Seven of Nine is recruited by Starfleet officers from the future to help deal with a temporal incursion aboard Voyager. Seven pursues the culprit through time to different moments in the ship's history... until coming to a shocking revelation of who she's really pursuing and why they're trying to destroy Voyager.
It's clear from the first moments of this episode that we're just here for "fun" this week. (Assuming you like time travel stories, anyway.) We get a sweeping view of starships being built in orbit of Mars, then the reveal that we've flashed back to the beginning of the series (with clues like Janeway's old hair bun and talk of chasing Chakotay into the Badlands). But what's a shifty-acting and implant-less Seven of Nine doing there? The teaser and first act of this episode does a nice job of making the audience slowly come to understand the plot, all while serving up some fun "deleted scenes" that we never actually saw in the original pilot.
From there, the episode proceeds to unleash as much anarchy as it dares. Seven of Nine dies! And lives again! Voyager is destroyed! But can still be saved! Temporal distortions cause different parts of the ship to exist in different times. Blast from Voyager's past include appearances by Lieutenant Carey, the Kazon... and Captain Braxton, the Starfleet time traveler Voyager tangled with before (albeit now played by actor Bruce McGill). We get a shout-out to the plot of the movie First Contact, Seven of Nine interacting with herself, a neat new time travel paradox, and several time-travel related jokes (including the clever hero one-liner: "Come here often?").
But there are a few elements at the margins that for me keep this from being top shelf fun. The "rule" the writers introduce to cover why Seven of Nine can't keep time traveling until she gets everything right doesn't seem like it applies to the characters from the future (who time travel all the time). Janeway's memory strains credibility, as she recalls details of an insignificant conversation from years earlier. And while this has no bearing on the time travel shenanigans, it feels a bit strange to me that neither Paris' best friend Harry nor girlfriend B'Elanna want to be his ping pong partner; they'd both rather team up against him.
Other observations:
- Seven of Nine is something of an "internet hypochondriac"; she basically Googles her symptoms and diagnoses herself with a rare disease before seeking out the Doctor's opinion.
- We get a "Seven of Nine POV" shot that's all tinted green. So... her vision is like that all the time?
- Robert Duncan McNeill must have felt some pressure shooting the scene where he has to have a conversation as he walks down the hall bouncing a ping pong ball. I wonder how many takes it required.
- Trek fans would recognize actor Jay Karnes from this Voyager episode when he later appeared on Star Trek: Picard. Given that it was in the middle of a season-long time travel story, it led some to theorize that Karnes was playing the same character.
As can sometimes be the case in a time travel story, the stakes don't feel that high here. Still, at least they avoid an "it never happened" ending and allow some characters to retain knowledge of this little adventure. I give "Relativity" a B+.
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