Message in a Bottle

This Story: Season 4 Episode 14 (production code 181)
VOY Overall: Episode 82
Trek Overall: Story 509, Episode 538
Airdate: 21 Jan 1998
Story by Rick Williams
Teleplay by Lisa Klink
Directed by Nancy Malone

Notes

• Running fired torpedo count: 23 / Confirmed crew deaths since pilot: 14 (crew of 140).
• The EMH Mk II is was played by Andy Dick.
• The USS Prometheus was supposed to be NCC-74913.  However, a production error had it as NCC-59650 on the ship, although the former number can be seen in some places.
• The USS Prometheus is also called a “Prometheus class ship” – it looks visually similar to the USS Protostar from Star Trek: Prodigy (to my eyes).  But they are indeed different ships and classes.
• The only other time we see a ship of this class is in the Voyager finale, “Endgame“.
• There are two accounts of where the bridge set came from. It’s either a redress of the bridge set from the first movie, or NCC-1701E from the TNG movies.
• USS Voyager was said to be declared officially lost about fourteen months prior to the events of this episode.
• Idrin is played by Tiny Ron. He’s more known in Trek for his role as Maihar’du – the servant of Grand Nagus Zek on Deep Space Nine.
• EMH Mk II mentions that the Romulans have not yet joined the Dominion War, so it would place this episode before the events of “In the Pale Moonlight“.
• The first appearance of the Hirogen on Voyager, although in this episode they’re very much a background character.
• While not stated specifically, the events of this episode seem to imply that the Romulan the Voyager ran into in the episode “Eye of the Needle” did not deliver the crew’s messages to home.
• Rekar is played by Judson Scott.  Scott has appeared in Trek before.  Once was in the TNG episode “Symbiosis“, and the other was in Wrath of Khan as Joachim (uncredited).
• Multiple Defiant class ships are shown on screen at the same time here. There’s no explanation for this, because at the same time this would have occurred, it was said that the USS Defiant at DS9 was the only such ship in existence.
• Dr. McCoy gets a shoutout here.

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