“Year of Hell” lives up to its name, as the Voyager is caught in a series of time waves that slowly destroy the ship and cause the crew to suffer heavy casualties: Tuvok (Tim Russ) is blinded when a proton torpedo backfires, Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and Paris are captured by the Krenim Imperium, and Janeway ends up sacrificing the Voyager by ramming it into a Krenim warship. Fuller said that the writers’ room, particularly Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, wanted the events to last an entire season.

“We wanted to see Voyager get its ass kicked every episode and through that season was going to be marbled the story of Annorax and the time ship that was changing things. So, we would go back to it every once in a while to remind the audience that is the larger story.”

Ultimately, executive producer Rick Berman rejected the idea due to prior experiences on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” making him “violently ill” to serialized storytelling, according to Fuller.