'Year of Hell II'

Stardate: Unknown
Written By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menonsky
Directed By: Mike Vejar
Rating: ****1/2 (out of 5)

�Year of Hell� brought to us a spectacular action/drama episode that couldn�t have gotten any better.  It was excellent.  �Year of Hell II� continues with high quality which excels just as much as it�s predecessor.

Annorax�s story is amazing.  He eliminated the Krenim�s mortal enemy, but eliminated along with them an antibody, killing millions of his species.  Now he has spent 200 years altering the timeline with his Timeship, trying to restore his people, and the colony on which he lived with his wife.

Kurtwood Smith plays Annorax with almost emotionless emotion.  The burden Annorax carries is enormous and you really do feel for the character.  I loved how he tried to rationalize the losses of the people he has erased by saying, �They never really existed.�

Chakotay feels sorrow for the delusional Annorax, while Paris doesn�t trust him at all.  I enjoyed the scene where Chakotay tells Paris to �Keep the Chain of command, or settle our differences the old fashioned way.�

I�m surprised that Obrist and the others on the Timeship didn�t give up sooner and mutiny.  After 200 years of altering the timeline it would�ve got tiring.

Interesting how Chakotay got rid of one comet and hundreds of civilizations are erased.  Annorax has a difficult job.  And he complicated his job a great deal.  Despite Chakotay�s debates Annorax erases that planet.  That would�ve disrupted all the calculations that Chakotay was doing. 

I don�t think Chakotay gave in to Paris, I think he gave up with the calculations.  And also the results from that incursion where never shown.  Was the Krenim Imperium actually restored, and [SARCASM] Voyager is really lucky that the Krenim didn�t attack them throughout the course of this episode [END SARCASM], and they didn�t mention the last time alteration either.

Poor EMH, he tries to act all serious while taking Janeway�s command away, only to find that Janeway won�t comply.  This scene is one of the highlights of the entire episode.  The Doc is such a great character, and Janeway often takes advantage of the poor hologram.

There are two other fantastic scenes, firstly when Janeway and Tuvok say goodbye.  This was acted superbly, and the score was beautiful.  Janeway�s friendship to Tuvok really shows, and so does her loyalty to Voyager.

The other scene was the very surprising ending.  Janeway�s character is more obsessed than I thought.  Her kamikaze run with Annorax�s ship is one of the best SFX shots I�ve ever seen.  It�s short, but detailed.  I re-watched that scene a few times, and I was awed every time.  This is the only scene apart from the Janeway and Doc scene that I had shivers down my spine.

There are two small nits I have with this ending.  Apart from the fact of the reset ending (which I forgive), wouldn�t this action have created a time-loop?  Wouldn�t the actions have been repeated again and again, ending in the same result?  Another whole �Cause and Effect� (TNG) type episode could�ve been followed up to this.  Or maybe 29th Century Starfleet helped out.

The other nit is why couldn�t the crew of the Timeship just blow it up, resulting in a similar result?  It�s hard to say if that would work, it depends on whether or not Voyager was involved in breaking the time-loop created from ramming the Timeship.  (God I�m confused!)

All these time events have opened a can of worms.  How many times must Voyager get involved in this type of thing?  And we know for a fact that the Timeship will still wreak havoc in this timeline or the next.  So is the Voyager we�re watching now a completely new timeline from what we�ve been watching?  Maybe that�s why the continuity isn�t so great!  ;-)

Another small problem was that Janeway plots a course around Krenim space.  So she couldn�t have done that in the first place?  That one sentence undermines the entire plot.  How stupid, I think I�ll just ignore it.

I found Annorax�s final scene aboard the Timeship sad, watching the last remnant of his wife disappear like that, all hope of his future gone, 200 years down the temporal dunny.  You have to feel sorry for him.

Well, I�ve gone on enough, �Year of Hell II� succeed in all the ways of the first part, and improved on some of the aspects, especially Annorax�s legacy.  An SFX filled drama that doesn�t disappoint.  Just some relatively minor plot problems and not as thrilling as its predecessor, but an excellent episode otherwise.