Star Trek: Voyager originally had a better ending for its famous episode “Year of Hell,” but unfortunately abandoned it in favor of something more anti-climactic. “Year of Hell” is often considered one of Voyager‘s best episodes if not the best episode of the entire series. Airing towards the beginning of season 4, “Year of Hell” featured a dark premise that saw Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and the crew of the USS Voyager contending with a series of brutal attacks by Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) of the Krenim Imperium.

Annorax was a formidable villain with the ability to manipulate timelines, hell-bent on changing the past to reverse the death of his wife. Once he and Voyager‘s cast of characters began fighting, Janeway stopped at nothing to take him down. This included the episode’s ending when Janeway sacrificed herself by crashing Voyager into Annorax’s ship, resetting the timeline and erasing all the events of the episode in the process. This put Voyager’s crew back where they had been at the beginning and Annorax back with his wife on the colony where they lived with no memory of what had transpired.

Star Trek: Voyager Abandoned Its Original Ending For The “Year Of Hell” Two-Parter

Voyager had a better ending for “Year of Hell” originally

While Janeway’s sacrifice at the end of “Year of Hell” was certainly dramatic, the episode originally had an ending that would have preserved some of the crew’s memories and been much less happy for Annorax. In an interview with Cinefantastique, Voyager writer Joe Menosky discussed the episode’s writing process and detailed a much more interesting ending for “Year of Hell,” one that was ultimately shot down by Star Trek Executive Producer Rick Berman because it was deemed to be too narratively complicated. Read Menosky’s full quote below:

“I wanted at least a couple of people to know what had happened. We actually wrote this ending even though we didn’t shoot it, where time is reset, the weapon is gone; we know what has happened to us through some complication I can’t even remember. When we meet up with the next Krenim, Chakotay asks offhand, ‘Have you got a colony called Kyana Prime?’ And the guy says, ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The idea was that time had in fact in some ways punished Annorax. Everything was reset except that. That was denied him, so it was this great, final, tragic moment.”

In some ways, it makes sense why Berman voted for the more simplistic ending of Janeway fully resetting the timeline. Menosky’s vagueness about how everyone was aware of what had happened to them during “Year of Hell’s” original ending shows that Voyager‘s creative team didn’t have a concrete reason for the crew maintaining their memories after the timeline reset. A hand-waved explanation for this might have made the episode’s conclusion feel unfinished. However, the ending that “Year of Hell” chose instead unfortunately committed an even greater narrative sin.

“Year Of Hell’s” Original Ending Would Have Made It A Much Better Episode

“Year of Hell” could have been a perfect episode with a different ending

Despite the vague and/or complicated time-travel implications that “Year of Hell’s” original ending had, having the crew remember what had happened to them would have at least stopped the episode from falling into the “it was all just a dream” trope. This trope, also sometimes called the reset button, is arguably one of the laziest writing mechanics in history. It undermines the plot of whatever story it is employed in, and in Voyager‘s case, making it so the crew remembered nothing cheapened their experiences and made “Year of Hell” feel like everything they had been through had meant nothing.

Along with the fact that having the crew remember “Year of Hell” would have been more narratively satisfying, Annorax getting his just desserts to close out the episode would have been well-deserved. Annorax is often considered one of Voyager‘s best villains, and any great villain often deserves an equally great downfall. Having Annorax get everything he wanted by the end of the episode wasn’t in keeping with the punishment he deserved for the temporal crimes he committed and everything he had put Star Trek: Voyager‘s crew through. Ultimately, “Year of Hell’s” ending was contrived, tainting the episode’s otherwise great legacy.