OVEG: Future’s End, Part II

Description: The second part begins, and it's more of Rain annoying the living hell out of the audience. Tom is messing with the radio out of the microbus, and we get another typical attempt at character development that's really just padding, as Rain talks about why she became an astronomer. Needless to say, her reasons are the typical hack crap you expect from Braga, you know what I mean, I'm sure. Nobody ever goes into a scientific field because it's interesting, they always have to be inspired to take it up. Someone becoming a CPA because they found early on a love of perfectly balanced sums is the kind of shtick that'd make you roll your eyes, so why do Hollywood hacks seem to think some kind of explanation is in order for becoming a scientist? We know most Star Trek writers are completely ignorant when it comes to even basic science, but are they so absolutely clueless that they actually can't fathom doing science just because? No wonder the aliens are so one-dimensional, the writers can't even comprehend people with similar upbringings that just happen to like things they don't understand, how can they put themselves in the head of an alien?

Finally, Tuvok comes back with a collection of junk food for breakfast, to further the "We're from the future!" element of the show. While they prepare to chow down on burritos and hot dogs, Tom says that, surprise surprise, they can't contact Voyager with a thirty year old car radio. I will admit, I was half expecting it to work, but only because I know that no matter how absurd a plan, it usually works on Voyager. Instead they'll use the radio telescope at the observatory.

On Voyager, we see that not only has Starling downloaded twenty percent of Voyager's computer memory, but it apparently wipes it out in the process. Because, as everyone knows, downloading also takes the files away - that's why the government created a copyright czar to stop you from downloading the latest Beyonce album. He also completely took the Doctor away, because apparently there's no emergency backup for the EMH. To make matters worse, seems their little capture on amateur video -while being dismissed as a hoax by most- has the Air Force on alert and ready to intercept Voyager if they come in again. So far they seem to be doing even worse than Chekov and Uhura wandering around San Franscisco looking for nuclear wessels. But they get contacted by Tuvok, who fills in what's happened and they discuss ways to get to Starling.

Meanwhile, Starling is talking to the Doctor. Shockingly, it seems the events of The Swarm actually affected the Doctor slightly, but what won't shock you is that Starling has magically projected the Doctor into his office and has enough programming abilities to torture him for information. You'd think with that kind of ability he could just program the Doctor to cooperate, but Starling seems like he prefers the less effective approaches, like most Voyager characters. After a little of that, we get an interruption by Rain, who wants to lure Starling into a trap. She does this by doing everything short of saying "Please come out into our ambush." I really don't know why Trekkies love this episode so much when it's filled with so much crap like this.

Meanwhile, Torres has whipped up some more interferometrics to make a shuttle look like a small plane on radar as she and Chakotay fly in. He comments in passing that he trained here, then around venus, and then dodged asteroids in the belt. Well, don't be too impressed, we're not talking Empire Strikes Back here; the asteroid belt is a mind-bogglingly empty area of space. Chakotay's training is like saying you flew back and forth between Korea and Spain to practice dodging the Taj Mahal. They discuss what could happen if they don't get back -so much for the idea that anyone with a warp engine can slingshot around the sun- which would probably be a bit of a problem if you have a trilobite for a forehead. Oh, and one thing that struck me was Chakotay pointing out to watch out for birds - isn't that probably standard procedure? Why would he need to tell her that? Because they're in the past? It's not as if hitting a bird is any more of a potential disaster than whatever they've done to get money, the vaporized truck, the UFO footage, or anything else they've done since arriving. Taking out a gull is probably not going to result in a Simpsons-esque distortion of reality.

Anyway, they're coming in to spring the trap, and we see the Doctor with his mobile emitter out with Starling. We also get what wins the dumbest line of the episode: "If your shipmates start any trouble, you'll be holo-dust." The hell kind of comment is that? Starling is such a lame villain even his threats are stupid. It's also not helped that, for some reason, whenever Begley starts trying to sound threatening or sinister, he talks like he just got back from the dentist. Also, showing the brilliance that led him to become such a sinister threat, he brings the only lackey with him who was actually seen by Rain - you'd think a gazillionaire like Starling could afford at least a second henchman for these situations. Anyway, Starling figures it's a trap, but since Rain plays dumb he plays along and takes her to his car. This completely blows the plan for him to go into the microbus (why the hell would he do that?) and they frantically have to get him out of his own car. This leads to an action seqence involving the Doctor; a particularly wonderful bit that shows just why Picardo is so damn good is his escape from the car. The Doctor runs like someone who never actually had to do it before, not goofy but odd. Anyway, they eventually succeed in catching Starling (he winds up getting onto Voyager) and the Doctor shows off his mobile emitter for the first time.

At this point, we get a scenario that undoubtedly exists solely to pad out the episode, because it really serves no other purpose. Somehow Starling, while disrupting the transporter, overloaded the shuttle and it crashed. Not only are Torres and Chakotay fine, but they are quickly caught and tied up by a group of anti-government nuts. We reach the manufactured conclusion: they're government spies wearing military uniforms. In a real world, it'd be: they're wearing some kind of weird flight suit and might be trying some new glider to bring illegal immigrants in from Mexico. Whatever the case, they plan to bring in reinforcements. Probably going to need to get a few more cases of beer too.

So Starling wakes up in Sickbay and the expected confrontation between him and Janeway begins. Seems they're at a bit of an empasse - Janeway has him trapped and is considering killing him (yes, you read that right; Janeway would not execute a psychopath who has already killed, but is considering executing a man who might do something. And I'm betting it'd be a lot more of an effect on the time line then hitting a swallow with a shuttlecraft), and he's rigged up the time ship to blow up LA if they try to transport it away. Naturally Janeway's far more aghast at his threat than her own, because she's the alleged hero. Watching these two argue reminds me why I always hate elections.

Remember that Janeway fought back against Braxton and caused this all to happen, because she said she needed to have proof. However, because Braxton's the cartoon villain, he's not going to resist because he needs proof, he's going to resist because he accepts it, but doesn't care. What a nice, shallow villain, making it so easy for Voyager to tell us he's the bad guy that will need to be stopped by any means necessary. Rule number one for creating a bad guy is that they should have something that makes them a serious threat to the heroes, yet they remove every aspect of it: he's a bumbling, short-sighted fool holding Voyager at bay through lucky use of technology he has no idea how to use. He's the C-3PO of villainy.

Back in the compound, Chakotay gets another run-in with the militia man: "There are two forces at work in the world. The drive toward collectivity and the drive toward individuality. You are the former, and I am the latter." He may be a gun-toting nut dating his sister, but he's got a point. Chakotay, as a former leader of a guerilla army, rejects his choice to join the Maquis and tells the man that violence is not the answer. All he needs to do is slip a flower into the end of the gun barrel to make it complete. It would be interesting to know at what point Chakotay made this decision, because so far nothing in his character arc suggests it, it's just there because we need to spread The Message.

But in the contest of who we hate the most, we have to always fall back to Rain, who's with Tom and decides they're not secret agents. "You can't keep a girl from hypothesizing. I'm a scientist. I'm thinking, I'm thinking alternate dimension, I'm thinking close encounter." Well, if that's science, no wonder America's getting its ass kicked on the scientific front in the twenty-first century. When confronted with such incredibly advanced technology, a scientist should think... incredibly advanced technology. Alternate dimensions, UFOs, those are things for which there is no actual scientific evidence. Rain is a walking explanation of why people buy into Cold Fusion, Reflexology, and Big Foot (which I suppose could probably benefit from Reflexology, now that I think of it).

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Tuvok have come across the compound where they have Torres and Chakotay. Seems there's already a confrontation between the locals and the cops - yes, because with the Air Force on alert, the cops are going to be the ones they send in rather than the National Guard or the military. Anyway, the Doctor comes in, is impervious to harm, leading to the following:

Hick: God in heaven help us.
Doctor: Divine intervention is unlikely.

Even Picardo can't sell this stupid line. So he takes out the locals and frees our captives. Oh, and highlight of this scene: the redneck leader, who has been referring to Chakotay as "chief" and all that because he's an indian, decides in the middle of his terror at the onslaught of laser weapons to refer to Tuvok as "some black guy." He's not completely racist, just selectively racist.

Meanwhile, Starling was rescued by his only lackey using the timeship, and now they prepare for the big launch. Before the action begins, Rain throws herself at Tom just long enough to make us want to dry heave until our kidneys are reduced to Shake N Bake, then the bad guys send out a big rig emanating tachyon emissions. So they go chasing after them, and Rain takes time to tell Janeway that because of the lack of traffic, they'll know they're being followed. Frankly, even if it was rush hour, odds are pretty good you're going to spot the persistent presence of a powder blue microbus that hasn't been released in America since Jimmy Carter was president. Anyway, this prompts the lackey to fire back at the microbus. The Serious Danger Music begins playing, even though the reaction to the one and only shot was to swerve just slightly to avoid it. Tom shoots out the tire, causing the rig to skid, but sadly, all this excitement has overwhelmed the shitmobile, causing it to stall out right in the middle of the road so that the lackey can try to plow over them for absolutely no reason at all - not only is it not his job to kill them, not only could it potentially disable his already damaged vehicle, but also, he has a goddamn phaser!!! We already saw it vaporize an entire truck! What the hell?!

Anyway, the shuttle arrives in the nick of time and blows up the rig, but it turns out after all that that there was no time ship in the big rig, just a transponder to distract them. Instead Starling takes off in it from his office, and activates "hyper-impulse," better than regular impulse because it's not only from The Future, it's from The Future Of The Future! Weapons still don't work, so Janeway is prepared for the ultimate sacrifice as she heads down to fire a torpedo manually - I vainly hoped she'll ride it at the time ship while waving a cowboy hat like Dr. Strangelove.

Meanwhile, transporters now working, Paris is getting ready to be beamed up. In a Tender Moment he tells Rain: "I've never met anyone quite like you, and I don't think I ever will." Change "don't think" to "hope" and that reflects my sentiments. Anyway, at this point, we hit the moments that always come in a Voyager episode, the "Missing the obvious" moment, like the time ship with no time moment from last time. Starling goes to warp, and Voyager pursues. So, if the time ship is capable of warp, it raises two important questions.

First, why can't Starling fly outside the solar system before trying to quantum leap to the future? It's the most obvious way to avoid all the problems; are we expected to believe no one would suggest it to him or that he wouldn't think of it himself? Is he supposed to be that big of a moster that he'll risk the future -not because he's greedy or misguided or arrogant- but just because he's f*cking lazy?!

Second, he can understand enough to use the advanced computer technology, the holographic technology, the many and various devices, but what he can't figure out is warp theory, a science invented less than seventy years in the future by a drunk in Montana. Even just his hyper-impulse drive that gets him out of Earth's gravity well is a gold mine that makes Chronowerx look like a lemonade stand. Starling could easily have a monopoly on commercial space travel, and he's not going to use it? Why? Are we supposed to believe that's something he can't understand? Then why go to the future if there's already all this shit you don't understand, so that you can find more shit you don't understand? You're going to risk your life for the chance to feel stupid?

Anyway, Starling attempts his time jump, refusing to back off despite the threats of Voyager, until Janeway blows up the time ship with her special torpedo. Before they can think of how to get back to the twenty-fourth century, Braxton returns in his time ship like he did at the beginning, saying none of that timeline ever happened for him. He's here because they detected the temporal anomaly of Voyager being over Earth and is here to correct it. Okay, so why didn't they come to take care of the time ship mucking up history? Yeah, I know, the whole destroyed Earth thing, but that only takes care of detections after the explosion, not before. For instance, if the explosion happened on August 10th, why wasn't the disruption from nine hundred years in the past picked up by August 1st? And now that the Braxton thing didn't happen, the microchip revolution it caused shouldn't have happened, but that remains unchanged. In other words, even for a Star Trek time travel episode, this is poorly thought out. You might as well say Superboy is banging on the walls of reality.

So, Braxton says he's bringing them back, but dumping them back in the delta quadrant rather than Earth. They can't change his mind because of the temporal prime directive - hah! How do you like those apples, bitch! So they get brought back and throw a little shin-dig to celebrate surviving their experience, and just to remind us of how thoroughly annoying she was, we finish with Tom quoting Rain and calling Tuvok a "freakasaurus." Groovy.

Comments: I said a few times that I couldn't understand why people liked this story so much. Well, thinking about it, this is my best guess. Putting aside the time travel stuff (which I think people just tend to like) I think it was that it was different. A different environment, a different villain, more action than we normally got. They didn't do a bad job, but nor did they do a particularly good one. There are plot holes, poor characterization, all the stuff we normally have, but this is one of those episodes that makes it easier for a fan willing to turn their brains off to enjoy it in spite of that. Sadly, it's a big part of Voyager overall that thinking is actually the enemy; think, and it crumbles so easily.

Burn, Baby, Burn: Shuttle crashes on Earth of all places.

Rating: 6

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"I've rigged the timeship. If you try to teleport it again, if you even go near it, Los Angeles will look like the face of the moon." Starling, who is seriously understimating Jack Bauer