Learning Curve

This Story: Season 1 Episode 16 (production code 116)
VOY Overall: Episode 16
Trek Overall: Story 447, Episode 472
Airdate: 22 May 1995
Written by Ronald Wilkerson & Jean Louise Matthias
Directed by David Livingston

Notes

• Running fired torpedo count: 1
• Season 1 finale.  While this was the finale, some scheduling issues forced some already produced episodes (four of them) into the start of Season 2. The four episodes held over for Season 2 were “Projections“, “Elogium“, “Twisted“, and “The 37’s“.  The 37’s was intended to be the Season 1 finale.
• Tuvok and his training was intended to be a B-plot to another episode, but it got promoted to being the A-plot here.
• The backpacks used by Tuvok and his students were re-used from the TNG episode “Chain of Command“.
• The highest rated Voyager season finale with 6.1 million viewers, and a 10 percent share of the audience.
• The first episode since the pilot that mentions the bio-neural gel packs that power the ship, and the first time they’re seen.
• This episode is the one where Federation & Maquis friction is resolved.  It’s touched on in two future episodes again – “Worst Case Scenario” (S3), & “Repression” (S7).
• The second of three episodes with Janeway’s holonovel – it’s last appearance is in Season 2’s “Persistence of Vision“.
• The child actor Thomas Dekker played Henry Burleigh here and in the episode “Persistence of Vision“.  He also played Thomas Picard in Star Trek Generations. A few decades later (as an adult) he played Titus Rikka in the Star Trek Picard episodes “Seventeen Seconds” & “Imposters“.

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