Shattered

As hard as it was to believe the possibility of a ship with time barriers, where characters pass through an find themselves in the same place at different times, I still thought it was fun. I agree, with some time and thought, it could have been great. Chakotay is the natural foil here because of his varying roles, from Maquis terrorist threat, to kindly first officer to Janeway. What we do get to see are glimpses of all seven seasons, used in a creative way.

The biggest problem with "Star Trek: Voyager" is that all too often the writers included episodes about so-called 'temporal anomalies'. It seemed like whenever they didn't know what to do, they'd throw out yet another tired episode involving inexplicable situations where time is somehow screwed up. The episode oddly has an overall rating of 8.1 at this time--which is insane since the show is clearly the same tired old crap being hauled out again because the writers were being lazy.

When the show begins, some weird space thingy approaches. Chakotay is zapped and ends up in sickbay--and from then on whenever he moves about the ship, each section is in a different part of time. Why? No one knows and it never makes sense nor is it the least bit interesting...well, except for the part where OLDER Janeway encounters Dr. Chaotica. That is kinda cute. Otherwise, a tedious episode that represents the worst sort of show the series could give us.

HINT: IF the words TEMPORAL or ANOMALY appear in a show, it will undoubtedly suck. Additionally, bringing Seska into the show is a clear sign that it will not only suck but that many fans (like me) will bet REALLY ticked, as that &$R@% seems to keep reappearing all the time for the most contrived reasons.

A pretty creative episode that is basically a retrospective of past events. In contrast to other flashback and clip episodes (a negative example is certainly the TNG episode "Shades of Gray"), it doesn't just repeat what happened in other episodes. Instead, the past events are woven into a new story.

This time, for a change, Chakotay doesn't have to go on any spirit quests or explain supernatural phenomena with mystical mumbo jumbo. In fact one of the few good Chakotay episodes. The interaction with an early version of Janeway, who is not yet stranded in the Delta quadrant and who also only knows Chakotay as a Maquis renegade, leads to one or two surprising scenes for Janeway. For example, that one day she will host Borg drones on her ship and one of them will also be part of her crew, or that her decision is ultimately the reason why Voyager and her crew are stranded far from home.

Janeway's inner struggle is also convincingly portrayed. Who wouldn't want to make different decisions if they found out depressing news about their future? But Janeway doesn't know the whole picture. Just snapshots. Fragments that seem threatening without knowing the whole context. She may be able to avoid making a wrong decision in the future, but this would mean that many of the right decisions that follow would never be made.

However, the talk about the Temporal Prime Directive is nonsense. Janeway herself says that once the temporal event is corrected, none of those involved will be aware of this time fragmentation. And the Janeway from Chakotay's time could well have known that Chakotay was trapped in a temporal fragmentation, but that all time strands have now been realigned. This would not have given Janeway any knowledge of future events, she would only have understood why Chakotay needs to be secretive.

When Janeway asked Neelix how he knows how she drinks her coffee, I kind of wondered if she still hasn't gotten the memo that because of time fragmentation, she'll encounter future events on the ship and Neelix will probably be one of her crew members - in a future that is still unknown to her.

Another reviewer described it perfectly by saying it is almost a clip show, as it feels like a celebration of Voyager's greatest hits. However, with the effort that must have gone into the production it is ironically as far from a clip show as you can get.

I think if you take it overly seriously you might struggle with the silliness of the sci-fi concept, but suspend the disbelief it is good entertainment.

I hope the humour of having ultra-cheesy Chaotica scenes in the same episode as the ultra-cheesy Chakotay/Seska scenes is intended. It would be ironic if a show making fun of retro, camp sci-fi serials intended the dialogue exchanges between Robert Beltran and Martha Hackett to be dramatic.

The sexual tension between Janeway and Chakotay is nicely done by the actors and filmmakers.

Visually it is excellent as it has such a diverse range of scenes.

The ship gets split into different time periods and only Chakotay can pass through the time barriers.

Now this episode has it's problems of course, as do all time travel episodes, but I thought Chakotay was written very well here. If you try not to think about the time nonsense (I know it can be hard lol) you can really enjoy this one.

PS. If you wanna see Seven of Nine CHOKE Seska watch this one lmao I watched that part 3 times in a row xD