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.
Definitely agree. That would likely make my top 5 episodes. Well paced, good premise, excellent performance by Ryan and top direction to really add to the unease. It’s a top bottle episode.
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.
Really _really_ surprised not to see this one even in the "also ran" section. I can't imagine what's going on in someone's head that Living Witness isn't even in the top 12... It's the one episode I picture when I think "Voyager".
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.
@@jenoc3541 Yeah the first few episodes I was like "This is the most Star Wars Star Trek I've ever seen" but then it very quickly finds it's footing and becomes fantastic. Really hope we get a third season. Also someone get Wesley a TARDIS already.
Equinox is my favorite Voyager episode and one of the all-time great Trek episodes for me. The image of John Savage's Captain Ransom sitting in a wrecked cabin, trying and failing to escape the hell he's put himself into with the neural stimulator just sticks with me.
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.
@@akosut I think “Course: Ovlivion” is absolutely fabulous (to coin a phrase) and definitely deserves a spot in the best VOYAGER episodes near the top.
@@akosut and btw, I agree with you that the Hell Planet” version of our characters were way more interesting and better developed in that one hour than the “regular” crew had been in all the previous episodes of all the previous seasons.
"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.
Hear hear for The Thaw. So glad you’ve shared your support for this, I’ve always felt this was underrated and one helluva solid sci-fi story on the knife’s edge of horror. An incredible episode!
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).
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.
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!
A favorite Voyager episode of mine that I seldom see mentioned in lists like this is "Survival Instinct," where we learn about an incident from Seven's past when she and three other Borg were temporarily separated from the collective after crash-landing on a deserted planet. The other three, who had been assimilated as adults, started regaining memories of their past lives and declaring their intentions to escape rather than return to the Borg. But Seven, who had been assimilated as a child and didn't know any other life, panicked at the thought of being separated fro the collective forever. So she created a new mental link just between the other three to subdue them, make them compliant again, and force them to repair their equipment so they could signal the Borg to come get them. The whole episode deals with why Seven did what she did, and the aftermath, and really leans hard into the cult survivor reading of Seven's character. As an exvangelical who grew up deeply in the church and felt a lot of the same feelings as Seven after leaving it, I thought the episode absolutely nailed the emotional experience and the messed up things victims of intense religious indoctrination often do.
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.
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.
Top 12 and no mention of "Body and Soul?" You have the two best characters in Voyager having a tremendous amount of fun in an episode where they really get to showcase their talents. Granted Jeri Ryan steals the show with such an inspired Doctor impression you almost forget it's not really him, but Robert Picardo's look of terrified guilt after being angrily confronted by Seven, "You became sexually aroused in my body!" is the hardest I've laughed at almost any scene in any Trek ever. It's a perfect moment, and on the whole Body and Soul makes it into my top 10 of all Trek, it's just that good.
Nancy Bell, who played Ensign Jetal, was teaching as a theatre professor at Cal State Long Beach when I was there as a theatre student, back around 2010. I didn't have the luck of being in one of her classes, but as it happened, one day I was practicing piano in one of the theatre dept classrooms after hours, and she stepped into the room. I thought she was about to ask me to stop playing, or to leave, but instead she said she was auditioning for Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and she wanted me to try out for Orsino. So I did, and she cast me on the spot, and she seemed to absolutely adore me from that point forward. I didn't even realize who she was in Trek until a much later time, which I think of as a good thing, because otherwise I would have been a bucket of nerves and probably wouldn't have casually nailed the audition like I had. But anyway I absolutely adore her too, and it seemed like a good time to share. She is every bit as amazing of a person as one would hope.
*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..."
The Void is a great episode. It's all about how Federation principles of cooperation and respect for those who are different aren't things to be abandoned when survival is at stake but how sticking to those principles is what saves Voyager in the end.
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.
Voyager is still my favorite Trek series. I like how they couldn't just run to Star base Whatever for repairs and resupply. When stuff broke, they had to fix it. The idea of surviving so from home appealed to me.
@foxesofautumn I agree. Voyager is also responsible for creating one of the greatest villains in Trek history, Species 8472, and then... totally ruining them.
@@foxesofautumn I agree but, I don't know if you were around when it originally aired, DS9 had some pretty big pushback among the older Trek fans about its serial nature. The showrunners may have over corrected but it wasn't without cause.
@@saucyl3477 Yes, I watched the debut of the Star Trek Deep Nine (which came out about the same week as Babylon 5) and I too had the thought. What about DS9 is Trek? They don't go anywhere, they don't explore. And dare I say it, season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently guilty of the same thing. Season two had 10 episodes and they literally explored one new planet. I miss the old Trek where we got a new planet of the week.
"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. 🖖😎👍
The problems with Jetrel were that a) it came too late to rescue Nelix as a character, so we were being asked to root for and empathise with the series' scheisskopf and b) the character of Jetrel himself was badly underwritten as an anti-villain so you couldn't really hang the episode on him either.
I agree with many of these that you highlighted Steve. One more I would have included - Counterpoint. The twist in the show's climax was a bit telegraphed, but I absolutely LOVED Kate Mulgrew and Mark Harelik's performances.
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 currently rewatching the series and I’m absolutely loving it. The stories are way better than I remember. Is it perfect? No. But thoroughly enjoyable
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.
@@Insightfill And I think it's all the better for that! Despite loving both Mirror Mirror and Crossover, by the time DS9 ended I was thoroughly done with that entire idea, so the Voyager writers managing to come up with a different way to get to the same "evil alternative" is much appreciated.
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.
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.
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.
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
I can never stay mad at Voyager. It was the series that hooked me into the Trek universe and gave me my love of stories about plucky little ships doing their best against big odds. Now, in my 40s, the issues are more glaring...but i still get butterflies if I hear that opening. :) Also, the Intrepid class is so COOOOOL! Enjoy your goofy flying saucers, i wanna go to space in a SPACESHIP! Enjoyed the video, bud. Keep up the great work!
When my parents and i moved to Arizona for 10 months due to my dad's job, we would all watch Voyager when it was on. My mom often refers to that time as her Year of Hell which i think could be one of my favorite two-part episodes. I have seen all of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise and Voyager is my second favorite after TNG. One of my favorite episodes is probably when Seven's nanoprobes infect the Doctor's mobile emitter to create a Borg from the future essentially.
I've become a much bigger fan of DS9 from binging it on Pluto. Coincidentally, they also have a Voyager channel too so it can be binged simultaneously. And there's another channel that shows both the original and Next Generation. So Pluto is the go to for Star Trek binging.
I knew you had some "Voyager" in that coldness of space heart of yours. ;) And hell yeah, "Bride of Chaotica" still makes me smile every time I watch it. One of my best friends (RIP) and I used to say "Ha! You're no match for Arachnia" for *years* - usually involving triumphing over some kind of technical problem. LOL
My favorite part of that episode is the look on janeway's face and her double take when Tom hands her the pad with the specs for her costume😂 just the ultimate WTF?🤨 Look in all of star trek. She sold that perfectly
I love it when I recognize an image from the Hubble Telescope in a scene, in this case, the image behind Seven in the astrometrics lab at 24:05: the twin jet nebula (M2-9) is one name for it, I think. Thanks Steve for a great revisit of these episodes, as I only have memory of them from the original broadcast.
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.
She didn't do that because there was no conspiracy. It was Seven assuming there was a conspiracy due to the information overload she received. Kind of like mental periadolia. Periadolia is seeing recognizable patterns where they may not exist. Like an optical illusion. Sometimes our brains work overtime.@@johnmiller7682
I have to say, I was surprised there weren't only four episodes in Steve's "Top 5" Voyager list. That seemed like something he'd do, because it's Voyager... :D
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 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.
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
I also liked, "Virtuoso." The Doctor becomes a huge celebrity among an alien race that had never heard singing before, but then all goes to .... when they create their own computer program that can even exceed the Doctor's musical ability. I think it parallels what is happening right now with A.I., pitch correction, auto-tune and quantization.
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 really expected a 24-minute gag reel. I was so confused by the words and the content, and Steve talking about liking Voyager, that I had to watch this twice to comprehend it.
Other than the ones you mentioned, I'd like to nominate "Message in a Bottle", "Distant Origin", "Living Witness", "Deadlock", "Pathfinder", "One", and "Real Life". Also, while I do agree the ending could have been done better, "Endgame".
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.
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
My favs: 5) Blink of An Eye 4) Equinox 3) Distant Origin 2) The Void 1) Living Witness Honorable Mentions: In the Flesh, The Thaw, Course: Oblivion, and Scorpion
I'm so glad to see Blink of an Eye on here, and at the #2 spot no less. It's easily my favorite episode of Voyager, and firmly in my top, I dunno, ten-ish Star Trek episodes, though I'll grant that I haven't seen all of them.
"Was thar a good enough reason for Janeway to do as she does?" I asked myself that several times each season. I don't care for Caretaker or The Thaw. However, I love "Blink of an Eye" is a great episode! A great sci-fi story with good characters. One of my faves. I also love "Eye of the Needle", although it was first season, so we knew it wouldn't work out for our heroes.
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
My top three: 1) Course: Oblivion 2) Year of Hell 3) Timeless Also a shout-out to Before and After, just because it was one of the first Star Trek episodes I ever saw, along with One [my mum had to explain the concept of hallucinations to little me].
I like that one with Chakotay where he is conscripted by some freedom fighters/terrorist to fight a war and they use some messed up mind control to mold him to the cause... what's it called? Nemesis? It's a really good one.
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.
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.
I also loved this episode. The twist at the end where it is not the relatively undamaged ship and crew we have been rooting for that survive is excellent. Seeing them sacrifice themselves to save the heavily damaged version which had (literally) lost Harry Kim was a real jolt to the emotions.
I really like Meld, another episode that hangs on a good guest performance. I'm in the "Voyager sure did not come close to capitalising on its potential" camp but, every now and then, it was as compelling as any other Star Trek show.
The Thaw is my favorite too, especially that ending. The only comparable emotional punch was the ending of Sacrifice of Angels on DS9, though the emotions are very different.
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.
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.
Voyager was my first Star Trek show, and it still holds a special place in my heart. I didn't watch Picard S3, but I did see the scene where Seven talks about Voyager, and that was a really powerful scene for me. I really think it could have gone farther than it did, and I feel like Janeway gets a bad rap. Sometimes I feel it suffered from playing opposite of DS9, partly because it was being compared to a show that (even I'll admit) was far better, but partly because I feel like the producers were trying to keep it from being DS9 on a ship. I do enjoy your Voyager reviews; as a writer I try to be critical of even things I love to better understand the art of writing and the media I'm consuming. You've never felt unfair towards Voyager, just critical (which isn't bad).
Star Trek voyager was the shit, we all know that. I am a huge star trek fan, and I never understand why we have to love one series but hate another. I have my favorites, but none of the series have been bad.
Another really good one is Memorial. Imagine experiencing one of the most harrowing periods in history secondhand , years after it happened... And not even knowing you're watching a recording. Neelix in particular is played not for lsughs, but as a tragic, angry shadow of himself. If I had been part of an experience like that, I'm not sure I could dig myself out again.
11:04 "It's a superbly executed story, rooted in a compelling concept." Yeah. It was called "Dragon's Egg", by Robert L. Forward, and it was published in 1980.
Satan's robot from the Captain Proton holo adventure is the robot from Zombies of the Stratosphere, which was a 1950's sci-fi serial that began Lenard Nimoy's television career.
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.
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.
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 really appreciate your effort to keep your channel positive--at least reagarding the Star Trek stuff. Sure, we all salavate over tearing apart the stuff we love so much, and shitting on all kinds of new aspects of it. (Seriously, we love that. Don't stop.) And I'm sure the negative reviews generate the most views... But the negativity can get tireing after a while. It's also limiting. Talking about the good stuff doubles your potential content, which is great for you and for the viewers. So thank you, Steve! We really appreciate all of your hard work. And I, personally, appreicate the extra effort to keep things in the positive. Thank you!!!
Latent Image is the first time I've probably considered Voyager as sometimes being incredibly good. Sure there was okay episodes before, but this was a strangely dark episode that just hits me in the right spot. It was a really dark moment for the Doc, a feeling that I felt was very valid for the show to push so hard on, and then to see the crew acknowledge that they've up until now have just been pushing trauma like that aside and Janeway truly putting in the time to be there for someone in their time of need. if i was ever to consider a top 10 episodes, it'd probably be the only VOY episode on it.
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 dont know my exact favorites, but "Critical Care" is definitely in the top five. As a kid, I remember watching it and getting extremely angry at the idea of such a horrifying dystopia. Then I grew up and realized that our system is just as evil, just as dystopian, and arguably worse in some ways. It's especially poignant given recent events and discussions regarding a certain CEO who died from "acute lead poisoning."
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."
Definitely agree. That would likely make my top 5 episodes. Well paced, good premise, excellent performance by Ryan and top direction to really add to the unease. It’s a top bottle episode.
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 think that's my favorite episode
Really _really_ surprised not to see this one even in the "also ran" section. I can't imagine what's going on in someone's head that Living Witness isn't even in the top 12... It's the one episode I picture when I think "Voyager".
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
@@jenoc3541 Yeah the first few episodes I was like "This is the most Star Wars Star Trek I've ever seen" but then it very quickly finds it's footing and becomes fantastic. Really hope we get a third season. Also someone get Wesley a TARDIS already.
And showing the flaws in Voyager was not the actors. Give them something to do then they will do it. Interesting characters just left to do nothing.
Yes, I said this in my comment, Voyager was bad to most people but Prodigy took it up from their
@@ShinGallon😂😂 I one hundred percent agree with you, that machine threw me way off but Roc Tok sold it for me.
Equinox is my favorite Voyager episode and one of the all-time great Trek episodes for me. The image of John Savage's Captain Ransom sitting in a wrecked cabin, trying and failing to escape the hell he's put himself into with the neural stimulator just sticks with me.
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'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.
@@akosut I think “Course: Ovlivion” is absolutely fabulous (to coin a phrase) and definitely deserves a spot in the best VOYAGER episodes near the top.
@@akosut and btw, I agree with you that the Hell Planet” version of our characters were way more interesting and better developed in that one hour than the “regular” crew had been in all the previous episodes of all the previous seasons.
It is the most heartbreaking episode of Star Trek. All that work and they're basically just a footnote in Voyagers log.
"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."
"Drat." :P
Hear hear for The Thaw. So glad you’ve shared your support for this, I’ve always felt this was underrated and one helluva solid sci-fi story on the knife’s edge of horror. An incredible episode!
@@jelmerterburg3588
I have always felt that last bit was unnecessary, and the scene would be better without it.
@@JanetStarChild I agree, in fact I initially remembered the scene ending with "I know" 🤔
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.
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.
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy -- one of my all time favorites.
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.
W. Morgan Sheppard for the win!
Voyager is my favourite ST series.
Scorpion
Void, The
Phage & Deadlock
Thaw, The
Caretaker
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!
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.
Yes! I rewatched this recently and was surprised at how little love it gets. It's outstanding!
A favorite Voyager episode of mine that I seldom see mentioned in lists like this is "Survival Instinct," where we learn about an incident from Seven's past when she and three other Borg were temporarily separated from the collective after crash-landing on a deserted planet. The other three, who had been assimilated as adults, started regaining memories of their past lives and declaring their intentions to escape rather than return to the Borg. But Seven, who had been assimilated as a child and didn't know any other life, panicked at the thought of being separated fro the collective forever. So she created a new mental link just between the other three to subdue them, make them compliant again, and force them to repair their equipment so they could signal the Borg to come get them.
The whole episode deals with why Seven did what she did, and the aftermath, and really leans hard into the cult survivor reading of Seven's character. As an exvangelical who grew up deeply in the church and felt a lot of the same feelings as Seven after leaving it, I thought the episode absolutely nailed the emotional experience and the messed up things victims of intense religious indoctrination often do.
Janeway's speech about fear is one of Mulgrew's finest moments.
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.
He should have flipped a coin. Dilemma resolved!
Latent Image was my first ever Star Trek episode, it's got a special place in my heart.
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.
This is my favorite episode. It also gives us another hint at what's happening at Starfleet to locate them.
Top 12 and no mention of "Body and Soul?" You have the two best characters in Voyager having a tremendous amount of fun in an episode where they really get to showcase their talents. Granted Jeri Ryan steals the show with such an inspired Doctor impression you almost forget it's not really him, but Robert Picardo's look of terrified guilt after being angrily confronted by Seven, "You became sexually aroused in my body!" is the hardest I've laughed at almost any scene in any Trek ever. It's a perfect moment, and on the whole Body and Soul makes it into my top 10 of all Trek, it's just that good.
Nancy Bell, who played Ensign Jetal, was teaching as a theatre professor at Cal State Long Beach when I was there as a theatre student, back around 2010. I didn't have the luck of being in one of her classes, but as it happened, one day I was practicing piano in one of the theatre dept classrooms after hours, and she stepped into the room. I thought she was about to ask me to stop playing, or to leave, but instead she said she was auditioning for Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and she wanted me to try out for Orsino. So I did, and she cast me on the spot, and she seemed to absolutely adore me from that point forward. I didn't even realize who she was in Trek until a much later time, which I think of as a good thing, because otherwise I would have been a bucket of nerves and probably wouldn't have casually nailed the audition like I had. But anyway I absolutely adore her too, and it seemed like a good time to share. She is every bit as amazing of a person as one would hope.
I watch everything STAR TREK related you put out and I wish more people would. You always leave me thinking, questioning, and satisfied.
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.
Janeway didn't fuck around man.
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.
The Void is a great episode. It's all about how Federation principles of cooperation and respect for those who are different aren't things to be abandoned when survival is at stake but how sticking to those principles is what saves Voyager in the end.
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.
Voyager is still my favorite Trek series. I like how they couldn't just run to Star base Whatever for repairs and resupply. When stuff broke, they had to fix it. The idea of surviving so from home appealed to me.
Its premise was excellent. I just wish they'd been more daring with it.
@foxesofautumn I agree. Voyager is also responsible for creating one of the greatest villains in Trek history, Species 8472, and then... totally ruining them.
@@foxesofautumn I agree but, I don't know if you were around when it originally aired, DS9 had some pretty big pushback among the older Trek fans about its serial nature. The showrunners may have over corrected but it wasn't without cause.
@@saucyl3477 Yes, I watched the debut of the Star Trek Deep Nine (which came out about the same week as Babylon 5) and I too had the thought. What about DS9 is Trek? They don't go anywhere, they don't explore. And dare I say it, season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently guilty of the same thing. Season two had 10 episodes and they literally explored one new planet. I miss the old Trek where we got a new planet of the week.
"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...
The problems with Jetrel were that a) it came too late to rescue Nelix as a character, so we were being asked to root for and empathise with the series' scheisskopf and b) the character of Jetrel himself was badly underwritten as an anti-villain so you couldn't really hang the episode on him either.
Author, Author is one of our faves personally, another Episode that gives the Doctor the spotlight.
just watched it - I was not keen, but Picardo is excellent.
I agree with many of these that you highlighted Steve. One more I would have included - Counterpoint. The twist in the show's climax was a bit telegraphed, but I absolutely LOVED Kate Mulgrew and Mark Harelik's performances.
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 currently rewatching the series and I’m absolutely loving it. The stories are way better than I remember. Is it perfect? No. But thoroughly enjoyable
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.
It's their own version of "Mirror Universe"!
@@Insightfill And I think it's all the better for that! Despite loving both Mirror Mirror and Crossover, by the time DS9 ended I was thoroughly done with that entire idea, so the Voyager writers managing to come up with a different way to get to the same "evil alternative" is much appreciated.
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.
@@lloroshastar6347
That there is one of the main harms of religion.
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.
I expect it may have been a bit painful for Steve to make.
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.
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
I can never stay mad at Voyager. It was the series that hooked me into the Trek universe and gave me my love of stories about plucky little ships doing their best against big odds. Now, in my 40s, the issues are more glaring...but i still get butterflies if I hear that opening. :)
Also, the Intrepid class is so COOOOOL!
Enjoy your goofy flying saucers, i wanna go to space in a SPACESHIP!
Enjoyed the video, bud. Keep up the great work!
Steve saying nice things about Voyager and a little bit for Lower Decks too? Merry Christmas, buddy. 😊
When my parents and i moved to Arizona for 10 months due to my dad's job, we would all watch Voyager when it was on. My mom often refers to that time as her Year of Hell which i think could be one of my favorite two-part episodes. I have seen all of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise and Voyager is my second favorite after TNG. One of my favorite episodes is probably when Seven's nanoprobes infect the Doctor's mobile emitter to create a Borg from the future essentially.
I've become a much bigger fan of DS9 from binging it on Pluto. Coincidentally, they also have a Voyager channel too so it can be binged simultaneously. And there's another channel that shows both the original and Next Generation.
So Pluto is the go to for Star Trek binging.
I’m surprised “Riddles” didn’t make your list of great Neelix episodes. It might be my favorite.
I knew you had some "Voyager" in that coldness of space heart of yours. ;) And hell yeah, "Bride of Chaotica" still makes me smile every time I watch it. One of my best friends (RIP) and I used to say "Ha! You're no match for Arachnia" for *years* - usually involving triumphing over some kind of technical problem. LOL
My favorite part of that episode is the look on janeway's face and her double take when Tom hands her the pad with the specs for her costume😂 just the ultimate WTF?🤨 Look in all of star trek. She sold that perfectly
I love it when I recognize an image from the Hubble Telescope in a scene, in this case, the image behind Seven in the astrometrics lab at 24:05: the twin jet nebula (M2-9) is one name for it, I think. Thanks Steve for a great revisit of these episodes, as I only have memory of them from the original broadcast.
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 🤔
She didn't do that because there was no conspiracy. It was Seven assuming there was a conspiracy due to the information overload she received. Kind of like mental periadolia. Periadolia is seeing recognizable patterns where they may not exist. Like an optical illusion. Sometimes our brains work overtime.@@johnmiller7682
I have to say, I was surprised there weren't only four episodes in Steve's "Top 5" Voyager list. That seemed like something he'd do, because it's Voyager... :D
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.
Drone - makes me cry everytime "You are hurting me"
Living Witness
Eye of the Needle
Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy
Counterpoint
Hearing you gush about Voyager almost made tear up Steve. Thank you for this video sir. 🥰
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.
Message in a bottle and Pathfinder are two of my favorites.
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
I also liked, "Virtuoso." The Doctor becomes a huge celebrity among an alien race that had never heard singing before, but then all goes to .... when they create their own computer program that can even exceed the Doctor's musical ability. I think it parallels what is happening right now with A.I., pitch correction, auto-tune and quantization.
At the end of the video, Steve presses the reset button and goes back to hating on Voyager.
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. 🖖🏼
That episode always makes me tea....er....always coincides with a sudden unexpected rain.
Thanks!
So nice to see my favorite episode at #1 on this list. Thanks Steve.
FYI I've been binging your Trek episodes this week and they've gotten me through COVID. Thanks for a great collection of videos.
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.
Exactly! Threshold was good, until Paris became a lizard creature and kidnapped Janeway. Change that part, and it could have been a great episode.
This is great. I'd never seen 'Blink of An Eye' or 'Latent Image' before you draw my attention to them, and they are total gems! Thanks Steve
The Void, I always loved that one
I really expected a 24-minute gag reel. I was so confused by the words and the content, and Steve talking about liking Voyager, that I had to watch this twice to comprehend it.
Other than the ones you mentioned, I'd like to nominate "Message in a Bottle", "Distant Origin", "Living Witness", "Deadlock", "Pathfinder", "One", and "Real Life". Also, while I do agree the ending could have been done better, "Endgame".
My favourite has always been “prototype”.
It’s a really fun take on AI being the cause of civilisations downfall in a creative way.
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!
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’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.
My favs:
5) Blink of An Eye
4) Equinox
3) Distant Origin
2) The Void
1) Living Witness
Honorable Mentions: In the Flesh, The Thaw, Course: Oblivion, and Scorpion
Seems like this could've been a top 10 list, great picks! 👍
I feel like I have to explain my love of "The Thaw" to everyone, so...thank you. You get it.
I'm so glad to see Blink of an Eye on here, and at the #2 spot no less. It's easily my favorite episode of Voyager, and firmly in my top, I dunno, ten-ish Star Trek episodes, though I'll grant that I haven't seen all of them.
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
"Was thar a good enough reason for Janeway to do as she does?" I asked myself that several times each season.
I don't care for Caretaker or The Thaw. However, I love "Blink of an Eye" is a great episode! A great sci-fi story with good characters. One of my faves.
I also love "Eye of the Needle", although it was first season, so we knew it wouldn't work out for our heroes.
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
My top three:
1) Course: Oblivion
2) Year of Hell
3) Timeless
Also a shout-out to Before and After, just because it was one of the first Star Trek episodes I ever saw, along with One [my mum had to explain the concept of hallucinations to little me].
The EMH is my favourite Voyager character and that's never gonna change.
I like that one with Chakotay where he is conscripted by some freedom fighters/terrorist to fight a war and they use some messed up mind control to mold him to the cause... what's it called? Nemesis? It's a really good one.
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.
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.
I also loved this episode. The twist at the end where it is not the relatively undamaged ship and crew we have been rooting for that survive is excellent. Seeing them sacrifice themselves to save the heavily damaged version which had (literally) lost Harry Kim was a real jolt to the emotions.
I really like Meld, another episode that hangs on a good guest performance. I'm in the "Voyager sure did not come close to capitalising on its potential" camp but, every now and then, it was as compelling as any other Star Trek show.
The Thaw is my favorite too, especially that ending. The only comparable emotional punch was the ending of Sacrifice of Angels on DS9, though the emotions are very different.
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 hoped to see at least a mention for Living Witness 😢
An episode I think is a good Doctor episode is "Message in a Bottle". Seeing him having to take command essentially.
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’m withholding on hitting the like button… for now. 😂 (PS. My cats name is Kes)
Voyager was my first Star Trek show, and it still holds a special place in my heart. I didn't watch Picard S3, but I did see the scene where Seven talks about Voyager, and that was a really powerful scene for me. I really think it could have gone farther than it did, and I feel like Janeway gets a bad rap. Sometimes I feel it suffered from playing opposite of DS9, partly because it was being compared to a show that (even I'll admit) was far better, but partly because I feel like the producers were trying to keep it from being DS9 on a ship.
I do enjoy your Voyager reviews; as a writer I try to be critical of even things I love to better understand the art of writing and the media I'm consuming. You've never felt unfair towards Voyager, just critical (which isn't bad).
Even though I grew up on this show, your Chakotay jokes always make me laugh so damn hard lol
Star Trek voyager was the shit, we all know that. I am a huge star trek fan, and I never understand why we have to love one series but hate another. I have my favorites, but none of the series have been bad.
You mentioned some great ones - The Thaw, Death Wish. Agree!
Another really good one is Memorial. Imagine experiencing one of the most harrowing periods in history secondhand , years after it happened... And not even knowing you're watching a recording. Neelix in particular is played not for lsughs, but as a tragic, angry shadow of himself. If I had been part of an experience like that, I'm not sure I could dig myself out again.
11:04 "It's a superbly executed story, rooted in a compelling concept."
Yeah. It was called "Dragon's Egg", by Robert L. Forward, and it was published in 1980.
Satan's robot from the Captain Proton holo adventure is the robot from Zombies of the Stratosphere, which was a 1950's sci-fi serial that began Lenard Nimoy's television career.
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.
One of my favorites is the Haunting of Deck 12. It's just a fun episode and good Halloween episode.
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.
Love to see 'Blink of an Eye' and 'Latent Image' on here. They're also two of my favorites, and I feel like they don't get talked about enough.
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 really appreciate your effort to keep your channel positive--at least reagarding the Star Trek stuff. Sure, we all salavate over tearing apart the stuff we love so much, and shitting on all kinds of new aspects of it. (Seriously, we love that. Don't stop.) And I'm sure the negative reviews generate the most views... But the negativity can get tireing after a while. It's also limiting. Talking about the good stuff doubles your potential content, which is great for you and for the viewers. So thank you, Steve! We really appreciate all of your hard work. And I, personally, appreicate the extra effort to keep things in the positive. Thank you!!!
Latent Image is the first time I've probably considered Voyager as sometimes being incredibly good. Sure there was okay episodes before, but this was a strangely dark episode that just hits me in the right spot. It was a really dark moment for the Doc, a feeling that I felt was very valid for the show to push so hard on, and then to see the crew acknowledge that they've up until now have just been pushing trauma like that aside and Janeway truly putting in the time to be there for someone in their time of need.
if i was ever to consider a top 10 episodes, it'd probably be the only VOY episode on it.
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 dont know my exact favorites, but "Critical Care" is definitely in the top five. As a kid, I remember watching it and getting extremely angry at the idea of such a horrifying dystopia. Then I grew up and realized that our system is just as evil, just as dystopian, and arguably worse in some ways.
It's especially poignant given recent events and discussions regarding a certain CEO who died from "acute lead poisoning."