CAPTAIN'S LOG: The crew is split up in separate time fragments.
WHY WE LIKE IT: Clever title.
WHY WE DON'T: Star Trek has done too many temporal anomaly stories.
REVIEW: Temporal shenanigans has been a Star Trek staple since TOS, but it’s a dangerous game, especially post-Voyager, as that show abused the idea. There are only so many ideas that go with the concept, and they’re bound to repeat. In fact, Time Amok is just a variation on Voyager’s Shattered. There, Chakotay moved about different eras of the ship’s voyage. Here, the kids are all trapped in the present, but that present is moving at different speeds for each of them, with the Janeway hologram being able to move between them. It’s a crucial difference, and more clearly a puzzle that must be solved as a team. Janeway’s lesson at the top of the episode prefigures the action; the pandemic lockdowns give it a certain real-world context.
While it’s still one of the Janeway hologram’s biggest roles yet, and it’s clear an ensemble story, it’s Rok who gets to “arc”. During the exercise, she makes it plain that, super-strength or not, she doesn’t want to be security officer. Stuck in the slowest time fragment, she’ll be the crew’s last hope as the ticking clock to the protostar exploding has a short fuse even for those who are in normal time. The episode is cagey about how long she’s in there - months at least, probably a year or more, hard to say - but it’s enough for her to learn all the maths and technical skills required to build a warp matrix and reconstruct Janeway’s program after it is erased by Dredlok (we’ll get back to that). Also, stop being such a cry-baby. I do question whether we need another techie character since Jankom is a super-engineer, Zero is the brains (give or take hard to work hands - it’s cool to see them in awkward action), and Dal is pretty good with the jury-rigging. Glad she found her own path however.
While Rok essentially does it alone after a number of misfires from the other crew, they’re still necessary to figure things out so she has all the pieces of the puzzle. Well, except Murf, who ironically gets one of the slowest time fragments but is utterly useless except to make the kiddies laugh. Jankom, in the fastest fragment, gets the least to do. Dal, who finally admits to Janeway that he’s been lying about them being cadets (it doesn’t matter to her, phew!) wastes most of his time sulking in his room. Zero is on top of it and drops the technobabble bombs (well at least it leads to a cool shot where the camera rides the sine wave). Gwyn gets the bulk of the action thanks to Dredlok using the vehicle replicator to 3D print himself aboard - the ship is too far out to intercept after DaiMon Nandi sells the Diviner the coordinates - and ends up getting airlocked for his trouble (along with the first makeshift warp matrix). Of course once the timeline is restored, everyone’s alive and aboard, including him. Since the ticking clock is rather abstract, he brings needed tension to the episode and a real creep factor. Erasing Janeway with Chakotay’s voice? Brr.
LESSON: Patience isn’t for the young.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Some characters are advanced, but there’s still a reliance on technobabble that might lose some audience members.
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