35:45 Actually it kinda makes sense that Voyager can be piloted alone when it's practically 2 small bumps away from destruction; you don't need anyone to operate all of the systems that aren't even functioning in the first place
The problem with broken systems is that they usually don't get completely silent. All the trash data from faulty sensors floods your automatic controls, making it impossible for the computer to make good decisions. The ship's AI might be able to work around that, but what are the odds that the computer still works properly when the rest of the ship is shot to hell?
Also there's probably a hundred minor things that are going to malfunction or misbehave if left unattended, and that's a problem in the long term as minor problems can accumulate into a huge one - but when you're going into the final battle and your plan is to either win or go down swinging, you don't really have the luxury to worry about longterm sustainability.
Steering the ship in one direction is one thing - control the defensive and offensive systems and everything else at the same time something different. I loved that moment in Star Trek 3 when Scotty tells Kirk that they are basically defenseless. He made sure that the Enterprise could be controlled by only a handful of people - but this was not meant for combat.
Here is why my headcannon loves this episode: Anarax has been at it for 200 years. Which puts the start of his time war sometime around the year 2100AD on Earth, roughly the year the Enterprise was launched, where we were introduced to the concept of a temporal cold war. So in my headcannon Anarax's ship is a major player in the Temporal Cold war, even if Anarax doesnt know that. The temporal shockwaves which alter entire sectors, may over time and occassionally throwing off all sorts of temporal anomalies over the last 200 years, i.e. the entire run of the Star Trek saga. This some how ties all of Star Trek together for me in my headcannon.
I like your idea, but it doesn't work, because the time-stuff in this episode is way too stupid. Yes, they say that Annorax and his crew did this for 200 years and didn't age because of the weird time-technology. But it seems that this doesn't mean that 200 Years also passed outside the ship. In the End we see Annorax and his wife and it seems to be the present day. How would Annorax get his wife back, if he alters the timeline, but she died long ago? The Timeship can alter history, but it can't go back in time itself. It's more like the time outside the ship was standing still. Which of course it didn't, but thats why there are so many things that didn't make sense.The whole concept of the time stuff is as confused as Annorax himself: one second he tells you, you could never restore the timeline completely and the next moment he wants to do exactly that.
@@williamozier918 Which is really a shame, but what if your headcannon rewrote the script and corrected the mistakes and then Berman/Braga came along and rewrote it again so nothing makes any sense ... ;-)
@@lordmontymord8701 At the end, the ship was erased from history so those events never happened. So the scene we see at the end is Annorax and his wife back in the 2100s, because he never built the weapon ship in this timeline.
You know... I often wonder what if Ira Steven Behr was in charge of Voyager during this time? Because Bryan Fuller mentioned in an interview regarding Voyager that Behr just plain didn't care what Rick Berman had to say. Hence why the Dominion War became a long narrative arc rather than a three part episode.
Ira Behr explained that VOY was the baby at the time and they literally didn't care about what DS9 was doing. It came up in INSURRECTION when the producers were furious there was stuff they were told to acknowledge. "A Dominion what?"
@@EnterpriseKnight Yeah seriously. Could you imagine the last four seasons of DS9 if they were ordered to keep everything the same so people could easily understand what is going on ... War with the Klingons? The Dominion War? Morally questionable decisions during wartime? Noooo - that's all impossible.
'Fun Fact' to us in the UK, the antagonist's name sounded more like "Anoraks" the rain coat than Annorax. It's a derogatory term for an overly obsessed nerd. The theory at the times was this was deliberate.
I’ve never known it to be a derogatory word for nerds, only as a protective rain coat. I thought it was deliberate too but as the rain coat being a metaphor for the the temporal shields haha oh god, I need to sleep clearly
Brannon Bragga originally pitched it as a season long arc but Rick Berman shot it down so I can't really blame the writers for the reset button. Sure, there are a lot of time Voyager writers were just ridiculous but there were just some things Voyager was prohibited from doing.
Imagine if the whole season ended in a reset button to a clean timeline. But the "restored time line" leaves us mysteries to explore, things that happened we never saw since we saw the Year of Hell timeline. Who's the new alien onboard? Why does the EMH have a mustache. Stuff like that.
@@jodieg6318 I'd like to point out two things that could possibly be in his defense: 1. DS9 was still on air and he didn't want VOY to be too similar to DS9. He didn't want both shows to look the same (there goes the new grey topped uniforms), he didn't want both both shows to push conflict between the leads (there goes the Maquis plotline and dress code), he didn't want both shows to be dark (there goes the Year of Hell season-long arc) and he didn't want both shows to feature wars at the same time (there goes the original plan for Species 8472). I can understand wanting to differentiate the two shows on the air but it seems like VOY got the short end of the stick in many cases. 2. VOY was on a network, whereas DS9 went straight to syndication. Not only was VOY on a network but it was the flagship series for that network (UPN) so you would imagine that the network would have a heavy hand on the show. So there were a lot of decisions Berman made which he acknowledged were more based on what the network wanted. At the time, UPN wanted more standalone episodes so that people could discover the show and jump into it easily, and so that someone who missed the show could pick back up without needing to see what they missed. Bare in mind this is before streaming and on-demand video, so people sometimes lost interest in a series if they couldn't follow it properly. There goes serialized seasons for VOY. Now having said that, there were many missteps that can be attributed to Berman and the writers themselves but that would be a whole other response. This is just to balance the discussion re: Berman.
@@jodieg6318 Those double negatives could shut down a TOS computer. Berman did support Siddig El Fadil when Paramount wanted him gone after season one.
Tuvok getting blinded really bothered me, not because they did it, but because the writers didn't do their homework. Spock as a human/vulcan hybrid had the protection of his inner eye-lid to save his sight when exposed to masses of sunlight. The light cause by that explosion was nothing by comparison, I could buy it if his eyes were physically lost or damaged beyond repair by the physical explosion, but we see on camera there is no sign of physical injury whatsoever, during a time The Doctor has no access to sickbay. Not even something as simple as bandages to cover them, so to hide how grossly injured they were.
You have to understand, to do their homework and look up established rules and past events would require stuff like..... you know...... *effort* and the vaguest notion of actually, honest to god *giving a shit,* which as we all know, were huge and definite no-no's on Voyager.
Thanks for the video. The blinded Tuvok touching his way to his station is what I remember best from this two parter. An image I will never forget. The Seven & Tuvok scenes are just the best
I really enjoy _Year of Hell_ but a couple of things always stood out to me: 1) - Why does it never occur to Annorax to just erase his own ship? Or himself? That would reset time completely, undoing all the damage done and giving him back his wife. 2) - Why would Annorax think that if the colony at Kyana Prime were restored it would bring his wife back? They're over 200 years after when she was alive. We know the Krenim live about as long as humans do, because Obrist was saying he realised he'd been celebrating birthdays for the dead. If Kyana Prime was restored, it would have been restored as it would be _now_ meaning his wife would still be lost. I think if they'd have considered those, it could have really added to the tragedy, particularly the second point; that no matter how hard he tries, he would never get his wife back. It could have added an extra layer onto Annorax feeling that time itself is a conscious entity, torturing him.
I just had the idea that Chakotay and Annorax should have used the time weapon on the Caretaker's array. It would have gotten Voyager home instantly, and also saved the Ocampa planet from the accident that led to the planet being mostly uninhabitable.
I've commented many times, that this Two part arc is probably my fave Voyager episodes and arc. It is some of the best Voyager had ever done that pushed the show and characters to their limits, and fulfill the promise that the show was built on. The sympathetic antagonist, and intruiging implementation of temporal warfare I had never seen before... a fantastic performance by Kurtwood Smith. Everybody brought their A game, and I love that ending to essentially say... that history will repeat itself because his personality can't help it.
When Voyager first premiered, I couldn't fully make myself get on board with it. I had a lot of small quibbles with the show. Not the least of witch being that I just didn't like the Voyager herself as a ship. But after I watched Year of Hell, everything clicked in my head. That little ship showed her worth and Voyager skyrocketed to take its place as my second favorite Trek show...until Strange New Worlds premiered earlier this year. Now it sits as a firm third with DS9 being (in my mind) the best that Trek has ever offered up. And funny enough, DS9 is magic because they did the exact opposite of what Voyager did with Year of Hell. The idea of Year of Hell having been a season long story is a fantastic one on many levels. And why this wasn't allowed to happen given the overall success of DS9's long-form story telling is beyond me. From what I understand, just as Year of Hell was proposed as a season long story but truncated to a two parter, the Dominion War was proposed as a multi episode story but ended up defining the latter two thirds of the entire DS9 series...and it was a genius albeit risky decision.
The sad thing is they probably could've done a series-long Year of Hell in Neu-Trek... but they haven't. It speaks volumes that Lower Decks is one of the better series out of the four or five of them.
@@73rmin8r But that would be at least something funny to see. Let Burnham go on a rampage and kill all of the great characters of the bridge crew like ??? Seriously, does anyone even remember their names?
I forgot how powerful the speech that began part three of this review was. I didn't fully get that speech a decade ago when this first aired, but man do I feel it now. That's been the past 6 or 7 years, just dealing with demons and the pain and everything that got locked behind it while I was a naive stupid child who didn't consciously understand what was happening around him. And then we go into the hysterical comedy after that, which I forgotten most of so I'm going to be rolling on the floor again. :D This is why I watch these reviews, serious insight, silly humor.
One of my guilty pleasure episodes. For awhile my favorite two-parter of Voyager overall. Memorable idea, memorable villain. It's still Voyager so take it how you take it. I'll usually sit down and watch it start to finish if it's on, though.
I like it too despite its many flaws and its on my rewatch-list every time i come back to Voyager. And every time i ask myself who is crazier: Janeway or Annorax? Or maybe Chuckles for thinking he could work with Annorax?
Your suggestion for an alternative ending reminds me of Stargate sg1, the last episode saw sg1 trapped in a time bubble for 5 decades with Teal’c volunteering to leave the field, continuing on from that moment while the others revert to before it was activated. 50 years together on a spaceship, how would Teal’c have been changed and how did he view his companions differently now they had no memory of what happened, we’d never find out as this was the swan song for the series and the movies never touched upon it.
See, I see Enterprise Season 3 as what Year Of Hell should have been. The ship getting steadily more and more messed up, discovering new pieces of Technology from timelines that are erased and using them to counteract the ship falling to pieces, development after development, the few moments of reprieve for the Crew making those utterly disastrous moments even more heartwrenching.
I love/loved the whole idea of the year of hell and was excited to see how they got back to the status quo. I was disappointed that it didn't take a bit longer to recover back to normalcy.
"It could have been more" is Voyager in a nutshell. So many episodes show glimpses of the potential the series had, and very few show what the series could been all the time. But it was all wasted and squandered. Just like the premise of Year of Hell, just like what could have been.
This two parter was far better than it had any right to be. I kinda wish it had gone on for a whole season, or at the very least that we got a book / audio series out of it.
If this was a 3- 6 ep mini-arc, it would have been superlative. It was great for what they were allowed to do, just a shame nobody in the writers room stood their ground for more serialization. This was one plotline that needed it. I can think of several others. It's a real shame.
I remember talking with one of the writers for Voyager back when the show was just starting. A few of your ideas of Voyager being damaged and needing allies to get occasional repairs was something the writer wanted to do. I guess it was an idea that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Lol. Only Berman could take pride in absolute dreck. What an ignorant POS. Note to writers: don't ever let a brainless producer make you write terrible shit. It's called creative control for a reason. Don't listen to them. He needs YOU, not the other way around.
I question how destroying the time ship just magically undid all of the temporal changes it had ever done, that has pretty interesting implications. I mean, were they expecting once their mission was done they'd park it somewhere it would be safe for ALL OF TIME? Is it going to be alright ten million years in the future? Was there some way to shut it down that would save all changes? Holy crap...this is like a god damn term paper isn't it? If a power outage shuts down your computer unexpectedly you lose your work?
My take is that it only undid everything because the weapon was active when it was destroyed. It had the same effect as turning the weapon on itself. The time ship has never existed therefore the changes it made never happened.
@@wendyheatherwood Not sure if the weapon had to be active, or if the ship's core would have had the same effect anyway, but yes, this is obviously what has happened.
I have listened to your videos for years on and off thanks to the algorithm x busy life. I have come back time and again and I don't think you have given ANY series or movie as much flak as you give Voyager. Maybe it's me, but it's like listening to a whole different SFDebris when you review the episodes. The Janeway joke bits are hilarious! Please do a video on your feelings about Janeway and if you have please point me to it.
19:00 I know it's a time episode and blah-blah-blah but if there was a spin off of episodes those escape pods would be interesting. There is so much opportunity of stranded in the middle of no where of the galaxy that the episodes write themselves.
Not a bad idea. I would love to see all the ways these people died thanks to Janeway's idiotic decision 🤣 They are in Krenim dominated space, even if the Krenim are depowered again in this timeline. So most of them would be picked up by Krenim ships and probably imprisoned, enslaved or the escape pods would be used for target practice. Think about it: what if Voyager made it to the other end of the Krenim space and waited for the crew. And only a handful of people showed up, even after a year of waiting ...
the ending i got what its a reset yes..... but the the man who gets his wife et all back his comp pad had the workings of idea of time travel......he's working on whats going to f up his life still.. again ////he is reverted back to pre all and he could lose it all again closed loop??/// but could be another line he puts it down not deleted anything
Year of Hell is my favorite Voyager episode and if they have any deleted scenes it should be remastered into a feature film. It is the perfect Voyager tale, reset included.
@@mitchellmelkin4078 'Trash' is a little severe, actually I liked a lot about VOY, but it wasn't what it could have been. Berman and Taylor, who else? They were in charge.
15:05 - Being blind doesn't mean he can't see light or vague shapes. Not all bind people are completely blind. So he may still be able to see light in some form.
The really should have made it so that Voyager already had temporal shielding to begin with. Because it makes no sense for Voyager to continue trying to go through Krenim space after getting their butts kicked. It would have made way more sense if they had temporal shielding when Annorax made the first timeline change and Voyager ended up being in the middle of Krenim space because they weren't affected by the change. And Janeway not being afraid of the Krenim after developing temporal shields is really dumb. Presumably the Krenim still have hundreds or thousands of ships, even if Voyager's shields can block the torpedoes, it still won't stand up against 20 Krenim ships firing at it all at once. Also, what happens to the people who left in escape pods when Annorax changes the timeline again? They would no longer be protected by the temporal shields. Would they be erased?
As far as I remember, they already had the torpedo/shield frequency for the time shields, due to the episode where Kes jumps back in time. It might've been forgotten during their voyage, but I'm pretty sure Kes told others and made some notes in the computer ... though I should rewatch that episode to be absolutely certain, as I said, it's just what I remember from that episode.
@@KingOfMadCows I was going to say, "If they completely forgot about the Kes episode, how do we even have the Krenim for this discussion?" but then it occurred to me that 'they' has more than one possible antecedent, and that in this context it's more charitable to assume that you're referring to the characters, not the show's creators. Makes one wonder just how many useful bits of information are buried in Star Fleet's computers that nobody notices at a useful time; consider that "The Naked Now" relied on Riker half remembering (and an android to find) the information learned in "The Naked Time" they used to identify the problem and eventually counter it.
@@boobah5643 Yeah. They were using that episode to show that, while that tactic was successful in TNG, it failed in Voyager, because of the nature of the threat.
We were even shown that the Krenim had other weapons than these torpedoes. At least the Timeship had "normal" energy weapons. So it's save to assume that every warship has them and the Chroniton-torpedoes are just their ultimate weapon against stronger enemies. Attacking smaller targets with those torpedoes should be more difficult, so having different weapons for different situations makes sense - too much sense for this show.
I love how despite the Time Ship being proposedly "outside of time", its crew still experiences time sequentially and the ship itself also does things chronologically synchronous with the rest of the universe. Also, why would the people on the Time Ship not age? I mean, they still eat and breathe so I presume their body's physiology has not been altered in any way, so they would inevitably get older. Also, didn't Annorax consider that if he succeeded in restoring his colony and his wife...he'd also create another version of himself so he wouldn't be able to get "back" to this old life no matter what? The more thought you spend on this episode, the less sense it makes.
You have to love this: Tell Janeway that the area is not save and she turns the ship around. Attack Voyager immediately and Janeway decides to hold the course. Even without the Krenims bullshit-torpedoes this would have been a terrible idea. If Voyager can take out one Krenim warship they would send a bunch of them at the same time and Voyager is done ... The crew knew thanks to the Astrometrics Lab that the Krenim space is huge and they have a lot of ships. It's like Janeway decided to fight through Romulan or Cardassian space on her own. That they have weapons that can bypass shields is just the cherry on top. It was different with the Kazon. Voyager was already stranded in their space, so they had to go on.
I think the reason they weren't turned around is because of how the weapon worked at that point in the story. The temporal shock wave changed Voyager and the Krenim ship into their timeline-appropriate shape, but kept them in the same location. Later they made a plan that contradicts this, but let's be real here. That's not intentional. The writers are just morons. So this isn't Janeway being an idiot and going straight into enemy space despite how stupid that would be. It's the writers screwing up how their time manipulation plot device is supposed to work. Completely different kind of monumental screw up!
@@theuncalledfor I agree with your statement about the writers, and if they really didn't think about changing locations that would be one more stupidity. But i don't think that this was supposed to be the case. Yes, Voy and the Krenim-Ship didn't change their location when the first wave hit them, but that was more likely to have a "cool shot" of the ships changing. Janeway and the rest of the crew were not surprised by the changes, they even stated, that the ship was attacked multiple times before. This means Janeway deliberatly ordered them to go deeper into Krenim-space even after the first attack ... Which is also stupidity by the writers, but not because they didn't understand their own time-travel-plot (unlike all the other inconsistencies during the episodes)
@@lordmontymord8701 You have a very logical argument for why the way I described it makes no sense. HOWEVER As we already established, the writers are idiots, so the fact that it doesn't make sense is irrelevant. I still believe that's how it was intended, and the reason it doesn't make sense is because they didn't think this through, at all.
@@theuncalledfor Thats true 😂 I love the fact that we agree on the bad writing, but just disagree how the writers fucked up in this case. Only on Voyager! ---- and ENT, and the first seasons of TNG, and Nu Trek, and ...
Man, imagine if they used that time not resetting for one person approach you suggested at the end to re-make a character into someone war weary and grizzled in order to salvage them... And that character was Neelix. Of course it couldn't be Neelix as he was portrayed here, but some better version of him... That sure would've been something...
I like the idea of things not resetting every episode for a show like Voyager to be compelling. The entire series should have been like year of Hell. We ended up with something like that in the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Actions had consequences, decisions had ripple effects in later episodes, characters died, characters changed, and their entire adventure changed them all. It felt so new and fresh. The opposite of Voyager. Despite the intriguing premise never boldly went there.
The Krenim time ship never made that much sense to me. It alters time by erasing people, places and things from history. If you get hit, the timeline gets rewritten and you never existed in the first place. If Annorax has been at it for hundreds of years, shouldn't Krenim space be pretty empty by now? The species you wiped out don't ever return after all. That also means he can never hope to restore the timeline to get his wife and old life back. The elements necessary for her creation never existed.
This is one of these "shut of your brain"-moments. But as a wise man once said: "If i shut of my brain i die". What if a person is hit by this weapon? Have this persons parents never met? Did another sperm make it to the egg? Or did they just never have kids? Or the asteroid: did it just never form or were all of it's atoms destroyed in the past? When the Timeship itself was erased it seemed like it was just never built and that's all. Yeah, no sense to be found here ...
What If? often fell back on grimdark endings. The first run wasn't too bad, giving kind of a mixed bag in how things turned out in the AU. Volume 2 and beyond? Grimdark for the sake of it. But some of the Volume 1 stories are even hilarious in hindsight. What If Spidey joined the FF? Eventually, though this was early on. What If Hulk had Banner's mind? Yup. Iron Man making armor for the others? Issue 4 about the Invaders was revealed as an untold main universe story. Other Spider-bite recipients? 1950's Avengers? Rick Jones as Hulk? 20th Century Conan? Bucky lives? Jane Foster Thor? The Spidey-clone lives? But to your point, not all of them equally exploited the full impact of what this venue let them do, going mainly for bad-worse (See Gwen Stacy lives for one). Especially in Volume 2, being in an AU somehow gave every baddie ultimate genre-savvy. One exception was the next to last issue of V1, #46. What If Uncle Ben had lived but Aunt May had died had an unintentionally grim cast on main universe history. In short, Peter and his life and his future would have been hugely better off in this scenario. Biggest change: Norman is exposed years earlier, and this before most of his uber-schemes have even been laid in. Also, Peter overcomes his origin guilt and Ben manages to constrain Jameson's crusade - though not without problems. It can be done right, but the temptation to do anything just because you can proves too much, it seems. Hell, even DC saved Superman's family, gave him a little brother on Krypton, only to promptly kill them off.
You know, well I can't really disagree with the majority of the points you make. This is still probably my favorite Voyager episode and it might be my favorite episode out of the entire 90s era, next generation, deep space nine, and voyager. First, the more generic positives. This was one of the rare instances in Star Trek where you see anything approaching object permanence. Yes, it's because it's a two-parter, but you still get to see the consequences of actions beyond the commercial break. It's scratched that itch that I would say most Trek fans have had since the first star trek. Voyager wasn't even unique in the concept that they were stranded and short on supplies. Deep Space Nine had a bit of that because of the nature of what it was. Enterprise was supposed to have some of that component because it was the first time that humans had ventured outside of their solar system. But this episode I think is the only time that itch was properly scratched. Character-wise this had one of the most compelling villains they've ever had. The villain seems one dimensional and megalomaniacal at the start, but because it's a two-parter you get to see development and understand why he is taking the actions he is. You get to see Janeway develop the same level of obsession albeit for different reasons. You made the comment that chacote was just being his normal bizarre self, but I would argue that he acts the way he does because he is starting to feel empathy for the villains perspective. I would also argue that out of everything past the original season, this episode came probably the closest to capturing the vibe of the original series. Roddenberry was an irrepressible Optimist and regardless of his more huckster qualities, and regardless of how preachy or blunt some of the original series could be, thematically the show was an awful lot like the Twilight zone. Morality plays written by somebody who was rather nuanced. And this show came very close to that. You get to empathize with both the hero losing their marbles and with the villain being as obsessive as he is. But there is a valuable lesson in this episode in both that you cannot change the past, and the idea of unintended consequences. It also makes you think a little bit. When I first saw the episodes, one of the first thoughts occurred to me was that even if he managed to bring back his wife and son, he still would have found flaws in the plan. Because they wouldn't have been his exact wife and son. Maybe his wife is now a redhead. Maybe his son is now a vegetarian. Maybe his in-laws are a little different. It wouldn't be exact and his obsession with that would have had him continuing for all eternity. Some thought-provoking stuff. I tend to a bit of a paradox because I both dislike and enjoy time travel episodes. I dislike them because all too often they fail at the final stretch. There's always something they don't adequately think through. Yet I can't stop watching them. This story came closest to being a good time travel episode for me. It was light on the crunch, which restricted my ability to nitpick the mechanics, and it moves at a Brisk pace so I'm able to go with the flow.
Year of Hell, one of the episodes that shows Janeway isn't fit to command a ship. How the hell did she make Admiral? Is Chuck's joke about her planting a virus to give her promotions meant for Picard actually canon? Then again, somehow season 1 Torres was considered the most capable person to run engineering in the same episode she punched someone because she had the anger management skill of Doomsday, so maybe Starfleet's leadership is based on who's the least qualified for the job.
My headcanon is that they made her an Admiral so she is not in command of any ship and as a reward for PR reasons, I wouldn't be surprise if they put her in charge of the administrative side of things, like retirements or something like that XD
12:30 ok but you can't tell me that this isn't what some Federation penal colonies are like. The standards of education are so high in the federation and the ethics around rehabilitation and justice are so strong that I bet they have a few that are just straight up reputable scientific academies that also serve as prisons.
In the Wrapped in Kahn. Kirk said his strategy shows 2D thinking. All the shows are like port, full ahead, starboard. No much up or down. WERE GOING TO CRASH!!! HARD TO PORT!!! Why not go under or above?😊
8:39 I’m confused about your criticism here. Are you suggesting that Tom is acting overly aggressive, violent, or somehow sadistic to celebrate the destruction of the ship that is actively trying to destroy Voyager? Loss of life is always unfortunate but you can bet your ass if someone tries to kill me or my family and I killed them in self defense my first emotion would be relief.
The Titanic reference was not even correct. Watertight compartments are a completely normal part of ship design. Starships would have forcefields and bulkheads to contain damage like watertight sections on an ocean-going vessel. (Your off-topic conversation about Titanic had factual issues, as well) Interesting analysis.
"Infuriated by the reset button.... that's two more episodes that never mattered..." When have they *ever* mattered? Other than the occasional "naomi is born" or "the doctor gets a mobile emitter", everything is reset between episodes anyway so why care about one that they bothered to justify?
If destroying the Krenim Time Ship restored everything back to normal, then wouldn't it also restore the original enemy that the Krenim eliminated with the ship? Does that mean Annorax decided to temporally erase an enemy that wasnt even a threat to them?
If you can do anything because it doesn't matter, then why should the audience care? And if your first thoughts when freed from normal restrictions are a parade of death, destruction, and misery, what does that say about you as a person and creator?
It's less that you really want death and destruction; it's more that it's your only opportunity for it. And when faced with a now-or-never situation, a lot of people pick 'now.'
For the love of God, if you're a TV writer and don't actually hate your show, don't let Rick Berman or someone like Jeri Taylor come within 1000 light years of it. They're like the black hole that will drag it down to the depths of dreck and sadness from which it will never recover. They're the cancer tumor that you will have no defense against (unless you have a spine and self-respect and are willing to walk away but ehhh apparently most aren't so...). Edit: and believe it or not I don't mean this as unkindly as it sounds. I just wish they got the heck out of the way and let their writers develop their ideas past the goddamn 45 min mark. Also- some of their story ideas I just differed with. We seem to be on opposite ends of what plot elements we like and want to see expanded.
That's a brave opinion, and unlike those of people who clearly haven't watched the shows they love to trash, I'd like to believe you actually have tried watching Voyager. So I respect your boldness, but would pit Prodigy being surprisingly good for a show directed towards kids as worth keeping Voyager around.
It actually has a lot of good moments, and some excellent ones, it just suffered from bad production decisions. Berman didn't want to let the writers bring the show up one or more levels in quality. Why I don't know, but he really didn't. I still enjoy it, but I wish they had simply done more.
@@LoneBrowncoat Well, I guess you also subscribe to the maxim there's a sucker born every minute, as well, given how the series has had a pretty noted history of consistently having attracted the most viewers amongst all those in the franchise, for some years, on various platforms.
If I were to guess, he's seen more than one video sharing site go down in his time doing this and is future proofing. Certainly needed, since there's several episodes that aren't available like the third part of Caretaker and The Swarm.
"That's why the blind guy has the lights on."
To be fair, he might not be aware he has the lights on...
And nobody tells him because power consumption is not among the hundreds of problems right now ...
Parody Janeway and parody Piccard in the same video..... It's beautiful!
35:45 Actually it kinda makes sense that Voyager can be piloted alone when it's practically 2 small bumps away from destruction; you don't need anyone to operate all of the systems that aren't even functioning in the first place
The problem with broken systems is that they usually don't get completely silent. All the trash data from faulty sensors floods your automatic controls, making it impossible for the computer to make good decisions. The ship's AI might be able to work around that, but what are the odds that the computer still works properly when the rest of the ship is shot to hell?
Also there's probably a hundred minor things that are going to malfunction or misbehave if left unattended, and that's a problem in the long term as minor problems can accumulate into a huge one - but when you're going into the final battle and your plan is to either win or go down swinging, you don't really have the luxury to worry about longterm sustainability.
That makes even less sense. The more stuff that’s going wrong with your computer the less likely it is to function at all.
Steering the ship in one direction is one thing - control the defensive and offensive systems and everything else at the same time something different.
I loved that moment in Star Trek 3 when Scotty tells Kirk that they are basically defenseless. He made sure that the Enterprise could be controlled by only a handful of people - but this was not meant for combat.
"We've never needed a crew before."
Here is why my headcannon loves this episode: Anarax has been at it for 200 years. Which puts the start of his time war sometime around the year 2100AD on Earth, roughly the year the Enterprise was launched, where we were introduced to the concept of a temporal cold war. So in my headcannon Anarax's ship is a major player in the Temporal Cold war, even if Anarax doesnt know that. The temporal shockwaves which alter entire sectors, may over time and occassionally throwing off all sorts of temporal anomalies over the last 200 years, i.e. the entire run of the Star Trek saga. This some how ties all of Star Trek together for me in my headcannon.
I like your idea, but it doesn't work, because the time-stuff in this episode is way too stupid.
Yes, they say that Annorax and his crew did this for 200 years and didn't age because of the weird time-technology. But it seems that this doesn't mean that 200 Years also passed outside the ship. In the End we see Annorax and his wife and it seems to be the present day.
How would Annorax get his wife back, if he alters the timeline, but she died long ago? The Timeship can alter history, but it can't go back in time itself.
It's more like the time outside the ship was standing still. Which of course it didn't, but thats why there are so many things that didn't make sense.The whole concept of the time stuff is as confused as Annorax himself: one second he tells you, you could never restore the timeline completely and the next moment he wants to do exactly that.
@@lordmontymord8701 You sir are correct on all points. Unofrtunately Voyager never hired my headcannon to re-write their scripts :)
@@williamozier918 Which is really a shame, but what if your headcannon rewrote the script and corrected the mistakes and then Berman/Braga came along and rewrote it again so nothing makes any sense ... ;-)
@@lordmontymord8701 I think that is basically what happened in the writing of Voyager.
@@lordmontymord8701 At the end, the ship was erased from history so those events never happened. So the scene we see at the end is Annorax and his wife back in the 2100s, because he never built the weapon ship in this timeline.
You know... I often wonder what if Ira Steven Behr was in charge of Voyager during this time? Because Bryan Fuller mentioned in an interview regarding Voyager that Behr just plain didn't care what Rick Berman had to say. Hence why the Dominion War became a long narrative arc rather than a three part episode.
Wow, DS9 would've been very different if that had happened.
Ira Behr explained that VOY was the baby at the time and they literally didn't care about what DS9 was doing. It came up in INSURRECTION when the producers were furious there was stuff they were told to acknowledge. "A Dominion what?"
@@CT_Phipps Amazing what happens when you have something that's so focus tested vs "Just let the staff get on with it and don't bother us".
@@CT_Phipps it's laughable, these people only look at the numbers and never the quality of the show. I'm glad Ira could do whatever he wanted.
@@EnterpriseKnight Yeah seriously. Could you imagine the last four seasons of DS9 if they were ordered to keep everything the same so people could easily understand what is going on ...
War with the Klingons? The Dominion War? Morally questionable decisions during wartime? Noooo - that's all impossible.
'Fun Fact' to us in the UK, the antagonist's name sounded more like "Anoraks" the rain coat than Annorax. It's a derogatory term for an overly obsessed nerd. The theory at the times was this was deliberate.
I’ve never known it to be a derogatory word for nerds, only as a protective rain coat.
I thought it was deliberate too but as the rain coat being a metaphor for the the temporal shields haha oh god, I need to sleep clearly
Brannon Bragga originally pitched it as a season long arc but Rick Berman shot it down so I can't really blame the writers for the reset button. Sure, there are a lot of time Voyager writers were just ridiculous but there were just some things Voyager was prohibited from doing.
Imagine if the whole season ended in a reset button to a clean timeline. But the "restored time line" leaves us mysteries to explore, things that happened we never saw since we saw the Year of Hell timeline. Who's the new alien onboard? Why does the EMH have a mustache. Stuff like that.
@@scockery I'm not sure how Bragga originally proposed to move forward after the season-long Year of Hell, but that's not a bad idea at all.
Geez, just when I think I can't find another reason to not not like Berman.
@@jodieg6318 I'd like to point out two things that could possibly be in his defense:
1. DS9 was still on air and he didn't want VOY to be too similar to DS9. He didn't want both shows to look the same (there goes the new grey topped uniforms), he didn't want both both shows to push conflict between the leads (there goes the Maquis plotline and dress code), he didn't want both shows to be dark (there goes the Year of Hell season-long arc) and he didn't want both shows to feature wars at the same time (there goes the original plan for Species 8472). I can understand wanting to differentiate the two shows on the air but it seems like VOY got the short end of the stick in many cases.
2. VOY was on a network, whereas DS9 went straight to syndication. Not only was VOY on a network but it was the flagship series for that network (UPN) so you would imagine that the network would have a heavy hand on the show. So there were a lot of decisions Berman made which he acknowledged were more based on what the network wanted. At the time, UPN wanted more standalone episodes so that people could discover the show and jump into it easily, and so that someone who missed the show could pick back up without needing to see what they missed. Bare in mind this is before streaming and on-demand video, so people sometimes lost interest in a series if they couldn't follow it properly. There goes serialized seasons for VOY.
Now having said that, there were many missteps that can be attributed to Berman and the writers themselves but that would be a whole other response. This is just to balance the discussion re: Berman.
@@jodieg6318 Those double negatives could shut down a TOS computer.
Berman did support Siddig El Fadil when Paramount wanted him gone after season one.
Annorax is the perfect cross between Captain Nemo and the Flying Dutchman .
Throw in a little bit of Captain Ahab: He wants to hunt down the big Time-Whale ...
Tuvok getting blinded really bothered me, not because they did it, but because the writers didn't do their homework. Spock as a human/vulcan hybrid had the protection of his inner eye-lid to save his sight when exposed to masses of sunlight. The light cause by that explosion was nothing by comparison, I could buy it if his eyes were physically lost or damaged beyond repair by the physical explosion, but we see on camera there is no sign of physical injury whatsoever, during a time The Doctor has no access to sickbay. Not even something as simple as bandages to cover them, so to hide how grossly injured they were.
You have to understand, to do their homework and look up established rules and past events would require stuff like..... you know...... *effort* and the vaguest notion of actually, honest to god *giving a shit,* which as we all know, were huge and definite no-no's on Voyager.
This one of my favorite reviews I'm so glad all my favorite jokes survived & carried over from the redit.
Keep up the great work Chuck 💪
It made me smile to see the refrigerator door joke updated with an Indiana Jones reference. Thanks, Chuck.
I saw that movie in theaters and the laughter at that part was immersion breaking to say the least.
Thanks for the video.
The blinded Tuvok touching his way to his station is what I remember best from this two parter. An image I will never forget. The Seven & Tuvok scenes are just the best
I really enjoy _Year of Hell_ but a couple of things always stood out to me:
1) - Why does it never occur to Annorax to just erase his own ship? Or himself? That would reset time completely, undoing all the damage done and giving him back his wife.
2) - Why would Annorax think that if the colony at Kyana Prime were restored it would bring his wife back? They're over 200 years after when she was alive. We know the Krenim live about as long as humans do, because Obrist was saying he realised he'd been celebrating birthdays for the dead. If Kyana Prime was restored, it would have been restored as it would be _now_ meaning his wife would still be lost.
I think if they'd have considered those, it could have really added to the tragedy, particularly the second point; that no matter how hard he tries, he would never get his wife back. It could have added an extra layer onto Annorax feeling that time itself is a conscious entity, torturing him.
I just had the idea that Chakotay and Annorax should have used the time weapon on the Caretaker's array. It would have gotten Voyager home instantly, and also saved the Ocampa planet from the accident that led to the planet being mostly uninhabitable.
I've commented many times, that this Two part arc is probably my fave Voyager episodes and arc. It is some of the best Voyager had ever done that pushed the show and characters to their limits, and fulfill the promise that the show was built on. The sympathetic antagonist, and intruiging implementation of temporal warfare I had never seen before... a fantastic performance by Kurtwood Smith. Everybody brought their A game, and I love that ending to essentially say... that history will repeat itself because his personality can't help it.
The ‘Prison of Savants’ gag is one of Chuck’s best.
When Voyager first premiered, I couldn't fully make myself get on board with it. I had a lot of small quibbles with the show. Not the least of witch being that I just didn't like the Voyager herself as a ship. But after I watched Year of Hell, everything clicked in my head. That little ship showed her worth and Voyager skyrocketed to take its place as my second favorite Trek show...until Strange New Worlds premiered earlier this year. Now it sits as a firm third with DS9 being (in my mind) the best that Trek has ever offered up. And funny enough, DS9 is magic because they did the exact opposite of what Voyager did with Year of Hell.
The idea of Year of Hell having been a season long story is a fantastic one on many levels. And why this wasn't allowed to happen given the overall success of DS9's long-form story telling is beyond me. From what I understand, just as Year of Hell was proposed as a season long story but truncated to a two parter, the Dominion War was proposed as a multi episode story but ended up defining the latter two thirds of the entire DS9 series...and it was a genius albeit risky decision.
The sad thing is they probably could've done a series-long Year of Hell in Neu-Trek... but they haven't. It speaks volumes that Lower Decks is one of the better series out of the four or five of them.
Stop clinging to past. Prodigy is way better than Lower Decks but Lower Decks is a through line so folks gravitate to it.
The stress of that situation would probably drive the psycho characters they have on those shows go full Event Horizon on each other.
@@73rmin8r And this would be a bad thing how?
@@73rmin8r But that would be at least something funny to see. Let Burnham go on a rampage and kill all of the great characters of the bridge crew like ??? Seriously, does anyone even remember their names?
I forgot how powerful the speech that began part three of this review was. I didn't fully get that speech a decade ago when this first aired, but man do I feel it now.
That's been the past 6 or 7 years, just dealing with demons and the pain and everything that got locked behind it while I was a naive stupid child who didn't consciously understand what was happening around him.
And then we go into the hysterical comedy after that, which I forgotten most of so I'm going to be rolling on the floor again. :D
This is why I watch these reviews, serious insight, silly humor.
One of my guilty pleasure episodes. For awhile my favorite two-parter of Voyager overall.
Memorable idea, memorable villain. It's still Voyager so take it how you take it. I'll usually sit down and watch it start to finish if it's on, though.
I like it too despite its many flaws and its on my rewatch-list every time i come back to Voyager.
And every time i ask myself who is crazier: Janeway or Annorax? Or maybe Chuckles for thinking he could work with Annorax?
Year of Hell, not to be confused with TNG Season 1, also not be confused with 2020 AD.
Schemes fail 100% during crises. I always loved this 2-parter. It felt realistic and exemplary to me.
When the Space 199 episode *War Games* collide with Star Trek to get this two parter.
And both episodes ended with a reset button.
Your suggestion for an alternative ending reminds me of Stargate sg1, the last episode saw sg1 trapped in a time bubble for 5 decades with Teal’c volunteering to leave the field, continuing on from that moment while the others revert to before it was activated. 50 years together on a spaceship, how would Teal’c have been changed and how did he view his companions differently now they had no memory of what happened, we’d never find out as this was the swan song for the series and the movies never touched upon it.
See, I see Enterprise Season 3 as what Year Of Hell should have been. The ship getting steadily more and more messed up, discovering new pieces of Technology from timelines that are erased and using them to counteract the ship falling to pieces, development after development, the few moments of reprieve for the Crew making those utterly disastrous moments even more heartwrenching.
I love/loved the whole idea of the year of hell and was excited to see how they got back to the status quo. I was disappointed that it didn't take a bit longer to recover back to normalcy.
Voyager, where good ideas go to die ...
"It could have been more" is Voyager in a nutshell. So many episodes show glimpses of the potential the series had, and very few show what the series could been all the time. But it was all wasted and squandered. Just like the premise of Year of Hell, just like what could have been.
This two parter was far better than it had any right to be.
I kinda wish it had gone on for a whole season, or at the very least that we got a book / audio series out of it.
If this was a 3- 6 ep mini-arc, it would have been superlative.
It was great for what they were allowed to do, just a shame nobody in the writers room stood their ground for more serialization. This was one plotline that needed it. I can think of several others.
It's a real shame.
It is stellar praise when the worst thing you can say about a 9/10 is it could of been a 10/10.
Year of Hell?
must. avoid. 2020. joke...wait, I think I just did...SHIT
I remember talking with one of the writers for Voyager back when the show was just starting. A few of your ideas of Voyager being damaged and needing allies to get occasional repairs was something the writer wanted to do. I guess it was an idea that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Year of Hell should have been an entire season. It had so much potential. But of course Voyager threw that away. Still, I did enjoy this two parter.
No Rick Berman threw that away.
Lucky they brought that season long arc premise to Enterprise.
Lol. Only Berman could take pride in absolute dreck. What an ignorant POS.
Note to writers: don't ever let a brainless producer make you write terrible shit. It's called creative control for a reason. Don't listen to them. He needs YOU, not the other way around.
@@vinnyc.1265 , When push came to shove, more than likely it was the network that threw it away.
Yes, it actually was planned for an entire season.
I question how destroying the time ship just magically undid all of the temporal changes it had ever done, that has pretty interesting implications. I mean, were they expecting once their mission was done they'd park it somewhere it would be safe for ALL OF TIME? Is it going to be alright ten million years in the future? Was there some way to shut it down that would save all changes? Holy crap...this is like a god damn term paper isn't it? If a power outage shuts down your computer unexpectedly you lose your work?
My take is that it only undid everything because the weapon was active when it was destroyed. It had the same effect as turning the weapon on itself. The time ship has never existed therefore the changes it made never happened.
@@wendyheatherwood
Not sure if the weapon had to be active, or if the ship's core would have had the same effect anyway, but yes, this is obviously what has happened.
I have listened to your videos for years on and off thanks to the algorithm x busy life. I have come back time and again and I don't think you have given ANY series or movie as much flak as you give Voyager.
Maybe it's me, but it's like listening to a whole different SFDebris when you review the episodes. The Janeway joke bits are hilarious!
Please do a video on your feelings about Janeway and if you have please point me to it.
22:44 The sad thing is, I could totally see Tom saying that, trying to be snarky in the face of the horrific implications. lol
Seven, "It is offensive."
Best line of the series.
I came for the review, but stayed for the warp core shark
21:07 That's why a hull breach is so dangerous, don't you know. Because all that SPACE can leak into your ship and poison you!
I only laugh so much at this because I've literally seen people argue things to this effect.
Well you'd have to be able to grasp quantum , the ship is like some sort of quantum computer they weponized the drama and dialog was good
19:00
I know it's a time episode and blah-blah-blah
but if there was a spin off of episodes those escape pods would be interesting.
There is so much opportunity of stranded in the middle of no where of the galaxy that the episodes write themselves.
Not a bad idea. I would love to see all the ways these people died thanks to Janeway's idiotic decision 🤣
They are in Krenim dominated space, even if the Krenim are depowered again in this timeline. So most of them would be picked up by Krenim ships and probably imprisoned, enslaved or the escape pods would be used for target practice.
Think about it: what if Voyager made it to the other end of the Krenim space and waited for the crew. And only a handful of people showed up, even after a year of waiting ...
the ending i got what its a reset yes..... but the the man who gets his wife et all back his comp pad had the workings of idea of time travel......he's working on whats going to f up his life still.. again ////he is reverted back to pre all and he could lose it all again closed loop??/// but could be another line he puts it down not deleted anything
your Janeway voice is everything and more. lmfao
I think I watched this 3 parter back when it was released, but I'm happy to watch again after having listened to many more sfdebris videos since.
Year of Hell is my favorite Voyager episode and if they have any deleted scenes it should be remastered into a feature film. It is the perfect Voyager tale, reset included.
No reset but yes to having it more fully fleshed out.
The reset makes it not matter. That's why Voyager was trash. It didn't have to be but they made it that way.
@@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999, They? At the risk of exposing yourself as not being particularly thoughtful, whom are you referring to exactly?
@@mitchellmelkin4078 'Trash' is a little severe, actually I liked a lot about VOY, but it wasn't what it could have been. Berman and Taylor, who else? They were in charge.
Annorax is just trying to change history so he can be President of the Federation again, and maybe get rid of that blister on his head
He wants to kick the Klingon Ambassador's ass.
I'm glad they didn't make this a whole season. Especially with the "it never happened" reboot.
15:05 - Being blind doesn't mean he can't see light or vague shapes. Not all bind people are completely blind. So he may still be able to see light in some form.
The really should have made it so that Voyager already had temporal shielding to begin with. Because it makes no sense for Voyager to continue trying to go through Krenim space after getting their butts kicked. It would have made way more sense if they had temporal shielding when Annorax made the first timeline change and Voyager ended up being in the middle of Krenim space because they weren't affected by the change.
And Janeway not being afraid of the Krenim after developing temporal shields is really dumb. Presumably the Krenim still have hundreds or thousands of ships, even if Voyager's shields can block the torpedoes, it still won't stand up against 20 Krenim ships firing at it all at once.
Also, what happens to the people who left in escape pods when Annorax changes the timeline again? They would no longer be protected by the temporal shields. Would they be erased?
As far as I remember, they already had the torpedo/shield frequency for the time shields, due to the episode where Kes jumps back in time. It might've been forgotten during their voyage, but I'm pretty sure Kes told others and made some notes in the computer ... though I should rewatch that episode to be absolutely certain, as I said, it's just what I remember from that episode.
@@DaRealKakarroto They completely forgot about the Kes episode. They made no mention of Kes' experience with the Krenim in the episode.
@@KingOfMadCows I was going to say, "If they completely forgot about the Kes episode, how do we even have the Krenim for this discussion?" but then it occurred to me that 'they' has more than one possible antecedent, and that in this context it's more charitable to assume that you're referring to the characters, not the show's creators.
Makes one wonder just how many useful bits of information are buried in Star Fleet's computers that nobody notices at a useful time; consider that "The Naked Now" relied on Riker half remembering (and an android to find) the information learned in "The Naked Time" they used to identify the problem and eventually counter it.
@@boobah5643 Yeah. They were using that episode to show that, while that tactic was successful in TNG, it failed in Voyager, because of the nature of the threat.
We were even shown that the Krenim had other weapons than these torpedoes. At least the Timeship had "normal" energy weapons. So it's save to assume that every warship has them and the Chroniton-torpedoes are just their ultimate weapon against stronger enemies.
Attacking smaller targets with those torpedoes should be more difficult, so having different weapons for different situations makes sense - too much sense for this show.
I love how despite the Time Ship being proposedly "outside of time", its crew still experiences time sequentially and the ship itself also does things chronologically synchronous with the rest of the universe. Also, why would the people on the Time Ship not age? I mean, they still eat and breathe so I presume their body's physiology has not been altered in any way, so they would inevitably get older.
Also, didn't Annorax consider that if he succeeded in restoring his colony and his wife...he'd also create another version of himself so he wouldn't be able to get "back" to this old life no matter what?
The more thought you spend on this episode, the less sense it makes.
You have to love this:
Tell Janeway that the area is not save and she turns the ship around. Attack Voyager immediately and Janeway decides to hold the course. Even without the Krenims bullshit-torpedoes this would have been a terrible idea.
If Voyager can take out one Krenim warship they would send a bunch of them at the same time and Voyager is done ... The crew knew thanks to the Astrometrics Lab that the Krenim space is huge and they have a lot of ships. It's like Janeway decided to fight through Romulan or Cardassian space on her own. That they have weapons that can bypass shields is just the cherry on top.
It was different with the Kazon. Voyager was already stranded in their space, so they had to go on.
I think the reason they weren't turned around is because of how the weapon worked at that point in the story. The temporal shock wave changed Voyager and the Krenim ship into their timeline-appropriate shape, but kept them in the same location.
Later they made a plan that contradicts this, but let's be real here. That's not intentional. The writers are just morons.
So this isn't Janeway being an idiot and going straight into enemy space despite how stupid that would be. It's the writers screwing up how their time manipulation plot device is supposed to work. Completely different kind of monumental screw up!
@@theuncalledfor I agree with your statement about the writers, and if they really didn't think about changing locations that would be one more stupidity. But i don't think that this was supposed to be the case.
Yes, Voy and the Krenim-Ship didn't change their location when the first wave hit them, but that was more likely to have a "cool shot" of the ships changing.
Janeway and the rest of the crew were not surprised by the changes, they even stated, that the ship was attacked multiple times before.
This means Janeway deliberatly ordered them to go deeper into Krenim-space even after the first attack ...
Which is also stupidity by the writers, but not because they didn't understand their own time-travel-plot (unlike all the other inconsistencies during the episodes)
@@lordmontymord8701
You have a very logical argument for why the way I described it makes no sense.
HOWEVER
As we already established, the writers are idiots, so the fact that it doesn't make sense is irrelevant. I still believe that's how it was intended, and the reason it doesn't make sense is because they didn't think this through, at all.
@@theuncalledfor Thats true 😂
I love the fact that we agree on the bad writing, but just disagree how the writers fucked up in this case. Only on Voyager! ---- and ENT, and the first seasons of TNG, and Nu Trek, and ...
Man, imagine if they used that time not resetting for one person approach you suggested at the end to re-make a character into someone war weary and grizzled in order to salvage them... And that character was Neelix. Of course it couldn't be Neelix as he was portrayed here, but some better version of him... That sure would've been something...
Ship gets hurt a lot, then time travel resets everything. What was the point of that?
"What was the point of that?" Voyager in 6 words.
I like the idea of things not resetting every episode for a show like Voyager to be compelling. The entire series should have been like year of Hell. We ended up with something like that in the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Actions had consequences, decisions had ripple effects in later episodes, characters died, characters changed, and their entire adventure changed them all. It felt so new and fresh. The opposite of Voyager. Despite the intriguing premise never boldly went there.
The Krenim time ship never made that much sense to me. It alters time by erasing people, places and things from history. If you get hit, the timeline gets rewritten and you never existed in the first place. If Annorax has been at it for hundreds of years, shouldn't Krenim space be pretty empty by now? The species you wiped out don't ever return after all.
That also means he can never hope to restore the timeline to get his wife and old life back. The elements necessary for her creation never existed.
This is one of these "shut of your brain"-moments. But as a wise man once said: "If i shut of my brain i die".
What if a person is hit by this weapon? Have this persons parents never met? Did another sperm make it to the egg? Or did they just never have kids?
Or the asteroid: did it just never form or were all of it's atoms destroyed in the past?
When the Timeship itself was erased it seemed like it was just never built and that's all. Yeah, no sense to be found here ...
What If? often fell back on grimdark endings. The first run wasn't too bad, giving kind of a mixed bag in how things turned out in the AU. Volume 2 and beyond? Grimdark for the sake of it. But some of the Volume 1 stories are even hilarious in hindsight. What If Spidey joined the FF? Eventually, though this was early on. What If Hulk had Banner's mind? Yup. Iron Man making armor for the others? Issue 4 about the Invaders was revealed as an untold main universe story. Other Spider-bite recipients? 1950's Avengers? Rick Jones as Hulk? 20th Century Conan? Bucky lives? Jane Foster Thor? The Spidey-clone lives?
But to your point, not all of them equally exploited the full impact of what this venue let them do, going mainly for bad-worse (See Gwen Stacy lives for one). Especially in Volume 2, being in an AU somehow gave every baddie ultimate genre-savvy. One exception was the next to last issue of V1, #46. What If Uncle Ben had lived but Aunt May had died had an unintentionally grim cast on main universe history. In short, Peter and his life and his future would have been hugely better off in this scenario. Biggest change: Norman is exposed years earlier, and this before most of his uber-schemes have even been laid in. Also, Peter overcomes his origin guilt and Ben manages to constrain Jameson's crusade - though not without problems.
It can be done right, but the temptation to do anything just because you can proves too much, it seems. Hell, even DC saved Superman's family, gave him a little brother on Krypton, only to promptly kill them off.
You know, well I can't really disagree with the majority of the points you make. This is still probably my favorite Voyager episode and it might be my favorite episode out of the entire 90s era, next generation, deep space nine, and voyager.
First, the more generic positives. This was one of the rare instances in Star Trek where you see anything approaching object permanence. Yes, it's because it's a two-parter, but you still get to see the consequences of actions beyond the commercial break. It's scratched that itch that I would say most Trek fans have had since the first star trek. Voyager wasn't even unique in the concept that they were stranded and short on supplies. Deep Space Nine had a bit of that because of the nature of what it was. Enterprise was supposed to have some of that component because it was the first time that humans had ventured outside of their solar system. But this episode I think is the only time that itch was properly scratched.
Character-wise this had one of the most compelling villains they've ever had. The villain seems one dimensional and megalomaniacal at the start, but because it's a two-parter you get to see development and understand why he is taking the actions he is. You get to see Janeway develop the same level of obsession albeit for different reasons. You made the comment that chacote was just being his normal bizarre self, but I would argue that he acts the way he does because he is starting to feel empathy for the villains perspective.
I would also argue that out of everything past the original season, this episode came probably the closest to capturing the vibe of the original series. Roddenberry was an irrepressible Optimist and regardless of his more huckster qualities, and regardless of how preachy or blunt some of the original series could be, thematically the show was an awful lot like the Twilight zone. Morality plays written by somebody who was rather nuanced. And this show came very close to that. You get to empathize with both the hero losing their marbles and with the villain being as obsessive as he is. But there is a valuable lesson in this episode in both that you cannot change the past, and the idea of unintended consequences.
It also makes you think a little bit. When I first saw the episodes, one of the first thoughts occurred to me was that even if he managed to bring back his wife and son, he still would have found flaws in the plan. Because they wouldn't have been his exact wife and son. Maybe his wife is now a redhead. Maybe his son is now a vegetarian. Maybe his in-laws are a little different. It wouldn't be exact and his obsession with that would have had him continuing for all eternity. Some thought-provoking stuff.
I tend to a bit of a paradox because I both dislike and enjoy time travel episodes. I dislike them because all too often they fail at the final stretch. There's always something they don't adequately think through. Yet I can't stop watching them. This story came closest to being a good time travel episode for me. It was light on the crunch, which restricted my ability to nitpick the mechanics, and it moves at a Brisk pace so I'm able to go with the flow.
Year of Hell, one of the episodes that shows Janeway isn't fit to command a ship. How the hell did she make Admiral? Is Chuck's joke about her planting a virus to give her promotions meant for Picard actually canon? Then again, somehow season 1 Torres was considered the most capable person to run engineering in the same episode she punched someone because she had the anger management skill of Doomsday, so maybe Starfleet's leadership is based on who's the least qualified for the job.
Not to mention the fact she was expelled from the academy.
I would disagree, Janeway showed real courage under fire here. She and her crew made allies, and worked to ally the sector against Annorax.
My headcanon is that they made her an Admiral so she is not in command of any ship and as a reward for PR reasons, I wouldn't be surprise if they put her in charge of the administrative side of things, like retirements or something like that XD
Straight up a "Kicked up stairs" situation.
@@Vignum Probably just for the department of 'Time travel occurrences' just to annoy Braxton even more ...
12:30 ok but you can't tell me that this isn't what some Federation penal colonies are like. The standards of education are so high in the federation and the ethics around rehabilitation and justice are so strong that I bet they have a few that are just straight up reputable scientific academies that also serve as prisons.
In the Wrapped in Kahn. Kirk said his strategy shows 2D thinking. All the shows are like port, full ahead, starboard. No much up or down. WERE GOING TO CRASH!!! HARD TO PORT!!! Why not go under or above?😊
Single video! YAY
8:39 I’m confused about your criticism here. Are you suggesting that Tom is acting overly aggressive, violent, or somehow sadistic to celebrate the destruction of the ship that is actively trying to destroy Voyager? Loss of life is always unfortunate but you can bet your ass if someone tries to kill me or my family and I killed them in self defense my first emotion would be relief.
The prison of Savants mad me snickering.
If I remember correctly, in TNG, there was a small child learning calculus, so this scene isn't out of the realm of possibility.
35:33 That is a great reference.
The Titanic reference was not even correct. Watertight compartments are a completely normal part of ship design. Starships would have forcefields and bulkheads to contain damage like watertight sections on an ocean-going vessel. (Your off-topic conversation about Titanic had factual issues, as well)
Interesting analysis.
9:00 you do know you've got Harrison Ford writing your subtitles don't you?
"Infuriated by the reset button.... that's two more episodes that never mattered..."
When have they *ever* mattered? Other than the occasional "naomi is born" or "the doctor gets a mobile emitter", everything is reset between episodes anyway so why care about one that they bothered to justify?
If destroying the Krenim Time Ship restored everything back to normal, then wouldn't it also restore the original enemy that the Krenim eliminated with the ship? Does that mean Annorax decided to temporally erase an enemy that wasnt even a threat to them?
Year of Hell shouldn't have been a single episode. It should have been the running theme through a whole season.
I really liked year of hell but I can't lie, your point of view is rather sensible 🤣
4:50 How Janeway could own Kirk.
If you can do anything because it doesn't matter, then why should the audience care?
And if your first thoughts when freed from normal restrictions are a parade of death, destruction, and misery, what does that say about you as a person and creator?
Maybe it's a passive aggressive way of saying you hate working on the project.
It's less that you really want death and destruction; it's more that it's your only opportunity for it. And when faced with a now-or-never situation, a lot of people pick 'now.'
29:54 :)
For the love of God, if you're a TV writer and don't actually hate your show, don't let Rick Berman or someone like Jeri Taylor come within 1000 light years of it. They're like the black hole that will drag it down to the depths of dreck and sadness from which it will never recover. They're the cancer tumor that you will have no defense against (unless you have a spine and self-respect and are willing to walk away but ehhh apparently most aren't so...).
Edit: and believe it or not I don't mean this as unkindly as it sounds. I just wish they got the heck out of the way and let their writers develop their ideas past the goddamn 45 min mark. Also- some of their story ideas I just differed with. We seem to be on opposite ends of what plot elements we like and want to see expanded.
15:48 among us
😂😂😂😂😂😂
13:00
Janeway was the worst and cheesiest captain in the entire Star Trek series
I never liked this episode much. Very overrated.
I honestly wasn’t a fan of this episode.
Voyager sucks. if any show should be non-canon it is this train wreck.
That's a brave opinion, and unlike those of people who clearly haven't watched the shows they love to trash, I'd like to believe you actually have tried watching Voyager. So I respect your boldness, but would pit Prodigy being surprisingly good for a show directed towards kids as worth keeping Voyager around.
@@Jokie155 ...Took you that long?
It actually has a lot of good moments, and some excellent ones, it just suffered from bad production decisions. Berman didn't want to let the writers bring the show up one or more levels in quality. Why I don't know, but he really didn't. I still enjoy it, but I wish they had simply done more.
@@LoneBrowncoat Well, I guess you also subscribe to the maxim there's a sucker born every minute, as well, given how the series has had a pretty noted history of consistently having attracted the most viewers amongst all those in the franchise, for some years, on various platforms.
For a second, I thought you were going to review the first year of the Biden Administration.
You misspelled Trump.
@@jlev1028 : You need glasses.
@@jstrahan2 And you need a brain.
@@jlev1028 : If you actually think that Biden has done a good job, then it is you who 'needs a brain'.
They're all true scum. If you trust anyone from the red-blue team you've been had. 100%
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a rape gorilla. They really come in handy during diplomatic situations with hostile aliens.
I don't understand why Chuck is set to upload episodes like Raven and Message in a bottle this month when they are already uploaded in full motion.
If I were to guess, he's seen more than one video sharing site go down in his time doing this and is future proofing. Certainly needed, since there's several episodes that aren't available like the third part of Caretaker and The Swarm.
voyager can stand the time ripples but the pods cant so all those people in the pods are dead lol