Star Trek 523: Before and After

523. Before and After

FORMULA: All Good Things... + Memento + (paradoxically) Year of Hell

WHY WE LIKE IT: The hints about things to come. Kes' promise fulfilled.

WHY WE DON'T: Like all the best Voyager episodes, it never happened.

REVIEW: A wild, yet internally consistent time travel story that leads one to believe Kes was going to stay with the show to the end, and was planting the seeds of future story lines. (According to background information, the Year of Hell referenced here would have been the season finale had the Seven of Nine not been invented.) Certainly, Before and After fulfills a certain promise in regards to Kes, showing her age and die as you'd expect an Ocampa to, though there's a pretty sudden deterioration over the last 6 months of her life (again, as if they'd thought of this as Season 7 and didn't want to handicap the actress with too much make-up).

Of course, this particular timeline collapses, but it's still always interesting to see what might have been, or what might yet be. Tom married to Kes, and Harry marrying their daughter (kinda creepy actually). The Doctor's carousel of names and hairpieces. Neelix finally acceding to security. Chakotay becoming captain. It's something of a road map for the future of the series, though it'll definitely be a road not taken. Closer changes are more credible however, and here we see the promise of a Tom-B'Elanna love affair, Kes's longer hair (here to stay from now on), and the dreaded Year of Hell...

I can't wait for that two-parter now, honestly, to make a side-by-side comparison of the two stories. I know they turn out differently, but that can all be attributed to Seven of Nine's presence (probably - I just want to see it played out). It remains that aside from the high profile deaths mentioned in both timelines, this is how even Season 1 should have been. Voyager in hostile space, shutting down power from most decks and surviving in the face of adversity instead of treating it as a luxury cruise.

In Before and After, Kes is living and accumulating memories, Merlin-like, in reverse (like in Memento). It makes for an interesting temporal puzzle, but it also gives us a chance to visit her past. The wink to the pilot is fun, and the return to the Ocampa planet not unpleasant. But it's the eye-popping conception scene I want to applaud. Kes returns to inexistence and you're left with a black screen for a second or two before time goes forward again. It's a crazy moment that is practically enough to recommend the episode.

LESSON: It's ok as long as she's biologically 18.

REWATCHABILITY - High: A clever narrative conceit that is a close descendant of All Good Things. Fun as a sort of trailer for the rest of the series and where it might have gone if a) Kes had stayed and b) the Year of Hell really happened.