It’s a timey wimey episode involving a fractured ‘Voyager-verse’ on the episode that was originally broadcast on January 17, 2001. This is Shattered.
The Episode:
Captain’s Log Stardate: All over the place
Chakotay faces the past and the future as he attempts to save Voyager from a temporal distortion that has split the ship into multiple timelines.
The Story:
This is indeed a Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey episode so describing it in brief will be like trying to, well, explain the dangers of time travel to someone who barely knows what time it is to start with. It’s not impossible but man it will be very involved and probably make no sense to either person. Instead I will hit the highlights as best I can.
Chakotay is hit with a temporal surge in engineering while trying to prevent a warp core breach and soon finds that the ship has been fractured into over thirty different time periods ranging from just before Voyager departs for the badlands to well into the future where Icheb and Naomi Wildman are adults serving on the ship. Facing everyone from the holographic menace Chaotica to Seska when she had taken over the ship. Seska soon realizes that the future doesnt look good for her when she learns that Chakotay is from her future and attempts to alter history by killing Janeway. Borgified Seven arrives in time, saves the Captain allowing Chakotay to adjust the deflector array in order to prevent the surge from hitting them in the first place. This is successful and he is returned to his time. The end.
Is this a ‘Good’ Episode:
Every series seems to have a ‘clip show’ where they use old footage to tell a story through either flashbacks or, in the case of the terrible STNG episode Shades of Grey, through a medical procedure. This episode is essentially Voyager’s answer to the classic ‘clip show’ but done in a very clever way. Utilizing old footage and some left over props and items, the producers managed a very clever time travel episode where the characters never leave Voyager itself but travel through time itself.
This story itself is a fun one with Chakotay taking people from different timelines to assist him in repairing the timeline so that the episode never happens. I mean, normally I abhor the whole ‘it was all a dream’ thing but this one just works despite itself, plus Chakotay rarely gets his own episode anymore and this one worked well for him. Heck, he didn’t even use his connection with the spirits or even say Acouchi Moya even once, proud of him!
There were also some fun Easter eggs in this showing potential futures while also giving us a glimpse of the past through the past seven years. Covering moments with Seska and her Kazon attack on the ship to seeing a future Icheb and Naomi Wildman as adults, this is one that is fun to watch for no other reason than to try to identify every timeline by episode or season. We see eight distinct timeframes but it was mentioned that there were 35 in total making for a really strange time for the lower decks folks who probably had no clue what was going on.
Overall, this is a well plotted time travel episode that manages to protect the Temporal Prime directive while also telling a fun, if not overall pointless, story.
Gleanings and Cool Bits:
- 0 photon torpedoes fired, -24 remaining.
- 0 shuttlecraft lost or destroyed, -6 remaining
- Past Janeway claims that returning Chakotay to his time and preventing the surge will erase their memories but somehow knows where Chakotay kept his liquor later on. Did she actually know that Voyager would be stranded and chose to go or was she just screwing with him…hmmm
- Past Janeway insinuates that she has a thing for Chakotay when she asks if they ever ‘got close’.
- Tuvok dies holding past Janeways hand in a rather touching scene that…well…never really happens.
- We never do find out what the anomaly was or where it came from. Voyager just hightailed it out of there the moment Chakotay fixed the problem.
Thanks for reading the Retro TV Review, I look forward to discussing the rest of the series with you, one episode at a time every Monday, Wednesday and Friday! Next Review: Liniage
For more reviews: check out the weekly series called Key Movies Of My Life that comes out every Thursday and for more retro TV goodness check out the rest of the Retro TV Reviews here.
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Late To The Game 3/24/2021
Special Thanks to Memory Alpha as they are one of the best sources for details on Star Trek information available. Although I have a pretty deep knowledge on the subject, they have proven invaluable as a regular resource.
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