Star Trek: Voyager (Season One)

Back when I was doing the Captain's Blogs, I did a few quick posts on Voyager that are fine for what they are, but I've always wanted to watch the show beginning to end and re-do the rankings I too-hastily-assembled five years ago. To that end I started watching the show on my lunch break last October and only yesterday * reached the end of season one. On this timetable, I should have some spiffy new rankings sometime around summer 2019. 

* Well, "yesterday" when I wrote this intro. Which was just about a month two months ago. Like Voyager, we bounce back and forth between past, present, and future!

Couple quick things:

- I consider the season six Voyager episode "Blink of an Eye" to be an A+. This may change over the course of the re-evaluation, but at the onset, this is my instrument calibration. (I decided not to put actual grades with each episode; rankings seemed enough.)

- While I prefer having all the cast/crew information in one place, gathering it all slows the pace of these posts considerably. Target Date Summer 2019 could too easily turn into summer 2029. (Heck, it still might.) I'll likely mention a lot of the info just the same. 
 
- I decided not to read any of the other overviews out there or buy the curiously overpriced Voyager Companion. Going to fly solo on this with no evidentiary support or research of any kind beyond whatever I half-ass google when typing up the post. I have a notion I'll end up with more or less the same favorite episodes, but I'm curious to see if watching them all in order will alter it any.

- All plot summaries from the show's wiki. My guess is you know the basic set-up and characters. My further guess is - like every Trek fan I've ever met - you have opinions as to why the show was never as successful as TNG and perhaps even why or how it never fully embraced its premise. Good! I am happy to have you here. Or maybe you're just casually familiar with Voyager; all good, too. Let us begin.

SEASON ONE

15. 

A member of the Haakonians, a race warring with the Talaxians, arrives on Voyager, much to the dismay of Neelix, whose family was killed by a weapon of mass destruction this particular individual devised.

Let's get this out of the way up front: I just can't with Neelix. The more I watch of the series, the worse I feel about this. Ethan Phillips gives it his all. The cast work well with him. The writers use him well (for the most part). And here in "Jetrel" both actor and character get several chances to shine. But man. This episode is probably pretty good; it's not them it's me. I'm not the guy to properly evaluate this - I just can't with this guy.

Trek vet Jason Sloyan as Jetrel.

14. 

Tuvok trains several Maquis members who have not fully integrated into the Voyager crew.

You know, it's perfectly valid to explore this sort of thing - and not just valid but a stated intention of the show - the whole Maquis vs. Federation conflict. But it's just not very interesting to me. I try to keep this first season in perspective with whatever else was going on over on DS9. I wasn't watching either show at the time, nor have I seen more than a season or two's worth of episodes, but it and Voyager were produced concurrently for most of the 90s. The episode of DS9 that aired the same week as "Learning Curve" was "Shakaar." Which (hey!) I've never seen. Anyway - maybe there was some interest to this whole dynamic for fans watching these episodes as they came out, I couldn't say, but for me it falls flat.

As does Tuvok's "Galileo Seven" storyline where he must both teach and learn from his recruits once things go from simulated to actual peril.

I'm not sure why "Learning Curve" was chosen to end the first season - someone who has the DVD probably knows for sure from either the featurettes or the commentary track - except perhaps it re-enforces one of the show's central premises: the isolation of the Delta Quadrant and the kind of engineering problems a starship might have without any starbases around. Unfortunately, though - and I hope unintentionally - it re-enforces another conceit of the series: a manufactured problem running through a set piece / countdown until solved by magical technobabble. 

Also, Tuvok says cultural ornamentation is anti-Starfleet?

At some point, someone doesn't give a circassian fig about something. I'll try and note these things as I go along. Then again, the internet probably has this well-mapped.

13. 

B'Elanna Torres is split into her human and Klingon halves by the Vidiians.

The Vidiians are introduced in "Phage," coming up a bit later. Alien species weren't really Voyager's forte. I'll see if this watch-through changes that opinion, of course - I'm keeping an open mind. The Vidiians - a doomed race of science-smart, ethics-indifferent space lepers who are hunting Voyager for their electrolyte-rich Alpha Quadrant bio-matter - are okay enough for recurring villains, I suppose. 

As for the episode itself, it has two Trek tropes in one: 1) B'Elanna struggling between her alien and human halves, and 2) some wonky magical science with implications that undermine the basic premise (namely why don't the Vidiians just cure themselves with all this magic science at their command?) Neither of these things are dealbreakers, just well-trodden ground.

12. 

Tom Paris is convicted of murder on an alien world, and his punishment is to witness the murder from the victim's perspective every 14 hours.

Directed by LeVar Burton. A Trek-trial episode, with perhaps too much in common with "A Matter of Perspective" (TNG) and "Court Martial" (TOS). Trek-court episodes are always a little off (see "Wolf in the Fold"), but they can be a lot of fun, to0 (see TNG's "Devil's Due" and "Wolf in the Fold" again.) This one not so much, though.

"Ex Post Facto" was the 8th episode of the show's 16-episode (15 if you count "Caretaker" as one, which I do) 1st season. Again, I wasn't watching at the time, but if I had been, would I have been puzzled by the lack of urgency the show had in distinguishing itself - and the Delta Quadrant - as its own endeavor? Probably. I think the show could have used a Star Blazers sort of tag at the beginning or end ("Hurry, Star Force! Planet Earth has only so-many-days left!") Ron Moore, one of Voyager's writers and later the co-creator of BSG, might have thought so, as BSG later utilized such a tag to great effect throughout its run. 
(He didn't join the Voyager staff until 1999, but hey, he still might have thought so!)

11. 

A shuttlecraft with Chakotay and Tuvok aboard is attacked; Chakotay is left brain-dead, while Tuvok begins acting strangely. An unknown force begins controlling crewmembers.

Here's more Delta Quadrant casserole of TNG ("Conundrum") and TOS ("Spock's Brain,") oddly enough one of two callbacks to "Spock's Brain" in Voyager's 1st season. It's perfectly fine but just a couple of things:

- The Doctor can put "consciousness" in and out of people? Okay. I can squint at this and make it work, I guess - it makes sense that Federation science would only grow from the days of "Return to Tomorrow" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of" and perhaps all of that ended up in The Doctor's program. Still, though.

- Kes is already being used as the Counselor Troi empathy-cypher, 11 episodes in. Speaking of Kes, I used to really dislike her. I can't really understand why now. Not only is she perfectly fine - if used a bit generically when in Troi-mode - she's a vital member of the cast. Kudos to Jennifer Lien.

Not the greatest taste in men.

- The music cues seem off in this one. Is it just me?

- First appearance of the Captain's holodeck program - playacting the governess of an English manor. Not the most exciting part of the show for me, but a subtle component of her character that I like. In general, I like what Voyager does with the holodeck.

10. 

Janeway and the other senior officers attempt to flush out a spy who is sending information to the Kazon.

I've mentioned my lack of interest in the Maquis, but I'm riveted compared to my interest in the Kazon, a group of Klingon-types introduced in the pilot who dog Voyager in hit and run attacks hoping to steal their technology.

Lt. Seska's defection from the crew to the Kazon and her big reveal re: her origins is fine. (At first.)

But these guys - just, no. Not only are they fourth-rate Klingons, their visual is ridiculous.

The technobabble is strong with this one: neosorium signatures, cytological diagnostics, pyrocite replacements, you name it. I do like the idea of a replicator malfunction leading to fatal subspace mayhem.

9. 

An organ-harvesting species known as the Vidiians steal Neelix's lungs, leaving him to die.

I'm torn between (Troy McClure voice) "They BURGLED Neelix's LUNGS!" and "The Talaxian's Lungs Are Missing..." for the tagline, so there's both of them.

Here's the other "Spock's Brain" pastiche (even an ion propulsion trail) except instead of Nimoy and groovy women with brain-and-pain machines who live underground, it's Neelix and... the Vidiians.

Progress... yay?

The Doctor refers to Neelix's lungs as too complex to replicate. Not like Klingon spinal cords, I guess! But okay. Talaxians are Delta Quadrant species, so hey. It opened the door for Neelix to be fitted with holo-lungs, so that's cool. The show doesn't know it yet, but it is its holo-imaginings that will be its legacy.

8. 

Voyager is trapped in a quantum singularity's event horizon, and Captain Janeway must decide between Lt. Carey and former Maquis B'Elanna Torres to be the new chief engineer.

I was just reading something about how black holes may not actually exist. They might, they might not. They're not something as quantifiable as stars or comets, etc. This isn't exactly news to me - I think I knew there was some uncertainty - but it made me think about discovering they didn't exist would terminate an entire era of sci-fi, much as discoveries of the moon (and Mars) brought definitive ends to earlier eras.

This isn't quite the story to hang such epoch-pondering thoughts upon, but it's a decent episode and a sensible 2nd episode of the series: re-enforcing the premise while getting the cast quickly into position so you know where to find them and what their job is during the big countdown-crisis inevitably on its way. This is a Torres episode, so this is about the girl who never felt at home anywhere in the Alpha Quadrant finding herself now that she's a gazillion light years from it. Not the most original arc, I grant you - most of Voyager's aren't, really, save the Doctor's, and perhaps Janeway's.

7. 

A race that could shorten Voyager's journey with a transportation device will not share its technology.

An interesting inversion of the whole prime directive dilemma in Trek. This has some nice moments in it, particularly with Tuvok and with Harry Kim. While we're here, the show really wants you to like Harry Kim. Which is pretty easy, actually - Garrett Wang is kind of effortlessly likeable and the more the other characters go out of their way to sing the character's praises, the more you say, hey! I like Harry Kim, too!

"Who, me?"

"Yes, me."

You need Harry Kim on that wall! Or down on the surface, romancing the ladies, as is the case here. 

This is actually a Janeway episode more than a Harry Kim one, but just some general praise for Harry "Bang Machine" Kim. Women want him, and men want to be him!

Sorry, Captain.

6. 

While searching for a missing Maquis ship with a Starfleet spy aboard, USS Voyager is swept away to the Delta Quadrant, more than 70,000 light-years from home, by an incredibly powerful being known as the Caretaker.

In January 1995 when this two-parter aired to kick off the series, I was working an ill-fated electrician's assistant job in Dawson, Georgia. I was trying to remember why I didn't watch this at the time, and I honestly don't remember. Which is odd - I have a strange obsession knack for remembering this type of thing. At any rate, I was not one of the 21 million people who tuned in. I only saw it for the first time 14 years later when Voyager became my go-to 3 am show during a mercifully brief bout of insomnia I had in 2009. (Incidentally, when I turned the corner on the show; prior to this I'd been pretty indifferent to Voyager. Insomnia will erode your resistance to just about anything.)

Anyway, this time around I enjoyed much more than I remembered. It's a solid piece of storytelling and sets up the show quite well. That Voyager almost immediately settles into an Alpha Quadrant of the Week approach should not be held against it. (Season 1 could definitely have used a few episodes like BSG's "33.") All in all, the Berman era of Trek did a more-than-decent job with its pilots for Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Better, arguably, than "Encounter at Farpoint" did. That's not a comment on the quality of that story (which is perfectly fine and perhaps a bit underrated), just in how effectively it communicated what the series-to-come would actually be like/ about.

This raises a further question about whether the Berman Factory might have gotten their assembly line a little too perfect. Robert Beltran has certainly expressed that opinion over the years. But, we have plenty of time and no particular hurry.

5. 

Investigating a planet just devastated by a polaric explosion, Janeway and Paris are engulfed by a subspace fracture and transported in time to before the accident.

This episode must have been picked to be the third of the season to re-assure the audience that in spite of the crew being 70,000 light years from home, the audience could still count on the same kind of planet/ species/ episode of the week sort of Trek fun. With familiar faces in ridged-face make-up like Joel Polis. 

Olde Towne Tavern! Olde Towne Tavern! (Also Jerk Store.)

I'm torn on this aspect of the show. Was it just a matter of playing it safe? If so, can its lack of interest in rewriting the playbook (despite a premise that not only allows it but would seem to encourage it) or challenging the audience with new character dynamics be considered a failure? (I like the characters fine, but let's face it: there wasn't much going on, dynamics-wise, that didn't exist prior to Voyager in other Treks.) 

I guess what I'm getting at is that everytime I think "Here's the reason the show wasn't the success it could have been," I'm struck by a) the fact of the show's actual success (I don't know why I stubbornly persist in my delusion that seven seasons and finding a perennial streaming and download audience and new generations of fans, etc. does not equal success-any-way-you-define-it), and b) that if the point was to walk a specific line to re-assure the mid-90s Trek-viewing audience that the show would deliver a reliable product within established parameters, can I really hold that against the show? I might prefer it to have gone about itself a little differently, but it's like arguing with a Ferrari for not being a Cadillac. (Or something like that.)

Whatever the case, this isn't a bad one. 

If 70s Burger King and 70s Houston Astros joined forces for fashion.

Voyager had - for its time - the hands-down best special fx on TV. I'll find a better spot to discuss that in more detail, though.

This is two episodes in a row where Paris has to learn "effect" can precede "cause" in quantum mechanics / subspace microfractures. (Airdate-order, I mean, not in this countdown.) Also: first mention of The Delaney Sisters. We don't see them in "Time and Again" or for most of the times they're mentioned, but this is the first glimpse into Tom's (and Harry's, eventually) infatuation with Megan and Jenny.

4. 

The crew enter a nebula to collect samples before realizing it is a living organism, but not before injuring it.

Here's another fairly traditional Trek. I've taken to calling these episodes "Trek casseroles" in my notepad. (If I haven't mentioned that yet, it'll likely appear sooner or later and I'll have forgotten to footnote what it means. So here.) 

The nebula looks cool enough. A nice mix of old-and-new-Trek design.

Tom continues to corrupt Harry with his hedonistic holodeck ways. (First series appearance of Tom's Marseilles pool hall.)

3. 

Harry Kim is transported to an alien world at the same time as a dead woman's body arrives on Voyager.

I might be underrating this one. It's an interesting set-up (Voyager collides with one alien culture's death-and-afterlife belief system) and it's the kind of thing I like Trek to do: approach our cultural conditioning in an oblique but accessible sci-fi way.  It's a little uneven, but inoffensive. 

2. 

A micro-wormhole is discovered that leads to the Alpha Quadrant, and the crew make contact with a Romulan ship on the other side.

There are a few very cool things going on in this episode (having to compensate for the size differentials caused by the wormhole, the temporal tragedy of Telek R'mor, the Back to the Future II/III bit, are the ones I made note of,) But man - the whole hotshot pilot threads the starship through an impossible course, "threading the eye of the needle" is just so unexciting. Was it ever exciting, in any Trek, anywhere? Has anyone ever said "Man! Sulu piloted the shit out of the Enterprise in (that one episode)?" It's odd to me that they felt the need to have stuff like this in every incarnation of Trek.

But it was a different world in the mid-90s, and I'll try not to gripe about Trek-tropes. At least until the show gets to 2000. Why then? Because Galaxy Quest came out in 1999. (Not to mention Free Enterprise.) Let's use that as a dividing line of when Trekdom became a little too self-aware (for better or worse) to really get away with a certain range of things in an unironic way.

1. 

The holographic doctor must rescue crew members who were turned to light energy in a Holodeck simulation of Beowulf.

I haven't spent too much time on The Doctor in this post. He's a great part of every episode, for sure, but he shines particularly in this one, where he has to enter a holo-fantasy that has been co-opted by a strange life form. 

There's a little in common with "Emergence" (TNG) in this episode, which is an episode I personally love but many do not. So it goes. And I really like watching Picardo play The Doctor. It's definitely one of the entire franchise's best marriages of actor to role. 

The Doctor's search for a name is a running feature of the show. I think it'd have been great had he chosen Beowulf as a result of this episode, officially entered it, had doubts later and been ribbed about it here and there over the next 7 seasons. But hey.

~

As of this writing, I'm up to "Lifesigns" in season two. Hopefully this means we'll see a Season Two breakdown sooner rather than later.

Hope to see you then.