When you’re eighty years away from home and no chance of getting back to Earth before you can draw your pension, it’s usually quite nice when you switch on your viewscreen and see that blue and green ball ahead of you. Though it’s slightly disconcerting when you realise you’re a few hundred years in the past, none of your friends or family’s grandparents have even been born yet and you only got there moments after someone tells you that you’re the harbinger of doom that’s responsible for the end of all life.
In the middle of reconviction top tennis tips from Tuvok, Janeways called to the bridge as a massive timey wimey event is slightly more important than her serve. Moments after encountering the temporal event, a small ship from the future arrives, guns akimbo, and after a brief skirmish between the two, it’s captain reveals what he’s up to. Captain Braxton’s from the 29th century and it turns out that somehow Voyager is responsible for a catastrphic temporal event that wipes out Earth and it’s solar system. Also, can he pretty please wipe Voyager from existence before that happens.
A touch confused, Janeway’s not fond of her atoms being turned to space mush on the word of Captain Serious, fights back against the time ship and cuases them both to get sucked into the big shiney temporal void to 20th century Earth. Which, as it turns out, is when and where Voyager will be the cause for everything exploding.
Futures End isn’t an original idea nor is it very inventive. But it is a lot of fun as it focuses on the paradoxical situation. Braxton travels from the 29th century to destroy Voyager in the 24th as it’s responsible for a temporal crisis in the future. That results in Voyager stuck in the 20th century where, thanks ot Braxton’s own involvement, Voyager is trapped and both cause the end of the world. Braxton also ended up in the 20th century, but a few centuries earlier where his ship is looted by a hippie programmer who then reverse engineers the time ship to star a microcomputer revolution.
Of course, that revolution needs to continue and the hippie turned Bill Gates stand in, guest star Ed Begley Jr’s Henry Starling, plans to travel to the future and grab a load more tech to steal and inject his company Chronowerx with more products to corner the market and fill his pockets with. Part one lays it all out – Starlings greed and the fate of Captain Braxton as a homeless maniac shouting about the end of the world. But it’s mostly filled with a fish out of water comedy in the vein of The Voyage Home, with Chakotay and Janeway teaming up to play detective and figuring out how to type, while Paris and Tuvok make a nice fun pairing between the stone faced Vulcan in a hat reacting to Paris’ not quite mastering the lingo and flirting with local astronomer Rain Robinson.
Meanwhile Chakotay and Torres get to meet some radical right wingers who think they’re part of a conspiracy theory which juggles both a dark truth about the ever present modern day racism, and a bit of fun in their escape while adding a contrast to the usual fish out of water shenanigans that included Neelix getting somewhat obsessed with soap operas.
For all the fun and shenanigans, Starling as the symbol of corporate greed who doesn’t really care about the damage he’s doing to the future as long as he gets what he wants now adds a few nice Trekian levels. Of courts corporate greed is bad, but much like the better known Trek time travel adventure, it has a nice environmental parallel as well considering how often humanity builds and advances without thinking of the consequence of how much worse of the planet will be down the line.
It also wraps up nicely with the bad guy foiled, the future restored and Voyager back to the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant. The only down side really is that the first half feels a little light on story while the second is where the action and drama kicks in. But overall it makes a nice two parter that stays memorable, fun and bizarrely, adds a character upgrade when Starling downloads the Doctor from Voyager and gives him a 29th century hole-emitter so the writers can give him some time outside sickbay!
As someone who’s not a fan of time travel episodes, Futures End is good fun all round thanks to it’s guest stars, focus on the fun and watching the crew underestimate the primitive 20th century antagonist!
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