Star Trek VOY Season 7 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

The very last season of Voyager.  I felt kinda sad to reach the end of this series.  I just loved Captain Janeway so much.  I loved her sense of honor and her fierceness.  With all the Star Trek series, there is the sense that the crew will always follow their Captain because they trust them, and I really felt the strength of the Captain in holding her crew together in this series.  It is strange though that I didn't put the finale episode in my top 5 though.  It was very good, and featured time travel, but it seemed a bit off at times, and I'm not even sure how much I liked seeing Janeway so altered.  Probably if I was to revisit the episode in the future, I would enjoy it more, but for now, these top 5 are the ones for me!

Now I just have one more series to go! (Until the new one that is!)  I'm so impatient to see Dr. Noonien Soong! :D

5. Author, Author

The Doctor is working on a holonovel that advocates hologram rights.  The novel borrows much from the Voyager's history and personnel.  Some of the other crew members are not happy with their depiction in the novel.  This is a fun episode, that takes a serious, thoughtful turn.  It reminded me a bit of the TNG episode The Measure of a Man since it deals with the Doctor's ability to have rights over his holonovel.  Although this episode does not... measure up to The Measure of a Man in my opinion, it does still do a great job of focusing on humanity's need to adapt when it comes to rights issues, and this story also stands out because of the skewed way the crew is portrayed in the holonovel.  It makes for some hilarious and surprising scenes.

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Star Trek VOY Season 6 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

Voyager! I'm still watching Star Trek, even if I haven't done an update on the season for awhile.  I did finish the sixth season of Voyager awhile ago, and am just now getting around to writing my recap for it.  Which I really shouldn't do since my memory is a little hazy on overall thoughts on the season.  Looking at my list of episodes though, I'm reminded of one thing that I absolutely loved about this season - Michael Sullivan.  But I'll gush more about him when I get to talking about his episode.

5. Pathfinder

Lieutenant Barclay is working hard to find a way to bring Voyager home, and with the help of his trusty Voyager holodeck program and the counsel of Troi, he's working through a solution.  There's so many things to love about this episode - the appearance of Barclay (who's just so lovable!) and Troi, the altered view of the Voyager crew as seen through Barclay's holodeck program, and the fact that we get more of a glimpse into what it's like being a part of Starfleet, outside of the missions into space.  I really like that they included Tom Paris's father as well - so the audience can understand more about Tom.  Although it does seem like they are softening the antagonism between Tom and his father - I really can't see why Tom found him so insufferable.

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Star Trek VOY Season 5 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

I mentioned in my last post about Season 4 how Voyager seems more like a show about the story and science fiction concepts, which led me to thinking about something else about the show that I find interesting - that there are no established villains.  The Original Series had the Klingons, TNG had the Borg, and DS9 had the Cardassians.  Voyager does have villains, but as they speed through the Delta quadrant they leave behind many of them.  Species 8472 was the most chilling and the most promising of the villains so far (especially since the Borg can't conquer them!) but it's sad they can't be explored properly given the conceit of the show.  I suppose, I don't need a good villain but it does help to make a show better somehow.  I like that with an adventure based show that is long-running, there can be a touchstone of conflict by reintroducing a villain who is a great match for the protagonist.  It's good to have new villains, but nice to settle in sometimes with another round of protagonist vs. a good old, familiar antagonist.

Having said that, I can't really fault Voyager, especially with how this season shaped up for me.  When I checked my list, I found I'd noted 10 episodes as noteworthy for me from season 5!  I don't think I've ever had such a long list for Star Trek.  It was really difficult to whittle it down to 5 episodes, let me tell you, so I feel it's important to include my honorary mentions: Infinite Regress (Seven gets taken over by personalities made up of people the Borg assimilated), Bride of Chaotica (aliens in sub space believe a holodeck program represents real life), Bliss (Voyager believes they've found a wormhole home, but it's a trap), Think Tank (the one with Jason Alexander!), and Warhead (a warhead with artificial intelligence).  All such good episodes - it's the stories that are drawing me in with this series.  And by the way, I'm so not happy with my top three - I find it so difficult to order them, they are all three almost perfect stories to me!

5. Relativity

Seven of Nine is recruited from the future to prevent a bomb from going off on Voyager that was planted sometime before Voyager left the Alpha quadrant.  Another good old timey whimey epsiode, that features a flashback to the first season, which I thought was very fun.  Seven proves how valuable a member she is to the crew as well, since she is the only one who can undertake this particular mission.  It's interesting that this episode again explores Captain Janeway's decision-making, which maybe throws a negative light on her, but again, she is in a very difficult situation.  I did sympathize with her of course and not the bitter man who was trying to destroy Voyager.  

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Star Trek VOY Season 4 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

So Season 4 of Voyager, or as I like to think of it now - The Seven of Nine show.  LOL, I'm just kidding (slightly) but she really got a lot of screen time for a new character.  They wanted to get more viewers to the show I guess.  I do like that it feels like Voyager has two female leads now which is awesome.  Captain Janeway is such a bad-ass now - I continue to love her as a character.  I'm pretty sure now she is my favorite character from this series.  I do feel sorry for B'ellana though - it feels like so much of her storylines revolve around her love interest Tom Paris and what he's going through.

While I'm slowing down a bit with Voyager, I do still really enjoy the crew and the storylines; which are fun, inventive spins on science fiction ideas and it feels like the episodes revolve more around concepts than around interpersonal drama and alien conflicts.  Which I'm loving as it makes for some very interesting stories.

5. Hope and Fear

With the help of a linguistically talented alien, Voyager decodes a message Starfleet sent them months ago.  The message tells them of a ship with new technology that can send them home quickly, and they just need to go to certain coordinates to pick it up.  It seems too good to be true.  The real situation behind the message was a surprise to me - while I didn't expect for Voyager to be able to get home, I was surprised that this episode turned into an evaluation of Janeway's actions from a previous episode.  While I feel like Janeway's lax adherence to the Prime Directive is creating issues in more and more of these episodes, it's interesting how I feel like she made the right decision every time.  Obviously I'm not a big proponent of the Prime Directive here, haha.  Of course the consequences of her decision was very unfortunate in this episode.

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Star Trek VOY Season 3 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

I think I'm slowing down a bit with my series binging of Voyager.  I have been trying to fit in more Movie Musicals, so that takes up some time, but I feel like I'm less motivated to watch Star Trek than I was before.  So there is probably a little burn out happening here.  I don't really have much to say about season 3 as a whole - I think I enjoyed season 2 overall more, but looking over my list of episode picks for season 3, I really liked these episodes!  Anyways, on to my top 5 picks!

5.  Before and After

Kes is experiencing time backwards, when she wakes up much older, and then continues to pass out and wake up while getting younger and younger.  I like the timey whimey aspect of this episode, as well as dilemma for Kes, to try to get back to her time, when she couldn't control when she went into the past.  That aspect alone is what put this episode into the top 5 - although when she goes back into the womb, it was a *little* weird, this was still an intriguing episode.

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Star Trek VOY Season 2 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

Season two of Voyager was a wonderful season for me - I had seven episodes listed for my top favorites, and it's been a long time since I had to whittle down my list to five!  One episode that I decided not to go with was "Death Wish" which had the wonderful, unexpected return of Riker for a brief scene and the alright return of Q (the Q we are all familiar with).  Well actually it was kinda nice to see Q.  And the other episode was "Investigations" in which Neelix tries to discover the traitor on board Voyager.  And although I didn't note it (because it was so close to the end of the season) I really enjoyed "Resolutions" where Janeaway and Chakotay face the possibility of living the rest of their lives on an uninhabited planet.

The season was not really memorable in any overarching theme - some of the stories were interesting, and I was happy to see the characters develop further.  I don't yet feel deeply attached to the crew, although I do look forward to seeing what unfolds in each new episode.  This season had a cliffhanger ending involving Seska though, which I was glad to finally get on with, as I wanted her storyline resolved a long time ago.   I did not care for her as a character at all!

5.  The Thaw

Voyager comes across a planet where most of it's people have been cryogenically frozen to endure a natural disaster, but something happened and only three people survived.  Yet their system has not woken them up yet, so the Voyager crew try to revive them.  This episode almost didn't make my list because the whole creepy clown thing is not appealing to me, and it was annoying to have to watch the figment of the machine be overbearing and superior - holding the lives of anyone's consciousness hostage.  But that ending though!  Janeway gets the better of him, and the episode ends on this weirdly solemn note, as it touches on fear of death, and then fade to black.  It was such an impactful ending, that I felt like I had to include it on my list. 

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Star Trek VOY Season 1 - Top 5 Favorite Episodes

Okay, why did I not know that ST:VOY is like Gilligan's Island in space!  Although I hope they will get back to the alpha quadrant by the end of the series!  And I hope they manage to stay away from the pitfalls of doing a show like this - with a bunch of episodes that present opportunities for the ship to jump light-years ahead, but their plans are always foiled in the end.  It will get very monotonous, and the suspense will start to peter out.

My first impression of this series was Captain Janeway is awesome!! This is when I knew I would love her character - there's a scene in the episode "Time and Again" where Janeway is told she has to do what these terrorists want, or they will shoot a child and, after a moment to think, she steps up to the guard and directly gives away the terrorists.  In front of them!  Boss.  And what a difficult situation to be in!  It was a little surprising to see her take the situation that was for the greater good too.  But the child was ok of course.  I also love that we are back to an adventure an episode kind of format too - this series is noticeably lighter than Deep Space Nine, so now I understand why they had both shows kind of running con-currently.  They are such different shows!

I'm still getting used to this crew but there are a few things I'm really happy about with them:

• There's another Vulcan main character!
• Tom Paris - nice to see an actor from a TNG episode join the Star Trek family as the main cast
• Harry Kim - I just love his character, he's sweet, and a good character for the viewer to connect to vicariously if you wanted to imagine yourself as a member of the crew.

5. Heroes and Demons

The holographic Doctor is the only one who can go into the rogue holodeck and bring back the crew members who have 'disappeared'.  I'm liking this tendency (so far) of Voyager to explore literary stories and this Beowulf take-off was fun to see on a scifi show.  And it was fun to see the show play around with the concept of having a main character who is a holo-character and what sort of limitations and ramifications it has.  For me, the storyline of the entity that took over the ship was a subordinate to the enjoyment of the elements that made up the story.

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