20th-century tech billionaire Henry Starling seems to have all the advantages in his clash with the crew of Voyager. He has more advanced technology. He has fewer morals constraining the length he'll go to. He's "abducted" the Doctor. But the game is not as one-sided as it seems. Tom Paris has earned the trust of astronomer Rain Robinson, and she's willing to help. Plus, a new technology allows the Doctor to move about more freely. Can our heroes prevail and return to their own time?
"Future's End, Part II" is a jam-packed episode. It's very exciting, but also feels rushed at times. The big cliffhanger of part one, that Voyager was recorded on camera as a UFO, turns out to be a problem our characters don't even have to take steps to solve. A subplot in which B'Elanna and Chakotay are captured by redneck conspiracy mongers isn't given enough time to feel dangerous before a rescue comes. And the logic of the ending requires even more hand-waving than the shaky opening of part one: somehow the timeline gets reset enough to erase everything that happened to future Starfleet Captain Braxton, but without doing the same to Voyager, or changing the fact that his timeship's technology affected Earth history.
This is all evidence of the original plan for "Future's End." The writers conceived of it as a three or even four part episode, which executives at Paramount reportedly nixed. And this was hardly the only debate behind the scenes. Some writers wanted to see Rain Robinson join the Voyager crew as a regular character, an idea firmly squashed by executive producer Rick Berman. (For what it's worth, Sarah Silverman -- anxious about a long-term commitment to one project -- has said she probably would not have played Rain had she been slated to become a series regular.) Actor Robert Picardo was strongly opposed to the permanent introduction of the Doctor's "mobile emitter," feeling that it would compromise something core about his character to lift the key limitation of his existence.
But despite off-camera turmoil and on-camera shortchanging of some story, there's still plenty of good stuff that ended up in the episode. The relationship between Tom and Rain plays quite well. It's basically the first time we see Paris as something other than a chauvinist cad. Also, critically, Rain is not blind to his flaws: she challenges him about his secrets, pokes holes in his lies, and delivers plenty of zingers even as she helps Tom and Tuvok. (In short, Sarah Silverman is even better in part two than she already was in part one.)
Henry Starling continues to be an intriguing villain, kinda-sorta like a Ferengi you can actually take seriously. He's driven by greed and utterly indifferent to future consequences (in a way that must have been interesting for climate activist Ed Begley Jr. to portray). He also displays truly psychopathic behavior in this half of the story, inflicting torture on the Doctor not for any actual goal other than to demonstrate that he can.
What an episode for the Doctor! Yes, the mobile emitter is going to change his character forever -- though as Robert Picardo would later acknowledge: he was wrong, it was for the better. Right out of the gate, the Doctor gets in a fist fight, rescues his shipmates, and tosses off action movie one-liners. (And side note: I made a mistake when I blogged previously that his Alzheimer's-esque memory loss was never mentioned again on the show. It does indeed get a passing mention here.)
And while I wish there had been more time for Chakotay and B'Elanna's story, there are still some good moments there too. In particular, we see how much Chakotay really has moved beyond the Maquis: he speaks about a time when he thought he was a freedom fighter. Also, he and B'Elanna talk at length about their Starfleet Academy experiences.
Other observations:
- Ed Begley Jr. has a particular accent that pokes through whenever he says the words "anything" ("anithing") and "everything" ("everithing"). And for whatever reason, this episode calls on him to say both a lot.
- B'Elanna mentions that a large portion of the ship's data (including the Doctor) was irretrievably lost to Starling's download. (I guess Starling "cut-pasted" instead of "copy-pasted.") But while they do get the Doctor back, there's no talk of any of the rest of the lost data. What do you suppose is now just gone forever? Or did it somehow magically return in the incredibly selective resetting of the timeline at the end of this episode?
"Future's End, Part II" might be overstuffed, and its ending is as flawed as part one's beginning. But it's even more fun... one of the somewhat rare Star Trek two-parters where the conclusion is better than the introduction. I give it a B+.
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