VOY S5E6 "Timeless" Review by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

For some reason, I remember this episode being better than it actually was. It certainly starts out as an ambitious outing, with an aged Chakotay and Kim on a barren ice land unearthing a frozen Voyager. Everyone on board has died long ago, and their frozen bodies still lay where they fell. It's a gruesome scene, but the whole thing is handled rather nonchalantly by a hardened Chakotay and Kim. They are there for two specific purposes: to enlist the help of The Doctor, and to recover the body of Seven of Nine to use her body for spare Borg parts.

Slowly what has happened to Voyager is revealed. The crew had come up with a new warp drive using Borg technology that would allow them to get home much quicker. But the calculations on the technobabble parameters weren't quite right, and rather than call it off they decided to risk everyone's lives by just winging it. Chakotay and Kim were ahead of Voyager in a shuttle, and were supposed to direct Voyager with the correct phase variance to overcome whatever the issue was. It failed, Voyager crashed, and the shuttle made it home just fine. Chakotay and Kim had to live with the knowledge that their error cost everyone their lives. Worse yet, they were celebrated as heroes. They tried to find Voyager, but Star Fleet lost interest, so the two eventually went rogue. Their plan is to use Dead Seven's parts to transmit to Past Seven the correct variance, and avoid the disaster ever happening.

In my opinion, the characters just don't portray the level of desperation that it would take to commit such an act. Chakotay, as always, seems distant and a little too collected. He doesn't even show emotion when dealing with his girlfriend that he brought along with him, even though a successful mission would mean erasing their relationship from existence. Kim jumps all over The Doctor when he mentions that at least Kim survived, but the line is delivered so cheesily that if falls flat. In the past we're watching the timeline play out on Voyager, even though we know how it ends. Which...while it's all well done, just seems like a waste of screen time since we've already been informed of the events.

Star Fleet is on to the outlaws, and they send none other than Geordi LaForge to reign them in. He knows they're about to violate the Temporal Prime Directive, but is way too sympathetic with their cause. Two assholes with some guilt issues want to erase 15 years of history, and all he can bring himself to do about it is wish them luck and gently fire on their engines? This gives Kim enough time to transmit the variance to Seven, but (plot twist) he still can't get the calculation correct and nothing changes. Eventually he realizes that the math is impossible, and instead sends them a variance that causes them to gently drop out of the slip stream way short of their goal. This is portrayed as a failure, but to me seems like the logical thing to have done from the start. Save their lives, then figure out getting home. He sends them the variance a split second before LaForge gets serious and blows their ship up.

Now that things are back to normal on Voyager, they immediate disassemble the slipstream drive, because they have almost three more seasons to go. The good news is they're ten years closer to their goal. Kim swears that he didn't send Seven the variance that caused them to abort early; in fact the info that he did send would have resulted in catastrophe. Janeway shares with him that that the Star Fleet signature on that transmission was his, and from the future. Oh also, they have a message that future Kim recorded for current Kim explaining everything, so that takes the guess work out of it. When Kim correctly points out that a paradox exists that would prevent that message from ever having been sent, Janeway (very bored) replies, "My advice for making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple--don't even try." And with that, the main plot hole in the show is acknowledged and brushed off.

"Timeless" could be fantastic, but unfortunately is only Good. I hate to pick on any particular character or especially actor, but I think sending the pair of Chakotay and Kim into the future to be the saviors was a mistake. The Doctor of course added his usual cleverness to the situation, but I couldn't get over how he just accepted that he should join with the outlaws. Doesn't he have ethical sub-routines or some nonsense that would prevent him from obeying those types of orders? Now, reimagine the story with Janeway and Seven being the ones in the shuttle. It's better already, right? Then they end the thing by just spitting in the face of the viewer by telling them not to worry about the obvious paradox that the plot created. Nevertheless, the episode still had a great feel to it. It was a welcome break from the same old alien or anomaly of the week.

Published September 29, 2017