11.59

[Captain Shaw]

I have just been talking to my brother Jax and I was surprise to learn he despises the episode 11.59 he says its not trek.
Its been a while since I have seen it, but I remember enjoying the episode just wondered what peoples thoughts was on here regarding the episode?

 

[JB2005]

It's not Trek, it's nothing to do with Voyager, it doesn't really establish anything about Janeway that we didn't already know...(She's inspired by Pioneers, big whoop we saw that in the '37s. Picard also had pioneers in his family, but we didn't need entire episodes of TNG to learn this)

It wasn't directly related to the DQ. It was just an excuse to tell a different story.It's fluff which is why I said meh.

 

[Jax]

Boring episode with no hint on Trek bar the first few minutes set on the ship. Episodes like that were clear signs UPN/Paramount were wrong to demand 26 episodes for most of the season's but its not the worst everepisode of VOY...

That honor belongs to Threshold

 

[BlobVanDam]

I thought it was a pretty bad episode. Aside from Janeway trying to discover her history, it had absolutely zero relevance to the lives of the crew in their timeframe, so it felt like a waste of an episode. I didn't find the story of the new characters all that compelling or interesting either, and I couldn't have cared less about what happened to them.

 

[lurok]

a divertissement. For what it was, wasn't bad - not great, but seen worse; gave me another insight into Janeway background; and I guess a visual break from monotony of DQ. Always felt like it was a bit of a Mulgrew vanity piece, which in principle don't mind, and much prefer to those ghastly Oirish village or 'lovesick Janeway' eps

edit: having watched again recently, feels a bit a shaggy-dog story (ok, so maybe ancestor not that important really). In that sense reminded me a little of ENT Carbon Creek. But still enjoy both episodes...

 

[Captain Shaw]

a divertissement. For what it was, wasn't bad - not great, but seen worse; gave me another insight into Janeway background; and I guess a visual break from monotony of DQ. Always felt like it was a bit of a Mulgrew vanity piece, which in principle don't mind, and much prefer to those ghastly Oirish village or 'lovesick Janeway' eps

I'd forgotten about fair haven

 

[Jax]

I like the FairHaven stuff because there nice comedy episodes.

 

[AuntKate]

It is as much about Trek as many other episodes, Voyager and otherwise. What about DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars"? Excellent episode, but not much about Trek. Or TNG's "The Inner Light"? Another wonderful episode, but only touching on Trek. Now, I'm not saying that "11:59" approaches the quality of those two examples, but it did provide a little background about Janeway and made an interesting point about what we really know and understand about history.

 

[JB2005]

But FBTSs and TIL we're at least given an explanation for what we're seeing - Sisko is having a vision from the prophets and Picard is experiencing the last record of a dead civilisation.

Here it's "DID YOU KNOW JANEWAY HAD AN ANCESTOR WHO IS IN NO WAY RELEVENT TO THE FACT SHE'S IN THE DELTA QUADRANT, WHOM SHE WILL NOT INTERACT WITH AND WHICH WILL NOT COME UP AGAIN? NO? WELL YOU DO NOW!"

The Inner Light gave us an insight into Picard, which echoes through the rest of TNG when we see him playing his flute...

Plus Picard and Sisko were both involved directly in what was going on...and there were call backs to Benny Russel in DS9 too...if Shannan O'Donnel had been an integral part of a future Voyager story (ie if this had come before Back to the Future's End) and Janeway had been forced to interact with her ancestor, then this would have been intersting backstory...

 

[RyuRoots]

It is as much about Trek as many other episodes, Voyager and otherwise. What about DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars"? Excellent episode, but not much about Trek. Or TNG's "The Inner Light"? Another wonderful episode, but only touching on Trek. Now, I'm not saying that "11:59" approaches the quality of those two examples, but it did provide a little background about Janeway and made an interesting point about what we really know and understand about history.

Far Beyond the Stars and The Inner Light both affected Sisko and Picard in very deep, personal ways in that they experienced lives that weren't their own, and felt perspectives that were extremely powerful and changed them, and we see that brought up again multiple times for both of them.

Janeway mopes a bit when she realizes her ancestor wasn't who she thought she was.

There's really not a comparison; the first two tied into our captain as another person and gave both us and them perspectives on them as a similar person in a fundamentally different life. 11:59, while I personally enjoyed it, didn't really have any bearing on anything.

 

[AuntKate]

I respectfully disagree. Janeway learned a lot from the experience, and so did others on the crew. What do we really know of the past? What will the future think of us? We want to think that we will be remembered, that our actions influence the future, but we may not be remembered at all. Or we might be remembered for the wrong reasons.

Janeway has been taken down a peg, no longer able to brag about her ancestor as a pioneer in space exploration. And yet, Shannon is part of her family, valuable just for that reason alone.

I think that is as good a lesson as the one Picard learned in "Inner Light." All we're missing is the flute.

 

[JB2005]

What experience? Janeway didn't actually see/experience what we the audience saw. That was just Mulgrew playing an entirely different role.

And well I might add, say what you like about me, but I do think that Mulgrew is a hell of an actress...that is to say when she's allowed to act and not being given some of the truly appalling direction we see on Voyager. And as a truly appalling director myself I know it when I see it.

And Janeway can't brag about Shannon O'Donnel? So what? It's not like she ever did before...or since...

It's nice that she learned that family matters, but surely that was the message in Endgame (You know "To the journey...which incidentally prompted Janeway to say, ya boo sucks to the journey, I wanna go home and kill some borgs on the way past)...

I'm not saying it's not a good episode. I liked it as a silly little sideshow to a somewhat more darker season 5, but when you start comparing it to The Inner Light and Far Beyond the Stars, I'm sorry it just doesn't compare...

And the whole "what will history think of us?" thing probably was learned by the crew...it was probably very keenly on their minds...along with the names Ahab, Queequeg and Starbuch in Equinox II when Janeway decided to hunt down Ransom.

Sorry, but as much as I like the episode, we have to hold it up relative to the series. For Voyager it was pretty good, but compared to IL/FBtS it's like comparing Who Shot Mr Burns? To Best of Both Worlds. Personally I think they are both fantastic cliffhangers and interesting stories...but you can't really hold them up side by side.

 

[AuntKate]

I said it didn't compare in quality to the DS9 or TNG episodes, if you read my post. What I said was that those were not "Trek" in the strict sense of the word.

 

[JB2005]

Very true, you didn't compare the quality...

I However do! It just seems like there was more potential for the story here than we got...It's almost like the producers stopped in the middle of the pitch and no one realised.

Joe Menosky: "So we've got this great idea for a Voyager story..."

Brannon Braga: "Ok, shoot"

JM: "Ok, so what if Janeway has a relative?"

BB: "Loving it!"

JM: "A relative in the past?"

BB: "Genius!"

JM: "And we see this relative..."

BB: "Don't you hold out on me now..."

JM: "...and she's played by Mulgrew!"

BB: "Of course! You've done it again! Don't hold back, what's the twist?"

JM: "Well...what if it turns out that Janeway has one idea of what her ancestor was like, but we the audience see what the real ancestor was like"

BB: "Comedy Gold! Go on"

JM: "and then Janeway learns about it, from...er...Tom Paris?"

BB: "Well he is the ships historian!"

JM: "And then Janeway learns that it's ok no matter who your ancestors were, because they're still important to you!"

BB: "An important message too, way to round off the episode! Joe, you've done it again!"

_____

I mean don't get me wrong, its a fine concept for the episode, it just seems a little shallow. Like we kind of had this in First Contact, where everyone thought Cochrane was a great man and visionary and then found out the truth for themselves...

It Just needs...something...

 

[HoneyBLilly]

11:59 was a good Janeway episode.

Not necessarily a good episode of Trek but it was good for the character and it had a good moral.

You don't know who your ancestors really were. You get histories version and with primitive ways to pass down tradition then the facts become garbled.

And yes, Janeway kind of rode her high horse a little too high, but to be honest if I wanted to I could go around screaming that my uncle has saved countless lives because why he created Morse Code. But I don't. Because A: it doesn't matter, we don't have the patent it got sold off years ago and B: I'm just a great-great-great niece, I've never met him and it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm only bringing it up because it's kind of relevant to this.

Janeway believed her aunt had actually done something important, which in a way she did, and for someone who holds onto her roots that's incredibly important and when she found out that Shannon didn't do that she felt hurt; which I understand, if I was to find out tomorrow that all that research I've done on my family tracing it to County Cork, Ireland was pointless because none of what I have been told was true and that I was actually Greek(which I am so not, you'd understand if you saw my tanning powers ) I would be heartbroken.

She came to the realization at the end of the episode that it didn't really matter because she was still alive and without Shannon O'Donnell staying in Indiana she never would have existed.

But I still say "meh" when I'm in the mood for Janeway it's good. Beyond that, nope.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I don't love it, I don't hate it, but I don't find it "meh", I just like it.
I hate when polls have a crappy selection of choices.

 

[JB2005]

*JB* do you have anything good to say about Janeway?

All it seems like is that you're attacking her.

I have plenty good to say about Janeway. This episode did give us an interesting insight into Janeway, I'm not denying that. She was inspired by her ancestors as well as by Amelia Earheart, when you start to add it up she's got a female pioneer thing going, which is appropriate because she herself is a female pioneer, being the first Starfleet Captain (well until Equinox comes along) to chart the Delta Quadrant.

It's just that we didn't hear about AE in the episode, and if I wasn't a Voyager fan, I wouldn't be able to make the connection and draw a conclusion.

And as I said in my previous post, Mulgrew's acting was fine - no complaints there at all!

My "beef" as I hoped my post indicated, was with the show runner and the writer. They had a good premise for a) a series b) an episode and they wasted both.

I was thinking after I posted that this episode might have been interesting if it had aired directly after either Dark Frontier or Raven, and if Seven of Nine had been having issues about her parents, and Janeway told her the story of Shannon O'Donnell and how even though Janeway had been brought up to believe one thing about her family and it turned out the truth wasn't as inspiring, it didn't matter, because family is still important, even if it's not always what we might have hoped for.

 

[od0_ital]

...if Shannan O'Donnel had been an integral part of a future Voyager story (ie if this had come before Back to the Future's End) and Janeway had been forced to interact with her ancestor, then this would have been intersting backstory...

Which brings up another problem with '11:59', since Janeway told Chakotay in 'Future's End, Part One' that for all she knew about her own ancestry, some punk rock chick with blue hair on roller skates goin' down the boardwalk could have been in her family tree.

A few seasons later, and Janeway idolized her great-great-whatever-granmother, from the same decade as the punk rock boardwalk skater.

Didn't care for '11:59' at all, and anyone arguin' the idea that it's VOY's version of 'The Inner Light' and/or 'Far Beyond the Stars'...well, that just goes to show how poor an imitation VOY could be, doesn't it?

 

[JB2005]

Would have been funny if Shannon O'Donnell had had a picture of that punk rock boardwalk skater and shown it to Henry Janeway and said "Could have been worse, just a few years ago, this was me!"

 

[Guy Gardener]

Saw something recently where this guy, this really proud Jew, been a jew all his life, discovered that his father had been a prison guard in a concentration camp who stole the identity of some dead guy from the showers to effect his escape from the fall of the third reich. The son was quite bummed when this all came to light.

Janeway emulated her big hero ancestor by going into space just like she did. But if Shannon's only claim to fame was bedding her husband, then the most honest way for Kathy to live up to Shannon's legacy was to lay on her back and bite a pillow.

Honestly kathy's near frigid lack of sexual curiosity, complete absence of promiscuity was about as tight as one could close their legs compared to the 14 children and 40 grandchildren Shannon churned out like a factory.

The lollywater logic to this episode makes no sense, you can't retroactively jigger your love and hero worship to make sense after the fact some damnable fall from grace.






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