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Recap / Star Trek: Voyager S5 E22: "11:59"

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Where DS9 had "Far Beyond The Stars", and Enterprise had "Carbon Creek", here's Voyager's own "20th century episode."
Captain Janeway tries to recall the life of her ancestress Shannon O'Donnell, to suss out what was true about her and what was not.

This episode provides examples of:

  • Breather Episode: Probably the lowest-stakes episode of the entire series. The only thing that happens in the present is Janeway enduring the minor disappointment of discovering an old family legend was highly exaggerated. Even within the flashbacks, the primary story is a 300-year-old relationship drama between two characters we've never heard of before, and never will again.
  • Broken Pedestal: Janeway had counted Shannon as her inspiration to join Starfleet and is naturally rocked to discover the woman was nowhere near the Famous Ancestor Janeway thought she'd been. Chakotay tries to cheer up by pointing out Shannon had no idea she'd have to live up to Janeway's expectations.
  • Cassette Craze: Not having a Captain's Log, Shannon uses a tape player to record logs of her travels.
  • Continuity Snarl: You really don't want to think at all about how this story fits into the Trek lore of what was going on in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
  • Deceptive Legacy: Not on purpose but Janeway talks in the early part of the episode of how she was told Shannon was a NASA astronaut who fought to install the Millennium Gate against massive opposition and that helped inspire Janeway's career. However, she soon discovers that Shannon was rejected from NASA training, was only a consultant on the project and the only opposition to the tower was her future husband. Janeway does her best to handle it, saying her big concern is how she's going to break the news to her aunt that the great family legend is false.
  • Disappointing Heritage Reveal: When Neelix becomes interested in Earth history, Janeway decides to look up history about her identical ancestor, Shannon O'Donnell, whom she believes was responsible for allowing the Millennium Gate tower to be built, and was later part of NASA's missions to Mars. She does find that Shannon helped bring about Henry Janeway, Kathryn's distant grandfather, to sell his bookstore, just in time before the year 2000 was over, to begin work on the tower. However, what disappoints Kathryn is that Shannon was never part of the NASA Mars missions, as she had looked up to Shannon's seeming history as an inspiration to join Starfleet.
  • Fictional Holiday: Ancestors Eve, which was made up by Neelix.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: This is probably the only story in the entire Star Trek franchise without any significant science fiction to it.
  • Future Imperfect: After discovering all of the inaccuracies in her own family history, Janeway wryly jokes about how future historians will piece together their story.
    Janeway: The holographic engineer is having problems with her program. Neelix, the Cardassian cook, is low on supplies. Seven of Twelve is regenerating and Captain Chakotay is doing just fine.
  • Gilligan Cut: In the teaser, when Janeway first starts telling Neelix about Shannon, she recounts how she was recruited to the Millennium Gate project by the governor of Indiana himself, and according to her Aunt Martha, flown into town on a private aircraft. Cut to Shannon arriving in town (on the way to somewhere else) in an old, barely-functional station wagon, the first indication that the story her descendant heard about her life may not be entirely accurate.
  • Good Old Ways: Henry Janeway gets into a (cordial) argument with Shannon about how much technology really improved our lives. Shannon "won" the argument, but Henry made many arguments that technology made peoples' lives worse.
  • Identical Grandson: Captain Janeway and Shannon are naturally both played by Kate Mulgrew. Interestingly, Shannon talks into in a tape recorder in a way similar to Captain Janeway's log entries while driving down the interstate.
  • Mathematician's Answer:
    Shannon: I'm in a transitional period.
    Henry: From what to what?
    Shannon: From what I was doing to what I'm going to do.
  • May–December Romance: It isn't clear what the character ages are supposed to be, but Henry appears to be decades older than Shannon. The actors are only about ten apart in real life, though.
  • Millennium Bug: Mentioned during the flashback. Shannon notes that it didn't turn off a single lightbulb.
  • The Mole: A representative for the Gate offers Shannon a spot in the Mars colonization project if she convinces Henry to sell his shop. She's interested in his offer, but to her credit, she promptly reveals everything to Henry.
  • New Year Has Come
  • Opposites Attract: Shannon O'Donnell, a futurist and engineer who failed NASA astronaut testing falls in love with and ultimately marries Henry Janeway, a bookstore owner with a reverence for the past.
  • 20 Minutes into the Future: The episode aired in 1999 and takes place in 2000 (except for scenes involving the Voyager crew, of course).
  • Whole Episode Flashback: More or less, though interspersed with others talking about their ancestors.

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