Year of Hell, Parts I&II
I can certainly see why the producers decided to scrap this as the season finale cliffhanger, and make "Scorpion" to replace it. "Year of Hell" makes a terrible cliff-hanger – it's obvious from the moment trouble beings exactly how it's going to end (in that respect, it's a bit like "Basics", only with less suspense). Even though "Scorpion" ended up being fairly disappointing, especially in its ending, it wasn't completely predictable. The same can't be said for "Year of Hell."
There are just so many problems with this 2-parter, it's hard to know where to begin. So I'll begin by being nice. These two episodes look great. The production crew did a great job turning the sets into a mostly destroyed Voyager – it must have taken a heck of a long time to mess it all up, and even longer to get it back to normal. The special effects were also quite nice, especially the scene of the one deck blowing up completely. Pretty neat stuff. Still, none of the space battles come anywhere close to holding a candle to the ones in DS9's "Sacrifice of Angels", but then again, few things do. I also like Janeway's new hairstyle – it always bothered me that the captain of a starship would spend at least an hour a day doing up her hair in a staggeringly convoluted style, as Janeway seems to have done for the past few years. Her new, very simple ‘do looks good, and doesn't present the image of someone who spends more time on their hair than worrying about the warp drives. Why the producers saddled her with her old, silly hairstyle I don't know, but I'm sure glad they changed it.
I suppose what is most striking at the beginning of the story is that no one seems to realize that they've been expecting these events. At no point in the entire two hours does anyone ever mention Kes or her experience in "Before and After". Why this is, I cannot fathom. As others have noted, the first mention of Krenim space should have caused Janeway to turn the ship around in an instant. Instead, she boldly heads right into Krenim space, and damn near gets the whole ship blown up as a result. Why? The same problem pops up other times throughout the episode, most notably when Seven re-creates Kes' sensor-probe race against the unexploded temporal torpedo. Kes already got those numbers – didn't anyone think to write it down? I suppose some sort of credit ought to go to the production team for accurately re-creating Kes' experience with Seven in her place, but why no character realizes that they already knew about all this is beyond me. It's especially galling in this case, as Seven's determination to get the data leads to Tuvok's blindness – but if they had the numbers from Kes' experience, this would not have been necessary.
The other problem with relating this episode to "Before and After" is that some of the events unfold exactly as foreseen by Kes – and some don't. The biggest problem is, of course, Kes' absence itself. This is completely inexplicable in story terms – but since it's an unavoidable production problem (like Klingons suddenly looking different in the movies), I can let that slide. Pretty much. But there are other critical differences. One is that in Kes' vision of the future, all of these events actually happened – while by the end of this two parter, these events have not happened. That is not explained, but begs to be. Also, in Kes' view of the future, Janeway was killed – but here, she is not. In Kes' vision, the Doctor was destroyed -- but in this version, he is not. Why? And yet, other events – the torpedo hitting the ship and not detonating, its temporal frequency, etc – happen exactly as Kes saw them. Why take such care to show that this event happened as Kes experienced it, if none of the other events she saw are reproduced? This kind of confusion and sloppiness on Braga and Menosky's part undermines whatever tension or mood that the show manages to generate.
Anyway, having entered Krenim space and been knocked around by the suddenly (due to temporal interference) hostile Krenim, the Voyager begins its Year of Hell – a year in which Voyager is constantly at risk of destruction, and is falling apart at its very seams. This is exactly what we haven't seen before – a Voyager where actions have consequences; where damage doesn't disappear overnight; where people die; where danger is real and the future uncertain. It ought to be pretty dark, exciting stuff. Except it isn't. From the moment Voyager gets into this situation, it's clear that there's no chance in hell that it will end in any way other than time being reset, and these events never happening. Therefore, all of those good things I said aren't true – actions aren't going to have consequences; damage isn't going to last week after week; people aren't going to die and stay dead. The story will end with a reset button being firmly pressed, and we will be able to forget that any of this aver happened. Thus, even though there's a lot of stuff happening which is, theoretically, interesting, I never found it actually involving – I knew all along it was just a big con.
I think the other thing which lessens the tension and emotional impact of the show was the decision to make the events take place, in the show's time, over the course of nearly a year. By spreading the events out over a year – and yet stuffing them into two hours – we end up with the worst of both worlds. We don't get very many details about our heroes' lives or their adventures, and we also don't feel a strong emotional connection to them. All we see are little snippets here and there, spread out over time. There's not much actual tension here – none of the battle scenes feel all that tense, as we know that the Voyager is going to survive pretty close to a year. And there's just not enough time to have really deep character moments in among all the little events that we see. I still stand by what I said in my review of "Before and After" – a true Year of Hell – where the events took place over a whole season, and actually happened – would make great TV. But here, we don't get really interesting events, and we don't get really interesting character scenes. We just get snippets of both, and its unsatisfying.
Now, some of these snippets are intriguing. Perhaps best is the pairing of Tuvok with Seven. The two work very well together, and I would welcome the two working together more through the rest of the series. Those scenes were very effective. On the other hand, they are a mere shadow of what they could have been, given more screen time. For example, why did Seven choose to become Tuvok's eyes? Was it out of guilt? What would feelings of guilt be like for a Borg? Now that's interesting stuff. But there's no time for that – there's a whole years' worth of pointless events to display. And why did Seven chose to stay on board Voyager, and not strike out in a life pod, hoping to find other Borg? Again, that's a decision I'd like to see. Yes, we saw Janeway going increasingly nuts as the year passes by, and we saw her read Chakotay the riot act for giving her a present. But even that feels out of balance – we just don't have enough character scenes to really feel what Janeway's feeling, to understand her pain. We're just shown that she's going squirrely, and are basically asked to fill in all the details for ourselves -- but it's the details that I'd like to see.
Of course, not all of our time is spent on the increasingly blown-up Voyager. We are also shown the events going on onboard the Krenim time ship. There, the mad scientist Annorax is manipulating time, trying to restore the Krenim empire to its full glory. But he has another motivation equally great – he is determined to restore a colony where– and this is obvious long before we're ever told – his wife lived, before it disappeared. So, we have a driven, obsessed man trying to save his people and his wife in equal measure, and who has become inured to the guilt of destroying entire civilizations to reach that goal. That's a fine character, I guess, and he's certainly portrayed effectively. But, again, I just didn't find it all that interesting. There just didn't seem to be anything really special about the character, nothing that really grabbed me. Maybe it's just that I was anticipating the ending all along, and knew that Annorax would inevitably end up being just a plot device of no real importance. Maybe it's because Annorax, for all his evil, was still rather bland. While dispassionate evil may be realistic, it's not necessarily compelling viewing. Also, given that Annorax really wasn't all that compelling a figure, it was less credible that Chakotay would be so taken in by him. Annorax' reasoning was pretty obviously flaky to everyone watching, and therefore Chakotay's near conversion to his way of thinking would seem to need an explanation in terms of Annorax' personal charm – but he doesn't have a lot. Tom has even less to do on board the time ship – his purpose is simply to provide the opportunity for Janeway to ram the ship, and nothing more.
Back on Voyager, after the ship has taken extreme damage, Janeway decides to have the crew abandon ship, staying on board with only a skeleton crew. The decision to abandon ship, I think, makes sense given the circumstances. But again, it has little emotional impact, as we know it won't actually end up having happened. What's less convincing is that a crew of seven people can operate a nearly destroyed starship for months on end.
Part of the purpose of abandoning the ship was to drive home one of the themes of the story – that of family. This was done with typical Braga/Menosky subtlety – which is to say, none at all. Janeway refers to the crew as a "family" no less than three times during the course of the episodes. Thanks, guys, we get the point! Sadly, this is a classic example of telling rather than showing – I still don't get the feeling that the crew is, in fact a family. (Especially if we include the crew beyond the regulars.) But it must be one, ‘cause Janeway keeps saying it is! If it looked like a family and acted like a family, we wouldn't need to be told that the crew was a family. Also undercutting this sense of family is the fact that after all the crew is gone save the command staff, no one actually seems to care, except for the fact that it makes repairs take longer. We are told that these 200 people are all family – and yet no one misses them when they're gone. Funny, that.
Let's move on to the end of the show. The show ends, inevitably, with a battle between Voyager and a few allies (who seem to exist merely to be blown up in moderately neat fx shots) and the Krenim time ship. We know what is coming – somehow, the timeline will be restored back to before Voyager was damaged. Unfortunately, we get there in a pretty uninteresting – and unconvincing – way. Once the time ship is vulnerable, Janeway rams it with the Voyager, inexplicably reasoning that this will set the timeline right. There is, in fact, no particular reason that this should work, but just before the time ship blows up, someone explains that it will work – and, lo and behold, it does. Voyager is back to Day One, and the Krenim are friendly. The past 8 months never happened.
This ending is – among other things – a good example of Voyager's preference for technobabble endings and plots over character plots. Here's how I thought the ending might go – and is, to my mind, far more satisfying than the ending we got. Lets's even say we have that big space battle there at the end. But midway through the battle, Chakotay is able to lead Annorax to see that the only way to restore the timeline – and to restore his wife – is to turn the time ship's weapon on itself, removing it from history. You could then have some tension by having Annorax racing to turn the ship against itself before Janeway could destroy it, thus accidentally locking them all in that timeline forever (or maybe the tension would be Tom and Chakotay trying to get off the ship before it goes bye-bye, or whatever.) That ending has the advantage of the resolution building out of character – Annorax's love for and obsession with his wife. He finally is forced to realize that he himself is the problem, and must destroy himself to save the world and the woman he loves. Ok, so that may not be a perfect ending either, but I think it would at least be more satisfying than a lame catchphrase like "time's up" and a big ‘splosion.
Now, to the most serious criticism many people have of the show, and with which I agree: that it never happened. I think this is a serious problem – especially since we knew from the first minute that this is how it was going to turn out. When you know that all the events will simply be erased, what's the point of caring? Perhaps if the internal story were truly compelling, I could buy into it – but as I've said, the story was too sketchy and emotionally flat for me to get excited about. So, we're left with two hours of stuff that, for our heroes, never happened.
This episode has been compared, in its structure, with "Yesterday's Enterprise." Both stories take place in alternate timelines caused by some sort of temporal mucking about, and both stories end with the original timelines being restored. But there are crucial differences. "Yesterday's Enterprise" is incredibly tightly written – the events take place in a short timeframe, and there are a lot of events packed in. There are also a lot of great character scenes seamlessly worked in, plus there is the gee-whiz factor of seeing the alternate universe, and trying to figure out just what's going on, and who everyone is in this new timeline. Add to that a beautiful character arc for Tasha, who chooses to sacrifice herself to give herself a meaningful death, and you have the best thing TNG ever did. "Year of Hell", in contrast, is actually leisurely paced, with events stretching out over months, yet without much of interest happening. The character bits aren't interesting, and the story is not built around a character arc to give it resonance.
But there's another crucial difference. What gives "Yesterday's Enterprise" it's final emotional whallop is that fact that it did happen. Guinan remembers what happened – or at least is left with a sense of it. By grounding the story in the show's reality that way, the creators gave the episode even more weight and resonance than it already had. (The other proof that the events happened, of course, was Seska – a far less successful story. Yikes.) In a single sentence – "Tell me about Tasha Yar" – Guinan both makes the events real, and sums up what the show was all about. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.
And, in the end, perhaps that's the most important point. I don't think anyone's going to get teary-eyed thinking about "Year of Hell" – in fact, I think most people won't even think about it much at all after it ends. And that's just a shame, because it had the potential for some truly moving, innovative storytelling. What we got instead was Voyager by numbers.