Episode 50: Future's End Part I

It’s a Thursday so we must be due for another time travel episode, and we are.
 

So a bunch of time travel type paradox stuff happens and Voyager ends up on Earth in 1996 where they have to find a pair of humpbacked whales... no wait, that was the better one.  This crew have to prevent a paradox and Ed Begley Jr using his smarm to destroy the Solar System.  There’s also a homeless man in LA  in 1996 who was from the 29th century and was a Star Fleet Captain of a Timeship until Voyager happened.  I know how he feels.  Oh yes, and Sarah Silverman is also there to help Voyager.  Was this sweeps week or something?
 

Of course this couldn’t be a Voyager episode without cliche, and there’s nothing that springs forth cliches better than computers in TV/movies.  I loved how Janeway didn’t really know how to use the 1996 computer but within seconds was typing, changing screens, and all without using a mouse.  Did ‘The Net’ teach them nothing?

Not a bad episode but it did suffer a bit too much in the ‘fish out of water’ syndrome with saying how different things are every five seconds, like Neelix and Kes watching soap operas or Paris calling things ‘groovy’..  Plus it was done with more aplomb in Star Trek IV.  Though to give credit where it’s due, there was a funny bit when Janeway’s communicator went off on Earth, the contemporary humans in the background all checked their phones.  Still there’s the hope of more than one scene with the Doctor in Part II.