4 – Time and Again

Grade: C+

Summary

While continuing to travel home, Voyager hits a huge shockwave from a massive explosion, which originated on an M-class planet nearby. Janeway, Paris, Torres and Kim beam down to the planet to investigate and they find breaks in the space-time continuum. Janeway and Paris accidentally fall into one of these and are pulled into the planet’s past – but only one day before the accident.

Commentary

This is the third episode (out of three total episodes) in which Voyager causes the problem that they then try to solve. It’s also the second episode in a row that deals with time travel. So far, we’ve had a pretty good pilot episode and we met a lot of new aliens and characters. And this was supposed to be a different kind of Star Trek since it takes place so far away from the rest of the Federation. But what we’ve ended up with are some pretty standard and sub-par stories that really could have taken place on any of the series. There’s no reason to have them take place 70,000 light years away from home. I wish Voyager could have been more creative. Deep Space Nine continues to be my favorite Star Trek series for that very reason – most of the stories in DS9 could not have been told in any other series, given the specific characters and circumstances.

What’s worse is that this episode also gives us an example of the infamous Voyager Reset Button, which we’ll see many more times during this series. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s basically when at the end of the episode, everything is magically restored to how it was before the episode started. It’s infuriating because this cheapens the story and makes it so that none of the characters have to deal with any of the consequences of their actions during the episode.

And we also have another violation of the Prime Directive. Since it was a pre-warp civilization, Voyager should not have stopped by to investigate the explosion in the first place. So right from the start, they’ve already broken their supposedly most important law. Then, when Paris finds out that they’re only a day early, he wants to the people about the upcoming explosion. Yet Janeway says that would be violating the Prime Directive. As I’ve said before, she’s just as bad as Kirk when it comes to how strictly she keeps it – she only obeys it when it suits her needs.

It appears that Kes is going to fill the role of Deanna Troi on this ship – she will have some kind of ESP that lets her feel emotions from people thousands of kilometers away. Then she’ll tell us what she feels so that we can feel that too. The writers seem to have no faith in their own writing or in the ability of the actors to portray emotions. So they throw in Kes to make sure we understand that it is a very traumatic experience when a whole civilization dies all at once. The scene with her and Neelix when she describes her dream is just pathetic.

But there are a few things I did like about this episode. The Doctor has some great scenes and has some great lines. If he had stayed that way the entire series, I think it would have been fantastic. The other part I liked is when Torres said something about how this explosion could have been the result of a war, and Paris says “I wonder who won.” Considering everyone is dead, I think the question is moot – but that’s what makes it a nice bit of writing.

Finally, a word on Tuvok. He appears annoyed in this episode a number of times, and he states the obvious at least a couple of times. I’m beginning to be annoyed by this guy.

Of Note

This is the first episode in which the Delaney sisters are mentioned. They’ll be talked about several more times throughout the series and finally make an appearance at some point.