Also, the dark ages explanation is mistaken. From time 0 to 370,000 years: there were a bunch of short lived photons, but the Universe wasn't transparent to light. After a while, recombination and decoupling ended and this source of light ceased to exist, making the Universe dark again.

Only after ~200 million years the first generation of stars appeared, which we cannot hope to see with a telescope. The first proto-galaxies (too faint) and galaxies took even longer, hence this billion years of darkness.