100 – Timeless

Grade: B+

Summary

Two explorers are looking for something on an icy planet. We don’t know who they are yet, but they seem to have found something. When the camera pulls away, we see Voyager trapped under the ice.

Commentary

This episode is one of my favorites from this series. The opening scene is very memorable and introduces the story really well. I also really like the direction the story takes and how it gets there. It’s another story about how Voyager almost makes it home, but it doesn’t end as a let-down. It’s a creative way to tell this story.

I also really liked seeing Kim and Chakotay in heroic roles. Usually Kim is the one who gets abducted by aliens, or he gets beat up by Hirogen, or he takes it really personally when their attempt to go home fails. But this time, he rises to the occasion and saves the day. Granted, it’s a much older Kim than the one currently on Voyager, but still, it’s nice to see Kim’s character in a way we don’t usually see it.

We also have another bit of role-reversal. Here, Tom is the one worrying about what might happen, while Harry is the one who says “don’t worry about it.” It was nice to see Kim’s confidence and also to see Tom playing the role of the more cautious one.

About the only thing I didn’t like about this episode is how easily and quickly Janeway gives up on the slipstream technology. They made it 10k LY in just a few minutes, so why didn’t they switch all their efforts to perfecting the technology? It seems to me that the effort to built this would certainly be worth it. It isn’t this episode’s fault that the writers of future episodes completely forgot about slipstream drives, but it definitely should have been explained in Timeless why they wouldn’t be able to use it anymore.

Of Note

Garrett Wang said a lot of the credit for his performance actually goes to LeVar Burton, who directed it. If that’s really what it took to get Wang to perform better, then maybe we should have had Burton direct every episode. It was also really nice to see Geordi LaForge in this as well.