Voyager Re-Watch: Time And Again

Time And Again
Season 1: Episode 3

Alright now, this episode. I don't know. For some reason, this one always sticks in my head. Maybe it's the outfits. Maybe it's the plot. Maybe it's Janeway's glorious half-up, half-down mane.

Actually it's surely her hair. Look at it! Magnificent.

Time and Again is interesting for a few reasons. Mainly, it's the first really stand-alone, episodic, no-strings-attached story. And that's pretty important. Basically it's this: Voyager comes upon a planet where the native peoples have blown themselves to bits in a huge nuclear explosion. They go down to investigate because why not and Janeway and Paris get thrown back in time to the day before the explosion. The bulk of the episode is spent with Janeway and Paris walking amongst these doomed fools, trying to figure out a way back to Voyager whilst the crew simultaneously try to collect them and Kes has lots of psychic trauma because of all of it. At the end, they prevent the explosion and everything goes back to normal for Voyager.

There's no Maquis/Starfleet conflict. There's no "OMG look how far away from home we still are!" business. There's no "OMG look how close we're all getting because we're a family!" conversation. It's just a regular, run of the mill Star Trek episode. The plot from this one could easily be lifted and dropped into TOS, TNG, DS9, or Enterprise.

But that's also what makes this one kind of special. Can Voyager, without the aid/interference of Starfleet, the known alien races, the known space etc, function like any of the other Treks? Yeah. Absolutely. But then again, maybe that's why this one always kind of stands out to me. It doesn't have all that much of what makes Voyager stand out among the rest of Trek.

Here's what it does have though:

1- The first mention of the infamous Delaney sisters. Apparently, they come as a matched pair.
2- Paris says he has "five girls back home." Could they be trying any harder to make him the Riker? Possibly.  
3- Neelix gives Kes a lecture about telepathy. I'm sorry Neelix, when did you become an expert in exobiological neuroscience as applied specifically to the Ocampa?
4-One of these doomed fools tells another of these doomed fools to "Have a confection bar and calm down," which always makes me laugh. Also it makes me want a confection bar.
5-Janeway just straight up breaks the Prime Directive right here in the 3rd Episode. She says she's not doing it and she's technically right, I guess. But this kind of, "Aw, Fuck It" attitude will eventually separate Janeway from the rest of her Starfleet captain comrades. She just lets down her hair and starts dropping heavy knowledge on these poor, unknowing people.
6- At the end everything resets except the doomed fools don't blow themselves up and they go back to living in a pre-warp society so it's like Janeway never even dropped any knowledge on them. Paris still has five girls back home though. According to him.

Tom "Five Girls Back Home" Paris