3x21 Before and After

[7.7/10] A number of Voyager episodes have faded from my memory. Revisiting the show, I’ll cue up an episode, think I must have missed it entirely as a kid, only to reach some twist or key moment that triggers my memory of it. But I remember this one clear as a bell, from Kes’ initial memory loss as an old woman in the future, to her “time is of the essence” resolution in the present.

You never know for certain why something resonates with you, but I think much of it is the sheer coolness of the idea at play here. On the one hand, you have Kes traveling backwards through time, experiencing little vignettes for her life, and trying to figure out what’s wrong with her before the next ill-timed jump happens. On the other, you have a glimpse of Voyager’s possible future, one that lets you see who might end up with whom, how the ship would proceed without Janeway, and what the worst encounter the ship will ever have might look like.

That’s neat on both counts! Someone jumping through time with no clear indication why, forced to convince their friends and family to believe them and stop the problem is an idea the Next Generation finale worked with to great effect. As in that episode, this story forces Kes to think non-linear, use her knowledge of the future to inform her actions in the present, and turn to the people she trusts to help her no matter how crazy her situation sounds.

At the same time, seeing what Voyager might look like in six years has that “What If?” thrill to it. The tragedy of losing Janeway and B’Elanna, the minor charge from hearing Chakotay referred to as “captain”, Neelix becoming a security officer and donning a Starfleet uniform, The Doctor picking a name (and a new holographic hairstyle), beleaguered remembrances of the evocatively-named “Year of Hell”, all get the imagination spinning as to what happened along the way to provoke these grand changes.

The nature of Voyager is given to slow, steady change (to the extent things are allowed to change at all in a show that seems to overvalue the status quo). So getting to jump to the end of the book and peek at how things might turn out is exciting in and of itself.

These elements would be interesting for any Voyager character the writers chose based on that thrill-factor alone. But writer Ken Biller makes the particularly canny choice to put Kes at the center of the story.

The decision to center the time-dilated tale on an Ocampan allows “Before and After” to only jump backwards across six years, while still showing the dramatic differences and big changes in life that happen when the average member of your species only lives to be nine. It creates a nice balance between being able to show significant differences from how things are for Kes without having to jump into the far future for everyone else.

So we get to see that Kes becomes a doctor! She marries Tom! She has a daughter and a (well-named) grandson! Her son-in-law is Harry. Her daughter follows in her footsteps and becomes an crew member aboard Voyager. She lives long enough to celebrate her ninth birthday! Getting to see her life play out like this, even if the final scene carefully caveats that this was just one possible future, comes with the warmth of seeing her life work out.

(MAJOR SPOILERS for much later in the series: It’s especially nice to see since Kes will be leaving the show soon. This is something of a last hurrah for her, and a more positive one than “The Gift”. You get the sense that the writers originally had some big plans for Kes. And while we never see her potentially wild psychic abilities amount to much, it is nice to get to see this glimpse of the happy ending for her that might have played out in an alternate universe. Plus hey! Mentioning the Year of Hell and other tidbits comes with an extra thrill for rewatchers.)

So you have a cool premise of skipping backwards in time. You have a compelling look at what later days might hold for our heroes. You have the right character at the center of it. So why isn’t this a homerun for Voyager?

The answer is because “Before and After” doesn’t have much more than. The episode ably capitalizes on its premise, and dutifully parcels out neat details from the various time periods we get to see. But compared to TNG’s “All Good Things” and DS9’s “The Visitor” which play with similar concepts, this one lacks in a broader sense of emotional catharsis of poignant themes.

Sure, Kes is theoretically in mortal peril, something underlined in melodramatic terms. And I appreciate the choices to ensure Kes has a hand in saving herself by crawling through the Jefferies Tube to locate the chroniton torpedo and get the exact frequency she needs to be cured, and The Doctor being cocky about his solution in each spot of the timeline. But we deal with mortal peril and resourceful officers every week on Voyager. There’s not really an extra ingredient here that makes it more than the sum of its (assuredly well-done) parts.

What did Kes learn from this experience? How did it change her? What was she grappling with before that she has clarity on now? What did she have certainty about before that she’s now questioning? I guess she learned to be careful around time torpedoes? That she can rock a different hairstyle? Or, I guess, something generic and trite like that there’s no time like the present?

Regardless, there’s not much of a point to all of this. She just un-lives as time races backwards, with a downright unnerving flash to Kes as mere cells dividing, and then she bounces back to our present where the original plan to get her re-stuck in time works. It’s a mostly-earned solution to the cool sci-fi problem of the week, but it’s also kind of mechanical. There’s interesting individual character moments here, of future Kes interacting with her colleagues or seeing times both tough and heartening. It just never amounts to a broader idea or motif.

Still, sometimes a good concept is enough. “Before and After” isn’t a high water mark for Voyager or anything. But it commits to a wild, high concept premise and plays it to the hilt. It tantalizes us with a fleeting look at what the Delta Quadrant might have in story for the crew and even their descendents. All of that was more than enough for this story to lodge itself in young Andrew’s brain, able to be summoned once again decades later. Grand achievement or no, that means they must have been doing something right.