This episode of Voyager was clearly trying to be something different and while it was different it didn't really work for me. Captain Janeway starts to look in to one of her ancestors who inspired her to join Star Fleet. We see the story of her ancestor Shannon O'Donnell in flash back as she finds herself stuck in an Indiana town when her car breaks down in the run up to news year's day 2001. She takes refuge in a book shop owned by one Henry Janeway who is the last person in town who hasn't sold his property to developers who wish to build the Millennium Gate tower, a building that will be a self-contained biosphere containing a large shopping mall amongst other things. Henry is not keen on change however and it looks as though the tower will have to be built elsewhere. As more details are revealed the captain learns that her ancestor wasn't quite the pioneer she thought and only had a relatively minor role in the tower's construction and was never part of the Mars exploration missions as she had been led to believe.
The weakness of the episode was largely down to the fact we knew Shannon would end up with Henry in the end due to his surname. It wasn't without its strengths though, it was nice that the Shannon was just a normal person not the leader in her field the captain believed as that would have been cliché.
The weakness of the episode was largely down to the fact we knew Shannon would end up with Henry in the end due to his surname. It wasn't without its strengths though, it was nice that the Shannon was just a normal person not the leader in her field the captain believed as that would have been cliché.