Star Trek: Voyager - 30th Anniversary! / BLOGS

2025/01/15

January 16^th, 2025, marks the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, the 4^th live-action TV show bearing the name Star Trek. After The Next Generation went off the air, in 1994, doing movies, the suits wanted another show like The Next Generation because Deep Space Nine was the odd duck in the pond, not travelling from planet to planet but set on a station and it was clear that the suits wanted to repeat the success of The Next Generation, wanted to have a flagship, which wasn’t Deep Space Nine according to them and this turned out to be Star Trek: Voyager.

Star Trek: Voyager started in the middle of Deep Space Nine’s 3^rd season, which meant that DS9 was only half a season the only Star Trek show on TV. For the first time the captain was going to be a woman.

Geneviève Bujold was cast as Captain Nicole Janeway but after half a day of shooting she quit! This apparently wasn’t for her and so Kate Mulgrew became Captain Kathryn Janeway. Obviously not the first female captain in Starfleet but the first female captain on a Star Trek TV show.

In September 2024 I finished rewatching the whole series for the 8^th time or something. Let me be honest, Voyager has never been my favorite Star Trek show, DS9 was and is. Still, with my last rewatch I really enjoyed Voyager more than with previous rewatches. Not that I find the stories so much better than before or something but even when an episode was only average, I still could enjoy it, because I think I accepted it, after so many years, you know Voyager has many uneven seasons in terms of quality, but it does shine on more than one occasion. Other reason is that I realize that I rather watch Star Trek: Voyager than any NuTrek currently is out there. I just appreciate even more the Star Trek shows we got in the 60’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s.

It seems like we may never get back to that same feeling of Star Trek, all the more appraisal to Seth MacFarlane who was able to create a SCI-FI show with the feel of the 90’s, or early 00’s with The Orville! He managed to do what CBS/Paramount couldn’t do…or didn’t want to do. Anyway, I found a new appreciation for Star Trek: Voyager because of this, but also, I guess because when you get older, your viewpoint also changes, so episodes I used to didn’t like or didn’t love, I now actually enjoy or at least tolerate. Besides that, I also gained more appreciation for captain Janeway, no I don’t agree with all her decisions, but she is a captain I would follow, stand behind her decisions unconditionally. With my last rewatch I appreciated her even more, but this is true for most of the cast, as I said a few times in my seasons blogs, these people have come into my home for 30 years now, I consider them family, they have been more in my home than my actual family.

Before I started my rewatch I was thinking that it most likely would be my last rewatch, but now I know there will be many rewatches to come. Besides Captain Janeway, I think you can guess who was is my other favorite character, yes, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), she gave the show a much needed impulse, besides the fact that she was a beautiful woman, a great actress, she truly was an interesting character, obviously has grown the most of all characters, because she came from so far, starting as a Borg drone. Kate Mulgrew’s character Janeway also got a boost from this, because she became Seven’s mentor, which meant her character also evolved over the years. Besides that, these two characters together in one scene always meant quality TV.

Although I never really did like Neelix (Ethan Phillips), he eventually also grew on me, with my last rewatch I even began to appreciate the character more. I guess he also really did grow over the 7 seasons because especially when he was with Kes, he mostly only annoyed me. But when he got greater responsibilities on Voyager, for me, he grew to a character I could like and appreciate. I always liked the Tom Paris / Harry Kim friendship, as I also really liked Tom’s relationship with B’Elanna. The writers / creators built up that relationship quite nicely. Especially because it wasn’t an easy relationship, they had problems but that didn’t stop them from pursuing their relationship. Regarding Harry Kim, I really don’t understand though why Harry Kim never got a promotion, not very realistic.

I keep on appreciating…because I also really enjoyed the character Tuvok (Tim Russ) more and more. On the one hand you might say: he is a bit boring, well that is how I looked at him for most of the 30 years but last few years I began to see him as a Vulcan, as a Vulcan on a ship with mostly humans. His relationship and interactions with Janeway, Tom Paris and Neelix made me enjoy this character more than in previous years. As I said before, as you get older, your viewpoint changes. The Doctor was and is one of the most interesting characters from the start, although I also easily get annoyed by him, especially in episodes like “Flesh and Blood” and “Renaissance Man”. And I usually also don’t like episodes where he plays a dark version of the Doctor, like in episode “The Darkling”. Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is a more than an okay character, sadly though, his character was a bit underused and the episodes where he was at the center, almost always were mediocre at best. If you compare the number ones from each Star Trek show, Spock, Riker, Kira, T’Pol and Chakotay, it becomes clear that Chakotay drew the shortest straw in terms of stories and character growth. And another thing, which you already know if you read any of my Voyager blogs: I really don’t understand why Janeway and Chakotay didn’t end up together in the end, they definitely had something together, we have witnessed this in multiple episodes. Really didn’t like the Seven & Chakotay relationship.

Seasons One through Seven in a nutshell:

As I mentioned earlier on also, the Voyager seasons were very uneven, all through its run, except perhaps for seasons 4 & 7! More on that later. Like TNG & DS9, Voyager’s first season is rocky to say the least. A few really good stories, like the “Caretaker” and “Eye of the Needle” but other than that it was fairly average overall. Season two had a slight uptick, with episodes like “The 37’s”, “Maneuvers”, “Alliances”, “Meld” which is particularly engaging, “Death Wish”, “Investigations”, “Lifesigns” and “Tuvix”. In the past I would also mention the season 2 finale “Basics”, but these Kazon repulse me to be honest, worst adversary in Star Trek history.

Season 3 is another uptick from season two with “Flashback”, a favorite of mine “The Swarm”, these creatures were more interesting in one episode than the Kazon were in two seasons. “Future’s End” is of course the best episode of the season, “The Q and the Grey”, “Macrocosm” Janeway as John McClane, “Coda”, ‘Blood Fever”, “Real Life”, “Distant Origin” and of course “Scorpion” Part one. I have concluded that I find that the Q episodes work better on Voyager than on The Next Generation. That is my opinion at least. I do like Picard’s relationship with Q, but with Janeway it is even better!

After my last rewatch, it has become clear to me that the 4^th season definitely is my favorite season! Yes, it has some weaker episodes but, overall, it should have been Voyager’s standard. “Scorpion” Part Two, “The Raven”, “Scientific Method”, “Year of Hell”, the fantastic “Message in a Bottle”, “Hunters”, “Prey”, “The Killing Game”, “Living Witness”, “One” and the season finale “Hope and Fear”. And yes, adding the character Seven of Nine to the crew was a great success, that’s for sure.

The 5^th season was certainly not in the same league as season 4 but at that point, for me, its 2^nd best season. Episodes like “Night”, “In the Flesh”, “Timeless”, “Counterpoint”, “Latent Image”, “Dark Frontier”, “Think Tank”, “Relativity” and the season finale “Equinox” Part One. I often thought that what happened on “Equinox”, would also be very interesting on Voyager, but we all know this isn’t possible and would get very uncomfortable to watch. Season Six started out rather well, I remember back then that I was thinking that it perhaps could surpass the 4^th season as my favorite, with episodes like “Equinox” Part two, “Dragon’s Teeth”, “One Small Step”, “Pathfinder” and “Blink of an Eye”. But the 2^nd half of season six was definitely a huge disappointment! It started with “Fair Haven” and with one or two exceptions, the next 12 episodes are mediocre at best. Episode 24, “Lifeline” breaks through the mediocrity and the season finale is also entertaining but everything before episode 24 is mostly lame to be honest. And I understand that there already have been many hours of Star Trek, time constraints, budget, you name it, but so many mediocre episodes in one season is just sad. They later called it Star Trek fatigue, but I call it writers’ fatigue because if the stories were good, the phrase Star Trek fatigue would not have been invented. Having said that, I still enjoyed the season because I learned to accept that the second half is mediocre at best. Plus, season 6 does hold a few of my favorite Voyager episodes: “Equinox”, “One Small Step”, “Pathfinder”, “Blink of an Eye” and “Lifeline”. I love these visits from Counselor Troi, Troi from the movies that is.

Well, I had convinced myself that season 7 was also a very mediocre season, but although there aren’t many fantastic episodes in season 7, it is a steady season with usually a grade of a 7/10 or 7.5/10 per episode. Another remarkable thing is that there is only one episode below average, “Renaissance Man”! I was almost done, I began to think this season would not give me a below average episode, but unfortunately episode 24 was a huge disappointment to me. But as I said, overall, a steady season without any real outliers but also, only one dud. My favorite season 7 episode was “Inside Man” where we again meet Lt. Barclay and Counselor Troi.

Kes:

I just wanted to say something about Kes (Jennifer Lien), she was part of this crew for 3 years. It was a character I didn’t find really interesting, but I certainly didn’t hate or something. I did find her relationship with Neelix very weird and was not sad when they broke that off. I had the feeling the writing staff had difficulty writing stories for her, which could be a reason I didn’t find her that interesting. There are some good stories with her in the center, but most episodes were annoying. I think of “Elogium”, “Sacred Ground” and “Warlord”. The character never really got interesting, so I didn’t mind when she left the show, especially because we gained a very interesting character in return with Seven of Nine. In season 6 Kes came back for one episode “Fury”. It was truly awful; you’d think the writers could have come up with a story where I didn’t need to be annoyed with Kes for 38 minutes of the episode. I think this was truly a missed opportunity, as a viewer who did not have much interest in the character, hasn’t been proven wrong with that last episode with Kes, a shame.

The Series Finale:

The series finale is on itself a decent finale, still, I never really loved it because to me, it missed 10-15 minutes of screentime after they arrived back on earth. I wanted to see Kim seeing his parents again, see Tom reunite with his father again. I wanted to see Reginald Barclay being happy to finally see this crew getting home after he’d spend so many hours on getting them home and I could go on a while longer. So yes, I think it is a decent episode, but it is not in the same league as TNG’s or DS9’s series finale. But after rewatching the series finale, I listened to reviewer Dave Cullen’s thoughts on Voyager’s series finale, and he changed my view of the finale even more. To watch this video, click here, in my season 7 blog I also go into a little more depth about it.

Voyager Documentary: To The Journey:

As you might know, as I write this in October 2024, real soon the Voyager Documentary will be ready and I might add, it is about time! Announced in January 2021 for the first time. Really looking forward to this, I supported this from the get-go, got my “first Day” pin, selected the Blu-ray movie of the documentary for my support. Like with the DS9 documentary, the scenes that are showing in the documentary, are in HD. Be sure to look out for this.

Final Word:

So yes, I am a bit harsh here and there, but this is because I love Star Trek: Voyager and I think it could have been so much better, but still, it is fun, it has some golden moments, a great cast, great crew and we need to be grateful that we can go back to these Star Trek shows of the 60’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s, I don’t think it will never come back like this, there are too many influences in today’s TV industry that it will never be like those times. I don’t know perse if that is good or bad, but I do know that NuTrek does not appeal to me in the same way, so again kudos to Seth McFarlane for creating The Orville, Star Trek’s next best thing. In that regard perhaps it is best if we didn’t get a new Stargate show, unless it is with Brad Wright at the helm. Anyway, happy 30^th Anniversary Star Trek: Voyager, you will forever have a place in my heart, for all its flaws, I will never stop rewatching you!