Why Janeway Hates Time Travel In Star Trek

Why Janeway Hates Time Travel In Star Trek


WARNING: Contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy season 2!


Summary

  • Admiral Janeway navigates time travel complexities in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, drawing from her Star Trek: Voyager experiences.
  • Time travel challenges put the Star Trek multiverse at risk, as Janeway and her crew attempt to rescue Chakotay without creating a new timeline.
  • The Loom, temporal parasites feeding on aberrant timelines, pose a significant threat to the multiverse’s existence in Prodigy season 2.


Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) has a familiar refrain of “I hate time travel” in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, and it’s thanks to her experiences during Star Trek: Voyager. Now commanding the USS Voyager-A in Prodigy season 2, Admiral Janeway is tasked with rescuing Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran) from an alternative future, while preserving the prime Star Trek timeline. One false move in their mission to rescue Chakotay after he sends the USS Protostar to Tars Lamora, and Janeway and her young warrant officers could create an entirely new timeline.

The complexities of time travel are so vast that Starfleet Academy has even compiled a textbook, Temporal Mechanics 101, which Dal R’El (Brett Gray) struggles to get his head round in the opening episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy season 2. However, Dal’s not the only member of the Voyager crew to get a headache from time travel. Reunited with her fellow Star Trek: Voyager characters, the Doctor (Robert Picardo) and Chakotay, Janeway repeatedly complains about her own dislike of time travel, and looking back over Janeway’s experiences with temporal mechanics, it’s easy to see why.


Related

10 Most Important Star Trek Time Travelers

Time travel is a staple of Star Trek stories, and several time traveling characters have had a significant impact on the Star Trek timeline.


Star Trek: Voyager Is The Reason Janeway Hates Time Travel

“My advice on making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: don’t even try.”

Admiral Janeway’s hatred of time travel in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 is pretty on-brand for the former captain of the USS Voyager. In “Timeless”, when Janeway tells Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) to “not even try” to understand temporal paradoxes, Star Trek: Voyager heavily hinted that, like Dal in Prodigy, Janeway wasn’t a particularly keen reader of Temporal Mechanics 101. This was established earlier in one hilarious moment from the Voyager season 3 two-parter, “Future’s End” when Janeway outlined her feelings on time travel and temporal paradoxes to Chakotay, saying:


“Time travel. Ever since my first day in the job as a Starfleet Captain, I swore I’d never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes. The future is the past, the past is the future. It all gives me a headache.”

Janeway’s desire to get caught in “godforsaken paradoxes” becomes more and more ironic across Voyager‘s seven seasons. In “Year of Hell”, Janeway aborts an entire alternate timeline by destroying a Krenim timeship. Then, in “Relativity”, Janeway helps a time-hopping Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) to stop Captain Braxton (Bruce McGill) from destroying the USS Voyager. Finally, in the Star Trek: Voyager finale, “Endgame”, Captain Janeway accepts help from her older self to escape the Delta Quadrant. The older Janeway had a more relaxed attitude to time travel and the Temporal Prime Directive, advising her younger self to just “ignore it“.


In
Star Trek: Prodigy
season 2, episode 15, “Ascension, Part I”, Chakotay states that Starfleet based their new uniforms and combadges on the older Admiral Janeway from “Endgame”.

Star Trek: Prodigy Is Janeway’s Most Dangerous Time Travel Mission

The fate of Star Trek’s Multiverse hangs in the balance.

Admiral Janeway’s newest time travel mission puts the fate of Star Trek‘s multiverse at stake. As Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 begins, the USS Voyager-A is tasked with sending a small ship through the wormhole to retrieve Chakotay without polluting the timeline. When that mission goes drastically wrong, and Chakotay escapes with the USS Protostar a new timeline is created, which puts the very existence of Gwyndala (Ella Purnell) at risk, and causes great ruptures across the multiverse. To make matters worse, the failure to preserve the timeline attracts the attention of the terrifying Loom, temporal parasites that feed on aberrant timelines.


As someone who’s always hated time travel and paradoxes, Janeway’s mission in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 is her biggest headache to date. The USS Voyager’s time travel missions were largely confined to preserving the ship’s personal timeline or bending its rules to get home faster. In Prodigy season 2, Admiral Janeway faces something far bigger than anything she ever faced in Star Trek: Voyager, a threat to every single reality. Lucky for Janeway, Dal R’El has brushed up on his copy of Temporal Mechanics 101.




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