Recap / Star Trek: Voyager S3E8 "Future's End"

Oh, yeah, make Tuvok wear the doo-rag.

Chakotay: Well Captain, you got us home.

Janeway: Right place...wrong time.

The one with an evil version of Doctor Ehrlich, and Sarah Silverman.

A Starfleet timeship appears out of a temporal rift and opens fire on Voyager without warning. When Janeway can get a word in edgewise, its pilot, one Captain Braxton (Allan Royal), claims that Voyager is responsible for a cataclysm that destroyed Earth and its entire solar system in the 29th Century. Braxton being unwilling to discuss matters, his timeship gets damaged in the subsequent exchange of fire and Voyager is pulled into the rift, emerging at...Earth! The delight of the crew is short-lived when they realise they've returned to 1996, when Earth lay devastated after the Eugenics Wars... or maybe not. And why does 20th Century I.T. entrepreneur Henry Starling (Ed Begley Jr.) have access to 29th Century technology?

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This episode has the following tropes:

• Accidental Time Travel: Given that Braxton was trying to destroy Voyager, not send it (or himself) back in time.
• Aliens Steal Cable: Voyager herself does this, with Neelix and Kes doing the monitoring. And of course, they both get addicted to soaps.
• Apocalypse How: Earth's solar system in the 29th Century was/will be obliterated by Starling stupidly flying the time ship there without properly calibrating it.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Starling discovers and downloads Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram, which he projects using the holographic system in his office. He demands the Doctor come with him as a hostage, which Doc points out is impossible. Cue the Doctor stepping out of Starling's limousine, staring in awe and delight at everything around him. It's all thanks to a piece of 29th Century technology called a "mobile emitter", which the Doctor wears on his arm and can store and project his entire program.
• Artistic License – Geology: It is mentioned by Janeway that during an earthquake, half of California sunk into the ocean. While this is a popular notion, the San Andreas fault is actually a strike-slip fault, meaning that instead of sinking, the Los Angeles area would instead be moved upward.
• Artistic License – Physics: When Voyager makes her low-level flight over Los Angeles, she's traveling at impulse speeds (which are well over the speed of sound), yet there's no indications of any sonic booms from an object the size of a modern-day aircraft carrier moving at supersonic (if not hypersonic) speeds through the lower atmosphere.
• Asteroid Thicket: Chakotay mentions that he spent part of his pilot training dodging asteroids in the belt.
• Attack Hello: Braxton doesn't even try talking to Voyager. He just blasts away with a Wave-Motion Gun and only talks because they're able to knock it out temporarily.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: After being punched several times by Butch, to no effect, the Doctor punches out Butch — a personal first, and very uncharacteristic for a medical hologram programmed to take the Hippocratic oath.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Tuvok and Doc in the phaser battle with whomever was outside the militia hideout.
• Beard of Sorrow: Spending nearly 30 years in the 20th century really hasn't done Braxton any favors.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Janeway gets some fairly extensive first-degree burns on the right side of her face when she launches a photon torpedo from inside the tube.
• Big Damn Kiss: You just know Tom and Rain are going to end their partnership with one.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Tuvok hits Dunbar's super-phaser, giving him, Tom, and Rain time to escape.
• Blatant Lies: Rain Robinson gets annoyed at the increasingly ridiculous fibbers she's being told by our heroes. Tuvok's Pointy Ears are a family trait; he's very sensitive about them. Tom Paris claims they're secret agents and the so-called UFO she detected is actually a KGB satellite. Rain has to inform Voyager's "expert" on this century that the USSR broke up five years ago.
  Paris: That's what they want you to think!
• Bond One-Liner: "Divine intervention is unlikely."
• Brick Joke: Tuvok, the "freakasaurus".
• Broad Strokes: Because their surveys had shown most people who watched the series weren't hardcore Trekkies, the producers decided to just leave out all reference to the Eugenics Wars and have events take place in the contemporary Earth the viewers were familiar with, rather than confuse them with a Great Offscreen War that was only mentioned in a single Original Series episode (later episodes in Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek Into Darkness would mention the wars without specific dates). While the changes to the timeline could mean that these events never happened, there's a model of the S.S. Botany Bay in Rain's room, which fits with a later Expanded Universe trilogy Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars that tried to handwave the issue as a Secret War amid actual conflicts of the 1990's.
• California Collapse: Janeway mentions an earthquake that caused the Los Angeles region to sink under 200 meters of water to become one of Earth's largest coral reefs.
• Call-Back:
  • All the way to the TOS episode "Space Seed". Rain has a model of a DY-100 interplanetary spaceship, canonically in use in 1996, in her office.
  • Rain also has a Talosian figure on her desk...
  • Janeway complains that using 20th Century technology is like using "stone knives and bear skins".
  • While trying to scan past one of Starling's force fields, Chakotay can't find a control panel or an access port.
  • Janeway has to adapt a photon torpedo manually.
• Captain Crash: Chakotay crashes yet another shuttle, right after boasting of his piloting skills at Starfleet Academy.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Neelix and Kes are monitoring TV broadcasts. Would that include a popular television franchise called Star Trek?
  • Rain mentions watching Mission: Impossible, made by the same studio as Star Trek: The Original Series and sharing several production staff and actors including Leonard Nimoy (Spock).
• Changed My Jumper:
  • Humorously averted; the crew beam down in 20th Century dress, but on seeing the denizens of the Santa Monica boardwalk, Tuvok states that they could've worn their Starfleet uniforms and no-one would've noticed. Also a Shout-Out to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in which the Enterprise crew just wore their regular off duty 23rd century outfits with only the rank insignia removed in 1980s San Francisco.
  • Tuvok's statement is mostly confirmed later when the Doctor steps into a public square in his uniform and no one so much as raises an eyebrow at him (though Rain later refers to him as "Mr. Leisure Suit" and says he has the worst fashion sense she's ever seen). Also, the survivalists evidently assume that the captive Chakotay and Torres' unfamiliar uniforms are merely those of one of the many secret government agencies they always suspected of existing though they'd never encountered it before now.
• Chekhov's Gun: The tattoo on Starling's arm shows that he's the hippie from The Teaser.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Captain Braxton will return in "Relativity".
• The Chew Toy: Braxton. He crashes his timeship and has to spend thirty years in a primitive society, including being drugged in a psychiatric centre for speaking a Cassandra Truth, until he Goes Mad From The Revelation that he caused a disaster which destroyed the entire solar system by going back in time in the first place. And then there's what happens to him in "Relativity".
• Classified Information: How Tom and Tuvok justify not telling Rain anything. Given that she's already detected a UFO in orbit and seen a large pickup truck vaporized, the explanation that they're secret agents is rather unconvincing.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The Doctor isn't impressed when Starling tries to make him deliver information on Voyager until Starling adjusts his tactile sensors to give the Doctor the same sensation as a Man on Fire.
• Come Alone: Except Starling is aware of this and brings along the Doctor as a hostage and Dunbar as backup.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Doctor mentions a recent memory loss ("The Swarm").
  • Rain has a model of the S.S. Botany Bay and a poster of its launch (TOS "Space Seed").
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Henry Starling
• Crazy Homeless People: Braxton ends up as one, though his sanity was already questionable.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Being shot over a dozen times by Crazy Survivalists doesn't inhibit the Doctor's ability in this area one bit.
    Porter: God in heaven help us!
    EMH: Divine intervention is unlikely.
  • Tom Paris tries to go for the Everybody Laughs At The Vulcan Ending, but Tuvok turns it around on him.
    Paris: You should have seen it when the parking enforcement officer came over to the van. Tuvok tried to use pure Vulcan logic to talk her out of giving us a citation.
    Chakotay: Did it work?
    Paris: Of course not!
    Tuvok: Given Mister Paris' alleged familiarity with Twentieth Century America, it is a wonder we survived the experience at all.
    Paris: Tuvok, has anyone ever told you you're a real freakasaurus?
• Death by Materialism: Take that, you 20th Century Neanderthal!
• Decoy Getaway: Our heroes follow Dunbar driving a semi-trailer out into the desert and blow him up. Turns out false signals were being used to make them think the timeship was on board, and Starling is about to launch it from inside the Chronowerx Building back in Los Angeles.
• Disintegrator Ray: The 29th Century phaser wielded by Dunbar. Ironically it doesn't do anything that ordinary phasers can't do (at least on ST:TNG).
• Doomsayer: The crew find Captain Braxton as a crazed hobo, putting up signs saying "The End is Nigh". Well, give or take nine centuries...
• The Dragon: Dunbar. Doesn't stand out much as a character, but has the wherewithal to free his boss from Voyager after he's captured.
• ET Gave Us I.T.: The computer revolution happens because a timeship crash-lands next to a 60's hippie who becomes a 90's yuppie (probably based on Steve Jobs) by reverse-engineering its technology. Since the Federation tend to put all of human knowledge into the computer of every single starship, Sterling was able to quickly learn what he needs to just by asking the right questions. His progress is stunted when he gets to (then) modern-day technology, however, claiming that he had reached the limit of what he could adapt from the timeship. He is planning a trip to the future to get more technology, apparently too egotistical to realize all the problems this would entail.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Starling refuses to believe Janeway's story about an impending cataclysm if he launches the timeship, concluding that she wants to steal its future technology like he did, and are targeting him because they can steal it more easily from a "20th Century Neanderthal", as he puts it.
• Fade to White: When Voyager travels through time.
• Failed Future Forecast: Star Trek: The Original Series predicted that Earth would suffer the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, during which Khan Noonien Singh would come to prominence. As for that California Collapse in 2047, we'll just have to wait and see on that one.
• Failure Is the Only Option: At the end of the Two-Part Episode, Voyager ends up right back where it started.
• Fan of the Past: There's a clever subversion of the common trope of the Fan of the Past taking charge—Tom Paris is indeed an expert on the twentieth century, but given how far in the past it is, his knowledge isn't quite specific enough and he keeps dropping out-of-date phrases and references, including using the term "Groovy" in complete seriousness and invoking the now-defunct Soviet Union as the enemy causing this mess.
• Fanservice: Rain's bustiness is on display while running down the steps of Griffith Observatory after Tom and Tuvok. She also jiggles quite visibly when she flounces down into her chair after calling Sterling to report her discovery of the signal he wanted to know about.
• Foreshadowing: Janeway says she doesn't know what her contemporary ancestor is up to. In "11:59" we find out.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum:
  • The shuttlecraft is used, but not until the second part of a two-parter episode and long after the audience are scratching their heads wondering why they aren't being used. Voyager tended to vary the number of shuttlecraft according to what they needed for an episode, so when the shuttlecraft crashes no one mentions taking a second one down to locate the first.
  • The 29th Century tricorder recovered from Starling isn't seen again.
  • Averted when the mobile emitter is used by the Doctor from now on. The writers specifically introduced it because they were sick of the Doctor being restricted to Sickbay or the holodeck. It also served as a useful weakness; despite being Immune to Bullets and most other threats, damage to the emitter could be used to shut the Doctor down if the plot required it.
  • One thing never mentioned is the Spaceship Slingshot Stunt used to Get Back to the Future in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Maybe they would have thought of it given time, but Captain Braxton intervenes right after they've resolved the crisis.
    • This has been acknowledged in at least one of the spin-off novels, which explains that time-travel leaves characters' molecularly out of phase with their current time period; the only way for them to get back to their own time is to repeat the circumstances that sent them through time in the first place, otherwise... well, it gets theoretical, but it's generally agreed it wouldn't work. Other novels have suggested that the slingshot only ever worked for the Enterprise crew, for various reasons. Star Trek: Picard would finally make use of the Slingshot Effect in the second season.
• Funny Background Event: When Ensign Kim contacts Captain Janeway regarding Rain's attempt to communicate with them, all the nearby Los Angelitos take out their mobile phones and beepers in response to her communicator's beeping.
• The Future Will Be Better: As per usual for Star Trek — Rain is impressed with Tom Paris' selfless dedication. You'd never find that in a handsome, unattached male who majored in astrophysics and shares her taste for B-Movies in her century!
• Geeky Turn-On: Tom and Rain bond over their love of B Movies.
• G-Rated Drug: After being told to monitor the electronic broadcasts, Kes and Neelix get hooked on soap operas.
• Hair-Trigger Temper
  Chakotay: Only you, B'Elanna, could start a brawl in Astrotheory 101.
• Have We Met Yet?: When Voyager's crew encounter Captain Braxton for the last time and mention their two previous encounters, he just says he's not familiar with that timeline.
• Hollywood Hacking: Starling is using a 29th century computer. Somehow this lets him instantly hack into Voyager, download (and wipe) a third of its database, and control and disable its systems at will. This is despite only having 20th century hacking skills despite Voyager's systems being completely unfamiliar to him, and despite Voyager's computers being five-century-old legacy technology as far as his tools are concerned, in a field where a ten-year gap is usually insurmountable.
• How Do I Shot Web?:
  • The Doctor enjoys the freedom of his new mobile emitter. Then he's told to go to the launch tubes to treat Captain Janeway, and has to admit that he doesn't know how to get there, having never been outside Sickbay or the holodeck, or walked from Point A to Point B before. Thinking on his feet, Chakotay promptly orders an ensign to escort him there.
  • Even before that, when the Doctor escapes from Starling's henchman he's clearly struggling to work out how to run, as he's literally never had to do it before.
• Idiot Ball: Braxton blazing away at Voyager instead of investigating how they might have gone forward in time to create the disaster in the first place, and working with them to avert this. San Dimas Time may explain it, or he may be traumatised by the destruction of the entire solar system, though "Relativity" also mentions a condition known as temporal psychosis that could be to blame.
• Illogical Combat Roll: Tuvok during his battle with Dunbar.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Starling demands information on Captain Janeway. The EMH replies, "I'm a doctor, not a database." Starling points out that he's actually a bit of both.
• Immune to Bullets: Two Right Wing Militia Fanatics shoot the Doctor full of bullets and shotgun pellets, which pass right through him to perforate the wall on the other side. They stand gaping in amazement until Doc stuns them with his phaser. B'Elanna and Chakotay are no less surprised, given that Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram shouldn't be able to walk into the room in the first place.
  Chakotay: Doc, how...?
  EMH: It's a Long Story, Commander. Suffice it to say, I'm making a house call.
• Incredibly Obvious Tail: Tom and Rain follow Dunbar in their van, but Rain points out they're on a desert road with no other traffic so he must know he's being followed. Sure enough a phaser-battle quickly ensues.
• Innocuously Important Episode: While a handful of Star Trek episodes featured time travelers from the future relative to the characters, this episode established that Starfleet of the 29th century has a Time Police with casual Time Travel, with their primary job trying to keep people from their own time period in check rather than all instances of Time Travel across all time. This would indirectly inform the Temporal Cold War Myth Arc of Star Trek: Enterprise which involved a myriad of time travelers trying to influence history to their advantage, and continue with Star Trek: Discovery where the 32nd Century is said to be when all powers involved outlawed time travel to prevent another Temporal Cold War.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: While stealing cable, Kim makes some pithy comments about how oddly passive it is to just watch TV, compared to the more interactive forms of entertainment they have in the 24th century.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, and Tom Paris beam down to the surface to handle the Crisis of the Week, leaving Harry Kim in charge.
• Missing Backblast: Averted; when Captain Janeway launches a photon torpedo manually, she's knocked down and scorched by the exhaust gasses. Knowing this, Chakotay made sure the Doctor would be on hand to treat her.
• Mundanization: This is a Star Trek: Voyager episode Recycled ON EARTH!
• My Car Hates Me: Rain's van stalls when Dunbar is about to ram it head-on with his semi-trailer. Tom and Rain dive out the doors, when suddenly the semi explodes as Chakotay arrives in a shuttle for a Big Damn Gunship moment.
• Noodle Incident: Tuvok's attempt to use Vulcan logic to avoid getting a parking ticket.
• No Time to Explain: Though you'd think someone manning a Time Machine would have plenty of time!
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: After two seasons, the entire writing crew was beyond fed up with the Doctor being limited to sickbay or the holodeck, so this story was primarily designed to get him the 29th century mobile emitter. From now on, he can go anywhere he wants.
• Odd Couple: Tom and Tuvok.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Rain understandably freaks out when Dunbar and Tuvok shoot Death Rays at each other. And then again when Starling gets beamed away right in front of her.
  • Starling just before a photon torpedo blows him up.
  • Tom and Rain when Dunbar's truck tries to ram their stalled van.
• Ominous Message from the Future: Captain Braxton of the timeship Aeon comes back from the 29th century with information that the entire solar system has been destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion and that Voyager was somehow involved. Now he's here to destroy them before that can happen.
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: To make this episode work, the Voyager had to be without its transporter and weapons systems. Those would have made Voyager's job all too easy.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The Aeon is a tiny one-man Time Machine armed with a subatomic disrupter that is able to seriously damage the much larger Voyager.
• Poor Communication Kills: Dear God, Braxton. From his Attack Hello against Voyager to his You Have to Believe Me! rants, it's no surprise that nobody takes him seriously.
• Pop the Tires: Tom phasers a tire on Dunbar's truck, hoping to crash it. Unfortunately it's a fourteen-wheel rig, so Dunbar just turns the vehicle around and tries to run his pursuers down.
• Prim and Proper Bun: This is the last episode in which Janeway wears the Bun of Steel. On beaming down to Earth she changes to a bun-and-ponytail combination, and keeps the hairstyle when she returns to Voyager.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
  Rain: Talk about a motley crew. We have the Doctor, a guy with the worst taste in clothing I have ever seen. Tuvok, what a freakosaurus! Has the guy ever tried to smile?
  Paris: Not that I can recall.
  Rain: And you, Tom Paris. Sexy, in a Howdy Doody sort of way. Pretty goofy, although sometimes I think you're the smartest man I've ever met.
• Ramming Always Works: Chakotay is fully prepared to do this to stop Starling.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Just the technology Starling managed to reverse-engineer from the Aeon and had installed in his office alone should have been more than enough to revolutionize numerous industries (and make him far richer than he already was). But that was just a fraction of the actual technology inherent in the timeship which he hadn't manage to figure out how to duplicate! Yet his 1996 Earth does not appear to be any more advanced than it was in the real world, clearly indicating that the majority of the technology he had puzzled out still had not been brought to market.
• Reset Button Ending: When Starling and his timeship are destroyed, an entirely non-hostile Captain Braxton appears to investigate what Voyager is doing out of its proper time. He denies any knowledge of himself as a Crazy Homeless Guy saying it must be an Alternate Timeline, and says he will return Voyager to its correct place in the space-time continuum. That's space-time, as due to the Temporal Prime Directive he can't return Voyager to Earth in the 24th Century, but must send them back to the Delta Quadrant.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Ex-Maquis freedom fighters Chakotay and B'Elanna Torres crash their shuttle in Arizona, where they're captured by paranoid survivalists convinced that these uniformed strangers in an apparent stealth aircraft are part of some Government Conspiracy (a far more plausible explanation than the truth, actually). Chakotay is just starting his peaceful warrior speech when said government forces turn up, demanding they hand over the shuttle and whoever was piloting it. Unsurprisingly bullets start flying, but fortunately Tuvok and the Doctor intervene with a Big Damn Heroes. The Doctor's ability to be Immune to Bullets and stun them with a Ray Gun would hardly make them less paranoid and disbelieving of nutty conspiracy theories in the future. (Ironically, Starfleet's intervention probably saved their lives, since the Doctor and Tuvok put a stop to what could have been a deadly gun battle by merely stunning everyone with their phasers. Also, when the feds fail to find much of anyone or anything they were seeking at the compound, the survivalists are likely to get nothing worse in court than a few plea-bargained light sentences for assaulting government agents.)
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The survivalists find B'Elanna's forehead ridges rather suspicious, but they figure the Beast comes in many guises. When a man tries to touch them, B'Elanna snarls and tries to bite his finger.
  Porter: (laughs) Careful, this one's a fighter.
• Rule of Three: Our heroes have three encounters with Captain Braxton — the distraught attacker, the crazy homeless doomsayer, and the calm Temporal agent.
• San Dimas Time: Implied; Braxton begs Janeway to let him destroy Voyager to save the future. Janeway refuses to condemn her entire crew to death on the basis of a ten-second conversation and wants more details, but Braxton just shouts "No time!" and opens fire again.
• Saying Too Much: When Rain asks where Tom learned astrophysics he replies "Starfleet Academy", then realizes his blunder and says that it's an "East Coast school".
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Captain Braxton's attempt to stop a temporal explosion that destroys 29th Century Earth by attacking Voyager accidentally sends both ships back to 20th Century LA, putting his ship in the hands of an unstable tech CEO who wants to launch it to the future, causing the explosion Braxton was trying to stop in the first place.
• Series Continuity Error: Official Trek lore states that the Eugenics Wars occurred between 1993 and 1996. It is also known that while a good portion of North America was involved and affected (specifically, the eastern coasts,) "Future's End" served to establish that Los Angeles and the west coast in general was still one such area where life continued on as normal. This is a bit of a Hand Wave though, as the west coast is still a part of the same country as the east coast. Plus, a great deal of the west coast's economy is based on trade with Asia, which was being ravaged by war at the time.
• Ship Tease: While on Earth, Janeway and Chakotay walk very close to each other, for all appearances a couple. At one point they're discussing what their ancient relatives were up to during the time period. During the conversation, Chakotay makes a comment that simply can't be approved under Starfleet regulations towards a ship's captain.
  Janeway: (a random woman on skates bumps into the pair and apologies before she skates away) For all I know she might be my great-great-great-great grandmother.
  Chakotay: (smiles mischievously) She does have your legs.
• Shout-Out: Captain Braxton's diagram and explanation of the predestination paradox (A leads to B leads to C leads to A) with chalk resembles Doc Brown's explanation of alternate timelines in Back to the Future Part 2.
• Shrine to Self: Janeway takes note of Starling's "I Love Me" wall. There's even a framed photograph of Starling shaking hands with Richard Nixon. (Apparently, his having been a hippie didn't stop him from making friends with the hippies' least-favorite President once he started using all that future technology to advance his career.)
• So Much for Stealth: At the end of Part One, Voyager does a low run over Los Angeles at night so they can beam up Janeway and Chakotay, who are being held at gunpoint. Someone catches it on video and the image is broadcast all over the news.
• Some Kind Of Forcefield: Starling in Sickbay. There's also a forcefield around the timeship, preventing Voyager from just beaming it up.
• Stable Time Loop: As explained by Braxton. Despite being insane when he does so, he's more comprehensible than most people on this series. While Voyager managed to break the cycle, it's never explained how it got started in the first place.
• Status Quo Is God: Played straight when a second Captain Braxton shows up to return Voyager to their previous time and location in the Delta Quadrant, refusing to return them to 24th Century Earth due to the Temporal Prime Directive. However, he doesn't bother to confiscate the Doctor's new mobile emitter, allowing him to function away from Sickbay or the holodecks for the rest of the series.
• Stealth in Space: There's references to adjusting shields to scatter radar beams and such-like. Unfortunately Starling is expecting someone from the future to come after their timeship, and is using Rain's SETI program to scan for emissions from a warp-powered starship.
• Subterfuge Judo: Rain Robinson (Sarah Silverman) tries, with Tuvok and Lt. Paris, to lure him to a business plaza somewhere in Los Angeles. Starling takes the bait, coming to "rescue" her, and bringing the now-mobile EMH. Rain tries to get Starling into her van^note (so Chakotay and B'Elanna can beam him up in one of Voyager's shuttlecraft), but Starling seemingly is suspicious, as he twice insists taking his limousine instead, forcing Paris and Tuvok, hiding somewhere in the plaza, to quickly change their plan:
  Henry Starling: Let's go.
  Rain Robinson: [pointing back] Oh, my van is this way.
  Starling: [insistent] We're taking my car.
  [They begin to continue walking]
  Robinson:[turning back] Oh, well, I left my stuff in the van.
  Starling: [insistent again] I'll send somebody back for it.
  [They pause for a beat]
  Starling: [seemingly suspicious] Is there a problem?
  Robinson: Nope.
• Surveillance Station Slacker: Rain has her feet up on the desk and is eating Chinese food when she first detects Voyager.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Justified as Starling and his minion have access to technology 500 years in advance of Voyager's, so they can break into their computers, or beam someone out through their shields.
• Sword over Head: Averted; Starfleet principles or no, when they've run out of options our heroes don't hesitate to kill Starling and Dunbar.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Much shenanigans with these. First Janeway and Chakotay are beamed out of Starling's custody. They then kidnap Starling by luring him into a place of which they know the co-ordinates and beam him up to Voyager, despite his efforts to stop them with his 29th Century tricorder, leading to a mild case of Teleportation Sickness. Then Dunbar uses 29th Century technology hidden in a Chronowerx satellite to beam his boss out through Voyager's shields.
• Tempting Fate: Janeway swore she'd never let herself get caught in a temporal paradox. Voyager will get involved in so many temporal disruptions it drives Captain Braxton to insanity by Season Five.
• That Came Out Wrong: Tom says Rain's curves^note her Fourier spectral analysis don't look so good, and Rain demands to know what Tuvok has in his pants ^note his tricorder.
• Time Is Dangerous: An incorrectly-calibrated timeship is enough to destroy the entire solar system.
• Timeline Altering Macguffin: Braxton's timeship kickstarts the computer age thanks to it being found by an enterprising hippie.
• Time Police: Captain Braxton is implied to be Starfleet's version of this in the 29th Century. This is confirmed in "Relativity". This would be further elaborated on in the Temporal Cold War Myth Arc of Star Trek: Enterprise which featured 31st Century agents.
• Time Travel Episode
  Janeway: 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.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Having adapted all the technology he can from the timeship, Starling has rebuilt it and intends to steal more technology from the future.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The disaster was caused by Starling stealing Braxton's time ship from Earth. Braxton's time ship was on Earth as a result of his mission to destroy Voyager. Braxton undertook his mission to destroy Voyager because of the disaster. Braxton was reduced to a homeless man screaming about the end of Earth and manages to explain a Stable Time Loop to Janeway, but other than stopping Starling from traveling to the distant future it's never explained how this got started.
• Title Drop
  Braxton: It's too late now. All things are set in motion. The terrible explosion will occur. The end is coming! The future's end.
  • When Janeway and Chakotay follow Braxton to where he lives, they walk past a pole where a cardboard sign Braxton posted says "Future's End."
• Took a Level in Badass: The DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" introduced the Department of Temporal Investigations. In the 24th century all they did was take reports about time travel incidents after the fact, not that there was really anything they could do about them. At some point, they went from toothless bureaucrats to full-fledged Time Police.
• Totally Radical: Tom gets a funny look from both Tuvok and Rain when he uses the word "groovy".
• Trapped in the Past: Chakotay and B'Elanna speculate on what might happen if they can't get back. Chakotay thinks he might become an archaeologist, as many great discoveries have yet to happen. B'Elanna pointedly doesn't discuss how she'd fit into a pre-First Contact society with Klingon forehead ridges.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Starling jump-started the computer age with access to Braxton's time ship but he didn't really understand how it works and that was just what he could replicate; so he was becoming desperate to find something else that could push past the current plateau. His personal equipment taken directly from the ship is also still 500 years more advanced than Voyager's technology and that allows him to hack their systems like firewalls were a myth.
• Unusual Ears: Tuvok's bandanna gets knocked off when he pulls an Unnecessary Combat Roll during his phaser battle with Dunbar, exposing him as a Pointy-Earred freakasaurus. He passes it off as "a family trait" akin to a genetic deformity.
• Vague Age: Since Janeway's date of birth hadn't yet been codified, this episode gives us a ballpark: she mentions playing tennis "in high school" and that this was "nineteen years ago". If twenty-fourth century high school follows the twenty-first centuries age range of 14-18, this puts her age here from 33-37 (Kate Mulgrew was 40 when this season was filmed).
• Viewer-Friendly Interface: On Rain's computer.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Starling. A philanthropist whose computer revolutions benefit all humanity, but really a Small Name, Big Ego playing with technology he doesn't truly understand.
• Watch the Paint Job: In the first half of the "Future's End" two-parter, Tom and Tuvok need some transportation and so take a truck out on a test-drive, leading to Tuvok arguing about the ethics of hanging onto the truck for longer than they told the dealer they would. The discussion ends up being rendered somewhat irrelevant when Dunbar shows up and vaporizes the truck with a 29th century disruptor.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The time ship requires a trained pilot to properly Time Travel. A jump that is calibrated wrong, such as by the inexperienced Starling, was apparently destructive enough to destroy most of the Sol System in the 29th Century. The Stable Time Loop came from Braxton discovering a piece of Voyager's hull in the explosion, assuming they were responsible and attempted to destroy them to prevent those events from happening, which only lead to the Time Ship being stolen in the 20th Century.
• You Are in Command Now: Before beaming down, Janeway leaves Harry in command.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Starling is opening a temporal rift, but has made a miscalculation that means he'll destroy the solar system when he arrives in the future. He won't listen to reason and Voyager's weapons are off-line. Tuvok says the future disaster may be inevitable. Chakotay says Screw Destiny and they'll ram Starling if they have to. The Captain comes up with another option.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Braxton tried to warn people that Starling stole his timeship and would cause a catastrophe in the future. Naturally he got thrown in the looney bin and is being treated as a public nuisance by police.
  Braxton: Stay right where you are, quasi-Cardassian totalitarian!
  Policeman: No need to get upset about this, we just want to talk to you about the signs. Now, there've been a few people complaining.
  Braxton: Captain, tell them I'm not crazy. Tell them I'm from the future. They came from the future too, you know.
  (Janeway and Chakotay give embarrassed "This guy's a looney" smiles)
  Braxton: Traitors!
  • Averted with Tom Paris. When Rain Robinson demands an explanation, and points out the flaws in his "secret agent" story, he just says that he can't explain but when Dunbar tried to kill her, he and Tuvok protected her, so she's just going to have to accept that they're the good guys and what they're doing is Classified Information.
• You Know Too Much: When Rain emails a professor (who told someone else, who told someone else, etc) regarding the UFO she's detected, Starling sends Dunbar to kill her. Tom and Tuvok try a non-lethal version by simply wiping her hard drive.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Starling thinks Voyager can't do this, because he knows from the files he's hacked that their weapon system is disabled. So Captain Janeway crawls into a launch tube and activates a photon torpedo manually.

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