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Star Trek: Voyager reviews — season 3

Star Trek: Voyager — 3x21 — Before and After

Synopsis

Kes begins moving backward in time.

Remarkable scenes

  • Doctor "Van Gogh", complete with hair.
  • Captain Chakotay.
  • Kes married to Tom.
  • Harry married to Tom's daughter...
  • Neelix: "It's good to see that old lung is still working, Kessie."
  • Neelix as a security officer.
  • Neelix: "You keep working on that sense of humor, Commander Vulcan. You'll get it one of these days."
  • Tom describing the Krenim and the Year of Hell. Janeway, Torres, and Carey all died in the Year of Hell.
  • Tom regarding the chronoton torpedos: "They were able to penetrate our shields because their torpedos were in a constant state of temporal flux."
  • Harry: "So how does it feel to be a grandfather?" Tom: "A lot better than it does to have you as a son in law."
  • Tom: "Doctor Van Gogh? I thought you settled on Mozart?"
  • Kes giving birth to her daughter.
  • Chakotay: "I don't understand how these torpedos are ripping right through our shields!"
  • Kes: "These torpedos are chronoton based. They're passing through our shields because they're in a state of temporal flux."
  • Kes discovering the temporal variance of the chronoton torpedo.
  • Kes jumping back to the end of Voy: Caretaker.
  • Kes' birth.
  • Kes' mother: "I think one day she'll see the sun."
  • The doctor asking what kind of medical breakthroughs he's going to make, and the crew asking about other future events.

Review

This episode is much like TNG: Future Imperfect, TNG: Cause and Effect, and TNG: Parallels all combined. And I must say, a fantastic combination. There is one episode which uses the Kes character better than any other, it is this one. There are numerous repercussions of this episode. One interesting, though perhaps trivial change, is that Kes now has long hair. This perhaps signifies that the time period Kes woke up in as the "present" is in fact quite a bit later than the time period of the previous episode. Besides this, Kes has given Janeway foreknowledge of the Krenim, a race which they will encounter later. Additionally, this episode predicts that Tom and Torres will form a relationship, as well as Lt. Carey's death. I hate putting mass spoilers in a review, but this is the most prophetic episode of Star Trek ever done. I'll be referencing it several times in later Voyager episodes.