User Reviews

Star Trek Voyager series 4 would be blessed with many great episodes such as 'Scorpion part 2', fan favourite 'Message in a bottle', and 'The Gift'. By far the best episodes of the series were, however, 'Year of Hell' parts 1 & 2. It showed a nasty, dark side to star trek that had rarely been seen before, and was beautifully acted by nearly everyone. The premise is simple: A temporal ship tries to erase everything to rectify a mistake made in the past. Enter the 'Krenim', a wonderful new species full of temporal programmers, under the rule of a distraught captain trying to restore the glory of his species and bring back his lost wife. In entering Krenim space, Voyager will become critically damaged, eventually being evacuated apart from senior officers. This leads to a beautiful scene on the Bridge where Janeway evacuates everyone, with protest from Tuvok, and finally drives Voyager to its death into the Krenim ship. Obviously, Voyager cannot finish at this point, and the only thing letting down the episode is that fact that the ending comes far to quickly and easily, and is a let-down compared to the rest of the episode. However, the way this episode is shot, the sense of fear and terror that runs through it is magnificent and not something you would expect from Star Trek. A stand-out episode in a stand-out series.

The first part of this story was fairly dark but surprisingly this second part is even darker. After the evacuation of Voyager only the senior staff remain on board, although from the viewers point of view that just means there are no nameless background characters wandering around the corridors. Heavily damaged Janeway has taken Voyager into a nebula so they can make repairs and make a plan for confronting the Krenim's temporal weapon. Meanwhile aboard the weapon Chakotay and Paris have different ideas about how they can help Voyager; Chakotay thinks that by using the weapon they can make it so that Voyager never approaches Krenim space whereas Tom thinks any adjustment of time is wrong and they should try to ferment mutiny amongst the crew. We also learn Annorax's real motive for constantly changing time; he just wants to correct a mistake which lead to the loss of his wife. Obviously the crew of the Voyager find a way to repair time but I won't spoil how they do it.

This was another exciting episode where the crew actually get hurt, including the captain who is badly scarred in a fire. It was just a shame the story couldn't have been stretched a bit longer as it was good to see the usually pristine Voyager battle-scared.

Annorax elevates this episode with his portrayal of timeless despair. Trauma is one of the major star trek themes and we get a complexed character who ends up being a victim of his own invention. Unlike some 'iffy' star trek episodes/arcs he is portrayed in a sympathetic manner and becomes a fascinating character to watch.

Captain Janeway has lost her mind and is neck deep in her own obsession of getting Voyager home ---- to the point of sacrificing herself to save Voyager and time itself? It's a shame there is no memory of her being the salvation to billions.

I enjoyed the moment of embrace between Tuvok and Janeway. I am a sucker for Vulcan's being on the receiving end of someone expressing love for them. Surprising how much emotion a hand on a back can contain.

I also appreciated how the show did not explain a damn thing about the ending. How did Annorax end up being back with his wife? Instead of spurting out some nonsensical technobabble you just let it be and I can buy into it.

A well deserved 9/10 for the creative plot and execution.

After I finally got over the maddening continuity problems in Part 1 (writers ignoring that Kes told Janeway all about the Year of Hell) and Janeway's new hairstyle (which actually improved as episode 1 went on and is definitely better in episode 2), I was able to settle into some good old fashioned space-time continuum fun.

Kurtwood Smith (playing Annorax) always makes for an excellent villain. His "trying to get my wife back" motivation is a bit cliche and devoid of any surprise upon the "reveal" but I guess this is network TV so I'll roll with it.

It's fun to see Voyager destroyed, but only when we know we will get it back in ship shape via the magic of space-time.

This is the second part of an unusually violent two-parter. In the Trek shows, two-part episodes usually are more violent and exciting than normal, but this one is even more so.

When the last episode ended, Paris and Chakotay were taken prisoner by a temporal ship run by a Captain Ahab-like guy, Annorax. Annorax is trying to change time in order to undo horrible things his ship did hundreds of years ago. Since one of the ship's first acts accidentally resulted in erasing all memory of Annorax's family, he's been making changes in time again and again and again--all in an attempt to undo his earlier change. But each change ends up causing more havoc and erasing various species. Clearly Annorax and his crew are playing god!

In the meantime, Voyager is a mess with a skeleton crew of only about a half dozen. Given its condition, there seems to be no way they'll ever make it back to the Delta Quadrant--let alone survive more than a few months at best.

Can all this somehow be undone? Well of course--because this went on for seven seasons! Because of this, the viewer KNOWS all this will somehow get undone--a weakness in this show. But given the action and the complexity of Annorax as a villain, it's very much worth seeing and a nice change from the usually too nice episodes of the series.

This review applies to both episodes of this 2-parter Who wrote this two-part episode and why? A gritty and compelling story with a slight minimum of technobabble, a genuine sense of loss in that it's not just nameless goldshirts who can die or be seriously wounded, and an antagonist who is not a typical "bad guy" but actually a well-rounded, fully fleshed out person whose motives are driven solely by a desire to bring back his family, friends, and his people from mishaps he was responsible for, while being flawed enough to sacrifice entire races in order to do so? This is not typical "Voyager", but no worries; the show soon returns to the formula of mediocrity and stupidity it's so well known for. But for two weeks, we get a story that lives up to its title as it flashes forward from "Day 1" to "Day 4", "Day 39", "Day 70", "Day 180", etcetera in chronicling a *SHOCK!* REALISTIC depiction of a spaceship pursuing another through space and waging a bloody guerrilla-style war that sees Voyager slowly come apart, characters die or be maimed, and personalities clash.

There's still moments of stupidity, such as Tuvok claiming that there is an accepted addage amongst the Federation that "The Captain is always right", but for the most part, everything comes across wholly real, and very much as though Voyager were a small town under siege by an enemy, with the once pristine hallways and decks becoming smoldering shades of dark gray and blue as power fluctuates, decks are destroyed piecemeal, and places like the mess hall become medical facilities, and a big-ass piece of debris is stuck through the bridge.

The antagonist, meanwhile, is of the Krenim race. Spoilers abounding.

It starts with the Krenim attacking and threatening Voyager for intruding into their space, while Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) commands a gigantic ship with the ability to use time travel technobabble to alter aspects of things from molecules to planets in terms of time. So he uses this to eliminate an entire species on a planet, then observes how the timeline is affected, while he and his ship is protected from these changes.

Turns out, the Krenim were involved in a hideously violent war against a superior species that it was losing. Annorax then invented this time ship and used it to wipe out this species. The timeline then sets itself so that the Krenim are suddenly a superpower... and people begin dying by the millions from a disease that this other species had cured for the Krenim generations earlier.

So he attempts more and more time incursions to mess with the timeline, and as a result, accidentally wipes out the vast majority of the Krenim nation, as well as his own wife and children. He spends 200 years constantly attempting to change time enough to set things back the way they were, or possibly better.

They take aboard Chakotay and Tom Paris, and begin working together to try to undo the damage, and set Voyager fine as it was in before the Krenim met them.

Of course, the "Magic Reset Button" must come into effect for a show like "Voyager", and everything ends up reset the way it was at "Day 1", but the difference becoming that the Krenim do not attack Voyager outright, but acknowledge them, and politely tell them to avoid their space.

The only problem I saw is that Annorax was apparently still alive, at his home, working on the time ship. But in the prior episode, it was said he had spent 200 years messing with the timeline. So was this a flashback or a continuity error? Either way, an odd change of pace from typical Voyager stupidity, and even though the Magic Reset Button came into effect, it wasn't done as stupidly as it could have been.

With everything this crazy time-ship captain Crazy Pants Annorax has done, you'd think Chakotay would respond almost exactly as Paris. Telling him basically, to take a hike.

But no, Chakotay not only wants to hear more, he's drinking the last of the the last of a bottle of wine from a civilization that doesn't exist anymore thanks to Captain Crazy Pants.

Then Captain Crazy Pants compliments him and his ability to perceive time and Chakotay melts all over himself.

What an idiot! The guy wants his cooperation because he can't find Voyager to destroy it and fix his problems. And clearly, Annorax is nuttier than a fruitcake, hell when they walk into the dining room, he's stroking a glass pendulum holding his wife's hair.

Creepy Crazy Pants!

Anyway, it takes wiping out another few civilizations for the uber dense Chakotay to see what Paris saw immediately, that Annorax is nuts and there's no way in hell you can ever account for every variable to change time and make things just the way you want them.

Oh well, maybe they've got some good wine from one of those wiped out civilizations he can commiserate with Captain Crazy Pants about it.

First major problem: A few episodes ago, Kess warned them of this Year of Hell yet this episode doesn't even mention it. They should have stated "Kess warned us, so we changed x. We can get through this." (But of course, they can't defy destiny.)

Second major problem: Kess says that Janeway dies, but in this episode she doesn't. Why does Janeway survive the fire?! There's no need. Let her die in the fire. We all know that she will be magically restored anyways. How do you go through a Year of Hell without losing any of the main characters?! This is the situation that you can let them die.

The main storyline is interesting: 200 years ago, A Krenim named Annorax uses a temporal weapon to erase an enemy people from history but this erases his wife's colony and many of his people die from a disease because they don't have any genes from their enemy. Therefore Annorax keeps using the weapon, erasing more people but never succeeding to restore his wife.

Today, Voyager enters Krenim space and is greeted by a Krenim vessel that warns them to go around Krenim space. Janeway ignores this and therefore is attacked.

For the next year, Voyager is repeatedly attacked but the Krenim, with no explanation of why Janeway doesn't decide to go around their space.

Annorax keeps erasing people from history but miscalculates the effect of the presence of Voyager. (Voyager created temporal shielding to protect them from the Krenim's temporal chroniton torpedos.) So he tries to erase Voyager but fails. He then erases more peoples.

Voyager joins forces with other peoples to attack the time ship. Janeway has no weapons so she rams the time ship with Voyager, destroying both.

Third major problem: Presto, the destruction of the time ship erases everything that it ever did. WHY?! They destroyed the ship to stop Annorax from committing more new genocide but there's no foreshadowing or expectation that its destruction will change history. (Only the audience's expectation that by the end of the episode everything must be magically restored.)

Fourth major problem: Voyager encounters exactly the same ship that they did at the beginning of part 1. This should NOT be the case! For this to happen, then everything in the last 200 years would have happened, so not all history was restored, only the history since Voyager arrived in their space. Why would destroying the time ship only restore the last year? If all time was restored then hey should have met a ship but it would be the Krenim's enemy that Annorax had tried to erase. Them we would know that he did not use the weapon.

Also, we see a scene from 200 years ago of Annorax with his wife where he takes a break from his calculations. If this break is to imply that he never uses the weapon, then it should be a DIFFERENT ship that greets Voyager. Since we see the same ship, he should have turned away his wife and kept working, to show that time does not change. What can change is Janeway's decision, even though there is no basis for a different decision, only chance.

More: Beyond that, it's boring that the time ship is destroyed via a rather conventional fight.

More interesting would be if Chakotay, Tom and the sympathetic Krenim devised a way to turn the Time Ships weapon back on itself, to remove it from the timeline, such that Annorax never built it. The most reasonable method would be for a deflector to reflect the weapon's beam back at the ship. But not Voyager's deflector (that's too simple). Voyager works with the other ships to create a large temporal deflector. Could have a nice graphic of a network of beams between the ships creating this temporal deflector. Of course, place Voyager at the center and use some communication with Annorax that entices him to target Voyager first. Include the mutiny aspect because the sympathizer must program the weapon to produce a beam to send the time ship back (instead of one designed to eliminate Voyager.)