Some thoughts on Annorax (Year of Hell)

[Mach5]

I've been thinking about my favorite episode of ST Voyager (the "Year of Hell" two parter), comparing it to some of the movies, and I came to the conclusion that the Krenim were much, much better, more interesting adversaries than the So'Na for example, with Annorax being infinitely more awesome and charismatic than Tolian Soran, Ahdar Ru'afo, Shinzon or Nero.

Also, the plot itself (a ship existing outside the space/time continuum, erasing entire worlds and civilizations from history just to reunite the tragic character Annorax with the love of his life) is superb to that of ST XI, Nemesis, Insurrection etc...

Annorax is a deep, layered character with clear, understandable motivations, feelings (love, and guilt over neglecting and ultimately causing the "death" of his wife), methods and so on, while Nero and Shinzon were none of this. Plus, Kurtwood Smith played him superbly and it's always a privilege to watch this man do his thing on screen.

I often wonder whether a great idea was in fact wasted by being used on TV, instead on the big screen, with the proper budget and such...

BTW, do you think a Picard/Annorax showdown would be more fitting than the thing we saw on VOY?

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Admiral Shran]

I agree that Annorax was a much better villian than Soran, Ru'afo, Shinzon, and Nero combined.

I don't know if it would have been as good on the big screen though. With the movies, they either don't have a good story or don't have a good budget.

Generations and First Contact were pretty interesting stories, but the budget wasn't there. Insurrection and Nemesis had neither a good story nor a good budget. Star Trek XI had a good budget, but not a good story.

 

[Cornholio]

I've been thinking about my favorite episode of ST Voyager (the "Year of Hell" two parter), comparing it to some of the movies, and I came to the conclusion that the Krenim were much, much better, more interesting adversaries than the So'Na for example, with Annorax being infinitely more awesome and charismatic than Tolian Soran, Ahdar Ru'afo, Shinzon or Nero.

Also, the plot itself (a ship existing outside the space/time continuum, erasing entire worlds and civilizations from history just to reunite the tragic character Annorax with the love of his life) is superb to that of ST XI, Nemesis, Insurrection etc...

Annorax is a deep, layered character with clear, understandable motivations, feelings (love, and guilt over neglecting and ultimately causing the "death" of his wife), methods and so on, while Nero and Shinzon were none of this. Plus, Kurtwood Smith played him superbly and it's always a privilege to watch this man do his thing on screen.

yeah, this is like, one of the best two part episodes. I wouldn't disagree with anything you said.

I did umm, frequently expect Annorax to say, "bad things happen 'cause you're a dumbass!" though.

I often wonder whether a great idea was in fact wasted by being used on TV, instead on the big screen, with the proper budget and such...

I wouldn't umm, say it was wasted by being on TV and stuff, it was still cool, but it would've been really cool to see it on the big screen.

some of the other two part episodes would've been really cool on the big screen. 'Scorpion' and 'Dark Frontier' come to mind.

BTW, do you think a Picard/Annorax showdown would be more fitting than the thing we saw on VOY?

absolutely not!

 

[Kai Winn]

it's big screen stuff, but the end has to be rewritten. the villain mustn't be rewarded, but punished. a painful dead, and the remains scattered all over the place.

 

[RTOlson]

Annorax is a deep, layered character with clear, understandable motivations, feelings (love, and guilt over neglecting and ultimately causing the "death" of his wife), methods and so on, while Nero and Shinzon were none of this.

Very interesting thoughts. I did like Annorax more than recent Trek movie villains.

That said, Nero technically had a similar character background — the supernova destroyed his entire civilization, including his wife and child. However, it wasn't as portrayed as well as the "Year of Hell" story.

 

[Mach5]

it's big screen stuff, but the end has to be rewritten. the villain mustn't be rewarded, but punished. a painful dead, and the remains scattered all over the place.

The ending of "Year of Hell" is my favorite part, actually. Seeing Annorax not making the same mistake all over again was, in a way, very gratifying.

 

[G2309]

Well any voyager episode would be better if it was Picard's crew.
It wouldn't have been good as a movie unless they changed the cheap reset ending.

 

[Deckerd]

it's big screen stuff, but the end has to be rewritten. the villain mustn't be rewarded, but punished. a painful dead, and the remains scattered all over the place.

That's the worst thing about Hollywood movies. The way the baddies just have to die, preferably violently. There's no subtlety, no revenge, no appropriately long-term misery. Soldier is a classic case in point. There was no point to the bomb at the end. Leaving the baddies on a trash planet for the rest of their lives would have been infinitely more satisfying.

 

[henbane]

With a little tweeking here and there, I certainly think it had the makings on a great movie plot - Annorax was a great villan (much better than many other Trek villans, including Nero who was very shallow).

Wouldn't have worked with Picard - while I did enjoy TNG and Picard, I found Picards devotion to Starfleet left him a little stogy and "too correct" at times. Janeway was much much more like Kirk (the TOS Kirk, not the new one who only seemed to succeed at getting his butt kicked every 5 mins.....lol) - stuff the Prime Directive when your ethics dictate otherwise!

 

[SpyOne]

it's big screen stuff, but the end has to be rewritten. the villain mustn't be rewarded, but punished. a painful dead, and the remains scattered all over the place.

Not so.
I agree the end needs to be rewritten, but I think the dramatic needs of a movies are quite well served if Annorax merely dies (not painfully, and scattered about).
You can even make it a conscious sacrifice: Annorax realizes that all the harm he has done can be undone if he is undone, and the change he makes is to remove himself from the timeline.
Very Sidney Carton.

 

[SpyOne]

it's big screen stuff, but the end has to be rewritten. the villain mustn't be rewarded, but punished. a painful dead, and the remains scattered all over the place.

The ending of "Year of Hell" is my favorite part, actually. Seeing Annorax not making the same mistake all over again was, in a way, very gratifying.

Um, he doesn't. (I just re-watched it this week): he sets aside his work to spend time with his wife, as she asked.
In the past he remembered while on the ship, he had neglected her and focused on the work.

 

[SpyOne]

Well any voyager episode would be better if it was Picard's crew.
It wouldn't have been good as a movie unless they changed the cheap reset ending.

I disagree with both statements.
And I'm not really a fan of Voyager.
This is one episode where the Reset Button is justified. The real problem isn't the button itself, but going there too often.
And Picard just doesn't have the backstory to support going as nuts as Janeway does in this episode, or the obsessive love a single ship. Picard loved each ship he commanded, don't get me wrong, but the only one it was really hard for him to leave when the time came was Stargazer. In First Contact, it wasn't about "I will not lose another Enterprise", but rather "I will not give up my ship to the Borg", which is a whole different psychological problem.

 

[Space Turtle]

First of all, just want to say I thought the Year of Hell two parter was really great! Annorax was a well-drawn bad guy, you can understand where he's coming from whilst still despising his actions.

I think the storyline works particularly well on Voyager because they are in the middle of nowhere -no nice new parts for the ship when it gets the stuffing knocked out of it. Also Janeway's determination to get the crew home at all costs makes her a force to be reckoned with in episodes like this.

It was never really touched on (might be wrong?), but I thought there were parallels between Annorax and Janeway in their single-mindedness, their relentless pursuit of their goals and how they had isolated themselves from those around them. There were times in other episodes where I felt Janeway was just able to pull herself back from doing whatever it takes to get her crew home, no matter the cost. How easily she could have lost her own humanity in doing so, but didn't.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

That is actually a common comparison on this board. It is not without its merits. I'd say the difference between Captain Janeway and Annox is the scale that each went to. Admiral Janeway, on the other hand, was Annox in drag as far as her behavior goes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

To paraphrase Picard from his most worst movie "How much time do you have to rape before it is wrong?"

Any alteration to history is the rebuilding of the entire universe even if the new final product looks and seems entirely identical to what ever used to be the fine figure of reality.

The real difference might be that Annorax was a pioneer making up and justifying shit on the fly, badly albeit but he believed he was a good person... Meanwhile in the Federation, Time travel had been around for a century and the official mandate from the law and Janeway's bosses, immediate to ambiguous was: "This shit is dangerous, leave it the fuck alone."

Thinking about how Chuckles joined Annoraxes crew substituting Annoraxes ethics and methodology for both his own and the new behaviours he had adopted from Janeway to assimilate into her crew. men of such pliable morality usually don't say "Hell No, you greasy spoonheads will get my farm over my cold dead corpse" ...Unless he actually tried honestly for a time to be a Cardassian citizen?

How does someone who bows to power so easily become a terrorist leader? but then according to DS9, the Maquis ran/populated entire planets, which means that some "cells" might be numbering into the the tens of thousands, that, Starship aside, Chakotays position in the Maquis might have been very very low on the Maquis totempole.

So maybe it was his skillset as a captain and not his zeal towards the cause that put him in position of power? And so the more luck for Kathryn that she was forced to work alongside a man who received his commission meritoriously and not politically, because things should have gone tits up in the beginning, but they didn't. maybe if B'Elanna or Suder had been in charge Janeway would have woken up one morning to her own gutting?

 

[Dr. Chandra]

I did umm, frequently expect Annorax to say, "bad things happen 'cause you're a dumbass!" though.

Eric's a dumbass.

Kirk's a dumbass.

Janeway's a dumbass.

 

[SpyOne]

What, no pictures from Robocop?

 

[Space Turtle]

That is actually a common comparison on this board. It is not without its merits. I'd say the difference between Captain Janeway and Annox is the scale that each went to. Admiral Janeway, on the other hand, was Annox in drag as far as her behavior goes.

Sorry, I'm showing my newbie spots!! I agree with you that it's the scale they each went to. Especially in terms of the consequences of their actions to other species.

I thought this was picked up again really well in Night when Janeway was second guessing her actions that stranded Voyager in the Delta Quadrant and how much she should or shouldn't be putting the wellbeing of other species above getting her crew home.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

That is actually a common comparison on this board. It is not without its merits. I'd say the difference between Captain Janeway and Annox is the scale that each went to. Admiral Janeway, on the other hand, was Annox in drag as far as her behavior goes.

Sorry, I'm showing my newbie spots!! I agree with you that it's the scale they each went to. Especially in terms of the consequences of their actions to other species.

I thought this was picked up again really well in Night when Janeway was second guessing her actions that stranded Voyager in the Delta Quadrant and how much she should or shouldn't be putting the wellbeing of other species above getting her crew home.

I think part of what Mulgrew was trying to pull off through acting and what the writers tried to show in "Night" was how depressed and isolated Janeway felt. By keeping busy and staying away from her own thoughts, she was able to ignore that part of her that was so full of guilt for stranding her people so far from home.

Annorax, on the other hand, was trying to recreate an entire empire, which, in a natural selection way, doesn't really make sense. Empires rise and fall; it's the natural course of things. His desire to regain his wife is commendable, but he was destroying entire civilizations... wiping them existence ...to save one person in the name of saving an empire.

Captain Janeway made one choice and was trying, struggling really, to live with that. If she had continued the struggle, she would have lost and turned into Admiral Janeway.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um, Annorax didn't care squat about the Empire by the time we caught up with him into his second century of kicking time in it's tires. That chalk about rebuiding what was lost was just padding to gladhand his woman back, and his crew were morons not to notice after he turned down a %98 restoration. He wasn't after a full hundred percent, or even a two hundred percent if their borderes swelled unimaginably, he dearly andmedically needed just tht two percent which held his true love missing these many centuries, well 2. If he'd got the missus back and the empire was still mostly broken, the dude would have let it be. It's unlikely he would have risked losing her agin, not that one wonders if he just wouldn't have brought her aboard and THEN tried to fix the empire like he ws supposed to've done?

Seven of Nine assimilated Annorax, or shared out his psyche with the drone who did assimlate him and yet the Borg did not seem to explore this technology... I wonder why?