Year of Hell

Template:Infobox Star Trek episode

"Year of Hell" is a two-part episode from the fourth season of the television series Star Trek: Voyager. Both parts of the episode have an average rating of 4.6/5 on the official Star Trek website (as of May 2, 2007).

Plot

Voyager has a running battle with a Krenim timeship over a period of eight months. Krenim scientist Annorax developed a technology that can cause "temporal incursions" which can be used to erase events from history. Each temporal incursion must be meticulously calculated so the removal of one event from the timeline has no negative effects on other events. This is rarely possible, of course. Annorax attempted to restore the Krenim empire to the apex of its power by destroying its archenemies, but by doing so he prevented the development of an antibody in his people, and they became vulnerable to a plague. 50 million of his people died, including his beloved wife, because of his actions. Now he is bent on undoing his mistakes. The more temporal incursions he creates in the attempt only causes more disruptions in the timeline. Civilizations are being erased from existence. When the crew of Voyager tries to stop him, he tries to remove them from history as well. They manage to escape using the warp drive as Voyager is faster but this causes even more damage to the ship. Janeway is forced to order all but the senior staff to abandon ship as the ship has taken too much damage and can no longer sustain a crew. She and the senior staff remain behind in an attempt to rescue Chakotay and Paris who were captured by the time ship. The senior staff will remain on board as long as possible to effect enough repairs to rescue them but given the damage they will likely end up having to abandon ship afterwards as well.

Captain Janeway eventually makes an alliance with two species known as the Nihydron and the Mawasi to attack the Krenim timeship. Torres and Kim are sent to one ship while Tuvok, the Doctor, Neelix and Seven are sent to another. Janeway remains behind alone on Voyager to pilot the ship herself although everyone knows it will likely not survive the battle due to the extensive damage it already has. During the battle two of the allied ships are destroyed along with presumably Torres and Kim. With the help of a dissatisfied crew member Chakotay and Paris take the time ship's temporal core offline rendering it vulnerable to attack and beam to the nearest allied ship. Unfortunately even vulnerable and without the weapon that erases things from history the time ship is just too powerful and the two remaining allied ships are disabled and Voyager is mortally wounded when one of the ships loses helm control and crashes over the saucer section of Voyager damaging it beyond repair. Ordering the fleet to drop their temporal shields (developed to protect them against Krenim Warship weapons it also protects them from changes in the timeline) Janeway rams the mortally wounded Voyager into the time-ship while it is powering up for another temporal incursion (having apparently somewhat restored power to the temporal core) destroying Voyager and causing the time ship's temporal core to destabilize. This causes the time-ship itself to be erased from history, restoring Annorax's wife and Voyager to its undamaged state, as it was prior to the year and all of the species wiped out by the timeship to be restored restoring the true timeline that would have happened if not for the ship's intervention. Voyager is allowed to pass safely through Krenim Space by the warship that chased them at the beginning of the episode for months before they destroyed it, but the Commandant is friendly this time wishing them good luck and warning them about a territorial conflict in the area they should stay away from. It as if the Year of Hell never happened and never will. However, Annorax is last seen working on temporal incursions until his wife tells him to spend the day with her.

Other Versions of the Year of Hell

In the episode "Before and After", Kes experienced one possible version of the Year of Hell when she traveled through the future into the past. This version turns out differently, and Kes is no longer aboard Voyager. Though Kes revealed the frequency of the chronoton torpedo, and details of the Krenim in general, the crew appear to have no knowledge of those details in "The Year of Hell" mainly because they found those details in a timeline that did not occur, as Kes was still on the ship in the episode "Before and After," but she left the ship before the events of the Year of Hell took place.

External links

Template:Time travel stories