The summary has been given to you-it makes sense and was and is one of Voyager's best eps period. Your simply a hater or foolish if you disagree
The ending of "Year of Hell"
- Thread starter jmidnight_99
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But to be consistent, wouldn't erasing the weapon, also erase everybody inside of it from existence, including Annorax? And isn't erasing Annorax the real key to insure that the weapon would never be built? Or are we supposed to believe that the weapon said to itself "I am going to erase myself from existence but I won't touch a hair of anything in my vicinity, except for Annorax will to study temporal mathematics or whatever"?
Annorax made no time travel calculations whatsoever, because the episode did not involve time travel. His weapon removed objects from existence. His calculations determined the effects of removing an object from existence. His objective was to restore certain aspects of the present. Nothing that he did could obtain his objective, because the existence of the weapon itself prevented that.
Your comment about erasing the weapon from the timeline didn't erase his initial need to build the weapon (if that is what you meant) shouldn't be a source of confusion, as the last scene shows him designing his weapon again.
It seems to me that you still don't understand the episode.
It's a good point. But assuming the incursion deleted the weapon first, the ship never existed to be deleted so no one was ever on it.
[Edit: What I mean is, I don't think the weapon was the ship, the ship carried the weapon.]
[Another edit: It's also possible that if the weapon deleted Annorax, then there would be no weapon to delete Annorax (because there was no Annorax to invent it), so Annorax would be restored because there was never any weapon to delete him. Maybe I'm mistaken and instead of the weapon needing to delete itself to restore things, It needed to delete Annorax]
No wonder why this gives Janeway a headache.
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The timeline divergence happened when Annorax's wife wanted him to spend some more time with her.
In the original timeline, he declined and carried on working on his timeship blueprints.
The erasure of that timeline was simply him putting down those blueprints and taking time to be with his wife. We can conclude that due to that event, he decided to discontinue his work on the timeship, and thus its existence was erased from history.
In the original timeline, he declined and carried on working on his timeship blueprints.
The erasure of that timeline was simply him putting down those blueprints and taking time to be with his wife. We can conclude that due to that event, he decided to discontinue his work on the timeship, and thus its existence was erased from history.
Yes, very very possible that it was never finished. Only the writer knows for sure! He may have continued his work that evening.
Call it what you want, his calculations whatever they might be, caused the weapon to be built. We're supposed to believe that in the end he decided not to finish those calculations after all. But why would he do that since he had no memory of another time line?
As for the episode, it's quite obvious that the writers themselves didn't understand it themselves as it is filled with plot holes and contradictions.
For instance, they can't decide if the ship is moving forward in time or if it's stationary timewise. Annorax says that they've been wandering around for two hundred years, yet he still expects his wife to reappear and that suggests that the ship is stationary via a vis the normal time. But then you have his assistant that says that for a hundred years he's been celebrating the birthdays of the dead and that says that the ship is moving forward in time. So which one is it? Besides it they were coming back to the same time period again and again as they seem to imply (sometimes) then Voyager wouldn't hard to find as it wouldn't MOVE!!!
This is just to show you how incoherent the whole thing is. And that's a characteristic of most voyager episodes, the more you think about them the less sense they make.
I assume Annorax meant he wanted to create a timeline in which his wife had never died. It's less clear if or how he was planning to join her at that point, but the point of the episode was that the only way for him to bring his wife back was to turn his weapon upon itself.
The flow of time continued, the crew was just granted effective immortality by virtue of the ship.
The flow of time continued, the crew was just granted effective immortality by virtue of the ship.
How's everyone's headache? Mine's getting worse ...
But hey I won't give up, please keep on analyzing. I actually understood some points, which is more than before reading this thread ...
Nevertheless, I can understand Janeway perfectly ... I think I need a cup of coffee ... to go to warp ...
But hey I won't give up, please keep on analyzing. I actually understood some points, which is more than before reading this thread ...
Nevertheless, I can understand Janeway perfectly ... I think I need a cup of coffee ... to go to warp ...
Thank you for your reply.
I don't think you understand the paradoxical nature of this episode. I also don't think you understand the irony, either. These concepts can be complicated, so, the episode remains incoherent to *you*. Paradox, irony, tragedy... these things don't fill up the vast wasteland of prime-time TV for a very good reason.
I understand well enough. Maybe you should take another look at my explanation. It can't be that complicated.
Let me give it another shot, though:
1) Annorax is hoping to get his wife back after to hundred years and that means that the ship remains stuck in the same time period otherwise timeline or not, she'd be long dead no matter what he did.
2) Annorax assistant says that for more than a hundred years he's been celebrating the birthdays of the dead and that means that the ship is moving forward in time.
You do get that these two statements are in stark contradiction, don't you?
1) Annorax is hoping to create a timeline in which his wife didn't die. That said, his species could be long-lived in general.
2) They've experienced one hundred years of time passing while being sheltered from its effects. They could have gone another 1,000 years (or more) in the same condition. They don't age as long as they're on the ship.
There's no contradiction here.
2) They've experienced one hundred years of time passing while being sheltered from its effects. They could have gone another 1,000 years (or more) in the same condition. They don't age as long as they're on the ship.
There's no contradiction here.
While Annorax and his crew are on the ship, time does not pass for them. In other words, they exist outside the time line of the rest of the universe. But they don't become atemporal beings with no sense of linear sequences of events, like Deep Space Nine's prophets. They experience a sequence of events within the ship, in which one thing happens after another. So, it's as though the ship has its own internal time line, independent of the universe's time line, and along this internal time line, Annorax's crew member has been celebrating birthdays for hundreds of years.
It's a bit like the way people on a space ship travelling at a fraction of light speed would experience the passage of time at a slower rate than people standing still (or moving at much slower speeds). The conditions of Annorax's ship aren't based on that principle of physics, nor do they work in precisely that way, but I'm making a basic comparison to a real world situation in which time passes differently inside and outside of a ship.
Unlike my real world comparison, the conditions of Annorax's ship make no scientific sense (as far as I know), but if you accept the unscientific premise, the story does not contradict itself.
It's a bit like the way people on a space ship travelling at a fraction of light speed would experience the passage of time at a slower rate than people standing still (or moving at much slower speeds). The conditions of Annorax's ship aren't based on that principle of physics, nor do they work in precisely that way, but I'm making a basic comparison to a real world situation in which time passes differently inside and outside of a ship.
Unlike my real world comparison, the conditions of Annorax's ship make no scientific sense (as far as I know), but if you accept the unscientific premise, the story does not contradict itself.
If they are locked into one spot in time, how do they converse with Voyager?
That's precisely the point I am making. And also if they are locked in that spot in time then how is Voyager able to flee?
I understood it completely. I was sort of semi-quoting Cat from Red Dwarf like the previous poster had used Austin Powers for ''I've gone cross-eyed".
If I had watched the episode more recently, I could answer more precisely. But basically, Annorax's ship moves around in a sort of field parallel with but independent from normal spacetime. Somehow, Voyager detects the ship and does some technical something to force it back into normal spacetime. The first time Voyager tries this is the time Tom and Chakotay get kidnapped and the ship goes back into its own field.
Again, it makes no real scientific sense (to me), but it is internally consistent.
I think you're misremembering. The timeship is temporally-shielded, but it's Chakotay and Paris who deactivate the shielding from inside the ship so that it can be attacked.
I would say the ship was protected from the deleterious effects of time, but I never really thought the ship existed outside of it in any other significant capacity beyond essentially being in a different phase.
I would say the ship was protected from the deleterious effects of time, but I never really thought the ship existed outside of it in any other significant capacity beyond essentially being in a different phase.
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