"Year of Hell" pt. 1, 2 - what?

[Thorius]

So, I've been watching Voyager on Netflix for a few weeks, and have made it up to Season 4. I've just it to "Year of Hell, pt 1". My problem is, is it just me, or should this story arc have never happened?

Here's my reasoning:

In ep. "Before and After", we learn through Kes's time travelling that in about a year, Voyager encounter the species with the chroniton torpedoes (don't remember the name). Three or four episodes later, in "The Gift" (which was, I think, Ep. 2 of Season 4), Kes throws Voyager 10 years worth of distance in 3 seconds. Then, 3 or 4 episodes later, Voyager is encountering the Krenim. WTF? Shouldn't they have been thrown about 8 years' travel past Krenim space?

It's sort of like your driving from New York to California. I tell you you'll be attacked in 4 hours time, which might put you somewhere in Pennsylvania, depending on your route. I then use a transporter to send you to Illinois, where after an hour of driving, you're attacked by the exact people I'd said you'd be attacked by if you had just kept driving 4 hours from New York - even though that would have placed your attackers in PA.

I thought the whole *point* of The Gift was to have Kes throw them past the year of hell. Guess not. Anybody else get the impression that Voyager (and most ST episodes for that matter) were written by committee, with nobody tending to issues of continuity? I mean, I can overlook small things, but this is a very not small thing. These two episodes should have never happened.

 

[F. King Daniel]

"The Gift" threw them past Borg space, not Krenim space.

And Star Trek ships move at the speed of plot. The Romulan Neutral Zone can be five minutes from Earth in First Contact, and so distant to preclude real-time communication with Earth in "The Neutral Zone"

 

[Thorius]

"The Gift" threw them past Borg space, not Krenim space.

No. Scorpion, Pts. 1 & 2 (which come almost right after "Before and After") revolved around them passing through Borg space.

It did throw them clear of Borg space, but certainly should have thrown them past the Krenim too, based on my previous reasoning. However, you're definitely right about ships moving at the speed of plot. I remember while watching DS9 (which was I think supposed to be one of the most distant outposts from earth, hence the "Deep Space" designation), there were some episodes where various crew members seem to shuttle back and forth to Earth in no time at all.

However, this doesn't seem to be a case of moving at the speed of plot - they move much faster than plot, then apparently backtracked so they could be attacked by the Krenim.

 

[Ln X]

Maybe Kes returning from the future or forseeing it, changed the future? I dunno, Star Trek is full of these episodes in the future but when the future comes things don't turn out the way some particular episode revealed it to be.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Krenim seemed to have disposed of or greatly reduced the Borg perhaps centuries earlier and taken most of Borg space for their own, and I doubt that Annorax would accept a galaxy as rightly shaped if it still had such an extreme Borg presence to his homeland.

In fact Krenim space was so large that we were still encountering formerly Krenim worlds as late as Virtuoso in season 6, if we are to accept that the repeat use of stock footage of a planet constitutes that those two worlds are the same world.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe Kes returning from the future or forseeing it, changed the future? I dunno, Star Trek is full of these episodes in the future but when the future comes things don't turn out the way some particular episode revealed it to be.

Annorax was immortal, outside of time for 200 years, rewriting time thousands upon thousands of times before our story picked up.

In any timeline that Kes had Janeway avoid the krenim, it is a timeline where Janeway never stopped Annorax and he he was free to change the universe again to try and get his wife back once more.

Only in a timeline where Kes didn't warn Janeway about the krenim, becuase before and After never happened or happened differently, or Kes just didn't tell Janeway about it, could Voyager ever be put into a situation where they would first run foul of the Krenim and then run double foul of Annorx and them somehow succeed in stopping his shennigans for a tripple foul.

We missed the first 200 years of Annorax's personal adventure where Voyager and Janeway were an inconsequential pawn that mattered to their grand plan less than belly lint.

 

[RoJoHen]

No. Scorpion, Pts. 1 & 2 (which come almost right after "Before and After") revolved around them passing through Borg space.

Yeah, but their journey through Borg space was cut short by Species 8472's attack. At the end of the episode, they are still inside Borg territory.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Basically the answer is that Voyager writers don't care about continuity, they've practically said it themselves. So don't expect any type of continuity to be applied to this series whatsoever. People will literally argue for days trying to apply some kind of internal logic that makes all these incongruous events match up. But the fact of the matter is "Year of Hell" was drawn up before Scorpion/Seven of Nine changed how season 3 would end/season 4 would begin. But it was a good story so the writers didn't want to abandon it so they just made it, continuity and logic be damned.
That's what Voyager is, its a collection of stories, not a cohesive show.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Just chalk it up to Annorax's timeline rewriting. Seven of Nine was in YOH but wasn't in Before and After so something was wonky with the timeline.

 

[Lindley]

The simplest explanation is that if Kes hadn't thrown them 10000 LY closer to Earth, something else would have.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

"The Gift" threw them past Borg space, not Krenim space.

And Star Trek ships move at the speed of plot. The Romulan Neutral Zone can be five minutes from Earth in First Contact, and so distant to preclude real-time communication with Earth in "The Neutral Zone"

And then there's Qo'noS..

 

[Kooz]

I agree that it's a collection of stories that we have in Voyager, not a cohesive show. I think we all need to admit that by-and-large, the stories that are collected are pretty terrible. Not to get off on a tangent, but did anybody care about any of these characters?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You're kidding right?

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I don't feel that most Voyager stories are terrible at all, Voyager probably had the most unique concepts out of all Trek and even while I was watching and being disappointed by uneven character development and lack of continuity, I was constantly impressed that they kept coming up with really interesting story ideas that kept my attention even when other problems were present.
You can criticize a lot of aspects of the show and I know I do - especially in relation to its failure to fulfil its basic concept - but viewed as a show that explored various science fiction possibilities, it was pretty damned entertaining.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

And if people don't like Picardo as the EMH well.. I don't know what to say. He's a breath of fresh air in Trek land IMHO.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Regarding the Confused Matthew video you posted in the other thread too. He points out a few really bad episodes - I dislike "Future's End" and "Infinite Regress" too. But in my opinion for every "Future's End" there's a "Dark Frontier" and for every "Infinite Regress" there's a "One".
Pointing out some of the series's worst episodes/worst instances of writing does not mean the whole show's writing is bad otherwise looking at "Masks" and "Identity Crisis", we could assume TNG was one of the worst shows ever.
Take his criticism of "Infinite Regress" for example - yes its bad but season 5 also gave us "Drone", "Once Upon a Time", "Timeless", "Latent Image", "Bliss", "Dark Frontier" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" which were all great episodes.

 

[Kooz]

I don't feel that most Voyager stories are terrible at all, Voyager probably had the most unique concepts out of all Trek and even while I was watching and being disappointed by uneven character development and lack of continuity, I was constantly impressed that they kept coming up with really interesting story ideas that kept my attention even when other problems were present.
You can criticize a lot of aspects of the show and I know I do - especially in relation to its failure to fulfil its basic concept - but viewed as a show that explored various science fiction possibilities, it was pretty damned entertaining.

Example of unique concepts please?

@Teacake: Picardo was really great. Best character on the show, which is not surprising since he's one of the few to show any character development.

 

[Kooz]

Regarding the Confused Matthew video you posted in the other thread too. He points out a few really bad episodes - I dislike "Future's End" and "Infinite Regress" too. But in my opinion for every "Future's End" there's a "Dark Frontier" and for every "Infinite Regress" there's a "One".
Pointing out some of the series's worst episodes/worst instances of writing does not mean the whole show's writing is bad otherwise looking at "Masks" and "Identity Crisis", we could assume TNG was one of the worst shows ever.
Take his criticism of "Infinite Regress" for example - yes its bad but season 5 also gave us "Drone", "Once Upon a Time", "Timeless", "Latent Image", "Bliss", "Dark Frontier" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" which were all great episodes.

Fair enough, but I'd say that his video is exemplary of the series as a whole, and the good episodes were the anomalies. In the past month I watched every single Enterprise and Voyager episode. Enterprise was not a great show, but Voyager was, at times, unwatchable! I guess we have to agree to disagree, since you have such a high opinion of the show, and that's fine--that's why these kinds of debate are fun. But I am not going from fond memory, I am working from a position of having crammed in every episode, in order, in a period of a month or so.

 

[Lord Manitou]

Thorius wrote:

In ep. "Before and After", we learn through Kes's time travelling that in about a year, Voyager encounter the species with the chroniton torpedoes (don't remember the name). Three or four episodes later, in "The Gift" (which was, I think, Ep. 2 of Season 4), Kes throws Voyager 10 years worth of distance in 3 seconds. Then, 3 or 4 episodes later, Voyager is encountering the Krenim. WTF? Shouldn't they have been thrown about 8 years' travel past Krenim space?

It's sort of like your driving from New York to California.

In 'Before and After' Kes was thrown into a distant future time. There is no more deductions one can get from the script. It was so far in the future she was dying of old age (9yrs.). Through a number of scenes she skips back again and again to just before 'Year of Hell'. She didn't experience anything else.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Example of unique concepts please?

I guess we have to agree to disagree, since you have such a high opinion of the show, and that's fine--that's why these kinds of debate are fun. But I am not going from fond memory, I am working from a position of having crammed in every episode, in order, in a period of a month or so.

I am not coming from fond memory either. I watched nearly all of Voyager within the space of about 2 months one summer and I found myself extremely frustrated by the lack of ambition, the carelessness towards continuity and cohesion, and just generally how much it paled in comparison to DS9. But after a while, I came to accept Voyager for what it is instead of dwelling on what it should have been. Its basically a continuation of season 6/7-esque TNG with some slightly more lifelike characters and yes, a little less consistency but not a whole lot less.

Regarding unique concepts, you can't be serious if you can't see how Voyager often gave us very cool, interesting and new stories. It was in the show's nature considering it took TNG's two hi-concept story writers (Braga and Menosky) and was following in the footsteps of TNG's relatively hi-concept later years. So here are some of VOY's greatest concept episodes:-

Faces - The concept of a character torn between two backgrounds literally being split in two, and having to face both sides of eachother. And its completely different from the "good vs evil" Kirk angle.

Lifesigns- A woman ravaged by illness finds new life in holographic form and decides that a few weeks spent functioning as a fully healthy hologram is better than years more suffering in her real body. Both hi-concept and poignant, something VOY really pulled off well sometimes.

Deadlock - The ship duplicated but sharing the same power source. Either one is destroyed or both are. Fantastically hi-concept and an episode superior to both "Starship Down" and "Disaster" in my estimation.

Tuvix- Two people combined into one who has his own personality and right to live. The ethical considerations of this episode were really quite thoughtful and the concept that allowed them fun and what Trek does great.

Unity- Another view of the collective consciousness and the benefits it can bring to a divided people. This was a wholly unique and different look at the Borg and really made me think.

Distant Origin- Sure, it gets a bit silly but sci-fi can be silly sometimes when its trying to explore issues as interesting as the harms of strict adherence to dogma. A story combining dinosaur aliens with a real issue, good stuff.

Year of Hell - A crew frozen in time that constantly attempts to change time around them in order to regain the former glory of their people, and a man not content until he brings his wife and daughter back into existence? Sure, the reset button was annoying but that's a problem for the show, as a two-parter on an episode basis - both unique and well done.

Mortail Coil - A character with religious convictions and the belief he will meet his family again in heaven dies and is revived only to realize the afterlife does not exist. This episode is refereshingly unapologetic in its view, and the concept was both wonderful and daring.

Living Witness- A crewmember "awakened" 700 years in the future to find the actions of his crew had become distorted from the passage of time, and is determined to set the record straight. Another great concept.

Latent Image- The issue of holograms and the rights of holograms were well explored in Voyager in a series of wonderful episodes. The idea of a hologram that has evolved to the point where he would pick to save a friend over an acquaintance in a medical emergency and experiences a crisis because of it, coming up against the prejudices of the crew. Wonderful stuff, episodes like this really made Voyager worth watching for me and I can't see most sci-fi shows doing work approaching this quality.

Course: Oblivion - A decently executed episode with a fantastic concept - the idea that Voyager was duplicated and those duplicates lost their early memories and began to believe they were the real article. Wonderful.

One Small Step - The subspace graveyard filled with the remnants of thousands of alien ships was great, and it gave us a really good Seven of Nine story where she comes to appreciate the importance of history and not just the here and now.

Ashes to Ashes - One of my favorite concepts in the show. A dead crewman reanimated by another species comes back to Voyager only to realize she's changed and may not belong. It didn't do everything it could with the concept, but the idea was still fantastic.

Muse - Another one of my favorite Trek concepts and indeed episodes. A crewman crash lands and inspires a poet that aims to use his work to prevent a war on his world. This is classically beautiful and refined trek.

Those are just some of the great concepts I find in Voyager, and as I said I enjoy them on an episode by episode basis. The show overall is a disappointment, I accept that. But I don't let the lack of cohesion obscure how good some of the individual writing in these episodes were. In my opinion seasons 1, 4, 5 and 6 all had way more good episodes than bad ones. For awful episodes like "Cathexis", "Demon", "The Fight" and "Fury", there were episodes like "Faces", "Living Witness", "Latent Image", "Dark Frontier", "Barge of the Dead", "Critical Care" to make it all worth it.

I probably place VOY below TNG because I do find it less consistent and I do judge it down overall as a show due to its failure to live up to its concept. But it had a lot of fantastic episodes that other science-fiction shows couldn't even begin to make. And really, I like all Trek, I don't think most science-fiction shows can come up to the level of even its least greatest show.
VOY was not worlds away from TNG by any stretch of the imagination, and I can enjoy them both on the same level just fine.