Timeless (Star Trek: Voyager)

"Timeless"
Star Trek: Voyager episode
Chakotay and Kim's future selves visit Voyager's crash site.
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 6
Directed by	LeVar Burton
Teleplay by	Brannon Braga Joe Menosky
Story by	Rick Berman Brannon Braga Joe Menosky
Featured music	Dennis McCarthy
Production code	201
Original air date	November 18, 1998 (1998-11-18)
Guest stars
LeVar Burton - Captain Geordi La Forge Christine Harnos - Tessa Omond Tarik Ergin - Lt. Ayala
Episode chronology
← Previous "Once Upon a Time" Next → "Infinite Regress"
List of Star Trek: Voyager episodes

"Timeless," the sixth episode of the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager, was also the series' 100th episode. It has an average fan rating of 4.7/5 on the official Star Trek website as of September, 2009.

The episode was directed by LeVar Burton, who also featured in a cameo appearance as his Star Trek: The Next Generation character Geordi La Forge.

The episode also marks an important turning point among the series when Janeway notes in her personal log the changing perspective of their journey home: it's no longer "if" the crew will ever return to Earth, but "when."

The episode begins with a "cold opening" on a frigid windswept planet. Two figures wearing survival gear beam onto the scene and search until they discover what they are looking for: Voyager, buried beneath the ice.

Plot

Fifteen years in the future, over six years have passed since Starfleet called off its search for the Voyager's wreckage. Chakotay and Kim, become obsessed with finding a method to alter history after causing the USS Voyager to crash and become entombed inside of a glacier on an uncharted ice world a few parsecs from the Alpha Quadrant, in the Takara Sector.

Kim and Chakotay, under fugitive status with the aid of a woman named Tessa Omond (Christine Harnos), enter the orbit of an ice planet in the Takara Sector on the stolen Delta Flyer spacecraft. After reactivating the Doctor using a mobile power source, the three, along with the frozen body of Seven of Nine, return to orbit. The Doctor, mistaking that the mission was to salvage his program from the wreckage, thanks the two only to be informed that they are both fugitives from Starfleet on two counts of Treason, and "Conspiracy to violate the prime directive."

Kim had learned that Starfleet Intelligence had recovered a Borg temporal transmitter from the wreckage of a Borg cube in the Beta Quadrant. Kim's plan is to use The Doctor's surgical knowledge to access Seven's chronometric node, in order to determine her exact time of death, and to remove her interplexing beacon in order to find her translength frequency to relay the phase corrections needed to prevent Voyager from crashing.

Tessa informs the three of a nearby Galaxy class starship, later being hailed by the USS Challenger commanded by Captain Geordi La Forge.

Starfleet officials realize what Kim and Chakotay are trying to do, and the Challenger has been sent to stop them from altering the timeline. They quickly attempt to alter the slipstream to allow Voyager to make it through, but fail. The future Kim reasons that the new course corrections must not have worked, as they're still trying to evade the Challenger, which manages to damage the Delta Flyer's warp core. Told of the impending core breach, at first Harry bitterly accepts his failure - but when the Doctor suggests that the link to the past be used to to safely take Voyager out of the slipstream rather than stay in it, Kim suddenly realizes that he still can save the ship, and rushes to make the calculations needed for this to occur. At the same time the temporal beacon they established begins losing power. Kim uses The Doctor's mobile emitter as a power source. Just before the core breaches, killing him, Chakotay and Tessa, Harry triumphantly sends a message to the Seven of Nine of the past - with the instructions ("corrections") which she follows that intentionally shut down the slipstream, altering the timeline to one in which the experiment "fails" and the crew survives.

Afterwards, even though Captain Janeway slightly disappointed that the trip didn't work as planned, she consoles Harry, helping him feel that his attempt to get them home was not as disastrous as he feels. She notes that in their aborted slipstream hop, ten years are taken off Voyager's journey to the Alpha Quadrant. She also reveals that when Seven of Nine accessed her internal sensors to ascertain the nature of the transmission she received, she discovered a personal message which contained a Starfleet ID: Harry's ID. Janeway hands Harry a tricorder and tells him that the message itself is to Harry Kim, from Harry Kim.

In the present, Kim watches a recording which the future Kim left for him. Harry's future actions have placed his timeline in a closed loop. It happened, yet the events that prompted the timeline have now been prevented.

Notes

In a future episode, "Relativity," Starfleet officers from the 29th century, dedicated to protecting the flow of time, are said to have been left to clean up the "mess" caused by future Harry's message to his past self; they refer to it as "the temporal inversion in the Takara sector."

Reception

"Timeless" is generally highly regarded by Voyager fans.

External links

• Timeless at the Internet Movie Database
• "Timeless" at TV.com
• Timeless at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• Timeless at StarTrek.com