Kes returns to Voyager, her mental powers now so advanced that she doesn't fit in anywhere. Enraged and uncaring about any of the Voyager crew, she travels back in time to mere weeks after Voyager arrived in the Delta Quadrant, determined to remove her younger self from the ship and change the course of her own life.
I'm of two minds about this episode. On the one hand, I think this episode really does Kes dirty. The core of her character was always how thoughtful and poised she was, how empathetic. And sure, seeing her be none of those things makes for an exciting change. But it feels inauthentic. It was one thing to kill Tasha Yar on The Next Generation, then bring Denise Crosby back to play a different villainous character. Here, Kes herself is the villain, who destroys half the ship, unthinkingly murders B'Elanna, sells everyone out to the Vidiians, and sneers to the audience any time she's forced to play nice with one of her former friends.
And not only is Kes a villain -- she's a dumb villain. The way she goes about her plan makes no sense at all. If she's got the psionic mojo to shrug off phaser hits, rip apart bulkheads, and travel through time, then why does she go undercover when she arrives in the past? Why not just go full-frontal assault and tear up that version of Voyager too? And why is she so easily persuaded to give up her mission when confronted in the end with the recording of her younger self? She comes in at the start of the episode angry about being isolated and alone -- and then it seems like she's just going to head back out into the Delta Quadrant, again isolated and alone.
But on the other hand -- as a fan of Back to the Future Part II, I love the idea of a time travel story about going back to actually interact with a younger version of yourself. True, the "first season era" story we see isn't an actual previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager, but it feels close enough -- what between the return of the Vidiians and the subtle shifts in the portrayals of all the main characters. It's fun to see touchstones of the earlier seasons, including Ensign Wildman and Lieutenant Carey. (Though neither character has died, so why don't we see them on the show anymore?) Tuvok's odd premonitions of the future are entertaining too, especially when various children who don't even exist yet appear all over the ship.
Other observations:
- Executive Producer Rick Berman gets a "story by" credit on this episode -- though by all accounts, all he did was suggest that they bring Kes back, then left it to writer Brannon Braga to figure out the details.
- The opening scene has Janeway surprising Tuvok for his birthday. She says he's about to hit triple digits, but I think his presence during the events of Star Trek VI means he must be 100+ already.
- The visual effects in this episode are all over the place. The attack of the Vidiian ship at the climax of the story looks fantastic. A simple split screen shot of holographic young Kes speaking to her older self looks terrible.
- Ubiquitous Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong racks up another appearance (and another alien played) as the Vidiian captain.
- When Jennifer Lien delivers the line "they abandoned me long ago," you can't help but feel like there's some real-life spin on it.
- I'm apparently not the only Trekker who didn't like how Kes was written here. I hear there's a Star Trek novel in which author Heather Jarman retconned this episode to say in essence that this was a dark manifestation of Kes and not actually Kes herself.
My mixed feelings on this episode are going to pencil out to "mostly positive." I'll give "Fury" a B. Still, fun as this is, if they were bringing Kes back for one last episode, I wish she could have had a better "ending" than this.
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