"Before and After", timelines and "Year of Hell"

[F. King Daniel]

I just saw "Before and After". Good episode, but...

First, it's not "an alternate future" like Janeway says at the end, it's actually many alternate futures since nobody in the further futures remembers what Kes did in the earlier future time periods (earlier to them, later for Kes).

But most imporantly, what is up with Seven re-enacting Kes' torpedo scene from "Before and After" in "Year of Hell"? They both go looking for the "temporal variance" (yay technobabble!) of the same lodged torpedo, albiet for different reasons. Kes needs to know specifics about her irradiation, and Seven wants the same info to help develop countermeasures. In Kes' version, she's overcome by the radiation and passes out (then jumps back) and in Seven's version (which doesn't happen in the first attack, like in Kes'), Tuvok grabs her, the bomb detonates and he's blinded.

Will someone explain Kes and Seven doing the same thing in alternate tinelines for different reasons? Fate? Fluke? I think it's clever, either way.

 

[Anwar]

Kes' vision of the future and the Krenim was in a future where she never left the ship (B&A was written back when Braga thought they'd let him do YoH as a real Season 4). Thus when she did become pure energy and leave the ship that whole timeline she saw was erased and never happened, she was replaced by Seven.

Basically, between episodes one of Annorax's time changes wiped out B&A from everyone's memories.

 

[froot]

Yeah, I think The Gift changed the timeline, along with Annorax's initial wave attack that wiped out that alien dude off the Bridge and made everything all beat up. My guess is that wave probably killed their memories... you'd think they'd still remember that particular temporal variance when Kes talked about it at the end of Before and After, even if the timeline where she found it never happened.

I thought it was kind of cool that they had the two women do the same scene, too

 

[Guy Gardener]

Annorax had been attacking the same year, 2373(?) for over 200 years. He had been changing the uniiverse around Janeway for 200 years. He had meddled with Voyager peripherally thousands of times for two hundred years which would dramatically alter the affairs on board Voyager in unquantifiable ways.

In every manifestation of the timeline where kes's adventure in before and after "happened" janeway was able to circumnavigate or muddle through Krenim space with out getting into a world of shit.

If the Krenim didn't challenge or stop Janeway even if she befriended them instantly by calling them strong and sexy or because of kes knew how to shoot through their shields and shoot out of phase temporal torpedoes, then Janeway passed through Krenim space without needing to stop or notice Annorax who in turn would reset the timeline and tilt Janeway back to square one without understanding that she's being used like a poppet.

 

[Finn]

^I'd say that one of the the timelines Annorax created, created the B&A timeline, only to be wiped out again. That timeline somehow prevented Voyager from encountering Species 8479.

That could suggest some of the other epsisodes we saw never happened or happened differently.

 

[Guy Gardener]

No, it was the Borg.

The Planet from Virtuoso used the same stock footage as one of the worlds seen in year of hell which means that (possibly?) Krenim space before Scorpion/First Contact extended for decades worth of conventional space flight from one side of the dq to the other.

After the Borg spun up their Interplexing beacon and upgraded the historic Borg in the DQ to 24th century standards, it would have completely changed the methods and timetable of their occupation and annexation of the rest of the Delta Quadrant considering Captain Chakotay "missed" Borg Space and Janeway needed ten years to take the most direct course through Borg Space.... Coupled with the notion that Seven new about the Borg helping Zephram in 2063 and Seven admitted to assimilating a Krenim temporal scientist who may or may not have been Annorax in Infinite regress years earlier who Janeway found charming.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I like the idea that "Before and After" existed between shots of Annorax's weapon.

But "First Contact" was a predestination paradox. There was no "upgrade" of Borg (aside from makeup and CG between TNG and VOY). They've just been really inconsistantly written and thus met humans for the first time twice.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It can't be a predestination paradox because the borg turned the 2370 earth into all Borg. The world was redestined (I invented a word!) into something post apocalyptic. Picard was protected as the universe changed around him and then he launched forth into the past from the wrong earth to create a third 2370 which was more like his home than Borg earth.

The creation and layering of incompatible timelines proves that Picard was not always in the past making sure that his present held shape which is the nature of a presestination paradox.

If the Borg had always known about Earth because they eventually received the signal from 2063 then why did they have such a magnificent hard on to assimilate the pathetic Federation of the mid 2360s?

Maybe the signal didn't reach unimatrix One until late 2369?

 

[propita]

And how much of that happens with the results of the latest movie? Or are we talking multiverses?

 

[F. King Daniel]

And how much of that happens with the results of the latest movie? Or are we talking multiverses?

Shhh! It's complicated enough

 

[CobraCommander]

Originally, Year of Hell was planned as starting where Scorpion did. Harry Kim was going to be killed and Kes would have remained. Unfortunately, Garrett Wang (in 1997) was listed as one of the 50 best looking men by People magazine. Since the producers wanted only nine cast members, the sword fell on Kes at the last minute. TPTB also killed the Year of Hell season arc so the whole plot was changed. Time paradox resets were also added so that as soon as the two parter ended, the ship would be back to new. This reset turned one of the best episodes into a mere dream. The soap Dallas did a similar thing when they ressurected Bobby Ewing by making his death and the whole resulting season a dream. It later sent the show into a slow decline. Cobra

P.S.. I would have liked to have had both Seven and Kes on at the same time. Harry/ Kes could have been killed later or assimilated.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Voyager 101 there Cobra Commander.

What happened on Dallas was that the showrunner changed for a year, and when the old guy (Original?) came (was coerced) back because the ratings were tanking, he said fuck this mess made in my absence, It sucks, i don't understand it, and I don't want to understand it so lets just burn everything and pretend I never left.

Saw an E! True Holliwood Stories on the subject.

I loved the post YTK Christmas special where Victoria Principle wankes up in a cold sweat panting the she had had a nightmare about Family Guy and wet himself too, Duffles replies "What's family Guy?"

Nothing that happened in Year of Hell erased Before and After because before and after supposits the co-existence of parallel timelines.

Besides they said that Voyager was "temporally Inert" up until it surprisingly got it's new shields. They never had to have played with Voyagers fate up to that point because Voyager had nothing to do with "time" so whatever switched tracks from the Before and After Timeline (Which would have lit Voyager up like a Christmas tree, not so that Annorax would have destroyed Voyager more so than that he should have used the correct math to "work around" Voyagers temporal signature indicative of Kes jumping about, therefore never coming into direct conflict with Janeway STILL.) happened before the Year of Hell cleaning Voyager of any messy temporal signatures or residue from any of it's many time adventures because Annorax did have the technology to scan for any shenanigans.

 

[exodus]

I just saw "Before and After". Good episode, but...

First, it's not "an alternate future" like Janeway says at the end, it's actually many alternate futures since nobody in the further futures remembers what Kes did in the earlier future time periods (earlier to them, later for Kes).

But most imporantly, what is up with Seven re-enacting Kes' torpedo scene from "Before and After" in "Year of Hell"? They both go looking for the "temporal variance" (yay technobabble!) of the same lodged torpedo, albiet for different reasons. Kes needs to know specifics about her irradiation, and Seven wants the same info to help develop countermeasures. In Kes' version, she's overcome by the radiation and passes out (then jumps back) and in Seven's version (which doesn't happen in the first attack, like in Kes'), Tuvok grabs her, the bomb detonates and he's blinded.

Will someone explain Kes and Seven doing the same thing in alternate tinelines for different reasons? Fate? Fluke? I think it's clever, either way.

Don't they always say that the future isn't set in stone?
That any changes in the timeline no matter how small, changes the future, right?
Everything has to happen the exact way Kes saw it going forward for it to be true.

In "B&A" Kes doesn't encounter the Borg or Species 8472.
Meeting them changes everything.
The Doc. said her bouncing was caused by her being exposed to the radiation from the Krenium torpedo.
Kes was exposed going backwards but not forward.
If she wasn't exposed to it again going forward, she can't bounce back to the past before it happened and warn anybody anymore. She had to enter Krenium and "YOH" to warn them about it before it happened.

Many things change due to it besides Seven taking Kes' place. Janeway & Torres don't die, Voyager isn't destroyed and time isn't reset. Upon Kes' death, Voyager still isn't home yet.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I really can't imagine Braga thinking up explanations for this. I truly believe that Braga ever had an explanation of why the crew forgot about Kes's warning, he just left that up to us. For him, it was simply more convenient to ignore it.

I do find the explanation that all the temporal meddling Annorax has done has changed the situation, but using the same logic you could say that his temporal meddling may have changed events constantly and that any random episode may not have occured throughout any of the trek series - I don't buy it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We haven't seen most of Voyager thanks to Fury.

In every episode you saw, episodes 5ish to 150ish of Voyager was there a Kes Corpse in the cellar? Did kes live every day knowing that one day "soon" Kathryn janeway was going to murder her AGAIN? Somewhat of a hostile workplace no? And how could Janeway now that she knew how GOOD it feels like to murder an Ocampan, not just let loose and whack a few more?

It wasn't the torpedo residue ONLY Exodus. The Doctors Biotemporal Chamber agitated the stuff which caused her to bounce about until the Doctor reinvented it for the first time in season 3 where they extracted the chronoton particles and knew better than to stick her back in a biotemporal chamber if she was ever re-exposed.

You've never taken your causality far enough Exodus. You're always happy to claim that it's just the absence of Species 8472 which changed everything. But they're only not there, MISSING, because the Borg never invaded fluidic space, and they only never invaded fluidic space because (if Captain Chakotay "missed" Borgspace then) Borg Space had moved, vanished or shrunk along with their degree of technological magnitude which would suggest that they may never have "assimilated" the technology to travel into Fluidic space, so what happened to the Species they "stole" this technology from?

Kes was never going to meet 8472 in the before and after Time line because of moments and choices that may have happened as far back as centuries or millennia. How can not meeting 8472 claim to be a pivotal moment if it's only the resultant/aftereffect/ripple of something else really big which happened perhaps 300 years earlier on Earth? It's like stressing the importance of smoke without questioning where/if there is a fire.

 

[exodus]

We haven't seen most of Voyager thanks to Fury.

In every episode you saw, episodes 5ish to 150ish of Voyager was there a Kes Corpse in the cellar? Did kes live every day knowing that one day "soon" Kathryn janeway was going to murder her AGAIN? Somewhat of a hostile workplace no? And how could Janeway now that she knew how GOOD it feels like to murder an Ocampan, not just let loose and whack a few more?

It wasn't the torpedo residue ONLY Exodus. The Doctors Biotemporal Chamber agitated the stuff which caused her to bounce about until the Doctor reinvented it for the first time in season 3 where they extracted the chronoton particles and knew better than to stick her back in a biotemporal chamber if she was ever re-exposed.

You've never taken your causality far enough Exodus. You're always happy to claim that it's just the absence of Species 8472 which changed everything. But they're only not there, MISSING, because the Borg never invaded fluidic space, and they only never invaded fluidic space because (if Captain Chakotay "missed" Borgspace then) Borg Space had moved, vanished or shrunk along with their degree of technological magnitude which would suggest that they may never have "assimilated" the technology to travel into Fluidic space, so what happened to the Species they "stole" this technology from?

Kes was never going to meet 8472 in the before and after Time line because of moments and choices that may have happened as far back as centuries or millennia. How can not meeting 8472 claim to be a pivotal moment if it's only the resultant/aftereffect/ripple of something else really big which happened perhaps 300 years earlier on Earth? It's like stressing the importance of smoke without questioning where/if there there is a fire.

.....because Voyager isn't that complex of a show but I also never understood why the concept of charting a course around Borg space is never considered. It's mention even in "Scorpion", that going around it could have been an option. It would just add more time to the trip. If Voyager might have become a generational ship, what was the rush? So no, I don't believe that Borg space shrinking or vanishing is the only excuse for them not encountering them in "B&A", especially seeing as how we don't know the exact boarders of Borg space or Krenium space. For all we know, you can go around Borg space and still end up in Krenuim space anyway.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They said it would take 10 years to fly through Borg Space at conventional speed. Pi R squared. That's 78 and a half years to go around the bugger (if their domain is close to circle... Maybe Borgspace is a cube? That seems more likely given their aesthetic predilections?) Chakotay and Janeway baulked at the thought of a 14 month detour around Swarmie Space and decided they'd rather slaughter some natives than to be so inconveniently put out.

Captain Chuckles did make up for the space and time to Keep pace with Captain Janeways parallel adventures despite not receiving Kes's bunt which pushed the ship 10 K light years on in the gift. Best guess would be wormhole. If there was a wormhole that was going to do about the same as what Kes was offering, well, it makes her "gift" a little shit.

 

[exodus]

They said it would take 10 years to fly through Borg Space at conventional speed. Pi R squared. That's 78 and a half years to go around the bugger (if their domain is close to circle... Maybe Borgspace is a cube? That seems more likely given their aesthetic predilections?) Chakotay and Janeway baulked at the thought of a 14 month detour around Swarmie Space and decided they'd rather slaughter some natives than to be so inconveniently put out.

Captain Chuckles did make up for the space and time to Keep pace with Captain Janeways parallel adventures despite not receiving Kes's bunt which pushed the ship 10 K light years on in the gift. Best guess would be wormhole. If there was a wormhole that was going to do about the same as what Kes was offering, well, it makes her "gift" a little shit.

..but it sounds like your assuming Krenuim space is in a linear line after Borg space. What I'm say is, what if Kernium isn't just after it but partly surrounds it. like even if you fly half way around Borg space you still end up entering Krenuim territory. Like your example, if Borg broaders form a cube, what if Krenium broaders form a like a "j" shape around it. So say if you charted a course to the left of Borg space you'd still end up in Krenuim.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I agree that Krenim space is huge and it's size and shape varied greatly upon how well Annorax is doing his job, even though I've always referred to this as a virgin timeline, what time would look like before Abnnorax started fiddling. Which begs the question, why is the shape of time after Year of Hell still so inconsolably different from Before and After... As if Time is some sort of slut who lets practically any one have it's way with it.

 

[exodus]

I agree that Krenim space is huge and it's size and shape varied greatly upon how well Annorax is doing his job, even though I've always referred to this as a virgin timeline, what time would look like before Abnnorax started fiddling. Which begs the question, why is the shape of time after Year of Hell still so inconsolably different from Before and After... As if Time is some sort of slut who lets practically any one have it's way with it.

Well, he did speak of time as if it was a living thing taughting him.