Year of Hell/Before & After

[Trek4Ever]

I've recently watched the three episodes dealing with the Krenim and I keep wondering about when did the original timeline diverged for the VOY crew.

Apparently Janeway and B'Ellana were killed at the start of the Year of Hell as seen in Before and After, but at the end of the show Kes filled in the others onto the pending Krenim encounter.

Flashforward a season later, Kes is gone, VOY encounters the Krenim and has nobody seems to remember them, what more, Janeway and B'Ellana survive the Year of Hell. So what exactly happened? Keep in mind that 7 of 9 had that incident with the chrono torpedo that Kes did and there's the whole matter of Kes having hurled the ship thousands of light years at the start of season four to the point that they ran into the Krenim, while in Before & After the Kes in the Year of Hell timeline didn't seem to have had that kind of power.

So where's the divergence? My theory is that the timeline might've diverged from the original to "our" timeline when Kes' powers increased in the Gift. Originally it probably didn't happen and a short time later Voyager might've gone through a wormhole or found another means to travel 10,000 light years past Borg space.

Any other thoughts? And come on let's leave out lazy writers as an excuse!

 

[Candlelight]

You could argue that Annorax altered time to such an extent that the 'battle' that killed Janeway and Torres in the original timeline never happened.

That and lazy writers.

 

[Gadrin]

you might find these interesting...

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/treknology/timetravel-voy.htm

and in general:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/timetravel.htm

I remember in Future's End, Braxton mentioning "I never experienced that timeline" when he returned Voyager at the end, so it's possible the same happened to the V-crew when the Krenim attacked (in other words: what YEAROFHELL said

 

[exodus]

The way I see it is, not one thing in "Before & After" happened, not even Kes telling Janeway or Tuvok about the Krenium.

Here's why I think so: In "B&A" Kes never encounters Species 8472, so she enters the "YOH" and now has the memories of it. In the real timeline, Kes encounters Species 8472 and never enters "YOH". Because she never enters "YOH" she couldn't be exposed to the radiation that caused the backwards time jump. If she never actually time jumped now, she couldn't have any memories of "YOH" to tell anybody. Every single thing she learned and knew gets erased from time.

 

[nx1701g]

I always took a couple of possibilities from it.

1.) In Year of Hell the Voyager's Computers are severely damaged - perhap's Kes' report was erased in the damage (remember she DID record a report about the Krenim at the end of the episode and delivered it to Janeway).

2.) Janeway did receive the report but by nature of the Temporal Prime Directive she didn't access it.

3.) Annorax's activities caused the Year of Hell Voyager encountered to be erased from history and instead be reborn as something else. We saw several times in the episodes that the Krenim would grow, then shrink, maybe that's what happened here?

 

[od0_ital]

nx1701g said:
1.) In Year of Hell the Voyager's Computers are severely damaged - perhap's Kes' report was erased in the damage (remember she DID record a report about the Krenim at the end of the episode and delivered it to Janeway).

Actually, Kes left the holodeck to write the report - no tellin' what may have happened between the holodeck and her quarters that kept her from it.

 

[Casper]

my explanation of it all was that the writers screwed up!!!

trying to figure out any other reason gives me a headache....so this was probably a pointless post but i'm posting anyway.

kes ended up in the same timeline as the real voyager in the end and supposedly told janeway everything to look out for...then YOH came and Nada...nothin!....janeway draws a blank and pooh happens.....

i throw this one in with the 'what happened to the borg baby' category!

 

[Jack Bauer]

Part ofthe problem is Year of Hell was meant to be the season ender for the third season. Then they decided to add a Borg to the cast so Scorpion was done instead. By the time they did YoH Kes was gone so they just ignored that part. Instead the best explanation is that Annorax was mucking with time and just before the YoH two parter the Kes stuff was purged from the timeline.

 

[Trek4Ever]

I thing that makes this so nagging is that scene in YOH when 7 of 9 finds the exact same chroniton torpedo that Kes found in her episode. It shows that the writers were aware of Before and After yet nothing more came of that. A simple one or two lines of dialogue could've taken care of that. Say have someone discover that the Kes timeline was erased by Annorax, probably Chakotay when he was held captive. But that's VOY for you.

 

[exodus]

Trek4Ever said:
I thing that makes this so nagging is that scene in YOH when 7 of 9 finds the exact same chroniton torpedo that Kes found in her episode. It shows that the writers were aware of Before and After yet nothing more came of that. A simple one or two lines of dialogue could've taken care of that. Say have someone discover that the Kes timeline was erased by Annorax, probably Chakotay when he was held captive. But that's VOY for you.

However, I think that means Kes was never exposed to the radiation. If she wasn't exposed, "Before & After" absolutely couldn't happen.

"B&A" all hinges on her being exposed to that radiation for the entire event to happen. If Kes never enters the "YOH", she never has any memories of anything. So she couldn't write down anything because she now never actually meets the Krenium.

 

[ALF]

od0_ital said:

nx1701g said:
1.) In Year of Hell the Voyager's Computers are severely damaged - perhap's Kes' report was erased in the damage (remember she DID record a report about the Krenim at the end of the episode and delivered it to Janeway).

Actually, Kes left the holodeck to write the report - no tellin' what may have happened between the holodeck and her quarters that kept her from it.

While she was in 2373, Kes warned Janeway of the Krenim danger. (VOY: "Before and After")
At least one of Annorax's later incursions removed this event from history as Janeway was unaware of the nature of the Krenim when she met them.

Taken from Memory Alpha's page on The Krenim.
Seems plausable.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Krenim

 

[exodus]

^^I've heard Memory Alpha isn't a reliable source.

Not to say you are wrong or anybody else is right, but I've been told much of the info in Memory Alpha is provided by fans.

Can that be considered accurate?

 

[Turbo]

exodus said:
^^I've heard Memory Alpha isn't a reliable source.

Not to say you are wrong or anybody else is right, but I've been told much of the info in Memory Alpha is provided by fans.

Can that be considered accurate?

It's a wiki, so yes, most of the info is provided by fans.

But it's the best source of Trek knowledge out there; the Pocket Books staff keep redirecting people to MA when they ask about any new editions of the Encyclopedia.

 

[exodus]

Turbo said:

exodus said:
^^I've heard Memory Alpha isn't a reliable source.

Not to say you are wrong or anybody else is right, but I've been told much of the info in Memory Alpha is provided by fans.

Can that be considered accurate?

It's a wiki, so yes, most of the info is provided by fans.

But it's the best source of Trek knowledge out there; the Pocket Books staff keep redirecting people to MA when they ask about any new editions of the Encyclopedia.

Is that what they do now?

I'm sorry, I find that amusing because the publishing company I work for used to own Pocket Books. I think it's interesting that they aren't publishing an updated Encyclopedia and instead are directing fans to fan based site. What's also ironic is Viacom owns part of Pocket Books, so I don't understand why they don't have their own site for such things.

It would make more sense coming from the source than from fan speculation. It would give questions such as this more soild answers than: "Well, maybe I think it happen this way...."

 

[Smiley]

There's no profit in it for Pocket to make an updated encyclopedia at this time, so why not point fans to the best available free source out there? Things may change after 2008, but for now, the fans have put a lot of thought and effort into MA, and the information there is usually at least reasonable.

Regarding this particular topic, plans changed, and what would have been great for Kes did not make as much sense with Seven. "Year of Hell," beloved as it is on this board, does not make a ton of logical sense in the first place, so the best thing you can do is just roll with it.

 

[exodus]

Smiley said:
There's no profit in it for Pocket to make an updated encyclopedia at this time, so why not point fans to the best available free source out there? Things may change after 2008, but for now, the fans have put a lot of thought and effort into MA, and the information there is usually at least reasonable.

No, I was thinking more along the lines of having their own wiki type site. Publishing companies are already thinking and or using the idea of online books. I don't see why an online version of the encyclopedia wouldn't work just as well.

BTW, if you've never heard of the idea of online books, keep it under your hat because you never heard it from me. I'm not sure if that's meant to be public information yet.

 

[Anwar]

Smiley said:
There's no profit in it for Pocket to make an updated encyclopedia at this time, so why not point fans to the best available free source out there? Things may change after 2008, but for now, the fans have put a lot of thought and effort into MA, and the information there is usually at least reasonable.

Regarding this particular topic, plans changed, and what would have been great for Kes did not make as much sense with Seven. "Year of Hell," beloved as it is on this board, does not make a ton of logical sense in the first place, so the best thing you can do is just roll with it.

How did YOH not make sense? It's one of the better thought out time stories done in Trek, IMO with the major plot wrapped up nicely by the end with no lingering questions and stuff.

Yes, it would've made a lot more sense if it had been Kes in that scene with the torpedo, but Lien left so what Braga had planned out back then no longer made sense but it was beyond his control and they had to cover it best they could by replacing Kes with Seven in that scene.

 

[Casper]

i think YOH made perfect sense...eccept for the fact that kess' warning wasn't mentioned at all...

the fact that it was seven and tuvok got to the torpedo or whatever instead of kes...well kes wasn't there and mayby in B&A....kes got there before seven and tuvok at the time...or she was closer.....and got there cause it was one of the things that was causing her problems.

 

[Anwar]

The entire timeline that Kes experienced was erased, and hence the entire episode "Before and After" was erased as well. This wasn't explicitly stated but it's a reasonable explanation.

That scene of Tuvok and Seven finding the torpedo was meant to be the replacement scene of what happened to Kes, an implicit way of telling us that the Kes version was gone now and this was what happened in the timeline.

 

[Smiley]

exodus said:

Smiley said:
There's no profit in it for Pocket to make an updated encyclopedia at this time, so why not point fans to the best available free source out there? Things may change after 2008, but for now, the fans have put a lot of thought and effort into MA, and the information there is usually at least reasonable.

No, I was thinking more along the lines of having their own wiki type site. Publishing companies are already thinking and or using the idea of online books. I don't see why an online version of the encyclopedia wouldn't work just as well.

BTW, if you've never heard of the idea of online books, keep it under your hat because you never heard it from me. I'm not sure if that's meant to be public information yet.

I'm quite aware of eBooks, and the percentage of the audience who would buy them is less than the percentage who would buy a hard-copy reference book, and the costs are just as high. As for making their own wiki site, where is the revenue stream? People will not pay for something that they can get for free, so there is no incentive for CBS to make a competing wiki to Memory Alpha.