The Year of Hell... predicted by Before & After?

[NumberSix]

Something that always bothered me was in "Before & After" (one of the last few episodes of season 3), Kes was in the future and saw the events of "The Year of Hell" and at the end of the episode when she was back in normal time said she was going to make a report on all she knew about the Krenim and their torpedoes that could go right through their shields...

So, why then, in season 4 when the two-parter "Year of Hell" episodes happened, did they not know about any of this?? They didn't know who the Krenim were or about the torpedoes.

Did Kes forget to hand in that report?

Or was the "Before & After" episode a sort of alternate timeline episode such as with "Living Witness" where Voyager is in a museum, the Doctor helps put their history right and then sets off for home? Cos if so, maybe this should have been more clear...

 

[apenpaap]

In Year of Hell, Annorax really screwed up the timeline, so the events of "Before and After" may never have appened.

 

[Mistral]

Yeah, and the episode where Kes traveled backwards in time-her knowledge could have changed things in various ways as well. FYI: There is no evidence that Living Witness was an alt timeline-it merely took place in the far future and involved a "backup node" of the Doctor. I actually wrote a sequel to it for the fanfic forum. If you are interested, check out my sig-the tale is called Remnants.(Shameless self-promotion-the only game I play! ).

 

[Lynx]

I guess it's more about sloppy re-writing.

"Year Of Hell" was actually planned to be the cliff-hanger between seasons 3 and 4. But when the decision to bring in a Borg character was made, "Scorpion" became the cliff-hanger instead and "Year Of Hell" was postponed to season 4. Somewhere between seasons 3 and 4 when they decided to dump Kes instead of Kim, they had to re-write "Year Of Hell". Obviously they did it in a hurry so there are some real flaws in that episode.

It may also have something to do with the fact that it actually looked like they were doing everything to "erase" Kes from the Voyager story. She was never mentioned until they decided to bring back the character and destroy her in "Fury". That might be the reason why Kes's report simply "dissapeared".

 

[exodus]

Everything relies on Kes encountering the Krenium and being exposed to the temporal radiation. Because the future changed by Voyager meeting Species 8472, Kes never gets exposed to the cronoton particals. Therefore nothing she sees or says ever happens & Before & After ends up being a "What If?" ep., as in "What if Kes stayed onboard instead of picking up Seven." Plus, we know the crew hasn't forgotten Kes because she's mentioned in "Raven", "Mortal Coil" & "Voyager Conspiracy".

It has nothing to do with Annorax because in both timelines of the actual ep. "YOH", Janeway enters Kernium/Zall space and in both timelines she doesn't remember Kes at all. Which means the future changed before "YOH".

 

[apenpaap]

It has nothing to do with Annorax because in both timelines of the actual ep. "YOH", Janeway enters Kernium/Zall space and in both timelines she doesn't remember Kes at all. Which means the future changed before "YOH".

Yes, but Annorax had been using the weapon before Year of Hell. He wouldn't have to alter a lot to accidentally prevent Kes from being irradiated by the torpedo, thus preventing Before and After before Voyager even came in the area.

 

[exodus]

It has nothing to do with Annorax because in both timelines of the actual ep. "YOH", Janeway enters Kernium/Zall space and in both timelines she doesn't remember Kes at all. Which means the future changed before "YOH".

Yes, but Annorax had been using the weapon before Year of Hell. He wouldn't have to alter a lot to accidentally prevent Kes from being irradiated by the torpedo, thus preventing Before and After before Voyager even came in the area.

Only if we hadn't seen the end of the temporal wave hit Voyager and disippate after it, which means Voyager was on the edge near the end of how far the wave travelled. Plus, if you noticed in the start of "YOH", the civilzation he erased is the same city from "Virtuoso". Several eps. and light years in the other direction of Voyager.

As Janeway enters Kernium space she is told that the space is in dispute and ruled by "the Krenium". So Janeway hears the name and replies: "This space is said to be owned by the Zall and if you don't have anything bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm going thru." (No knowledge of Kes' warning) Janeway then meets with the Zall ambassidor, he tells her she safe to go thru their space. Janeway meets the Krenium again, the shock wave hits. The Zall ambassidor is erased from time and Janeway then states, they've been in Krenuim space for "a week" and are still trying to get thru.

Both times she was told she was in Krenuim space. Both times she has no knowledge before entering it of Kes' warning. Plus, even without the frequency of the temporal torpedos, she pushes though taking more & more damage to Voyager. So it's clear, before we see the time wave hit, Janeway has no knowledge of the Krenuim or Kes' warning. So the future changed before Annorax.

As Annorax said, past, present & future are all the same. So what happens is meant to be.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Annorax and his crew said that they had been outside time altering the timeline for 200 years. As nonsensical as that sounds that they can be measuring time outside time is a remark on their apparent immortality as flying Dutchmen that.... We saw Annorax make at least a dozen temporal incursions in the lone and single year we were viewing his activity... Multiply that by the two hundred years that he had been making temporal incursions and it's quite obvious that we missed out on on seeing at least 2400 slightly different reimaginings of Voyager between scientific method and Year of hell one which all occurred linerally on top of one another that in some of these timelines Janeway had received Kes' warning and in others she didn't.

Although it's obvious that in every timeline which janeway had Kes warning, she would not have been drawn into conflict with the Krenim so easily, or because she had their torpedo frequency (laughably the same in every alternate reality) janeway would have been able to own them quick... So she never would have ever been so frakked over that she would ever have had needed to invent temporal shields and therefore never meet annorax because up until this version of Voyager, the ship had been temporally inert and he owned them like a school boy incinerating and flooding ants.

Of course that Seven was there after Annorax was removed from the equation (That Annorax was inside her subconscious as an assimilated facet!), means that time was also being altered by a third party, since it wasn't his fiddling which landed her on Voyager, which I suspect did happen in Star trek First Contact when the Queen went back in time and later the historic Borg got upgrades and intel from the message she sent them with her interplexing beacon... If not the the shuttle mission return home which spanked Archer.

Time to bring it on.

 

[Praetor]

In the real world? I'd call it a dramatic conceit because they wanted to do the episodes. (Good episodes if you ask me.)

In the Trekworld? Annorax probably undid it somehow, making the events of 'Before and After' unhappen along with a myriad others. Presumably, it didn't happen in the non-Annoraxed version of the timeline either.

 

[Daneel]

It kind of bugged me a little bit too, but I let it slide because, well, I like "Year of Hell", and with all the changes Annorax was making to the timeline, it was fairly simple to just chalk up the inconsistency to that. A bit lazy and pat, perhaps, but it works for the most part.

Although exodus' notion that "Before and After" never happened because the timeline changed when Kes left Voyager (which obviously doesn't happen in the "Before and After" future that we see) is probably equally plausible -- well, as plausible as history-altering stories get, anyway.

 

[exodus]

^^It's like that Denzel Washington film "Deja Vu".

Time is like a river. It follows forward undisturbed.
Drop a rock in that river & the river has to figure out a way to compensate.
So the river creates a new path to follow, thus creating a new timeline and new future.

That's what happened here.

The future Kes saw was the future of Voyager had they never encountered Species 8472 or the Borg. Meeting those two species is the rock in the river that changes time. So time followed another path and switched Kes with Seven. That's is why Seven now finds the torpedos frequency in "YOH" and not Kes. Changing the future also now allows Be'Lanna & Janeway to live. Also Kes' death in "B&A" is two years after "Endgame". Which meants in her timeline, Voyager doesn't get home.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Both those timelines happened in an alternately after branching off from what we knew 58 days into the mission during Fury.

Possibly 138 Voyager Episodes didn't happen exactly as we saw them from the perspective of the crew that got home in Endgame including their encounters with Annorax and departures and deaths of many crew. Kes could have stayed half a season more?

I see time (in Voyager) as the same as when Austin powers was trying to make that three point turn in that golf cart down that long thin corridor under Doctor Evils lair. You know what I'm talking about.

 

[Jaespol]

I guess it's more about sloppy re-writing.

"Year Of Hell" was actually planned to be the cliff-hanger between seasons 3 and 4. But when the decision to bring in a Borg character was made, "Scorpion" became the cliff-hanger instead and "Year Of Hell" was postponed to season 4. Somewhere between seasons 3 and 4 when they decided to dump Kes instead of Kim, they had to re-write "Year Of Hell". Obviously they did it in a hurry so there are some real flaws in that episode.

It may also have something to do with the fact that it actually looked like they were doing everything to "erase" Kes from the Voyager story. She was never mentioned until they decided to bring back the character and destroy her in "Fury". That might be the reason why Kes's report simply "dissapeared".

That's not true, they mentioned her in "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "The Voyager Conspiracy".

Anyway, the reason they don't know about the Krenim is because Kes left the ship early and therefore never became infected by the chroniton particles and therefore the events of "Before and After" never happened.
Its a simple explanation and it has NOTHING to do with Annorax's time weapon.

 

[Guy Gardener]

kes already was never going to experience all those timelines from before and after every time she backsteped making those futures impossible with foreknowledge in every new past she arrived in (otherwise they would already be expecting her in the future, her sudden present, because they had already met her in their past, after she had voyaged there from where she was right then in the new present.) which was immediately an alien history to the future she'd just arrived from, but it was only she who had traveled through time which was an x-factor who was doing things different, so the further away from kes you got, the more things were the same to the most original shape things that were still is.

Y'know, until other timetravelers intruded on all their history she called the present and over egged the pudding.

Track this.

She left early because brogspace swelled 40 sizes. Captain Chakotay said that he had never seen a cube half way through what should have been the fourth season, but Captain Janeway discovered it would take her decades to bisect the Borg empire in front of her or gods for bid (pi R squared) centuries to circumnavigate even a fraction of the rim of their frontier...

So time changed before 8472 changed time and jumpstarted kes into a god.

Obviously the Queen from First Contact did service patch the 22nd century Borg into 24th century Borg well before that corner of the galaxy was ready to deal with them with her interplexing beacon after all which would explain the change in the size of borg space and put them into position to attack 8472 which would force them into conflict with Kes who would apotheosize and leave Voyager for their own good well before the year of hell.

That and Seven would only know about what the Borg did in First Contact within a timeline that had been altered by the contributions to time made by Picard and the Borg in 2063...

 

[32JaX]

That always bothered me too, but I explain it to myself that Janeway never read the report. Or time was "sweeped" before Kes had a chance to make it. Wasn't Year of Hell was originally conceived as an ongoing season plot? I thought that was stated in one of the extra features on the DVD.

 

[Frazzled]

That would've been fab ...a whole season Year of Hell.

As long as they hit that reset button at the end of course wonder how well that would've gone down actually? I reckon they'd be accused of a huge cop out. a bit like that awful season of Dallas that turned out to be all a dream.

How about Year of Hell without the reset button, but without any permanent damage so the whole of the following season could be a big clean up? So no deaths, and stuff like Tuvok's sight could eventually be restored when they repair sickbay enough.

Actually that sounds great to me now I can watch whatever I like whenever I like on DVD, but since I like my happy endings Id've hated it if I'd been watching it a week at a time slowly!!

 

[Guy Gardener]

how about a year of hell were the reset button got hit at the end of every episode as Annorax changed the universe over and over again that the crew and their histories crosstime shifted before our eyes with their personal histories and hair cuts and relationships and wardrobe and even cast members...

Y'know like for the fist couple seasons of Sliders when they were trying.

Steven Spielberg was hands on with the Sliders pilot, I was amazed to rewatch the quality after seeing the b-roll hammer films creature feature that clusterfuck became.

That's what I like about Voyager, nothing was too good or too bad, it was just a consistent mellow that you could rely on... baring forgettable exclusions I chose to erase from my recall.

 

[Anwar]

Braga did want Year of Hell to be a season (thus, a year) long but was overruled. I don't think he'd have undone it at the end, but I guess that was partially why he was overruled: That kind of damage would've been impossible for them to fix up and would've required new models physically and CGI as well as set redresses. Too much money.

 

[exodus]

Braga did want Year of Hell to be a season (thus, a year) long but was overruled. I don't think he'd have undone it at the end, but I guess that was partially why he was overruled: That kind of damage would've been impossible for them to fix up and would've required new models physically and CGI as well as set redresses. Too much money.

I think people would have kicked their TV sets in if they watched a year long story only to have it reset at the end. A two-parter makes the reset tolerable.

 

[Anwar]

No no no, I meant it WOULDN'T have been reset at the end. But the exec order said no to the season-long story (too inaccessible) so he made it the two-parter reset at the end.

As far as reset button moments go, YoH did it pretty well.