11:59

 DVD, Voyager S5 (11:59)

There's something very affecting about a group photograph, and the way this episode ends going into that moment of the past and injecting life back into it as we see Janeway's ancestor, Shannon O'Donnell, now Janeway, and her offspring, a happy snapshot of the latter end of life, it's especially moving. It's a beautiful end to a unique episode, one of the most atypical of the series, if not the whole of Trek. It's not a sci-fi story, there's no time travel, other than for us, the audience, as we 'go back' and see the real story of what Janeway's ancestor did and how the Captain's line was formed - the moment Shannon almost walks out of the bookshop the first time, before she's really made a connection, was the moment you realise if she hadn't turned back Kathryn Janeway would never have existed. Time is a constant series of results from decisions and choices - well, maybe not constant, but turning left instead of right, accepting that job, walking into that building, any of it could have far-reaching implications and perhaps that is what the story is about? I say perhaps because I don't know what the story is about. For the Captain it's about delving into her own genealogy and finding disappointing answers: this ancestor who had inspired her to aspire to a career in space for being one of the first woman astronauts, turns out not to be what the family story told, but the fact she did inspire her was what mattered. For Trek it's about a kind of dawning of its own era, well before first contact with the Vulcans, another step on the trajectory towards space exploration.

In some ways it does appear to be a decrying of those 'backward' people who love history and wish they lived in the past 'when lives were worth living,' as Henry Janeway puts it, while the Trek future requires explorers and adventurers and those who are going to push towards the future envisioned by Trek. But it's not done in a cliched, simplistic delineation between past and future - the very story is about celebrating a past that got them to the future the series exists in. Trek has always (well, used to always), had a strong foot in the past, an acknowledgement of history, a reverence for the old. Yes, they have Holodecks, Transporters and sundry technological wonders, yet plenty of Starfleet people we've met, from Kirk to Picard, find pleasure in old books, in recounting historical events or knowing the genealogies of their past. Trek has had a nuanced connection with the past, it didn't throw it all out and ignore it as irrelevant, it's a part of this future, and that's satisfying to see - they understand the importance of knowing what happened and learning from it, not dismissing it, disbelieving the evidence or failing to have an interest in exploring and unearthing the facts. Janeway is dismayed that the facts don't fit her picture, but the lovely thing about the story is her friends, her crew, rally round to remind her that her ancestry was important: it brought her into the world, for one! I can't help imagining how current Trek would tell the same kind of story and it would be that Shannon was more important than was thought, she achieved more, we owe her more, it would be all about her, her, her to the exclusion of all else!

The scenes with other characters on Voyager are quite sparse, more like inserts amid the real story, but they are also carefully laid crumbs on a trail that leads to a fantastic melding of the two stories as we see the connection of family for both Shannon and Janeway in their respective positions and times, a beautiful commonality they share. I've always liked it when the A- and B-stories in an episode find a way to come together at the end in artistic meeting. In this case both stories were connected from the start by the fact of them being about what Janeway thinks happened and what actually happened, but it was still pleasurable to see them intertwine so much and in such a personal way for her and the crew. At first it does simply seem like they couldn't justify setting an episode entirely in the past with only one member of the cast acting in it - I suppose they could have used the approach of other stories where the setting is mainly off the home ship or station and bring the cast in to play other contemporary characters of the time, but that could have distracted from the story in this case which is really about the connection between two very opposite people. But as the story progresses the little scenes peppered here and there build to an affirmation of friendship and family that crown the episode very neatly and make it important that it was a 'Voyager' episode instead of something that could have been done on any old series.

I remember finding it somewhat of a disappointment when I first saw it as it was in the days when I was getting advanced notice of upcoming episodes thanks to Star Trek Monthly, the magazine still going today (in its third guise after Star Trek Magazine, now Star Trek Explorer), and so I had been primed for some kind of 'Future's End'-type adventure about the past, or our present as viewers (hmm, wonder why Janeway never thought to look Shannon up when she was on Earth in 1996!), and not some adult exploration of loyalty and progress (adult in the true sense of the word, not the modern Trek view of gratuitous violence, swearing, etc!), that wasn't particularly interesting to a teenager. But the episode has aged very nicely so that each time I enjoy it a little more. It wasn't about some exciting thing called the Millennium Gate, which sounded ripe for weird alien plots or something, but is in fact about the meeting of past and future, two people who are 'stuck' in each non-present finding common ground. It is strange, because it subverts the traditional idea that big business, commercial interests come in and rip up an old town, force out any resisters who only care about the place's heritage, and usually it's a victory for tradition versus so-called progress by those who only want to exploit the place. Instead it's about someone coming around to accept modernity for the sake of this woman - Henry has the power, but Shannon has the key to everything, and she's the one that wants it all: both Henry, setting in motion Janeway's family line, but also getting the job that she needs, so it's about compromise, not dismissing one view or another.

On the face of it is about opposing views, but it's less about that than it is about discovering your place in the world - Shannon claims she's in a transitional stage, Henry asks from what to what. There's a lot of that talking around things, like when she returns to the bookshop at the end and he says it's closed and she replies that's not what the sign says. They're beating the air with words, it's not that they really mean much, they're simply sallies to reach a point of contact and that was fascinating to see and hear. It is very strange seeing the 'evil' businessman, bald, besuited, trying to get Shannon to appeal to Henry's nature and manipulate him around, but she's never less than honest: she'll think about the offer and she goes back and tells Henry, almost like she's putting the offer to him. It helps both characters are enjoyable to watch and there's a good sense of warmth and joy to the story to the extent it very much feels like Christmas in the best Trek tradition, complete with actual Christmas decorations and lights because of the time of year in which it's set, with the snow falling at the end as Henry makes his decision to emerge and grant permission for the development to go ahead. It's not even explicit that he's abandoned modern life because his wife died, but you can get that message from the way he's so intent on living through books, the story having a very similar message to 'Generations' about cherishing time and not living in fiction, an apt warning for those of us who love the Trek world and want to exist there as much as possible.

As much as I had suspicions about the theme of abandoning the past to live in the present with all its preparation for the future, I couldn't help but be buoyed by the charm of it all and the fact it isn't rabidly one view. Clearly, and fitting with Trek's use of technology and a future that is quite different, the 'progress' nature of movement towards this ideal is the predominant view, but it also allows space for the past, not dismissing it. It's surreal to see Kate Mulgrew driving around in an old banger on icy Earth streets at the turn of the millennium and they get their references in to the Y2K bug and the fact that the Millennium was celebrated a year earlier than it actually was since it was actually the turn of 2000 to 2001, not 1999 to 2000, which was fun, and also prophetic considering this came out in 1999 so they couldn't have been certain these things were as they predicted! There was concern over what it would mean to cross over into a new millennium, people didn't know what to expect, even though it's really only our own measure of time. But above all it is that warmth, the 'Star Trek IV' joy - it's not that it's hilarious or exciting or even profound, but there is something poetic about it all, simple messages of family and a reassuringly old-fashioned approach and message about familiar things of society instead of some new order, dangerous ideologies, changing of fundamental behaviours and beliefs that is upsetting society as the fashion of the now, while at the same time this story is about development. And it's great fun Shannon calls her car her rocket ship and records what are basically ship's logs on tape recorder as she goes.

What helps the episode is a lack of distraction. The scenes on Voyager are few and link directly in to the story, and there are no familiar guest actors for once (though the passerby who isn't much help was played by James Greene who'd had other roles in both 'TNG' and 'DS9,' but he's not a name I'd know), and no aliens. Janeway did mention different alien races' historical views of humanity, like the Vulcans dealing with savages, the Ferengi drawn to Wall Street and Bolians disgusted with our plumbing, but it's the central pillars of Henry and Shannon upon which the story-building takes place. It doesn't rely on a lot of Trek history and references, nor is it an action story of defending this or that. The Millennium Gate itself isn't even that important, it sounds grander than it really is, described as either a self-sustaining civic building that laid the groundwork for bio-domes on Mars, or a glorified shopping centre (I must admit I prefer more open air centres than closed-in and artificial, personally!), but it's really there as a symbol of modernity which can either be fought or embraced. I thought there was a mistake in Kim's story of an ancestor in 2210 putting the crew into stasis for a six-month journey (whereas in 'Enterprise' they had warp 5 ships long before then so wouldn't need to travel like that, and also in that series they were laying out relay stations for messages, too!), but then I realised his ancestor stayed awake as pilot so it's not that they didn't have warp, it was just a long trip and there was no need to be awake for it. I liked the message that books can take you anywhere, anytime, even if that isn't what you're supposed to take away, but if you expand it to Trek, which can do the same, it has more relevance, and they fully succeeded in that here.

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