From MadCap's Couch - "Star Trek: Voyager" (7 Favorite Episodes)

So, I already did a best of list for my favorite Star Trek spin-off, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was seven years of television that turned the very concept of Star Trek on its head, but in a very smart and sophisticated way, dissecting and inverting a lot of Gene Roddenberry's original concepts as well as giving the spotlight to several alien races that The Next Generation introduced and didn't do too much with in the way of development.

Voyager...really, really wasn't that.

I'll go ahead and say that I don't really hate Voyager like so many people do, and there's a lot to like about the show. It has one of the best premises in all of Trek: a Federation crew is left stranded 70,000 light years from Earth and has to find a way back home from the depths of a largely unknown and uncharted quadrant of the galaxy. More to the point, however, you have a Federation crew having to co-habitate with the remainder of a Maquis crew they were sent to hunt down (Voyager started around Season 3 of DS9, so the Maquis were still a factor at that point). There's so much you could do with that concept - radically different ideologies and beliefs as well as methods. It could be a subject for a great deal of tension and drama...

...and Voyager did almost nothing with that part of the concept. We'll get into that a bit later.

What I will get into, however, is my picks for the seven best episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, one from each Season. Like the DS9 lists (and don't worry, I will be doing a "worst" list for Voyager), this isn't meant to rank any one particular episode above any other, just which ones from each Season I think are the best. You'll also notice that Voyager will probably have far fewer runners up than DS9 because...well, frankly, most Voyager episodes range from "bad" to "meh". Only a few of them get to offensively bad, though...and we'll get into those soon enough.

Season 1: "Caretaker"

Go back! Go back right now!

This one is kind of a given, but it's only because the first season of Voyager is really, really bad. It's sad, though, because Caretaker had a lot of promise. The unflappable Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) gathers together her crew on the brand new U.S.S. Voyager in order to undertake a mission into the Maquis Badlands - the disputed territory between the Federation and the Cardassian Order. She acquires the help of one Tom Paris (Robert Duncan MacNeill) due to his familiarity with their target, Chakotay (Robert Beltran). In pursuit of the last known location of the Maquis, Voyager is suddenly transported 70,000 light years to a planet called Ocampa where they meet an enigmatic being known only as "the Caretaker".

If you've seen Caretaker, then you know a lot of the seeds that were sown that never actually went anywhere in the seasons that were to come. What is seen, however, is pretty good as we get introduced to the main cast and do actually manage to get a feel for what the show will be...or at least what it was intending to be. Do the crew of Voyager manage to get back to the Alpha Quadrant? Obviously not, seeing as we have seven whole seasons to get through. Caretaker is fairly solid, though most of the faults that it has are more the show's later on for wasting the potential. Voyager could have stood to be a bit darker and edgier than even DS9...and it was all wasted. Very sad to see.

Season 2: "Basics, Part 1"

"My God, Bones...what have I done?"
"What you had to do. What you always do. Reference the wrong Trek!"

I'll go ahead and tell you that I, like most people with working brains, am not a fan of the Kazon. Introduced in Caretaker and then staying around way, way longer than they needed to (read: any point after the end of Caretaker), the Kazon are basically what the Klingons would be if they traded in their forehead ridges for cabbage heads and dropped their collective IQ by about 60 points.

...and then were hit over the head with a stick a few thousand times to drop it another 60 points.

They really, really suck, is my point.

However, I will give credit that they were used effectively in the two-parter Basics...mostly because they had a Cardassian commanding their forces. Sort of.

To better explain it, by the end of Season 2, the Kazon had been hounding Voyager for a while. One of the former Maquis, a woman named Seska (Martha Hackett) had been revealed as a Cardassian infiltrator who had been surgically altered to appear Bajoran. She had impregnated herself with Chakotay's DNA and was seemingly carrying his child. This came to fruition in Basics, Part 1, where the crew of Voyager receives a message from her begging to be rescued as the leader of the Kazon group she's with has discovered that the child isn't his.

Spoiler alert: It is his and I don't need Admiral Ackbar here to tell you that it's a trap.

Voyager keeps getting hit with heavier and heavier attacks as they almost get out of Kazon space, all of them focused on one specific part of the ship. Adding in a supposed defector who commits suicide onboard to damage the ship further, and Janeway finds herself unable to activate the self-destruct sequence of the ship when the Kazon finally do board the ship and take over. The crew are banished to a desolate world, with Janeway resolute that they will be rescued...and she's right. The Doctor, a crewman played by Brad Dourif (seriously, the guy has all of three appearances on the show. Why wasn't he in the main cast?), and Tom Paris are on the case!

And on the case they are in the beginning of Season 3: Basics, Part 2! Unfortunately, that episode isn't a good as this one, though this seems to be a recurring thing with not just Voyager, but a lot of Trek.

Season 3: "The Swarm"

"You guys wanna buy some speakers?"

So "The Swarm" concerns itself with...oh, you thought this was going to be Basics, Part 2? Nah. It's not bad, just that it's a step down from the first part. Also, Brad Dourif dies in it rather than being promoted to the main cast.

Spoiler alert.

"The Swarm" concerns itself with the titular alien race, who are enigmatic and unknown even to most of the other Delta Quadrant races besides being overpoweringly xenophobic. Ships that enter their area do not leave until they're drained of power and every single member of the crew is killed. The writers decided that Janeway would be absolutely unshakable in her belief that they have to go through this portion of space to continue their trip home.

This does not end well for them.

...okay, well it does. There's four more seasons to go.

Another facet of this episode is that of Voyager's EMH "The Doctor" (Robert Picardo) suffering a technical problem that may require his program to be reset. The Doctor actually has one of the best arcs in Voyager and gets a butt load of development over seven years. It's really some good stuff and some of the brighter spots in the show. While the Doctor is happy with being reset if it means being able to save the lives of the crew, Kes (Jennifer Lien) champions his rights as an individual and tries to find an alternative method.

It's some good stuff, which is a rare thing to say about Kes.

I really wish that the Swarm had shown up in more episodes. They were a powerful and menacing threat that it actually took the Voyager crew more than just some pluck and plot convenience to fight. It's just a shame that a relatively neat concept like the Swarm get only the one episode, whereas they allowed multiple episodes to things like the Kazons. It's likely that they would have lost their menace and mystery in much the way the Borg or Species 8472 eventually did, but you know what I mean.

Season 4: "Year of Hell, Part 1 & 2"

"Y'know what's worse than never getting to the Alpha Quadrant?
My foot when it's in your ass."

Oh, yeah, it's a twofer. This episode is literally just that good. I did say that, like with a lot of Trek, when Voyager is good it's great. The Year of Hell two-parter proves that statement in droves.  Year of Hell begins with the crew entering a region of the Delta Quadrant ruled by an alien race called the Krenim.  One of their scientists, Annorax (played by Kurtwood Smith aka Red Foreman), has developed a vessel that can alter time. Why? Because he wants to not only restore the Krenim Imperium to its dominant state, but also to bring back his wife who was lost to him due to his experiments.

At first, Voyager is powerless against him, until they utilize an undetonated torpedo from the time ship to create temporal shielding and thus protect themselves from changes to the timeline. This only makes Annorax more determined to stop them and thus executes several months of cat and mouse chasing leading into destructive battles that the crew of Voyager terms "the Year of Hell". Will Voyager be able to stop Annorax and keep him from destroying all of time? Or will Annorax finally achieve the victory he craves...that Time itself seems to be keeping from him out of spite?

Kurtwood Smith does an amazing job as the villain in this piece, able to both be a sympathetic man while also being someone we want to see defeated. He's a man who is desperate to regain all that he has lost, but also drunk on the power that he has manage to construct, erasing ships and indeed entire civilizations from existence in order to get things to fit his vision of how everything should be. If it weren't for Brad Dourif being one in the previous seasons, Kurtwood Smith would easily be the best guest star that Voyager ever had.

Also, for all the episodes where the Voyager crew got out of everything without any consequences, it's damn good to see them have to actually deal with them for a change.

Season 5: "Course: Oblivion"

"I am never using Neelix's moisturizer ever again!"

Remember what I said about consequences? Yeah.

Course: Oblivion is a little bit of a cheat, though, in that it's not actually the Voyager crew. I'll explain. In an earlier episode in Season 4 "Demon", Voyager found itself on a Y-Class or "Demon" planet. The only things to remember are that duplicates of the crew were created and that they would not survive outside of the Y-Class atmosphere, which is toxic to most humanoid life forms. The real Voyager left at the end of the episode and that seemed to be all there was to it.

Then comes this episode. Tom and B'Elanna get married (their romance had been set up since at least Season 2, nothing really to note there except that their relationship is another one of Voyager's high points) and everything seems hunky-dory...and then things start going horribly, horribly wrong. The ship is breaking down and, soon, the crew are. Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Chakotay look through their own mission logs and realize what is happening - they're the duplicates from the Demon planet.

Everything and I mean everything that the crew tries to do to stop their destruction fails. They try to get to a Y-Class planet with a similar atmosphere and get rebuffed by miners. They try to construct a container of non-biomimetic material, they fail a few times and then succeed, but can't launch it. In the end, only Ensign Kim (Garrett Wang) remains on the bridge as everything falls apart and the ship detects another ship, putting out a distress signal...

...and Voyager comes across a cloud of biomimetic gel floating about in space. Janeway notes the attempted answering of the distress call and sets a course for home.

It is absolutely bleak and without any mercy toward it's characters. It is easily the darkest episode of Voyager and is a front runner for the darkest episode in the entire franchise, and that is not a statement I make lightly! For a crew that seems to have improbably high good luck, seeing them fail in every respect is surprisingly refreshing...and sure, it's a bit of a cheat seeing as it's not the actual crew, but it is a lesson that not everybody makes it back home...and those that don't could very easily be forgotten...

Season 6: "The Voyager Conspiracy"

"Great shot, Tuvok! That was one in a million!"

Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) is undoubtedly the breakout character of Voyager. She was known for her 36D's of 9 and a catsuit that was so tight she had to lie down between takes because she had trouble breathing in it (what the hell, Rick Berman?), but was actually a very compelling character that was written and acted very well. She had a lot of good episodes, and The Voyager Conspiracy was one of them. One could argue that she had too many focus episodes...and one would probably be right, although one would probably remember that the alternative was getting more Chakotay episodes and one would shut the ever-loving Hell up.

...yeah, I'm not a fan of the Chakotay episodes. We'll get into those in my "Worst" List.

As for The Voyager Conspiracy (noticeable for being the only episode of Voyager with the word "Voyager" in the title), Seven begins to assimilate more data from Voyager's database. As a result of this, she becomes convinced that several completely unrelated events - in particular Voyager being in the Delta Quadrant in the first place and her own severing from the Borg Collective - are part of an elaborate plot by the Federation to establish a foothold within the Delta Quadrant.

After another regeneration cycle, she believes that Chakotay is trying to spearhead a Maquis operation into the Delta Quadrant to drum up sympathy for the movement.

Her mind is being overloaded with data (no, not Data, stop reading fanfics) and her Borg sensibilities are trying to force her to make order out of chaos. All of this with the backdrop of Voyager finding a new technology that could cut a few years off of their trip...

...that they don't attempt to study or replicate in any way because we have one more season to get through.

Conspiracy has a great performance from Jeri Ryan, however, as Seven becomes more and more paranoid while her mind slowly degrades. Getting the help she needs, I'm sure that Seven's life is going to turn out all right in the end!

...oh, wait, I've seen Star Trek: Picard. Never mind!

Before we get to Season 7, here's some runners up for the show...I guarantee you it will be short.

Season 2: "The 37s"

You joke, but a Ford truck somehow managed to survive 400+ years in space...

Most people remember this episode as "that one episode with Amelia Earhart" and that is pretty much all there is to it: a group of humans from the 1930's (including Amelia) are found in cryogenic freeze on a planet in the Delta Quadrant. The aliens who brought them there are long since gone thanks to some of the descendants of the 37s, who have lived on this planet for generations since.

It's the first opportunity the Voyager crew has to really put down some roots with some other humans...which, of course, literally none of them take the opportunity because they're afraid that Janeway will murder them to death.

...I mean, they have such loyalty to their totally not off her rocker captain. Yeah. That.

The 37s is a cute little episode, though. Inoffensive and letting the crew get in the traditional Star Trek hero worship of people who weren't around long enough to have questionable tweets on Twitter.

...although Discovery did talk up Elon Musk for some reason, so what the hell do I know?

Season 2: "Meld"

"He is inside with us! He will NEVER get away! His pain won't end!"

Remember when I mentioned Brad Dourif was in Voyager and they didn't immediately put him on the main cast? This is the first episode with that. His character, Lon Suder, murders another crew member. The main cast discover that Lon Suder is a Betazoid sociopath. Tuvok investigates him, not believing his initial claim that he killed the crewman for no reason. As Suder becomes more centered and focused, given that Tuvok teaches him Vulcan mental discipline, Tuvok begins to display more and more extreme signs of sociopathic behavior.

He manages to avoid killing Suder, but only just. Suder would go on to appear in Basics, Part 1 and Part 2, dying thereafter.

It's a shame, really, because Tim Russ and Brad Dourif had quite a bit of chemistry together and I really wish we could have seen more of them together. While Tuvok did have a mentoring relationship with Kes, it just really wasn't the same.

The episode pulls out a lot of questions of morality for the Voyager crew, particularly Janeway having to decide exactly how Suder is to be punished for what he did. In the end, she makes the choice to imprison him in his quarters until they can return to the Alpha Quadrant for trial and treatment, because nobody kept her from getting to the coffee that day. Like a lot of Voyager, this episode was the start of something beautiful...that was never fully realized.

Season 3: "Coda"

On an away mission, Janeway and Chakotay get stuck in a time loop and then forced to a planet's surface. Janeway is critically injured in the crash, but manages to survive thanks to Chakotay. They are then attacked by the Viidians (race of plague-carriers, they'll get more than a few mentions in my "worst" list) and both are killed.

...then Janeway is back on the shuttle with Chakotay. This goes on for a while, going through a few variations, until Janeway seemingly, actually dies. In a spirit form, she is greeted by (seemingly) the spirit of her own father. He tells her that she is actually dead and that he has come to guide her into the afterlife. Janeway being Janeway, however, gets it in her mind that something isn't right and begins to fight against him...finding that he's not her father and not nearly so benevolent.

Janeway actually has several badass moments in the series, and Coda has one of them: particularly where she defies the alien impersonating her father to the last, telling him to "Go back to Hell, coward!". Give credit where it's due. That's pretty badass spitting at death like that.

Season 3: "Scorpion, Part I"

Yes, I'm doing just Part 1 of a two-parter. Sue me! Scorpion, Part I has potentially the best opening of any Star Trek episode ever. Borg Cubes are seen, the usual Borg chant of "Resistance is futile" being cut off mid-sentence by an energy beam that blows all the cubes to kingdom come with virtually no effort.

Keep in mind, by this point in the franchise, the Borg were an almost impossible to fight threat. The only reason that the crew of the Enterprise had managed to stop them was through sheer dumb luck. Even then, they were a constant and looming threat. This was their first full appearance in Voyager and it was a hell of a shock to see that happen for the first time. Scorpion introduced a new baddie - Species 8472 - and didn't just stop at a spectacular opening.

Janeway, having to use genuine pragmatism instead of just paying lip service to it, concocts a plan to get the crew of Voyager across Borg Space - giving them a bioweapon that could destroy Species 8472. This doesn't go off without a hitch, of course. The first part ends with Voyager literally being dragged behind a Borg Cube as it attempts to escape from an attack by their new opponent, who doesn't seem all that big on distinguishing between Borg and non-Borg.

Scorpion Part II is known for introducing Seven of Nine to the series, and that's kind of it. The second part doesn't really have the punch that the first part does, hence why it's not on this list. I do like it, but not that much.

Season 4: "Living Witness"

"Mr. Kim...your agonizer, please..."

So, 700 years in the future, the Doctor gets reactivated on a planet that Voyager passed through the area of and left a big impact - so much so that the people still remember the ship's exploits seven centuries later. However, the Doctor points out that the information that the planet's people keep in their historical records is incorrect - displaying a Voyager closer to one that might appear in the Mirror Universe than the one that actually existed.

This includes such gems as: Janeway wearing a pair of long, black gloves and dishing out orders and punishments of a cruel nature, Seven of Nine still being a Borg drone and yet under Janeway's command, seeking out and eliminating or assimilating threats at her command, Chakotay's hair and face tattoo being entirely different.

...okay, look, they can't all be gold.

Robert Picardo gives another awesome performance as the Doctor, torn between setting the record straight and causing more trouble for the two races that live on the planet, with tensions already high with the record of history that they know now. In the end, however, it's revealed that the Doctor and the scientist who reactivated him did set the record straight, and that the Doctor later attempted to return to the Alpha Quadrant, hoping to find out what became of his crew.

It's the furthest out Star Trek episode to date (although this may soon be eclipsed by Star Trek: Discovery) and cleverly manages to be in what is the post-series timeline without actually revealing what actually happened to the crew of Voyager in their journey to get back home. Did they succeed? The Doctor seems to think so enough to try and go after them, giving the episode a somewhat optimistic ending. Plus, the planet is no longer a strife-ridden Hellhole, so that's pretty good, too!

Season 5: "Nothing Human"

"The hip bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the..."

Another episode for the Doctor, and a good one as always. When an alien attaches itself to B'Elenna Torres, the Doctor whips up a program of a renowned xenobiologist to assist him in removing it from her. Unfortunately, the xenobiologist he has chosen...is a Cardassian who did terrible experiments on Bajorans during the Occupation.

...yeah, the writers apparently decided to remember that Deep Space Nine was still happening at the time.

B'Elenna is less than pleased with this and, as time goes on, the Doctor becomes more and more unsettled at the unethical nature of the scientist, Crell Moset. Even if the guy is just a holoprojection, he is based on the man's psychological profile. In the end, the Doctor cannot use Moset's methods in good conscience and deletes his program - definitively insisting that, in medicine, the ends cannot justify the means.

Also, B'Elenna survives, but I'm pretty sure you already caught onto that.

Season 5: "The Bride of Chaotica!"

"Activate the lightning field!"

This is an episode that so many people dislike and I get why, it's hokey as all get-out. That's really part of the charm.

I'll be the first one to critique Voyager on trying to set up Tom Paris as this devil may care badass in Seasons 1 and 2 and then having him devolve into a complete geek playing around in the holodeck with Harry later on, but it did give us this so I really can't hate that all that much. The Bride of Chaotica! concerns itself with Tom's holodeck program Captain Proton (basically a homage to the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 1930's) getting invaded by extra-dimensional photonic beings "from the fifth dimension!".

With the holodeck putting everyone at risk, Tom convinces Janeway to take on the role of Queen Arachnia - the titular Bride - to take down the evil Doctor Chaotica and save the day. She does this with great reluctance, of course, but throws herself into the role with gusto when she needs to. Janeway is a professional, after all...when the writers decide that she is.

Sadly, while it sets up a sequel we never get one...which is a shame.

Maybe, if this had been a few Seasons earlier, it would have spared us a Kazon episode.

Season 5: "Equinox , Part I"

"Triple AAA's first attempts in the Delta Quadrant were less than stellar."

Voyager comes across another Federation ship the Equinox, also pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker five years ago. Unlike Voyager, however, the Equinox crew has made quite a bit of distance with an inferior ship...and when the Equinox and then Voyager start getting attacked by mysterious life forms, they all learn why - the Equinox crew has been using the aliens as biofuel, slaughtering dozens of the aliens to clear 10,000 light years in just under two weeks.

When Janeway discovers this, she takes the moral high ground...never mind that she gave the Borg a biogenic weapon earlier and has made some more than questionable decisions herself. She has the crew imprisoned, but Equinox's EMH (ethical sub-routines removed) manages to free them and, capturing Seven of Nine, they escape. As they do, Voyager's shields take a beating...and Season 5 ends on the chilling scene of Janeway about to be attacked by one of the aliens...

Equinox, Part II is like other entries on this list in that, again, it's not bad, but it doesn't have the same punch. I will give the ending credit in that it has a very good Redemption Equals Death moment.

Season 7: "Author, Author"

That awkward moment when...

...yeah, I had no real good choices for a runner up for Season 6. Eat me.

Author, Author concerns itself with the Doctor. In his neverending quest to improve himself, the EMH has taken up holo-novel writing. His epic Photons Be Free puts the reader in the shoes of the EMH onboard the starship Vortex, lost in the Delta Quadrant. The crew of Voyager find out about the novel, and they are less than flattered by some of the outlandish things the Doctor has put into it - such as Captain "Jenkins" being a merciless woman who kills another crewman so that the Doctor will heal another, "Katanay" being not only a man with a tattooed face but also a Bajoran complete with nose and earring, Lieutenant "Marseilles" being a lecherous manwhore...and so on and so forth.

Needless to say, this doesn't paint a particularly flattering picture of the Voyager crew. The Doctor doesn't see the connection until Tom Paris decides to give the program a few tweaks, in a moment that legitimately had me howling with laughter the first time I saw it. Needless to say, regardless of the Doctor's feelings on it, Starfleet is less than pleased...less so because of the Doctor's publisher having already published the novel even though he hadn't finished it.

Why? Because, as a hologram, the Doctor has no rights under Federation law.

This episode goes from being comedic into being a more serious one about the rights of the Doctor as an individual and a bit of a celebration of the road he has been on since the show began. He is ultimately given the rights as an artist, even if the question as to whether or not he's a sentient being is left up in the air by law...which is a small victory, if nothing else.


Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand finally, the winner of the coveted Season 7 slot is...

Season 7: "Endgame"

"Set a course...for home."

Oh, c'mon! It's the finale. Yeah, it's kind of underwhelming when you dissect it. I've seen people call Endgame a low-rent version of The Next Generation's finale All Good Things..., but there's really no way that applies. All Good Things was a culmination of everything that The Next Generation had been, and was a fond farewell to the cast we'd come to know over seven years.

Endgame is "Voyager takes down the Borg for the Umpteenth time" on supercrack.

Not to say the Endgame is bad. There's a lot to like. Alice Krige resumes her role from First Contact as the Borg Queen (the Queen had been played by actress Susanna Thompson in every previous Voyager appearance). Tom and B'Elenna's baby girl Miral is born (albeit in the closing moments of the episode). Janeway has to contend with herself in what is a hilarious bit of karmic catharsis. Kim finally gets promoted the lieutenant!

...actually to Captain. In a future timeline that gets negated by the events of this episode.

Oops.

All said, there's nothing that's objectionably bad in this episode beyond a certain relationship that really, really shouldn't have happened (I say again, what the hell, Rick Berman?)...which I'll get into when we look at the worst episodes of the series. The moment where Janeway and the crew glimpse Earth for the first time in seven years, and Janeway echoes the order she once gave seven years ago in orbit of Ocampa makes it all worth it...

As it stands now, these are the cream of the crap. Voyager is a series that deserved some fresh ideas and more care and didn't really get either of those things in high amounts. When I tell you this is as good as it gets...I'm not joking. Abandon all hope, ye who pass this point.

Next week...it's gonna get bad.

Star Trek is the property of CBS.

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