Written By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menonsky
Directed By: Cliff Bole
Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5)
The issue of Voyager being seen by people on Earth is dropped rather quickly, and we simply continue the story of Starling needing to be stopped. The story goes in this direction nicely and there is nothing much the matter with it. It�s just that I was expecting more. Don�t ask what exactly, I just expected there to be more to the conclusion, just something different.
Apart from that the plot of B�Elanna and Chakotay served little purpose, time that could�ve been better spent dealing with something else more worthwhile like Voyager�s presence on Earth. The plote was quite good, actually very good, but it didn�t do much. Okay, so it was there to add suspense, but so much time was wasted on something that didn�t add to anything worthwhile to the rest of the story. In fact it detracted from the main story and created a plot-hole; how did the Doc and Tuvok actually get to Arizona so quickly?
The ending has Starling in the Timeship almost ready to make his time-trip, when Voyager simply fires a torpedo at him and then he�s dead. I suppose it�s logical, but it is anti-climatic despite the slight tension of Janeway manually firing the torpedo. Two other major problems with �Futures End� as a whole is the use of the mobile phone to communicate with Voyager and the contamination to the timeline that I�m sure is severe whether it be Voyager�s fault or Braxton�s fault and whether it be in 1996, the 24th Century or the 29th Century. They all made a mess of time here.
I�m kind of glad that the crew managed to remember everything that�s happened to them, because then this two parter at least counts towards something. However it doesn�t seem right that 29th Century people would allow such extensive knowledge of everything that�s happened, little lone actually keeping some of the technology! Seeing as Voyager was returned to the exact time and place it would seem logical that their memories would be erased too.
Other than what�s mentioned, �Futures End� aims at the action, blow em up, kewwwwl factors. And some of this stuff is pretty cool actually. The Doc�s mobile emitter is a wonderful contraption which I�m glad was kept, the Doc bashing up that other minion was funny, the truck exploding look really good, the timeship flying out of the building was clever, and I loved the scenes with those Arizonian guys even if that was all a dead end.
There is little else to speak of here, �Futures End I� was better than its conclusion. The only difference seems to have been the writing, everything else was just as high quality as the first part.