157 – Shattered

Grade: C

Summary

Chakotay gets zapped by some space lightning from a random anomaly and suddenly he’s able to travel from one time to another. It appears the ship is traveling through 37 different time periods. Chakotay has to find a way to restore the timeline back to where it was so that the ship can be back to normal.

Commentary

It’s been six weeks since a new Voyager episode was released. Then they came up with this mess. I don’t know, maybe this might have been a good idea in theory, but it just turned out to be really convoluted and messy. Seriously – how can a ship that is divided into 37 different time periods even hold together? The worst part was the climax when Chakotay and Janeway go into Engineering and find Seska causing trouble. When their original plan (which was a really stupid idea in the first place) fails miserably, then we see the aforementioned Janeway Backup Plan, which involves everyone suddenly racing into Engineering to save the day.

Aside from being really goofy, it is also just a really bad scene cut. Chakotay is talking to Seska. She doesn’t buy his story. She tells the two Kazon soldiers to fire. They charge their weapons and aim at Chakotay, from point-blank range. We cut to commercial, and then when we come back, suddenly we see the conversation from Janeway’s point of view. Now all of a sudden, Chakotay’s conversation is interrupted in the middle BEFORE the Kazon soldiers can aim their weapons at him. Then Kim and Paris jump down and cause a riot. Icheb and Naomi show up to push buttons, Torres brings a couple of Maquis with guns, and finally Seven shows up to assimilate Seska. It’s just silly – way too goofy to take seriously. It’s like the ending of the 1967 James Bond spoof called Casino Royale when everyone shows up at the end and there’s a big fight.

Eh, who cares. There are only 16 episodes left of this series. Really wish they could go out with a bang instead of a thud.

Of Note

A future Icheb will be in charge of the ship in 17 years. No explanation for what happened to everyone else. That really isn’t that far off into the future and everyone else (Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, etc.) should still be around. At most, they’d be in their 50s or maybe 60s. What happened to them? Why aren’t they running the ship?

Janeway gives a pep talk and tells everyone that if the final solution works, nobody will remember what happened. Yeah, small problem. Chakotay remembers what happened when he returns to his time. Oops.