Star Trek: Voyager

I moved to Texas in December of 1992, and at this point in the franchise, this was the first Star Trek series to be conceived fully after I moved here.  DS9 started about three weeks after I moved to Texas, but I knew about it beforehand.  Voyager is something else.  This has no bearing on the drama of the show at all, just a personal memory I wanted to stick in there.

Voyager tried to do a few things different.  After DS9, they were back on a starship as TOS & TNG were, but this time around they were determined to do something different.  Voyager is the first series to have a female captain of the ship.  In no way did that bother me at all, but I did wonder at the time if the audience was ready for something like that.   Star Trek fans are generally more open minded than some fan bases can be – but still.  They’ve never tried a series with a female lead before.  After a brief sidetrack with Geneviève Bujold, they settled on Kate Mulgrew as Capt Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager.  Additionally, they were going to remove the crutch of Starflet, by having the ship be marooned 70,000 light years into another sector of space.  Which means there wasn’t always some Admiral to oversee them, or correct their decisions.  From a plot standpoint it was a good idea.  In practice though I ended up feeling I missed the trappings of “Star Trek” more than I thought I would.  It didn’t stop me from liking the show, I quite loved it.  Some of it is stellar Star Trek.  Like most Trek series, it took a little time to find its footing, but once it did, it got quite good.

They had some carry over from existing Trek to start the series – the crew was initially made up of Maquis characters, a concept set up on TNG & DS9.  However, it didn’t last long as the Maquis angle was pretty quickly absorbed into the overall feel of Voyager.   They made a big effort to make this not feel like “just another crew on a Starship”, as that’d been done a few times already to this point.

Voyager was the last of the “big” Star Trek Series.  It ran seven years and 172 episodes from 16 Jan 1995 through 23 May 2001.  Every subsequent Star Trek series that has come after this has lasted at most 5 seasons, and the number of episodes was reduced.  Enterprise had the traditional 26 or so episodes a season, but only lasted four years.  Everything from Discovery forward was anywhere between 10 to 15 episodes a season (mostly just 10 though).

Season 2

Season Two was the first “full” season with 26 episodes.  However, it started off with four that were produced for Season 1, but held over to start off Season 2.

Will say more about the season once I watch more of it.

• Cold Fire (1/23/2026) - (13 Nov 1995) – Season 2 Episode 10 (Serial 126)
• Tattoo (1/22/2026) - (6 Nov 1995) – Season 2 Episode 9 (Serial 125)
• Persistence of Vision (1/21/2026) - (30 Oct 1995) – Season 2 Episode 8 (Serial 124)
• Parturition (1/20/2026) - (9 Oct 1995) – Season 2 Episode 7 (Serial 123)
• Twisted (1/19/2026) - (2 Oct 1995) – Season 2 Episode 6 (Serial 119)
• Non Sequitur (1/18/2026) - (25 Sep 1995) – Season 2 Episode 5 (Serial 122)
• Elogium (1/17/2026) - (18 Sep 1995) – Season 2 Episode 4 (Serial 119)
• Projections (1/16/2026) - (11 Sep 1995) – Season 2 Episode 3 (Serial 117)
• Initiations (1/15/2026) - (4 Sep 1995) – Season 2 Episode 2 (Serial 121)
• The 37’s (1/14/2026) - (28 Aug 1995) – Season 2 Episode 1 (Serial 120)

Season 1

Like most Trek series, Voyager’s first series was more of a “getting a feel” for what’s going on.  It’s not bad (like TNG season 1 was), but I felt there was too much time spent on stories that were “meh”.  That’s not say it’s bad, there are some excellent moments, too.

They also set up the Kazon as a big threat in the pilot, but they only re-appeared once in the remainder of season 1.

It’s also the shortest season of Voyager at 16 episodes, vs the 26 the rest of the seasons have.  That’s mostly to do with the show being a mid season launch (it started in January vs Sep or Oct).  Additionally, a couple of episodes produced for Season 1 were held over and shown at the start of Season 2.

One thing I discovered on this rewatch is that I enjoyed Chokotay far more than I remember liking in the past. While I never actively disliked the character, he wasn’t my favorite in the past.  This time around I found the character far more enjoyable.  I wonder if that has anything to do with the character’s reappearance in Star Trek Prodigy a few decades later.

• Learning Curve (1/13/2026) - (22 May 1995) – Season 1 Episode 16 (Serial 116)
• Jetrel (1/12/2026) - (15 May 1995) – Season 1 Episode 15 (Serial 115)
• Faces (1/11/2026) - (8 May 1995) – Season 1 Episode 14 (Serial 114)
• Cathexis (1/10/2026) - (1 May 1995) – Season 1 Episode 13 (Serial 113)
• Heroes and Demons (1/9/2026) - (24 Apr 1995) – Season 1 Episode 12 (Serial 112)
• State of Flux (1/8/2026) - (10 Apr 1995) – Season 1 Episode 11 (Serial 111)
• Prime Factors (1/7/2026) - (20 Mar 1995) – Season 1 Episode 10 (Serial 110)
• Emanations (1/6/2026) - (13 Mar 1995) – Season 1 Episode 9 (Serial 109)
• Ex Post Facto (1/5/2026) - (27 Feb 1995) – Season 1 Episode 8 (Serial 108)
• Eye of the Needle (1/4/2026) - (20 Feb 1995) – Season 1 Episode 7 (Serial 107)
• The Cloud (1/3/2026) - (13 Feb 1995) – Season 1 Episode 6 (Serial 106)
• Phage (1/2/2026) - (6 Feb 1995) – Season 1 Episode 5 (Serial 105)
• Time and Again (1/1/2026) - (30 Jan 1995) – Season 1 Episode 4 (Serial 104)
• Parallax (12/31/2025) - (23 Jan 1995) – Season 1 Episode 3 (Serial 103)
• Caretaker (12/30/2025) - (16 Jan 1995) – Season 1 Episodes 1-2 (Serial 101-102)