“Before and After”
Written by Kenneth Biller
Directed by Allen Kroeker
Season 3, Episode 21
Production episode 163
Original air date: April 9, 1997
Stardate: various
Captain’s log. An elderly (nine-year-old) Kes is being placed by the EMH (who now has hair) into a biotemporal chamber in 2379. Kes is going through the morilogium, the final stages Ocampa go through before death, which includes significant memory loss.
A flash, and then Kes is in sickbay, but now surrounded by the EMH, a boy in civilian clothes, and a woman a Starfleet science uniform. Her only memory is of the EMH talking to her before putting her in the biotemporal chamber, but the confused EMH isn’t ready to put her into the chamber yet and denies saying what she says he said.
The other two are her daughter Linnis and her grandson Andrew, but Kes doesn’t recognize them. Andrew says he finally finished her birthday present and he’s sorry he didn’t give it to her at her ninth birthday party. Her body temperature starts to drop.
A flash, and then Kes is in her quarters. She sees a picture of herself much younger with a newborn infant. She goes into the common room to see Andrew and Linnis. Andrew says he’s still working on her birthday present. Kes learns that Linnis is her daughter, and she escorts her to sickbay. They assume it’s the onset of the morilogium. Paris and Kim come in, and we find out that Paris and Kes are now married, Linnis is their daughter, and Andrew is Linnis’ son by Kim.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Even as the EMH examines her, her temperature starts to drop. Another flash, and then Kes is in the mess hall. Neelix, who is now a full-time security officer, has dusted off his baking skills to make Kes a ninth birthday cake. Andrew also says he doesn’t have her present yet, but he’ll get to it when he has time and it’ll be great. After blowing out the candles, she takes the EMH aside. She still has no memory of her past, but she remembers all her future bits that she’s experienced. The EMH is shocked to see that she knows about the biotemporal chamber—which he had only come up with that morning and was going to tell her about at the party.
They go to sickbay, where the EMH reports to Captain Chakotay. Chakotay thinks it’s a temporal paradox, while the EMH thinks she may have precognitive abilities (which would track with her growing telepathic powers). She and Paris go off to try to find something in her past—which she doesn’t remember—that may explain what’s happening.
Kes finds a reference to Voyager being hit with a chroniton torpedo, during a fight against the Krenim that Paris refers to as the “year of hell,” during which many crew members were killed, including Janeway, Torres, and Carey. Given the temporal fuckery, the chroniton torpedo may be the answer. They were all inoculated against the chroniton radiation after they fought the Krenim, but the biotemporal chamber may have activated the residual radiation in Kes’ cells. This is confirmed after another time jump to right after Andrew was born, when Kes has to tell it all over again to the EMH. This after she jumps to when Kim took the picture of Kes and baby Andrew that was by her bed when she was nine years old in the future. (Time travel really messes with verb tenses…)
The EMH creates a force field in the hopes of being able to protect her from further time jumps, but it doesn’t work. They need to know the exact frequency of the chroniton torpedo that struck Voyager, but sensors were down during that attack, and they have no idea what that frequency might be.
Kes’ body temperature drops, a flash, and then she’s giving birth to Linnis on a shuttlecraft. It’s in the middle of the “year of hell,” and they get back to the ship with the newborn Linnis, but the ship is in terrible shape. The EMH is offline, the main computer is down, and there’s no way to try to cure Kes with the ship in the shape it’s in.
Then Kes jumps again, this time to the day of the first Krenim attack. A party in the holodeck is interrupted by red alert. Janeway and Torres (whom Kes, in essence, meets for the first time) are killed in the firefight, and Kes goes into a Jefferies Tube to get the frequency of the chroniton missile.
Another jump, this time to 2373 (the “present” of the late third season). She goes through the explanation all over again, and the EMH (who is now bald again) and Torres construct a biotemporal chamber. However, in the middle of his using the chamber to remove the chroniton radiation, she jumps again, this time to when Neelix convinced Janeway to let him and Kes remain on board after rescuing her from the Kazon and destroying the Caretaker’s array—and then she jumps again to her childhood, and she tries to convince her father of what’s happening. Her father, of course, thinks it’s just her overactive imagination.
Then she jumps back to the day she was born. Then to being a fetus inside her mother. Then to being a zygote. Then to being a cell.
Then time moves forward for her, and she is born, and then she jumps to the biotemporal chamber in 2373, as the EMH has removed all the chroniton radiation from her cells. She’s all better and back in sync.
A party is held on the holodeck. Tuvok reminds everyone that this is only a possible future, as Kes’ travelling back through her own life likely had an impact on the timelines. Janeway also says she’d like to know as much as she can about the Krenim, and Kes runs off to file a report, as this adventure has taught her that there’s no time like the present…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? A biotemporal chamber may extend your life, but it will also activate any chroniton radiation that’s in your cells. So be careful of that…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway and Torres are both killed by that old Trek standby, the exploding console, which takes both of them out. After hearing the whole episode about how the pair of them were killed, it’s kind of hilarious that it’s so anticlimactic a death as getting blown up like some redshirt…
Mr. Vulcan. After Janeway’s death, Tuvok becomes first officer under Chakotay.
Forever an ensign. Kim becomes Paris’ son-in-law and makes him a grandfather. That’s not weird at all.
Half and half. Because Kes only remembers what happened in her future in the episode, the moment where she “first” encounters Torres (right before her and Janeway’s death) is hilarious. “You must be B’Elanna,” and Torres laughs her ass off at the ridiculous statement.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. In the future, Neelix becomes a security officer. This means he has to trim his hair and wear a uniform, and also only have one duty on board, all of which are extremely unlikely.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. During the year of hell, the EMH is deactivated for several months, and some time after he comes back, he decides that he needs to have hair. Also some time around when Kes is eight years old, he takes on the name Vincent van Gogh.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Kim apparently marries and procreates with a woman whom he first meets as an infant shortly after she was born and who grows up within the space of a year. That’s not weird at all.
Torres and Paris are a couple by the time the year of hell rolls around, which accurately predicts the two characters’ future, though it’s not much of a future in this timeline, as Torres is killed, and Paris and Kes later wind up as a couple.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. We get three different parties, two of which, one to celebrate Kes being cured (the reason for the one the day of the Krenim attack is never given) are held in the Paxau Resort program. The other, for Kes’ ninth birthday, is in the mess hall.
Do it.
“In approximately six months, I will apparently expose Kes to some type of biotemporal field in a highly experimental, but nonetheless brilliant attempt to stop her aging process.”
“However, some five years later, when I attempt an experimental and, I might add, ingenious procedure to extend her lifespan, the biotemporal field I expose her to will trigger dormant chroniton particles.”
–Two different quotes from the EMH in which he tells the crew what Kes told him about the future and making sure to throw in some self-aggrandizement for good measure.
Welcome aboard. Jessica Collins (who is actually older than Jennifer Lien) plays Linnis, while Christopher Aguilar plays Andrew. Janna Michaels is the child Kes, while Michael L. Maguire plays Kes’ father.
And our Robert Knepper moment is Rachael Harris—currently being amazing as Dr. Linda Martin on Lucifer—as Kes’ mother!
Trivial matters: Kenneth Biller’s primary inspiration for this episode was the Martin Amis novel Time’s Arrow, which is also about someone who experiences time in reverse.
This episode was the inspiration for the “Year of Hell” two-parter in the fourth season (which was originally intended as the season-spanning two-parter to end this season, but they went with the Borg-heavy “Scorpion” instead), as Brannon Braga loved the idea of portraying the year of hell described and briefly portrayed in this episode.
Starting with this episode, Jennifer Lien wears her natural, longer hair instead of the short blonde wig, mostly so she wouldn’t have to wear the prosthetic ears (now covered by her hair), which Lien had been reacting badly to.
Neelix mentions Kes’ single lung when she blows out the candle on her birthday cake, a reference to the fact that she donated a lung to Neelix in “The Phage.”
Joe Carey is mentioned as being killed during the year of hell, the first reference to the deputy chief engineer since his last appearance in “State of Flux.”
Kes jumps to the scene at the end of “Caretaker” when Neelix convinces Janeway to let him and Kes stay on board. “Caretaker” also established that the Ocampa all lived underground in hiding from the Kazon and protected by the Caretaker; Kes’ mother’s declaration that she’ll some day see the sun when Kes is born will prove prophetic.
Just as with Worf’s birthday party in TNG’s “Parallels,” the Voyager crew sings “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” to celebrate Kes’ birthday to avoid having to pay royalties to use “Happy Birthday.”
The only thing we see in the future that actually comes to pass is the Paris-Torres relationship. The biggie is, of course, that Kes won’t be on the ship for the next six years—she’ll only be on board for another couple three months. Also, Neelix will never become a security officer (or get a uniform); Janeway, Torres, and Carey will survive the fight against the Krenim; Paris and Kes will never get together and procreate, which means Kim will never marry their daughter and procreate; and (thank all the deities that exist) the EMH will not give himself hair (nor choose the name van Gogh).
This is the first Voyager episode directed by Allan Kroeker, who had already directed the DS9 episodes “The Assignment” and “The Ascent.” Kroeker will go on to direct the series finales of each of the two extant shows, and the next one, as he will helm DS9’s “What You Leave Behind,” Voyager’s “Endgame,” and Enterprise’s “These are the Voyages…”
Set a course for home. “Grandma, don’t look, you’ll spoil the surprise!” This is a brilliantly written episode. Kenneth Biller’s track record has been hit (“Jetrel,” “Initiations“) and miss (“Twisted,” “Maneuvers“), but he absolutely nails this one. It’s beautifully structured, reminding me favorably not just of Time’s Arrow, but also the Harold Pinter play Betrayal. But what’s particularly nifty about this is not just that Kes is moving backwards through her life, but she only remembers what happened to her “before,” which is always in the future for everyone around her. It’s wonderful to see Kes try to figure out what’s going on, based only on things that haven’t happened yet and with no memory of what happened before.
Jennifer Lien does superlative work here. She modulates seamlessly from an amnesiac elderly woman to someone who becomes more lucid as she figures out what’s going on—and grows younger. The book on Kes has always been her curiosity and eagerness to learn, and that serves her well even if she doesn’t entirely remember who she is. This is a very nifty little science fictional mystery, and it’s to Biller’s credit that it doesn’t bog down in repeated exposition each time Kes jumps to a new time where she has to explain stuff all over again. Credit also to Janna Michaels, who looks and sounds very much like someone who will grow up to become Lien.
Everything just clicks beautifully here, with so many nice touches, like the EMH having hair and picking a name, like Janeway and Torres being killed with Chakotay now in charge, Neelix formally joining Starfleet, and seeing both Paris and Kim raising families (well, the same family, really).
Having said that, the notion that Kim marries and has a kid with someone who was born on the ship just feels oogy to me for some reason. Of course, we don’t see the relationship develop, and apparently half-Ocampa develop as fast as full-blooded ones, but it’s still just odd. In addition, we see Neelix having already joined security before the Krenim’s first attack, which doesn’t quite track. Him joining the crew formally after the losses suffered during the year of hell makes sense—him doing so prior to that, not so much.
There are a few other head-scratchers, too. Kes fading out of sight right before one of her time jumps makes no sense except to needlessly draw out the scene—none of the other time jumps are like that. And then there’s the ending, where it’s all fixed by the EMH drawing out the chronitons in 2373—except she already jumped back several more times. So what was the point of watching her go all the way back to being a single cell?
Still, these are minor complaints about what is overall a superb episode that really gives Lien a chance to shine.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be doing a bunch of panels at the virtual version of Dragon Con this coming weekend. Keep an eye on his blog, his Facebook page, or his Twitter for his schedule, which should be finalized soonish.
I love this one! Jennifer Lien is more than capable of carrying episodes, and it really was a shame they didn’t let her do it more. The glimpse into what life would look like for her on Voyager had she stayed is fascinating to me, and I wish they had been able to do more with it in the series. The idea of having a whole line of Ocampa on the ship, and what that means with their short lifespans, is super interesting. Once Kes is gone, Linnis and her descendants are the only Ocama around, and now have no living memory of their homeworld or life outside Voyager, but also no hope of even possibly being alive if and when they reach the Alpha Quadrant, that alone has so many interesting character possibilities!
I also *adore* “Year of Hell,” and so love this episode even more for 1. coming up with the idea and 2. showing more of it than we ever actually get to see in the show. It makes me wish that they really *did* have a full year of hell, not only because it would have made the show more interesting, and stuck to it’s premise more, but also because we get this great glimpse of what life on the other side of that might have looked like. Everyone is a little older, a little wiser, a little closer because of what they have been through, and there is a feeling of real consequences to them being stuck in the Delta Quadrant.
This was a really good episode. There’s two things that stuck out for me when I first watched it: 1) I know gender is a lot more fluid in today’s day and age, but when I first saw this episode I could have sworn that Andrew was a girl when he first appeared. Then he was named and it really threw me. 2) Jennifer Lien’s old age makeup was horrendous. Like, really really bad. She looked more like a melted candle.
Coming off of a couple of really below-average episodes, Voyager kicks back into high gear with this one. Late season second wind or final marathon sprint. Late season 3 Voyager is like that. Before and After is one of the greats. Structurally similar to TNG’s Cause and Effect, but no less brilliant in its execution. This is Voyager done right. When Biller’s motivated, he delivers (if only he’d been as motivated while running that final season….).
Kroeker’s debut on Voyager is superlative. Right from the beginning, this episode shows just how capable he is of directing action and putting viewers in the middle of it, never letting the tension subside. This was his warmup for his upcoming work with DS9’s Dominion War set pieces (and also VOY’s own Year of Hell two parter). It’s not surprising he became the go-to director for overseeing all of the Berman-era series finales.
A nice insight into what could have been for Voyager, had Jennifer Lien been kept on the cast. It’s almost as if they did this episode anticipating the possibility of losing Lien. Kes is the perfect POV for this kind of story. It’s the great to see the little changes to the crew, and the consequences of the Krenim assaults. It also reminds me a bit of what Mike Sussman would do in a few years with Enterprise’s Twilight (which was originally meant to be a Voyager story). Superb episode.
@krad: I think it’s fascinating that the writers had Kim marrying Linnis. It might be irksome by today’s standards, but one assumes that 24th century humanity is socially different enough to have a different, more nuanced view of such unconventional pairings. I’m more impressed that this somehow made into the air without either Rick Berman or the network vetoing it.
@1: Braga’s original intention was in fact to do the Year of Hell story as a season-long arc. Obviously, it was shot down by the higher ups. He finally gets to do it justice with the Xindi arc on Enterprise, six years later.
I love Betrayal. Saw it last year with Loki and daredevil in the leads
The thing with Harry and Linnis doesn’t weird me out because of the age thing, it seems like that would be common with cross-species romances (Sarek is obviously much older than his second wife, for example), and if Linnis had both wanted to stay with her mom and wanted a family of her own, her options for a partner would basically be limited to someone on Voyager. It weirds me out because Harry always read to me as being half in love with Tom, and having him marry Paris’ daughter just seemed like a bizarre transference of that affection.
This is a clever and effective episode, and a great showcase for Kes/Lien, but the temporal physics and logic drive me up the wall. It’s an illustration of how VGR’s time travel stories tended to be pure fantasy and be all but impossible to make sense of in physical terms. Basically, every time Kes jumps back, she’s branching off a whole new alternate timeline by saying and doing things differently than she did the first time through. So that’s something like nine alternate timelines created here.
Or ten, really. It’s interesting to realize that what we see here is the original version of Voyager‘s journey from 2373-9, and everything from this episode on is an altered timeline.
This is one of several episodes where it seemed the writers were trying to explore the plot arcs and character-growth arcs they weren’t allowed to do on a continuing basis by compressing them into a single alternate-reality story. They did more of the same in “Year of Hell,” and in a different way in “Course: Oblivion.”
As much as I like Kes’s longer (Lien’s natural) hair, it’s jarring how quickly it materialized. But then, given how accelerated an Ocampa’s life cycle is, it follows that her metabolism would be accelerated too and she might be able to grow that much hair in just a couple of weeks — and maybe it just wasn’t long enough to get wavy before. She must’ve needed to trim her hair on a daily basis to keep it short.
It’s interesting to realize that what we see here is the original version of Voyager‘s journey from 2373-9, and everything from this episode on is an altered timeline.
@6/Christopher: Would that include Nemesis and Picard? It was Janeway who sent Picard to Romulus, kicking off those events. But of course, another admiral could have given the same order.
@7/Eduardo: Well, yes, of course all the Trek we see is in the same timeline (except Kelvin). When I said everything from this episode on, I meant everything, in every series. Presumably, though, there’s a timeline out there somewhere in which Janeway didn’t live to make it home. It’s just not one we see except in this episode.
This was an amazing episode. I always liked it as a taste of what was to come for Voyager in the future.
And, on a completely different tangent, this episode’s Easter Egg for me was their choice in casting. It always puts a smile on my face seeing Kes’ father not being a revolutionary. For those who may not be aware, the Michael Maguire cast here originated the role of Enjolras in “Les Misérables” when it premiered on Broadway and in 1995, returned to the role for the 10th Anniversary Concert held in London.
@krad – slight typo – Rachel Harris’ Lucifer character is Dr. Linda Martin, not Harris
I’ve always really, really liked this one but then I’m a sucker for temporal anomaly and alternate future type stories. I think that because we had events unfolding in reverse is what made this particular episode unique and intriguing. It’s a great vehicle both for Kes and Jennifer Lien. It really does make you wonder how things would have been different if she had been around at least for the actual “Year of Hell” two-parter. And I was always under the impression that that two-parter was always planned and this episode was like a preview of it but from this review I’ve learned otherwise. I loved all of the little touches like the funny rug on the Doctor’s head and his cycling through different names, and I got a kick out of the revelation that Paris was now Kim’s step-father. A Kes/Paris pairing seems very credible to me. I think this is also a much more improved look for Kes as well. I guess she’s the only Ocampa female ever that’s had long hair!
critter42: Whoops! Good catch. It’s fixed……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So there’s at least 4 timelines (The OG one we only see in this episode, the new timeline here, the Timeless reset, and the Endgame reset.) and possibly several more based on @5 (that Kes might be creating a new branching timeline each time she jumps back and, I guess, each version of Voyager just never sees Kes again and has no idea what happened). Geez. If I was Braxton, I might want to wipe Voyager from time too. At some point you’d think even the characters would start asking themselves questions, in that they’re fully aware of all the resets and reboots of their own lives. Is there even a point to any of this, or might it be a good idea to enjoy a life of hedonism and just wait for the next reset?
@11/garreth: An Ocampa female extra from “Cold Fire” had long hair tied back, as did the half-Ocampa Linnis in this episode.
Warning Way too much thought on Ocampa lifecycles upcoming.
One of the reasons that Neelix and Kes’s relationship always ooged me a bit was the age difference. Not just in the “she’s two! She’s a baby! sense, though. Kes is, we’re told, and given no reason to disbelieve, is a mentally mature adult- but there’s a massive gap in experience between her and Neelix. A relationship between someone who’s only just become an adult and someone with decades of experience need not necessarily involve a massive power imbalance, but when the younger one is also a refugee and the older one owns his own starship…
Eh, that’s likely as not my own cultural baggage from living in a world where it’s not uncommon for older males (with, generally, institutional power which, to be fair, Neelix pretty thoroughly lacks once he joins the Voyager crew) pursuing younger, less experienced women is a fairly common thing. Don’t date your students, professors, is what I’m saying.
But now that I’m thinking about Ocampa life cycles, it raises other questions. Linnis has apparently become a part of the crew- this makes a fair amount of sense, since Voyager in this timeline is extremely short on crew, and Linnis’s developmental pace is apparently a lot closer to her Ocampa mother than her human father. (One hopes they sat down and had some incredibly awkward conversations with the EMH about that beforehand- maybe Kes still would have chosen to have a child knowing she’d likely never see it reach adulthood, but it seems like the sort of expectation you might want to set ahead of time. Then again, I don’t recall offhand much of any family planning taking place on Star Trek *before* someone winds up pregnant.).
But suppose an Ocampan, or a member of a species with a similar life cycle wanted to join Starfleet in less extreme circumstances? If Starfleet Academy is a four year program (more for certain specialties) then an Ocampa that entered the academy at one year of age would be five before they got out- and have only four years of service before enterering the morologium. And this is assuming they don’t decide to take a gap year to have and raise a child. (Starfleet offers child care, of course but it seems likely that at least some Ocampa, of any gender, would prefer to be closely involved in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it development of their offspring). Now granted, medical technology may well extend the Ocampa lifetime- they population we saw in Cold Fire live like twenty or so, I think, which mitigates the problem somewhat, but even then, an Ocampa is spending something like a quarter of their life in the Academy, . Ocampa living long enough to attain the rank of Captain would be unusual- Admiral probably almost unheard of, unless they’re promoted much more rapidly than their peers.
Then again, if Linnis is performing her duties competently, and hasn’t just been given a uniform to humor her (and I see no reason to assume the former is not the case), then she’s presumably learned fairly up-to-date Starfleet science under less than ideal circumstances. Perhaps Ocampa are simply capable of absorbing knowledge more quickly, in which case, Starfleet Academy might introduce some sort of accelerated program for them.
The whole question of Ocampa child-rearing and education raises some interesting questions- at least in that first year they’ve got to learn incredibly quickly- it’d be fun* designing an educational course for them on the fly. Also must have been tough for Naomi Wildman, having another child about her own age for a week or so only to be promptly outgrown.
For the sake of minimum oog, I’m going to assume that Harry Kim was marooned on an asteroid for a couple months or something during which Linnis grew up.
This is a kind of fun and intriguing episode, albeit one with a few shades of “All Good Things” and “Parallels” to it. The structure though has to be almost unique, as we’re basically following a future version of Kes and the others throughout and it’s only near the end that the present version of the characters turn up and this Kes kind of becomes our Kes. It’s probably best not to try and get philosophical or technical about it, just sit back and enjoy the ride through this alternate future of Voyager.
So…how did Chakotay get to be a captain? Janeway clearly doesn’t give him a promotion before she dies. I came up with the idea that there’s a Starfleet regulation where if a starship is out of contact with headquarters indefinitely, the officer in command has the right to assume the rank of captain. (Note that he has regular rank pips rather than the Maquis one.) Everyone seems to have skipped up a grade actually: It’s not mentioned in dialogue aside from Neelix calling Tuvok “Commander Vulcan”, but from the rank pips it looks as though Tuvok’s a full commander (probably: we don’t get a clear look at his insignia), Paris is a lieutenant commander and Always An Ensign Kim is actually a lieutenant.
(As an aside, whilst Neelix never becomes a security officer in the regular timeline, he does in the other “year of hell” timeline that we see in Season 4.)
Hologram technology apparently isn’t up to giving the Doctor convincing hair. As well as being mentioned for the first time since “State of Flux” in Season 1, Carey finally gets a first name, Joe: The fact that he’s mentioned among the casualties of the year of hell means the writing staff clearly knew he was alive in the present at this point despite fan theories to the contrary. Kes’ age being given in the present as “three years two months” seems way out given she turned two back in “Twisted”: Whether you place that near the end of season one or the beginning of season two, we’re nearing the end of season three here, so it must be more than 14 months ago.
First evidence that Paris will actually make a very good husband. It seems from the end that Kes never told him about that, which is a shame: She actually looks jealous on finding herself in a time period where he’s with Torres! (Kim is nice enough to predict Tom will have a family, which turns out to be true in both timelines.) This probably wasn’t the best time to introduce a new haircut for Kes: It looks like another change in the future, so it takes a while to realise that we’re actually in the present and she’s already got it. Plus, the fact we get a scene set during “Caretaker” means she has to go back to the old hair and make-up for that anyway. (She also gets to interrupt Neelix’s big speech, which is nice.) Only appearance of any of Kes’ family.
But unfortunately it’s very hard not to view this episode without a heavy feeling of sadness at what could have been and at the rug about to be pulled from under its featured actor. I don’t think anyone really expected Janeway and Torres to be killed off next season, but they probably didn’t realise how much of this future was going to become so impossible so quickly. They’re clearly setting up an explanation for why Kes is aging at the same rate as Jennifer Lien and in the end they might as well not have bothered. (It is hard to reconcile with “Caretaker” depicting several apparently elderly or middle-aged Ocampa: Were they all near the end of their lives? It’s ignored by “Fury” as well, which depicts Kes as an old woman when she should only be about six or seven, but most of us would like to wipe that one from history anyway.) As it is, when we finally get to the “Year of Hell”, it happens without Kes and they basically pretend this episode never happened.
@16/cap-mjb: “The fact that he’s mentioned among the casualties of the year of hell means the writing staff clearly knew he was alive in the present at this point despite fan theories to the contrary.”
I think you’re mixing up the cause and effect (how fitting). As I understand it, the reason they later assumed he was dead was because they remembered killing him off in the Year of Hell episodes and then forgot it had only been in an alternate timeline.
We saw two Ocampa births in this episode. The setup was pretty BDSM-ish, what with them standing up and chained, but did they really pull the baby from the back? The person behind them never seems to squat down to grab the baby. You know what, I don’t think I want to know…
Should that read “Andrew is Linnis’ son by Kim”, or did I miss something?
Krad: Another typo:
At least three different ways to fix it, depending on what you actually meant… :-)
Somehow they lose their knowledge of the Krenim because when they meet them next season they don’t recognize them nor do they realize that it’s the beginning of the Year of Hell that Kes predicted. Also when was it known that Jennifer Lien would be leaving? Was it before the end of this season?
@18/Austin: Yes, it was established in “Elogium” that the Ocampa equivalent of the uterus is the “mitral sac” that forms on a woman’s upper back when she enters the elogium. (An odd name; “mitral” means shaped like a mitre, i.e. a bishop’s hat, sort of a triangular or spade shape. I guess a sac on the upper back would be kind of triangular.)
And they aren’t chained, just holding onto a bar overhead. I guess in prehistoric times they grabbed a tree branch or something.
@21/Michael: Because of the inconsistencies, my theory is that everything in “Year of Hell” except the closing scene takes place in an alternate timeline.
@22 – Upper back? Yikes! Did you see the size of the baby they delivered? Of course, the show had to use a real human baby. But wow…not sure if that’s even biologically possible.. Like, are they hunched over during the pregnancy? Weird.
Ugh. Great episode, but so much missed potential here. Kes explicitly warns Janeway in the “present” about the Krenim, and at episode’s end Janeway brings it up again. Voyager should have been asking every race they ran into what they knew about the Krenim. Janeway should’ve put the crew immediately to work figuring out a way to defend against those chroniton torpedoes. Instead we don’t even get a mention of any of this until “Year Of Hell”, and even then noboďy gives any indication that they’ve heard of a Krenim.
So does this mean the Ocampa female vagina is located on the upper back as well? If so, the sexual positions might look a bit awkward to other humanoid species.
While I think the episode is very well structured, it annoys me that there’s no call-back to it in Year of Hell.
Kes told them that they needed to avoid the Krenim. At all costs. Also, the one thing she makes a point of remembering is that the chroniton torpedo has a phase variance of 1.47 microseconds, which is the same as the one Seven finds in YoH (I think it’s even the same footage when it explodes). Even if they couldn’t manage to avoid the Krenim (which apparently they could easily have done, as Chakotay thinks the only reason they encountered the Krenim was because of a course change to avoid a comet, which makes no sense but okay…), the first thing they should have done when trying to make their temporal shielding was see what would happen if they assumed a 1.47 microsecond phase variance.
ARGH. I know Voyager was never much for internal continuity and call-backs to earlier episodes, but these are connected episodes where it would have been really, really appropriate to have call-backs.
@26/Muswell: Like I said, that’s why I assume nothing in YoH except the closing scene happened in the Prime reality. The early Voyager scenes in the 2-parter must take place in a different reality where “Before and After” never happened. After all, that reality is erased at the end anyway. It’s all reset back to 2000 years ago, and then the Prime reality (including all onscreen Trek) develops from there.
Yep, “Year of Hell” takes place in an alternate universe where Star Trek: Voyager was a great series to watch. ;-)
@26 and @27
This has bothered me for years! Thanks for the explanation. I will say though that they should have mentioned it in the Year Of Hell episode.
Loved this episode.
@29/Tonya: Well, it’s kind of implicit, isn’t it? I mean, the last scene with Voyager is clearly in a different version of history than the first scene. And that’s the version it ends up with, so it’s the version the rest of the franchise is set in. The simplest answer is that the episode opens in an alternate timeline already. It’s like TNG: “Parallels”: though Worf is from the Prime reality, the first Enterprise he arrives on is already an alternate one, though he doesn’t know it yet. We don’t see the Prime Enterprise until the closing scenes.
@17/CLB: Possible I suppose, although he doesn’t appear in seasons two and three which is before that. I think the theory someone was putting forward a while back was that they’d confused him with Hogan?
Has anyone else noticed it’s always that same blue icing cake they always trot out for parties? I mean it looks delicious but it’s probably a plastic prop that they keep reusing rather than having some kind of variety to the cakes they serve aboard. The poor Voyager crew has it rough!
This is easily my favorite Kes episode. It’s a fun sci-fi story that makes good use of the unique aspects of her character. Kim marrying Linnis is a little weird, but the same could be said of every character. The entire crew knew her when she was a child, so any romantic relationship with anyone on the ship would be a little icky from our perspective.
In my personal headcanon, Kim was imprisoned by the Krenim and therefore wasn’t around much when Linnis was a child. Then when the Year of Hell was over and he was freed, he discovered there was a new beautiful woman on board that he hadn’t already crashed and burned with. From her perspective, here was a guy that her father had been talking up her entire life and that didn’t treat her like a child the way the rest of the crew might.
– Primordial Scream of Outraged Terror –
I was in recovery from the trauma of the Doctor’s … that thing on the Doctor’s head and all ready to post my assessment of this episode (a well-realised Old School Science Fiction fantasy of time travel) spiced with a Lovecraftian ramble about the horrors unleashed through Mr Picardo’s Folly.
Then I tried to post the **** thing and the system CRASHED. The Thing will therefore not be the butt of a joke, because clearly it’s Malignant Power is Very Real and we should all be very, Very Afraid …
This might be the first Voyager episode that didn’t make me cringe in embarrassment over the acting or the plot. Jennifer Lien was outstanding in this . . . way beyond anything she’d been given the opportunity to do before. I did get a little befuddled by the ins and outs of the alternate timelines, but the pacing carried me along through to the end. Wish they’d all been this good.
Am I the only one who thought the Doctor’s hairpiece looked…not bad? Of course, this coming from a wistful bald guy, take my opinion with a grain of salt.
This was one of the best episode of the series. It had a great sci-fi concept and it was one great ride of an episode. And it gave us a glimpse of a possible future of the series.
Jennifer Lien did an amazing job here. She put everything into this and it really paid off. Had the writers given her more episodes like this she probably would have remained on the series and we could have seen amazing character development.
The future parts were really nice and added so much character development that would have been great to see. I feel the writers were laying down some groundwork for possible future stories. Except Tom and Kes getting together, that was just weird but since it was only for this episode I don’t mind.
One thing I did notice is that whenever there is really strong character development on the series it takes place in a tie-travel episode where the events reset and everything is goes back to where it was at the beginning.
@37. Austin: Yes. Double Yes and THRICE YES.
Beware, young fellow, beware and take warning lest thy innocent desires become twisted by and thy dreams empower The Rug That Must Not Be! It watches, it awaits and it hungers!! BEWARE!!! BEWARE!!!!
This is one of the highlights of Voyager’s first 3 seasons, and especially a highlight of Kes’s tragically underutilized character. As a kid watching Voyager I never much cared for Kes, but now as an adult I realize that it’s because they so poorly served a character (and actor) who had potential all along. Most of her episodes were focused either on her ill-defined psychic powers and had nothing to say about her actual character, or on her love life which was just dull and annoying for the most part. This is probably the one truly good episode Kes had.
It must be fun for the writers to posit future events that they know they can’t actually write into the show, because Star Trek does it a lot. Especially on Voyager with its ever-looming reset button built into the end of every episode.
@27 Wasn’t Annorax and his crew in the timeship for 200 years, not 2000? He mentioned the timeframe of their activities several times and that’s what I remember it being.
@40/eric: Yeah, sorry, I meant 200.
Harry Kim predates Twilight’s Jacob by at least a decade.
@CLB/Kes’s hair:
Very similar case to Worf’s hair suddenly being very long and tied back in “Face of the Enemy”. There is the part in “Insurrection” where it’s stated that accelerated hair growth is characteristic of a Klingon in puberty. Obviously Worf was not in puberty between “Aquiel” and “Face of the Enemy”, but perhaps it’s not the only time a Klingon’s hair can grow super fast. That, or his hair was stimulated artificially, similar to Seven of Nine. Or as you theorized with Kes, maybe Worf had to stay on top on it, but just finally got fed up after years of hassle.
@cap-mjb/The Doctor’s hair
Well, I mean the costuming department was limited to how realistic toupees are in our time, haha.
@The musucal/the movie “Hair”: Since I’m talking about hair, great play; great movie!
11. garreth
Just to pick a nit, Paris would be Kim’s Father-in-law, not his step-father.
16. cap-mjb
Um, because Chakotay is the First Officer? He’s the only Commander on board? Tuvok, at least at this point, is a Lt. Commander. Command would naturally fall to him if the Captain dies. And remember the Captain of a ship does not have to have the rank of Captain.
Excellent episode and boy did the show need to have one after the previous weeks debacle. A couple of frustrating things.. when you see they could do episodes as good and interesting as this it makes the unevenness of the series so annoying and secondly this is the second excellent Kes episode this season after Warlord ..which makes it frustrating when rewatching as you know she isn’t going to be there much longer..just as character and actor were coming into their own
@44/costumer: Late to respond because I’ve only just seen this but…you’ve clearly missed my point. Yes, of course, Chakotay would take command as next in seniority. But he is a captain in rank: As I pointed out, he has regular captain’s rank pips, when he doesn’t even have regular commander’s rank pips (just “provisional rank insignia”) in the normal timeline. How did that happen?
@@@@@46. cap-mjb
I’m not an expert on Star Fleet rank insignia. I did do some googling around and the images I found are not clear. At least one article I found says the actual problem is that Chakotay’s rank insignia show him a rank below his own. Can you supply a screen cap to show he has captain’s insignia?
Kim marrying Tom’s daughter who he saw grew up from childhood to adulthood in a couple of years is weird enough, but this also got me thinking about getting in a relationship with a species like an Ocampan. I probably wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone I know I’ll loose so soon…
“Time travel really messes with verb tenses” reminds me of what Captain Braxton said in Relativity – “I gave up trying to keep my tenses straight years ago”. Before and After also reminds me of Memento somewhat the way it tells the years of Kes’s life in reverse. For He’s/She’s a Jolly Good Fellow is supposedly cheaper than Happy Birthday. I wonder if they knew by this stage that Jennifer Lien would be leaving the show and Before and After was made as a result (it would have been a better departure than The Gift).
3: Darkling, Rise and Favourite Son are known as VGR’s Trilogy of Terror – the show’s nadir, but S3 does experience a bit of a late resurgence from here on out. I’m surprised Twilight wasn’t a VGR episode what with the show’s running theme of distorted memories. I agree with Krad that Harry marrying someone he knew as an infant leaves a skeevy aftertaste. 6: Is Lien’s longer hair a wig or not? 15: Neelix owns a shuttle, not a starship. Ocampa are blessed with photographic memories and that’s how the EMH was able to train Kes as a nurse much more quickly than Paris. I’m sure Linnis was just as fast.
16: It’s a surprise that Brannon Braga didn’t wind up writing this, isn’t it? 20: Sorry to report that Krad has not taken your suggestion to heart (maybe he thought you meant six months). 23: The baby even has human ears, not Ocampan. 25: I think the vagina and the mitral sac are in separate places, as they should be. 28: Ronald D. Moore always felt that Year of Hell was what VGR should have aspired to all along. 32: Considering Voyager’s situation, you do wonder how they manage to live in such luxuries. 35: They’ll be hell toupée. 38: I don’t know if Jennifer Lien wanted to leave the show like Denise Crosby or Terry Farrell. VGR does love the reset button.
40: Over the course of VGR, Lien became more and more underused (particularly in S3). But I think Warlord also made great use of her. 45: VGR is more uneven than TNG and DS9 and while it can deliver more of the same it never does as frequently. And I would have liked to see what else Jennifer Lien would have done but with Jeri Ryan being added to the cast, it meant someone had to leave, and that brought about some resentment, particularly from Kate Mulgrew. 46: Chakotay’s captain so he gets to make the rules now, not follow them.
@49/David Sim: “Is Lien’s longer hair a wig or not?”
Kes’s short hair was the wig, with Lien’s natural, long, strawberry-blond curls hidden under it. They let her switch to her real hair with this episode so that she wouldn’t have to wear her prosthetic ears as much (apparently the makeup was rough on her skin).
I don’t see what’s wrong with Harry marrying Kes’s daughter, or Tom & Kes for that matter. Our current Western 21st Century judgements about age differences are surely about discrepancies in emotional maturity and – related – experience. (26 and 16, frowned on. 55 & 45, not so much.) Since Ocampans are just like everyone else in other respects, presumably by age 2 they are equivalent to a Human aged 20, 3 <> 30…, so she & Kim seem perfectly appropriate. Surely being challenged to think about our real life assumptions and what they’re based on is exactly what we should be welcoming Star Trek doing.
In a universe where different species have different life expectancies, any judgements like this will be made based on where someone is in their life, not their age in years. As someone pointed out for Vulcans & Humans – we don’t raise an eyebrow there. (Let alone certain Trill & those poor young Klingons they take advantage of…)
On a separate note I thought the actor playing baby Kes did a _great_ job conveying the horror of her situation as she regressed (and then soon after, her utter confusion on the way “back up” again.)
That was pretty great. So much lovely Voyager I have never seen, or not seen since I was too young to appreciate.
Unlike so many commenters, I like time travel stories. Like, kind of love them!
My bullets, because hey nobody else said them:
* Kes proving she is telling the truth by telling the doctor about a time travel (reducing) device he only just thought of that same day was exactly like Back to the Future. I wonder if he was standing on a toilet trying to hang a clock at the time.
* I have no problem with the differences between this and the Year of Hell, including the 10 year inconsistency. As Tuvok points out, none of this is necessarily going to happen. And as sometimes comes up in Trek, some historical events are kind of stuck there and can’t be avoided, and show up differently. That said, yes it would have been great if the warnings in this episode had paid off later. Oh well.
* 37. Austin, I didn’t stare at it and I was watching on a fairly small monitor, but I thought it looked fine! I think some of the folks razzing it may be offended by it automatically, subconsciously, on principle, because that’s just not how The Doctor looks. ;)
* The horror of the time jumps back to conception, including the “nobody believes the very young or the very old”, make this a particularly disturbing story and I am here for it.
* Oh yeah, @krad, Kes faded out slowly in the one heartwrenching scene because the Doctor was trying his best to keep her there. Only prolonging the torture.
* Why did she keep going back, only to wind up in the ‘present’ again? We didn’t see her literally vanish from the Doctor’s operating table. Maybe he was able to wrest her from the jaws of oblivion, it just took a moment.
Paris’ emotional stuff was really amazing this ep too.