“Future’s End”
Written by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by David Livingston
Season 3, Episode 8
Production episode 150
Original air date: November 6, 1996
Stardate: 50312.5
Captain’s log. In 1967, a young hippie named Henry Starling is hanging out in the woods when a vessel crashes near him.
In the Delta Quadrant, Janeway’s contemplation of taking up tennis again is interrupted by a ship coming through a temporal rift. It fires on Voyager and then announces itself: it’s the timeship Aeon, from the 29th century, and its captain, Braxton, states that an explosion that destroys all life in Earth’s solar system 500 years hence had a piece of Voyager’s secondary hull in the debris. Therefore Braxton must destroy Voyager to save billions of lives.
Janeway is unwilling to sacrifice herself and her crew on the anecdotal evidence of someone she’s just met, so they fight back. They both wind up falling through the rift, first Aeon, then Voyager.
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The Relentless Moon
When they come out of the rift, Paris reports that they’re in orbit of Earth, and Kim reports that it’s 1996. They moved through time and space. They’re also detecting low-frequency subspace readings in Los Angeles, which is unusual to say the least. It’s also the best clue to finding Braxton and their way home.
Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, and Paris beam down wearing civilian clothes appropriate for the era. They split up, and Janeway and Chakotay finally find the subspace reading, on the person of a homeless guy who turns out to be Braxton. He’s been on Earth for three decades. When Aeon crashed in 1967, he transported out before impact, but Starling found the ship before Braxton could get back to it. Starling used the 29th-century technology he salvaged to create Chronowerx, one of the leading tech companies in the world.
According to Braxton, Starling will try to fly Aeon into the future to steal more technology, but his ignorance in how to fly a vessel from nine hundred years in the future will cause it to explode on arrival, killing billions. Braxton now knows that Voyager wasn’t directly responsible, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s been institutionalized already as a crazy person, and he can’t get anywhere near Starling.
At the Griffith Observatory, an astronomer named Rain Robinson detects a gamma emission that Starling, one of Griffith’s benefactors, told them to be on the lookout for. She sees it 20,000 kilometers above North America in orbit, and no other search functions are detecting it. (It’s Voyager, obviously.) She reports this to Starling, who tells her to sit on the news for the moment until they have more data.
While Robinson doesn’t actually call NASA, she does send a message to the signal, which Voyager picks up. Kim contacts Janeway to inform her of this.
The transporters aren’t functioning, so Kim can’t just beam Paris and Tuvok to Griffith to investigate. Paris takes them to a car dealership to take a truck out for a test drive—all the way to Griffith. Unfortunately, Starling thinks Robinson is a security risk, so he sends one of his goons to take care of her.
Paris flirts with Robinson while Tuvok surreptitiously erases her hard drive. Robinson chases them out to their truck just as Starling’s goon shows up—armed with a 29th-century phaser that vaporizes the truck. They manage to escape in Robinson’s VW microbus thanks to Tuvok’s returning phaser fire.
Janeway and Chakotay break into Starling’s office and start downloading his databases to Voyager. They discover that he has Aeon in a bay just off his office. Then Starling himself shows up and his goon holds them at phaserpoint. He thinks they’re here to steal his timeship for themselves.
Starling tells Kim to stop the download or he’ll kill the captain. Kim does so, but then goes into a lower orbit so they can use the emergency transporter (the only one working, but it’s shorter-range) to rescue the captain and first officer.
The good news is that Janeway and Chakotay are safe. The bad news is that Starling is able to use the transporter beam as a hookup to download information from Voyager, at which point he realizes that his own tech is superior to theirs. Besides downloading a ton of data, he also transfers the EMH from sickbay to his office.
Making matters worse is that someone with a camcorder shot footage of Voyager in the atmosphere, and it’s made the news.
To be continued…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The episode has an entertaining tug of war among Voyager‘s 24th-century technology, Starling’s stolen 29th-century technology, and general 20th-century technology.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway ruefully accepts Chakotay’s mock-congratulations on getting them home, albeit in the wrong time.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok wears a do-rag to cover his ears, because 1996.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Kim tasks Neelix and Kes with watching local broadcasts in 1996 to help the away team out, and they find themselves completely absorbed by soap operas. (For his part, Kim doesn’t see the appeal of dramatic entertainment that you don’t participate in, like a holonovel.) They also catch the news report of the sighting of Voyager in the atmosphere.
Forever an ensign. Kim gets to be put in charge of the ship, and does an okay job of it. Janeway commends him on his timing in getting her and Chakotay out of Starling’s clutches, though that’s what leads to Starling stealing the EMH and a ton of data…
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is, in essence, kidnapped by Starling at the very end.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris flirts with Robinson like whoa, with the two of them bonding over mutual love of B-movies.
Meantime, when Janeway and Chakotay are accidentally bumped by a woman on rollerblades, Janeway jokes that the woman could be her ancestor, prompting Chakotay to say that she has her legs. Wah-HEY!
Do it.
“We could’ve worn our Starfleet uniforms. I doubt if anyone would’ve noticed.”
–Tuvok’s commentary on 1990s fashions.
Welcome aboard. Two great guest actors in this one in Ed Begley Jr. as Starling and Sarah Silverman as Robinson. Allan G. Royal plays Braxton, while Susan Patterson makes her first of three appearances as Ensign Kaplan.
All four will return in Part 2.
Trivial matters: Although this episode takes place in the 1990s, and the original series episode “Space Seed” established that the Eugenics Wars were fought in that decade, there is no reference to such in the two-parter, with the producers sensibly not wanting to rewrite contemporary history too much. Having said that, Greg Cox’s two-book series The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh established that what 23rd-century historians referred to as the Eugenics Wars were a collection of covert battles involving various Augments throughout the 1990s that most of the general public was unaware of at the time. The character of Rain Robinson appears in that duology as well—at the end of it, she’s recruited by Roberta Lincoln to work for the Aegis after Gary Seven retires (viz. the TOS episode “Assignment: Earth“).
While working on Starling’s computer, Janeway compares working with such antiquated tech to be akin to working with stone knives and bearskins, a callback to Spock’s line about working with early 20th-century tech in the original series’ “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
Janeway’s interest in tennis was previously mentioned in “Deadlock.”
Set a course for home. “What does it mean, ‘groovy’?” Time travel has long been a staple of Star Trek, from “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” and “Assignment: Earth” on the original series to “Time’s Arrow” on TNG and “Past Tense” on DS9, not to mention the movies The Voyage Home and First Contact, so having Voyager dip into the well was pretty much inevitable.
What was fascinating to me watching this now, 25 years later, was that it also had a nostalgia hit for me, one that only really applied to The Voyage Home prior to this. I don’t really remember the late 1960s of “Tomorrow is Yesterday” and “Assignment: Earth,” “Time’s Arrow” and “City on the Edge…” were both way before my time, and First Contact and “Past Tense” are still in the future (though not for much longer).
Watching “Future’s End” now, I have to admit to getting a giddy sense of amusement at this look back at my twenties (I turned 27 in 1996), from the entertaining fashions to the primitive cell phones to Tuvok’s do-rag to computers with their big-ass monitors. But the best was Starling’s office, which brought me back to the glory days of the dot-com boom of the 1990s when corporate culture was taken over by people in their twenties and thirties who’d convinced investors that their web site would be the best thing ever: the pinball machine, the more relaxed decorations, and best of all, Starling’s outfit of a polo shirt and jeans with a suit jacket over it, the epitome of 1990s casual formalwear.
The story itself hits all the beats entertainingly enough, but what makes it work are the amusements. Watching Paris wander all around all cocksure about how well he knows the period and then get everything wrong, the deranged Braxton’s crazed monologue on time travel in the alley, Neelix and Kes getting completely sucked in by soap operas.
Brilliant guest casting helps. While Allan G. Royal is pretty nowhere as Braxton in the Delta Quadrant, the thirty-years-later homeless version is brilliantly done. Sarah Silverman’s Rain Robinson is a sheer delight, a wonderful local supporting character in the same vein (and worthy of) Edith Keeler and Gillian Taylor. And while he’s written as a tiresome mustache-twirling villain without a trace of nuance, Ed Begley Jr. salvages the one-dimensional role of Starling with a charismatic performance.
The specificity of the damage to Voyager is a bit too constructed—the transporter goes down after they use it the first time and is not fixed in anything like a timely manner, which defies credulity. Also what about the transporters on the shuttlecraft? It’s not like they completely forgot them, given how important they will be in Part 2….
Still, a fun little time-travel romp.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s next Star Trek project was announced last week: he’s one of the contributors to the Star Trek Adventures Klingon Empire Core Rulebook, now available for preorder (print) and download (PDF) from Modiphius. See Keith talk about the new rulebook alongside fellow scribes Derek Tyler Attico and Kelli Fitzpatrick, as well as Jim Johnson, Chris Birch, Nathan Dowdell, and Sam Webb from Modiphius, and special guest, award-winning Trek illustrator Rick Sternbach from the “Day of Honor” event.
Huh, this is one I never liked, although I will admit off the bat that I don’t particularly like time-travel-to-the-past stories, *especially* when the “past” is the “present” for the viewer (or at least, it was when it aired). I already know what 1996 is like, thanks. And this one just seemed like a missed opportunity for me. There’s no insight into the Eugenics Wars, which could have been an interesting thing to explore, it doesn’t work as a character piece, and there’s a lot of technobabble.
IMO, “Future’s End” did a better job with the “someone travels from the future but is really coming from the past” thing, “Past Tense” did a better job with the “we are in the past in the middle of an important part of history” thing, and “City on the Edge of Forever” did a better job with the “character development in the midst of time travel” thing. Since this episode came after all of those, it always just felt kind of tired to me. Voyager could have put it’s own spin on it, but other than a couple references to “getting home but in the wrong time” there really isn’t anything new or different to this episode that TOS, TNG, and DS9 didn’t do better. It has some good nostalgia bits (I, too, like Kes and Neelix getting drawn in to the soaps!!) and some good guest stars, but I always found it a let down, even more so considering that they decided they needed two episodes to tell this story.
I, personally, didn’t care for Ed Begley Jr’s acting. Plus his character in this 2-parter is suuuuuuper annoying and not at all plausible. To think that he could reverse engineer the timeship and then create better technology than Voyager is laughably absurd.
I rewatched this episode a year or so ago and thought it was amusingly on the nose that someone would name their tech company based on stolen future tech “Chronowerx”. Personally, I feel that a tech company using stolen future tech should be named something super generic. General Dynamics, for instance.
@3: Now, if they’d named it “Googol”…
90’s Fashion!
I always had a problem with this–and the idea of the Eugenics Wars being a secret war–because of a line in the original “Space Seed,” where Spock says Khan was, “From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world, from Asia through the Middle East.”
It would have been far better if they’d mentioned that the Wars were only happening in Khan’s region at this point, or something like that. It makes sense for Americans to not be concerned about a war in Asia, but to completely ignore it when it makes sense to have been mentioned somewhere, by someone? Meh.
This is one of my favorite episodes for sure. Regarding Ed Begley as a “young” hippie….he was the oldest looking twenty year old in history!
@6 what annoys me is that there was really no reason to make it like that. This episode could easily have been more like DS9s “Past Tense,” where they are plopped down in the middle of the action, and a lot of the tension comes from the internal dramatic irony of the situation- our heroes know what is about to happen, but no one else around them does. And we, the audience, get to see an “historical” event that hasn’t happened yet, but which is old news for the protagonists, thus giving us a richer understanding of what led to the Federation. Considering that the Eugenics Wars are reference numerous times, were a cause of WW3, and that their existence led to the Federations on-going distrust of trans-humanism, retconning it to be a secret war just seems silly to me. It’s like if the Cold War had still led to all the satellite conflicts (Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc), and the space race, the development of vast nuclear arsenals, and all the cultural changes that came out of it, but the only people who knew what it was really about were the White House and the Kremlin.
This episode always kind of struck me as a way to do two episodes on the cheap, since they could use modern clothing and on-location shooting instead of hiring a whole bunch of extras and building a set. Heck, for most of shooting they didn’t even have to do Tim Russ’s usual prosthetics! On a different show I might be more forgiving of it, but Voyager could always barely keep track of it’s own timeline and continuity, let alone the rest of Trek’s, and so this always just came across as half-baked to me, especially since so many of the plot points are borrowed from TOS, TNG, and DS9, and were all handled better on those shows.
Doesn’t “Trials and Tribble-ations” also involve Time Travel?
@8 I doubt this one was much of a money saver. Begley probably didn’t come cheap, and everyone you see in the LA scenes was an extra. They used high quality CGI and spent 5 days shooting on location…not very cost saving.
On another note, this episode is the last one with the “Janeway Bun” hairstyle.
@9 it sure does! Honestly, DS9’s time-travel episodes are some of the only ones I like. “Trials and Tribble-ations” was a delightful, nostalgic romp, “Past Tense” was a great look into the ‘past’ of the Trek universe, but our future (and was a nice addition to Sisko’s knowledge and interest in civil rights), “Little Green Men” was funny and a good showcase for the Ferengi characters, and “Far Beyond the Stars” and “Shadows and Symbols,” while not technically being ‘time travel’ (but I’m counting them because all the usual characters are in the past) is a great look at some of the not-so-nice roots of science fiction, and a great acting job by Brooks (it was also the first time I had ever seen Micheal Dorn without his Klingon make-up, and I remember thinking “Oh, wow, he is a very attractive man!”).
Now if a couple of weary time cops would just show up to save the next episode…
That ’90s Show! Remember the one where Chakotay and Urkel get stuck in the mall after it closes? They get into some hijinks, let me tell you.
(For his part, Kim doesn’t see the appeal of dramatic entertainment that you don’t participate in, like a holonovel.)
Which is a bit of a brick joke, since we know from Heroes & Demons that Kim is using the holonovel as a way to have sex with holographic Norse beauties. I’m unsurprised that a soap opera is less fun than a Freya designed to be seduced by your character.
Also what about the transporters on the shuttlecraft?
This is my pet peeve. Star Trek got this right exactly one time (to the best of my recollection), when in TNG’s Power Play, it was a plot point that it wasn’t enough to just gain control of the ship’s transporters, since the shuttlecraft have their own. Every other time– whether it’s Alexander supposedly in danger in New Ground, Lwaxana/Odo trapped in the turbolift in The Forsaken, and this episode– nobody ever considers using the shuttle transporters.
Always thought these episodes were a lot of fun, and I still wish Rain had joined the crew full-time (as apparently was considered). She had more chemistry with Paris than B’Elanna ever did.
Putting my books aside, the absence of the Eugenics Wars never bothered me. I mean, World War II consumed much of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific in the 1940s, but if you were to drop in on Los Angeles in 1943, you’re not going to find yourselves in the middle of a war-torn wasteland or apocalyptic battlefield or whatever. If you looked closely, sure, there might be some War Bond posters in sight and the front pages of the papers are going to be full of war news from overseas, but everyday life in L.A. is still going on without the War being right in your face all the time.
And it’s not as though the Voyager crew had any time or interest in getting involved in the Eugenics Wars during their brief, hectic visit to the 1990s. They had plenty of other things to occupy themselves with besides discussing Khan or whatever.
Greg Cox @15 “If you were to drop in on Los Angeles in 1943, you’re not going to find yourselves in the middle of a war-torn wasteland or apocalyptic battlefield or whatever. If you looked closely, sure, there might be some War Bond posters in sight and the front pages of the papers are going to be full of war news from overseas, but everyday life in L.A. is still going on without the War being right in your face all the time”
Tell that to George Takei and other people of Asian descent.
I absolutely love these episodes! As a child of the 90s, I, as well, get very nostalgic watching this episode now. I personally think EBJ is a very effective villain, a snotty, cocky middle-aged Tech-bro. There are a few contrived plot conveniences I agree but overall I would have given at least an 8.
I do feel like putting the only Black maincast member in a du-rag today would be seen as racist but it’s a million times better than “my friend is obviously Chinese and got his ears caught in a rice-picker”
I would have loved for future episodes to have Neelix completely addicted to late-20th-century soap operas, that would have been hilarious.
This one is pure fun. The plot itself is nothing we haven’t seen before, but the execution is superlative. The style, the tone, the whole character of Starling. It’s as pulpy a villain as Trek has gotten up to this point. The setting. It’s pure nostalgia, plus a no-holds barred adventurous vibe throughout. Future’s End gets right everything what TNG’s Time’s Arrow got wrong. It’s focused, and it wastes no time getting into the thick of it. And it gives the show a chance to break from the usual Trek formula and cut loose a little.
I definitely enjoy Tuvok’s line, and it would have played even better had they inadvertently ventured into a sci-fi convention of some sort. But my favorite line is a Janeway line in the second part. We’ll get to it next week.
This was the first time I saw Sarah Silverman in anything. It’s not surprising she’s become a big comedy icon since. She has instant chemistry with McNeill.
Braga and Menosky’s script not only commits to the premise, but it’s not afraid of having some fun. Neelix and Kes’s soap opera. Janeway and Chakotay both showing a surprisingly relaxed attitude towards the mission. How much of a doofus Braxton can be given his responsibility (which gets its own kind of resolution in season 5). Plus, Livingston directs the hell out of this first part. This is something that works well for Voyager at this point. A big scale two parter that isn’t afraid of having fun, even if isn’t breaking new ground on a narrative level. I’ll take this over Basics any day.
It was around this time, I think, that I started to realize that Deep Space Nine was the show you went to for thoughtful, intense drama and Voyager was the show you went to for big action romps and FX spectacle. This is a fairly superficial 2-parter that makes little logical sense but can be fun if you don’t think about it much.
Sarah Silverman as Rain was certainly the high point of the episode, charismatic, funny, and gorgeous.
Greg is absolutely right in @15 — LA being untouched by the Eugenics Wars is perfectly consistent with 20th-century history. Aside from a couple of conflicts with Mexico and indigenous nations in the first couple of decades, no wars in the 20th century were fought on continental US soil. Los Angeles was never bombed or invaded even during the biggest wars of the century, so why should the Eugenics Wars have been any different?
And the story reasons for ignoring the EW should be self-evident. That was a plot point from a different series, one that would be too complicated to explain to new viewers and irrelevant to the story being told. Besides, it made sense in the actual 1990s to ignore the 1960s premise that there would be a global war over eugenics in the 1990s — for the same reason that 21st-century Doctor Who episodes have ignored what the classic series established about Earth having space colonies and a Moonbase and so on by the early 2000s. Roddenberry set that precedent way back in “Encounter at Farpoint” when he retconned World War Three (which “Space Seed” had equated with the Eugenics Wars, more or less) into a conflict from the mid-21st century, because it was logical for an ’80s show to push it further into the future so as not to seem incongruous to viewers. The decision of DS9 and ENT to re-establish the Eugenics Wars as an explicit part of the canon hadn’t happened yet; it was only 3 months away in DS9’s case, but “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” would mistakenly put the EW only 200 years in the past instead of 400. It wasn’t until ENT and STID that they were explicitly re-established as a late 20th century conflict.
Besides, there was a reference to “Space Seed” in the episode — there’s a photo of a DY-100-class ship taking off taped to a cabinet in Rain’s office. And since the EW ended in 1996, maybe the episode is set a few months after it ended, hence the lack of discussion about it.
Speaking of the Eugenics Wars, whatever became of the Khan prequel series at CBS? If memory serves, Nick Meyer was attached. I haven’t heard anything about it in some time. Was it canceled or lost in the shuffle of all the new Trek projects? Anyhow, I was interested in seeing how they would handle the EW with real history.
But yes, this is a fun couple of episodes. I was most thankful for the invention of the mobile emitter. Picardo is too good to keep in the sickbay all the time. Any old contrivance would do.
Yeah, Chakotay’s comment about Janeway’s legs? Definitely ewww . . .
@21
She does have nice legs. For a human.
I forgot to mention, but what’s up with Chakotay’s hairstyle? Did he really think it made a difference whether it was combed up or forward?
“…As a Starfleet Captain I swore I’d never get involved in one of these god-forsaken paradoxes. ‘The future’s in the past, the past is in the future.’ It all gives me a headache.”
I also love how the episode makes fun of the time traveling tropes. By far my favorite quote from Part I.
I just noticed this episode aired not long before the release of Star Trek: First Contact, so it further makes sense they didn’t want too heavy a story here, given the Enterprise-E crew does go back to post WWIII Earth.
This was also my first exposure to Sarah Silverman, and where my mind goes every time I’ve seen her since. It’s too bad Rain doesn’t get to pull a Gillian Taylor and jump on Paris’ shoulders as he’s beaming out (or Tuvok’s, which would have been hilarious).
Yes! Finally it’s time for the EMH to be able to leave Sickbay (more on that next week).
A very nice episode.
No wonder Robert Beltran wasn’t too happy with the show. I’ve never seen any main Star Trek character get such lame lines. Captain Braxton wants to blow up voyager. And Chakotay responds to Janeway, “What if he’s telling the truth.” Then the, Got your legs comment.
BTW Rain Robinson. When someone crashes your computer, there’s no need to put on your backpack to chase them.
Your ‘There’s coffee in that nebula’ heading reminded me that they should have had someone make a PriceCostco run for coffee & snacks!
@25 Tom W – in the 90’s I used a backback as a purse & I probably would have grabbed it before heading out the door. My purse is my life! :P
26. treebee72
She didn’t think her backpack was that important when she went to pick up her pizza. She even left the door open. It’s not like she was going anywhere but to confront Paris and Tuvok.
Hello to Voyager’s first mid-season two-parter! I think it was Brannon Braga who noted Voyager was good at coming up with one-off villains for these event stories (so it’s a shame they tended to default to the Borg Queen in later years). Henry Starling is a wonderfully sleazy character, steeped in the worst of 20th century morals and unable to understand that these virtuous 24th century types aren’t like him.
The show seems to be testing Paris out with various straight men at the moment. Perhaps someone has realised Neelix is a bit too obnoxious to be an effective McCoy to Tuvok’s Spock, so Paris kind of takes on the role here. (“Vulcans. Deep down you’re all a bunch of hypochondriacs.”) They actually make a very good double act, especially when Rain is added to the mix as the innocent they have to bluster to.
Braxton must be one of the most inept Federation officers in history. Not content with trying to murder 100+ people on circumstantial evidence, he proceeds to spend thirty years completely failing to blend in on 20th century Earth: The best he can come up with is living on the streets acting as crazy as possible. And they gave this guy a timeship?
The tension ratchets up well but that’s an odd point to end the episode: Voyager being spotted is largely incidental in Part II.
And yes, of course, 1996 should put us in the middle of the Eugenics Wars according to TOS. (I know the novels tried to retcon them as a secret war the public didn’t know about, which received a mixed response…and I should probably be careful with the writer in here, especially since I’ve never read those ones.) Mind you, I’d just unknowingly written a story in which 1996 Norwich had been as unaffected as 1996 Los Angeles, so I was glad for the precedent… We get to see Khan’s ship in the observatory anyway. Either way, I’m perfectly happy to accept that the Eugenics Wars didn’t touch anywhere where the writers lived. (Bombing raids in the world wars aside, mainland Britain’s managed to avoid any wars here since about 1746.)
Kim’s first time in command of the ship and he even gets to sit in the big chair. I think that’s also Torres’ first time manning Ops. Ensign Kaplan, barely visible in the background in this two-parter despite having dialogue, has a more visible but more short-lived role in “Unity”. (And I have no idea what her fourth appearance is?) Neelix and Kes get addicted to daytime soaps… (Is that really a nostalgia thing? Soap operas still seem like an ongoing thing here.) Some poor schluck is going to come back to his ute and find Tuvok and Paris have got it disintegrated. Hope they’ve got good insurance.
Nitpick: It’s not Kim’s rescue of Janeway and Chakotay that results in Starling hacking into Voyager’s database, it’s them attempting to beam the Aeon up once they’re back on board.
I seem to recall a short story in one of the early Strange New Worlds collections where Dulmur and Lucsly are hiding in the cupboard when Paris and Tuvok meet Rain and help them escape by knocking out Dunbar (yes, “Starling’s goon” has a name). I’m not sure if the latter matches what’s seen on screen though…
@28/cap-mjb: “And yes, of course, 1996 should put us in the middle of the Eugenics Wars according to TOS.”
Right at the end, actually. “Space Seed” said that Khan ruled until 1996 and was the last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
The novels put the end of the Wars in February 1996 and the events of “Future’s End” nine months later in November.
I screwed up with Kaplan — her next and last appearance after this two-parter is in “Unity.” She is, however, mentioned in “Macrocosm.” I will edit the post….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For me the issue with the episode isn’t quite that the Eugenics Wars were out of sight, out of mind — admitting the USA carefully kept out of it then, you’d probably see it only on the news — but that it was a missed opportunity. I know the Eugenics Wars are more of a TOS plot point but they could have used the two-parter to explore the wars without saying it was them: Star Trek is pretty much already an alternate timeline as it is and the call-back would have been nice.
Or, better yet, explore what it meant for the Eugenics Wars to be a covert conflict. But oh well, otherwise it works well enough so I guess I can’t complain too much.
@31/Loic A: “Star Trek is pretty much already an alternate timeline as it is”
That’s become impossible to deny by now, but how many casual UPN viewers in 1996 would’ve been able to understand that? Most of them would’ve expected a show set in the future traveling to the present to depict the present as they knew it. Defining it as an overtly alternate reality from our own, in the middle of a time travel story, would’ve needlessly confused the issue, because viewers (those not familiar enough with TOS to get the reference) would’ve thought it was about restoring the timeline to our own. Sure, the TOS fans would’ve understood and expected the Eugenics Wars references, but one thing that fans of the franchise have a hard time understanding is that we are not actually the majority of the audience. There are many more casual viewers who don’t share our encyclopedic knowledge. And it’s a basic rule of writing to make your work accessible to people with no advance knowledge of the subject, not just the experts.
Besides, the whole appeal of having characters from the future or an alien society come down to present-day Earth is to see them interact with the world as we know it, to imagine them actually being here where we live. If it’s going to be a version of Earth that isn’t our own, there’s no point even setting it in the present.
@30, don’t worry, as far as we’re concerned you got it right the first time, just as you “always” do. And we’ll stick to that story even if they question us separately…
Hello to Voyager’s first mid-season two-parter! I think it was Brannon Braga who noted Voyager was good at coming up with one-off villains for these event stories (so it’s a shame they tended to default to the Borg Queen in later years).
@28/cap-mjb: Future’s End definitely set a template, and Starling is an interesting case of a very broad stereotypical villain. Nuance is off the table for these types of characters. He’s not that different from the likes of Chaotica, who would become a familiar face during season 5. It’s easy to notice Braga’s footprints all over this. His passion for old-school pulpy B movie sci-fi permeates these episodes, and would become a benchmark for future Voyager stories (but you’re right that the Borg Queen becomes too much of a crutch later on).
Even someone like Braxton isn’t that different. Unlike the other temporal agents we’ve seen on DS9, Braxton is an extreme case of taking his job way too literally. The fact that a piece of Voyager’s hull is amongst the evidence is enough for him to unilaterally decide to blow up a ship full of innocent people. A more nuanced or realistic character would think twice. He doesn’t. It fits perfectly with this B movie feel and setting that this two parter evokes. Future’s End is not concerned with the ethical implications of Braxton’s extreme actions because that would conflict with the easy-going adventurous spirit the story evokes.
Hmm, this episode (and the two-parter in general) was more corny than humorous to me and was Voyager’s take on Star Trek IV: TVH, specifically taking the Starfleet crew and having them interact with contemporary humans for the anticipated resulting comedy. Even though I’m also a child of the ‘90s, I was also already cynical at the time and saw this no more than a November sweeps ratings stunt (how the network airing Star Trek: VOY tries to pull in higher viewers for these “event” episodes in order to charge higher rates to advertisers purchasing commercial time). This was passable entertainment but it also seemed to be inconsequential other than the EMH getting the mobile emitter which opened up his character nicely to more stories. Also, interestingly, Captain Braxton will be recast when he’s featured on the show a few seasons later.
And while I’m not nostalgic for this episode or two-parter specifically, I am nostalgic in general for this time in my life and the then current state of Star Trek. For the former, I remember going on a high school field trip in my senior year to NYC which was very memorable and which was around a week or two before Star Trek: First Contact hit theaters so I was super stoked for that. And regarding this era in Star Trek history, this was undoubtedly the last peak in popularity of Trek, or at least TNG-era Trek. The aforementioned First Contact was a commercial and critical hit, DS9 was in its 5th season and firing on all cylinders including the excellent “Trials and Tribble-ations” charmingly celebrating the 30th anniversary of Trek, and then you had Voyager which was, well, just okay. And then the gradual decline in quality and commercial success began post-First Contact. Now we’re in a new age of Star Trek that seems to be in abundant supply that rivals the TNG/DS9/VOY era in sheer quantity, but needs to be careful in slipping over the line into over-saturation.
@30: Glad to know I’m not going crazy! We all make mistakes…and fortunately we can now edit them out!
Well, I have watched TOS, TNG, DS9 and ENT before watching Voyager and even though I know there were Eugenics wars at some point in time, I would’ve been terribly confused if they returned to 1996 and landed in the middle of a war zone. So I am glad they did not go that way.
I enjoyed this episode greatly because of the small funny moments and because despite the danger they are fighting against it is very lighthearted.
I was going to mention that this episode was significant as being the final appearance of Janeway’s bun but a previous commenter beat me to it. I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned in the There’s Coffee in that Nebula section.
@38 – People keep saying that, but there’s still the 2nd part. That still counts as an episode.
@39
She does not wear the bun in the second part, she has a pony tail.
Janeway has Kirk syndrome in this episode as she beams down with her 2nd and 3rd in command (and possibly her 4th as it’s been implied that Tom is next in line after Tuvok) leaving an ensign in charge of the ship. I understand her bringing Tom as a history buff and also a pilot in case they need to actually fly the timeship. I also understand Janeway going herself because of her science background she can figure out the science behind how the timeship works ( given their original mission I assume they didn’t have a dedicated science officer. Janeway seemed to function in that role until 7 of 9 comes along). But why did she bring both Chakotay and Tuvok? Especially Tuvok who as a non human could cause alot of problems if anything went wrong.
@41. Michael
“Especially Tuvok who as a non human could cause alot of problems if anything went wrong“
Since they went back into time to 1996, Spock already had rock star status thanks to the original series. So it would work to Tuvok’s favor if he was discovered.
@41/Michael: Harry was usually the de facto science officer, much like his fellow operations manager Data in TNG. I guess an ops manager doubling as a science officer makes a certain amount of sense, since the ops manager is in charge of coordinating and allocating ship resources, and on a vessel with a strong science focus, that could entail managing sensor systems and reporting on the findings of the science staff and so forth. I tend to assume that bridge science officers who seem to have endless knowledge in all fields of science at their instant beck and call are actually passing along results reported by the science staff down below. That’s probably what Spock was listening to through that Feinberger earpiece in some episodes.
I’ve always liked Sarah Silverman, both as an actress and as an interesting, compelling person. So it’s a little annoying to me to see Tom trying to work his smarmy charm on her character, and even worse in the next episode when he appears to actually get somewhere.
Eh, I have a hard time with this one. I find the guest stars very distracting, especially Sarah Silverman, who was already “famous” by the time I first saw this episode.
Also:
“Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, and Paris beam down wearing civilian clothes appropriate for the era.”
I’m not certain those clothes were ever acceptable in any era.
nealh: I was there in the 1990s. Their clothes blended perfectly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad – the clothes may have blended perfectly, but they were never appropriate!
nealh: Dude, after the train wrecks that were 1970s fashions and 1980s fashions, 1990s fashions were a huge step up, trust me…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@47: I would agreed with Krad. While fashions from the ‘90s certainly appear dated today, they’re still much more subdued than the ‘70s or ‘80s. People can dress up in costumes from those latter eras for Halloween and they totally work because those fashions were so over the top and goofy. I think fashions from the 2000s would still blend in fine today.
There were fashions in the 2000s? I thought that was when everyone gave up.
Janeway would wear the bun-and-ponytail from here until early season 4. Janeway’s hair is actually how I tell one season from another…
@53: Yes, and actually you can generally tell what season of VOY it is based on any of the female cast member’s hairstyle (Janeway, Torres, Kes) except for Seven who always kept her hair the same way. And personally I liked Janeway’s hairstyle that she had from early season 4 on the best: with all of her down and cropped shoulder length. It just seemed the most relaxed and practical.
@54: I agree. Although the bun in its many variations had probably become iconic by that point, the cropped hairstyles from season 4 onwards definitely seemed more comfortable and practical.
My comment duplicated so I went ahead and over wrote it.
Wait a second!
You mean to say that Braxton attacks Voyager due to evidence linking it to a future catastrophe, and the result of the attack is what provides the actual impetus and opportunity for said catastrophe, as well as the actual evidence in question?
That’s a time paradox worthy of Q…
@57/Shloz: Ah, “We accidentally caused the very thing we were trying to prevent” is the oldest time “paradox” in the book, and one that a supposedly experienced time cop like Braxton should’ve been aware of.
(I put “paradox” in quotes because it’s not actually a paradox at all. A paradox is a self-contradictory premise, a problem that can’t be solved because it invalidates its own answer — e.g. you go back to prevent something, and since it didn’t happen, you never went back to prevent it, so it did happen, so you did go back and prevent it, so it didn’t happen so you did go back, etc. etc. in an unresolvable loop. If you go back and cause the thing that prompted you to go back, then that’s a self-consistent event with a single non-contradictory outcome, and thus is not a paradox at all in the correct usage of the word. The only thing it contradicts is our common-sense expectation of causality, but ordinary causality doesn’t apply in a time travel event.)
@58 – My favorite example of this is Guy Pearce’s version of The Time Machine. His fiance dies and he becomes obsessed with building a time machine to go back and save her. No matter what he tries, she still dies that night in different ways. At the end of the movie, the Uber Morlock tells him why he can’t save her: because he’s stuck in a paradox. Her death is what causes him to build the time machine; so if she doesn’t die he never builds the time machine to go back and save her…
@59/Austin: I don’t like that Time Machine example at all, because it’s self-contradictory. He actually does change a number of things about the past, but he still concludes the past is immutable just because he doesn’t change the one thing he wanted. Okay, it’s finally explained why he can change anything but that specific thing, but he doesn’t know that at the time he concludes it’s immutable. Worse, he decides her fate is immutable after only one try. For all he knew, if he’d tried it a second time, he would’ve succeeded. So having a character who’s supposed to be a scientist jump to that conclusion based on only a single unrepeated trial was really shoddy writing. They should’ve done a montage or something where he tried it dozens of times and never succeeded.
Also, that’s not really an example of the specific kind of time loop we’re talking about, where it turns out that your time travel actually caused the thing you wanted to prevent. For that to be the case here, he’d have to find out that his time travel had been the reason she was killed in the first place, which it wasn’t.
@41/Michael:
Janeway also has “This is an Ensemble TV Show” Syndrome. Gotta have the characters in the opening credits in the thick of things. For the most part, the only reason to have a background character as part of an away team is to act as a redshirt.
@paradoxes: To this day, I still don’t know what came first, the chicken or the egg!
This was a fun episode, but it’s another one that could have been TNG or DS9, showing that this period of VOY was about being as generic as possible. It will, however, end up with the Doctor’s mobile emitter, so there’s that.
And… couldn’t have they left some kind of message for Starfleet in some sort of time capsule? “Help, we’re trapped in the Delta Quadrant!”
@26 – treebee72: They should definitely have sent someone on a snack and coffee run.
@62/MaGnuS:
That’s actually a great idea! I’ve never heard that one before. I’m not sure how they would accomplish that and plan it to be found at the right time. Too early and whoever finds it might think it’s the work of some crazy person. Too late and well…
But sure, like why not try it! They’d have nothing to lose!
@63/Thierafhal: “I’m not sure how they would accomplish that and plan it to be found at the right time.”
Easy. Launch a probe in a cometary orbit that will take 375 years to complete — probably at a high angle to the ecliptic plane to minimize its chance of being detected. Since space is mostly empty and doesn’t have any wind or water currents to blow things off course, orbits are usually perfectly predictable and consistent, as long as you take the gravitational influence of other bodies into account. In 2371, after Voyager is lost in the Badlands (since you want the timeline to stay consistent), the probe’s orbit will have brought it back into the inner Solar System, at which point it turns on its running lights and begins transmitting a beacon to Starfleet Command. So Starfleet learns pretty soon what happened to Voyager and can promptly begin work on devising a means to make contact or bring them home.
@CLB: Ahh, clever! I don’t know, why, but I was thinking in terms of burying it somewhere on the earth, but any idiot could accidently find it. Putting it in space is a no brainer, obviously! (Apparently not to me, haha
)
I always felt this episode and the next were a commentary on that particular year. Henry Starling was an effigy of Bill Gates, and Chronowerx was Microsoft. Windows 95 OSR2 was released that summer. The company was at an apex. The OS was robust and finally realized huge gains after years of improving upon the back engineering of MacOS. Apple was on the verge of bankrupcy. Also, IE3 was rolled into this new OS, and the assault on Netscape Navigator was inevitable. Office Apps were taking market share from competitors like Corel WordPerct, IBM Lotus 1-2-3, etc. Most of Microsoft’s advancement or innovations were through procurement of technology by various means. A faction in the industry considered them the big bad wolf, and a destructive force which was bad for the future.
The dew rag was not a racial thing. I’m tired of today’s misguided sensitivities. If anything, it was a homage to ‘Pac who was killed in September of 1996.
Continuity? Eugenics? Why even discuss it? Berman didn’t give a ship.
I’m sure HG Welles would never have approved of Voyager and the Aeon travelling through space as well as time. Krad, we don’t learn Starling’s motives for wanting to travel to the 29th Century until Pt 2. Future’s End was not VGR’s first time travel episode, that was Time and Again (unless you meant the first to travel into Earth’s history, Krad).
2: The technology was already better than Voyager’s before Starling got his hands on it because it came from the 29th Century. 3: I’m surprised Chronowerx’s slogan isn’t “The Future Is Now!” 9: It does. 10: Or the bun of steel, so I’ve read. 14: On The Orville, I like the fact they don’t have transporters which makes rescue missions a lot harder. 26: I think they do in Pt 2.
28: Yep, they’ll pair Tom and Tuvok again in Worst Case Scenario and Gravity and it would work there too. I think Braxton was driven mad after suffering an incredible run of bad luck over the course of 30 years in Earth’s history. 29: Do you think they deliberately set it in 1996 to coincide with the end of the Eugenics Wars (although Dr Bashir, I Presume seemed to think it took place in the 22nd Century)?
31: Has ST ever directly tackled the Eugenics Wars? 35: I think Trek has already reached a point of saturation overkill due to so many competing properties. 41: Maybe their science officer was killed when Voyager was first brought to the DQ? A first officer is always on an away mission (at least in modern Trek) and Tuvok is security chief – he should be on this mission.
54: Seven occasionally gets to let her hair down and I think Mulgrew ditched the bun because she was tired of the Katherine Hepburn comparisons. 58: Seven mentions that very same thing to Braxton Mk2 in Relativity and that episode was an example of that paradox. 60: Like Edge of Tomorrow or Groundhog Day?
62: They tried something similar with Telek R’Mor in Eye of the Needle and that failed to work out but I do like the idea of Janeway sending out a Redshirt (in civvies) on a coffee run. 65: Yes, but would it survive Earth’s many wars? 66: What technologies did Microsoft procure? I think Starling is meant to be an evil Bill Gates.
@67/David Sim: “I’m sure HG Welles would never have approved of Voyager and the Aeon travelling through space as well as time.”
I hate stories where time travelers stay on the same point on Earth’s surface, because they’re forgetting the basic fact that the Earth does not stand still. It constantly moves through space on a convoluted, spiraling path. Jump through time to “the same point” and you’ll end up in empty space, because Earth will have moved somewhere else. There is no such thing as movement through time without movement through space, or vice-versa.
Wells kind of gets a pass, because his time machine was basically more of a time-dilation machine — as described, it stayed in situ and slowed the occupant’s perceptions so that the outside world raced by around him. Although one would think, then, that outside observers would still be able to see it with the occupant frozen within. So Wells’s description of the model time machine disappearing from the observers’ view was inconsistent.
“Do you think they deliberately set it in 1996 to coincide with the end of the Eugenics Wars”
They set it in 1996 because it was made in 1996. It was a present-day episode, like “Assignment: Earth” was in TOS.
“Has ST ever directly tackled the Eugenics Wars?”
Not onscreen. Greg Cox wrote a novel duology portraying them as a secret war behind the scenes of real-world 1990s history.
@66 – Chip72: I think you’re reading too much into the episode. It’s got a generic tech tycoon, that’s all. And about racial issues, we don’t get to decide what others, particularly minorities, consider racist.
I think it’s a danger of this episode to try to fit the Eugenics Wars and so on in what is clearly an episode that is just flat out ignoring them. It’s our job as Trekkies to do that but I just think of it as a parallel timeline or, even better, shut my brain off and go, “Okay, they went to Los Angeles in the Nineties. Its funny.”
Sarah Silverman is, indeed, gorgeous and funny in the role too.
@70/C.T. Phipps: The point is that there’s no need to “fit,” because there’s no problem that needs to be solved one way or the other. No war in the past hundred years has been fought within the continental United States, so it makes no sense to be surprised that the same is true of the Eugenics Wars. There’s no need to invoke a parallel timeline or to “try to fit” a darn thing; you just have to remember that very simple fact about actual history, that there is nothing remotely strange or unusual about an American city being untouched by an ongoing global war. Or, for that matter, about Americans completely ignoring massive warfare happening elsewhere in the world, as we did with the civil wars that raged through Africa in the actual 1990s. For that matter, American troops were fighting in Afghanistan for two whole decades until this year, but how often did you see any reminder of that in your everyday life?
One thing that I totally hate in essentially every Star Trek go-back-to-present-time episode is that it’s always US centered. I understand the budgeting reason for that, but that does not make it less annoying. EVERYTHING happens in California as it is the Center of the World. :D
th1_: Yes, they went back in time to California in “Future’s End,” and also in “Past Tense” and The Voyage Home, but on the other hand, they went to Montana in First Contact, Detroit in “Carpenter Street,” New York in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” an Air Force Base in a never-established location in “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” and both New York and Florida in “Assignment: Earth.” Plus there’s “11:59” and “Carbon Creek,” which take place in Indiana and Pennsylvania, respectively.
Still U.S.-centered, yes, but not always California….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@73/krad: Throw in the trip to 2020s Los Angeles in Picard season 2.
Christopher: countering that, “Little Green Men” was New Mexico…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@75/krad: We don’t know where it was. The shuttle crashed near Roswell, presumably, but there’s no way of knowing if the Air Force base was in the same state. The nuclear test they used to get back was in Nevada.
what about the time they traveled to late 1970s acapulco and helped that divorced couple get back together?
@72/th1: As a resident of the Bay Area, I have always assumed California to be the “Center of the World”, but I suppose if one squints, one can see how some others might not see it that way. Perhaps in the future, it will be discovered that there are other people and cultures elsewhere on this planet. Once again another Star Trek fan has dragged me kicking and screaming to see the broader possibilities of the universe, however fanciful! ;
Either way, though, not California…..
—KRAD
In “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” the Enterprise was spotted over Omaha, so presumably it was the Offutt base. Their Wikipedia page makes the claim.
krad: yeah, ok, you got me here. But what about all the other countries and continents? :)
It’s really pretty simple. It’s a TV show produced in the US (L.A. presumably) and they are not going to spend their budget to send their cast and crew to another country to film a modern day sequence. Perhaps they could try to fake it by recreating a foreign locale on a set (like LA shows that film in “NY”) but, again, budget.
@78/FSS: If that’s a reference to something, I don’t get it.
@83/Austin: Budget shouldn’t be an issue. It would cost less to fake a foreign country on Earth than it would to fake an alien planet, since you can reuse pre-existing studio assets like backlots, costumes, props, vehicles, and stock footage, and don’t need to make up the guest stars as aliens.
So it really just comes down to failure of imagination.
@84. https://treknews.net/2017/05/09/star-trek-tng-love-boat-snl/
Wound up watching this on my semi-random Voyager exploration.
Just noting for the record: If La’an’s adventure in Strange New Worlds S02E03 “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” is now canon, Romulan agent Sera has been battling various factors which have scooted the Eugenics Wars later and later, though certain things are pinned on Taskbar of Time and never go away, no matter how many Time Knives you set the table with.
So, everything works out now.
I really enjoyed this episode. For all that it is kinda dumb in spots, it’s nothing compared to SNW, LD, and I mean even some TOS, in terms of dumbness. You have to kind of go with it, is a general theme of science fiction, and maybe more so when it comes to time travel episodes. But I’ve loved time travel stories since before there was a Back to the Future, so that’s okay by me.
Watching this in 2023, I am impressed by how deep and complexly the plot has been worked out, to so many decimal places. Every scene is smart, even when it gets a little dumb. It is a bit like Future Man in that way. (I really liked Future Man.)
As to making Braxton homeless, the explanation implied I think is that after deciding the was really trapped, he chose some folks to open up to, and they had him put away and pumped full of 1990s antipsychotics. After deciding he was either cured, or hopeless, he was turned out to the street with nothing, probably still on drugs and maybe reeling from ECT or whatever, and he wound up homeless because that is often how it works from there. He’s never been super brilliant, he’s more of a timecop oaf and proves to be dangerously unhinged and potentially cruel without empathy. I thought the homeless choice was tacky, and I guess it is, but it could have worked if they had done something more interesting, and moralistic, about that choice.
Just realized he’s kind of a John Whorfin but without the style, charisma, or fire ants.