Excellent review. I do think Wong's performance is even weaker than you imply ('sometimes passable' is quite nice of you). It's too bad because this is a solid idea that failed at the script and actor levels. Personally I think this should have been Paris' story. He had the motivation to return to Voyager than Kim did not -- Kim, who whines episode after episode about how much he misses Earth.

I also fear for Earth if that is the kind of security you get at Starfleet headquarters. Ankle bracelets, on-foot chase scenes, break-ins at Starfleet, stolen ships - what inept fool is running Starfleet security?

Nice youtube recap of this episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp8cFegY42k

What the... TWO stars?????? This is SUCH a good episode. Easily my favourite from season two. You're just nitpicking, which I think is the worst way to make a review. I LOVE this episode.

@Will:

I agree with you that the episode probably deserves more than two stars, but you probably have to provide us with a little more than "Easily my favorite from season two." You know, like reasons.

The good: We see Earth! Other than DS9's amazing two-parter 4x11 Homefront, 4x12 Paradise Lost, there is very little of Earth in any of the Star Trek episodes. (Who cares about ENT?). Nice to see small details like the Trans-America Pyramid and One Market. The public transportation (BART?) stops are a pretty cool touch. Evidently even the Mission becomes yuppified by the 24th century :-)

Paris - as mentioned, Tom does a great job. Maybe the show would have been better as a buddy episode (Tom & Harry), rather than a Harry (and the awful Libby) hour.

On a side note, Cosimo's (and the Sisko restaurant in DS9) always make me scratch my head - how the fuck do these businesses work in a society with no money!

The bad: As mentioned, the quick fix deus ex machina. Harry is a smart guy, why couldn't he have been allowed to figure out the solution. Just let it be a temporal anomaly. This is San Francisco, and maybe the time-stream is the 24th century equivalent of the San Andreas fault. No magic aliens required.

Nevertheless, I think the episode is a strong 2.5 stars. Not a three star by any stretch of the imagination, but still clearly better than some other Harry vehicles like 1x09 Emanations (a 2 star outing), or another alternate-time outing, like 1x04 Time and Again (also only 2 stars).

Restaurants can function perfectly on the 24th century if the chef is passionate about his job. He doesn't need to earn money, as long as he can satisfy his customers. That's particularly true of Sisko's restaurant. It's his life, both socially and professionally.

"[S]abotaged by some sub-par performances," indeed. Jennifer Gatti is a dreadful actress.

Eduardo, the whole idea that Earth can function without money is preposterous. Passion has nothing to do with it.

Are you saying that only the talented chefs and restaurant managers can run restaurants? Who decides who is most passionate and talented?

What if there were more chefs than we need restaurants... what then? Who decides who gets to have a restaurant from who doesn't?

Who owns the land the restaurants are built on? How much land do we allocate for restaurants and for other things?

If someone wants to make a restaurant and nobody attends because the food is horrible, what happens? Without money, how would it ever go out of business as a sign that it doesn't work?

If someone wants to build a restaurant and there are already too many restaurants or not enough land, how does he go about getting his restaurant?

If there are too many restaurants and too many chefs... will they be forced to stop being a chef for the good of the planet? How does that work?

The concept of money, capitalism and property solves all of these problems easily. The fake future in Star Trek does not solve them at all - it just pretends to, even though they can offer no logical explanation as to how. After all, similar models like communism that are very similar to how people live on Star Trek didn't work... so why would it stand any chance of working in the 24th century for?

The answer: It won't. As long as we want to remain a free people who have rights by the virtue of being a human being, we can never get rid of the concept of money. Without money, rights will get violated and force will need to be used - which has and does get used in many cases in Star Trek actually (especially on DS9 - as much as I think the writing on the show is the best among all the series').

Here's an episode that could have worked but didn't. It had some promise to be a 3-star episode.

The real problem is that I don't believe the motivation for Harry to get back. If it were me, I would have been quite happy with the way things turned out.

Sure, some people lost and gained in the "Accident", but that's not Kim's fault. It's not like he took an action that forced these circumstances on the various people (Paris, Byrd, etc.). The fact that he's taking this moral "high road" and is taking for responsibility for it is actually not very believable.

The other big problem with the episode is Libby. The actor they got to play her is really awful. The chemistry between Kim and Libby is just... off. The dialog and the actions are totally out of sync. Some of Libby's emotional reactions are just not authentic at all, and the episode really suffers.

And as someone else pointed out, I don't understand why they couldn't just lock onto Kim and Paris with a transporter at various times during the chase scenes. Is Starfleet security really that inept? It *is* government after all, so maybe so... but this is not how Starfleet is painted in many episodes. Starfleet is supposed to be competent and exemplify the best in humanity. These security officers are nothing of the sort.

Conclusion: One Bad episode.

Did anyone else notice the space doors were the same as the Dyson's Sphere from TNG's "Relics"?

I remember having hated this episode when I first saw it. After a recent viewing, I realise I only hate the last act. It really does spoil a lot of what happened already which (aside from Libby) is actually very compelling given it's a Harry story. There didn't need to be any action/adventure stuff...Cosimo could have felt he didn't have a right to purposefully effect the timeline again, until Harry realised he needed to go back...that who he (and Paris) had become on Voyager was worth the sacrifice of being so far from home. He could have just done it with a flick of his fingers or something, it should have taken 20 seconds.

@Ken. Seriously, shut the hell up about communism. Ask any successful capitalist if passion "has nothing to do with" his success and see what he tells you. People's worth is simply not measured in terms of currency in Roddenberry's style of communism. It's the future, it's fiction...no one has proved anything about it being impossible. It has no effect on the quality (or lack thereof) of this episode; shut the hell up.

Overall, I think a fair review. I wish they had scrapped the whole action scene for something substantive.

I won't shut the hell up, as if that's any way to disprove anything I said. What I said is perfectly rational and true. It points out the flaw in what was said by Eduardo. I am only pointing out that this future would never happen - it cannot work. Sure it's fiction - but Eduardo didn't seem to think so. He thought passion was all that was needed, as if passion would solve all the logical problems with the way it works in Star Trek.

Ken

Passion alone won't make warp drive, replicators or Leola Root Stew possible either...you're on a tirade against socialism and it's pretty damned silly on a Star Trek page. You can't simply say things like "it's perfectly rational and true" when you're trying to talk down a Utopian economic system. No number of bullet points can prove it won't or will happen. It's all speculation. You just don't like it.

According to Eduardo: "Restaurants can function perfectly on the 24th century if the chef is passionate about his job"

I merely said that passion would not make it function perfectly. I brought up many logical flaws and problems with this claim, to which you have not bothered to answer.

And yes, it is rational to know in advance that a 24th century Utopian economic system would not work.

Stop saying things like "I merely..." nothing you say is mere--you make grand sweeping statements that hold up to little scrutiny; there's nothing humbled about them.

If you want to play this little polemics game (which I'm sorely tempted not to play with you, because I'm under the suspicion you wouldn't like an episode of Trek unless it read like a Rand novel), then explain to me what the hell "too many chefs" is.

If passion were the only requirement to determine if you could be a chef or not in Star Trek (as Eduardo said), then it stands to reason that we may have too few or too many chefs on the planet.

If some of those chefs are actually pretty bad cooks - but they still have "high passion" - nobody is going to attend their restaurants (or at least very few... favouring the chefs that make better food).

What you're going to have is a bunch of wasted land and chefs not cooking very much while others are cooking like crazy - all for the same reward. Is it first come first serve? What if you invented the latest warp drive - should you not be able to eat at the best restaurants? Or should you let the lowly janitor get the best food just because he was there first?

There could be the case where there are simply an oversupply of chefs to meet the natural demand of them. And it doesn't stop with chefs. How can passion be used as criteria for any kind of business? It's nonsensical.

How many people are passionate about running businesses but have no freaking clue how to run one? If we allowed all of these incompetent yet passionate businesses owners their way, we'd have a pretty horrible set of services to pick from.

The idea that passion is somehow a valid requirement for being a good chef and running a good restaurant is preposterous.

Ken: I simply must accept the fact that when you say things to yourself, no matter how stochastic and unsupported they may be, they make sense to you, they justify your beliefs, which you claim as proofs.

Any good capitalist knows that making good food is one of the least important aspects of being a successful chef and it is the reason some people (like I) object to it as a system. The fact that you casually regard a janitor as "lowly" is evidence of your caste-value system which is really the heart of your prejudice against enlightened philosophies. At any rate, part of having a society in which one may pursue being a chef without making money at it is that there would be no janitors (such tasks are relegated to the available technology). As any artist can tell you, competition between people of talent does not vanish when money is taken out of the equation. Artists don't expect to make any money doing what they do, yet they still work to do better than their peers, and if they can't or don't they don't achieve success. Now the problem is, each of these people still has to eat, so he must work some other form of labour to survive while still finding the time to pursue his art. This is silly. Why force people to waste their time when there's no need?

We can't possibly have an intelligent debate about this until you start considering carefully what you say and how you say it; your arguments are hollow and lack a cogent centre. They aren't so much easily defeated as casually dismissed.

Elliot: "Any good capitalist knows that making good food is one of the least important aspects of being a successful chef and it is the reason some people (like I) object to it as a system."

I never said making good food (or a good atmosphere, entertainment, whatever) makes a good business. You inferred this. I only said that passion alone would not do it. There is a difference.

The market would determine what they wanted in a restaurant. I can't decide that. Nobody could. It is up to each chef/restaurant owner to research their potential customers and create the kind of restaurant that would appeal to them. That could be good food, a good atmosphere or naked females dancing in front of you as you eat - who knows.

Elliot: "The fact that you casually regard a janitor as "lowly" is evidence of your caste-value system which is really the heart of your prejudice against enlightened philosophies."

That janitor might actually be amazing at his job - and maybe he is to commended for that work - but nonetheless... the work he produces is less valuable than the person who invented an airplane, a skyscraper or a warp engine. It is also less valuable than the productiveness of the owner of the restaurant who pays him.

It is not prejudice - it is a fact. I would say that it is prejudice to assume that all work is somehow equal and that all people are equal in their level of productiveness - this is absolutely false.

Elliot: "At any rate, part of having a society in which one may pursue being a chef without making money at it is that there would be no janitors (such tasks are relegated to the available technology)."

There would still be work that is less demanding and less valuable compared to others in such a society. Janitor or no, the point is still valid.

Just because technology improves, it would not change the fact that supply and demand would still exist in this society.

Elliot: "As any artist can tell you, competition between people of talent does not vanish when money is taken out of the equation. Artists don't expect to make any money doing what they do, yet they still work to do better than their peers, and if they can't or don't they don't achieve success."

What? This is absolutely false. I'm sure a whole myriad of musical bands, architects, etc. fully expect to get paid for their productive effort.

When people choose to create art, they can do so for spiritual and/or physical rewards. So much choose to self-sacrifice and not want to get paid, but that hardly describes "As any artist" as you put it.

And if artist don't get paid, how the hell are they suppose to create their art in the first place? Steal other people's money through the use of government subsidies to allow them to create their art? How?

Also, good art or bad art (i.e. talented art as you put it) is not the point of this discussion - art is only as valuable as people are willing to pay for it. Clearly society values Beyoncé a lot more than Mozart, and society values Mass Effect or even a simple pinball machine a lot more than Opera.

You might not like this fact, but value can be attached to artwork as anything else.

Elliot: "Now the problem is, each of these people still has to eat, so he must work some other form of labour to survive while still finding the time to pursue his art. This is silly. Why force people to waste their time when there's no need?"

Again, false. Who is going to pay for their food? Their housing? Is it going to magically appear on their lap?

And moreover, why do artists get the privilege of not earning their keep but others have to? Why are they entitled to special treatment for?

If artists in society got such treatment, what would be the incentive to do anything else then? Wouldn't everyone want to be artist so they didn't have to work a day in their life and could just do art all the time? If everyone did this, who would be left to feed them? And who would decide these things? Who would decide who gets to do art from who doesn't?

If government pays the artists to create the art, where does government get the money? Taxes? So each individual is now forced by the government to give part of their earnings to support artwork that they don't even like? Should the Christians have to pay for art that depicts Jesus as an evil demon that rapes children? How is that going to work Elliot?

If the artwork was truly valued by members in society, they should be able to invest in it privately - either before the art is complete (which is no different than venture capital) or afterward. The point is that each individual has to consensually trade money for art.

If nobody in society is willing to pay for art (which is highly doubtful), then that art has no right to exist in the first place.

If art is created through the theft of money from others, it is no longer art. That art should never have existed. In fact, it is a symbol of theft because that art required the use of force in order to exist. It is unearned achievement.

Elliot, what you're saying is entirely nonsensical.

About these comments... It's fiction! Let it go already!

About this episode... Ugh. This episode did have some potential. I think that they could have made the dynamic they went with of wanting to get home at any cost work better if they had focused on Paris. Finding out what happens when Paris has an accident and wakes up a useless drunk in France would have been compelling. He also would have had a genuine reason to want to get back to the regular time line.

I also think this episode would have worked well if Harry had woken up in the scenario presented and had NOT wanted to correct the timeline. The episode could have been about the alien trying to force him back to Harry's regular timeline, or maybe even Voyager itself finding a way to pull him out of this alternate reality. Harry is always talking about how much he wants to go home. It's easy for me to imagine Harry seeing the events of the beginning of this episode as though he had just won the lottery. He's home, he's getting married, he has a great job... How cruel and dramatic would it have been for him to accept this new reality only to be "rescued" by Voyager? It would have been very powerful.

Also, in that scenario, they could have spent the last act showing how Harry deals with trying to balance gratitude that his friends on Voyager cared enough to rescue him (possibly at great risk to the ship) with the dissapointment of having his dream of getting home so aburptly snatched away from him. I for one would have welcomed that kind of depth in an otherwise boring character.

But, instead we get Kim acting like a starfleet robot who MUST go back to his reality because... Well, because it's the starfleet thing to do! I guess. I frankly have no idea why he would want to go back. Of course, there was also the matter of the terribly wooden acting and the paint by numbers ending. It was nice to see Earth again. But, all in all, the premise of this episode was completely wasted and over all the whole thing sucked.

One and a half stars from me.

Carbetarian, you're right - it IS fiction.

I believe this is what I was saying all along - there is no way the Star Trek form of government and philosophy world actually work in reality.

The problem is that some people seem to think that this show is a prediction of how humans "ought" to live. They really do think this is an "enlightened" philosophy. And yes, they'd wish we would live in the world of Star Trek as a end result.

This is actually a really big problem. They offer no proof to show this humans "ought" to live this way. They offer no moral proof. They claim that I "have't proven anything" - but quite the contrary - it really doesn't take make much to point out counter-examples which logically disprove their position from all sides - proof by counter-example is a valid form of proof (but he ignores this).

I ask him to offer a proof for his claims, but we both know that's not possible. After all, it didn't take much reasoning to disprove them in the first place.

As for the proof that we live in reality, we use reason and logic to know about that reality, that reason should be our highest virtue, that our own life is the ultimate standard of value in which we judge what is good and evil, and the proof that capitalism is the only moral system of government - these are already proven by Ayn Rand and have not been disproved...

... well, except for people disproving things she never actually said in the first place. There are lots of people on youtube that criticize Ayn Rand and I can tell they have no clue what he positions are at all. They just glossed over them and made many errors. This is extremely common. They never actually take the time to understand what she said, and some of these "critics" admit to not even have read her work - just commentary on her work. If you want to judge her work, maybe the best thing to do is to actually read what she actually said as opposed to someone's opinion on what she said.

Star Trek does not offered an 'enlightened' philosophy. It is just plain wrong.

Ken - Personally, I don't care about how possible Star Trek politics actually are. I also don't presume to judge whether or not Star Trek really does present an "enlightened" future. As I said, it's fiction.

What I do care about, is a good story. This episode missed more than one opportunity to be a good story. That's all I want to discuss in my comments. I'm not here to debate the moral positions of Ayn Rand. I'm here to debate the emotional validity and questionable logic of Harry Kim's desire to get back to Voyager. If you have an opinion on the actual story in this episode, then discussion is welcome.

@Carbetarian

Well said - thought I's stumbled into a Politics blog in error. It's a science fiction show for god's sake. Whilst I might have some concerns over whether the economic philosophy of the Federation is viable, this comments thread, about this specific story and the author's review of it is unarguably not the forum for it.

&Ken

Have you thought about anger management?

@Van Patten

So I say something absolutely makes sense and is true, and that suddenly means I need anger management?

This episode was totally pointless and was barely enjoyable. Sorry, but that's how I feel.

I love how in the 24th century you are free to do whatever your heart desires but if that happens to entail playing pool in the afternoon while getting mildly sauced you are immediately pegged as a loser and your life's a catastrophic failure.

I actually like this episode.

What the hell happened here? Ron Paul 2012 :)


Seriously, Kim's actions seemed very off. Picard at the beginning of "The Inner Light" is how I imagine someone reacting to suddenly waking up in a different life. Kim was way too accepting and didn't try to tell other people what was going on until it was too late.

And the 'time stream' was garbage. I think it would have been much more interesting had it switched at the halfway point to the 'real' timeline, and we saw the non-Voyager Kim on Voyager - in other words, Kims from two alternate timelines had been switched. The end would switch them back not through any action of theirs but through some Q-magnitude being realizing a mistake had been made and undoing the switch. And the day or so that had elapsed would have actually happened in both timelines, so it would be implied that both Kims would have to undo the damage caused by the other Kims.

There is no point debating anything with an Objectivist. There is no thicker-headed idealogue in existence.