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"Future's End" is a two-part episode from the third season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, the eighth and ninth of the season and the 50th and 51st overall. "Future's End" made its debut on American television in November 1996 on the UPN network.
In this episode, Voyager is thrown back to 1996 Earth and must find a way back to the 24th century while making sure they don't cause a disaster in the 29th century in the process.
Part I [edit]
A small ship with a Federation signature emerges from a temporal rift in front of the starship Voyager, and its pilot identifies himself as Captain Braxton from the 29th century. He says he must destroy them to prevent a cataclysm he believes that Voyager is the cause of which would wipe out most of the Earth's solar system in his time. As proof, Braxton briefly states that debris from Voyager's secondary hull will be found in the remains of the explosion. Voyager fights off Braxton's attack, resulting in the future captain being sent back through the rift to the year 1967. Voyager and its crew are also pulled into the rift and find themselves in the year 1996. The starship is identified on Earth as a UFO and videotaped as such, placing the U.S. military on alert.
A young hippie hiker, Henry Starling (Ed Begley, Jr.), finds the timeship in 1967 and copies its technology, allowing him to found his own company, Chronowerx, and spark the micro-computer revolution of the 1990s. When Janeway and Chakotay beam up to the ship after confronting Starling, he uses the transporter downlink to hack into the computer on Voyager, stealing many of their files, including the Doctor. Meanwhile, a young astronomer named Rain Robinson (Sarah Silverman) who works at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles has discovered Voyager in high orbit through her warp emissions and assumes it to be extraterrestrial life; against Starling's instructions--Starling funds her lab work--she attempts to contact Voyager, by transmitting a greeting to it which forces the crew to do some damage control.[1] The Voyager crew tracks her location to the Observatory and Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, Lt. Tuvok, and Lt. Paris, decide to beam down to Los Angeles. Tuvok and Paris try to find Rain, while Janeway and Chakotay attempt to investigate more on the ex-hippie and now multi-millionaire, Henry Starling. Tuvok and Paris successfully remove Rain out of the observatory before she can be harmed after Starling, who fears that Rain is a security risk, dispatches a hired gun to kill her.[1]
In Los Angeles, Janeway and Chakotay identify a homeless man as Captain Braxton. Braxton explains that "he emerged from the time rift in 1967 and crash-landed in the desert, where a young Henry Starling found the timeship and utilized its technology" to begin his high-tech empire.[1]
Ultimately, Janeway and Chakotay discover from Captain Braxton that Starling's planned attempt to travel into the 29th century using the timeship will be the true cause for the temporal explosion in the 29th century because Starling lacks the knowledge needed to properly operate the timeship. When Starling makes his trip to the future, the improperly configured temporal matrix will cause a temporal explosion that will destroy Earth's entire solar system. Braxton hypothesizes that Voyager's debris will be found in the remains of the explosion because they will try and fail to stop Starling.
Janeway and Chakotay decide to secretly enter into Starling's Chronowerx office where they find the timeship, just as Starling walks in on them. Starling ignores Janeway's warning not to use the timeship since its use will cause disaster and he tries to kill both Janeway and Chakotay.[1] However, the latter two are beamed aboard Voyager just before he carries out the deed. When Voyager tries to beam up the timeship, Starling uses Voyager's own transporter beam to access Voyager's computer and study its systems before stealing the Doctor's program from Sickbay.[1] Worse still, Voyager's presence is detected and placed on the news media since the ship's crew had to dive the ship low into Earth's atmosphere to successfully beam aboard Janeway and Chakotay before Starling could kill them.
Part II [edit]
Janeway eventually manages to successfully abduct Starling and beam him aboard Voyager where he admits that he intends to travel into the future to steal more advanced technology.[2] While Janeway believes that she has ended Starling's plans, one of Starling's henchmen uses his scavenged 29th century technology to transport Starling back to his office from where Starling launches the timeship to perform his intended time travel.[2] After a failed attempt to convince Starling to stop his time travel before it's too late, Janeway destroys the timeship by manually firing a photon torpedo into it, destroying it just as it enters a temporal rift, and saving the future. An alternative Captain Braxton arrives, having detected their presence in the past, and returns them to their own time at the place they left it. He is unwilling to bring them to their Earth as that would violate the Temporal Prime Directive.
Aftermath [edit]
- The main consequence of the episode was that the Doctor gained his 29th century technology mobile emitter from Starling and thus becomes able to leave Voyager’s sickbay with its stationary holo-emitters to go wherever he likes, whether inside or outside of the ship.
- The later episode "11:59" reveals that the events of this episode, particularly the existence of Chronowerx, continued to be part of the timeline, as a web browser made by Chronowerx was seen to be in use.
- Captain Braxton returns in the episode "Relativity", possessing memories of both versions of himself seen in this episode. He says that after spending decades on Earth, he was subject to rehabilitation but allowed to return to duty.
- This episode contains two allusions to incidents in time travel episodes of the original Star Trek series: The first is when Voyager is observed and reported as a UFO. This happened when Kirk's Enterprise traveled to 1969 in "Tomorrow is Yesterday". The second was when Janeway attempted to access Henry Starling's computer files. She equated using a keyboard and primitive computer with using "stone knives and bearskins", the same line used by Spock in "The City on the Edge of Forever".
- Star Trek writer and producer, Bryan Fuller, who began his career on Star Trek Deep Space Nine has stated that Brannon Braga, Voyager's co-executive producer considered making Sarah Silverman a member of the crew on the basis of her acting in this episode. [3] Braga “liked writing for Silverman and the freshness she brought to the Voyager” show plus the possibilities for a Tom Paris romance with her.[3] In the end, Braga abandoned the idea and instead chose Jeri Ryan to join the crew in season 4 of the show.
References [edit]
External links [edit]
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