A Unified Theory of Star Trek: Voyager, Part 2
See the first part for answers to questions like "Why am I doing this?". But once again, here's the rubric I'm applying with my emoji rating system of VOY episodes.
- The Must-Watch Mango (🥭) is applied to episodes of Voyager that must be watched. Maybe they're very good; maybe they're just central to the show's overall paratextual mythos (Like the season 6 outing Tsunkatse, which is an infamous tie-in with WWE); maybe they are one of the few episodes of Voyager that come up later somehow and/or come up in the Delta Rising expansion to Star Trek Online.
- The Ogre of Madness (👹) is applied to episodes of Voyager that are insane. Those are often the very best episodes of Voyager.
- The Leaf on the Wind of Running Away (🍃) is applied to episodes of Voyager that conform to the "running away from itself" theme; they take place in alternate timelines, dreams, holodeck simulations, or don't feature the crew of the Voyager at all.
- A special sub-category is the Wasteful Hourglass (⏳), applied to episodes that take place in aborted timelines. These are the most skippable episodes of Voyager in the sense that they literally didn't happen at all.
- The Melting Man (🫠) is applied to episodes featuring plot elements that seem like they could be reused or reapplied, but never recur.
- The Stupid Hat (🎩) is applied to episodes featuring Stupid Hat Societies – alien cultures whose entire Deal is fundamentally stupid. This is a major recurring theme in VOY.
This part covers season 3 and 4 of VOY.
Season 3
- 1: "Basics, Part II". See the previous post for more on this two-parter.
- 2: "Flashback". This is just kind of an indulgent bit of fan service, really; it commemorates the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. It's not as good as DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations", but it does feature actual George Takei.
- 3: "The Chute". I go back and forth on whether Paris and Kim's underdeveloped relationship is enough to qualify them as blowjob brothers, but I don't think they are ever more blowjob brothers than in this skippable but not terrible prison-escape caper. The idea of a prison where everything – food, new inmates, etc – arrives down the titular Chute is as imaginative as it is obviously nonsensical, in typical VOY fashion.
- 4: "The Swarm". 🫠 This is mostly a very unmemorable episode in which aliens we'll never see again attack Voyager, but it's also the beginning of both the Paris/Torres relationship and the Doctor's opera singing, which will become major things down the line. But also the main plot of this episode is something that you'd think would come up again later, and it never does. So this gets the rare distinction of being both significant for continuity for its minor plot elements, while being a melting man episode. Ah, Voyager...
- 5: "False Profits" 🎩 - This is not as good as DS9 Ferengi episode, but it absolutely is a fun romp.
- 6: "Remember" 🎩 - Ironically, I entirely forgot this episode was a thing.
- 7: "Sacred Ground" 🎩 - What if the Prophets (the Bajoran wormhole Prophets) were Annoying? This is just one of the deep questions that VOY interrogates in its third season...
- 8-9: "Future's End" and "Future's End, Part 2" 🥭⏳ - That's right, it's a two-parter branded with the Wasteful Hourglass of Events that Didn't Happen. It's not even the only two-parter that didn't happen in Voyager. You see what I mean about this show loving episodes that don't exist? They're fun episodes, featuring the Voyager crew stranded in 1990s Los Angeles and a very cute performance from Sarah Silverman. Also, even though the events of this episode never happened, they will be important much later for reasons that are never adequately explained.
- 10: "Warlord" 🎩👹 - Kes spends most of this episode possessed by Space Hitler, and Jennifer Lien gives a bravura performance that makes a very good case that she's actually a great actor saddled with a terrible character.
- 11: "The Q and the Grey" 👹 - Possibly the worst of all Q episodes across 90s Star Trek. Still a fun one, but inessential. The title is a pun on "the blue and the grey", because it uses the American Civil War as a metaphor for a civil war within the Q continuum (it makes marginally more sense in the show).
- 12: "Macrocosm" - The main reason to watch this episode, possibly the sole reason, is in order to get one of Lower Decks' many, many jokes about stupid VOY plot points. My live-blogging comment on this one: "Lots of people saying 'mucilaginous compound' in this one." I think this says it all.
- 13: "Fair Trade" - This is a very unmemorable Neelix episode.
- 14: "Alter Ego" - This is another episode in the all-important "Harry Kim can't get laid" arc, which is to say it's only important to Harry Kim superfans.
- 15: "Coda"
- 16: "Blood Fever" 👹 - This is, indeed, one of the worst ever episodes of Star Trek where people catch some kind of horny flu. This stretch of season 3 is rough. The show is sputtering and gasping for air, which will culminate in the mild retool that happens in season 4.
- 17: "Unity" 🥭 - If you've watched the last few episodes, you've seen the foreshadowing of the presence of the Borg in the Delta Quadrant; this is the episode that properly introduces the Borg to Voyager. Also, as you no doubt care intensely about, this episode is essential to understand the storyline of the Delta Rising expansion for Star Trek Online.
- 18: "Darkling" - Inessential but fun episode about Robert Picardo doing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
- 19: "Rise"
- 20: "Favorite Son" 🎩👹 - Another episode for Harry Kim aficionados. Does his v-card remain resolutely unpunched? You will need to watch to find out...
- 21: "Before and After" ⏳👹 - The single important thing in this episode is that it foreshadows the Year of Hell, which makes this a wasteful hourglass episode that's mostly notable for foreshadowing another wasteful hourglass episode. Again: Voayger hates depicting events that actually happened in the main continuity of the show Voyager.
- 22: "Real Life" 🥭🫠🍃 - A classic Doctor episode. Although it contributes to his character development, the events of this episode are never directly revisited or referenced later on in Voyager – but they are in Starfleet Academy 30 years (800 in-universe years) later. This is somehow stupid for both shows.
- 23: "Distant Origin" 🥭🫠🎩 - While the Voth, the cool (but stupid hat) aliens from this episode are never revisited in VOY, they are crucial to understanding the plot of the Delta Rising expansion for Star Trek Online. Look out for some of the absolute worst dinosaur science you've ever seen on a tv show.
- 24: "Displaced" 🎩 - I cannot confidently say that the hats won't get stupider but they are pretty stupid, with a side of "Janeway doesn't look too clever in this one either".
- 25: "Worst Case Scenario" 🥭🍃 - This may very well be the best holodeck episode of Voyager.
- 26: "Scorpion" 🥭 - This two-parter is basically the pivot around which all of Voyager turns. They're also pretty good episodes, probably some of the best in VOY overall.
Season 4
- 1: "Scorpion, part II" 🥭 - Also the introduction of Species 8472 is essential for actually quite a lot of the plot of Star Trek Online.
- 2: "The Gift" 🥭 - This may be the only episode of VOY that is pure serialized continuity. Essentially an epilogue to "Scorpion", this episode sets up the new status quo of the show and finishes the season 4 retool. At the end of this episode, Kes is gone and Seven of Nine has fully joined the crew.
- 3: "Day of Honor" 🎩🫠 - This episode has two morals: One, you should totally start a relationship with someone while in an emotionally charged situation in which you don't know if you'll live or die. Two, never give anyone charity.
- 4: "Nemesis" 🎩🫠 - If there's such a thing as a good Chakotay episode, it's this one. AbsoLUTELY a stupid hat society episode, though.
- 5: "Revulsion" - This is a pretty simple but very fun little three-hander between B'Ellana, the Doctor, and a very disturbed hologram.
- 6: "The Raven" 🥭 - Not a great episode but essential to Seven of Nine's character.
- 7: "Scientific Method" 🎩🫠 - Another episode about advanced aliens we'll never see again fucking around with Voyager, but this one has the distinction of just how demonically evil the aliens are.
- 8 and 9: "Year of Hell and Year of Hell, Part II" 🥭⏳🎩🫠👹: Genuinely really good stuff, but also a huge wasted opportunity; this is the most Voyager-y Voyager, as you can see from how it has every emoji. Kurtwood Smith is fantastic in this. But of course: it's an aborted timeline episode about advanced aliens we'll never see again, that could have been a seasonal arc but is instead just this isolated two-parter.
- 10: "Random Thoughts" 👹🎩 - B'Ellana gets Wesley Crushered for thoughtcrimes. The main reason to watch this episode is the subplot in which Tuvok starts giving violent thought addicts back-alley mind melds.
- 11: "Concerning Flight" - Possibly one of the most boring episodes of the show.
- 12: "Mortal Coil" - Possibly one of the most boring episodes of the show
- 13: "Waking Moments" 🎩 - To me this just feels like a pallid shadow of much better dream-logic tv episodes, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Restless" or the entirety of Twin Peaks.
- 14: "Message in a Bottle" 🥭 - Andy Dick pl— no wait stop come back! I promise it's good!
- 15: "Hunters" 🥭🎩 - Introduces the Hirogen, Voyager's fifth attempt at developing a recurring villain species – previous ones being the Viidians, the Kazon, the Borg, and Species 8472.
- 16: "Prey" 🥭🎩 - This is both a Hirogen episode and a Species 8472 episode, which makes it one of the more Voyager-y episodes of Voyager that also feels like a normal episode of Star Trek.
- 17: "Retrospect" - Hey if you thought all the bad race stuff in "Tattoo" was Voyager's lowest point, wait until you see all the bad gender stuff in this episode.
- 18 and 19: "The Killing Game and The Killing Game, Part 2" 🥭🎩🫠👹 - This is one of the rare instances of something quite horrific and daunting happening to the USS Voyager that isn't immediately deleted from the timeline. It is never acknowledged again, of course. But the episodes are quite fun themselves.
- 20: "Vis a Vis": Inessential, but this is one of the extremely rare instances of VOY actually stumbling on a cool sci-fi concept and following it through.
- 21: "The Omega Directive" 🥭🫠: VOY itself does nothing with the insanely sick premise of this episode, but it is essential to understanding the main "omega particle gathering" activity in the recurring anniversary event in Star Trek Online.
- 22: "Unforgettable" 🎩🍃: Similar to "Vis a Vis" in that this is a VOY episode that stumbles on an actually VERY cool sci-fi concept. I could imagine a much better version of this episode that's like a Harlan Ellison story. This gets a leaf because while it doesn't quite take place in an aborted timeline, nobody aboard Voyager remembers the events of the episode afterwards.
- 23: "Living Witness" 🍃 - Essential viewing if you consider all Doctor episodes to be essential viewing. This is also quite a fun episode, featuring most of the cast playing twisted evil versions of themselves. But it's also one of several Voyager episodes that basically do not feature the starship Voyager. We'll be seeing more and more of the leaf going forward.
- 24: "Demon" 🥭 - A must-watch because it is essential to understanding what may be the best episode of the series.
- 25: "One" 🥭 - A really cool pseudo-bottle episode featuring almost exclusively Seven and the Doctor.
- 26: "Hope and Fear" - Inessential, even as a season finale, but if you don't watch this you'll miss seeing Ray Wise play an alien on Star Trek.