The ending of "Year of Hell"

[KelisThePoet]

Different field, different time line, different phase? To me, it's all just science-fictional gibberish (loose on the "science" part) to say that time passes differently inside the ship than it does outside.

But I do make room for the possibility I'm misremembering. It has been a year or so since I watched it.

 

[DonIago]

Ah, but was it a year...of Hell?

(ducks)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ You forgot to put on sunglasses and go YEEEEAAAAAAHHHH

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

I call that cliché and weak. Why would "erasing the timeline" erase Annorax initial need of making time travel calculations. It's almost as if he had benefited from his "previous" experience of something that never happened... As often with Voyager, the less you think about the plot the better of you'll be.

Yes, that was the problem. The only solution that would have worked if he had actually erased himself, not the weapon, from history since he's the one who designed and created it.

 

[Tosk]

To me, it's all just science-fictional gibberish (loose on the "science" part) to say that time passes differently inside the ship than it does outside.

Regardless of the "science excuse", if time passes normally within their ship, then his wife will be beyond her lifespan by the time he fixes things, or at least hella old. If time does not pass normally, how do they interact with other people outisde their ship? If they're locked in one point in time, then they wouldn't exist for Voyager except for a brief fraction of a second.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

Regardless of the "science excuse", if time passes normally within their ship, then his wife will be beyond her lifespan by the time he fixes things, or at least hella old. If time does not pass normally, how do they interact with other people outisde their ship? If they're locked in one point in time, then they wouldn't exist for Voyager except for a brief fraction of a second.

I think by saying that they 'existed outside the space-time continuum' time somehow wasn't effecting them inside the ship. ie, nothing actually grew older, but they were still able to do whatever the normally would. Because, you know, this is the same show that thinks a computer program works like a physical book, and when you copy a file to another computer, no trace of it remains behind. So, yeah...

 

[DonIago]

As I've said, I think Annorax's intention was to simply create a timeline in which she didn't die. He didn't intend to rejoin her in some manner in his current state. Hell, he probably knew on some level that a timeline in which she didn't die would by necessity be one in which his own life took a different path. It just never occurred to him that the way to get to the timeline he wanted was to wipe the very tool he'd created to get there out of existence.

It does beg the question of what would have happened if he'd managed to bring her back while the ship's temporal shielding was functional. Would that have created the same Annorax we see at the end of the episode without wiping out the original?

 

[KelisThePoet]

Regardless of the "science excuse", if time passes normally within their ship, then his wife will be beyond her lifespan by the time he fixes things, or at least hella old. If time does not pass normally, how do they interact with other people outisde their ship? If they're locked in one point in time, then they wouldn't exist for Voyager except for a brief fraction of a second.

If the ship exists outside normal spacetime, it's not locked in one point of that spacetime.

Again, I say "if" because I don't know if I'm remembering the episode correctly, but until I re-watch it or until someone reminds me of a specific detail of the episode that contradicts my understanding, I'm sticking with it.

 

[Anwar]

It's simple. Annorax simply was so obsessed by this point he didn't realize how futile it all was and that his wife would be dead from old age anyways.

OR

He figured if he could erase things from time, it's hardly harder to time travel back to when his wife was still alive and join her once he'd restored her.

 

[jmidnight_99]

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 not hoping to get his wife back. he is hoping to restore her existence, because in normal space time, she never existed.

2) The ship exists outside normal space time, The passage of time is an artifact of the weapon, and the ship itself.

3) Once Annorax restores his colony and his family not in the present but in existence, THEN

4) he would have spent his life with her instead of wandering around, outside normal space time trying to restore a colony.

this is the paradox

5) He doesn't realize the only way to gain his objective is to :

a) use the weapon to remove the weapon itself from history. if there was never a weapon, he might have spent his life with his wife

b) remove himself from history. without him, there would be no one to make the weapon and therefore no weapon with which to erase himself, so he would be restored and he might have spent his life with his wife

c) or both.

This is the irony

6) After the weapon restores everything, he is seen back oh his colony, none of this ever happened, and he's designing the weapon.

7) Does he complete the weapon, this starting this all over again? I think so, but maybe his getting up to enjoy the day with his wife makes him decide to never finish. I doubt this, but you can read the ending either way.

Your confusion is that he's trying to "get his wife back" in some sort of present time. You also don't get that were he to achieve restoring his wife in history, he never would have had to restore his wife in history, and wouldn't exist in the present.

You don't understand the paradox.

b) use the weapon to remove himself

 

[jmidnight_99]

If the ship exists outside normal spacetime, it's not locked in one point of that spacetime.

Again, I say "if" because I don't know if I'm remembering the episode correctly, but until I re-watch it or until someone reminds me of a specific detail of the episode that contradicts my understanding, I'm sticking with it.

That's reasonable. How does he think he knows what "outside normal space time" means? Maybe it means in another parallel space time? Maybe they exist in every space time like the bajoran prophets? I don't know how a phaser is supposed to work, that doesn't make it's operation a contradiction.

 

[DonIago]

I would think it basically is similar to Geordi and Ro being out of phase in "The Next Phase", except that in this case it's a matter of being outside of temporal phase. Time happens, and the Krenim can observe and interact with it, but as long as they're inside their ship they don't age.

 

[LJones41]

I never understood the complaints about the "reset button" being used for this particular episode . . . especially when it began with the timeline being altered in the first place. Were we really supposed to spend an entire season or two watching the crew rebuild Voyager on some Delta Quadrant planet or spend the rest of the series there? If so, I would have dropped "Voyager" in a snap. I had already endured that scenario during one season of "Battlestar Galactica", when a great deal of the crew or fleet were stuck on some planet as prisoners of the Cylons. And I hated it.

 

[jmidnight_99]

I never understood the complaints about the "reset button" being used for this particular episode . . . especially when it began with the timeline being altered in the first place. Were we really supposed to spend an entire season or two watching the crew rebuild Voyager on some Delta Quadrant planet or spend the rest of the series there? If so, I would have dropped "Voyager" in a snap. I had already endured that scenario during one season of "Battlestar Galactica", when a great deal of the crew or fleet were stuck on some planet as prisoners of the Cylons. And I hated it.

it would have been a year of hell for the viewer, and as I've said repeatedly, the episode wasn't about Voyager to begin with.

 

[Paradise City]

I never understood the complaints about the "reset button" being used for this particular episode . . . especially when it began with the timeline being altered in the first place. Were we really supposed to spend an entire season or two watching the crew rebuild Voyager on some Delta Quadrant planet or spend the rest of the series there? If so, I would have dropped "Voyager" in a snap. I had already endured that scenario during one season of "Battlestar Galactica", when a great deal of the crew or fleet were stuck on some planet as prisoners of the Cylons. And I hated it.

I didn't mind the reset button in that episode, it actually seemed a nice touch. But it's not needed. There's no absolute law to have one season = one year. Just have one year in three episodes and devote the rest of season to the next year or whatever distribution that's preferred.