Star Trek: Voyager - The Essential 20 Episodes

I already ranked my favorites least-to-most for each season. But how do the best of each season stack up against one another, you ask? If you had my spreadsheet you'd know the answer! One last time: let's go to the Delta Quadrant. 

20.

The Doctor enters a holonovel initiated by Kim which has caused several crewmembers to disappear. By playing out the events of Beowulf and confronting the villain Grendel, actually an alien lifeform, he saves the day.

There's probably a few episodes not listed here that I enjoy more than "Heroes and Demons," but I wanted to find room for it. An early example of two things the series did fairly well: (1) utilize the holodeck and photonic life in creative ways, and (2) give Robert Picardo a script to work with and let him fly. 

19.

In December 2000, one of Janeway's favorite ancestors must overcome one man's resistance to the building of the Millennium Gate on Earth.

In some ways, this episode is a little confused. It asks interesting questions - are we heroes? do we come from heroes? can we ever really know where we truly come from? where does "we" ultimately start and begin? if your cousin is a prize-winning chess program, does that make you ultimately related to Activision Chess? and so on - but arguably doesn't resolve them all in dramatic fashion. It basically leads to the speech on family at the end and then the slow zoom into the photograph of Sharon O'Donnel with her children and grandchildren around her. 

And that really shouldn't work as the tie-the-room-together moment, and yet I get a lump in my throat each time I've seen it. Must be getting old. Regardless, it works as the parting image upon which to hang so many unknowable sentiments.

"Is this relevant to our present mission?"

"It's relevant to me."

"This ancestor of yours is fifteen generations removed. You only possess a small fraction of her genetic material. Insignificant."

"This isn't about chromosomes, Seven. It's about character. She had an influence on my imagination, on my goals."

18.

As Voyager enters a nebula, the ship goes to grey mode, and Neelix tells a ghost story to the Borg children whose regeneration cycles have been disrupted. He tells of a creature who once took over the ship in circumstances very similar to their own, but later admits that he made up the whole thing. Icheb, however, harbors doubts.

Great fun, great performances, writing, pace, atmosphere, all of it quite well done. It plays to Ethan Phillips's strengths and blends the concept plus traditional genre-scares well. It's more successful in this regard than both "Catspaw" and (arguably) "Wolf in the Fold," two TOS attempts at the very same, or TNG's "Sub Rosa", so that's a feather in the show's cap. It's quite a bit different than all three of the aforementioned, but that blend of genre, I mean.

Icheb is the proto-blogger here, the Trek viewer asking nitpick questions that hint at the absurdity of some of the franchise’s conventional wisdoms/ go-tos. And he even calls out Neelix's story as meta, so extra meta-points.

17.

When aliens steal technology from Voyager, Janeway works with a holographic Leonardo Da Vinci - who has also been stolen, by way of Doc's portable emitter - to find and salvage the computer processor.

This is a classy episode. Great performance by John Rhys-Davies as Da Vinci ("James Kirk claimed to have met him but the evidence is inconclusive." How did Kirk claim this? Didn't Spock mind-wipe him to mend his broken heart? Perhaps later Spock realized this was a lame thing to do, and un-wiped him, then Kirk went around telling everyone he met Da Vinci on one planet, Cochrane on another. No wonder he's where he was at the beginning of The Motion Picture; clearly the brass felt he'd gone space happy.) Excellent chemistry between him and Mulgrew as both characters and actors. It's too bad they never brought Da Vinci back a few more times. "Earthquakes... and idiots. Florence be damned."

16.

A Hirogen relay station allows Voyager to send the Doctor to the Alpha Quadrant, where he finds himself on an experimental shuttle that has been overtaken by Romulans. Working with that ship's EMH, he tries to defeat the enemy and get a message to Starfleet.

Heroic stuff from The Doctor here. I can't believe not only how much fun Andy Dick is in this episode but also how good his chemistry with Picardo is. Like I wrote about it previously, if you never saw, heard of, or read about the actor prior to watching him here, you'd never guess he had this whole other career as a jackass.

Everything about the experimental shuttle looks and sounds pretty cool. All the stuff around the edges (the Romulans snatching this secret Starfleet tech, the mysterious relay station, etc.) likewise.

15.

Learning that his inventor is dying, the Doctor has his program transmitted back to the Alpha Quadrant to try to save him. There he meets Troi and Barclay who, having already tried to convince Zimmerman to seek treatment, are doubtful about the chance of success from the Doctor.

Two beam-the-Doctor-to-the-Alpha-Quadrant episodes in a row - I didn't plan that.

The primary-matrix-degradation parallel is good, with the “I'm not defective, you’re defective!” projections. He’s bitter about what's happened to both himself and the mk-1s and then the Doctor shows up, a literal externalization of his failures, a mocking counterpoint to the end of his life. That he just wants to help makes it all worse. It says something about Picardo that he can make an arc like this feel like a satisfying breakthrough between two different people simply by talking to himself. 

And I like the whole virtual Dad/son stuff, too; that last shot (above) is really earned.

14.

Voyager encounters a divergence field and splits into two identical ships, one damaged and one not. Janeway must work together with her counterpart from the other Voyager or both ships will be destroyed, if not by the anomaly then by the nearby Vidiians.

Okay, so, maybe we've seen this kind of thing in Trek before. Then again, have we? Infant death, major character dies only to be replaced by his (exact) duplicate from another universe? The actions of the ship out of slight phase with its duplicate causing mass destruction? (Okay, that we definitely have.) 

Is it weird that Harry never mentions being from an alternate universe again? No throwaway remarks, no nurturing a conspiracy theory over his lack of promotion? Then again, maybe this is simply commonplace in the future. No one mentions it because who knows how many times they've swapped timelines or if they're really who they were when they started.

13.

The Doctor experiments with a daydreaming program, but when aliens tap into it and mistake his fantasy life for reality, it causes considerable problems - for both the Doctor and the aliens. 

Hidden in this one is some Barclay-esque commentary on both the dangers and salvation of an active fantasy life, a topic I'd wager every Trek fan of a certain age knows all too well. Of any age, properly.

Beyond that, though, it's a great The Doctor episode. No secret here - most of the great Doctor episodes make my top 20. 

12.

Neelix tries to rescue a colony of besieged Talaxians and decides to stay in the Delta Quadrant with his own species, serving as a long-distance ambassador for Starfleet.

My being able to overcome my anti-Neelixness was one of the great surprises of this rewatch. I started with it virtually as a guideline, even giving myself permission to skip Neelix-centric episodes (although I don't think I ever actually did). But somewhere along the way, Ethan Phillips's enthusiasm for the role won me over. Neelix is a good character damn it - if occasionally written as clumsily as anyone else on the show - and Ethan Phillips deserves a standing ovation everywhere he goes. I was wrong and happy to discover it.

Great send-off for the character, here. They need to do a Voyager sequel where The Doctor rounds up a holo-posse (Da Vinci, Moriarty, Chaotica) and goes back to the Delta Quadrant to help Neelix in some kind of Magnificent Seven scenario. 

11.

When Voyager harbors telepathic refugees, a high-ranking alien investigator seeks to defect, and gets close to Janeway as they work to escape his former peers.

I never quite buy Kaskyk's defection, but as neither did Janeway and a great deal of the fun of this is holding this back and watch them seduce and parry with one another, that works in the episode's favor. Nice guest performance by Mark Harelik, good stuff from Kathryn Mulgrew, and from Mahler, too.

I like the dramatic idea of an anti-telepath zone, but one wonders how they could truly handle such a policy. Could they withstand only a couple of Talosians just outside their perimeter, projecting illusions within? Probably not. Of course, it wouldn't stop such a policy from being enacted, even if the Devore knew who the Talosians were. Maybe they're short-sighted people. 

10.

The Doctor writes a holo-novel to be published in the Alpha Quadrant, featuring characters who closely resemble – but do not flatter – the crew.

You'd think there would be no more fresh storytelling angles on the Doctor's narcissism by season seven, but here we are. The hologram's narcissism is humanity's - oh the irony. 

A couple of aspects on this episode don't hold up after repeat watchings. While the ending with the Zimmerman mk1s is initially pretty cool, one wonders how the wild exaggerations of the Doctor's story will do anything more than stir up resentment - likely against the Doctor himself. A kind of reverse "Life Line" could happen. Sort of a Nemesis vibe, there, too. Can you imagine if they made a big-screen Voyager movie out of nowhere and had it follow Nemesis pretty much beat for beat, but with this mk1 set-up instead of some never-before-seen Picard clones and Remans, etc.?

Another is the personhood/ authorship dilemma under Federation law. That might be too nitpicky to bring up. I'm not sure this episode is the case law on the matter that it perhaps might have been. But let's not hold that against it. It's always fun to see an established cast subvert their familiar personae. As it is in this next one:

9.

When aliens from another dimension infiltrate the ship and trigger a war in the Captain Proton holonovel, Janeway pretends to be Queen Arachnia to rescue her ship.

I was going to type that I didn't know anyone who doesn't love this episode. But I think my brother and his wife may have only liked it. What? How this doesn't depress every button on the mental Trek console to 'delightful' perplexes me. It's possible people simply grew tired of the holo-gimmicks. Understandable, I guess, but not a demographic that includes myself. I wish they'd gotten rid of half the episodes they did do and just fleshed out the Chaoticaverse to absurd, indulgent levels. Fair Haven, too. On some level of the Voyager Tower, there's a War Between Chaotica and Fair Haven and the Unnamed Aliens, and it lasted a whole season and changed the franchise forever. 

The Doctor as the President of Earth and Tuvok's "Please, summarize the message" are favorite moments. Everything with Satan's Robot, as well.

8.

Hundreds of years in the future on a planet in the Delta Quadrant, the Doctor's backup module is recovered by a race which believes he can shed light on Voyager's devastating intervention with their planet's history.

It's kind of funny to watch this episode in 2019. This sort of examination might seem too furiously neutral, or disengaged. Are we supposed to empathize with the Doctor here? I think we should, or at least can, but I think 2019 would find such empathy problematic. I can hear the angry screeds fairly easily. An episode more like "Memorial" would be more suitable to such critics, I bet.

Their loss. This is great stuff and good for your mind. Why deprive yourself of a) any good The Doctor story/ Picardo performance for any reason? or b) the kind of thoughtful meditation on civilizational POV that used to animate the franchise? Not that just because something used to be the franchise's raison d'etre is reason to keep doing anything, but when it was a perfectly reasonable raison d'etre tossed aside in pursuit of something far slipperier, well. Do what works; avoid what doesn't. 


Same goes for:

7.

Voyager rescues a critically ill Vidiian woman who is given a holographic body by the Doctor while he treats her. They begin to fall in love, but the woman must return to her diseased-ravaged body, and she tries to sabotage the Doctor's work because she thinks death would be preferable to such an existence.

Above and beyond work from both Susan Diol and Picardo here. The episode ends on a subtle note: the Doctor and Denara waltzing, no easy resolution, just a little more time together. It's the type of ending that trusts the viewer to come to his or her own emotional reconciliation - if any. Very true to life but theatrical at the same time. I love it.

Good on ya, Shmullus.

I'm always an easy mark for these sort of man-who-wasn't-there meets woman-without-a-face (so to speak) stories.

6.

Voyager encounters another Starfleet spaceship, the USS Equinox, also stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Their divergent approaches on survival so far from Federation principles threaten to destroy them both.

I'm also an easy mark for the through-a-mirror-darkly/unexpected-redemption stories. Here's the only two-part season-wraparound that ever truly worked start to finish for me. The late-innings resumption of the Equinox captain to his Starfleet ethos, as brought to life by a very effective John Savage, elevates an already exciting story to a heroic one. 

As with so many Voyager episodes you can see how these ideas changed into BSG-reboot episodes in the years to come. I've thought this many times over the years and was happy to see it confirmed in So Say We All: The Complete Uncensored Unauthorized Oral History of BSG by Mark Altman and Edward Gross. Not that they were reworked into BSG episodes, more like certain BSG episodes pointedly made contrary decisions to how similar scenarios would play out on Voyager. 

5.

Torres crashes on an alien world and becomes the inspiration for an indigenous playwright who believes he's captured a literal muse. Torres works with him as she learns he uses his plays to inspire his patron to peace between the warring factions of his people. She helps him pull off the best play ever, then beams out.

Like Harry or Tom, B'Elanna was occasionally hampered by having to re-do the same story arc over and over. Here she takes center stage to the type of fantastic civilization musing (no pun intended, sincerely) that again once defined the franchise. I love this kind of crap. Its refreshing lack of excess edginess charms me, as well. It reminds me a little of TNG's "Thine Own Self" in that regard. The lesson that the episode imparts, while hardly opaque, is not necessarily spelled out in the dialogue, and that leaves the viewer room to ponder.

"Muse" asks what the relationship is between art and inspiration, between art and politics, art and commerce, etc. All questions that the writers' room must have felt keenly. I like everything that happens in this episode, although I do wonder what will happen to poor Kelis: they'll never be able to reproduce that transporter effect again. His patron - or some future patron - might grow angry at such a failure and cancel his career, perhaps his life.

Again, something the Trek writers knew a little something about.  

4.

A Saurian scientist pursues Voyager in hopes of proving his theory that his species did not evolve in the Delta Quadrant, but evolved from dinosaurs on Earth. The scientist, who takes Chakotay first as a hostage and then as a willing witness, must convince his ruling council that his findings will not be disruptive to their society.

For my money, this (and "Living Witness" and even "Muse") was the kind of episode they should've done more of in the series, or at least several times a season: something from the perspective of aliens who know nothing of Starfleet, who've lived their whole lives in their own cosmologies deep in the Delta Quadrant. This one - one of the wackier ideas in the whole Trek canon - allows us to examine our own biases regarding evolution and our ideas of where we come from and who we are, as well as cheering Chakotay (arguably his finest moment in all seven seasons) as he aids and abets an alien Galileo (or Darwin/ Alfred Russell Wallace) to accomplish that which we, the viewer, know (well, "know") to be right.

Great stuff. "Warp Speed Dinosaurs" would've made a better title. While we're here, season four's "Prey" should've been named "If It Leaks A Quantum Signature, We Can Irregulate Its Isonarrative Subroutine!" Exclamation point and all. The show could've used a more TOS sensibility in some of its episode names. Trek suffers from this in general over the past few decades; the names are so generic and forgettable. This is decidedly not the case with our next selection:

3.

The bio-mimetic duplicate crew attempts to go about their merry way as Paris and Torres get married, but a horrible fate befalls them just as they find a quick way back to Earth.

The surprise of this one - spoiler alert: this ain't Voyager, it's the duplicate biomemetic lifeforms who only think they're Voyager from "Demon" - is pretty cool. The second surprise - everyone's degrading back to their original state and will all certainly die - is powerful. For all the times we see something like this - not exactly like this, but anything that underscores the basic tragedy of life: we live, we learn ideals and try to exemplify them, they don't save us,  only animate our lives with meaning, we deteriorate, we die - it really hits me with "Course Oblivion." 

I love the discussion of whether or not Starfleet ideals matter, even for people who are "faking" them. It's the type of "what is Trek?" discussion that is relevant for the franchise, its viewers, its country or origin, and all its citizens. And like the bio-mimetic crew, it doesn't matter whether we're doomed to fail or not; if we embody what we say we believe, our path is clear. 

Powerful episode. I'd have preferred for my personal taste someone putting it together and honoring their memory at episode's end. One of those in the Captain's ready room codas that you know TNG would've had. "I've been examining the debris..." etc. Without that, maybe it is a touch too bleak. But bleakness aside, the theme (you are the one bearing witness to your life; your principles are what you do when no one is there to see you/ when you're falling apart) is something Voyager - and Trek - come back to again and again. I appreciate their not giving us the coda just this once. (Why no one makes an effort to collect this goop of bio-deuterium, which they went to great, life-threatening risks to collect back in "Demon", though, that suddenly appears in front of them, is an oopsie. If you have one episode where some element is crucial to the crew's survival, you don't show the crew shrugging at it in another one.) 

2.

In order to pass through a dangerous nebula, the entire crew is put into stasis, leaving only Seven of Nine - who is immune to the deleterious effects - to fly the ship.

This was a big episode for Jeri Ryan's career. If she blew it here, her character might not have had the development she got in s5 - s7. Could she carry the episode by herself? Was she more than just a physical presence in a catsuit so tight production had to be shut down so she could go to the bathroom? Could a Seven-centric show carry the rest of the cast or teach us something about them, as well? Could we be moved by or find common cause with a Borg's struggle to be alone? The answer, happily for us, is yes on all counts.

Hard not to project some of that on-set drama between Ryan and her castmates (particularly, unfortunately, Kathryn Mulgrew) on Seven's paranoia, here. And the understated, haunted last last line ("Perhaps you dislike being alone") which could be read as her simply making conversation (which began the episode) with Paris, speaking of his claustrophobia. We-the-Viewer, having been on this journey with her in "One", understand the iceberg of emotion beneath the surface with that line. Delivered perfectly, directed perfectly. 

Like the Doctor, Seven episodes kind of crowded out episodes with the rest of the cast in the seasons to come. Which is understandable when you have performers and characters of their caliber, and that's no slight to anyone else. It's show business, not show communism. (At least in theory.) 

1.

Voyager becomes trapped in the orbit of a planet with an odd tachyon field. Time passes much differently on the planet's surface. Civilizations rise and fall in minutes, with Voyager's struggles to free itself a part of their evolving mythos and worldview. As they grow more sophisticated and the earthquakes the ship's presence causes more severe, they develop weapons that can destroy Voyager. Can peoples from two different time differentials communicate before it is too late?

And here we are at my favorite episode. Not just mine - a lot of Voyager fans. Lightning in a bottle this one, as precious to me as, Trek-wise, as "The Inner Light" or "Darmok." Everything about the franchise that I used to love is embodied here. (Also in "Return of the Archons," but I'll try and stay focused.) 

The script makes some demands on the people who brought it to life. How do you represent the passage of centuries on the planet? The production designers chose to emphasize how one establishing shot of a hillside, populated first with only rocks and sheep and what not, eventually turns into an observatory and finally, a future-scape where the old Gotana-Retz watches Voyager fade away from the night sky forever. ("I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend.") And we see them leap from superstition to the first hints of reason to societal organization (and commerce, with the "Sky Friends action figures") and finally, when their technology finally allows them to take decisive action against this god that's ignore them for centuries. 

Great stuff.

No less great: everything on the ship itself, from the discussions of their predicament to the Doctor's seconds-to-them/years-for-him adventure on the planet and all that entails. (Did he have a holo-baby down there? That may be taking Trek's whole hybrid-baby thing too far. But it's only alluded to.) 


By the time Voyager makes it back to Earth, how many centuries would have passed for them? It'd be interesting to see some kind of sequel to this, maybe where some variation of Morlocks and Eloi are all that remains of Gotana-Retz and the gang. 

~

But, we all but certainly won't be seeing any Voyager sequels of any kind, to "Blink of an Eye" or any of the what-ifs above. So it goes. If you care to read my season to season watch-throughs, click here and scroll down to Voyager. If not: thanks for reading and see you round the galaxy. 

Star Trek: Voyager (Season Seven)

I had some doubts along the way that we'd actually get here, but! Here we are. 

Voyager's last season aired from October of 2000 to May 2001. Were you watching? I wasn't. I think the only things I was watching regularly week-to-week in that time period were Dawson's and SNL. 

There'll be at least one more post in this VOY series, then that may be it for Trek-blogs for awhile. Or maybe not. Originally I'd planned to start an immediate Enterprise season-by-season project. It'd be cool to do one of these season-by-season re-rankings for any of the other Treks, really, with the exception of TOS. (There's no such as "rewatch" with TOS - it's an ongoing watch - and I don't have much to add to any of those.) But they take forever.

For now let's just focus on the task at hand, and a-Voyager-ing let us go.

23.

Q leaves his son (Q2) on Voyager to learn from the crew.

Nope. The idea of even engaging with this annoys me. I don't know Voyager felt the need to go back to the Q well after insert-last-Q-episode-ever events, but here's another diminishing return for a pretty well-diminished-concept.

22.

Prisoners are brought onto Voyager from a damaged alien vessel, and the crew must deliver them to their destination – for execution. Seven's nanoprobes are used to help heal a prisoner.

Where have I seen this guy before? (Answer: oh, it's Jeff Kober, from China Beach and elsewhere.) Where have we seen this episode before? Haven't they already done this on the show? Or am I just thinking of that TNG one from one of the earlier seasons?

Capital punishment stories are always a little awkward for me. Yedig doesn't persuade me. Is he meant to? Starts a little on the broad side and gets extensively broader. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Yedig had been a liberal reformer of some kind? 

It's not terrible, and there are some issues raised worth examining via  Trek lens. Particularly the Clockwork Orange-ness of the nanoprobes. What exactly do they do? how can they restore someone's sense of empathy and moral compass when they're designed to suppress that in assimilated drones? I'm not knocking the idea - I think it could've been much more interestingly explored than what we got here. 

21.

In the future where it took Voyager 23 years to get home, Admiral Janeway devises a plan to alter history. As the crew enters a final showdown with the Borg, the two Janeways implement a risky plan to take out one of the six Borg Transwarp Hubs in the galaxy and simultaneously cross the transwarp threshold to get home.

Any Trek finale is getting in the ring with "All Good Things." (I'm just skipping over "Turnabout Intruder" and "The Counter-Clock Incident," neither of which were specifically crafted to be series finales.) I thought the DS9 finale was pretty good, although I only ever watched the first and last season and a handful of episodes in-between so maybe I'm not the one to say. But it seemed to do its job. Finales have to exemplify the spirit of all that came before, wrap up any long-running storylines, elevate everyone in the cast, and send things off in style. I can forgive the shortcomings of any finale that hits these marks, even if I don't like them. 

"Endgame" isn't that finale. They opted for a retread of "All Good Things", right down to Tuvok's degenerative brain disease and the time displacement/ multiple Janeways. And not a very animated one at that. Worse, it hits so many cliches (the birth, the big 'splosions, the inexplicable new romance - Seven and Chakotay - yadda yadda) rather than trust in the show and cast's innate qualities. You know the scene in Bring It On where the girls realize their dance routine is identical to the one that just wowed the crowd, but they do it anyway, satisfying no one? That's "Endgame."

Another thing that gets me: Janeway's (and Trek time travel) inconsistencies re: moral imperatives, the timeline, and Borg are something else. Definitely not the note you want to hit on the way out the door. 

There are things I like. Harry Kim as Captain of the USS Rhode Island? Awesome. And giving him the redemptive moment of having been the one to correctly guess the way home is a nice touch, too. I like the return of Alice Krige, even if she's not given much to work with. The transwarp conduit is... well, it looks cool. But the assimilation-infection-back-up plan: I can't believe they still talk about this. Like the cloaking device, surely the Borg have adapted by now; Starfleet talks about this all the time. Are you telling me an enemy who adapts to phaser frequencies within thirty seconds can somehow remain oblivious to the danger of this plan over years and years and years of its being tried? Trek can be so weird about things like that - or having some big fuck-off ship appear like we're all supposed to be impressed or something. Always blown up with a single torpedo. Who makes these decisions?

Also: Janeway didn't even try to beam/ rescue Admiral Janeway. This is at least the 2nd alternate Janeway she's let die, geez.

20.

Ex-Maquis crew members are attacked after a data stream arrives from Starfleet.

A little late in the show to be doing this episode. Maybe the Maquis and the Kazon can get together and pool their resources into a concept I care an iota about; they'd need to. Not a bad episode but I struggled to remain interested in watching it. I liked the movie theater stuff, that's about it.

19.

Voyager's hologram technology, which Janeway had previously donated to the Hirogen, has been modified to make the holographic "prey" more cunning, enabling the hologram characters to rebel against their new masters.

Titlewise, we get "Flesh and Blood" and "Body and Soul" in the same season. Seems a little lazy. Couldn't anyone come up with anything else? I always wonder with these things if it's a writer's-union sort of thing, like to do so engages machinery that is the exact opposite of a quick two-second fix. 

I suppose your reaction to this one all depends what you think of this all-holograms-working-together sort of thing. And whether this season can support 2 two-parters that seem born of recycling costumes. Myself, I think the former is strained or doesn't realize itself well enough - again, BSG comes to mind as the road better taken - and I do not for the latter. The dilemma for Janeway isn't really apt: the holograms are who they are because of the Hirogen's adjustments, not because they shared the technology. The heavy sense of responsibility she feels is a little too forced. Obviously I see what they're going for (and it's an exploration very much in the Trek tradition, all the way back to Kirk's "serpents for the garden of Eden" poetics at the end of "A Private Little War") but it doesn't land with me here.

18.

 

Janeway, B'Elanna and Tuvok are assimilated by the Borg while attempting to save the group of drones who have developed individuality.

I covered this one last time but worth a mention here as well. I apologize for my lack of consistency with the two-parters I condense into one entry and the ones I treat separately.

For a story that ends with the Borg Civil War, which just kind of fades into the background of s7 after this episode, and features the Borg Queen destroying several of her own ships, and Tuvok getting assimilated, or whatever-you-like, it sure feels like we've seen all this before. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but there's just an aura of been-there-done-that to all we see. The tete-a-tete between Janeway and the Borg Queen has its moments, as do some of the moments between Seven and Axum (played by Mark Deakins, who was in Insurrection). 

The production design choices re: the Borg get-ups are interesting. Cool sub-processor effect on B'Elanna's voice but why not the others?  

17.

 

When her cortical implant malfunctions, Seven of Nine needs a life-saving transplant.

The Delta Flyer, so recently offered up as a sacrifice in "Unimatrix Zero" is replicated and back in action. Like many Voyager watchers, I've poked some fun at Chakotay's losing so many shuttles over the years, or their having an inconsistent approach with what they can or can't replicate. Mostly that's a pretty mild offense - there are "magic" elements of Trek, and the replicator is certainly one of them. That said, it might've helped the show a tad more had shuttles and Delta Flyers been harder to come by.

Icheb for the win this whole episode. Touching ending. I think there was definitely an element of awkward men and women working out adolescent issues in some aspects of Berman-era Trek. In thoughtful if sometimes clunky ways. Overall positive. It's a nice counterpoint to the other trends of 90s programming, i.e. a general slide then spike towards tortureporn and nihilism. Imperfection(s), indeed.

16.

Now married to Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres discovers she is pregnant. The Doctor tells her to expect a daughter; but B'Elanna's unresolved fear of the childhood traumas, which she suffered as a part-Klingon girl growing up among humans, makes her determined to remove her child's Klingon DNA.

Here's the bulletpoints from my now-retired Voyager notepad:

- Klingons have a 30 week pregnancy. I'm enough of a nerd to want to check that against any/ all other references, but not enough of one to actually do the legwork. Something to shoot for!

- The flashbacks don't quite deliver the Lost/Watchmen effect here. Like the earlier Tuvok one. (I can't recall the name offhand, the one with Tank Girl.) 

- Tom Paris has a toaster? I'm not surprised.

- Kind of an uncomfortabe one. But an honest attempt, at least, to deal with the mixed (ahem) legacy of half-human hybrids in Trek and their analogs in the non-trek (i.e. real) world. Also, the well, whiteness of the franchise, while staying within the ideological framework of the show. 

- The only problem is it feels a bit of a regression for B'Elanna's character. Much like Harry with "Nightingale," I had a sort of paternal reaction, like I thought it was a cruel use of the character just to put the (admittedly worthwhile) issue on display. It didn't feel developed enough. The flashbacks like I say were integrated rather awkwardly, not as effective as they could have been.

- I do like very much the Doc's being chosen as the godfather.

15.

 

Harry Kim takes command of an alien ship that has lost its officers in an attack.

We've heard all of this before, right down to Tom and Harry in the corridor. Little late in this show for this type of episode/ Harry-arc. But this would've made a fine transition-Harry-out-of-perpetual-ensign episode back in s3 or s4. In a way, there's part of me that responded to this episode in an almost offended way, like it's tough to see Harry keep getting treated like this. Ridiculous I know.

Ron Glass!

Poor Icheb. Poor Harry. (Icheb's arc is the fun part of the episode. Although I kind of enjoy most of the Nightingale story, too.)

Why is the cloak so important? We saw the A's firing on it, pre-credits. I must've missed something.

14.

 

Seven practices her social skills on the holodeck.

Perfectly fine, but as with "Nightingale," a little late in the series for this type of thing. Some more fun stuff from Icheb. If I were in charge of Paramount, I'd have made 3 or 4 Icheb movies by now. With Neelix. Man that'd piss people off - but they'd all be awesome, so everyone would begrudgingly admit I was right. And I'd be loaded. 

Sorry, had some trouble disengaging my holodeck program from interfering with my duties, there. Should be fine now.

13.

 

The crew of Voyager enters the Delta Flyer in a sub-warp race, crewed by Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, and events conspire to encourage Tom to propose to her.

Mostly fine, although I personally found the juxtaposition of relationship-race stuff with flying-the-race stuff to be a little pat. Harmless enough - perhaps the genre (racing drama) demands the car vs. betty dynamic, I don't know, along with the cheating-mustachioced-villain. 

The race itself could have been more dazzling. The premise is in never in any danger of being over-exploited; they charted a rather bland-but-safe passage right through. Rather disappointing, that, but I suppose not everything has to be a gamechanger. It speaks to the difficulty of the "hotshot pilot" scenes in Trek. It just never really works. Piloting shuttlecrafts and starships is just never exciting the way the scripts want it to be. 

12.

 

A hologram of Reginald Barclay is sent to Voyager, supposedly to implement a dangerous plan to bring them home; but the hologram has been tampered with by some Ferengi, who are trying to steal valuable Borg nanoprobes from Seven of Nine.

Maybe too much Barclay, now, especially with Troi always combined with him. 

But, a good variation of the concept, and Schultz was a fun character actor who chewed scenery well. Picardo and he were well-matched onscreen. 

11.

Voyager encounters an ancient Klingon battlecruiser. The Klingons aboard it had set out long ago to find their savior, and they believe it to be Tom and B'Elanna's unborn child.
More Alpha Quadrant.

More bulletpoints:

- 2nd episode where the shyuttle cargo bay is converted (200 mouths to feed. That replicator is getting a workout.)

- Neelix and Tuvok: the spin-off Odd Couple reboot-gold that never happened.

- I'm a sucker for this type of story. I'm probably overranking it.

- When challenged to a death match, with a Klingon or otherwise, you always accept.
That training montage could have really used some more montage-appropriate music. VOY never went off-model like that, though, and it would've been odd for them do suddenly do so in s7. Still! You're the best! A-ROUND! (insert Klingon for the rest)

- Nehret: magic hybrid stem cells! Always with the magic blood in these things. I suppose that was a trope long before Star Trek or 20th century sci-fi altogether.

- Wouldn't the Klingons demand Tom and B'Elanna stay with them? And then Tom and B'Elanna would be elevated as royalty or protected persons or something? Wouldn't mind a sequel where their daughter-to-be seeks these guys out. With Neelix. And Icheb. And Tuvok and Old Harry Kim, who's still an ensign.

10.

The crew is sent on its first mission by Starfleet in nearly seven years: to find a lost probe sent by Earth in the 21st century that has ended up in the Delta Quadrant.

Definitely a bit of a John Carpenter homage with this one. And a successful enough one, I think. Also a TWOK/ Botany Bay vbe.

Fun set-up. Not a bad version of this sort of thing. All too true of a wrap-up at the end.

9.

While visiting the planet Ledos, Seven and Chakotay crash through an energy barrier. The two are stranded in the jungle with primitive humanoids, who take the pair in and care for Chakotay's injuries. To rejoin Voyager, he and Seven have to disable the energy barrier.

Chakotay loses a shuttle! And he and 7 are paired so soon after 7's Chakotay-kissing-practice on the holodeck. Pretty good. Some might think it gets a little preachy. Maybe so - I thought it was mostly uncontroversial stuff. The ending would've worked a little better against a waves backdrop, like leaving the island's beauty.

Tom's whole subplot with the driving test: a shameless pitch to their fanbase/ demographic. But, hardly the first of those in either Trek or TV history, nor the last.

8.

During an emergency on a mission, The Doctor is forced to upload his program into Seven of Nine's Borg implants, allowing him to experience real sensations for the first time.
Great Picardo impersonation from Jeri Ryan.

Why do aliens say 'the Delta Quadrant'? I guess the answer is simply the universal translator. In a way it's an elegant solution: no matter what people call their own worlds, the universal translator translate it all into a grid of language (especially with regard to planetary systems and names). It's by no means perfect, though, or really that comprehensible. These are all Captain-Obvious statements to make to any Trek fan, of course. 

A better question is: why are there no cameras in the brig?

This could have went somewhere a bit more with the attraction to the lady - also, who IS that lady? It's Megan Gallagher, another alum (like Picardo) of China Beach. How come Voyager never got Dana Delaney?

Is Picardo just employing actor-ly mannerisms in his performance of the Doctor, easily teachable to Ryan or anyone else, the way a cartoonist's style can be taught as an in-house style?

Or perhaps Ryan is just a master impressionist, which is the likelier case - we've seen her do many different characters already on the show.

I'm not 100% up on her post-VOY career, but my impression is that those types of talents have perhaps been squandered. Even in VOY episodes I'm not crazy about (like the one where she splits into different people) it's easy to see she had a talent for this sort of thing. She would've worked well on a show like Dollhouse. Hindsight. 

I'm skipping over the Pon Farr stuff. While a good callback, it seemed like kind of a letdown. Does Tuvok really need to be persuaded of the logic of utilizing the holodeck to avoid his own death from sexual frustration? 

7.

 

Voyager is pulled into a void, where the ships that have become trapped attack each other for food and resources.

This is another one I remember well from my insomnia Voyager watching way back when. It struck me then as a successful utilization of the concept, and so it strikes me now. Interesting, differentiated aliens, Federation principles tested against isolation, survival of the ship so far from home in the unknown, etc.  Good contrast with the abundance of food vs. losing 90s% of their food stores in the initial raid. 

Nice score and sound design in this one, as well.

6.

Voyager is fractured into several time periods by an accident, and only Chakotay is able to move between them, in the process meeting old friends and old foes from the previous six seasons

Fun deal. The gel-pack thing is maggufintastic. But who cares.

Icheb and Naomi Wildman are cool. But 17 years... I have questions.

Nice moment between Janeway and Chakotay.

I never liked Seska but kind of nice to see the actress again and the passage of time almost makes me nostalgic to see the Kazon. I'm sorry - sometimes I say things.

One thing, though: how would Chakotay telling Janeway about the epsode's plot be against the Temporal Prime Directive? Obviously these are all alternate timeliness. Not knowledge of the future. Oh yeah: the TPD is nonsense. My fault for asking.

5.

 

The Doctor is forced to help aliens steal Voyager's warp core.

I seem to have lost my notes for this one. I didn't write much, just how this kind of story was getting a little repetitive for The Doctor. But how could they stop? They're always so much fun. Even if I find a lot of it to be better expressed in other Doctor episodes. it's engaging from start to finish.

Nice to see Vorik again. Did it really take me until just now to realize his parents are Jeri Taylor (Voyager co-creator) and Dick Enberg? Sheesh. I probably learned and forgot that 3 or 4 times now, I bet. The perils of covering a series over 2 years.

It's an odd choice for the penultimate episode of the entire series. Personally, I'd have gone with "Author, Author."

4.

The Voyager crew is brainwashed into taking new jobs on an industrialized planet that has a severe labor shortage, leaving only Chakotay, Kim and Neelix (who were on an away mission) and the Doctor (who, in the absence of the crew, has become the Emergency Command Hologram) to save them. Chakotay and Neelix take jobs on the new planet, and try to rescue their amnesiac crewmates – who don't want to leave.

Ambitious. Like "Year of Hell" but much more focused. The alien species set-up is kind of undeveloped, but it's just-developed-enough to get the story across. I like it as a metaphor, which I assume is all it's meant to be, but a metaphor for what, specifically, I don't really know. (Actors and roles? Re-entering the workforce after Trek? A vague sort of swipe at capitalism?) Whatever the case, some fun moments. There always are with brain-wipe plots. Also, plenty of inconsistencies.

 

Perhaps it might've been tied into that management-class-alien-species from the health care episode (coming up next incidentally - spoiler alert!) That'd have been cool. 

3.

  

The Doctor's program is stolen and he is forced to work in an alien hospital, where he skillfully manipulates the system to provide ethical medical care.

Classic Trek with all that entails. I bet there are those who feel the Doctor's actions, here, aren't correct, or that the writers fumble the debate in an alienating way. I don't, but I can sympathize with the proverbial viewer who does. This engages me on a Trek level (alien-hospitals and space kidnapping, etc.), theater-level (good performances from President Logan and all the rest) and a compelling, engaging topic, explored within accessible dramatic limits. And I like what it brings up and how it does so. Really, the people of the future's health care issues are more or less solved. Anything the replicator or transporter can't take care of is fixed up by McCoy's magic spray bottles. I like that the people of Trek are (Tom Paris notwithstanding) consistently appalled when confronted with societal conditions resembling our own.

With one notable exception, of course.

"I miss the Earth so much..."

2.

 

The Doctor writes a holo-novel to be published in the Alpha Quadrant, featuring characters who closely resemble – but do not flatter – the crew.

You'd think there were no more stories to tell about the Doctor's narcissism, but here we are. And despite some of the this-again ness of this, like most of the Doctor episodes, I'm too busy enjoying myself to mind too much. Let's face it: part of the reason Voyager feels after awhile like it's top-heavy towards the Doctor (or Seven of Nine episodes) is because they're the most fun. I like all the cast of the show and all the characters, too, but they had two exceptional performers in Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan. Not taking anyone from anyone else, of course.

The story might have been developed a bit more or in a different direction, something like "Blood of Chaotica" or "Tinker Tenor". Really it's a very simple structure and comes across almost as fan service in some ways, but like I often say any multiple-seasons show has to give the actors new ways to blow off steam once in awhile.

I put this one under that umbrella.

I forgot about the very ending of this one, with all the mk1 Picardos (referenced in "Life Line").

1.

Voyager encounters a Talaxian settlement leaving Neelix with the difficult decision of whether to leave the crew.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but this is possibly the most heroic of all the send-offs outside Spock's original death in TWOK for any Trek character. It actually made me want to see some kind of movie with Neelix as the main character, which I thought wouldn't just be impossible pre-this-project but evidence of actual insanity if uttered aloud. So kudos to all involved on that. I'm happy to discover I can even change my mind about such a thing in my advanced age.

Is Tuvok's farewell jig completely cheesy? Absolutely it is. Like Ryan Britt once wrote, Trek is usually at its best when it gets up to do the jerky nerd dance at the wedding and everyone groans. Maybe not Roddenberry-era Trek, but the case can be made for the Berman era.

This one isn't the most original perhaps - the world or the dilemma - but the familiar as tweaked / run through some fun Trek tropes. Congratulations, Neelix, you get my vote for most memorable/ favorite of season 7.

~

Join me for one last Delta Quadrant go-round 
next time with Voyager: My Top 20 Episodes.