What’s it about: Janeway and Paris travel back in time one day with the foreknowledge that a civilisation is about to fall…Hepburn-a-Like: Janeway and Paris look like poster children for the GAP clothing store in their multi coloured gear. In a moment of extreme violence Janeway gets well and truly smacked in the gob during the riot and its enough to make you flinch! Mulgrew tries so hard to give the material some gravity but the look and feel of the episode is working against her. When Janeway blabs out that she is a hostage almost causes the most annoying kid this side of Wesley Crusher executed I was ready to leap in and kiss her!
Parisian Rogue: Time and Again exposes a problem with plot heavy Voyager episodes; they forget that the characters are supposed to have a personality. The most we discover about Paris in this episode is that he is trying to bed the Delaney sisters and that is revealed in the teaser before the plot has begun. He takes a bullet for the kid which proves his character degeneration has already begun.
Forever Ensign: Would rather run a transdata diagnostic then help Paris chat up the Delaney sisters and doesn’t quite have the hang of exaggerating his prowess to wangled his way into their quarters! Its commendable that Kim is remaining faithful to his girlfriend but a little naïve that he thinks they will be getting home any time soon.
Elfin Chick: Kes suffers a terrifying telepathic vision of the planet burning. Jennifer Lien is quietly a very impressive performer and she often provides moments of striking emotion when we explore her powers.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘ Our own rescue attempt! That’s what sets it off!’ – not only does that episode take the most predictable path but it feels the need to explain it to us.
The Good: ‘So, we’re looking at the end of the war’ – that’s a much more visual description of the searing of the planet than Janeway’s technobabble.
The Bad: The first alien civilisation Voyager meets since the pilot and it’s a bunch of humans with the only concession to this being on the other side of the galaxy being they all wear different coloured bright clothes!
That goofy little blond kid is more annoying than Alexander, Wesley Crusher and Molly put together. His entire purpose is to irritate and hamper Janeway. I have absolutely no idea what B’lanna is talking about in engineering when mounting a technobabble fuelled escape plan. A planets surface blasted to death by war with pockets of time that offers windows into the past when it was thriving and foreknowledge that it is about to be destroyed tomorrow. That’s a pretty strong premise for a story so why is the execution so bland? The community is completely unmemorable and no attempt is made to make us care about their fate. The conclusion is inevitable, of course the Voyager crew is ultimately responsible for the disaster that befalls the planet because that is exactly how these sorts of episodes always resolve themselves. Janeway needs to read up on some of the old TNG episodes to see how these things end up. The end of the episode proves that the whole thing never happened as far as the crew is concerned. If only. Orchestra: The musician wakes up as we head towards the climax with some exciting music as Janeway heads off to stop the terrorist attack.
Result: I can imagine a much stronger version of Time and Again that sees Janeway and Paris trapped on a war torn planet of fascists, trying desperately to avert a disaster and avoid being executed themselves. The version we get sees them dressing up in multi coloured clothing, hiding from a scrotum-clenchingly irritating kid and chatting amiably with colourless officials. Given the premise of the show it is potentially the blandest execution imaginable. The most interesting thing on offer is Kes who displays unusual supernatural powers which give the episode at least a few moments of interest. When TNG was bad in its first season it was at least entertainingly camp and when DS9 dropped the ball it was propped up by subplots – Time and Again is the first bad episode of Voyager and it proves that at its worst this show is simply forgettable and for me that is the worst kind of bad. Time and Again flaunts a great idea but does absolutely nothing with it. Pretty much the story of this series: 2/10
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