star trek voyager 11 59

11:59 (episode)

1.2 Act One
1.3 Act Two
1.4 Act Three
1.5 Act Four
1.6 Act Five
2.1 Story and script
2.2 Cast and characters
2.3 Production
2.4 Continuity
2.5 Reception
2.6 Video and DVD releases
3.1 Starring
3.2 Also starring
3.3 Special guest star
3.4 Guest stars
3.5 Co-stars
3.6 Uncredited co-stars
3.7 Stand-ins
3.8 References
3.9 Crew manifest
3.10 Alexandria Books titles and authors
3.11 Millennium Gate poster references
3.12 Timeline
3.13 External links

Summary [ ]

Neelix telling Janeway about the Great Wall of China

Captain Kathryn Janeway walks through a corridor on her way to a turbolift when Neelix , USS Voyager 's chef and morale officer , joins her. He hands her the requisition reports for that week and asks her what she could tell him about the Great Wall of China , who built it and why. Janeway states the obvious, that it was built by the Chinese to keep people out. When they enter the turbolift, Janeway orders it to deck one , while Neelix tells her more facts about the wall and that it was one of the only objects before the 22nd century that could be seen from Earth 's orbit with the naked eye. Janeway congratulates Neelix on his knowledge about Earth.

When the turbolift arrives at the bridge , Janeway is told by Commander Chakotay that they are on course to the class Y cluster and will arrive in about three days, while she and Neelix walk to her ready room . Janeway asks why Neelix is so interested in the Great Wall of China, and he tells her that he has been studying Earth landmarks. In her ready room, Neelix tells her that he and Tom Paris have been exchanging cultural knowledge about Earth and Talax and that Paris has become very knowledgeable about Talaxian geography. Janeway then asks Neelix what he knows about the Millennium Gate .

Neelix recites the Millennium Gate specifications – its height, base width, and surface material. He states that it was built in the United States of America in the 21st century . It is also one of the objects which can be seen from Earth orbit. Janeway tells him that it became a model for the first colonies on Mars and that one of her ancestors, Shannon O'Donnel , built it, not with hammer and nails, but with words. On family gatherings, Janeway was always told that Shannon O'Donnel was one of the first women astronauts and the driving force behind the Millennium Gate, the first of a long line of Janeway explorers. Neelix asks Janeway to tell him more, so he can impress Tom Paris. He learns that Shannon O'Donnel was in the space program at the time and that she was asked by the governor of Indiana , who wanted her expertise about re-cyclic life support systems . According to Janeway's aunt Martha , Shannon was flown around in a private aircraft.

Shannon O'Donnel driving through Indiana

In the early morning of December 27 , 2000 , Shannon O'Donnel drives through the state of Indiana. Her car made a strange bumping noise while she added one of the state's curiosities, the world's largest ball of string , to her personal log , which was a small tape recorder on the passenger seat. Seeing the Millennium Gate billboard , she headed to Portage Creek , where she hoped that someone could take a look at her car.

Act One [ ]

Driving through the town, she stops to ask a passer-by where she can find food , gas , and lodging. The man tells her those things can't be found any more in Portage Creek. Irritated, Shannon drives off but fails to look ahead and runs into another car. The other driver asks if she has insurance and she tells him it has run out. He says that two hundred dollars would be enough for the damage, but she tells him that she does not have that kind of money . The other driver accepts his loss and leaves. When Shannon tries to start her car it fails to start.

After Shannon calls a tow truck , she looks around for a place to keep warm while she waits. She finds that Alexandria Books is the only open store. Once inside, she meets the proprietor and his son, Henry and Jason Janeway , and asks them if she can wait for the tow truck in their store. She tells them she was trying to get to Florida when her car broke down. She hears Jason joking that Shannon is a corporate hit man and she grins as she explains to him that she does not do that kind of work anymore. Henry Janeway welcomes her and offers her a cup of coffee .

Shannon observes that most stores in town seemed to be closed. Jason replies that their store will never close. As she noticed their fliers lying on the counter, they tell her that they are fighting the building of the Millennium Gate, "the world's first self-sustained civic environment" according to Jason. Henry finds this to be propaganda ; he thinks it is nothing more than a glorified shopping mall. Shannon offers to help distribute the fliers using her computer if Henry would hire her. But they tell her that they do not need any help. Edging towards the door, Shannon asks again for a job. She says she really needs the money to pay for her car repairs. After an uncomfortable silence, Jason pleads for his father to hire her. Henry reluctantly agrees.

Save our Downtown

Later that evening, Shannon and Henry visit a local bar and discussed Portage Creek. They talk about the Millennium Gate and why Henry is against it. Shannon learns that Henry would prefer to have lived in the classical age. Shannon prefers the modern age. They sum up the pros and cons of each. They get stuck on the lack of cold beer in the classical age, whether it may be better with the absence of it. When Henry asks her if she has plans for New Year's Eve she tells him that it will be no different than last year – she plans to be asleep. She asks if Henry believes all the noise about the beginning of a new millennium, whether it would cause all those problems like so many said, and if he believes all those hucksters who claimed that 2001 was the real millennium and not 2000. As far as Shannon herself is concerned, those years are nothing but numbers on a calendar. Shannon mentions Jason telling her the bookstore has belonged to his family for generations and told Henry that she's just the opposite. She loves to visit places where she has never been before and doesn't like staying in one place for too long. She found that she was an explorer. Henry grins and tells her he thinks her car looks more like a sailing ship than a real car. She tells him that it's actually a rocket ship . Their conversation is interrupted when a rumbling sound shakes their beer glasses. They leave the bar to see what this sound is and see trucks driving by.

Act Two [ ]

The next day Henry Janeway argues with Gerald Moss , who is being interviewed by Marci Collins of 3 Action News . Henry pleads his case and returns triumphantly when he overhears Moss tell Collins that if Henry's resistance is not resolved, then the Millennium Gate would be built somewhere else. Henry tells Jason and Shannon that all they have to do is to stand firm until New Year's Eve. When Henry and Jason walk into the store Shannon watches Gerald Moss making a phone call. He seems to notice her presence.

That evening Shannon and Henry have a simple meal in the bookstore, which is illuminated by a few lamps and candles . Henry pretends they're in Paris . He places a book about that city alongside the table and tells Shannon he has never left the state of Indiana; he finds himself more comfortable with his books. She asks Henry about her car and he tells her that it has been repaired and is parked behind the garage. Shannon remarks that he should have mentioned that earlier that day. Henry says he forgot. Shannon says she will leave the next day but Henry reminds her that she promised Jason to show him some tricks on her computer. Remembering, Shannon agreed. She thinks he made it difficult for her to say goodbye. During their meal they seem to get along quite well despite their differences.

The Millennium Gate

In astrometrics , Captain Janeway is viewing technical data on the Millennium Gate when Seven of Nine walks in. She asks Seven to help her find more information about the era in which the Millennium Gate had been built, because most of it is lost or damaged. Janeway tells her that the Gate had been built by one of her ancestors over three hundred years earlier. Although Seven finds the Millennium Gate impressive, she questions its relevance to Voyager 's mission. Janeway tells Seven that it is relevant to her. When Seven replies that she possesses only a fraction of her ancestor's DNA , Janeway tells her that it is not about chromosomes but about character. Seven asks her to explain and Janeway replies that Shannon O'Donnel inspired her when she was young – she had a great influence on her imagination and goals, and she was the reason why Janeway joined Starfleet .

Later, Seven is researching historical data in the mess hall when Tom Paris and Neelix walk in. They are testing each other's knowledge about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . Paris pours himself a cup of coffee just as Neelix is about to name the seventh wonder, but he cannot remember it. Paris tries to recall it, but he cannot remember what it is either. Their contest is interrupted when Seven of Nine tells them that the seventh wonder was the Lighthouse of Alexandria , built by Ptolemy II in 280 BC . Paris sarcastically names Borg photographic memory a modern wonder of the world and tells Neelix the knowledge test is a draw and walks away.

" Someday, you might enjoy a little Seven of Nine point five running around, ha ha! Or not. Or not. "

Neelix, curious as always, asks Seven what she is doing. Seven tells him about her Shannon O'Donnel project. Neelix offers to help and notices the PADD containing information about a Sven "Buttercup" Hansen , an ancestor of Seven's. The captain had encouraged Seven to research her own genealogy but she questions Buttercup's relevance to Seven's life. As far as she is concerned their name likeness is a coincidence. Neelix tells her that there is some of him in her just as there would be some of Seven in her descendants. Seven replies that this only would be the case if she chose to procreate, and that she cannot appreciate Neelix's joke about a "Seven of Nine Point Five" running around. When her computer can find no references on Shannon O'Donnel, Seven says that her research has failed. Neelix tells her that researching genealogy is a lot like fishing – she has to use a wider net, and orders the computer to expand its search to non- Federation databases , personal archives and photographic indexes. When the computer finishes searching it displays one reference about Shannon O'Donnel.

Shannon Janeway with her children and grandchildren circa 2050

In the captain's quarters Neelix and Seven show Janeway what they have found: a picture of Shannon Janeway with her children and grandchildren. Neelix tells her that the photo comes from a Ferengi database. Eleven years earlier a Ferengi historian collected vast amounts of data about the origin of Federation space travel. The Ferengi wanted to market this information as nostalgic gift items. Janeway says she probably would be his first customer. Seven tells her that they also found journalistic articles about the resistance against the building of the Millennium Gate. Janeway observes that the entire town was against Shannon O'Donnel. She asks Neelix to download the image so she could frame it.

Shannon O'Donnel is watching 3 Action News in the local bar. She is planning her route to Florida where she wanted to visit a cousin of hers, when Gerald Moss walks in. He quotes the slogan her class came up with during her NASA period. Moss feels sorry for her that she had not made it at NASA and asks if she has stayed in touch with her former classmates. When Shannon tells him she did not, Moss tells her that a classmate of hers made it into to the space program and is scheduled for four months on the space station and that he's sorry that she has lost her job. He finds that engineers do not receive the respect they deserve. An annoyed Shannon tells him he had nothing to do with her personal life on which Moss tells her that they always screen their future candidates and makes her a job offer. Shannon could be a consulting engineer on the Millennium Gate project, but the catch is that she has to convince Henry to give up his resistance against it. Moss thinks Henry might listen to her because she seems close to him, Shannon tells him she has to think about his offer whereupon Moss tells her not to wait too long.

Act Three [ ]

The next morning Shannon wakes up from a dream about the first landing on the moon , which she watched on TV when she was eleven years old. When she walks into the bookstore she finds Jason playing with her computer. He's enjoying the games but getting vaporized when playing Matrix of Doom , and she advises him to launch a flare before entering the steel fortress. Shannon is offered a cup of coffee by Jason who tells her his father went out shopping in Bloomington and that he is in charge of the store for the time being. When Shannon is asked by Jason if she had any children she tells him that she never got around to it and in return asks him where his mother is. Shannon learns his mother died when he was very young and she asks him if he likes working in the bookstore and what his opinion is about the Millennium Gate. Jason thinks the Gate might be pretty cool. When asked by Shannon if he ever saw the first landing on the moon he tells her that he saw it once in his science class.

Shannon and Henry arguing

Just after eleven o'clock Henry Janeway gets back with supplies and Shannon reads the article about him in the local newspaper and gets into an argument with him about the Millennium Gate project. Shannon finds the Gate more than a glorified shopping mall and admits there is a commercial dimension but explains that it is an experimental biosphere . It is a completely self-sustained city that will help scientists to learn more about the environment so, one day, they can recreate it on other worlds . Shannon confesses she would like to leave Earth and its problems one day and tells Henry that the Millennium Gate has a lot of potential. She accuses him of living in the past, of being afraid of the future. Shannon tells Henry that Gerald Moss has offered her a job, at which he accuses her of sleeping with the enemy. Shannon tells him she might be a consulting engineer on the Millennium Gate project; Henry gets angry with her and asks her what would happen if he told her not to accept. Shannon tells him she does not want to live in her car any more. When Henry asks her to stay she tells him she cannot, afraid to get stuck in Portage Creek like Henry is. An angry Henry Janeway helps her pack when Jason walks into the room; Shannon tells him she has to go when Jason asks her why she is leaving.

Tom Paris explaining the Martian missions

In Captain Janeway's quarters, she, Harry Kim , Tom Paris, Neelix and Seven of Nine pass their leisure time by exchanging family stories. Kim is telling about his uncle Jack , who commanded a mission to Beta Capricus in 2210 , a deep space mission at that time. The journey took six months and his uncle piloted the spacecraft the entire time – the rest of the crew was in stasis . When he arrived it turned out that Beta Capricus did not exist, but was indeed just the misinterpreted image of a distant galaxy. Jack did not wake his crew because there was nothing to do or see and returned to Earth . When they arrived six months later, Jack brought the crew out of stasis and they wondered why they hadn't left Earth's orbit . The laughter of Kim and his colleagues is interrupted by the door chime; it's The Doctor , who wants to hand the captain a report but who does not want to intrude. When Captain Janeway tells him they were talking about their ancestors, he asks if he might join them. When Janeway agrees, he tells them that he, too, has ancestors. When Tom Paris jokes that his cousin was an electric shaver, he is corrected by The Doctor who tells him he was compiled from the most advanced holomatrices in the Federation; his cousin was an advanced prize-winning chess program. Seven of Nine tells Ensign Paris that he has not yet told them about his ancestors. According to Paris there was not much to tell; most of his ancestors were salt of the earth type of people. Some were planetary colonists and others were farmers, and one of his ancestors was a pilot who flew the first orbital glider over the lower Martian plateau. When Neelix mentions that his ancestors might have known Captain Janeway's, he asks for her name, but does not recall Shannon O'Donnel ever mentioned in relation to a Mars mission, and he knows every Mars mission from the 1970s on, and who participated in them, by heart.

Act Four [ ]

Captain Janeway is in her ready room reading a newspaper article on her computer terminal about Henry Janeway when Chakotay enters to show her the ship 's status reports . She had found some more data from the 21st century , but most of it is fragmented and incomplete, so she, jokingly, makes guesses about the contents of Chakotay's report: " 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. " She explains that she was wondering how future historians would piece together their lives on Voyager . Smiling, Chakotay replies that it depended on how big the pieces were. Janeway had gone to dozens of history files about 21st century Earth and found that every alien culture saw Earth's history differently. Vulcans described First Contact with a savagely illogical species, Ferengi revered Wall Street and even viewed it as holy ground, and Bolians expressed their dismay about the low quality of Human plumbing. So she researched the basics – birth , death and marriage certificates , court records, housing records, etc. but she found it all incomplete. When Chakotay asks her if Shannon O'Donnel existed, a slightly disappointed Janeway tells him Shannon did exist, but she only trained to be an astronaut and did not work on any of the Mars missions. She was an engineer who worked on the Millennium Gate as a consultant and the Gate itself was welcomed with open arms; there was no opposition except by Henry Janeway. Shannon married him but did not change history, only her name. Chakotay tells Janeway not to be so hard on her, that Shannon did not know she had to live up to the expectations of Kathryn Janeway. Janeway tries to sound upbeat, saying that the worst part is how she'll break the news to her aunt that the great family legend is false.

Three hours before Moss' deadline, he and Shannon O'Donnel watch 3 Action News in the local bar. Henry Janeway's resistance is still the main news topic. Moss tells Shannon that the building of the Millennium Gate will be delayed if Henry Janeway cannot be persuaded to give up his resistance before midnight. Shannon tells him she has to leave for Florida but Moss tells her he still could use her on the alternate building site of the Millennium Gate in Canton , Ohio . When Gerald Moss wants to leave the bar, Jason Janeway comes running in and tells Shannon his father still refuses to leave the bookstore and that a crowd is gathering; even the police are present. Shannon tells Jason his father can take care of himself. When Jason pleads her to talk to him she tells him that he won't listen to her, although she likes Henry and Jason Janeway she tells Jason she is sorry, it didn't work out.

At 11:15 pm Shannon drives out of Portage Creek and records her experiences into her personal log. She would not forget the last days and found Henry Janeway an interesting man – he liked to talk, but refused to listen to anybody but himself. Shannon reminisces about her dinner in Paris with him and found his son Jason as bright as his father. While eating a chocolate chip cookie, she decides to return to Portage Creek.

When Shannon drove into the street where the bookstore was located, she noticed the police line and walked up to the bookstore, where Gerald Moss told a policeman to let her through. Followed by a 3 Action News camera, Shannon walked to the bookstore entrance.

Act Five [ ]

Shannon knocks on the door and tells Henry to let her in. When she enters the store, she grabs his coat and tells him they're leaving; she even threatens to drag him out of the bookstore if he refuses. Shannon tells him it is over and accuses him of living in the past without any thoughts about the future of his son or Portage Creek. When Henry asks why she has returned, Shannon tells him it was because of the chocolate chip cookies which she bought when she left Portage Creek – they didn't taste the same without him. Shannon tells him she'd like to stay with him and Jason but she does not want to work in a bookstore for the rest of her life. Shannon tells Henry that he lives in the past while she wants to live in the future, and maybe together they could try to live in the present. She also tells him about the offer Gerald Moss made to her, but that she is prepared to turn him down if Henry wants her to stay. Henry hesitates for a short time and tells her he could re-open his bookstore in the Millennium Gate, whereupon Shannon tells him she probably could get him a nice location in the Gate where nobody would bother him. When Henry asks her if she would ever leave him again she tells him that if she would, they would leave together. When Henry asks the time she tells him it's 11:59. Just before midnight, Shannon and Henry leave Alexandria Books bookstore and Henry closes his store for the last time. As they leave the store they are applauded by the gathered crowd.

Kathryn Janeway is in her quarters staring at the stars when Neelix contacts her via her combadge . He asks her to come to the mess hall ; there is no emergency but he wants to speak to her personally.

"Happy Ancestors' Eve"

When Captain Janeway enters the mess hall, she is greeted by her friends who toast " Ancestors' Eve ". When she asks what it's all about, Neelix tells her it's April 22 , Ancestors' Eve, a holiday he established that very day. Commander Chakotay tells her Neelix had a point: an evening of reflection in honor of those who had come before. Harry tells him that his uncle Jack would approve and B'Elanna Torres had at least a reason to crawl out from under the warp conduit she was working on. Janeway appreciates the gesture, but is interrupted by Tom Paris, who tells Neelix to give her the present. Neelix hands Janeway a framed photo of Shannon O'Donnel and says that he has done some more research and told her the photo was taken around 2050 in a park near Portage Creek , thirty-eight years after the dedication of the Millennium Gate . Neelix thinks a nice place for it would be on the shelf near her desk in her ready room. Janeway thanks him but tells Neelix she is not sure that Shannon O'Donnel belongs there. Seven of Nine tells her she was wrong, Shannon captured her imagination, and historical details are irrelevant. Tuvok concurs with her analysis and Chakotay tells Janeway that she would not have joined Starfleet if it wasn't for Shannon O'Donnel. The Doctor grabs his holo-camera and places it on the bar. After he prepares it he tells everyone to gather around the Captain and to face the camera. They share a toast to 'family' as the camera takes its picture.

In the Portage Creek park, Kieran gave his sister "bunny ears" after their picture was taken. Shannon tells him to stop it and places him on her lap and pointed towards the camera which brought his attention to it and a big smile upon his face.

Background information [ ]

Story and script [ ].

This episode was inspired by an undeveloped Q episode for Star Trek: Voyager , thought up by John de Lancie , and was originally to have included a recurring character from Star Trek: The Next Generation . " For a while [Executive Producer] Brannon [Braga] and I were thinking about doing Janeway's distant ancestor and Q in the year 2000, " explained Supervising Producer Joe Menosky . " We also thought about Janeway's distant ancestor and Guinan , and this might have been a Whoopi [Goldberg] episode. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 51)
It was important to the writers that this episode be timely. Said Brannon Braga, " We wanted to do a show dealing with the millennium, before the millennium came. We wanted to tell a story of Captain Janeway's great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, played by Kate Mulgrew […] It's a story about history, and how history can be misinterpreted. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)
When it came time to actually write the installment, the writers attempted to involve no hard science fiction in the episode and opted to include no guest stars from previous episodes. Joe Menosky stated, " Our original inspiration for this was to do an episode where we didn't see Voyager at all. All we saw was Kate Mulgrew playing a distant ancestor [of Kathryn Janeway]. The idea was to tell a quintessentially Star Trek story without any science fiction. I wrote a teleplay, and it was a very painful [script] to write, because our premise wasn't working. We realized that we couldn't tell a story just on Earth without having Voyager to ground us in some way. We ended up doing a third of the episode set on Voyager . " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 53)
Both David Livingston and Brannon Braga considered this episode to be very different from others in the Star Trek canon. Livingston remarked, " It is the only Star Trek show that I know of that has no science fiction. It is not a Star Trek show. " Braga agreed, " Ultimately, it's a very unique off-concept episode. "( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)

Cast and characters [ ]

Joe Menosky, Brannon Braga and director David Livingston found Kate Mulgrew's turn as Shannon O'Donnel to be notably successful. " Kate really loved playing a character that was not herself, " Menosky stated. " She plays the founder of the Janeway clan, but she's a very reluctant hero, and a very damaged hero. She walks around with her hands in her pockets, and her head slightly bowed. She's a more withdrawn and vulnerable person than you can ever imagine Janeway being. It was quite nice to see her do that performance. " Livingston concurred, " What's wonderful in [the episode] is that Kate plays a totally different character […] It's a wonderful character study. We cut back and forth between Janeway and Shannon, and you get to see this wonderful contrast between these two. " Braga enthused, " It's a real acting tour de force for Kate Mulgrew. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, pp. 53-55)

Production [ ]

David Livingston was delighted with Henry Janeway's bookstore in this installment, describing it as "wonderful." He also opined, " The bookstore was phenomenal, one of [Production Designer] Richard James ' best sets. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)
The exterior of the bookstore was filmed at Paramount . Joe Menosky stated, " David Livingston did it on the New York Street on Paramount lot. They brought in tons and tons of snow and blew it all over the street. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55) Livingston himself remembered, " The production values were great. We shot it on the backlot at Paramount, and made it look like a Midwestern city. It was supposed to be in the winter, and we had snow, and we shot both day and night. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)
David Livingston was also pleased with the makeup that Kate Mulgrew wore, in the role of the elderly Shannon O'Donnel. " The makeup looks wonderful on her, " the director remarked. " Kate said when she looked in the mirror it scared her, because she looked so much like her grandmother. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)
There is a model of the Apollo Lunar Module hanging from the rear-view mirror of Shannon O'Donnel's car. According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 309), this was a commercially available model kit. It was borrowed from the desk of Denise Okuda , who loaned it to the production for that episode, according to Star Trek Encyclopedia , 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 36
In the dinner scene, there is a pinball machine behind Shannon. Though blurry, it is "Fish Tales".

Continuity [ ]

The date of the episode is given as April 22.
The stardate of the episode is never mentioned during the episode itself, however, in " The Voyager Conspiracy ", Janeway mentions this stardate in connection with Seven reluctantly studying her ancestors, which is undoubtedly during this episode.
There is no Captain's Log record in this episode. However Shannon O'Donnel is seen maintaining a personal log with her experiences in a tape recorder .
As the flashback portions of the episode are set in December 2000, they are taking place about 1.5 years into the "future" relative to when the episode first aired.
O'Donnell mentions that Indiana houses several roadside attractions, such as the world's largest ball of string, a reference to the " Biggest ball of twine " fad in some of the United States; in reality Indiana doesn't contain one.
O'Donnel's dialogue with Henry Janeway in the pub, refers to the real-life hype about the Millennium Eve of 31 December 1999, albeit futuristically. The dialogue also refers to the debate that the number 2001 is the real beginning of the millennium, rather than 2000. The dialogue suggests that because of this, Humanity chose to repeat the hype the following year. In reality, the millennial celebrations were not repeated in New Year's 2001, which was celebrated in much lesser magnitude.
The above dialogue also predicted that the Y2K bug would not "switch off even a single light bulb," which was almost correct; a nuclear power plant in Japan had a monitoring computer go down briefly, and minor events elsewhere occurred, but nothing major.
Shannon O'Donnel's statement that she watched the Apollo 11 landing on television in 1969 when she was 11 means she is 42 years old during the events of the episode and 92 in the photograph with her descendants.
Janeway has extensive (albeit, somewhat incorrect) knowledge about Shannon O'Donnel that she says she learned at family gatherings, when she was younger. In the third season installment " Future's End ", Janeway claims that she does not know anything about what her relatives were doing at the close of the 20th century. One explanation for this apparent incongruity is that O'Donnel's legend takes place during the 21st century and that Janeway did indeed not know what O'Donnel was up to, before the Millennium Gate was built.
While the officers exchange family history, Harry Kim narrates an adventure of his ancestor to Beta Capricus in 2210 as a single awake crew member while the rest of the crew are in stasis , for an extended period (here, six months). This seems to refer to a sleeper ship .
In the aforementioned dialogue, Seven exclaims that she would prefer stasis to being the single awake individual. She had a similar experience, being the single awake individual for a month during the events of the fourth season 's " One ".
The photo of Shannon Janeway with her children and grandchildren, circa 2050, shows no signs of the destruction resulting from World War III , or the following post-atomic horror .
This is the only episode of Star Trek: Voyager (and, with TNG : " 11001001 ", one of only two in the franchise) that has no letters in its title.

Reception [ ]

Joe Menosky regretted the decision to exclude science fiction elements from this episode. He related, " Ultimately, to me, it was a lot of domestic scenes, which I am not interested in writing […] More than anyone, I wish that we had had something of [the hard science fiction] element in to drive the plot. [Executive Producer] Rick Berman called to say he loved it. I just kind of shrugged. You just never know. " Conversely, David Livingston expressed his interested reaction to the episode; " The story is really intriguing […] I hope that the audience and the fans will be intrigued by it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 55)
According to the book Delta Quadrant (p. 309), an advertisement for The Planetary Society that aired during this episode's third commercial break involved Robert Picardo , standing on the set of Voyager 's sickbay, as he encouraged children to design Mars colonies for one hundred people.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 5.12, 22 November 1999
As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

Robert Beltran as Chakotay
Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
Ethan Phillips as Neelix
Robert Picardo as The Doctor
Tim Russ as Tuvok
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Special guest star [ ]

Kevin Tighe as Henry Janeway

Guest stars [ ]

Bradley Pierce as Jason Janeway
John Carroll Lynch as Gerald Moss

Co-stars [ ]

Christopher Curry as Driver
James Greene as Passerby
Kristina Hayes as Field Reporter
Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Stand-ins [ ]

Keith Estelle – photo double for Tim Russ (off-screen)
Mel Gold – photo double for Ethan Phillips
Sue Henley – stand-in for Kate Mulgrew
Photo double for Roxann Dawson (off-screen)
Stand-in for Roxann Dawson
Nicole McAuley – photo double for Jeri Ryan (off-screen)
Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan and Kate Mulgrew
Lem Perry – stand-in for Tim Russ and utility stand-in
Erin Price – hand double for Kate Mulgrew
J.R. Quinonez – stand-in for Robert Picardo and utility stand-in
Photo double for Robert Duncan McNeill (off-screen)
Stand-in for Robert Duncan McNeill and John Carroll Lynch and utility stand-in
Adam Ross – hand double for Bradley Pierce
Joey Sakata – stand-in for Ethan Phillips
Richard Sarstedt – stand-in for Robert Beltran and Kevin Tighe
William Smith – stand-in for Bradley Pierce
Stuart Wong – stand-in for Garrett Wang
Stand-in for Christopher Curry
Stand-in for James Greene
Stand-in for Kristina Hayes

References [ ]

3 Action News ; Achilles ; aerospace engineer ; aerospace engineering ; ailing ; aircraft ; Alexandria ; Alexandria Books ; American Express ; Ancestors' Eve ; antibiotic ; Armstrong, Neil ; Artemis ; astronaut ; barbarian ; Baylor ; BC ; beefsteak tomato ; beer ; Beta Capricus ; Beta Capricus expedition ; Big Bird ; binder ; biosphere ; birth certificate ; Bloomington ; Bolian ; Boulevard St. Germain ; boxing ; boycott ; Buck's ; building permit ; " Buttercup "; caffeine ; candy cane ; Canton ; car ; Cardassian ; cash register ; caution tape ; census survey ; chess ; Chevrolet Astro ; Chevrolet Caprice ; chicken ; China ; Chinese ; chocolate ; chocolate chip cookie ; Christmas ; chromosome ; Civic center ; classical age ; class Y cluster ; claustrophobia ; coffee ; coffee shop ; Colossus of Rhodes ; computer ; computer game ; consulting engineer / consultant ; convenience store ; cookie ; co-pilot ; corn ; corporate hit man ; court record ; da Vinci, Leonardo ; death certificate ; decaf ; deer ; Delta Quadrant ; doomsday book ; downsizing ; dozen ; e-mail ; Earth ; Earth history ; Earth landmarks ; electric shaver ; EM echo ; emperor ; employment record ; entrepreneur ; Ephesus ; European ; explorer ; family history ; family line ; Federation ; Ferengi ; Ferengi historian ; First Contact ; fishing ; Florida ; flying saucer ; football ; Ford LTD Country Squire ; Ford Mustang II ; franchise ; French language ; galliform ; gasoline ; genealogy ; generation ; gesture ; governor ; Great Wall of China ; Greek ; guidebook ; Gustave Caillebotte ; Halicarnassus ; Hansen, Sven ; Glorious Hector ; Hell ; Hercules ; historian ; holodeck ; holy ground ; Honda Accord ; housing record ; huckster ; Indiana ; insurance ; International Space Station ; interstate ; Jack ; Janeway family ; Janeway family members (21st century) ; Janeway's first wife ; marriage certificate ; journalist ; kilometer ; landmark ; Large Sunflowers ; The Last Supper ; light bulb ; Lighthouse of Alexandria ; Link-Belt HTC ; lion ; logic ; Lower Martian plateau ; Luna ; manmade ; market price ; Martha ; Martian colonies ; Mars ; Matrix of Doom ; Mausoleum of Halicarnassus ; McMillan ; menorah ; meter ; Midwest ; mile ; millennium ; Millennium Eve ; Millennium Gate ; modern age ; Morning Observer, The ; Mustang ; NASA ; National Cash Register Company ; newspaper ; New Year's Eve ; nomad ; Non-Federation ; nostalgia ; nuclear family ; oatmeal ; oatmeal cookie ; O'Donnel's NASA class ; Odysseus ; Ohio ; Oklahoma Sooners ; Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera ; orbital glider ; PADD ; parade ; Paris ; Paris' ancestors ; Paris Street; Rainy Day ; parking ; Pat ; permit ; personal archive ; personal log ; pharmacie ; photographic index ; photographic memory ; plumbing ; PM ; police ; Portage Creek ; Portage Creek Police Department ; postcard ; Priam ; prizefighter ; progenitor ; promotional literature ; Ptolemy II ; Qin ; recyclic life support system ; retail space ; Rhodes ; rocket scientist ; rocket ship ; Roman ; Rome ; sailing ship ; Saturn SL2 ; scaffolding ; Seven Wonders of the Ancient World ; shelf ; shopping mall ; SK ; slogan ; stamp ; station wagon ; Sterling LT-Line ; string ; supplier ; Talax ; tape recorder ; tax ; telephone ; Temple of Artemis ; Texas ; Third Circle of Hell ; toast ; tow truck ; traveler ; Troy ; TV ; United States Congress ; vaporize ; Volkswagen ; voter registration form ; Vulcan ; Wall Street ; White House ; Winnie-the-Pooh ; wreath ; Y2K bug ; Yin and yang ; Zeus

Crew manifest [ ]

Orlando, David ; Parsons, Michael ; Peterson, Sandra ; Platt, Jerry ; Porter, Amanda ; Quizzlink, Charlie ; Rahn, Pierre ; Rameau, Evelyn ; Rawski, Abraham ; Reen, Barbara ; Reynolds, Tony ; Rockefeller, Keith ; Rosa, George

Alexandria Books titles and authors [ ]

Allure ; Apartment Guide ; Best Medicine, The ; Big Bird's Rhyming Book ; Broadcasting ; By the Light of My Father's Smile ; The Chronicles of Narnia (map on wall as O'Donnel first enters the bookshop); Clancy, Tom ; Curtains for the Editor ; Forbes ; Geometry ; Journal of Accountancy ; Monster at the End of This Book, The ; Noble House (by James Clavell ); PC World ; Polsky, Thomas ; Pomp and Circumstance ; SK ; When I Think of Bobby ; Working World

Millennium Gate poster references [ ]

Berman/Braga Developers ; Berry, Greg ; Biller, Ken ; Braga, Brannon ; Dorton, Louise ; Harvey, Gaylord ; Hooper, Greg ; Howard, Merri ; Jim Mees & Associates ; Lazard/Anderson Group ; Levinson, Aron ; Lisa Rich Laborers ; Matalas, Terry ; Menosky, Joe ; Norman, Eric ; O'Williams, Wendy ; Purser, Tom ; Richard D. James & Associates ; Smutko, Al ; Starbrook, Peter ; Wendy O Design ; Yacobian, Brad ;

Timeline [ ]

1970s ; 1999 ; 2000 ; 2003 ; 2012 ; 2050 ; 2210 ; 2375

External links [ ]

" 11:59 " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
" 11:59 " at Wikipedia
" 11:59 " at the Internet Movie Database
2 Daniels (Crewman)
3 Klingon augment virus

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Star Trek: Voyager

“11:59”

Air date: 5/5/1999 Teleplay by Joe Menosky Story by Joe Menosky & Brannon Braga Directed by David Livingston

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"To family..." — Captain Janeway's toast

Review Text

Nutshell: Not riveting execution, but some good feelings and intentions.

"11:59" is a sincerely written reflection upon histories and feelings. It's without a doubt the quietest episode of the season, with no aliens, no action, no gimmicks, and no cheats. The most common complaint I've heard about this episode is that it's "filler." I don't quite understand such an assessment. Just how do you define filler? A story that doesn't advance us to ... what? A story that doesn't have ... what? Explosions? Aliens? An expensive-looking budget? A plot that gets us 10 years closer to the Alpha Quadrant?

"11:59" is different in that it doesn't follow the conventional Voyager pattern. There are no threats to the crew, no sci-fi anomalies. Just some ideas about the past, as Janeway thinks back to memories of her childhood, where she held an ancestor in high regard as her hero and inspiration.

She tells the tale of Shannon O'Donnel, a quiet, lonesome, and uncertain adventurer who sought a role in life that would offer an avenue toward the future.

The story is told in a sort of 400-year flashback, as we follow O'Donnel (played by Mulgrew) through the events of the days prior to New Year's 2001. O'Donnel, in her failing decades-old car, happens upon the small town of Portage Creek, Indiana. There she meets widower Henry Janeway (Kevin Tighe) and his son, Jason (Bradley Pierce). The town is caught up in a controversy involving something called the "Millenium Gate," an ultra-expensive, highly experimental futuristic community that a large corporation hopes to build in the area. The town wants the gate. But standing in the way is Henry Janeway, a man who values books and history and doesn't want to see the town leveled for some newfangled idea of the "future." He's adamantly refusing to sell his bookstore, and if he doesn't do so by midnight on New Year's Eve, the corporation will take their grandiose building plans elsewhere.

O'Donnel's car breaks down, and in order to pay the repair bill, she needs work. Janeway agrees to offer her board for a few days in exchange for work in the bookstore. The rest of the tale shows how O'Donnel's and Janeway's views of the world collide, albeit not in remotely unpleasant ways. Janeway lives in the past, O'Donnel looks toward the future, and a dialog opens between them that offers the viewer two reasonable viewpoints.

It might not be the most original story ever told, but it does make for an hour of friendly themes that are relevant to Kathryn Janeway as a character. One of the interesting aspects of the show is the way the captain holds this ancestor in hero status based on the obstacles she supposedly faced. But through the course of the hour Janeway comes to realize that her learned version of history might not have been the actual truth. Paris is also familiar with history, and he doesn't remember any O'Donnels being on any of the Mars missions, the history of which he has memorized. This leads Janeway to do some deeper research, until she realizes that O'Donnel was a relatively minor player in the Millenium Gate construction, and not quite the audacious adventurer Janeway long believed she was. (It's a revisit to the theme of historical accuracy that was the focus of last season's " Living Witness .")

The flashback story seems to capture some bits of atmosphere of a small Midwest town fairly well, and I appreciated the simple problems of the story and David Bell's appropriate musical accompaniment. We learn O'Donnel has had some tough career luck of late, and one of the corporate officials, Gerald Moss (John Carroll Lynch), offers her an opportunity to work on the groundbreaking engineering project—if she can convince Janeway to let go of the past. (But I must say that given the job market today, I find the idea of a brilliant, apparently respected engineer unable to find work to be slightly dubious.)

"11:59" invests a lot of time in the flashback characters. And perhaps the biggest problem with the episode is that it relies too heavily on the acting chemistry between Mulgrew and Tighe—a chemistry that comes off with mixed results.

There are some good scenes between these two, particularly where they argue their differences concerning the role of people and technology. Henry's son is an example of a youth who is more interested in the future than the past, which makes it pretty hard for Henry to remain so adamant. But despite the decent execution of several quiet dialog scenes, I don't think one key scene that really needed to work well ended up having the emotional payoff if seemed to want.

I'm referring to Henry Janeway's inevitable eleventh-hour change of heart, and especially O'Donnel's realization—through the taste of chocolate-chip cookies, no less—that she has developed such strong feelings for Henry and this town that she has to stay. The sequence is somewhat lackluster sentiment, and I wish it had been more believable. O'Donnel's realization doesn't seem heartfelt; it seems scripted. An earlier scene should've better established her feelings.

Fortunately, I think the impact of this tale on Kathryn Janeway—especially learning that history is not always what it seems—works far better. It's always something of a wake-up call to learn that your childhood hero was just a person with their own agendas and needs, and Janeway finds herself somewhat depressed by that all-too-simple realization.

The episode also knows that "family" is where its heart is at. Sentiment in the flashback sequences may have fallen somewhat flat, but I can't help but admit an affection for the group photo at the end—an image that speaks louder about the Voyager family unit than dialog probably could've.

"11:59" is a pleasant episode. It might not break much new ground and might lack emotional punch in a few important places, but it accomplishes its goal of telling a quiet tale about some people—with no strings attached. I'm inclined to think those who call it "filler" are mislabeling it. Perhaps it's simply an hour of peace, and a plot without the gimmicks we've come to expect.

Next week: Seven takes a trip through the fourth dimension.

Previous episode: Someone to Watch Over Me Next episode: Relativity

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Comment Section

106 comments on this post.

Another of my top 5 - Wow, I think Season 5 had the most 'winners' in my opinion.

One of the best Treks, ever. Should be included on one of those 'Collective' DVD series.

Didn't Janeway say in "Future's End" that she had no idea what any of her relatives were up to in "this" time period?

Neelix had contradictory facts in 2 sentences! 'Great Wall only thing visible from space til 22nd century'. 'Millenium gate?oh, that was built in 21st century - also visible from space!'

Just to clarify, regarding the Great Wall of China, Neelix said "...before the 22nd century, it was ONE OF the only man-made objects that could be seen from Earth's orbit with the naked eye." [emphasis added]

Tina: With the emphasis it makes even less sense! "[B]efore the 22nd century, it was ONE OF the only man-made objects [...]" "One of the only" what? One of only THREE MILLION manmade objects visible from space? Paul's right: Neelix's statement is a contradiction, but, then, he's a dufus anyway. Anyway, about the show. Two thirds of it is set in the 20th century, saving the crew (the studio crew, that is) having to come up with special effects and decor. Hey, why bother painstakingly creating a 24th-century environment, when you can just go out of the studio on to the street outside to shoot the episode! Janeway became a captain because of some broad from four centuries previously?! Yeah right. I'll become a blacksmith, how about that! A really boring and pointless episode, with no "sci" and way too much "fi" of the wrong sort. Wrong century, wrong focus, wrong plot. Unlike the previous abortion of an episode (Someone to Watch...), this one wasn't even funny. 0.5 stars and even that's being generous.

Fairly good, in a quiet sort of way, until the corny ending in the mess hall and the terrible aging makeup on Janeway...

Can't stand it myself. It's made well, but I really can't bring myself to watch it if I rerun the show on DVD, as it just has nothing to do with Star Trek. It really is a filler. Yes, at the end of the episode we've progressed nowhere and maybe that doesn't matter, but we haven't even got any extra depth in a character. Yes we have some background to an ancestor, but it tells you nothing new about Janeway except something she has an interest in. These kinds of episodes strike me as an excuse for a writer who desires to write something other than sci-fi, but can only get it out there by turning it into a story for a popular sci-fi series. At least have some humour and/or a strong story to make them interesting. DS9's Far Beyond the Stars, is a good example of a filler done well. This is slow, boring, and of no relevance to Voyager.

"Filler" is a term best used when dealing with TV shows or movies based on books, or anime based on manga. It refers to material written for the new medium to fill in time, I.e. when keeping only to the original material would make the show too short. It gets a bad reputation because it's usually written by the TV/movie/animation team and not the author so it frequently lacks the original material's quality, attention to detail and sincerity. It doesn't apply to this in the slightest. I don't see why episodes should need to have the flashing lights and a space battles every time without fail (I guess Voyager did attract people who like to be spoon fed the same recipe week after week as unfortunately that's the way it went from about S3/4). The thing about it is that yes it's about a spaceship tens of thousands of light years away trying to get home but it also has characters. I do think they deserve to be treated as characters once in a while and not just props like they have been in seasons 4 and 5 in particular. As such I loved this little insight into Janeway's view of her ancestry and it warmed me somewhat (not before time) to her again. After a season of mostly using her as "hard headed Captain" it was nice to see the human side again and I enjoyed this quiet and sincere little tale. I'm not saying it should be (have been, rather) like this all the time, it is after all about space and exploration. But it's like (let's use a Voyager Style Random Analogy!) music can't be all peak/chorus, it needs the quieter, slower interludes as well to make it complete.

Jake Taylor

Man this episode feels so forced in every way. These two people have nothing in common and the are so different, and ages apart. I am shown no reason as a viewer why they should get married. First of all the concept of the whole town being sold to built a "M GATE" is absurd. And that one little bookeeper is going to stop the construction process. Oh yea, I mean they stopped building I 95 when they got to Baltimore because the Nattie Boe Beer Co had a warehouse in the way! Come on! If a project as large as this were this close, Mr. Janeway wouldnt stand in the way. I mean he phone hasn't rang in 3 days anyway we learn. BTW, this goofy thing looks like Farpoint Station, and why the hell would anyone support building this thing, and support buliding it where a town already existed? None of these questions are answered, and none of it makes any sense at all. Its just the usual Voyager boring story that takes up an hour, that is bland and appeals to the masses. Poor storytelling, and unrealistic dialogue. This episode made me enjoy that idiot Neelix's nonsensical ramblings. All in all none of this matters, none of it feels real, and I have no reason to care about anyone in this story.

If they broke ground on the Millenium Gate in Portage Creek, Indiana on 12/31/2001, wouldn't it be done by now? I've been through Indiana lots of times since 2001, and I've never seen anything like this. There is a Portage, Indiana on Lake Michigan right across from Chicago, but there is literally nothing of consequence there. Maybe Janeway found some other way of shutting down the project after all. Hey, why build this on top of a town anyway? Has anyone driven through Indiana? They have lots of empty spaces where you could build a crazy shopping mall/biodome/plot contrivance.

BlightedSight

Jammer:(But I must say that given the job market today, I find the idea of a brilliant, apparently respected engineer unable to find work to be slightly dubious.) Maybe the episode was set 10 years too early because, right now, I definitly believe, and have experienced, respected and brilliant people out of work and unable to find a job.

Yeah, what a difference a decade makes.

I remember really not liking this episode when I first saw it (going back about 11 years, I think); it just seemed so random and pointless. Second time around and I enjoyed it a lot more - it's still random and still a bit pointless, but it's also a nice change of pace (although it would have been nice if it had been spaced a bit apart from 'Someone to watch over me' - two very quiet episodes next to each other). Kate Mulgrew gets to show more humanity in her portrayal here than in the entire season and I enjoyed the relaxed, easy-going nature of the episode. The best word to describe this ep is 'pleasant'.

SO from "I have no idea what my ancestors were doing in this time frame" in Future's End" to "I wouldn't have become joined Starfleet if it wasn't for Shannen O'Donnell". Another warning against tossing around throwaway lines that can easily be done without.

"Oh yea, I mean they stopped building I 95 when they got to Baltimore because the Nattie Boe Beer Co had a warehouse in the way! Come on!" They have eminent domain for highways. Though in certain cases they may be able to do it for economic development (thank you Kelo v. New London) it's extremely rare. One relatively modern example of a holdout affecting plans is the Citigroup Center in NYC: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Early_engineering_details (Actually I-95 was held up for a while due to local opposition, with the final alignment being somewhat different from the original plans; I-70 was never finished, and ends at a park and ride on the city limits. The recently-published book "The Big Roads" about the origins of the Interstates goes into detail about Baltimore's plans.)

Though in this case it was a little silly that they needed to buy up an entire small town. Why not just buy the same amount of land from one outlying farmer?

Well, call me boring, but when i tune in to Star Trek: Voyager i expect a) a science fiction show b) about Voyager and it's crew. This was neither. Now, I don't mind being surprised by something great, but this was just bland. I guess it's a matter of taste, I also hate mirror universe episodes and Voyager's incessant use of the reset button. This episode just hit reset before it even started. I also find it something of a stretch that Janeway's great great whatever grandmother was also her identical twin.

I'm more in agreement with tobe on this one...it bored me to tears...I don't really care about Janeway's ancestry 400 years ago...I care about Janeway's present mission to get Voyager home, this episode had absolutely nothing to do with that.

The O'Donnell scenes fall flat flat flat for me- total snorefest (although is it me or is Henry a dead ringer for Gene Roddenberry?) The scenes on Voyager, however, are totally charming and funny, some of the best crew interaction scenes in the series. They don't completely redeem the episode, but I'm very glad to have seen them.

Captain Jim

Enjoyable enough, if not especially memorable. There have certainly been a lot of episodes that were worse. Of course, as a resident of Canton, Ohio (also Brannon Braga's hometown), I got a kick out of the repeated references.

Interesting how Michael and the other Tom Paris History Buff haters don't show up for this one. I guess as long as it's made up history it's OK, right?

Perhaps the one major flaw of ST is that always portrays the future of humanity and technological "progress" as so benign. In fact, the technologically influenced future is more dystopian than utopian, given global warming, nuclear waste, and countless industrial hazards -- all created by industrial and technological development. There could have been star ships and a future without with war or poverty IF humanity's values were no so similar to that of Malon wasteships. However, as long as fossil fuel "petro-tyrranies" reign supreme -- and there is no sign that their power is abating -- then the utopian future will be hellish, not the ideal that ST portrays. The colonists we often see on the M class planets who garden and live simply and in peace is perhaps a better ideal to aspire to right now, given that climate change, peak oil and the mass extinction of species and eco-system disasters caused by extraction industries and toxic pollution -- all in the name of "progress" -- are leading to the end of life on this planet. Colonization of Mars is a distant dream. We need to stop wrecking this planet first. Then we can start to build starships and explore space and meet new species. If they met us in our present condition they would regard us as the Vulcans did upon first contact, or as the aliens did in The Day the Earth Stood Still: unworthy of possessing machines and space technology, given our complete disregard for other species, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. We need to work on our values first and foremost. This episode fails in my opinion because it does not reflect that and portrays the bookstore owner as backward and regressive. Recall "Remembrance" in which non-technological people suffer a genocide; that is the more frightening future we might face as the gap between technological haves and have-nots continues to widen.

@Paul: Might point out that the opposite is true regarding space exploration/settlement. If the earth gets too bad, it would force people into space to find a new place to live. In Asimov's Robots and Empire, the robots purposely cause earth to slowly be uninhabitable in order to force humans into space. People are not going to permanently settle space unless there are economic or social reasons to do so. That's just the way it is. To be honest, I wouldn't mind if global warming forces us into space.

This was a great episode. It was great seeing a show that wasn't all about the alien of the week, the attack on Voyager of the week, or "they're going to somehow destroy voyager again" story of the week. This was about people, their interactions and their finding themselves. And it was good getting away from the ship for a change, into a normal. real world. I admit that their wasn't real chemistry between O'Donnell & Janeway; they needed to have something more substantial before the "cookie affect". But episodes are not perfect and, despite that failing, this episode was most enjoyable.

The most boring st episode ever...

I wouldn't call this episode "filler" (if you did, about 95% of Voyager episodes would have that label), and I enjoyed the scenes set in the present. As for the O'Donnell story, it didn't work for me at all. One of the reasons is that I completely agreed with Henry Janeway's wish to protect what he cherished most even when it is an inconvenience for a large corporation.

ProgHead777

I rather enjoyed this episode. It definitely would have been better if the role of Henry Janeway had been better cast. Nothing against Kevin Tighe's acting abilities, but he simply had zero chemistry with Kate Mulgrew in this episode. While the apparent age difference was likely a factor, I don't think it was the ONLY factor. This lack of chemistry was certainly one of the reasons why Henry's drastic change of heart in the end came off as sudden and unrealistic. Shannon's confession of romantic feelings for Henry just simply didn't carry enough emotional weight or resonance with the audience to justify such a dramatic reversal. Overall, I was engaged by the story that was being told, I was interested to see where it was going, and I was reasonably satisfied by its conclusion. It wasn't a great episode by any measure, but it really doesn't deserve the vitriol it receives in many circles.

Jo Jo Meastro

It was funny seeing such a (near enough) present day story sandwiched into an episode of Voyager. If you took the present day stuff on its own and teaked it just slightly, it could be one of those obscure really corny 1990s' made-for-TV christmas movies! That may sound like a discredit to '11:59' but I did enjoy it, I think there was intentional fluffiness added because this is the way we often nostalgically reflect and eagerly recount family stories. It managed to be heart warming even while I shook my head at some of the unlikely details of the tale...which is again true with many of the tall tales our parents and aunties love to tell! I liked the change of pace and it felt well-earned when the crew had their family moment. Given the plot summaries for the last 3 episodes, it looks like the calm before the storm has passed! I'd give this sentimental, enjoyable and feel-good episode 3 stars. Too bad Enterprises' take on this sort of story (Carbon Creek) was rubbish!

1st. To the enviro-wacko crowd, global warming stopped about 25 years ago, pay attention, if anything we are back to colling. Peak oil is a myth and actually technology has and continues to IMPROVE both humanity AND the environment. The fact is the more adavanced a society becomes the CLEANER it becomes because of technical and human progress. 2nd. Since the so-called milleanium gate is, of course, fiction it was silly to put the story in the present day (more or less). It would have been better and obeyed the previous continuity to simply make it a project in the near future.

first, i thought it was hilarious when jammer mentioned the job market in 2001 in his 1999 review. between the internet bubble popping and 9/11 he had no idea what was coming just 2 years later. secondly, my favorite part of the episode was harry kim's story about his ancestors. i liked that whole seen in the lounge. although, i like the more action mystery episodes, i would say this was good. but maybe only 2 or 2.5. in truth, i cant wait for next episode. "relativity."wheni think of Voyager i always think of the next episode in season 5.

For those complaining about how this would be more realistic if it were set in the near future... In 1999, when this aired, 2001 WAS the near future. That said, I found the episode rather dull. The characters of O'Donnell and Henry did not engage me and the episode did not hold my attention.

"(But I must say that given the job market today, I find the idea of a brilliant, apparently respected engineer unable to find work to be slightly dubious.)" Just wait 8 years, Jammer.

To drop back to a comment above, by Adam, unfortunately I'd have to agree. I'm quite sure we won't really begin to explore space for new worlds etc until forced to by environmental or economic pressures. Pleasant enough ep., but like others I didn't especially buy the chemistry between Janeway and O'Donnell, although I'm generally in favour of these more quiet, background episodes.

The building they were building looked like something they'd put up in Dubai. Already they have begun construction of the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, which will be over 1000 meters high. So, the Star Trek version of the future wasn't that much off, just 10 years or so ;) The plot set-up was a little hokey - nice touch with the gender roles reversal, very progressive. However, I'm sure Janeway got a good settlement from the corporation for his dusty used book shop and perhaps eventually opened a slightly more upscale place in the new shiny millennium gate; people gotta read right?

For those who read Ian's comment and agree with him, (or disagree with him) I recommend the website: "skeptical science". It is a very informative site; all of their articles(as far as I know) provide references to peer-reviewed research papers. (I know its an old comment, but maybe someone will read it and learn something)

As a physicist, Ian's comment bugged me as well, Eric.

SkepticalMI

I hate to digress, but I'm hoping Eric learns something as well. As an author of 20-odd peer reviewed articles myself, I can assure you that peer review is not synonymous with fact, or even anything more than the most rudimentary quality control. More importantly, I have a strong distaste for anyone manipulating science for their own agenda, regardless of what agenda that is. The "Skeptical" Science website is anything but. Science is about questioning one's hypotheses and accepting the facts wherever they might lead. It is not about massaging said facts to fit one's political agenda (an all too often circumstance in academia, I'm afraid). John Cook, and many so-called scientists who merely spout the party line about settled science or consensus or whatever without truly engaging real arguments are an affront to my screen name (named after Robert Boyle's famous book that practically created modern chemistry). Instead of seeking to understand and to learn, the site cherry picks and ignores data, conflates multiple issues, and spends time on multiple straw men as proof of other claims. That's not to say that Ian is correct about everything (although yeah, peak oil is hypothetical math rather than reality). Frank Herbert was wrong; it is not religion and politics being put in the same cart that causes the whirlwind, but rather science and politics. Combining those two is a travesty for both science and politics.

Not bad, not good. A meh character development episode. Full of holes, short on the deepness it wanted to achieve.

The plot of the evil developer and the one holdout who won't sell was a worn-out cliche even when this episode first ran. It's just not a Star Trek episode, it's just a thin veneer over an entirely unrelated story to make it look like Star Trek. Showing that the problems of today can be solved is not a flaw, it is a strength. If problems cannot be solved then complaining about problems becomes nothing more than bleating. The only people who solve problems are those who believe they can be solved. If a century ago, someone wrote a story about smallpox being eradicated and polio nearly so, many would have laughed. At the same time, that problems can be solved doesn't mean the doesn't justify the pseudo-skepticism of thinking they the problems don't exist.

colincostello

A disappointing episode. Not really in the Trek spirit. Well acted, but that is all I can say about it. Colin

Jeff Bedard

I do enjoy this episode, but I have to wonder if Voyager's library computer would truly contain the vast amounts of biographical and historical data the crew uses in this episode to research the past. It seems like any starship (not just Voyager) can call up information on anyone or anything no matter what world or time period. I just find it a little hard to believe.

Well, on the one hand, I appreciate Voyager trying something new occasionally. On the other hand, this was really slowmoving and rather pointless. It's a good thing they cut back to the Voyager crew every now and again, or I would have been bored to tears. The Voyager scenes work really well, but the Millenium Gate story was beyond boring. I just couldn't bring myself to care about anyone involved. And like Jeff Bedard says, why would Voyager have so much history in their database? Same issue I complained about back in 'Once Upon a Time'. There is no reason for Voyager to have this in their database, just like there was no reason for them to have children's stories stored in the holodeck. Mostly a pointless episode. The only thing worth remembering this for is the nice 'Voyager crew as a family' scenes. The Millenium Gate story itself amounts to nothing and is best left forgotten, if you ask me.

@Tim "Can't stand it myself. It's made well, but I really can't bring myself to watch it if I rerun the show on DVD, as it just has nothing to do with Star Trek." I agree 101 percent. I also appreciate the comment from the person who noted that in "Future's End" Janeway said she had no idea what her ancestors were doing at the end of the twentieth century. Maybe if they remaster "Voyager" they can redo that scene.

grumpy_otter

SkepticalMI, I spent a bit of time wandering around that Skeptical Science website and am not sure what your objections are. I am not enough of an expert to recognize conflated issues, but it looks like they have a good goal. Now, I am NOT AT ALL disagreeing that science should be separate from politics, but in the case of climate change, it is the politicians who grabbed it and are hanging on for dear life and spending tons of money to prove that warming is not occurring. In a world where you can't wear white while visiting Hong Kong, and climate scientists are suffering from PTSD because of the abuse they receive, and a politician says, “Not to diminish anything about the climate at all, but Mr. President, I believe most of us would think that a beheading is a far greater threat than a sunburn," do we not need some scientists fighting back? Bottom line for me, even if global warming is completely a myth, the things the left wants to do are things like limit factories that spew choking smoke in the air, and I am on board with that. I have spent enough time driving past places that made my eyes tear up that I would like to see some limits on that kind of stuff. So if we make good changes for the wrong reason--is that bad?

Diamond Dave

As the show says, "What does that have to do with anything"? I am sympathetic with those who feel that this has nothing to do with Trek, and I really wonder what exactly the point was. The year 2000 scenes just left me cold, as there was nothing there I could get invested in. The whole thing seemed forced, cliched and derivative. Indeed probably the only redeeming factor in this is the final scene, which has some genuine heart, and some of the earlier Voyager scenes. 1.5 stars.

Nice to see this episode receive some positive reviews. I enjoyed it. Fun? No.... but interesting. I think the best part of this episode is that it reveals a problem that most everyone has which makes out heroes more human. We all at one time or another hold someone (or an event) up and it or they motivate us. Many times in the future the truth comes out and we are disappointed. "Her life captured your imagination. Historical details are irrelevant. TUVOK: I concur with that analysis. CHAKOTAY: If it weren't for Shannon O'Donnel, you never would have joined Starfleet." It doesn't matter what motivates you as long as you are motivated. Solid hour of no explosions/aliens/shields at 47%. I enjoyed meeting Shannon. 3.5 stars (and we get that great picture of the entire cast)

Whatever (0)

@ SkepticalMI, "Frank Herbert was wrong; it is not religion and politics being put in the same cart that causes the whirlwind, but rather science and politics. Combining those two is a travesty for both science and politics." What we face now in politics and science might be annoying, but Herbert was talking about a whirlwind that would cause the death of billions and enslave all of humanity for generations. If you think mixing science and politics is a danger to that level of magnitude, then I would suggest that this would be a particular case of science being used *as* as a religion, to scare people or sway them with rhetoric. It religion is what captures belief and imagination, and politics is how the levers are pulled, then religion as such need not be defined merely as that which deals with 'spiritual' matters. All public frenzy is religious in nature.

I came for a Star Trek episode not a crappy lifetime movie. .5 stars

0 for me. I always skip it now. It's daytime telly stuff and while it may be a reasonable story and production it has absolutely *zero* to do with Star Trek. This is like someone stuck the wrong tape in when broadcasting. Even accepting that it's filler material I don't find the story that interesting anyway.

Yawn. Maybe I'd enjoy it more if I didn't watched it at 3am.

Jeffrey Jakucyk

I don't dislike this episode, and I applaud them for trying something different. I also don't agree that it's just filler because it isn't sci-fi. TNG's "Family" is similar, and it's an outstanding character piece. DS9's "Past Tense" is also a very similar story, and an important one. That said, speaking of "Past Tense" there is a similar kind of artificiality I feel in both of these episodes. Maybe it's the studio backlot setting which is almost real but not quite, or the strangely quiet and somewhat stilted acting which might be a symptom of being outside the actors' comfort zones, but both these episodes have something of a Truman Show feel to them that doesn't sit quite right with me.

OK, so maybe I'm nitpicking here - but I've never liked the ancestor stories in science fiction - why can't they just hire another actor to play Shannon o"donnell, why did it have to be Kate Mulgrew. She did a good job - it's just something I don't like.

dave johnson

Reading the comments in episode after episode from this Michael fellow.. I can't fathom why he is watching these shows if he hates them all... unless they are action adventure shows with no character moments, they are crap to him. Strange way to spend his spare time. I prefer to spend my personal time doing things I enjoy.

@dave johnson You know, I'm a communications student, and am in a class examining audience and reception, and one thing that came up was the idea of "hate watching" something. Essentially, it's watching something you hate, and getting enjoyment from poking holes in it. Now, to regular fans of something, such as Star Trek, to see this is confusing, and can maybe sometimes feel like you may be personally attacked for liking this thing that someone enjoys ripping to shreds. But to better understand this, one need not look further than the Phantom Menace. Yes, there are those who enjoy the movie, but I would hazard to guess that many more watch it to point out just how and where in it's narrative, characterization and runtime that movie failed, if for nothing else to make jokes at it's expense. And not to get political, but to merely give a recent example, it's no doubt a factor in the interest in American politics, talk shows tapping into that "hate watch" mentality that anti-Trump fans have in regards to his Presidency. Regardless of that political example and my hypothisizing about it (seriously, I've seen how heated that stuff can get and want to avoid interjecting into it) though and instead focusing soley on pop culture, hate watching something is just another way to consume mass media, and strange as it may seem to those that like the thing being torn apart, it is just as legitamate way to consume pop culture as any other, as it is very much so an individual thing, unique to each viewer. That said, I totally get the initial defensiveness to it though, like, "hey, stop ragging on this thing I like." I just try to view that stuff instead as what it is, a differing perspective and read growing out of different experiences, circumstances, and dispositions, which in turn, helps me to expand my understanding of the world and the people on it, so I can be more understanding of others.

I should confess though to a certain level of hypocrisy in my last comment, as some months ago I did rip into someone on this very site for having a different read of an episode, and different opinions in general, and made some insinuations about the commenter personally. And then I never participated in the following debate. I was going through some other frusterating things at the time, and a button got pushed, and I believe some of that frusteration got vented towards that commenter. As such, if that person is still around and reading comments, I would like to say that, despite disagreeing on some fundamental issues, I was still out of line and am offering my apologies to you. Even if it is months later and we've all moved on.

If this is filler, it's my kind of filler. A sweet episode. :)

Personally, I can see why this story is called filler. To me, filler has nothing to do with whether a story has explosions or aliens. As was mentioned above, TNG's "Family" is a great example of an episode which shows how Star Trek episodes can just be about people and can be done brilliantly. An episode doesn't have to advance the plot to not be filler (very rarely did an episode of TOS or TNG ever have a lasting impact). An episode just needs to make you care about the events to the point where you can see why the episode was made. In episodes like "Mortal Coil" the characters went through a major crisis you could genuinely care about. In this case, Janeway was concerned that an ancestor from a long time ago that you'd never heard of before wasn't quite the person she thought. There were no "stakes" though. Janeway wasn't an insecure child desperately drawing her strength from the heroic image of the stories of her ancestors. She's a successful starship captain. If it had turned out Janeway's ancestor was actually a cannibalistic serial killer, Janeway might have been disappointed but she'd still have been the same person and would have just moved on. There was no drama to any of that. Even in the past, it was a foregone conclusion that the Millennium Gate would be built (as we were told at the start of the episode) so there was no drama to that either (it also didn't help that we learnt immediately that Henry's name was Janeway so we didn't exactly get shocked they ended up together). It wasn't a bad episode. It was inoffensive. At the same time, it wasn't fun, silly, exciting, dramatic, challenging, innovative, mindless entertainment or necessary exposition. There was no clear reason why this episode took place which is why it felt like filler.

The whole premise of this episode is impossible to buy. A corporation wants to bulldoze an entire town to build this thing? Have the writers ever been to Indiana? I could show them a few cornfields that would be a lot cheaper to plow under. Or they could do it in Iowa and use Kevin Costner's land from Field of Dreams.

I agree with the haters here. One of my least favorite episodes in all of Star Trek. The biggest problem is that Kate Mulgrew has never been well served by the writing where Janeway spouts pseudo-profundities (usually in the last 5 minutes of many episodes). Unfortunately, this episode is chock full of her Shannon O'Donnel doing exactly that, and then you have Kevin Tighe spewing his own set of BS platitudes. The episode would have been marginally better if Mulgrew tried to not play O'Donnel pretty much exactly as Janeway, and better still if they got an entirely different actress to play the character. But it still would have been a bad episode. And as others noted, there is so much that is just off. A skyscraper biosphere mixed with a shopping mall? People who pretend they are dining in Paris by propping a book open? TV news keeping a 24 hour vigil outside a holdout business? And finally, I am bothered that the show was not true to Star Trek by (a) portraying a monstrous commercial development as some kind of moral progress and (b) giving early and mid-21st century Earth a bucolic depiction, ignoring prior continuity that it was instead a giant sh*t show (Bell Riots, First Contact).

This episode sux

Oh yeah! Let's build a 2x Burj Khalifa (and 8x large, good for rainy days), in the MIDDLE of a town that is surrounded by EMPTY plains. I would meet the architects and, btw, Janeway ancestors are really dumb, and this episode is a boring poop. Jammer, leave Star Trek alone! Your target is Walker TexASS Ranger...

According to the story Harry tells, transmitters were not subspace in 2210. Is this possible? Enterprise was set in 2151 to 2155, was it not?

Startrekwatcher

When I originally watched it I didn’t much care for it but I’ve warmed up to it ever so slightly over the years. Kate Mulgrew really felt comfortable in her role as Shannon O’Donnell who made me feel sorry for her and her plight in life —and the story has that comfort food feel to it. I could have done without the Paris, Neelix, Harry parts. Quite annoying but the ending was sweet 2.5 stars

John Harmon

I like the world building. I'm always interested in fleshing out there fictional history of the Star Trek world. Just about every TV show at this time had a Y2K episode. I guess not even Star Trek was immune to it. Oddly enough, one of my favorite moments was Harry Kim talking about one of his ancestors in one of the early deep space missions. I don't know why I loved it so much. It just rang so true. Of course early deep space exploration would be filled with that kind of trial and error. I thought it was neat. Agreed about the chemistry between O'Donnell and Janeway. Definitely didn't ring true.

So, the "what is the point of this episode?" comes up a lot with one-offs, and the usual rejoinder is "well, what is the point of ANY of this? if it's a good story, it's good." I agree with the latter point, and don't think it's intrinsically a problem for there to be a one-off story relatively disconnected from everything else. That said, I feel like one-off episodes should probably justify themselves with some thematic connection to the rest of the series. Here, the big one is that Shannon O'Donnell is meant to be a proto-Kathryn, which we know because Kathryn says so and also she's played by Kate Melgrew. And Henry Janeway is, also, an ancestor of Kathryn. So what do we learn from these antecedents? The two arcs of the episode are: 1) in the future, Kathryn had believed that her ancestor Shannon O'Donnell was essential for the creation of the Millennium Gate, but then learns she was "just" an ordinary person; 2) in the past, Shannon believed herself isolated, but manages to build a life with Henry in the Millennium Biodome thing. The structure sort of suggests that we're meant to see that Shannon, despite superficially being much more ordinary than the woman Kathryn had believed her to be, still *did* have a decisive role in letting the Millennium Gate happened, albeit on a much smaller, personal scale. Besides saying something about how our heroes are still worth admiring even if they didn't do things that would be considered overtly heroic, I think it's maybe suggesting that Janeway needs to recalibrate her picture of what heroism actually is, and seeing smaller, more personal things as being as important as the big space battles. (Voyager, the series, take note!) Along those lines, Shannon does proto-captain's logs, some relatively low-impact addictions (coffee for Kathryn, junk food for Shannon), is ambitious, has an exploratory attitude, and is very socially isolated, at least initially. She seems to be in a permanent self-imposed isolation/funk after her failure to succeed at NASA, and over the course of the episode learns to reopen her heart, and in doing so also manages to restart her career -- which is a benefit, but a mostly incidental one. This season has emphasized Kathryn's isolation throughout, sometimes effectively and sometimes less so, but, as suggested in Night, the way out for Kathryn is to stop punishing herself and to accept that other people can share her burden, that her life isn't over because she's "failed" (in Kathryn's case, I guess, because she's starting to feel like her Caretaker decision was wrong). I'm unclear on whether Kathryn actually sees enough of the December 2000 story to be able to get that message, but it does end with two family snapshots linking the two Melgrew characters, so, maybe she gets it, at least in part. I don't really find the story riveting and I somehow don't quite get how Kathryn somehow got this impression of absolute certainty about her ancestor's accomplishments without her scientist-explorer mind ever thinking to crack open a history textbook to see if these family rumours were correct. Why would the Janeway/O'Donnell clan spread this story anyway? I don't quite get it. And a lot of time is spent on Henry Janeway's reactionary, living-in-the-past beliefs, only for him to drop them out of ~love~ at the last minute, which seems a little convenient. Still, I think the acting is generally good and the characterization more or less effective. 3 stars.

Intergalactic Hegemon

I enjoyed this episode, its thoughtfulness, and the perspective on our current times by those hundreds of years in the future. My brain was exercising a good deal as I watched. But Tuvok only had one line.

What a weird episode. Story made no sense.

SouthofNorth

Nice enough episode. Would've enjoyed it more if they had a different actress playing Shannon O'Donnell.

Mellow, heartfelt episode that is a good change of pace for VOY without any obvious villains, phaser fights or aliens. Definitely like the premise about family, history, genealogy and we get the insight into Janeway's character that is curious and respectful of history, inspired by it. Reminds me of "Carbon Creek" from ENT, which I liked a lot. It's far from flawless though as the story has some holes, for me. I didn't buy O'Donnel being an engineer but taking a beat up boat of a car on an exploration drive across the midwest without a dollar to her name. Yes, random encounters can pop up but the eventual romance/marriage seems a bit of a stretch given the philosophical differences (and it seems age difference). The giving-in by Henry Janeway at 11:59 seemed abrupt especially with how much at odds he was with O'Donnel. It did seem a bit contrived with how fixated the two were on such opposing philosophies (past vs. future) -- but through this, good arguments were made on both sides. The bit about O'Donnel and the cookies not tasting right was an interesting way of bringing about the denouement. Captain Janeway may have wished for O'Donnel to have had a bigger part to play in the Millennium Gate, but what's important is that she believed O'Donnel was somebody really important and was thus inspired and eager to learn about her history. The flashbacks worked well because there weren't too many of them. It created a good vibe with all the ship's important cast getting into this family origins kick. The role of a photo can be a strong one and all it represents works well here. 2.5 stars for "11:59" -- VOY can put forth some very different kinds of episodes every now and then and it generally works well here in terms of getting the message across about family, reflecting on those who came before and laying the groundwork for what we do or aspire to do. Good performance from Mulgrew as O'Donnel but the Henry Janeway character seemed very hard-headed for the most part before giving in at the last second.

I Hate Janeway

I agree with Jake Taylor who wrote: "Man this episode feels so forced in every way. These two people have nothing in common and the are so different, and ages apart. I am shown no reason as a viewer why they should get married." I agree that this episode feels like filler.

RandomThoughts

Hello Everyone! Boy. This one is just... boy. I didn't like it during the original run, agreeing with the forced feel of the whole thing. I did attempt to give it a shot during my re-watch, as I've seen quite a few episodes in a new light as I've slowly crept along... But no. To me, it was cringe-inducing. And not just for the forced feel, but for the forced drama of a small town in Indiana having to decide if it wants to be razed to the ground. I lived in small town (1,800) Michigan, near the Indiana border, when this first aired, and now live in small town South-central Indiana. I'm thinking this town looks about the size of Austin. One main drag going through and that's about it. So I'd peg the town shown here to be around 1,500 to 2,500 people. Now, most of the towns this size in Indiana are not that big geographically, not their town parts anyway. Nearly all of them, if you drive two miles (or less, sometimes much less) from downtown in any direction, put you in areas with huge acreages of farmland. For me, I just could not wrap my head around why they'd want to destroy Austin (for example), instead of building it at the edge of town. They'd need a bar, a few restaurants, gas stations, and interstate access. Bang! Build it so it stops just outside of town, and you have all of these things. Destroying the small town to plop this thing down on top of it was just stupid to me, and all I thought was it must have been written by someone who had not been to small-town America for a while, if ever. And I don't believe it was a larger city with 15,000 or so people, because it just didn't look that big. If they wiped out Seymour or Columbus, they'd not only lose all the shops, but also the motels and the hospital. Nope, it looked village-sized to me. They'd not bother to buy out all of those business people, and the townsfolk. They'd buy up farmland close to an interstate, and make an off-ramp for it. And that... is why I dislike this episode. It must be thumbs down... Regards... RT

My three sins of Star Trek: 1.) Boring 2.) Contrived 3.) Irrelevant ...actually there's a fourth sin: 4.) Midwest in winter. There are few things so depressing. This episode seems to enthusiastically commit all three (four) sins with the knobs turned way up. I've watched every episode of Star Trek and might say that this is as bad as it ever got. At least the cheesy holodeck episodes have interesting sets and goofy actors. At least 'Maneuvers' has good special effects and acting. At least the babe episodes have hot babes and take place on the actual ship. I'm off to memory alpha to read the behind the scenes about the production, curious to learn how this happened.

Interesting story. Well done by Mulgrew. I was sorry to see Canton miss out, though. Buckeyes > Hoosiers, any century of the millennium. Reminded me of that Enterprise ep, where T'Pol tells the story pic her grandmother on Earth.

A few comments after reading the review and comments: --the Henry Janeway role was badly miscast. Just no chemistry. I guess they were going for ordinary small town guy, but Mulgrew has a strong, somewhat unusual look to her, and it just didn't work. --The title makes me think that Janeway is running out of time somehow. That, at some point, it will be late in the day, almost too late in the day, and she'll have to make a decision. But it may not be foreshadowing, may just be about her general isolation and her need to connect with others before it's too late.

Millennium Gate Sux

Sooooo... This Millennium Falcon, pardon Gate, is a sort of "3x Burj Khalifa" built ON the downtown of a little nobodycares town surrounded by a uninhabited neverending plain. Wow, who is the kanar-addicted genius who projected it?

Clearly these Millennium Gate folk never played SimCity...

I am ashamed to say that this episode was so boring I stopped watching after the fender bender. I am usually easy on the Star Treks but there is an exception to every rule I suppose. Maybe the episode was decent and maybe I will actually finish it someday but I had I boredom meltdown here.

Tim-1, You should feel ashamed. Slap yourself in the face and get back in front of that TV!! :-)

Thank you Yanks. I needed that!

Sleeper Agent

If Henry Janeway would only have been played by a more suitable actor this would've been a total slam dunk. With that said, this is a super cozy VOY episode and a welcome breath of fresh air (just like the previous episode). After half a dozen more or less forgettable episodes in the middle of season 5, I'm really glad things are shaping up just as we are nearing the end. Things I liked about 11:59: -Mulgrew once again giving a grandiose performance. She really is the pillar of Voyager. -"Ferengi talk about Wall Street as if it were Holy Ground." -That out of focus "Fish Tales" pinball machine in the background at the pub. -Harry Kim's family story. -Neelix theorizing about 7of9.5 -The NYE feeling. Things I didn't like: -Neelix and Paris battle of useless earth trivia. -Paris being a human encyclopedia of Mars projects from the 1970's 'til current Star date. (really? wtf) 3 Solid stars.

I was hoping the episode would make some reference to the Eugenics Wars, which happened in the mid 90s, and earth should have been recovering from, and isn,t the World War 3 nearly upon us? Or was it in the 21st century? And the reference first contact by the Vulcans, was this before the movie? It would have been nice to build on canon instead of potentially violating it as Voyager and Enterprise are won’t to do. On another note, see The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh paperback triology for an interesting take on The Eugenics Wars and 90s issues, like nuclear testing and global warming and terrorism. It also has Gary 7, nicely conflates Trek and our past. By the way, I know it’s an old comment from a few years back but any website they calls itself Skeptical Science is probably anything but, science is by definition skeptical and shouldn’t have to go out of its way to proclaim that. It is trying to use science to justify politics and corporate goals that are not supported by a majority of scientific opinion, as well as our own eyes and common sense. In the last ten years beaches in California and Hawaii shrink or disappear, fire season lasts all year and gets more intense as whole towns burn every year now, and hurricanes now threaten Ireland and New York City.

A reference to the Eugenics Wars would indeed have been nice. But, this isn't the first time VOY has done a story set in the 1990s and completely ignored the Eugenics Wars. As for World War III - that didn't happen until the mid-21st century. This story is set at least 40 years before. And First Contact with the Vulcans didn't happen until 2063.

Also living in southern Indiana, I guess I agree with cheerful RandomThought’s (and others’) objection to the notion that such a project would logically displace the downtown of a small Indiana town rather than being built in a cornfield. But more fundamentally than that, it seems a stretch that anyone would opt to build such a massive project in an area of such low population density, and of such slight tourist interest in the first place. (Santa Claus Land at Holiday World is more in keeping with Hoosier development ideas.) They’d never begin to fill the commercial spaces proposed, much less populate the tower. Also, we alREADy have communities capable of sustainable settlement. They’re called “small farm towns in the Midwest.” As a native of the Midwest, I found the town itself , its apparent demographics, and its geography rather vague and contradictory. It had very much the vibe of a northern Indiana small city (and there IS a Portage there). The fender-bending scene looked to be set in a city of 15,000 or more - a Columbus or Bloomington would have been believable. But one line refers to going “up” to Bloomington, which almost has to set it south of that location (because otherwise, you’d go “up” to Indianapolis. The night scenes do look more like small-town southern Indiana - but I lived here at that time, and I’m unaware of any 2-story bookstores in any town down in these parts. THAT looks more like an urban thing. Also, unless it was Evansville, one of the towns across the river from Louisville, Terre Haute, or Bloomington itself...there would certainly be no towns with TV stations putting news crews on the street to follow such a little drama. If the production folks had REALLY wanted to localize it convincingly, a shot of a town square and courthouse would have screamed “Indiana” at the top of its cinematic little lungs. For that matter, Huntingburg (which had hosted Hollywood for “A League of Their Own” and “Hard Rain” in the 90s, would have made the production welcome. Also, 13-14 year-old Janeway Junior couldn’t have casually walked into a sports bar looking for Shannon. Geez. So yeah. It’s Hollywood getting the small town America of Flyover Country wrong-wrong-wrong, building it out of tropes, tripe, and stereotypes. We’re used to it, but it’s still annoying. Couldn’t they even bother to look at a map and give it some thought? What was historically right: the cars, the way the ignition failure of the clapped-out 80s wagon sounded and behaved, and the dirty frosted windows. I felt right at home in those scenes. Also, Interstate cookies do suck. Incomprehensible: why would a show which aired in May 1999 set a massive fictional building project just 18 months into the future? The Gate would already have to have been well into advanced planning by the production date - and, well, it just wasn’t. Odd. _______ But all those niggling niggles aside, I’m ok with a quiet episode. I think Janeway herself delivered the line which gives her ancestor’s story relevant emotional resonance. In the disappointment of realizing Shannon had not been the important personage she’d previously thought, doesn’t she say something to the effect of “yeah, my great ancestor was a failure who couldn’t follow through on her ambitions, and now I’ve failed by losing my crew halfway across the galaxy”? I’ll agree that Shannon and Henry didn’t have smoldering chemistry. But I think that’s consistent with the tired, second-chance vibe of the episode. At the moment, neither is where they must have thought they’d be in life, and yeah one looks forward and the other looks back (another element tying in with the NY’s eve theme). But they’re both literate, intelligent, articulate people with wide-ranging interests, they enjoy each others’ company (in a limited social/cultural environment where there are not endless options), and Shannon feels something for the good kid, whose personality speaks well of Henry’s values. They like each other, and they recognize a good solid thing when they see it. Neither, as they say, is getting any younger. They’re mature and world-weary enough to be beyond lust-fueled passion. Love doesn’t have to consume. The family picture from decades later suggests that they made a good life for themselves. That’s believable. And yeah the episode is quiet. But does drama always have to be dramatic?

The present (future?) day parts are admittedly very nice, but the flashbacks sections are so unbelievably dull and lacking in any emotional core that's it's hard to view this as more than a well-meaning dud.

This is a fine example of an episode that I got something more and something different out of than when I last saw it. In recent years I've become far more interested in family history, and a lot of the comments about "fragmented" and incomplete records rang very true. It's hard to put together a history of someone's life when they just did what most of us do: they grew up, they went to school, they worked, they had a family, and there's just very little to distinguish them. Nor is family oral tradition always accurate. There were a number of other things I enjoyed about the episode: - Jason is a level-headed kid that has a good relationship with his father. I appreciated that. - The project manager who offered O'Donnell the job could easily have been a stereotypical corporate villain, but he was written and played as a quiet and reasonable man. There really is no villain in this story, and it works just fine without one. - I enjoyed the story's theme that we can be inspired by what family from generations ago did. Overall, it was a quiet, enjoyable story, and a chance for Kate Mulgrew to do something a little different.

Midw3sterner

This might be the only episode of any television show where selling out your community to a big developer is presented as the right thing to do. The residents of this town seem to be putting all of their eggs in one basket and that is never a good thing: Detroit and the Auto Industry, Steel and Youngstown, Oil in Cleveland etc are obvious big examples but there are plenty of suburbs that have become ghettoes in the last 15 years because of the collapse of their local mall, and that’s what the Millenium Gate seems to be, a mall that looks like that ugly building down in St Louis.

I love Kim's story about his ancestor piloting a ship with crew in stasis and Seven just sits there without commenting that that is exactly what she did in One. And Tom says "I'd rather be in stasis" when he did everything he could to get out of that stasis. I don't think this story was a winking reference, which is an impressive bit of non-tinuity... Anyway, I do like this episode a lot.

Bob (a different one)

With the exception of "City on the Edge of Forever" I'd have been perfectly content if Trek never ventured back to the 20th/early 21st centuries.

Lewd Mangabey

Just wait until Henry Janeway learns about Amazon . . . Accepting the limits of the medium (a television hour, one episode in a 20+ episode season), I think this was an effective main plot that imparted a thoughtful message. Who says sci-fi needs lasers, battles, and technobabble? Reflecting on history, the limits of our ability to "know" what happened in the past, and thinking about the real lives of living, breathing people who came centuries before us makes for good, thoughtful fiction. So what if the A plot resolves itself in a very Christmas movie sort of way? This was not as good as Living Witness, but it was a thoughtful departure from the norm. The B plot could have been better: Janeway's sulky response to learning her ancestor was not who she thought she was, Paris's conveniently encyclopedic knowledge of "every" Mars mission, the ease with which Janeway could have and would have figured out the true story of a family hero -- this was weak stuff, and it had me rolling my eyes a bit. Then again, there's only so much you can cram into 45 minutes of screen time. I think 3 stars is fair.

MidshipmanNorris

@Cloudane Who I am not sure is even an active user here anymore, but they said this: "I guess Voyager did attract people who like to be spoon fed the same recipe week after week as unfortunately that's the way it went from about S3/4" I would add "From about Season 3 or 4 until now" :smirk: I happened on this episode and realized that I'd never seen it before, because at that time (May 1999) my family was in a heavily transitional state, having moved to Alabama during a brief 9 month period while my dad sought work in Nashville and looked for a house. I missed this one the first time around. I feel like Marty McFly, talking to his future father in Back to the Future: "Get outta here! I never knew you did anything creative!" :D hehehe It's nice, actually, to meet an unformulaic Voyager episode. It's a little bit "Wifetime Network Glurge" but not so much so that it's a bad bit of TV. It does make me nostalgic for the pre-9/11 days a bit. Boy howdy things did not stay the way they're presented here. :( Ugh.

ThatsOnYoutube

In an interesting twist, the Millennium Gate turned out to be a Borg/Ferengi plot to install a giant antennae on Earth. Once operational, the antennae broadcasts a signal that subtly causes humanity to become profit-seeking individuals. These creatures reap gains off the suffering of the weak, mercilessly pollute, and seek new profits in the stars. This weakens Earthlings, allowing the Borg to assimilate them easily by posing nanophage assimilation arachnotrons as the hottest new Christmas present, Tickle Me Eleven of Seven... And allowed a few Ferengi to amass a lot of value as time traveling bitcoin entrepreneurs.

’l agree that Shannon and Henry didn’t have smoldering chemistry. But I think that’s consistent with the tired, second-chance vibe of the episode. At the moment, neither is where they must have thought they’d be in life, and yeah one looks forward and the other looks back (another element tying in with the NY’s eve theme).' (Proteus, Nov. 25, 2019) Well said Proteus...l really liked your allusion to 'the tired second-chance vibe of the episode.' I especially enjoyed the Henry Janeway casting...precisely because he isn't a great romantic figure to sweep Shannon off her feet. The last thing the story needed was a Mr. Perfect middle-aged hottie with some carefully thought out strategy for taking on big business. It needed, instead, somebody with no real plan, but some kind of authenticity which, believe it or not, some women do find attractive. I think the chocolate chip cookie revelation thing came out of nowhere....and would have been better done as a revelation arising out of a book given to Shannon by Henry when she hit-the-road to say no hard feelings. The book should have been about the Pharos lighthouse, mentioned earlier by Seven, which would given Shannon the idea that the Millennium Gate could have a SETI beacon installed at the top. That idea would have captivated Henry, who clearly revered the Hellenistic cultural milieu. The whole Martian Colony angle was a waste. The writers should have focused on O'donel's supposed role in relation to what was to happen after her death, during First Contact. Paris could still do a faux pas line bumming Captain Janeway out: 'I never heard about an O'Donel doing anything during First Contact'. We the viewers would know however, that the Pharos beacon had attracted the Vulcans to get close enough to Earth to pick up Cochrane's warp flight at the crucial juncture. 3 stars from me. I also loved the music, as it was well-suited to the message.

Correction : 'The book should have been about the Pharos lighthouse, mentioned earlier by Seven, which would have given Shannon the idea that the Millennium Gate could have a SETI beacon installed at the top. '

Michael Miller

Boring... The last episode of voyager I watched so I could say I watched the entire series, and the 3 most boring ones including this were all on the same disk! What torture! I had the display on half the time so I knew when it would be over. At least Threshold was fun.

Maurice Hooijen

The Chinese Wall has totally different dimensions. Instead of 2400 km it’s more then 21000 km long and it is 1,5 m wide instead of 3.8 meters. How can they be so wrong ? Unbelievable…

The "happy ending" of the giant developer successfully demolishing the historic town to build a vanity megabuilding has really not aged well.

I'm not a mechanic so I'm not sure why the oil pan would have anything to do with her car not starting. I guess the writer wasn't a mechanic either. They should have said she got a new fuel pump or something. This is one of my favorite episodes and has become a new year's tradition for me. I always watch it before midnight on December 31st, just like tonight. I'm posting this at 11:59 by the way! Kind of silly I guess but it sure beats watching that stupid ball drop every year. I like the second photo at the end and the way it instantly fades to black, sort of indicating that photo was probably lost to time.

Not fond of this episode. Just didn't buy the relationship between the once and future Janeway. A similar episode I like much better is "Carbon Creek" of Enterprise.

EventualZen

@Jim "Carbon Creek" was much more sci-fi than "11:59". It was much more intriguing, I'd give it a 6/10.

This really was a nothingburger of an episode, and a very weird idea for any Star Trek writers' room to pitch, much less actually produce. I can understand why @Jeffrey's Tube said in the comments section to a recent SNW episode that "11:59" is just fundamentally not very "Trek-y". Even if we don't necessarily mind that per se, it's a pretty random* story about nothing much in particular regardless of genre. And while I expected some kind of compromise at the end so their inevitable marriage could happen, the Janeway dude just completely caved! Yet somehow I was charmed by what Jammer called the "pleasant" good-natured vibe the story put on. And I do admire a show being willing to say the big corporate developer might actually not be the bad guy.** So I was tempted to go three stars here, like Jammer, but really it's more of a three stars out of five type deal, so on Jammer's scale 2.5 seems more apt. *I wrote that before reading any comments, including @Iceblink's "random and pointless". Yeah, kinda...but in addition to that, as both Jammer and Iceblink also said, "pleasant". **Again, after reading comments I see @Midw3sterner making a similar point: "This might be the only episode of any television show where selling out your community to a big developer is presented as the right thing to do."

I was convinced the snow in exterior scenes was real, so when they commented on the Delta Flyers podcast that they did a great job making Southern California look like a Midwestern city in the winter, I was sure they were in error and that it was probably shot in Toronto or somewhere like that in the winter. But no, according to Memory Alpha, they did film it on the Paramount lot. Joe Menosky recalls, "David Livingston did it on the New York Street on Paramount lot. They brought in tons and tons of snow and blew it all over the street." Livingston himself recalled: "The production values were great. We shot it on the backlot at Paramount, and made it look like a Midwestern city. It was supposed to be in the winter, and we had snow, and we shot both day and night." That really is impressive and deserves a tip of the hat, even if it was in service of an episode which one review called "a somewhat dull Hallmark movie". (Ouch, but not totally off base.)

I'm really disliking Voyager in general more and more the more reruns I go for. It was the first Star Trek I watched, since it was the first to air in Sweden - on Public Service TV no less! Some episodes I've looked forward to has turned to ashes in my mouth, not at all as enjoyable episodes as I've remembered. 11:59 is not one of those. Oh, it is not a brilliant episode, it has a couple of plot issues. But it does have sincerity and thoughtfulness to an extent Voyager rarely reaches or even tries for. For some reason the quietness and everyday perspective reminds me about TNG's Inner Light, the way both of these episodes stick out in tone - no comparison otherwise. But watching it this time, it's not just about that sincerity for me but also the sentimentality and warmth, as it tried to be a still, somewhat sadness tinged episode. Having developed much more firm opinions on Trek, what I dislike about Voyager is just how passive aggresive and plain unpleasant this crew is. They're more often than not a competent crew, in line with the general aesthetics of Golden era Trek, but they're emotionally immature and problems that the TNG crew would deal with healthily will result in bickering with Voyager's. In this episode, there's none of that. There are a couple of wry jokes and a bit of banter, but for once the dialogue sells it as endearing and not toxic. This is not just an episode about captain Janeway re-evaluating a mythologized past, but about the crew making effort to bond. In that sense, it also has a bit in common with TNG's All Good Things in tone - and, yet again, no other comparison otherwise. I like the little scene between Paris and Neelix, trying to have a friendly competition about trivia - there are way too many scenes in Voyager in general with Tom making fun of the poor guy behind his back, it is nice seeing them enjoy each other's company for once. Janeway's ancestor made a home for herself in a totally unexpected place, and being eerily similar to our captain. This is theatre, and thus all good to me. It would be fair to criticize it as heavy handed, but I think Mulgrew and the writers sell it with slight differences between them. Shannon is more aloof compared to Kathryn, to name the most obvious thing, and she is more marked by being an alone drifter, while Kathryn has always been on top of things and never had enough alone time. The parallel works for me, and I like the affirmation that these people should be dear to Kathryn, and to each other. If Voyager had gotten this down in general, I would be more alright with its lack of new ideas, with the comparative lack of political themes compared to earlier shows ... it could still have got the message through that community and teamwork is the solution to problems. It's a shame, because the actors sure could pull this family warmth off when given the chance.

Alex (in the UK)

The negativity towards this episode in the comments surprises me. 11:59 is actually one of my favourite episodes of Voyager. We can tear apart almost any episode of TV, or any film or play. There are always shortcuts taken, things that don't make sense. As long as you can suspend disbelief sufficiently to allow the story's themes to emerge then it is working tolerably well. 11:59 is an episode that blessedly doesn't feature hard headed aliens firing on the ship, doesn't feature that someone's ancestor was key to life, the universe and everything. Instead, it's a human scale episode and takes a number of surprising stances. Let's take the tension between the past and the future, between history and progress. This episode doesn't just say "the past is worthless", or "the future is all that matters". It takes a more nuanced stance. Janeway's family history evidently has a significant dose of embellishment. Those of us who have investigated our family histories may know the feeling. A grandfather who tells his granddaughters how the family moved from the old country because of famine. True in essence, but not in fact - the family didn't move during the famine but 30 years afterwards but the economic conditions caused by the famine were a large contributing factor. Doesn't stop the granddaughter from confidently telling her own children how the family fled during the height of the famine. People embellish, it's normal. When the family historian encounters the facts, they might feel that the family's folklore is hokum, but they'd be wrong to write it all off as worthless. The episode also acknowledges that all we can affect is what we choose to do. Henry Janeway is stuck in romanticizing the distant past, the more distant the better. Shannon convinces him to roll the dice on something better. Is the Millennium Gate a great idea? Almost certainly not, but engineers hone their craft on a lot of rubbish before they get to work on the real deal. The modern steam engine was invented to pump out tin mines and coal mines. It transformed the world shortly thereafter. In the alternate universe that is Star Trek's history, who's to say that the environmental controls built for the Millennium Gate don't ultimately prove the concepts that allow for the Enterprise and the Voyager? H. Janeway risks that future for a misguided attempt to hold on to his today in Portage Creek, and Amazon would have driven him out of business in less than a decade. The fictional Portage Creek may be better off with its ridiculous mall, than with a main street of empty storefronts. The lack of a grand romance is, I think, part of the point. Shannon O'Donnell is a dreamer, like Katharine Janeway. Her feet are stuck on the ground, but her mind is in the cosmos. She is frustrated. At the beginning of the episode she recounts the idle and pointless curiosities she's seen, and how it doesn't really matter if she's in Indiana or any other state. She's going nowhere. In Portage Creek she adopts Henry's mission to get work, but she's conflicted about it. In Janeway's bookstore, she makes the first genuine connection in what seems to be a long, long time. She realizes that she can't carry on aimlessly wandering, and she finally puts down roots. It's not a grand romance, but it's realistic - she settles, to have a place in the world, and all she asks of Henry is that he commit to getting unstuck together by agreeing to sell the store. It's an episode that is tinged with sadness and also celebratory of reaching a kind of peace with reality, oddly for sci-fi. Captain Janeway reconciles her family history with the cold facts and comes to a realization that whether the family folklore was strictly true matters less than its effects on her. The senior staff celebrate their found family in each other, reflecting how Shannon and Henry and Jason also became a family together during the course of the episode. Perhaps I am the ideal audience for this episode as someone who is torn between the past and the future myself. History was my first interest and an ongoing one, sci-fi opened my eyes to the idea of the future and made me passionately interested in technology. As I get older, I see more and more value in both sides of the argument. History tells us much about what was, what can happen, gives us caution and tells us to be wary, while the promise of progress is alluring. Progress rarely gives without us losing something, but the direst warnings of history also rarely come to pass. The truth is in the reconciliation.

Moral of this story seemed something like: Heroes sometimes save the day in untraditional ways. Here, it DOES turn out to be true that the millennium bridge would not have existed without Shannon (at least not in the place it was built and maybe not ever; who’s to say there wouldn’t be roadblocks in an alternate location especially after alternate naysayers learned about the success of Janeway’s blockade). But the heroism of a woman persuading her romantic partner to get off his high horse so global progress can happen, isn’t celebrated the way being “one of the first women astronauts” would be. So Kathryn Janeway doesn’t have any historical records to read about the form that Shannon’s heroism actually took, when it wasn’t being an astronaut. The episode makes a poignant comment about how, even by the time Voyager surveys the delta quadrant, women like Kathryn Janeway are still searching for validation on a male standard of heroism, when women like Shannon had been heroic all along.

Sets the Bar for Boring.

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Captain Janeway recalls a 21st-century ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, involved in creating a seminal self-contained biosphere called the Millennium Gate on Earth on New Year's Eve 2000. O'Donnel must convince the last holdout, local bookstore owner Henry Janeway to approve the plan.

Kevin Tighe

John Carroll Lynch

Bradley Pierce

Majel Barrett Roddenberry

Christopher Curry

Kristina Hayes

James Greene

Kate Mulgrew

Cast appearances.

Robert Beltran

Roxann Dawson

Robert Duncan McNeill

Ethan Phillips

Robert Picardo

Garrett Wang

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Star Trek: Voyager/11:59

11:59 is the twenty-third episode of the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager , and the one hundred seventeenth episode overall.

Starring : Kate Mulgrew ( Captain Kathryn Janeway , Shannon O'Donnell)

Also Starring : Robert Beltran ( Chakotay ), Roxann Dawson ( B'Elanna Torres ), Robert Duncan McNeill ( Tom Paris ), Ethan Phillips ( Neelix ), Robert Picardo ( The Doctor ), Tim Russ ( Tuvok ), Jeri Ryan ( Seven of Nine ), Garrett Wang ( Harry Kim )

Special Guest Star : Kevin Tighe (Henry Janeway)

Guest Stars : Bradley Pierce (Jason)

and John Carroll Lynch (Moss)

Co-Stars : Christopher Curry (Driver), James Greene (Passerby), Kristina Hayes (Field Reporter), Majel Barrett (Computer Voice)

Plot Overview

Janeway recalls her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, who helped build the Millennium Gate on Earth.

Arc Advancement

Behind the scenes, allusions and references, memorable moments.

Episode Stubs
Star Trek: Voyager/Episodes

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

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.
Double-Meaning Title : Downplayed. There is an Exact Time to Failure , but it's just until the deadline imposed for Henry to agree to sell out before the company building the Millennium Gate has to change its plans and build it somewhere else (and thereby make the efforts of the rest of the townspeople and businesses that already sold out be All for Nothing ); that said, the third act of the episode is about O'Donnell convincing Henry to sell before the moment passes, with the townspeople, police, reporters, and corporate CEO all outside waiting for the outcome. At the same time, since the episode takes place on New Year's Eve (when many couple kiss When the Clock Strikes Twelve ), the fact O'Donnell succeeds in convincing him by promising to stay with Henry and his son implies their becoming a couple, which the viewer already knows will happen .
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, despite having a middle-school or high-school aged son. The actors are only about ten apart in real life, though, as Kevin Tighe 's grey hair makes the difference more pronounced.
Meaningful Name : Henry's bookstore is named Alexandria Books, referencing the famous Library and its knowledge, quite appropriate for a lover of all things classical. The meaning is further underscored by both the humorous moment in the Mess Hall when Tom and Neelix can't remember the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only for Seven to remind them it was the Pharos of Alexandria, and the episode's theme of knowledge of the past not always being accurate.
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.
Star Trek: Voyager S5 E21: "Someone to Watch Over Me"
Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 23 Relativity

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11:59 Stardate: 22 April 2375 Original Airdate: 5 May 1999

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Opinionated Voyager Episode Guide looks at 11:59, aka, the Carbon Creek before Carbon Creek.

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Star trek: voyager copied one of tng's best trademarks.

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Every Star Trek: TNG 2-Part Episode Ranked, Worst To Best

Does admiral janeway still need to time travel for star trek: voyager's finale to happen, jeri ryan would have turned down star trek: voyager because of 1 scene.

Star Trek: Voyager copied one of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's best storytelling choices, giving both shows a unique aspect during the franchise's classic era. Both Voyager and TNG are distinctive entries in the franchise, with their own hallmarks and things that set them apart from other series. TNG acted as the blueprint for Star Trek 's cadre of shows in the 1990s, but Voyager 's cast of characters and setting pushed the franchise into new territory in terms of science fiction concepts and diversity.

Still, out of all the classic Star Trek TV shows , Voyager and TNG arguably have the most in common. Voyager was an attempt by Star Trek 's creative team to return to more TNG -style storytelling , combating the innovative but more serialized arcs that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine created while it and Voyager aired at the same time. In terms of character dynamics and plot, Voyager also hit closer to TNG than either DS9 or Star Trek: Enterprise. This included one storytelling choice that set both TNG and Voyager up for success each season.

Star Trek: Voyager And TNG Ended Most Seasons With Two-Parters

Only two seasons from each show didn't end with two-part episodes.

Except for two seasons each, Star Trek: Voyager and The Next Generation ended every season with the first part of a two-parter. Two-parters often include some of the franchise's best storylines, so on the whole, it isn't surprising that Voyager and TNG choose to use them liberally. The only four seasons where they weren't employed were TNG seasons 1 and 2 and Voyager seasons 1 and 4 . In TNG 's case, the show was just getting its feet under it in terms of storytelling, and for Voyager , its initial avoidance was due to scheduling issues at the end of season 1.

DS9 didn't end any of its seasons with two-parters, but this was likely because the show already employed serialized storytelling that flowed from one episode to the next more seamlessly.

However, every other season of both shows ended with a Part 1, while the next season opener picked up with the second part. Surprisingly, this made both TNG and Voyager unique in the 1990s era of Star Trek . DS9 didn't end any of its seasons with two-parters, but this was likely because the show already employed serialized storytelling that flowed from one episode to the next more seamlessly. Likewise, Enterprise only ended one of its seasons with a two-parter, instead choosing to use them in the middle of seasons as a way to incorporate more contained arcs.

Why Star Trek Two-Parters Make Great Season Finales And Openers

Two-parters were one of 1990's star trek's greatest strengths.

While there was nothing wrong with the way DS9 and Enterprise used two-parters, Voyager and TNG 's model arguably found the greatest success with them . Star Trek two-parters are often big productions, and while they can work well in the middle of a season, saving up the bandwidth for a season finale or season opener tends to inflate their importance and lead to much greater popularity for the episode. This was certainly the case with TNG , whose two-part episode "The Best of Both Worlds" is often considered one of the best Star Trek episodes of all time .

Star Trek: The Next Generation had some truly amazing two-part episodes over the course of its seven seasons.

Two-parters also provide a built-in cliffhanger and hook to bring audiences back for more the following season. While this could be seen as an obvious ploy, there's no denying that it works. Other series outside of the Star Trek franchise often use this technique with their season finales as well, although Star Trek shows often denote it more explicitly. In the case of Voyager and TNG , both ramped up their use of this cliffhanger tactic in later seasons , with Star Trek: Voyager especially creating some truly memorable installments in later years like "Equinox" or "Unimatrix Zero."

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"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999)
11:59: Directed by David Livingston. With Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill. Capt. Janeway recalls her ancestor, Shannon O'Donnell, with great reverence, but historical records don't back up the family story.
11:59 (Star Trek: Voyager)
Star Trek: Voyager. ) " 11:59 " is the 117th episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, the 23rd episode of the fifth season. This television episode first aired on May 5, 1999, on the television network UPN and was directed by David Livingston. [1] Kevin Tighe guest stars alongside a flashback version of a Janeway ...
11:59 (episode)
This episode was inspired by an undeveloped Q episode for Star Trek: Voyager, thought up by John de Lancie, and was originally to have included a recurring character from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999)
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
Weekly Episode Discussion
Weekly Episode Discussion - VOY 5x23 "11:59". Being a fan of Kate Mulgrew, this was one of my personal favorite episodes from Voyager as it got her out of the stuffy captain's chair into something a little more free with Shannon O'Donnell. As summarized by Memory Alpha, Kathryn Janeway discovers the truth about one of her famed ancestors ...
"11:59"
Includes all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds.
Just watched "11:59" and honestly it was great
Just watched "11:59" and honestly it was great I am on watch of Voyager and had heard a lot of bad things about this episode so I went in thinking it would be a dud, but instead I walked away smiling. I understand the criticisms that it can feel irrelevant to the show and out of place, but for me, Star Trek has always been about storytelling and people and this did just that. I enjoyed the ...
11:59
Episode Guide for Star Trek: Voyager 5x23: 11:59. Episode summary, trailer and screencaps; guest stars and main cast list; and more.
Star Trek: Voyager/11:59
11:59 is the twenty-third episode of the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager, and the one hundred seventeenth episode overall.
Star Trek Voyager
Star Trek Voyager - 11:59. A Christmas episode. It's not expressly referred to as a Christmas episode, but is literally the same plot as many hallmark Christmas movies I've seen, with a few sci fi twists of course. Also, a great episode. Highly recommend adding to your Christmas movie/TV watch list this season.
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999)
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999) Kate Mulgrew as Capt. Kathryn Janeway, Shannon O'Donnell
Star Trek: Voyager S5 E22: "11:59" Recap
A page for describing Recap: Star Trek: Voyager S5 E22: "11:59". Captain Janeway tries to recall the life of her ancestress Shannon O'Donnell, to suss out …
The Voyager Transcripts
11:59 Stardate: 22 April 2375 Original Airdate: 5 May 1999. [Corridor] NEELIX: Good morning. JANEWAY: Morning. NEELIX: Requisition reports for the week. JANEWAY: Thanks. NEELIX: What can you tell me about the Great Wall of China?
11:59
Janeway recalls her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, who helped build the Millennium Gate on Earth. Guest stars: Kevin Tighe, Bradley Pierce and John Lynch.
Star Trek (Voy): 11:59
Opinionated Voyager Episode Guide looks at 11:59, aka, the Carbon Creek before Carbon Creek.
Watch Star Trek: Voyager · Season 5 Episode 22 · 11:59 Full ...
Where to watch Star Trek: Voyager · Season 5 Episode 22 · 11:59 starring Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Robert Picardo and directed by David Livingston. Stardate: Unknown. Captain Janeway relates the story of her distant ancestor Shannon O'Donnell during the construction of the Millennium Gate on Earth during New Year's Eve 1999. She must convince ...
11:59 : r/voyager
11:59. Some of you have been following my voyage through seven seasons of Voyager. I've grown to like it a lot, though it suffers from really, really bad show runners. I've just watch Someone to Watch Over Me and 11:59 back to back and wanted to reiterate that, despite the fact that the writers and producers were oblivious to the world they ...
Star Trek: Voyager Copied One Of TNG's Best Trademarks
Except for two seasons each, Star Trek: Voyager and The Next Generation ended every season with the first part of a two-parter. Two-parters often include some of the franchise's best storylines, so on the whole, it isn't surprising that Voyager and TNG choose to use them liberally.The only four seasons where they weren't employed were TNG seasons 1 and 2 and Voyager seasons 1 and 4.
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999)
The story of this episode isn't actually that bad, but somehow it just doesn't fit with Star Trek and the Voyager canon. It's not a science fiction story - instead we see how one of Captain Janeway's ancestors met her husband on New Year's Eve 2000. Janeway always believed that this ancestor took part in missions to Mars and was also involved in the construction of the Millennium Gate. However ...
A Look at 11:59 (Voyager)
Opinionated Voyager Episode Guide looks at 11:59, aka, the Carbon Creek before Carbon Creek.
11:59
Janeway recalls her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, who helped build the Millennium Gate on Earth.
"Star Trek: Voyager" 11:59 (TV Episode 1999)
This episode was inspired by an undeveloped Q episode for Star Trek: Voyager, thought up by John de Lancie who played Q, and was originally to have included a recurring character from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Guinan.
Star Trek: Voyager season 5 11:59
Star Trek: Voyager follows the adventures of the Federation starship Voyager, which is under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway.Voyager is in pursuit of a rebel Maquis ship in a dangerous part of the Alpha Quadrant when it is suddenly thrown 70,000 light years away to the Delta Quadrant. With much of her crew dead, Captain Janeway is forced to join forces with the Maquis to find a way back ...

11:59 (episode)

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Kevin Tighe

John Carroll Lynch

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Kate Mulgrew

Robert Beltran

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Star Trek: Voyager/11:59

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