Prodigy has gifted Trek with a lot, but I think one of it's greatest gifts is giving Chakotay not only a personality but also actual plot-important things to do.
An episode I'm kinda partial to is "One", where Seven is forced to pilot the ship by herself through a nebula while the rest of the crew is in stasis, and slowly starts cracking up. Great showcase for Jeri Ryan.
One of if not my favorite episode. My only problem with it was I feel it didn't have to take place seven hundred years in the future. That making it take place one or two hundred years in the future would have still worked. We have seen how dramatic the memory of past events can change even when there are people still alive who experienced them.
Dammit! You beat me. That's my pick for best episode of the series. It's epic, well acted by Robert Picard and guest star Henry Woronicz. Tim Russ' direction of the episode SUPERB, especially in his freshman debut as a director. (Why he never directed again on Voyager is one of the great mysteries of the Universe.) At Star Trek convention, Mr. Russ once told me that he thought the "LW"'s storyline was so important that as a black man he felt passionate about the script and its message that the he pushed for himself to direct, which he ultimately did. Like "The Voyager Conspiracy" its message fidelity to historical truth is both prescient and deeply important. Also the ending hits me in the gut EVER time.
@@creativerealms Yes, but if there are still people alive they can stand as naysayers to the revisionists. (It's why Spielberg started the SHOAH FOUNDATION, so that the experiences of Holocaust survivors would be recorded for posterity and for TRUTH.). I think that's why the seven hundred years in the future was chosen by the PTB.
"I'm afraid..." "I knoooooow." The delivery sticks with me years afterward. Janeway became a recurring nightmare figure for months, a shadowed bogeywoman who just sat there menacingly.
Living witness was a great episode, I'm happy they did something different with "The evil version of the characters" instead of going with the mirror universe again. Going with voyager being made the villain in history was a much better way to do it. Also given the nature of the show, and how the crew simply involved itself with a couple of events and moved on as it nothing happened they wouldn't know their impact on history. I loved this episode. My only problem was I don't think it needed to take place seven hundred years in the future.
It also has something in common with “Blink of an Eye” in that it foregrounds an alien culture and how Voyager’s presence affects them. The Protagonist of the episode isn’t really the Doctor, it’s the museum curator, Quarren. He’s the one who has an arc through the story. He starts out disbelieving the Doctor’s testimony but comes around to the position that the truth is more important than a comforting story.
Solid list. Not necessarily top 5, but my favorite Voyager performance is Jerri Ryan in "Body and Soul". Basically, the Doctor downloads into Seven's Borg implants, allowing Ryan to perform a manic and over-the-top Robert Picardo Doctor impression. She is so good that it's easy to forget that we aren't watching Picardo. I had generally been kinda "meh" on Ryan and Seven until this episode.
It wouldn't surprise me if Ryan requested an episode like this to showcase her talents, especially as Voyager already had an emotionally repressed character in Tuvok.
I've always liked "Course: Oblivion." It hints that there was a much better version of the Voyager ship and crew we could have been watching instead, and then kills them in favor of the ones we've got instead. Sarcasm aside, I really like the way the episode is paced, and the ending is legitimately heartbreaking.
I don't find them any better than the OG Voyager crew (unless you were being sarcastic there? I miss these cues sometimes). At the end of Course Oblivion, it doesn't affect the OG Voyager crew because they didn't get to meet or even know of the duplicate ones. BUT, it affects the viewer. At least, it did so for me. It's so heartbreakingly final. They struggled so hard to survive, but no one will know that they existed. ... It's how I think about individual lives. Ancestors - there are usually names, dob and dod dates, maybe a picture, various records. Many women don't even have their maiden names recorded at all. But beyond that, who they were, their personalities, their hopes and dreams, their failures, their triumphs, their pains -- everything that fleshes out a unique life is lost. And it occurs to me that one day, I too will be merely a list of facts somewhere -- the real me forever unknown. "The Last Thought You'll Ever Have" by Pursuit of Wonder on YT. Check it out. Dark. Eerie.
Oh, the end kills me in all the right ways. I still like to believe that the very end of the episode were to actually have Voyager pick up the signal from the probe, just so I can believe that the alternate Voyager and her crew could at least be remembered. Then I snap back to reality, and know that their entire existence is lost to time.
The Torres 'mini-arc' about her sense of loss, identity etc. (Extreme Risk comes to mind, Day of Honour). Admittedly it's been a while since I've had a rewatch, but on reflection Roxann Dawson seemed to absolutely throw herself into those performances with Avery Brooks-level passion.
I didn't mind Torres, I think the only issue was that so many Torres episodes were centred around 'Torres has a temper' that it got a bit old, and also seem to imply that it was trying to reduce Klingon's down to just people with a short fuse, which does not reflect who the Klingon's have been throughout most of Star Trek and especially by the time Voyager came along. Are Klingon's more aggressive than most other races? Yes... but that's not all they are and they can even be pretty stoic if the situation calls for it, they aren't just like Orks from Warhammer 40k.
Bliss is another good episode. It revisits the crews desire to get home, but also shows how both Seven and Naomi see Voyager as their home, not Earth or the Alpha Quadrant, thus making them immune to the telepathic pitcher's plant (TPP) group manipulation. My main complaint is how Seven or Naomi didn't reactivate the Doctor to help them, especially for when the TPP changes manipulation. It also ignores the repeatedly shown conflict that Seven has regarding returning to the Borg, but I would consider than more of a nick-pick rather than a complaint.
I recommended that one to Dr. Becky on YT. She's an astrophysicist and has a reaction video to TNG's s1e6 "Where No One Has Gone Before" because people were suggesting it. (She's not a Trekkie, btw).
"Jetrel" is one of my favorites because it added a much-needed harder edge to Neelix, who is pretty much a goofball throughout the rest of the show. His description to Jetrel of what happened to his home colony and the dying girl he rescued, plus how it related to consequences really floored me. It was a beautiful, brutal episode with a glimmer of hope and redemption at the end. "Timeless" is another fave, if only to provide a new take on the "changing the dark future" storyline. 🖖😎👍
Hi Steve! Many of Tuvok episodes comes to mind as pretty good too! Please forgive me if I don't remember the titles. One comes to mind when Tuvok mindmeld with Sudor, an ex-maquis who has murdered a crewman. There is also the one where he lose his memory and abilities after been shot by an alien weapon and Neelix is helping him through this difficult time. And who can forget when he and Lt. Paris are stranded on a planet on the verge of collapse and 'fell' for an alien woman named Noss. What a great story! Thanks for the video! Bye!
*just* showed that episode to a dear friend today as an example of how bada$$ Janeway is. Also Endgame pt. 2 Borg Queen: *gasp* Janeway while being assimilated: "Must be something you assimilated..."
Course Oblivion is a fantastic episode for me; a tragic episode. Living Witness is another standout for me. Voyager has major character issues and suffers from chronic underdevelopment but it still is a show that I can’t help but back to every other week to watch an old favourite
I remember how excited I was after the Thaw. I was at school the next day and my even more trekked-out friend was just as excited. Voyager had finally had its Best of Both Worlds, its Past Tense! Every Trek show just needed to limp along enough to hit its stride. Oh, well.
I wish Voyager had continued its attempts at DS9-style continuity from the second season, but still I'd say it had less early season pains than TNG or DS9. It has less unwatchable episodes in general. Voyager was released at the peak of Star Trek and took a different approach than other series, being risk averse and stagnant rather than trying to do something new or develop the characters. That may have made the start easier, but is also my biggest problem with it. "Let's see what's out there" Picard isn't the same as "Sky's the limit" Picard. The Sisko that tackled Dukat into the fire has nothing to do with "Wormhole aliens" Sisko. But the Janeway that returns to Earth in Endgame is still Day 1 Janeway.
How cynical of you, of course Steve would eventually make this video. It can stand alongside the videos he'll eventually make of the top 10 episodes of TOS, top 10 episodes of TNG, top 10 episodes of DS9, and top 3 seasons of SNW.
It's interesting actually because I'm from the perspective of someone whose never really had a faith, but my girlfriend was raised a baptist and has been telling me how hard she's been finding it dealing with the gradual loss of her faith. So episodes like this certainly help me to try and understand things more from her perspective.
Solid list, some overlap with me Honorable mentions: Death Wish, Worst Case Scenario, Scorpion, Course Oblivion, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Bride of Chaotica, Nothing human, The Void 5: Blink of an Eye 4: The Thaw 3: Latent Image 2: Timeless 1: Living Witness
The 7 of 9 conspiracy episode is, imo, one of the best episodes of any Star Trek series. It really gets right to the core of the issue in a way that I really haven't seen anywhere else in any series or any sci-fi anthology anywhere.
The only thing that bums me out about that episode is that it copped out. They should have given the viewer some sort of twist ending. Like have Janeway make a cryptic, secure, log about the incident, eluding to 7 of 9 coming close to knowing the truth.
It is a lot of fun. Shane it highlights how the show could reward viewers who want an ongoing story... and framing them as mentally ill conspiracy theorists.
I think Prodigy takes the top spot for series premieres, personally. The highest stakes (freedom and community v. slavery and loneliness), the most untested crew (they're not Starfleet and have never even heard of the Federation!), and they manage to win the day against a ridiculously powerful adversary, setting the stakes for the seasons to come and establishing the crew's traits and personalities.
I love The Thaw. It's a great thought provoking episode To take myself down a notch perhaps, I also love Threshold, despite it being a stupid premise. I'm just able to suspend my disbelief for it. LOL
I genuinely love the strays Voyager gets from Steve it comes from a love of the franchise and understand how bad some entries can be and yet we still get great stuff later because of it. If Voyager didn't exist then we wouldn't have gotten Prodigy which I would put above SNW as some the best "Nu Trek" out after the Kelvin timeline. So everything has its purpose
The Thaw is such a great episode. I wish Voyager was more of that kind weird and interesting. And if most of the show was what Year of Hell was (before the stupid reset), it would have been an amazing show. I think One Small Step is another fantastic episode that shows what Star Trek is.
It should be noted that in "Latent Image" it wasn't just that the other crew member died, it was that she and Kim had equal chances of survival but one would die if he treated the other. The Doctor chose to save Harry because of his friendship with him, which is what caused his ethical and moral subroutines to go haywire. He let his fondness for one crew member dictate his medical actions, and his program couldn't reconcile it.
One episode I really like just because its a fun one. is Drive. Favorite part is when Tom is pitching the race and Janeway goes right along with it surprising everyone.
As much as I like Caretaker and Emissary, for my money the best First episode of any Trek series is Lost and Found over in Prodigy. You didn't mention it, but I think it does a wonderful job of introducing the characters, setting up the season long arc that we'll be going on, and gives us something we hadn't really seen in any other Pilot.
I'd like to give a shout out to "Pathfinder". It's not just an important episode in the overall Voyager storyline, but it's well told too. Dwight Schultz give such an impassioned performance as a desperate Barclay doing what he can to get Voyager home (more than the Voyager itself!). The scene when they make contact works like a multitude of gangbusters. It ties into TNG's "Hollow Pursuits" without being a rip-off as Barclay is struggling with a loss of connection. He's not escaping from connection, he's in dogged pursuit to help save people he's never met but deeply cares for while faces being dismissed at every turn. Subsequently, it also gives Barclay an arc that started on TNG. It's HIGHLY underrated and like "Death Wish" it is Voyager's other great crossover episode. It's one of the franchise's most unfairly underrated episodes.
An episode I loved was the telepathic Pitcher Plant one, I forget the name. I love seeing Seven and Naomi together on screen, they make a great duo. And William Morgan Shepherd is always a delight to see, especially as the grizzled "Captain Ahab" chasing his White Whale
Eye of the needle was always a favourite of mine. I remember reading a fic where eventually, after some legal disputes, the daughter of the romulan commander gets ahold of her father's belongings after his death, including a message to her to deliver voyagers letters to starfleet. So she finds the admiral I charge of the search effort, and ends up in Admiral Paris' office. Cut to Paris several days after their meeting: "Welcome to Project Pathfinder"
I've often described Voyager as being basically the microwavable meal version of TNG (safe plots, likable and functional characters that sometimes feel under seasoned, lack of cost etc.) and like microwavable meals you can occasionally find some that are of excellent quality and that you find yourself going back to again and again when you're having a tough time.
"Blink of an Eye" , is so good to me that I was feeling emotional listening to you describe it. I also love its homage to TOS episode, "Wink of an Eye".
To me, Voyager was always a series which was weak as a whole, but had some standout episodes. If you treat it as an anthology series and don't worry about the character development week to week, it works so much better. Some of my standouts include: Critical Care - a damning indictment of private medical systems Message in a Bottle - a gloriously fun Doctor episode Course: Oblivion - A dark and tragic story with a melancholic finale Someone to watch over me - another great Doctor episode Equinox - showing us what Voyager would have been like if it stuck to its premise
I'm a big fan of the Equinox two-parter. It's more than a little clumsy, but there's plenty to like in the premise, the characters, and the characterization of Janeway.
Course: Oblivion to me is the ultimate personification of the core Voyager problem feeling of "all of this is ultimately meaningless" being deliberately *weaponized* by the writers. It's impressive just for that.
Honestly, I'm always surprised that the Year of Hell two-parter doesn't get more love. I think it's legitimately one of the best episodes, if not *the best* episode, that Star Trek has ever produced across any series. It delivers, in two parts, on the original series premise of a starship hurtling through space with no support, deteriorating as it goes. The death spiral of the ship, and the crew as well, is something I don't think any other Star Trek series could credibly pull off. The Annorax plot is right up there with the best of Star Trek's philosophical discussions, and Kurtwood Smith plays the character masterfully. It's an episode that makes bold decisions, and sticks to them in all of the right ways.
I love Year of Hell as a piece of television. But the problem with going so high stakes on a 2 parter was there would never be a way of credibly resolving the plot that didn't massively underwhelm. That said, DS9 seems to get off more than a little lightly when they pulled out the 'the prophets did some crap in the wormhole which fixes the problem' plot device. Sometimes I think Voyager is treated a little too harshly on this.
It's my favourite Voyager episode and in my Top 5 Trek episodes overall. I think it suffers from being emblematic of a general "reset button" problem with Voyager, but taken apart from that I think it really stands on its own as a brutal, drawn out battle of wills between Janeway and Clarence Boddicker. Wrath of Khan level stuff. If you're going to do a reset button episode, this is how you do it.
This may just be nostalgia and old-man thoughts talking, but I think Voyager was a lot better than Discovery, when they wanted to talk about uncomfortable or controversial topics. I even liked Tuvix as an episode, not for how the plot shaked out, but I think it presents the question of identity in a way that confronts the viewer in how they assume their identity works.
Voyager has some real clunker episodes--it definitely is weaker than TNG, DS9, Lower Decks, & SNW in aggregate--but it also has some truly brilliant episodes & like you I like it a heck of lot more than Disco!
I know shows didn’t do this in that era, but damn if they shouldn’t have gone forward with Tuvix as a character, exploring it further. Reminds me of how I read that TNG was playing with the idea that Riker get killed and his clone from that transporter accident video joins the crew. That would have been WILD.
Tbf, I feel alotttt of it has to do with voyager having substantially more content to it, and with that they had a ton more freedom and leeway when a mediocre or bad ep came along (129 hours of runtime vs discos 59 hours)
Tuvix would be a great episode… if there were any consequences for it in future episodes. It was Janeway making that choice to kill a man to hard reboot the status-quo (as Voyager reliably does) AND THEN IT NEVER HAVING ANY WEIGHT OR RAMIFICATION that made it suck.
I'd have mentioned Blink Of An Eye too. Its not just a good episode of Star Trek, its just a really clever sci-fi story idea and they make a good job of presenting it.
My favourite Borg story is, was and always will be Unimatrix Zero. I particularly love Janeway's coded message to Chakotay and Seven, it reminded me of Spock's "By the book" coded message to Kirk in The Wrath Of Khan.
100 %. the one where time moves differently is also one of my faves of voyager, reminded me of playing civilasion ! just love that idea, and the not explaining the doctors other life he had down there, leaving it open to imagination. perfect.
I particularly like your _Enterprise_ retro reviews because I couldn't bring myself to finish that series, and your reviews are an entertaining reminder of why that was the right decision.
Good list. Can´t argue with them. Another one I enjoyed a lot is 'Deadlock', Janeway competing with Janeway over which Janeway gets to sacrifice her crew for the other, that was a fun twist to the 'heroic sacrifice' trope that I didn´t know I wanted before I saw it. All kept serious enough to work where too light a take would just ruin the fun of it.
Blink of an Eye has always been a favourite of mine too, it is such a good episode. Future’s End gets a lot of rewatching as well - not sure I can objectively say it’s a great episode (or two I suppose) but I clearly enjoy it enough to go back to it every so often. Glad to see Eye of The Needle getting an honourable mention.
I love your retro reviews of trek eps! It is my go-to when I am unhealthily eating maccas on my Friday lunch break during the one day of the week the company expects me to go to the office for some reason. Makes the day so much better! :)
i feel the Tuvix episode really drives home that Janeway absolutely likely thought of the Doctor as a full crewmember and as much of a person as anyone else... for whatever that's worth.
I don’t know why, but as I listened to you summarize the plot of “Blink of An Eye” I found myself thinking that it would be fantastic adapted for the stage. We need more Star Trek theater.
Voyager was the show that made me a trekkie. It was my "gateway drug" into Star Trek. When I was a kid, my parents watched TOS. They had "A Piece of the Action" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" on VHS. I'd watch those a lot, but the TOS episodes on TV Syndication I'd see would be hit or miss for me. Fast forward to the 90s when Voyager was on. I happened upon it one day, and I really liked it. Voyager had that "one ship alone in space" feeling TOS often had, while at the same time using technology from the TNG era and beyond. It also felt like the show didn't take itself too seriously, the way TOS often didn't take itself too seriously. (Sidebar: TNG season one took itself WAY too seriously and was the reason I didn't get into TNG until after watching all of Voyager, all of DS9, and all of Enterprise). "The Thaw" is a perfect example of a Voyager episode feeling like TOS. "The Thaw" could have easily been a TOS episode. Space and the technology of the future all take a back-seat to what is essentially a very compelling theater play. Voyager led to me to DS9, which is now my favorite (I have a DS9 shower curtain and a hat like Steve's that I made from a patch I got online). DS9 led me to Enterprise. Enterprise led me to TNG. At some point along the way I found myself correcting friends I viewed as die-hard trekkies on mistakes they'd make when brining up episodes they misremembered. That was when I realized what a fan of the franchise I am (or was. Star Trek Prodigy is the only new Trek I've enjoyed thus far, likely because of its ties to Voyager/Janeway/Chakotay). Now when I go back to rewatch Trek, what I like to do is concurrently watch TNG (including movies), DS9, VOY, and ENT in order of their original airdate. TNG episodes eventually stagger with DS9 episodes. And later DS9 episodes stagger with Voyager episodes. And then we get a few seasons of Shran. I skip the Enterprise finale like any sane, rational person would do. I'll always have a fondness for Voyager. It's the show that first got me hooked on Star Trek.
Steve, I just thought of it, but you may like Farscape and all the psychological torment the lead, John Crichton (Ben Browder), has to go through. It's a series created by Brian Henson, and I know I've always enjoyed it, and maybe you would too. There's also a lot of analysis that can be given, especially with how the characters change over time. Sorry for ranting, Keep up the great work!!
Voyager is the least-good Trek series. My opinion even diverges from Steve's, in that I thought "Picard" and "Lower Decks" were much, much better (mostly). But y'know what? I still had fun watching it. It may have been "bad" Star Trek, but that doesn't mean it was "bad" TV. edit: At the end of the day, Star Trek is a little bit like sex, or pizza: Even when it's objectively "bad", it's still genuinely enjoyable.
@@theimpulsivevulcan5346 NGL. "Enterprise" was pretty bad. But, yeah. Enterprise was, on average, better than Voyager (on average, episode-to-episode). I'd rate them about the same (6/10) but Enterprise scores a 6.2 where Voyager's a 6.0.
It's still enjoyable... except maybe for Code of Honor. Worth remembering that the episode *nobody* defends† is also in the series everyone† loves. † Except for that one guy, there's always that one guy. If I were on a deserted beach somewhere and said, "At least nobody here is gonna defend SG1's Emancipation" (same writer as Code), I'd expect a crab to immediately poke out of its shell and object that the episode had several strong moments, okay!
Equinox Parts 1 & 2. When I think about Voyager, I think about Equinox. It's like a show within a show. What would Voyager have been like had things gone a bit differently? It works as a story and a commentary on the show itself.
Every episode with Picardo at the centre was gold, even if it was sometimes a little tarnished: He even made a passable episode with *Andy Dick* for crying out loud!
I've always liked Voyager, it was "my" Trek series growing up. My parents watched TNG regularly, but I asked to watch Voyager when it started airing so I have a bit of nostalgia bias. These days it's my 'drop in' Trek; pick an old favourite or forgotten gem and just watch without needing to have watched the last 20 episodes. And Steve's reviews and critique is a reminder of how we can subjectively enjoy something which is objectively "bad". I can enjoy Voyager despite the criticisms and I can still enjoy Steve's work despite his criticism of 'my' Trek series. Both can be true at the same time. I have heard and read about a lot of the budget and deadline woes Voyager (And DS9) had to endure, at which point I can understand why Voyager had a lot of the issues it had.
All great picks! A favorite of mine you didn't list is Heroes and Demons from season 1. Robert Picardo really gets to show off his range in this episode.
6:34 I'm with Spock on wiping the docs memory the needs of the many and all that regardless of the question of his sentience. I think the doctor is a real person just like you and me.... and Janeway wasn't wrong to wipe his memory when necessary for the good of the crew. And Tuvix was an awesome character with an amazing creature design he looked like Star Trek tried to make Cat from red dwarf but they weren't wrong to separate him against his will.
If I remember correctly, Latent Image ends in the Holodeck with Janeway taking responsibility for the memory alterations and staying with the Doctor until he can come to terms with his internal conflict. I quite enjoyed that. Another episode that I recall enjoying was the one where the Doctor was having issues and the ultimate solution was to do a factory reset, the crew was hurt by the decision but at the end the Doctor was already showing signs of personal growth again (humming opera I think). That was a good one. The episode where the entire cast was kidnapped and memory altered so they worked on some colony and didn't know each other or who they were, that was enjoyable. That series of episodes where they had made a Holodeck program that they never ended and after like 3 episodes it started glitching out and causing issues because it had run for so long, that was a nice story arc. One of Voyager's biggest issues is it didn't have many multi episode story arcs that were not specifically multi part episodes. If they had done more multi episode arcs then the show would have been quite a bit better. The Tuvix debacle could have been better had it been a story arc that took place over 6 episodes, and maybe instead of killing Tuvix by reversing the transporter accident for selfish reasons, Tuvix gets critically injured on an away mission, and the Doctor can't save him unless they reverse the transporter accident, then Tuvix as he is dying consents to the procedure, and then the split happens. Then maybe a few callbacks after where Tuvok is in the mess hall cooking something or Neelix is making some traditional Vulcan meal or providing Janeway with a security report as he is giving her a coffee...
Yep, Blink of an Eye probably their best. Any Trek show could have done it but Voyager pulls it off nicely. I'm enjoying the shows repeats on Legend channel, just in time when I get home from work!. Also have a soft spot for 30 Days simply for the Jules Verne refs and an ocean in space.
My favourites are: 5 The Voyager Conspiracy 4 Worst Case Scenario 3 Deadlock 2 Shattered 1 Timeless With Endgame a close runner up with the 2 parter being my number 6.
Latent Image is one of my favourite episodes of Star Trek across all series, but it rarely gets mentioned in these sorts of lists. So I'm glad to see it get a mention here. And yes Steve, there was definitely some value to doing this, I did find myself starting to come into some of the Voyager retro reviews with an "what has he found wrong with this episode I like" mentality, which I know is irrational and unfair on my part 😂
Can't believe you left off Equinox (part 1&2). It was the only episode that gave a realistic view of the actual practical challenges of their voyage. At least you got Chaotica in the runners up.
Interesting how you started a lot of Voyager just as I started binge watching it again. Whatever your feelings about this series, I am currently rewatching it and others from the era, because it gets me in touch again with that part of American society that resonates me much more strongly than than the contingent that elected the orange menace.
Prodigy has gifted Trek with a lot, but I think one of it's greatest gifts is giving Chakotay not only a personality but also actual plot-important things to do.
I am so, so glad I pushed through the first few episodes of Prodigy. The first season is person top five Treks, with honest consideration for top 3
An episode I'm kinda partial to is "One", where Seven is forced to pilot the ship by herself through a nebula while the rest of the crew is in stasis, and slowly starts cracking up. Great showcase for Jeri Ryan.
It's a concept so strong that Enterprise picked it up and used it for an also pretty solid episode.
I love that episode too.
Me, too!
My first thought to the episode name is always "The one where Seven makes a new Borg drone out of the Doctor's mobile emitter? Yeah, it was okay."
I really like Living Witness, an excellent episode for the Doctor with a really good premise.
One of if not my favorite episode. My only problem with it was I feel it didn't have to take place seven hundred years in the future. That making it take place one or two hundred years in the future would have still worked. We have seen how dramatic the memory of past events can change even when there are people still alive who experienced them.
Dammit! You beat me. That's my pick for best episode of the series. It's epic, well acted by Robert Picard and guest star Henry Woronicz. Tim Russ' direction of the episode SUPERB, especially in his freshman debut as a director. (Why he never directed again on Voyager is one of the great mysteries of the Universe.) At Star Trek convention, Mr. Russ once told me that he thought the "LW"'s storyline was so important that as a black man he felt passionate about the script and its message that the he pushed for himself to direct, which he ultimately did. Like "The Voyager Conspiracy" its message fidelity to historical truth is both prescient and deeply important. Also the ending hits me in the gut EVER time.
@@creativerealms Yes, but if there are still people alive they can stand as naysayers to the revisionists. (It's why Spielberg started the SHOAH FOUNDATION, so that the experiences of Holocaust survivors would be recorded for posterity and for TRUTH.). I think that's why the seven hundred years in the future was chosen by the PTB.
"I'm afraid..."
"I knoooooow."
The delivery sticks with me years afterward. Janeway became a recurring nightmare figure for months, a shadowed bogeywoman who just sat there menacingly.
"He defecated through a sun roof!"
"I knoooooow."
Living witness was a great episode, I'm happy they did something different with "The evil version of the characters" instead of going with the mirror universe again. Going with voyager being made the villain in history was a much better way to do it. Also given the nature of the show, and how the crew simply involved itself with a couple of events and moved on as it nothing happened they wouldn't know their impact on history. I loved this episode. My only problem was I don't think it needed to take place seven hundred years in the future.
It also has something in common with “Blink of an Eye” in that it foregrounds an alien culture and how Voyager’s presence affects them.
The Protagonist of the episode isn’t really the Doctor, it’s the museum curator, Quarren. He’s the one who has an arc through the story. He starts out disbelieving the Doctor’s testimony but comes around to the position that the truth is more important than a comforting story.
Solid list.
Not necessarily top 5, but my favorite Voyager performance is Jerri Ryan in "Body and Soul". Basically, the Doctor downloads into Seven's Borg implants, allowing Ryan to perform a manic and over-the-top Robert Picardo Doctor impression. She is so good that it's easy to forget that we aren't watching Picardo.
I had generally been kinda "meh" on Ryan and Seven until this episode.
So Doc gets to play with Seven's implants? That's what he always wanted if you know what I'm saying 😀
It wouldn't surprise me if Ryan requested an episode like this to showcase her talents, especially as Voyager already had an emotionally repressed character in Tuvok.
I've always liked "Course: Oblivion." It hints that there was a much better version of the Voyager ship and crew we could have been watching instead, and then kills them in favor of the ones we've got instead. Sarcasm aside, I really like the way the episode is paced, and the ending is legitimately heartbreaking.
I don't find them any better than the OG Voyager crew (unless you were being sarcastic there? I miss these cues sometimes). At the end of Course Oblivion, it doesn't affect the OG Voyager crew because they didn't get to meet or even know of the duplicate ones. BUT, it affects the viewer. At least, it did so for me. It's so heartbreakingly final. They struggled so hard to survive, but no one will know that they existed. ... It's how I think about individual lives. Ancestors - there are usually names, dob and dod dates, maybe a picture, various records. Many women don't even have their maiden names recorded at all. But beyond that, who they were, their personalities, their hopes and dreams, their failures, their triumphs, their pains -- everything that fleshes out a unique life is lost. And it occurs to me that one day, I too will be merely a list of facts somewhere -- the real me forever unknown.
"The Last Thought You'll Ever Have" by Pursuit of Wonder on YT. Check it out. Dark. Eerie.
Oh, the end kills me in all the right ways. I still like to believe that the very end of the episode were to actually have Voyager pick up the signal from the probe, just so I can believe that the alternate Voyager and her crew could at least be remembered.
Then I snap back to reality, and know that their entire existence is lost to time.
The Torres 'mini-arc' about her sense of loss, identity etc. (Extreme Risk comes to mind, Day of Honour). Admittedly it's been a while since I've had a rewatch, but on reflection Roxann Dawson seemed to absolutely throw herself into those performances with Avery Brooks-level passion.
How do I upvote this twice?
I’m not alone with loving her episodes! 🙌🏾 All the way Lineage.
@@falsenamesthere, done.
I didn't mind Torres, I think the only issue was that so many Torres episodes were centred around 'Torres has a temper' that it got a bit old, and also seem to imply that it was trying to reduce Klingon's down to just people with a short fuse, which does not reflect who the Klingon's have been throughout most of Star Trek and especially by the time Voyager came along. Are Klingon's more aggressive than most other races? Yes... but that's not all they are and they can even be pretty stoic if the situation calls for it, they aren't just like Orks from Warhammer 40k.
@lloroshastar6347 totally get your point to be fair.
Bliss is another good episode. It revisits the crews desire to get home, but also shows how both Seven and Naomi see Voyager as their home, not Earth or the Alpha Quadrant, thus making them immune to the telepathic pitcher's plant (TPP) group manipulation. My main complaint is how Seven or Naomi didn't reactivate the Doctor to help them, especially for when the TPP changes manipulation. It also ignores the repeatedly shown conflict that Seven has regarding returning to the Borg, but I would consider than more of a nick-pick rather than a complaint.
Blink Of An Eye is one of the best Star Trek episodes overall, not just Voyager.
Blink of an Eye is Voyager's Inner Light.
I recommended that one to Dr. Becky on YT. She's an astrophysicist and has a reaction video to TNG's s1e6 "Where No One Has Gone Before" because people were suggesting it. (She's not a Trekkie, btw).
Blink of an Eye is so good the parody version, Mad Idolatry in The Orville's first season, is also good Trek.
If you really love it - read "dragons egg", which is the novel that they got the inspiration from (to not say they totally ripped it off)
Totally agree. I re-watched that episode just a few days ago. Still holds up. It’s just a great sci-fi premise done really well.
"Jetrel" is one of my favorites because it added a much-needed harder edge to Neelix, who is pretty much a goofball throughout the rest of the show. His description to Jetrel of what happened to his home colony and the dying girl he rescued, plus how it related to consequences really floored me. It was a beautiful, brutal episode with a glimmer of hope and redemption at the end. "Timeless" is another fave, if only to provide a new take on the "changing the dark future" storyline. 🖖😎👍
Neelix needed a heel turn to show it was all an act to gain the trust of the crew...
Hi Steve! Many of Tuvok episodes comes to mind as pretty good too! Please forgive me if I don't remember the titles. One comes to mind when Tuvok mindmeld with Sudor, an ex-maquis who has murdered a crewman. There is also the one where he lose his memory and abilities after been shot by an alien weapon and Neelix is helping him through this difficult time. And who can forget when he and Lt. Paris are stranded on a planet on the verge of collapse and 'fell' for an alien woman named Noss. What a great story! Thanks for the video! Bye!
Fear-Clown: I'm afraid.
Janeway: I know.
Chills! Do not fuck with Janeway.
*just* showed that episode to a dear friend today as an example of how bada$$ Janeway is.
Also Endgame pt. 2
Borg Queen: *gasp*
Janeway while being assimilated: "Must be something you assimilated..."
Janeway's best line was said by a holographic duplicate.
Course Oblivion is a fantastic episode for me; a tragic episode.
Living Witness is another standout for me.
Voyager has major character issues and suffers from chronic underdevelopment but it still is a show that I can’t help but back to every other week to watch an old favourite
I enjoyed the episodes with the void where they are trapped in a void like place where they have to have allies to escape. Also the episode Muse.
I remember how excited I was after the Thaw. I was at school the next day and my even more trekked-out friend was just as excited. Voyager had finally had its Best of Both Worlds, its Past Tense! Every Trek show just needed to limp along enough to hit its stride.
Oh, well.
I wish Voyager had continued its attempts at DS9-style continuity from the second season, but still I'd say it had less early season pains than TNG or DS9. It has less unwatchable episodes in general. Voyager was released at the peak of Star Trek and took a different approach than other series, being risk averse and stagnant rather than trying to do something new or develop the characters. That may have made the start easier, but is also my biggest problem with it. "Let's see what's out there" Picard isn't the same as "Sky's the limit" Picard. The Sisko that tackled Dukat into the fire has nothing to do with "Wormhole aliens" Sisko. But the Janeway that returns to Earth in Endgame is still Day 1 Janeway.
Never expected to see this title from you 😮
How cynical of you, of course Steve would eventually make this video.
It can stand alongside the videos he'll eventually make of the top 10 episodes of TOS, top 10 episodes of TNG, top 10 episodes of DS9, and top 3 seasons of SNW.
Mortal Coil changed how I saw the world. Took me out of my nihilism.
I can't stop thinking about the sun expanding to envelope the earth one day😮
It's interesting actually because I'm from the perspective of someone whose never really had a faith, but my girlfriend was raised a baptist and has been telling me how hard she's been finding it dealing with the gradual loss of her faith. So episodes like this certainly help me to try and understand things more from her perspective.
Janeway's speech about fear is one of Mulgrew's finest moments.
1:50 number 5 Caretaker
3:55 number 4 Latent Image
6:57 number 3 Death Wish
9:20 number 2 Blink of an Eye
14:14 number 1 The Thaw
Voyager is my favourite ST series.
Scorpion
Void, The
Phage & Deadlock
Thaw, The
Caretaker
I hoped to see at least a mention for Living Witness 😢
Seems like this could've been a top 10 list, great picks! 👍
The Void, I always loved that one
Solid list, some overlap with me
Honorable mentions: Death Wish, Worst Case Scenario, Scorpion, Course Oblivion, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Bride of Chaotica, Nothing human, The Void
5: Blink of an Eye
4: The Thaw
3: Latent Image
2: Timeless
1: Living Witness
The 7 of 9 conspiracy episode is, imo, one of the best episodes of any Star Trek series. It really gets right to the core of the issue in a way that I really haven't seen anywhere else in any series or any sci-fi anthology anywhere.
The only thing that bums me out about that episode is that it copped out. They should have given the viewer some sort of twist ending. Like have Janeway make a cryptic, secure, log about the incident, eluding to 7 of 9 coming close to knowing the truth.
Doesn't 7 get an innocent killed, due to her conspiracies?
It is a lot of fun.
Shane it highlights how the show could reward viewers who want an ongoing story... and framing them as mentally ill conspiracy theorists.
Just what were they doing with tri-cobalt warheads? Hmmm 🤔
I think Prodigy takes the top spot for series premieres, personally. The highest stakes (freedom and community v. slavery and loneliness), the most untested crew (they're not Starfleet and have never even heard of the Federation!), and they manage to win the day against a ridiculously powerful adversary, setting the stakes for the seasons to come and establishing the crew's traits and personalities.
I love The Thaw. It's a great thought provoking episode
To take myself down a notch perhaps, I also love Threshold, despite it being a stupid premise. I'm just able to suspend my disbelief for it. LOL
The worst crime of Threshold is that it's a mostly pretty good episode that shoots itself in the foot ENORMOUSLY right near the end.
I genuinely love the strays Voyager gets from Steve it comes from a love of the franchise and understand how bad some entries can be and yet we still get great stuff later because of it.
If Voyager didn't exist then we wouldn't have gotten Prodigy which I would put above SNW as some the best "Nu Trek" out after the Kelvin timeline.
So everything has its purpose
The Thaw is such a great episode. I wish Voyager was more of that kind weird and interesting. And if most of the show was what Year of Hell was (before the stupid reset), it would have been an amazing show.
I think One Small Step is another fantastic episode that shows what Star Trek is.
Message in a bottle and Pathfinder are two of my favorites.
It should be noted that in "Latent Image" it wasn't just that the other crew member died, it was that she and Kim had equal chances of survival but one would die if he treated the other. The Doctor chose to save Harry because of his friendship with him, which is what caused his ethical and moral subroutines to go haywire. He let his fondness for one crew member dictate his medical actions, and his program couldn't reconcile it.
The only real critism is that it should have been more like bsg in tone..an ongoing " Year of hell", but less extreme
One episode I really like just because its a fun one. is Drive.
Favorite part is when Tom is pitching the race and Janeway goes right along with it surprising everyone.
I’m also a giant nerd for those old-timey serials especially Commando Cody… it was nice of Voyager and you Steve to give Cody a nod of appreciation
I'm still PO'd that we never got a full 12-chapter Captain Proton serial.
As much as I like Caretaker and Emissary, for my money the best First episode of any Trek series is Lost and Found over in Prodigy. You didn't mention it, but I think it does a wonderful job of introducing the characters, setting up the season long arc that we'll be going on, and gives us something we hadn't really seen in any other Pilot.
I watch everything STAR TREK related you put out and I wish more people would. You always leave me thinking, questioning, and satisfied.
Voyager is my favorite Star Trek. There is so much I enjoy and I go back to it more often than any other series.
I'd like to give a shout out to "Pathfinder". It's not just an important episode in the overall Voyager storyline, but it's well told too. Dwight Schultz give such an impassioned performance as a desperate Barclay doing what he can to get Voyager home (more than the Voyager itself!). The scene when they make contact works like a multitude of gangbusters. It ties into TNG's "Hollow Pursuits" without being a rip-off as Barclay is struggling with a loss of connection. He's not escaping from connection, he's in dogged pursuit to help save people he's never met but deeply cares for while faces being dismissed at every turn. Subsequently, it also gives Barclay an arc that started on TNG. It's HIGHLY underrated and like "Death Wish" it is Voyager's other great crossover episode. It's one of the franchise's most unfairly underrated episodes.
An episode I loved was the telepathic Pitcher Plant one, I forget the name. I love seeing Seven and Naomi together on screen, they make a great duo. And William Morgan Shepherd is always a delight to see, especially as the grizzled "Captain Ahab" chasing his White Whale
Eye of the needle was always a favourite of mine. I remember reading a fic where eventually, after some legal disputes, the daughter of the romulan commander gets ahold of her father's belongings after his death, including a message to her to deliver voyagers letters to starfleet. So she finds the admiral I charge of the search effort, and ends up in Admiral Paris' office.
Cut to Paris several days after their meeting: "Welcome to Project Pathfinder"
I've often described Voyager as being basically the microwavable meal version of TNG (safe plots, likable and functional characters that sometimes feel under seasoned, lack of cost etc.) and like microwavable meals you can occasionally find some that are of excellent quality and that you find yourself going back to again and again when you're having a tough time.
"Blink of an Eye" , is so good to me that I was feeling emotional listening to you describe it. I also love its homage to TOS episode, "Wink of an Eye".
To me, Voyager was always a series which was weak as a whole, but had some standout episodes. If you treat it as an anthology series and don't worry about the character development week to week, it works so much better.
Some of my standouts include:
Critical Care - a damning indictment of private medical systems
Message in a Bottle - a gloriously fun Doctor episode
Course: Oblivion - A dark and tragic story with a melancholic finale
Someone to watch over me - another great Doctor episode
Equinox - showing us what Voyager would have been like if it stuck to its premise
I'm a big fan of the Equinox two-parter. It's more than a little clumsy, but there's plenty to like in the premise, the characters, and the characterization of Janeway.
There's an overriding theme in almost *everyone's* favourite Voyager episodes: Guest stars.
I think that's quite telling.
Latent Image was my first ever Star Trek episode, it's got a special place in my heart.
Course Oblivion?
Things did not end well for those people.
Course: Oblivion to me is the ultimate personification of the core Voyager problem feeling of "all of this is ultimately meaningless" being deliberately *weaponized* by the writers. It's impressive just for that.
Yeah, it wasn't called "Course: Just fine"
Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts.
Honestly, I'm always surprised that the Year of Hell two-parter doesn't get more love. I think it's legitimately one of the best episodes, if not *the best* episode, that Star Trek has ever produced across any series. It delivers, in two parts, on the original series premise of a starship hurtling through space with no support, deteriorating as it goes. The death spiral of the ship, and the crew as well, is something I don't think any other Star Trek series could credibly pull off. The Annorax plot is right up there with the best of Star Trek's philosophical discussions, and Kurtwood Smith plays the character masterfully. It's an episode that makes bold decisions, and sticks to them in all of the right ways.
I love Year of Hell as a piece of television. But the problem with going so high stakes on a 2 parter was there would never be a way of credibly resolving the plot that didn't massively underwhelm. That said, DS9 seems to get off more than a little lightly when they pulled out the 'the prophets did some crap in the wormhole which fixes the problem' plot device. Sometimes I think Voyager is treated a little too harshly on this.
It's my favourite Voyager episode and in my Top 5 Trek episodes overall.
I think it suffers from being emblematic of a general "reset button" problem with Voyager, but taken apart from that I think it really stands on its own as a brutal, drawn out battle of wills between Janeway and Clarence Boddicker. Wrath of Khan level stuff. If you're going to do a reset button episode, this is how you do it.
I love Year of Hell!
Hearing you gush about Voyager almost made tear up Steve. Thank you for this video sir. 🥰
Counterpoint is one of my favourites, probably in my top five. I like the interplay between inspector Kashyk and Janeway, and how she outsmarts him.
I remember Kate Mulgrew saying Counterpoint was her favourite episode.
Great performance from Mulgrew and I love the payoff of it in Prodigy
Ayyy, I was scrolling through and you're the first (and only?) one to mention Counterpoint. It's a great episode.
Steve saying nice things about Voyager and a little bit for Lower Decks too? Merry Christmas, buddy. 😊
This may just be nostalgia and old-man thoughts talking, but I think Voyager was a lot better than Discovery, when they wanted to talk about uncomfortable or controversial topics. I even liked Tuvix as an episode, not for how the plot shaked out, but I think it presents the question of identity in a way that confronts the viewer in how they assume their identity works.
Voyager has some real clunker episodes--it definitely is weaker than TNG, DS9, Lower Decks, & SNW in aggregate--but it also has some truly brilliant episodes & like you I like it a heck of lot more than Disco!
I know shows didn’t do this in that era, but damn if they shouldn’t have gone forward with Tuvix as a character, exploring it further.
Reminds me of how I read that TNG was playing with the idea that Riker get killed and his clone from that transporter accident video joins the crew. That would have been WILD.
Tbf, I feel alotttt of it has to do with voyager having substantially more content to it, and with that they had a ton more freedom and leeway when a mediocre or bad ep came along (129 hours of runtime vs discos 59 hours)
NO! I WANNA LIIIIVE!
cut to Lower Decks....
"Janeway straight up murdered him!"😅
Tuvix would be a great episode… if there were any consequences for it in future episodes. It was Janeway making that choice to kill a man to hard reboot the status-quo (as Voyager reliably does) AND THEN IT NEVER HAVING ANY WEIGHT OR RAMIFICATION that made it suck.
I'd have mentioned Blink Of An Eye too. Its not just a good episode of Star Trek, its just a really clever sci-fi story idea and they make a good job of presenting it.
Yay Steve is being nice about Voyager wooo!
I’ll go for:
5: Remember
4: Death Wish
3: Scorpion
2: renaissance man
1: Barge of the Dead
My favourite Borg story is, was and always will be Unimatrix Zero. I particularly love Janeway's coded message to Chakotay and Seven, it reminded me of Spock's "By the book" coded message to Kirk in The Wrath Of Khan.
Author, Author is one of our faves personally, another Episode that gives the Doctor the spotlight.
Thank you for the reminder about “In the blink of an eye” - Thanks to you I just finished rewatching it. I’m not crying. You’re crying. 🖖🏼
100 %. the one where time moves differently is also one of my faves of voyager, reminded me of playing civilasion ! just love that idea, and the not explaining the doctors other life he had down there, leaving it open to imagination. perfect.
I particularly like your _Enterprise_ retro reviews because I couldn't bring myself to finish that series, and your reviews are an entertaining reminder of why that was the right decision.
Good list. Can´t argue with them. Another one I enjoyed a lot is 'Deadlock', Janeway competing with Janeway over which Janeway gets to sacrifice her crew for the other, that was a fun twist to the 'heroic sacrifice' trope that I didn´t know I wanted before I saw it. All kept serious enough to work where too light a take would just ruin the fun of it.
So nice to see my favorite episode at #1 on this list. Thanks Steve.
I'm almost at the end of a "Voyager" rewatch.
"Tedious" is a good word.
very.
It's nice that Mortal Coil got a shoutout in this video. Such an underrated episode.
Blink of an Eye has always been a favourite of mine too, it is such a good episode. Future’s End gets a lot of rewatching as well - not sure I can objectively say it’s a great episode (or two I suppose) but I clearly enjoy it enough to go back to it every so often.
Glad to see Eye of The Needle getting an honourable mention.
The EMH is my favourite Voyager character and that's never gonna change.
The Thaw is sooooo great. I completely agree.
I love your retro reviews of trek eps! It is my go-to when I am unhealthily eating maccas on my Friday lunch break during the one day of the week the company expects me to go to the office for some reason. Makes the day so much better! :)
i feel the Tuvix episode really drives home that Janeway absolutely likely thought of the Doctor as a full crewmember and as much of a person as anyone else... for whatever that's worth.
Caretaker really is a superb pilot episode, possibly the best Trek pilot and really a pretty good reference for any pilot.
17:14 "Vejurs" works and is even a nerdy continuity reference.
In no particular order: One Small Step, Distant Origin, Friendship One, The 37s, Blink Of An Eye, Falae Profits, Author Author, Year Of Hell
I loved Robert Picardo in "China Beach". He's a really underutilized actor.
I don’t know why, but as I listened to you summarize the plot of “Blink of An Eye” I found myself thinking that it would be fantastic adapted for the stage. We need more Star Trek theater.
Voyager was the show that made me a trekkie. It was my "gateway drug" into Star Trek. When I was a kid, my parents watched TOS. They had "A Piece of the Action" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" on VHS. I'd watch those a lot, but the TOS episodes on TV Syndication I'd see would be hit or miss for me. Fast forward to the 90s when Voyager was on. I happened upon it one day, and I really liked it. Voyager had that "one ship alone in space" feeling TOS often had, while at the same time using technology from the TNG era and beyond. It also felt like the show didn't take itself too seriously, the way TOS often didn't take itself too seriously. (Sidebar: TNG season one took itself WAY too seriously and was the reason I didn't get into TNG until after watching all of Voyager, all of DS9, and all of Enterprise). "The Thaw" is a perfect example of a Voyager episode feeling like TOS. "The Thaw" could have easily been a TOS episode. Space and the technology of the future all take a back-seat to what is essentially a very compelling theater play.
Voyager led to me to DS9, which is now my favorite (I have a DS9 shower curtain and a hat like Steve's that I made from a patch I got online). DS9 led me to Enterprise. Enterprise led me to TNG. At some point along the way I found myself correcting friends I viewed as die-hard trekkies on mistakes they'd make when brining up episodes they misremembered. That was when I realized what a fan of the franchise I am (or was. Star Trek Prodigy is the only new Trek I've enjoyed thus far, likely because of its ties to Voyager/Janeway/Chakotay). Now when I go back to rewatch Trek, what I like to do is concurrently watch TNG (including movies), DS9, VOY, and ENT in order of their original airdate. TNG episodes eventually stagger with DS9 episodes. And later DS9 episodes stagger with Voyager episodes. And then we get a few seasons of Shran. I skip the Enterprise finale like any sane, rational person would do.
I'll always have a fondness for Voyager. It's the show that first got me hooked on Star Trek.
Drone - makes me cry everytime "You are hurting me"
Living Witness
Eye of the Needle
Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy
Counterpoint
I always quite liked the Cage as a pilot episode, I've rewatched it a number of times it's one of my favourite TOS episodes.
Steve, I just thought of it, but you may like Farscape and all the psychological torment the lead, John Crichton (Ben Browder), has to go through. It's a series created by Brian Henson, and I know I've always enjoyed it, and maybe you would too. There's also a lot of analysis that can be given, especially with how the characters change over time.
Sorry for ranting, Keep up the great work!!
Farscape is amazing. Crazy good acting, characters, make up, practical effects, and puppetry. Really worth a watch.
Voyager is the least-good Trek series. My opinion even diverges from Steve's, in that I thought "Picard" and "Lower Decks" were much, much better (mostly).
But y'know what? I still had fun watching it. It may have been "bad" Star Trek, but that doesn't mean it was "bad" TV.
edit: At the end of the day, Star Trek is a little bit like sex, or pizza: Even when it's objectively "bad", it's still genuinely enjoyable.
Worse than Enterprise?
@@theimpulsivevulcan5346 NGL. "Enterprise" was pretty bad. But, yeah. Enterprise was, on average, better than Voyager (on average, episode-to-episode). I'd rate them about the same (6/10) but Enterprise scores a 6.2 where Voyager's a 6.0.
It's still enjoyable... except maybe for Code of Honor. Worth remembering that the episode *nobody* defends† is also in the series everyone† loves.
† Except for that one guy, there's always that one guy. If I were on a deserted beach somewhere and said, "At least nobody here is gonna defend SG1's Emancipation" (same writer as Code), I'd expect a crab to immediately poke out of its shell and object that the episode had several strong moments, okay!
Equinox Parts 1 & 2. When I think about Voyager, I think about Equinox. It's like a show within a show. What would Voyager have been like had things gone a bit differently? It works as a story and a commentary on the show itself.
I’m withholding on hitting the like button… for now. 😂 (PS. My cats name is Kes)
Alright, before i watch, all i need is for the episode with the Photon Canon to be on here. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
I like that episode too!
Ah yes, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy is hilarious, one of the best in the series ❤
That one was fun.
Every episode with Picardo at the centre was gold, even if it was sometimes a little tarnished: He even made a passable episode with *Andy Dick* for crying out loud!
It's still the best Trek comedy to this day in my opinion. It's not even that close.
8:07 It's actually a very huge topic right now. Read about the current Assisted Dying bill going through approval in the UK.
I've always liked Voyager, it was "my" Trek series growing up. My parents watched TNG regularly, but I asked to watch Voyager when it started airing so I have a bit of nostalgia bias. These days it's my 'drop in' Trek; pick an old favourite or forgotten gem and just watch without needing to have watched the last 20 episodes.
And Steve's reviews and critique is a reminder of how we can subjectively enjoy something which is objectively "bad". I can enjoy Voyager despite the criticisms and I can still enjoy Steve's work despite his criticism of 'my' Trek series. Both can be true at the same time.
I have heard and read about a lot of the budget and deadline woes Voyager (And DS9) had to endure, at which point I can understand why Voyager had a lot of the issues it had.
All great picks! A favorite of mine you didn't list is Heroes and Demons from season 1. Robert Picardo really gets to show off his range in this episode.
6:34 I'm with Spock on wiping the docs memory the needs of the many and all that regardless of the question of his sentience. I think the doctor is a real person just like you and me.... and Janeway wasn't wrong to wipe his memory when necessary for the good of the crew. And Tuvix was an awesome character with an amazing creature design he looked like Star Trek tried to make Cat from red dwarf but they weren't wrong to separate him against his will.
If I remember correctly, Latent Image ends in the Holodeck with Janeway taking responsibility for the memory alterations and staying with the Doctor until he can come to terms with his internal conflict. I quite enjoyed that.
Another episode that I recall enjoying was the one where the Doctor was having issues and the ultimate solution was to do a factory reset, the crew was hurt by the decision but at the end the Doctor was already showing signs of personal growth again (humming opera I think). That was a good one.
The episode where the entire cast was kidnapped and memory altered so they worked on some colony and didn't know each other or who they were, that was enjoyable.
That series of episodes where they had made a Holodeck program that they never ended and after like 3 episodes it started glitching out and causing issues because it had run for so long, that was a nice story arc.
One of Voyager's biggest issues is it didn't have many multi episode story arcs that were not specifically multi part episodes. If they had done more multi episode arcs then the show would have been quite a bit better. The Tuvix debacle could have been better had it been a story arc that took place over 6 episodes, and maybe instead of killing Tuvix by reversing the transporter accident for selfish reasons, Tuvix gets critically injured on an away mission, and the Doctor can't save him unless they reverse the transporter accident, then Tuvix as he is dying consents to the procedure, and then the split happens. Then maybe a few callbacks after where Tuvok is in the mess hall cooking something or Neelix is making some traditional Vulcan meal or providing Janeway with a security report as he is giving her a coffee...
Yep, Blink of an Eye probably their best. Any Trek show could have done it but Voyager pulls it off nicely. I'm enjoying the shows repeats on Legend channel, just in time when I get home from work!. Also have a soft spot for 30 Days simply for the Jules Verne refs and an ocean in space.
My favourites are:
5 The Voyager Conspiracy
4 Worst Case Scenario
3 Deadlock
2 Shattered
1 Timeless
With Endgame a close runner up with the 2 parter being my number 6.
My favourite has always been “prototype”.
It’s a really fun take on AI being the cause of civilisations downfall in a creative way.
Shout out to Equinox, which used the premise of Voyager more than maybe any other episode.
I really like the pseudo two parter Demon and course oblivion. As well as the best Doctor episode living witness.
Latent Image is one of my favourite episodes of Star Trek across all series, but it rarely gets mentioned in these sorts of lists. So I'm glad to see it get a mention here.
And yes Steve, there was definitely some value to doing this, I did find myself starting to come into some of the Voyager retro reviews with an "what has he found wrong with this episode I like" mentality, which I know is irrational and unfair on my part 😂
I have a feeling we will look back more kindly than we should at many mediocre things more and more as we circle the drain
I'm not sure you've made a video covering the topic, but how about making a "How I Would Have Fixed Voyager" video?
I have a soft spot for Voyager so I love this!
Can't believe you left off Equinox (part 1&2). It was the only episode that gave a realistic view of the actual practical challenges of their voyage. At least you got Chaotica in the runners up.
All great episodes, I’d include Living Witness and Infinite Regress too.
Interesting how you started a lot of Voyager just as I started binge watching it again. Whatever your feelings about this series, I am currently rewatching it and others from the era, because it gets me in touch again with that part of American society that resonates me much more strongly than than the contingent that elected the orange menace.
Tuvix is an excellent episode. It's had people discussing it for decades.
In isolation it is. In its (lack of) impact on the characters and the series going forward it becomes emblematic of the series’ failings.