“Shattered”
Written by Michael Sussman & Michael Taylor
Directed by Terry Windell
Season 7, Episodes 11
Production episode 257
Original air date: January 17, 2001
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Chakotay interrupts Icheb and Naomi putting a jigsaw puzzle together to fetch some Antarian cider he’s hidden in one of the containers. He brings it to Janeway’s quarters for dinner, where the captain has screwed up the pot roast.
A gravimetric surge hits the ship. Janeway goes to the bridge while Chakotay heads to engineering. The first officer helps Torres stop a warp-core breach, but a chroniton surge hits him and knocks him unconscious. He seems to be several different ages at the same time as he lies on the deck. Torres has him beamed to sickbay.
Chakotay recovers in sickbay, where the EMH has no idea what’s going on. The doctor sounds like he did in the early days of the show when nobody told him what was going on—and he is confused by Chakotay’s reference to a mobile emitter.
Carrying a medikit, Chakotay goes to the bridge, but en route he passes through some kind of lightshow and the medikit disappears. When he arrives on the bridge, Kim doesn’t recognize him, and Janeway—whose hair is back in a bun—angrily asks how he got there and is in uniform.
To Janeway, the ship is still in the Alpha Quadrant and is about to go after Chakotay’s Maquis cell. Janeway immediately has him taken to the brig. However, as the turbolift goes down, he once again passes through a lightshow and the guards disappear. He goes to engineering to find Seska and a bunch of Kazon there. Chakotay barely escapes.
He realizes that Voyager has been separated into different timeframes, and he’s the only one who can pass safely between them. Everyone else who walks through the time barrier lightshows disappears. Chakotay figures it’s the treatment the EMH gave him for the progeria he was showing after he was hit with the surge.
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After getting a hypospray with the serum from the EMH, Chakotay returns to the bridge. He insists that he has a way to get Janeway through to the other timeframes, but she’s reluctant, as it could be poison. So Chakotay takes her hostage, saying the hypo does have poison, which keeps the security guards at bay. Chakotay injects her and then takes her safely into another timeframe.
Passing through the barrier that made her other crew disappear finally convinces Janeway that there’s more going on than she thinks. They pass through a corridor where several crew members are comatose on the deck, but Chakotay assures her they’ll be okay.
They go to astrometrics, which Janeway is confused by, as Voyager doesn’t have an astrometrics lab. She is impressed to learn that it was developed by the ensign who just reported on board.
There, they meet a much older Icheb and Naomi, both wearing Starfleet uniforms. It’s seventeen years in the future there, and they have much better sensors: there are thirty-seven different timeframes on Voyager now. They need help from Seven, so they try Cargo Bay 2.
Seven is there, still fully Borg, and with five other Borg present. Seven proposes doing the same thing Borg cubes do when they go through transwarp conduits to prevent succumbing to temporal stresses: projecting a chroniton field throughout the vessel. Janeway suggests using the bioneural gelpacks to run the chroniton field throughout the ship.
They go to sickbay, where the EMH adjusts some bandoliers filled with the chroniton field in liquid form that can pass through the time barriers, and gives them to Janeway and Chakotay. Janeway is shocked to learn that the EMH has been running constantly, at which point she finds out that the medical staff is all dead. Chakotay stops the EMH from revealing too much more, citing the Temporal Prime Directive.
After almost being attacked by the macrovirus in a corridor, the pair inject one of the gelpacks, then head to the holodeck, where the Captain Proton program is running. Janeway has to play act as Arachnia again (which this version of Janeway’s never done) to get out of Dr. Chaotica’s clutches and inject a gelpack.
The next stop is the transporter room, where Torres, Ayala, and other Maquis crew are being held. Torres mentions being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, which surprises Janeway. Chakotay admits that she kept them stuck in the DQ in order to save the Ocampa.
Next is the mess hall, which is in Chakotay’s present, where Janeway gets to watch Tuvok die of radiation poisoning. At this point, Janeway is utterly disgusted with the Delta Quadrant, and has an alternate plan. Instead of yoking Voyager back to Chakotay’s time, they should do it to Janeway’s, so she can not get them stranded in the DQ, Temporal Prime Directive be damned. Chakotay argues for all the good Voyager has done. He neglects to mention the thirty-plus people who have died along the way, preferring to focus on Paris being a better person (who cares?) and giving Naomi a home (without her father, whom she’s never met) and that they saved Seven and Icheb from the Borg (which is legit).
Janeway is convinced by this slanted argument, and they proceed to engineering for the last step. Unfortunately, that’s controlled by a Cardassian spy and a bunch of Kazon.
Chakotay tries to convince Seska to let him implement their plan. However, Seska has realized that if Chakotay’s from the future, it means the Kazon takeover of the ship will fail. So she’s going to do her version of Janeway’s proposed plan.
However, Chakotay anticipated that, with help from the EMH’s treatment, Janeway is in reserve with reinforcements: the present-day Paris, Janeway’s iteration of Kim, Torres and Ayala still in Maquis gear, the grown-up Icheb and Naomi, and Borg Seven all take down Seska and the Kazon and are able to use the now-fully-functional chroniton field to reset everything, though Janeway takes a minute to say nice things about her time-displaced crew, whom she doesn’t even really know yet.
The trick works, and Chakotay is able to restore the timelines, though he burns out the deflector dish to do it. He’s the only one who remembers any of it, and he tells Janeway he can’t say why because of the Temporal Prime Directive. But hey, at least now they can finish dinner…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Janeway’s replicator keeps not working right. She blames it on her calling it a glorified toaster once. Because that’s totally how science works.
It’s not explained how Voyager can be in different times yet all in the same space.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway says that Voyager is her first command, which is at odds with Janeway’s statement in “Revulsion” that she first met Tuvok nine years earlier after an incident with her first command.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok dies of radiation poisoning, and is able to say goodbye to Janeway in a manner very similar to that of how Spock said goodbye to Kirk in The Wrath of Khan.
Forever an ensign. When telling Janeway that Kim designed astrometrics, Chakotay says that Kim will become “one of our best people.” So why the heck haven’t you promoted him??????
Half and half. Even though there’s a major engineering problem, Torres is conscripted only to beat up Kazon in the climax.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix hands Janeway coffee just the way she likes it, which surprises Janeway, coming as it does from an alien she’s never met before.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. I must confess to having forgotten how very whiny the EMH was before the mobile emitter…
Resistance is futile. Seven suggests assimilating Janeway and Chakotay so they’ll be more efficient. They decline.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Janeway asks Chakotay how close the two of them have actually become. Chakotay says that some lines they haven’t crossed, which belies my interpretation of the events of “Resolutions,” but whatever.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The Captain Proton program is running on the holodeck, but Janeway and Chakotay don’t see anybody actually using it, which makes no sense. But it’s always fun to see Dr. Chaotica, Lonzak, and Satan’s Robot again…
Do it.
“If we restore the timeline, remind me to cancel Mr. Paris’ holodeck privileges.”
–Janeway’s response to experiencing the Captain Proton program.
Welcome aboard. It’s recurring character theater, as we get Martin Rayner and Nicholas Worth, both back from “Bride of Chaotica!” as, respectively, Dr. Chaotica and his henchman Lonzak; Martha Hackett as Seska, last seen as a hologram in “Worst Case Scenario“; and both Icheb and Naomi, played as usual by Manu Intiraymi and Scarlett Pomers, respectively, in the present, and also by Mark Bennington and Vanessa Branch as grownups seventeen years in the future.
Trivial matters: Voyager is split among thirty-seven different timeframes. The ones we see include the following: on the bridge, it’s in the Alpha Quadrant, just prior to “Caretaker“; in the transporter room, it’s during “Caretaker,” right after Janeway beamed the Maquis crew off the Val Jean; in sickbay, it’s about a year prior to the “Future’s End” two-parter, as Chakotay says the EMH won’t get his mobile emitter for another year, though the EMH also says he’s been active for three years, which doesn’t track with a second-season timeframe; in engineering, it’s during “Basics, Part II,” when the Kazon had taken over Voyager and put the crew off-ship; in one corridor, it’s during “Macrocosm“; in Cargo Bay 2, it’s in the middle of “Scorpion, Part II,” when half a dozen Borg drones, including Seven, have converted the bay for Borg use; in the holodeck, it’s some time after “Bride of Chaotica!” as the Captain Proton program is running and Chaotica references the events of that episode; in another corridor, it’s likely during “Bliss,” though Chakotay says it could be during “Waking Moments,” as both episodes had the crew laid out and comatose on the deck; and in astrometrics, it’s seventeen years in the future. Meanwhile, it’s the present day in the mess hall.
One of the ways Chakotay convinces Janeway that he knows her well is by mentioning that she regrets never learning how to play a musical instrument, which she talked about in “Remember,” and which is a fact unlikely to be in a Maquis intelligence report about Voyager’s captain.
Chakotay asks if Janeway burned the roast again—she burned a roast when she made dinner for Ballard in “Ashes to Ashes.”
Janeway says her crew complement when they set out for the Badlands is 153. In “Caretaker,” Stadi said the crew complement was 141. Of course, when she said that, Kim hadn’t reported for duty yet, and it’s possible eleven other crew also didn’t report until they arrived at Deep Space 9. Not that anyone seems to care how many people are ever actually on the ship…
Speaking of Stadi, she is mentioned by Janeway, albeit not by name, as she says that her helmsman disappeared through one of the temporal barriers.
In the original script, Rollins—who ran tactical in “Caretaker” while Tuvok was undercover with the Maquis—was part of the bridge crew, but presumably Scott MacDonald wasn’t available, and it was changed to Andrews, played by Terrell Clayton.
The novel A Pocket Full of Lies by Kirsten Beyer establishes that the anomaly in this episode was the result of a chroniton torpedo fired by the Krenim Imperium in an attempt to understand the events of the “Year of Hell” two-parter.
Set a course for home. “That is not the future I have in mind.” This was a fun episode in many ways, but I find myself frustrated by the stupider-than-usual pseudo-science, and especially frustrated by the many many many missed opportunities here.
As a kind of final-season tribute to everything Voyager has been through over the years, this works nicely. As an actual story, it’s kind of nowhere. And it actually pissed me off in several spots, in ways that everyone who’s been reading these rewatches for the past nineteen months can probably guess…
About a dozen people died in “Caretaker,” including the conn officer Janeway mentions, and the medical staff the EMH tells her about the death of, and the first officer and chief engineer that never come up in conversation. More than a score of people in the crew have died since they started their journey home. Aside from the EMH spilling the beans about the medical staff being dead, none of those deaths are mentioned at all. Worse, Janeway is repeatedly reminded and told that Chakotay became her first officer, yet at no point does she ask what happened to the first officer she’s already got.
This was a great opportunity to show the consequences of their actions, and to remind everyone that the journey Voyager has gone on has been on the backs of more than thirty corpses. Aside from Seska, we don’t see any of them, and it would’ve been so much more interesting to have Chakotay interact with Cavit, the guy he replaced, and put front and center that Janeway is condemning him, the medical staff, the chief engineer, Stadi, etc. to death.
We almost get there when Chakotay talks Janeway out of changing history to keep Voyager from being stranded in the DQ. Janeway’s points are all good ones, and the kicker is watching her best friend (whom she thinks is in the Badlands with Chakotay’s Maquis cell) die in front of her. There’s a lot of horrible things that happen to them, and wanting to avoid them is completely understandable.
But the other side of this is that without Voyager there, a bunch of other people might be dead, starting with the Ocampa. It’s a debate worth having and the episode totally avoids it.
Even by time-travel standards, this story makes no sense, as the ship was in thirty-seven different locations for those thirty-seven timelines, over a distance of tens of thousands of light-years (the bridge’s timeline is 35,000 light-years in one direction, and the transporter room’s 35,000 light-years in the other direction, just for starters).
Still, it’s a fun look at Voyager’s journey, and it’s fun to see Seska again, to see Seven in full Borg mode, to see Icheb and Naomi all grow’d up, and especially to see the EMH as his early, bitchy self. But the episode is only a fun okay one when it had the potential to be great, a serious examination of Voyager‘s journey, and it totally dropped the ball.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at Dragon Con 2021 in Atlanta this weekend. His incredibly busy schedule, which includes panels, readings, autographings, and workshops, can be found here.
It’s a debate worth having and the episode totally avoids it.
I think what needed to happen here is for two characters from the present to be part of the adventure, because Chakotay can’t really have a debate with himself and Janeway has no idea what’s going to happen, so she can’t meaningfully participate in the conversation. Then the two of them can argue about what they should do. Maybe Neelix, since he has a vested interest in time happening the way it did and is criminally underused.
Janeway says that Voyager is her first command, which is at odds with Janeway’s statement in “Revulsion” that she first met Tuvok nine years earlier after an incident with her first command.
What she says there is “The first time I met Tuvok he dressed me down in front of three Starfleet admirals for failing to observe proper tactical procedures during my first command.” I think to resolve the two, her first “command” refers to commanding an away team or shuttle mission or something like that but Voyager is the first ship she’s captain of. And, come to think of it, possibly also her last because she’s promoted to Admiral when they get back.
Now that we know how the series ends, I wonder if this episode was designed to be a prologue to “Endgame,” and an imitation of some arcs in TNG (some episodes involving Worf and Troi set up the conflict in “All Good Things,” and that episode flashed back to TNG’s first season). It would seem to feed the older Janeway’s motivation for her actions in the “Voyager” finale, but we’ll have a chance to discuss that further in a few weeks.
I’ll admit to liking this one more than it probably deserves, but I can’t help it. It’s a nice way of doing a clip show without actually doing a clip show- and I like that we get to bring back Martha Hackett and the Chaotica actors (not to mention fully Borg-ified Seven). I think Chakotay was also the right person to frame this one around, as it creates more conflict than, say, having Janeway being the immune one would. One of my favorite fanfics was based on a “what-if” that Janeway actually remembered the events of this episode when she went back, which I always thought was a fun thought experiment.
Yea, the rosy “things all worked out for people in the main credits!” thing has always been the downside of this episode to me (although it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a problem limited to this episode). I am sure Samantha Wildman and hubby would have far preferred to raise their daughter together on DS9 (or where ever) than being separated- potentially for the rest of their lives.
I know this really bothers some people, but I never had an issue with it, and even on first watch I had read the statement in “Revulsion” as her first command in the same way Picard referred to Worf’s “first command” in “The Emissary” . In fact, I think it makes Janeway more interesting as a character, and helps explains some of her… let’s call them “less well thought out” decisions as due to inexperience, instead of her being erratic. I know some people think that undermines her as the first female Captain, but (as a lady-type myself) I think it gives her more depth.
Even if Janeway were able to prevent Voyager from being lost in the Badlands, wouldn’t that still strand the Maquis crew (including Tuvok)?
@4- Theoretically, with sufficiently detailed intelligence from future Chakotay (assuming he can remember all the relevant details, offhand, under pressure, seven years later) Voyager might be able to intercept the Val Jean earlier, preempting its own abduction.
Otherwise, hmm… Seska in command of the Caretaker’s Array, perhaps?
Honestly, the whole “time travel must also be space travel because the world is moving” argument has never been terribly convincing to me because there’s no absolute frame of reference according to which you can measure positions anyways. If the time anomaly is going to be occupying an arbitrary frame of reference anyways, it might as well be comoving with the ship.
No, what bugs me about this episode (and about Arthur C Clarke and Steven Baxter’s novel Time’s Eye, which had a similar premise) is: how does the anomaly know to zero in on moments of high drama? I mean, I know that it would be pretty boring if the episode centred on the thousands of hours during which Voyager *wasn’t* occupied by Kazons, preparing to attack Species 8472, or overrun by macroviruses, but still.
Just how much time passed between the Maquis’ abduction and Voyager’s? The way it was presented in “Caretaker,” the Maquis were abducted, then we cut to Janeway on Earth meeting Tom Paris, then they still have to get from Earth to Deep Space Nine, which has always been depicted as not a quick trip, thenVoyager leaves DS9 to go to the Badlands.
One point: the ship doesn’t have to move around at all. Per Einstein, there is no privileged point of reference. All these events happened on board Voyager, so that’s Chakotay’s reference point. The ship didn’t have to move at all (although the space outside each version of the ship may have been different.)
Never cared for this episode, because of the scientific and logical absurdity Keith pointed out. Practically every Voyager time travel episode was dumber and more nonsensical than the previous ones, and this was no exception. They’re not just different times, but hugely different places, so how could they possibly connect
Although I did eventually come up with a handwave involving nonlocal quantum entanglement, the idea that the same particles making up the ship were linked across time even when they were in very different places. Which is also handy for explaining stories where time travelers arrive on “the same place” on a planet in the past or future even though the planet’s moved a great distance through space in the interim.
But even that doesn’t explain why most of the time rifts correspond to doorways. Why would that happen? Unless it’s something about the topological nature of the matter making up a doorway as opposed to a structure with a different topology.
And yes, I still hate the “first command” mistake here. It’s inconsistent with the way Janeway was always portrayed in the early seasons. There was never the slightest hint that she was inexperienced, and indeed she was always played as an accomplished veteran who’d been around the block, a sure and confident leader whose authority was unquestionable. I don’t know what Sussman & Taylor (or whoever added that line to the script) could’ve been thinking.
Well, what can you say, some episodes lean more towards fantasy than sci-fi.
@7/Queen Iacomina: “Honestly, the whole “time travel must also be space travel because the world is moving” argument has never been terribly convincing to me because there’s no absolute frame of reference according to which you can measure positions anyways. If the time anomaly is going to be occupying an arbitrary frame of reference anyways, it might as well be comoving with the ship.”
@9/Thomas: “One point: the ship doesn’t have to move around at all. Per Einstein, there is no privileged point of reference.”
It’s not just about position, though, it’s about momentum and acceleration. Per relativity, any two unaccelerated reference frames are physically indistinguishable — that is, you can’t tell the difference between one standing still and one moving at a constant velocity, so if two reference frames are moving relative to each other at a constant velocity, you can validly define either one as the stationary one and the other as the moving one. But — if one frame is under acceleration, whether by thrust or gravity, then you can define an objective, non-arbitrary difference between the two. They follow different physics and can’t be treated interchangeably.
Voyager‘s movements through space over the years have been subject to all sorts of accelerations, both thrust and gravitational. So the Principle of Equivalence just doesn’t cut it here.
So on first viewing for me this episode was kinda fun. But on repeat viewings I see more and more of its flaws. And I gotta start with my #1 complaint: Beltran’s performance. I think normally he does just fine with an episode that’s centered on him but here he’s just so lifeless and flat. I feel like the actor, who was vocal with his dissatisfaction with the series at this point, has already mentally checked out. The episode in general feels kind of lifeless and flat to me. I compare this episode to “Relativity” which also had different timeline shenanigans but that episode had much more zip to it and was more compelling with its Janeway-Seven team-up there versus the Janeway-Chakotay partnering here.
I think this episode could have been a much better way to bring back Kes/Jennifer Lien than “Fury.”
While it’s satisfying to see Seven of Nine take down Seska that interaction was like a split second and so was ultimately disappointing to me. You don’t even see the reaction on Seska’s face. I would have preferred a longer stand-off between the two characters.
It seemed a bit weird to me to see Andrews, a character we’ve never seen before, to speak and get some attention in a couple scenes. It’s like “where did this guy come from?” It at least makes more sense that it was supposed to be Rollins. But maybe they could have just given the lines to Kim to give Garrett Wang more to do?
In the scene in the mess hall when Paris is treating the wounded (and dying) he doesn’t even think to mention to Janeway that Tuvok, one of her closest friends, is dying? Tuvok has to call out to her to get her attention.
I always felt the Maquis scene in the transporter room was very odd. It’s like B’Elanna, Ayala, etc. were in the middle of trying to take over the ship. Why would they be held in that room? If this is supposed to be taking place during “Caretaker” then Janeway would have just beamed them over from their ship during the Kazon attack as well as having helped rescue B’Elanna rescue off of Ocampa. But in this scene it comes across like the Maquis just happen upon Janeway for this first time.
The Captain Proton scene isn’t as funny as it wants to be. It pales in comparison to “Bride of Chaotica!”
I had assumed this story was by Brannon Braga so I was surprised to discover it wasn’t as he often has his hand in bizarre premises having to do with time.
A rating of 5 seems to be right. Just so much potential wasted and opportunity for fun and other drama that’s not explored.
Christopher: I doubt they were thinking at all. I think they just unthinkingly wrote that line. A lot of Voyager‘s issues with characterization and consistency can, I think, be traced to just not thinking about things very much.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@14/krad: Well, there are active thoughts and passive thoughts, the latter being the unexamined assumptions that shape our decisions without our consciously realizing them. And that’s what I’m talking about here. What unexamined preconceptions or assumptions led the writers to jump to the conclusion that Janeway was inexperienced? Was it just kneejerk sexism or something else?
@10/CLB: I actually think the episode did a decent job in not having the rifts exclusively occupying different rooms only: there was the rift in the corridor when Chakotay takes Janeway “hostage”; the rift within engineering when Chakotay escapes from Seska; and the rift that intersects with the path of the turbolift. Of course it’s just a more dramatic conceit to enter into a different room and have the reveal to the audience of what particular time frame will be behind whatever set of doors.
What happens to the other crew members like Stadi who disappeared when they walked through the rift? They’re now in a different time frame too? It would have been interesting to see some of those scenes for the reaction shots.
#15. Perhaps their thinking was that an inexperienced captain adds an element of the unpredictable, making her decision-making possibly different than the normal Janeway to whom we’re accustomed.
@17/MarshmelonMan: “#15. Perhaps their thinking was that an inexperienced captain adds an element of the unpredictable, making her decision-making possibly different than the normal Janeway to whom we’re accustomed.”
You’d think Janeway still seeing Chakotay as a Maquis criminal she was assigned to hunt down would make her decisions different enough.
#18. Yes, I got the sense the Voyager writing staff was often in the mindset of blockbuster movies when drafting stories. One unpredictable element is added upon another and another and so forth for maximum drama, and sometimes logic be damned.
@17 and @18,
I’ve said this throughout the Re-Watch, but in hindsight…part of me kinda wishes Janeway had been the XO or the Second Officer in “Caretaker”.
Having someone lower in the command hierarchy thrust into the Center Chair with the losses from the Caretaker pulling them in the DQ…it would’ve made for more interesting character development and upped the stakes of VOY’s survival being in the hands of someone who was struggling with that burden.
It would’ve been akin to what Stargate Universe did with Colonel Young and how Telford, not him, was supposed to lead the Destiny expedition (at least before all hell broke loose on Icarus Base).
@20/Mr. Magic: “part of me kinda wishes Janeway had been the XO or the Second Officer in “Caretaker”.”
If they’d done that with Trek’s first female lead, it would’ve raised the same legitimate criticisms that have been raised about making Sisko a commander in DS9. It would’ve been a very poor choice in that context. Today, when female leads in SFTV are more common, it doesn’t matter as much, so you can center a Trek show on a science officer like Burnham or an ensign like Mariner. But back then, it was important that Janeway not be diminished in any way relative to her male forerunners. Making her inexperienced and unsure of herself would’ve just played into sexist expectations and made it much harder for the show to win the uphill battle that a female-led Trek show already had in those days.
Or what BSG did with President Roslin!
One of the things I think DS9 did right was make Sisko someone with room to grow into the role. He started off as a commander who was looking to maybe get out of the service, being sent to the butt-end of the quadrant to babysit a recovering planet, but he was able to grow into the Captain and Emissary we all knew and loved. Challenges arose, and he rose up to meet them. I still think of all the Trek Captains (note: not including Discovery, since I am way behind on it and therefore can’t really say) he was the one with the most interesting character growth, and I think that was at least in part because of where he was in the pilot. He wasn’t The Captain like Kirk, or The Officer and Gentleman like Picard, or The Strong Female Captain like Janeway- he was allowed to be more of a person than an archetype, and that made him a lot more interesting to me. Sure, he was the first African American Captain- and that is a big deal! but the writers weren’t too afraid of messing that up to make him interesting in the way I think the Voyager ones were with Janeway a lot of the time.
@22,
Ah.
Yeah, that’s…yeah, good point.
I was thinking more in terms of narrative than perception, but you’re right.
And that’s also a good point re: Sisko.
I’d always thought it was an odd decision to have him start as a Commander rather than Captain, but I never thought of the perception and controversy like that
(In my defense, heh, I was only 7 when DS9 premiered).
I loved this episode. It was a great retrospective for the series that is ending, and I’m tickled pink that they didn’t do just a flashback clip show. The best bit is when Seven whoops Seska without a second thought. The only thing that bothers me is that the Borg Seven has that weird Borg voice when it didn’t even sound like that in Scorpion Part 2.
I enjoyed this episode a lot. I would have given it an 8. It was fun enough for me that I didn’t care about the inconsistencies and bogus science.
wildfyrewarning: I’d be willing to buy that argument if they actually showed Sisko going on that journey, but they didn’t, at least not past the first episode. He did all the same things that the previous two leads did, and the same things that the next two leads did, except they all a) were white and b) got to be captains, while the person of color was a grade rank lower for the first three seasons. And there was absolutely no good reason for it. (Burnham, by contrast, has actually been going on that journey…..)
Sisko was a captain in all but rank, and to have the only African-American lead in the first five shows to also be the only one who didn’t start out as a captain was a phenomenally awful look.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ideally, “Emissary” should have ended with a scene of not only Sisko accepting the post as the head of DS9 but also receiving a promotion to captain along with it. A ceremony with Picard pinning the new pip on Sisko’s uniform would have been a very nice scene and really just a big historic moment for the history of the franchise. As it is, it was rather unfortunate that for basically the first three seasons you couldn’t call Sisko the first Black captain on a Star Trek series.
The first female Captain we saw was also a person of colour, Madge Sinclair. When her ship, coincidentally also called the Saratoga, lost power due to the encounter with the Probe, she basically sat in her chat and called for help.
When we later see the Captain of the Yorktown, played by Vijay Amritraj, a man of Indian heritage, he’s reporting on the efforts they’re undertaking to stay alive. (Even if they got the science of what they were doing utterly wrong)
The woman is shown as passive, the male is active.
@27/garreth: Heck, ideally Sisko should’ve been a commodore or admiral, since he was a starbase commander, responsible for much more than a single starship.
@@@@@ KRAD. That’s fair, I guess I always thought it was probably common for a Station Commander at a small station like DS9 to be a Commander instead of a Captain (much like modern base commanders tend to be full-birds alongside the flag officers that command the line units), at first, and that we were just meeting our main character at an earlier point in his career than the other 2 shows had.
@30
When I was in the army the commander of Camp Hovey in Korea was a colonel.
@31 Yea, when I was at Hood it was the same. I think some smaller bases I was at might even have had light colonels as base commanders.
@31&32: Ah, I see… an army colonel is the rank equivalent of a naval captain. So you’re saying that a Starfleet base could plausibly be commanded by a captain or even a commander.
Even so, whatever DS9’s size as a station, Sisko’s job was to guide an entire planet into the Federation — and then it became safeguarding the wormhole, making it immediately one of the most important postings in the Federation. So it’s weird that they just let Sisko keep the job and the rank. It seems that they would have either promoted him or replaced him with an admiral.
As Leonard Nimoy opined in the commentary for Star Trek IV, “admiral” doesn’t have quite the same pizazz as “captain,” or words to that effect.
I never watched Voyager but had to find this episode after visiting a traveling Star Trek exhibit that had a big wall illustrating the Star Trek timeline, including all the time travel. This episode was a bonkers squiggly line that was too intriguing to pass up.
@30,
And I suppose the posting and equivalent rank also made sense initially because DS9 was just supposed to be another outpost assignment.
Bajor going from a war-torn backwater world into one of the most strategically important planets in the AQ overnight was a fluke nobody saw coming — though after that, Sisko should’ve promoted or another higher-ranking officer should’ve taken over.
Given Sisko’s post-Wolf 359 career stall, I suppose you could argue Command had reservations about promoting him, but kept him in place given the impact (and pressure from Bajor as their Emissary).
Saying it’s Sisko’s job to guide Bajor into the Federation seems to be ignoring the fact that the decision is the Bajorans. Sure, he can show why it would be advantageous to join but that’s not the same as taking an active hand in directing them to membership. Is it really Starfleet’s job to occupy a station over an independent planet while working directly to bring them into the UFP? Membership is more the job of the Diplomatic Corp. In a modern day setting, it’s the job of the State Department as opposed to the Pentagon.
Yes, Starfleet Captains do have to act as ambassadors from time to time but that’s with newly contacted races far from the Federation. Once first contact is made, it’s time to bring in the diplomats.
Sisko’s job was to run the station for the Bajorans.
I saw that Netflix will be dropping Voyager at the end of September…..
On paper, the idea of revisiting key past Voyager elements is a sound one. Brief moments like seeing adult Icheb and Naomi do work. It’s similar in concept to TNG’s All Good Things, but ultimately not nearly as effective. Part of that is putting Chakotay as POV. Beltran sleepwalks through this. They obviously couldn’t do it with Seven, given they’d already done it in season 5’s Relativity. The story plays more like a greatest hits album and lacks a character hook. All Good Things had a deep impact in Jean-Luc Picard. This doesn’t have an impact in Chakotay as a character at all. And the less said about the science behind this, the better.
As for the plot hole of Janeway claiming that Voyager is her first command, I can understand Mike Sussman and Michael Taylor making that mistake (even director Terry Windell). They weren’t a part of the show back when Revulsion was made. However, Kenneth Biller himself directed that episode. As executive producer – and one who’s attempted to at least bring a bigger sense of continuity to this final season – he of all people should have caught it.
@39/Eduardo: It wasn’t just “Revulsion.” The information about Janeway’s prior command and her first meeting with Tuvok came from the Janeway backstory Jeri Taylor depicted in her novel Mosaic, and possibly in behind-the-scenes production documents as well. For that matter, while the writers’ bible doesn’t specifically discuss her prior commands, it does say “it is generally acknowledged that she is among the best [captains in Starfleet],” which is clearly incompatible with her being a brand-new captain when she was lost in the Badlands. It also says “her natural leadership abilities manifested themselves quickly” and “she was rapidly promoted,” which is consistent with an early captaincy.
@39: At the risk of the redundancy by having Seven as the focus of this episode because it would seem like “Relativity” all over again, Jeri Ryan would at least bring her usual A-game to the role, and it would have been a lot of fun to see her interact with her fully-Borg counterpart from the “Scorpion” time-frame.
For anyone curious enough to do some digging, here’s a PDF of Voyager’s bible:
Voyager_Bible
Plus The_Next_Generation_Bible , Deep_Space_Nine_Bible , and Enterprise_-_Bible for good measure.
All links from https://www.startrek.com/news/a-look-inside-star-trek-series-bibles
@42 Thanks for posting those! There are a lot of interesting things in there that I wish had shown up in the actual show, like Janeway having a close relationship with her mother (I don’t remember her ever mentioning her mother much, her father came up more), and Tom and B’Elanna being attracted to the steadiness that Tuvok provided (back when they assumed he would be played by an older actor). Those would have added some interesting depth to the characters, and it is a pity we never got to see it. And oh, what we could have had with a Neelix who was actually as edgy as his backstory implies!
There are a lot of interesting things in there that I wish had shown up in the actual show, like Janeway having a close relationship with her mother
@43/wildfyrewarning: TV shows almost always evolve over time. A show bible can serve as an initial basis for the characters and the premise, but parts of it will become outdated as the writers come up with fresh stories, or even rework the pilot episode. The TNG bible had Leslie Crusher, after all. Even Janeway’s name changed fairly quickly.
Janeway having had a close relationship with her mother might influence the way she occasionally mothers the crew, but I can’t say it would have necessarily led to an interesting onscreen story between them. Clearly the writers preferred the father/daughter dynamic. Plus, they went along with the more contentuous relationship between Torres and her own mother, which generated more conflict and tension for stories.
@40/Christopher: Indeed. It was also detailed in Pathways through the Tuvok chapter.
Reading the Voyager Bible is very interesting. I finally know the identity of Chakotay’s spirit animal. He told Janeway about his spirit animal in “The Cloud,” but wouldn’t reveal what it was. She guessed that it was a bear, but he said no, and we never had any followup on this at all. Now I know it was a wolf! Wrangling a wolf on set may have been too difficult or not worth the hassle, so maybe that’s why it was never realized. A wolf would have been more effort than Janeway’s gecko.
I remember reading early on during Voyager‘s pre-production that Janeway would occasionally go to the holodeck to participate in a Western wagon train program, but then that was dropped because either 1) production figured out that arranging for horses and location shooting wasn’t worth the expense, or 2) Kate Mulgrew hated working with the horses. Maybe it was both. So, that was dropped and we got the Victorian England program instead.
I always thought it was ridiculous that they never named the Doctor “Zimmerman.” Zimmerman was established in an early episode as the name of the Doctor’s programmer, and he added that they looked alike, so it would have made perfect sense for him to adopt the name. Instead, we got what felt like an interminable stretch of “I’m still choosing a name” with all sorts of options bandied about and quickly forgotten, until it, like so many other plot points on Voyager, was forgotten.
Probably the biggest departure from the Bible was the Maquis element. After “Parallax,” the Maquis element was all but abandoned and the crew treated as a harmonious whole, except for the occasional “Maquis Episode” that cropped up about once a year to remind us of what might have been. In fact, I remember reading where Torres was originally supposed to assume the job as chief engineer in “Caretaker,” but because of whatever, that element was held off until the second episode (“Parallax”).
Reading the DS9 Bible was also very interesting! Keiko was originally going to assist Dax in her job as science officer? Yeah, we never saw any of that.
I never had the impression that Voyager was Janeway’s first command, but I did always have the impression that the mission to the Badlands was Voyager‘s first mission as a brand new starship.
@44/Eduardo: “The TNG bible had Leslie Crusher, after all.”
The version I have includes Wesley, but it contains zero mention of Worf. Also there’s “Bill” Riker and his prejudice against Data (rhymes with “that-a”), who was built by mysterious aliens and has the memories (not just the journals) of a destroyed colony in his brain. And Geordi is the liaison to the ship’s children.
@45/bgsu98: I think it was the right choice to drop the “Zimmerman” plan. Lewis Zimmerman ended up being a very different character from the Doctor, after all, so it was appropriate that they didn’t share a name.
Prodigy main title sequence, complete with giant holo-Janeway:
ST Prodigy
@47/Sunspear: Apparently the ship is flying by/through closeups of all the main characters. Probably the corresponding actor credits will be shown over them.
How exactly do you burn anything using a replicator? How do you mess up saying “computer, pot roast #3”? Did she put a burnt pot roast into the replicator for copying in the first place? Is this another bit of tech that can have the safeties disengaged?
I liked the little speech Janeway gave everyone, despite not really knowing them yet, she’s still the captain and acts like it. Picard gave speeches like this to brand new crew as well.
Her question to Chakotay about their relationship is an odd one, even though she’s told that they’ll be stranded in the Delta quadrant, she’s still from a time period where she has her fiance, I wouldn’t think she’d be in the emotional state to wonder about that on any level.
The temporal prime directive seems like it could be used to get away with just about anything. “Why do I have to give you all my holodeck hours?” “I can’t tell you, temporal prime directive, trust me!”
That Enterprise bible entry on the decon chamber, yikes!
An odd observation, Chakotay needed the doctor to develop a hypospray casing as well for the serum because normal “stuff” couldn’t pass through the time barriers, so he needed a casing that could pass through or else the liquid would just fall to the floor upon crossing over. How come his clothes don’t vanish?
@51/karey: “How come his clothes don’t vanish?”
Cosmic censorship?
@49
I’ve always wondered that! People talk about cooking with a replicator, as if it’s more complicated than telling the computer what you want and waiting for it to be assembled from the molecules up. We do know that people sometimes elect to cook more traditionally, such as the Sisko family or Riker making eggs that one time.
The only way I can reconcile it is the replicator must have a “manual mode” where you try to put together the meal yourself, and now I want to see how that works. It’s just a nook in the wall so there’s no stovetop or anything. Is it like a minigame in an open-world video game? Press the colored lights in the indicated order to cause a pot roast to come together properly? And if you do it wrong it actually gives you a burnt piece of meat? Starfleet is so weird.
Apologies if I missed anyone else’s comment, but hadn’t it been established that Chakotay is a vegetarian? Was the burnt pot roast only for Janeway?
@54/AndorianShran: Well, replicated meat wouldn’t require killing an animal, so depending on the reasons for one’s vegetarianism, it might not count. But maybe it was a plant-based meat substitute, like an Impossible Burger?
Or maybe the show just wasn’t bothering with consistency anymore, either in Chakotay’s diet or in the logic of how replicators work.
Funnily enough, it’s not like we haven’t seen Chakotay naked before…
@55/CLB: Excellent point! My brain obviously wasn’t working too well last night. I’ll blame it on the ridiculousness of the storm here in NYC. As much as this makes perfect sense, let’s just blame it on the writers having given up on any semblance of consistency.
“Sounds like it’s going to be one disaster after another on this ship.”
This is basically an exercise in nostalgia. The plot is rather thin and ultimately just a device for Chakotay and a younger Janeway to take a tour of the last seven seasons. But you know what? It’s fun to revisit these characters and scenarios, to see Seska and the Kazon again, and Doctor Chaotica (who does work best in small doses), and the fully Borg Seven and fully Maquis Torres. It feels like they could have done more to differentiate the pilot-era Kim from his present day counterpart, but you can’t have everything.
Most of the time periods we see are clearly defined. Chakotay says the Kazon takeover of the ship was five years ago: It feels as though it should be more like four and a half, but then it’s also said they’ve been on Voyager for seven years, so maybe not. The stardate given for Sickbay fits in with late Season 2, shortly before “Tuvix”. (Another missed opportunity to sneak in a Kes cameo?)
On the returning faces side, Seska and the Kazon were last properly seen in “Basics”, although we saw holograms of them in “Worst Case Scenario” and “Living Witness” respectively, and Kazon ships in “Relativity”. Chaotica, Lonzak and Satan’s Robot last appeared in “Bride of Chaotica”. Naomi last appeared in “Fury” and Icheb in “Nightingale”: Unlike the others, they appeared again (Icheb in the next episode!).
Ah yes, Janeway’s reference to “My first command”: The context does suggest Voyager is the first ship she’s commanded, which seems to contradict the spirit of earlier episodes but possibly not the letter. (We still don’t hear anything of her prior career other than the Al-Batani, which is now said to be her first posting.) She did of course mention a different first command back in “Revulsion” (which did seem to refer to a mission rather than a ship or permanent post), so with a bit of squinting, maybe she just means this was her first mission as Voyager’s captain (as established in “Relativity”)? And yes, Chakotay’s comment about barriers they never crossed does seems to Joss the theory that they were at it like rabbits off screen in “Resolutions”. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for Chakotay not to tell Janeway what’s happened at the end (his knowledge of future events is limited and given later events that timeline probably doesn’t come to pass), so he’s probably just teasing. Given how much attitude the “Caretaker”-era Torres gives Chakotay for being in Starfleet and Janeway for getting them stranded, it’d be interesting to know her reaction when her Chakotay comes in the door immediately after going “Hey, good news, Captain Janeway’s invited us to join the crew!” I didn’t interpret the scene as meaning they were being held there (and it definitely doesn’t tie in with them having just been beamed aboard, since Torres was on the bridge when the array was destroyed): I just assumed they’d gone in there for a quiet chat.
Although we’re told the Doctor’s chroniton injection is what lets Chakotay travel through time zone barriers, no explanation is given for how he ended up in the 2372 Sickbay in the first place: Presumably it’s related to him being in a state of temporal flux, somehow. I’ve heard Robert Beltran was rather disgruntled with the script, feeling that something that was sold to him as a “Chakotay episode” was actually about Janeway with Chakotay just acting as a sounding board for her, which may explain his muted performance.
As well as the link with A Pocket Full of Lies that Keith mentioned, that novel reveals that the Janeway from this episode was abducted by the Krenim just before the timeline reset itself.
I found it hilarious that Chakotay could just bluff Seska by telling her he’d locked her out of a bunch of systems. So naturally she doesn’t even try to confirm it. She just says “Sure, Chakotay, have access to a console. What harm could come from that?”
I guess one thing that I’m unclear of is if it was ever possible for Chakotay to encounter another version of himself native to a particular time frame he crosses over to or if there was some technobabble reason that “our” Chakotay could only ever be the one version existing in any time frame he occupies? If the former scenario was possible, then that was a missed opportunity to have Chakotay encounter a duplicate of himself.
@60,
Yeah, it’d have been a chance to compare the Chakotay of VOY’s closing days with the Chakotay of the early days in the DQ.
But that would have only worked if there had been actual character development…and with Chakotay, well…
@60: Right, that’s why in my earlier comment I thought it would have been very cool if the episode centered on Seven (despite it feeling like deja vu from “Relativity”) so she could interact with fully Borg Seven from “Scorpion”.
Many days late, and dollars short, but the conversation about Sisko’s rank is very interesting. I like to think that it was part of a choice to make DS9 very different from TNG…station vs. ship, alien technology, non-Starfleet crew members, and a commander instead of a captain. Of course, why not distinguish it by making Sisko the CO of the Saratoga at Wolf 359, and a commodore taking command of DS9?
One reason, other than implicit (and even unconscious) racism could come down to age. I recall reading that James Earl Jones was sought for the part of Sisko at one point, and the character would have been an admiral in that case. I absolutely don’t deny the part prejudice may have played, but I think the almost-broken former XO to frontier station commander, to Starfleet Captain(TM) arc would have played out just as well if we were talking about Sven Olsen instead of Ben Sisko.
A final aside, about ranks (Kim’s endless ensign-ness reminded me of this too): I was reading about the Royal Navy’s operational intelligence division in WWII recently. Like the rest of the RN at the time, staff officers generally stayed at lieutenant indefinitely, 40 and 50 year old lieutenants not being uncommon. When the division was sending a delegation to the USA to work with them, someone suggested that perhaps the officer in charge should be promoted, as his counterparts would be colonels and generals and admirals. The charmingly arrogant reply (your mileage may vary)? If he’s not comfortable dealing with generals as a Royal Navy lieutenant, then he has no business being a Royal Navy lieutenant,
This one ought to have been called “ Voyager: The Greatest Hits Album”
Everyone I am sure has their own personal favourite moments but the Bride of Chaotica call back was mine..It’s nice to see Robert Beltran getting something to do for once. Also any chance to see Martha Hacket back as Seska is never a bad thing, Despite the nonsense story I still enjoyed this one a lot.
I don’t understand all of the temporal prime directive objections in this episode; they obviously all knew that if they were successful, nobody but Chakotay would remember what happened, so once the plan was put into action there was no danger of changing the future. But even setting that aside and saying that the TPD had to be adhered to out of an abundance of caution, why does the TPD prevent present-day Chakotay from telling present-day Janeway what happened? How on earth would telling her about past events possibly violate the TPD?
@66 sheepdot I was thinking the same thing too.
The story makes absolutely zero sense, but it was still a cute and innocent episode, so at least it was entertaining with a lot of funny elements. I actually appreciated a Chakotay-focused episode for a change :)
☵ At the start of the episode, Chatokay pours some precious irreplaceable Antarian cider into two glasses, and then the ship’s inertial dampeners are knocked out of whack by anomaly-of-the-week. So they set those two glasses down on a table, where they are surely doomed.
I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
I like this episode if, for no other reason, it moves on at a good clip and never bogs. Yet I think it presents some good questions. While there may have been no debate about the weight of Janeaway’s decisions, at least it was presented and acknowledged. Debate would have been pointless anyway, since she can’t change the future/past. I think she’s certainly having the debate in her mind.
Sure, there’s a big issue with it all being about dramatic moments and that every time period is so nicely delineated by ship area (to say nothing of what’s already been pointed out about it all moving along with a ship in different space). There’s a lot of conceit required, but I found myself willing to give it that.