This episode is either a beautiful tragedy or a contrived mess. How can i be both? Let’s see:
Plot Synopsis:
Things are great on Voyager with Tom and B’Elana getting married, but these good times don’t last when Torres finds the bulk heads are falling apart and then falls ill herself and dies.
Chakotay and Tuvok determine that they are mot the real crew after all. But Bio mimic copies which came to life at the end of the events of “Demon”. They were copied so well that they believed they were real. So real they installed a warp core which was lethal to Biomimic life forms and no one ever realized.
Janeway wants to push on to Earth, but as more die and the ship falls apart she realizes that is foolish. She turns the ship around to the Demon planet but it may be to late. All their efforts to save themselves fail. As Janeway dies and the end seems near, Harry Kim sees an image of the real Voyager on the screen. He desperately tries to make contact with them. But it’s to late.
Episode Pro’s:
This is a “what if” story and some of the stuff is very well done. We are happy to see Tom and B’Elanna married (in fact it was so well done we never even saw the real wedding). And man do we feel the tragedy when Tom loses her. That scene is so well acted and you feel for the guy. Though to be fair Torres dies before we find out the big twist of the episode.
Then there’s Janeway who is obsessed with getting the crew home and refuses to accept it when it’s clear that they aren’t the crew. It’s a great look at how Janeway’s single mindedness could lead to disaster if she’s not careful. The best scene is when Chakotay comes to her quarters to get her to see reason and she is still acting like everything is fine and wonderful. It’s an awkward scene which works. It’s easy to get aggravated with her but I think I get where the writers were coming from, There’s also the fact that this all happened because of the real Janeway’s decision in “Demon”. The ugly consequences show why making choices she has to are so difficult. In this case whole species was born and then died tragically. We see in this episode what it will take for her to accept that she just isn’t going to be able to get her crew home.
The make-up is fantastic, but it’s added by the acting from our cast.
Episode Con’s:
This episode has some very blatant criticisms so let’s go through them:
The whole plot is contrived if you saw the original episode. That episode wasn’t really good and while it did end with the crew getting copied we never saw another ship. And if they did copy the ship how can they make the tech work? I could probably make a copy of my iPhone with a 3D printer but I’m pretty sure it will be useless. The faux crew then did things the normal crew would do, like visit class M planets that these crew members should have not been able to survive on. How in the world did the Doctor’s program get copied? And why did all the crew members forget they were copies? These are all things you just have to kind of accept.
The fact they could catch up with the real Voyager at the end is pushing it. Yes ok, but the creators obviously wanted the episode to end with fans assured the real crew is alive and well. Though it may have had more impact if we never saw the real crew (like in “Living Witness”) and just let the tragedy of this crew stand on its own.
It’s a pointless episode because nothing that happens in it matters. When I first saw “Yesterday’s Enterprise” it kinda bugged me that we weren’t really spending the episode with the real crew. It was an alternate time line. But the episode is so damn good that I forgot about that. And that final scene of the Enterprise being pummeled while the Enterprise-C escapes is still haunting. Even if it all gets undone ten seconds later. That’s the case here, the episode could easily be considered pointless since it’s a faux crew but these are still real people and the acting is so well done. You feel bad for these people in the end, and I give the creators credit for seeing the tragedy all the way through. There is no escape, their logs are all gone, everything they have tried to do to save themselves has failed, and the real Voyager has no idea what the heck even happened when it finally catches up. I saw someone comment that they could have given that crew some kinda happy ending, but that’s tragedy folks. This episode touches on some very serious topics regarding mortality and why we exist that I am neither inclined or qualified enough to delve into. Despite all the good the crew has done, they fought to the end and no one will ever remember them.
Fast Forward Moment:
Honestly, there isn’t any really. This is one of those shows were every scene is important for the story to work.
The episode did what it set out to do and was damn effective in my opinion. It’s meant to be a look at what could have happened on the ship had everything gone to hell. And is better than the overblown “Year of Hell”.
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