#83, Timeless, Voyager, Season 5, Episode 6

An episode so time-travely they borrow Doctor Who's time vortex. 

In this episode of Voyager we get a glimpse of an alternate future, where an aged Harry Kim and Chakotay travel fifteen years back in time to undo a mistake that cost the crew of Voyager their lives. They're gruffer and grayer than we know them. They've turned their backs on the Federation, committed treason, stolen a ship and a piece of rare Borg tech, and are racing against the clock to send a message back in time to save their crew. Also, they have Captain Geordi LaForge, commanding the Galaxy Class starship Challenger, on their tail.

Harry and Chakotay have a confederate in this. Chakotay's girlfriend, Tessa, who's perfectly willing to die to help Chakotay. She faces death at the hands of the Challenger's torpedoes with a kind of blasé attitude that makes on wonder what kind of effed up relationship she has with Chakotay. Throughout Trek in it's many incarnations, there's this kind of detached calm when things are blowing up around people. Seriously, next time you watch an episode look for the 'I'm-just-doing-my-job' attitude that comes from extras and guest-stars in the show. It's kind of eerie. Tessa goes about her business as if changing time and exploding are perfectly normal.

The best moment in 'Timeless' comes at the beginning, when Voyager crashes into a planet and gets engulfed by a glacier. For a show (and series) where a lot of space action happens off screen to save money (i.e. holding on Tom Paris, for example, when he announces, "The enemy is exploding. It's spectacular! I wish you could see this!"), it's nice to see a big moment in the show. The crash looks great, and the special effects hold up well lo these many years later. The image of Chakotay and Harry, decked out in space parkas finding the englaciered Voyager is well done, and immediately sets up a the mystery. And like every mystery in the post-Seven-of-Nine era of Voyager, it's solved by Borg-technobabble. Considering how effing magic the Borg's technology is, it's astounding they haven't conquered the galaxy yet. More on that later when we get to more Borgy Voyager adventures later in this countdown.

'Let it go. Let it go.' — Elsa Janeway

Also, it's nice to see that Geordi gets a promotion to Captain in the future. It's always a treat for me when the series cross over with one another, even if it's for a glorified cameo. Although, for whatever reason, it looks like Geordi is commanding his ship from his ready room. I'm going to guess that reason is budgetary. It's a nice reminder that Voyager, despite it's premise of being lost thousands of lightyears away from home is still part of the larger fabric of Trek mythology. I've never been a fan of the extended universe for Trek. I've read a few of the novels — don't judge, I went through massive withdrawals when TNG went of the air — and find them lacking. None of the video games have ever caught my attention. So, it's fun to get to see where the next generation Enterprise crew land in the future, and fill in some of the gaps between the end of the series and 'All Good Things.' It carries massive good will to Voyager for me, and fills in the connective tissue of the universe.

"Though you might be tempted, don't read Star Trek novels." — Captain LaForge of the U.S.S. Reading Rainbow

Now, if there's one thing that Voyager, as a show, can do, it's ignore the crap out of temporal paradoxes. I'd love to see a quantitative analysis if the show, breaking down the number of episodes that deal with mucking with time as a concept. We've seen two in this list alone just from Voyager. A quick look at the list, and we've got another 15 or so that deal with time travel, or alternate timelines in some capacity, not counting any Temporal Cold War shenanigans from Enterprise. And in this episode, logic gets shoved right out an airlock as Harry and Chakotay race against the clock to save Voyager in the past. When they succeed in sending their message back in time, they erase the timeline that enabled them to save Voyager. Janeway even shrugs off the paradox with an "Eh, fuck it. Time paradoxes. What you gonna do?" I'm paraphrasing the captain, of course, but that's the gist of how 'Timeless' ends.

Then, we have a message from elder Harry Kim from an alternate future addressing his former self, and letting him know what his hubris might have cost the crew. Time logic problems aside, I wish the moment had had more gravitas. Part of the problem with putting our heroes outside their norm is that we don't get to see these new incarnations of the crew fully fleshed out. As elder Harry Kim, actor Garret Wang growls his way through the episode and I never got the sense that he was playing the truth of his situation. There are hints of PTSD and survivor's guilt, but the episode also has to shove in space battles and slip-stream-drive-technobabble, too. This truncates the character moments, and making me wish we had more time with this reality.

If there's a reoccurring theme in the episodes that I've seen on this list, it seems to be taking our characters out of their normal roles and throwing them in a situation, environment or timeline they find wholly out of the norm for a crew of a starship/space station. We've seen it in 'Parallels,' 'Little Green Men,' 'Bride of Chaotica,' 'The Killing Game,' and 'Future's End.' I'm making an observation, here, not a judgement, but that's almost a third of the episodes on the list so far. I can see the appeal from a creative standpoint. It shakes things up both for the audience and the writers and performers.  I'm going to keep an eye on this trend as the countdown continues, but for now, I'm just going to welcome 'Timeless' to that list.

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Next up, the crew of the Enterprise-D face a 'Conundrum.'

#93 Future's End, Voyager, Season 3, Episodes 8 & 9

This is where I take a beat to remind everyone reading that this is not my list of the Top 100 Trek Episodes of All Time. This exercise for me is a chance (an excuse, really) to examine a brand I love and revisit some great moments of science fiction television. So, not my list. I say this because I would have never...

Neh-vher...

...Put the two-part  'Future's End' on any list of anything other than Top 100 things I don't ever need to see again. The Voyager crew travels back in the past to the 1990s to stop a catastrophe in the 29th century and... Because... Ed Begley, Jr.? There's a time paradox and a ship from Voyager's future and the crew dresses all 90s and... Ugh...

Trek is known for its comedic episodes. And this one, well, falls flat. There's a lot of forced attempts at humor in this episode. Neelix watches tabloid tv! Voyager is an UFO on the news! Ed Begley, Jr. is a villain! Janeway wears a pantsuit with giant, giant shoulder pads! The crazy homeless guy who claims to be from the future is actually from the future! Tuvok wears a hat!

"This hat hides both my alien heritage and my dignity." — Tuvok

We even lose some of the time-travel-fish-out-of-water shenanigans because Tom Paris is supposedly an expert on 20th century. And, for all that seems to be be going on with the future time ship, stealing technology from the future, trying to stop the paradox, Tom's romance with an astrophysicist...

Hold up.

Is that...?

Holy crap, that's Sarah Silverman. Mind... blown...

Okay, I digress. For all that's going on, they're seemingly spread too little episode over too much time. It's so thin, that they throw in some survivalists/government conspiracists at the end of the second episode to hold Chakotay and B'Elanna hostage seemingly to just run out the clock and provide a modicum of action. Hacker Begley, Jr.'s main threat to Voyager is taking over their computer so there was a lot of evil typing while grinning maniacally.

Silverman's character, Rain Robinson, is an astrophysicist working for Ed Begley's Harry Starling and is not having any of Tuvok's and Tom's shenanigans. She sees right through their attempts to be 90s. She calls out their odd behavior and isn't fooled by Tuvok's hat covering his ears. She's surrounded by spacemen, aliens, holograms, starships and takes it all in stride. She's written smart and it's refreshing to have someone call bullshit on the things going on around her. If there's one thing that works in this episode, it's one of the icons of the alternative comedy movement playing it straight. A feat of cosmic irony, which I calculate as making zero-point-zero sense.

Silverman makes zero filthy jokes in these episodes. What's wrong with the universe?  

According to rumor, Silverman was considered to be made a series regular, joining the crew. And one can't help but wonder what direction the show might have taken if she had been part of the retooling of Voyager and not Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One. Fewer formfitting silver catsuits, probably, but we'll never know for sure.

Speaking of casting against type, Ed Begley, Jr. plays a billionaire mogul driven to steal technological advancements from the future at any cost so he can sell them for even more billions! He's selfish, destructive, and sociopathic, and carries about as much weight as a substitute chemistry teacher. If I've noticed anything in episodes that I've not really connected with is a villain who's non-threatening or miscast (I'm looking at you Kivas Fajo).

And in complete trekkie nitpickery, there's not one single mention of the Eugenics War that was supposed to be happening on earth at the time of this episode. Not even an obligatory 'historical records must have been off by a few decades' or 'the timeline's been altered.' Come on, Trek! 

Now, it's time to say something nice. These episodes provides the show with an excuse to let the Doctor out of sickbay with a piece of technobabble from the 29th century. Something that the show will play with throughout the remainder of the series. The Doctor, as always, is fun.

Trek in all of its iterations has its ups and downs. What surprises me is how well this episode is rated.   The reviews are generally positive, citing both Begley and the time travel bits as clever. I'm here to offer the counter argument, I guess. This one was just not for me.

Sorry, Sarah.

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Next up, it's back to Deep Space Nine with the Magnificent Ferengi.