Time and Again

Voyager investigates the aftermath of an explosion on an M class planet.

This is an okay episode with a strong premise and decent character development.

I like the Prime Directive issue that Paris and Janeway have to deal with and the sci-fi concept used to frame it is a good idea. Unfortunately the plot unfolds mainly using characters explaining what is going on with plenty of technobabble. Plus it suffers from the presence of an irritating child, which is not the young actor's fault, he was given annoying character traits by the writers.

The characterisations of Janeway, Paris, Kes, and the Doctor are established well, particularly Janeway. Katie Mulgrew gives a strong lead performance, whilst Robert Picardo and Jennifer Lien also do well in their scenes. Robert Duncan McNeill is entertaining but his emotions feel slightly forced at times.

Visually there are obvious budget constraints on the production as there is very little effort made to distinguish the setting as anywhere other than California populated by humans in brightly coloured clothes.

For me the timing of this as a temporal story following the previous episode is somewhat questionable.

This is a great early episode of Voyager. Several elements made me think of the original Star Trek with the Captain leading the away team and a Vulcan officer leading the rescue team. Some of the clothes worn on the planet look like they came from the 60's as well. There is also some Next Generation influence with the empathic female Kes discovering her expanded mental abilities.

The actors have settled into their characters after the pilot and the story is well-written. The crew finds a planet that has recently destroyed itself due to a huge energy explosion. When visiting the surface Captain Janeway and Lt. Paris end up trapped 2 days in the planets past, just before the explosion. Should they try and stop the incident that leads to the explosion, and can the Voyager crew find a way to rescue them? The classic Star Trek Time Travel Parradox.

A great example of this series potential.

A cave system under a city/on a planet (too many to mention) or a not so straight forward time travel episode.

This is one of the latter.

I do wonder if one of the writers read a classic 2000AD Future Shock story from about 1979 or 1980, which postulated that the massive explosion that happened in Tunguska in 1908 was caused by the craft sent from the future to see what caused the explosion in the first place.

My first time travel paradox right there, it blew my mind.

Still does.

Similar logic to the story here. I like how Janeway and Paris don't exactly see eye to eye, the friction between them and different idelogies is very clear-so its nice they went onto have a family together.

A good episode but with a somewhat rushed conclusion.

The Voyager crew beam down an M class planet after an event occurred that wiped out all lifeforms. Kes had an eerie experience about the people living in the planet being destroyed.

The planet is full of temporal fissures. Janeway and Paris slip through it and relive the planets final day with its inhabitants.

The planet was wiped out by a polaric energy explosion, something that was unstable.

Meanwhile the rest of the Voyager crew work to get Janeway and Paris back. Only for Captain Janeway to figure that the rescue attempt will start a chain of events that will lead to the explosion.

It is a very contrived story with an annoying kid. There is an even more annoying rebel group that are against polaric energy.

The studio set design of the planet is very bland and beige. The costume seem to have been inspired by the 1960s Star Trek era.

I'm sure we can destroy every vestige of reality by thinking too much. The fact of the matter is that going back in time has only one ultimate result. It will have to be erased or the results are catastrophic. I do appreciate the efforts of the Star Trek writers to delve into this. In "Time and Again," the crew discovers a planet that has been scorched and all life ended. While investigating, Paris and Janeway enter the planet the day before the moment of final destruction. Unfortunately they become complicit in the destruction. I thought it was well conceived and carried out, even though impossibilities present themselves.