“Before and After” is episode twenty-one of season three of Star Trek: Voyager.
The episode opens from the point of view of someone in sickbay. The Doctor – who has hair – tells some people to clear out. There’s a boy and a woman there; the woman says it’s her mother and she’s staying. The Doctor says it’s a delicate procedure and he needs peace and quiet. Tom’s voice is heard agreeing with this. The Doctor tells the person that they are the finest friend he ever had and that they will begin in approximately five minutes.
Next, the boy is seen approaching a woman in sickbay. He tells the woman, his grandmother, that he’s brought her present. And his grandmother is Kes. Kes doesn’t recognise him and he tells her he’s Andrew, her grandson. He calls to the Doctor, although he calls him Doctor van Gogh, and says that Kes doesn’t recognise him.
Kes asks where she is and what this place is. The Doctor tells Kes she’s in sickbay and asks if she recognises him. No. Yes – she saw him before with the boy and he called her his finest friend. But how could he be her friend when she doesn’t know him? What does remember? People standing around her and talk about a bio-temporal chamber, which the Doctor was about to activate. The Doctor says he isn’t ready to put her in that yet and asks Andrew to find the rest of his family. On the way out, Andrew bumps into Chakotay, who he calls Captain.
The Doctor tells Chakotay Kes is getting worse; her amnesia is nearly total. He can’t be sure if this is senility, as he’s never treated a nine-year-old Ocampa before. He’s got no idea if the bio-temporal chamber will work and would normally test it more. Chakotay says to do it, then Kes says she’s cold. The Doctor notices her cells are in a state of bio-temporal flux – before she has been put into the chamber.
Kes next wakes in her bed and goes out into a room to see Andrew and the woman from earlier. Andrew is working on her present. Kes doesn’t know who they are and the woman tells Andrew to get his father and grandfather and meet them in sickbay. Kes says she was just there, but apparently, she hasn’t been there since she finished working there a week ago. She was one of the ship’s doctors. The young woman worked with Kes. She’s her daughter, Linnis.
In sickbay, the concern is it is the onset of the morilogium, the final phase of the Ocampan lifespan. Tom and Harry arrive. Tom is Kes’s husband. When the bio-temporal chamber is brought up, Linnis isn’t keen. Harry says that if it was Linnis they were talking about, he would feel just like Tom. Because he’s Linnis’s husband. Kes tries to explain what’s going on, but feels cold again.
This time she appears in the mess hall for her ninth birthday party. Neelix, who is wearing a Starfleet uniform, has baked a cake. It seems he’s become a security officer. Kes speaks to the Doctor and tells him what’s going on, that she’s lost memories and the memories she has don’t correspond to those of others. The Doctor wonders if she’s dreaming. Kes mentions the bio-temporal chamber – which the Doctor only thought of that morning and hasn’t yet mentioned. Kes heads to sickbay and explains she’s experiencing events in reverse. Precognition is suggested. Tom is going to check for temporal anomalies.
Kes goes to her quarters and looks through her records. She finds that she was irradiated with chroniton radiation in her past. Tom talks to Kes about the Year of Hell, when they were under virtually constant attack by the Krenim, and lost Captain Janeway and B’Elanna, amongst others. The Doctor was offline for months. The Krenim used chroniton torpedoes, which were in temporal flux. There’s some temporal stuff. They are going to head to sickbay but Kes shifts back in time, to the birth of Andrew. Kes heads to sickbay and explains everything again to the Doctor. He thinks the bio-temporal chamber may have reactivated the chroniton particles, and Kes is going backwards in time.
Tom is concerned that Kes could go back before they are around to help. The Doctor is concerned that she could go back before she was even born. Some way of stopping Kes from going backwards needs figuring out, but Kes keeps jumping back and has to go through the explanation each time. Admittedly, it’s getting easier, as each time she knows more, but she is running out of time. On the plus side, Voyager will know about the Year of Hell in advance, enough to make it nowhere near as bad, or perhaps even avoidable.