Star Trek Voyager: Year of Hell Part 1

"You have the bridge... what's left of it." 

Voyager accidentally puts itself in the line of fire of an obsessive alien commander.

At first this episode seems to be following a fairly typical Voyager plotline, as the ship has to cross disputed alien territory. But it quickly becomes clear to the audience that this is something else entirely. We are told that the Krenim empire, from which the time ship captain Annorax hails, "possessed deadly weapons based on temporal science" in the past. And then the viewer gets to see the friendly Zahl race wiped from existence and the Krenim suddenly back in power, and attacking Voyager, which already looks pretty badly damaged. For much of the episode, the audience continues to follow a plot that the crew of Voyager don't realise is happening all around them.

What the crew also don't know but the audience do is that we are seeing an altered version of the events that shook Voyager to its core and killed off half the cast back in season three's 'Before and After.' In that episode, Kes lived her life backwards, and spent most of it living and working under Captain Chakotay, because Janeway and B'Elanna had both been killed on Day One of the "Year of Hell." It was also a weapon from that year that was partly responsible for Kes travelling backwards in time, because she had been contaminated by "chroniton particles" (i.e. particles of time!) 

We actually get to see the exact same undetonated chroniton torpedo stuck a jeffries tube in this episode. This time, Seven of Nine finds it, and decides she needs to determine the exact temporal variance of the torpedo to improve their own defensive technology. This is exactly the information Kes needed in the earlier episode, but where Kes jumped backwards in time and then used the reading to get herself back in chronological sync in a slightly earlier time period, Seven indirectly gets Tuvok blinded because he has come to get her and is caught in the explosion while gathering the data.

It's a wonderful little detail, because it doesn't matter if you haven't seen or don't remember 'Before and After' - the future events of that episode never happened and that future has been changed by Kes's departure, so none of the characters have any awareness of those events and they are simply getting on with the drama, which makes perfect sense by itself. But it's a callback that really rewards streaming and binge-watching, because it really is very well done, tying up very neatly with the earlier episode, even including some similar shots. It also, of course, explains how it is that Voyager became immune to the Krenim changes to the time space continuum this time around, which clearly did not happen in the "original" timeline that Kes lived through. Seven is making a real difference.

The incident also leads to one of my favourite developments, Seven and Tuvok becoming closer. Feeling guilty for her role in him losing his sight, Seven becomes Tuvok's assistant and guides him around the ship. I've mentioned before how much I love this pairing, and seeing them working so closely together and sharing their frustrations with messy humans is great. We also get to see Tuvok use a tactile interface at the conn, presumably featuring some kind of Braille, which is a nice inclusion as although Geordi was always meant to be blind, his VISOR meant we rarely saw him actually needing any reasonable adjustments.

There are so many great dramatic moments in this, like the Doctor having to shut an airlock on two injured crewmembers, which leads him to angrily explain the rules of triage to Paris when the latter wants to spend more time on his girlfriend than their other patients. There's a nice little reference to Star Trek: First Contact when Seven knows the answer to Harry's trivia question as well. The episode does what many of the best episodes of Star Trek do, which is make sure everyone in the ensemble gets a moment. Some have more focus than others, but everyone gets a scene to shine, which is so good to see on a show with a big cast who often get left behind if a lot of episodes focus on one or two characters.

It was interesting to see, on re-watching the episode, how far in to the plot we get before Seven's temporal shielding allows the crew to find out what's happening. Of course, this is a two-parter, so we're less than halfway through the overall story, but I had forgotten how much of this first part focuses on the 'year of hell' concept itself, putting the crew through the wringer in various ways, rather than the overarching time travel plot.

The episode finishes on a solid cliffhanger, with Paris and Chakotay taken by Annorax as scientific specimens and most of the crew except for the senior staff evacuated (we'll ignore the fact that in 'The 37s' Chakotay thought they needed at least one hundred crew to operate the ship). Back soon for Part 2...

Bits 'n' pieces

 - This episode introduces two very important new things to the ship; the astrometrics lab, and Janeway's new, shorter hairstyle. She had briefly experimented with shorter hair way back in season two's 'Parturition,' but here she has a really nice bouncy new hairstyle that very much suits her. And also they have a pretty new room with pictures of stars to film in.*

 - Neelix gets a battlefield commission and a Security uniform, just as he did in 'Before and After.'

 - The angry Krenim man who threatens Janeway with nothing to back it up early on, before Annorax has managed to restore the Krenim's power, is obstinate and emotional, not entirely unlike Annorax himself, a sign of what's to come.

 - At one point the idea was that the "year of hell" would be an actual year and would last for the whole season. I suspect this idea had to be scrapped when the show-runners decided to replace Kes with Seven of Nine, as it might be too destabilising, but the concept eventually became Star Trek: Enterprise's third season.

 - The shipping news: everything about Janeway and Chakotay's relationship and interactions in this episode is just perfect. Paris and B'Elanna... are also there! Though B'Elanna's best scene is a lovely bit of friendship bonding with Harry. But the focus is on Janeway and Chakotay.

 - Annorax's story has some similarities with Isaac Asimov's novel The End of Eternity, which is a brilliant novel that I highly recommend.

*I'm being facetious, astrometrics is a really good idea and its introduction works well in this story; although the stars themselves do not usually change with Annorax's temporal adjustments, the power balance in the sector does and astrometrics provides this political information as well.

Quotes

Janeway: This is turning into the week of hell. (Oh dear).

Paris: I was inspired by an ancient steamship, the Titanic.
Janeway: The Titanic? As I recall, it sank!

Tuvok: (To Seven; Neelix has just been trying to persuade him to change the red alert sound) And you believe you have difficulties.

Janeway: I'm no authority on time travel, in face I've made it my goal in life to avoid it (how's that going, Janeway?).

Janeway: Who are you and where are my men? (The emphasis she puts on "men" can't help but remind me of her history with both Paris - her lizard baby daddy - and Chakotay!).

Janeway: I promised myself that I would never give this order, that I would never break up this family. But asking you to stay, is asking you to die.

I genuinely believe this two-parter is one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever made, not just the best Voyager story but one of the best in the entire franchise. But I have too many Thoughts on that so I'm going to put them in a separate article! Suffice to say, four out of four chroniton torpedoes.

Juliette Harrisson is a writer and content creator. Check out her books here, or her Patreon here.