In “11:59”, Star Trek: Voyager briefly becomes a WB drama (remember the WB?), and in “Relativity”, Star Trek: Voyager briefly becomes a show about Captain Braxton of the Federation timeship Relativity.
Trekabout Episode 304: Star Trek: Voyager, 11:59/Relativity
Christopher Rollins
-Yeah, 11:59 is pretty skippable in terms of the series as a whole. But Relativity? I should have brought it up in Future’s End, and the same applies here quite a bit, but Number One: Policing the timeline? Could work in theory, but in order to work the number of ways to time travel have to be tiny and cannot be readily accessible. After all, if some nutcase in a basement can time travel with ease, what’s stopping a rogue state from doing it? And Number Two: Am I the only one reminded of Terminator? Agents from the future go back in time to cause or prevent some disaster. Terminator’s plot was centered around Judgement Day: machines trying to cause it, humans trying to stop it. 5 movies in, and Judgement Day still happens. Even C&C: Red Alert showed that you could travel back to 1924 and kill Hitler, but accidentally make things worse as a result.
Eric Murphy
-I don’t think you’re wrong! I just think Star Trek should leave time travel alone, because it always raises more questions than it’s prepared to answer.
Cliffy
-11:59 and to a lesser extent Relativity are I think artifacts of how tired the basic premise of “point the ship and go” is at this point in Star Trek’s history. They’re doing more and more off-model ideas (11:59 might be the most off-model episode they ever produced) because no one, staff or fans, can get too excited at yet one more gloss on the same story. As much as ENT and DISCO had/have their problems, I’m sympathetic to the desire to find something different to do after several hundred episodes.
I like 11:59 mostly because I really like Mulgrew’s portrayal of this character (which is closer to earlier roles in her career), and it’s nice to see a post-Emergency! Kevin Tighe who’s not an inveterate bastard. I also immediately thought of that Murder, She Wrote where Landsbury plays her cousin.
Eric Murphy
-Good points! Voyager certainly has been having trouble making memorable “point the ship and go” episodes.