift to 1967, where he lost his Time Ship to a man named Henry Starling (Ed Begley, Jr). Starling introduced computer technology based on the Time Ship two years later, and has build an industrial empire known as "Chronowerx Industries," releasing breakthrough technology every few years for the past two decades. 

But Starling is prepared for visitors from the future, and he is determined to protect his stolen Time Ship - a ship whose systems are hundreds of years more advanced than Voyager's!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Informs Starling that she is quite prepared to have her ship disintegrate his headquarters, even with her inside, to end his contamination of the timeline. Starling is fool enough to think she's bluffing. Maybe the Doctor should have gone ahead and given him Janeway's psych evaluation when asked - That would have put some fear into him! Kate Mulgrew looks fantastic in the plain suit she wears through most of Part One, incidentally, and it's actively disappointing to see her return to the red Starfleet outfit for the second installment.

Chakotay: Crashes another shuttlecraft. How many does that make now? He says he trained as a pilot, but I don't think I'd trust him with a paper airplane at this point. Aside from that and a tedious encounter with an anti-government group (whose leader, naturally, refers to him as "Chief"), Robert Beltran actually has a pretty good episode, giving a performance that's actually relaxed and likable for the first time since Resolutions. I think getting away from the ship-bound setting does him good. He gets a nice scene with Torres in Part Two, as they reflect on having to get jobs if they end up stuck in the 20th century, and it's good to see the writers remember that these two characters are friends.

Tom/Tuvok: Make an engaging "odd couple," as circumstances lead them to team up with naive SETI astronomer Rain Robinson (Sarah Silverman). Tom tries to cover by telling her that they are "secret agents," but his attempts to blend in with the 20th century go awry. As Rain observes, he keeps getting things "not quite right." Meanwhile, Tuvok reacts with disapproval to Tom's every word and deed, making for some entertaining exchanges. As the episode goes on, they come across less like colleagues and more like older and younger siblings, bickering and annoying each other while still managing to work together effectively.

The Doctor: He's slowly but steadily reconstructing his memories after the data loss. It's nice to see that actually get addressed, even if it is only to hand-wave it away again. I honestly didn't expect to ever see even that much follow-up. More significant is the mobile emitter with which Starling equips the Doctor. Robert Picardo wonderfully plays the Doctor's wonder at truly being outside for the first time ever, selling just how life-changing an event this is for him. 

Cute Earth Babe of the Week: Rain Robinson (Sarah Silverman) is the naive astronomy nut who becomes an ally for Tom and Tuvok. A little of Silverman goes a long way, and I was already weary of her by the end of Part One. She may be cute, but she isn't a particularly good actress. In an otherwise very well-acted two-parter, Silverman's line readings are noticeably forced and artificial. An attempt to create a would-be romance between her and Tom falls utterly flat, thanks to a complete lack of chemistry between the two actors.

Villain of the Week: Ed Begley, Jr.'s Henry Starling is a far more effective denouncement of "capitalism taken to its extreme" than the Ferengi ever were. He is a man of brilliance - He would have to be, in order to successfully adapt ridiculously advanced technology for consumer purposes. Had the Time Ship never crashed, he probably had it in him to do great things all on his own. But the Starling we meet is an absolute vulture, a man who has built his entire corporate empire by cannibalizing the work of others for his own gain. He has no empathy, casually ordering murders and shrugging off the prospect of causing billions of deaths as a simple business risk. Begley is terrific in a very atypical role, and the story gets a considerable boost from his presence.


THOUGHTS

"We could have worn our Starfleet uniforms. I doubt anyone would have noticed."
-Tuvok, commenting on the outlandish denizens of 20th century Los Angeles.

Future's End is unapologetic fluff that is basically Voyager's answer to Star Trek IV. The time travel plot is a thin mixture of paradox and Technobabble, and for all the talk of Starling's machinations leading to an Apocalyptic event, there's never much sense of jeopardy. All of which is beside the point. This two-parter isn't about the story. Rather, the story is an excuse to get the regulars out of their Starfleet uniforms and out into a few Los Angeles area locations to have some fun.

Judged on that basis, I liked Future's End. For a while, I liked it a lot.

Part One is particularly good, maintaining a fast pace and a breezy tone. All of the performers seem to be having a great time, with the two-part format allowing the writers to give every character at least one amusing moment, be it Harry finally getting to sit "in the big chair" or Kes and Neelix getting addicted to 1996 soaps.

The first part is also wonderfully paced. There are a lot of gags and character beats, but they are all slipped neatly into scenes which move the plot forward. There's a real sense of energy here, something Voyager all too often struggles with, and the first episode ends with a lovely visual of Voyager against the L. A. skyline and an effective cliffhanger.

That momentum lasts until about the middle of Part Two, with the complications involving Starling's "capture" of the Doctor leading to several good moments. Unfortunately, writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky just can't quite keep the pace going to the end. About halfway through the second episode, the plot starts to run out. After Janeway and Chakotay escape, Starling then captures the Doctor and Rain. They escape, then Janeway captures Starling, who escapes. Capture/escape/capture scenarios - A time-honored television padding technique.

This is all easy enough to take, since all of these captures and escapes result in some sharp exchanges and good character beats. But it doesn't stretch the story quite far enough, so we also get a rather pitiful and desperate "C" plot near the end, as Chakotay and Torres have a run-in with an anti-government group. This bit has nothing at all to do with the story, and seems to be there just to wring ten more minutes out of the episode.

Judged as separate episodes, Part 1 would get an "8," while Part 2 would likely squeak by with a "6" on the strength of the material with the Doctor. Averaging it out, therefore, leaves me awarding a solid score for a fun - if thin - two-parter.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Sacred Ground
Next Episode: Warlord

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2-05. Non Sequitur.

Harry gets a surprising wake-up.

THE PLOT

Harry Kim awakens to find himself in San Francisco, with his fiancee, Libby (Jennifer Gatti), and a steadily advancing Starfleet career. It is not a dream: It's too vivid, everything is too solid. It's also not the past. It's the present. A present in which Harry Kim was not assigned to Voyager, and was therefore able to continue in his Earth-bound life. It's not some alien projection or hallucination. Reality itself has changed, and in Harry's favor.

But Harry can't help but look the gift horse in the mouth. Told that his best friend had taken his place on Voyager, Harry finds himself compelled to search the crew manifest. Finding that Tom Paris also never made it onto Voyager in this timeline, he can't help but visit Tom. The combination of accessing restricted files and visiting a Maquis convict brings Harry to the attention of Starfleet authorities, and Harry soon finds himself suspected of being a Maquis spy.

Now the only way left to secure a future that doesn't involve prison is to find a way back to his own reality - a slim hope, unless he can convince the bitter, dissipated Tom to help him!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Comes up with some Technobabble to boost the transporter's signal in order to attempt beaming Harry out of the anomaly. Otherwise largely absent, though her effect on Tom is evident when the alternate Tom tells Harry that Janeway's offer was a lot more attractive than the life he faced without the Voyager mission. We also learn that after Tom got into trouble on Deep Space 9 in this alternate timeline, Janeway did attempt to secure his release. Even at that early point, she had enough loyalty to him as a member of her crew that she didn't just fly off without him, even though doing so would have been fully justified.

Harry Kim: Writer Brannon Braga turns the spotlight on Harry... and we get to see that he really is as bland and wooden as he seems! Wang's performance is, frankly, wretched. Wooden as oak, stiff as rigor-mortis personified. If this episode centered on either Tom or Janeway, I have no doubt that it would be compelling stuff. But just by being a Harry Kim episode, it's crippled - and the fault this time lies not with writer Brannon Braga, whose script tries very hard to fill in some of the blanks of Harry's character. No, this time the fault lies squarely with Garrett Wang, who is given a real chance to shine - but who just plain isn't up to the challenge.

Tom Paris: Robert Duncan McNeill has some fun playing the disipated Tom Paris of this alternate timeline. Tom has continued on the path set for him before Janeway made her offer, and he's much farther gone than he was at the start of Caretaker. When we first see him - much too late into the episode - he's drunken and embittered, but there's still a spark of something that makes him listen to Harry's story about an alternate reality. Though he shuts down once Harry mentions taking him back to Starfleet, suspecting some sort of trap, he is intrigued enough that he obviously asks some questions of some of his remaining friends, enabling him to help Harry at the crucial moment.


THOUGHTS

A Harry-centric episode. Given Harry's general blandness, along with the quality of the last Harry episode, I couldn't help but brace for the worst.

The good news is, Non Sequitur isn't half-bad. It's well-produced and nicely helmed by director David Livingston.  It's rather a relief to get footage that is actually outside for a change! There are some good scenes and entertaining moments, and the entire first Act - in which we are just as confused as Harry as to what is going on here - is just extremely well-done.

The bad news is, the episode never really manages to build on that. Harry's character remains as flat and dull as ever. Jennifer Gatti, as Harry's fiancee, is even more wooden than Garrett Wang - which in a way makes them the perfect couple, but certainly doesn't make them a very watchable or interesting pair on screen. Their scenes together drag the episode to a screeching halt, and it takes a very long time for the story to build up any momentum at all.

The story does manage to spark some interest in the late going, once Tom Paris enters the action. Robert Duncan McNeill has shown that he can do well when given good material, and Paris' scenes provide some quite good material - yet another reason why I wish this had been Tom's episode, as Tom's alternate timeline is far more interesting than Harry's.  But Tom doesn't really enter into the episode until well past the halfway mark, meaning that there is a lot of relatively dull material to get through before things start taking off.

Passable without ever really living up to its potential, the best that I can say for Non Sequitur is that it's well-made. But with a weak central actor leaving a void at the heart of the episode, there's nothing terribly compelling on a character level. I didn't have a bad time watching this story. But I never cared about the story, or about Harry, which leaves this another weak episode of a thus-far very disappointing second season.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: Elogium
Next Episode: Twisted

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1-04. Time and Again.

THE PLOT

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.

Previous Episode: Parallax
Next Episode: Phage


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