The Great Star Trek Voyager Rewatch: Relativity

Someone has gone back in time and planted a bomb on the USS Voyager. Captain Braxton and the crew of the timeship Relativity are determined to stop the saboteur, and to that end, they recruit Seven of Nine to jump to the moment when the bomb was placed. But Seven and Braxton must be careful, as too many jumps could prove fatal.

Relativity is a loose sequel to Future’s End, following up on Captain Braxton, and throwing some Seven of Nine into the mix for good measure. Whilst I liked a few bits and pieces here and there, the bulk of the episode failed to engage me. When you know that time travel is going to be involved, you stop caring about the jeopardy or the consequences of what’s happening, because you know everything’s going to be magically fixed by the end. This episode is no different, and no amount of Seven of Nine chasing Braxton through a corridor could ramp up the excitement for me.

The bits I actually did like

• Double Seven of Nine!
• A glimpse at pre-launch Voyager at Utopia Planitia.
• The ping-pong ball freezing in mid-air.
• The interior design of the Relativity

Points of Note

• Even though the timeline was reset, presumably the bulk of Janeway’s first visit to Voyager remained the same. This means that The Doctor was briefly activated before the events of Caretaker, and that his stated activation date has been incorrect all this time. Perhaps the technicians re-initialised him right before launch.
• Here, Voyager is said to the first ship to get an EMH. If that’s true, then how does the Equinox, which we will see very soon, also have an EMH? They launched before Voyager.
• The Captain Braxton we met at the end of Future’s End had not experienced the timeline in which he spent thirty years on Earth. Presumably these two versions of him and their memories were ‘re-integrated’ somehow.
• This episode features the first appearance of Lieutenant Carey since season one.
• The temporal fractures aboard Voyager are very similar to those that occur in Timescape.
• Janeway’s major temporal incursions are likely to be the events of Future’s End, Year of Hell and perhaps Endgame. Timeless might also count, but this is a more general Voyager incursion than specific to Janeway. Time and Again is probably too minor to register, and Non Sequitur was more to do with Harry Kim alone.

Lost, crashed or destroyed shuttlecraft running total: 15

Possibly salvageable shuttlecraft running total: 9

Number of times the entire crew gets enslaved or kicked off the ship: 3

Number of times a version of Voyager gets destroyed: 5

Summary – Relativity: One for the time travel fanatics in the room.