After a reasonable effort at character building in its second episode, Star Trek: Voyager shifted fully into "adventure of the week" mode with its next episode, "Time and Again."
When Voyager diverts to investigate strange readings from a nearby planet, they find a dead civilization recently annihilated in a global holocaust. Janeway and Paris are pulled through a time distortion to the prior day, where they must find an escape before the coming disaster... without violating the Prime Directive.
This is in many ways an odd episode to be coming at this point, this early in the run of the series. For one thing, there was already a time travel element to the only other regular, one-hour installment so far. For another, the episode's final twist of revealing and escaping a predestination paradox means that really, "none of this ever happened," nullifying any growth we'd get with these new characters. (The one character with even minor awareness of the averted timeline, Kes, has no way of convincing anyone (even herself!) that what she senses with her nascent mental abilities ever actually happened.
It's also odd that we've come to the other side of the galaxy, ostensibly to have all-new adventures that don't involve established elements of the Star Trek universe, only to have this as one of the first planets we meet. It's populated by completely normal-looking humans whose only cultural oddity is their commitment to three stripes of color on their shirts. Sure, the budget must have been tight after the expensive series premiere, but maybe instead of paying for yet another trip to the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant (perhaps second only to the Vasquez Rocks as a popular Star Trek filming location), you throw a little money to the makeup department?
Weirder still are the rather conservative, not-very-Star-Trek-like ideals that seem to be on display when you actually scrutinize the story. It seems to be anti-technology, centered on a nuclear energy metaphor and giving space only to the notion that it's too dangerous to use. Maybe it gets a pass on this point, since the "polaric energy" of this story is indeed dangerous on a scale that puts even nuclear energy to shame. But tilt your head and squint, and the episode also seems to be anti-protest; if the activists hadn't been stirring up trouble here, the global catastrophe would never happened.
Weirdest of all, the episode is kind of anti-Star Trek itself. "Seek out new life and new civilizations" is the franchise mantra, yet here it's the very act of our heroes exploring that leads to the destruction of an entire world. Maybe in, say, the third season of the show, once Voyager's Star Trek credentials had been well established, a story like this would make more sense -- a story that doesn't do much to illuminate character, doesn't highlight Star Trek's more noble principles, is just a straight-up sci-fi short story.
So what do we get? The beginning of the long-running "Delaney Sisters" running gag. The undercutting of Neelix's supposed Delta Quadrant expertise. The Doctor's strange dismissal of a potentially serious medical issue with Kes (and his apparent forgetting that he already met her in the previous episode). But also, some fun stuff for Paris, between his banter with the alien kid and the discussion of his Daddy Issues via the Prime Directive. Captain Janeway getting right into the center of the action without any of the Riker-style first officer protectiveness. And, ultimately, a time paradox that is at least moderately interesting. It's not a great episode, but it's hardly a disaster.
Other observation (just the one, really):
- Neelix does try to be sweet in comforting Kes, but his dismissal of her telepathic experiences plays differently from a more modern viewpoint.
A rather forgettable installment of Voyager, I give "Time and Again" a C+. It's more a case of the episode not really doing anything "right" more than doing anything particularly "wrong."
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