Stardate 48315.6 Half a year after Captain Picard and his crew left our television airspace for good, Star Trek: Voyager flew into our airspace (January 1995). And with success. The starship USS Voyager NCC-74656 carrying the only female Starfleet Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, Mercy) has flown for seven seasons in the imaginary Delta Quadrant. Located 70,000 light-years from Earth, Voyager is the only Star Trek starship to have no contact with Starfleet Command.
So Captain Janeway and her crew are completely on their own in a quadrant they don't know. Fortunately, the Talaxian Nelix (Ethan Philips, Boston Legal) and his companion the Ocampa Kes (Jennifer Lien, Men in Black: The Series) are there to guide the crew and educate them about the inhabitants of the Delta Quadrant. If Voyager flew at maximum warp, it would take them 75 years to return to Earth. But the Caretaker who moved them to the Delta Quadrant has told them he had an ally who has left, so the search for Caretaker number two begins to bring the Voyager crew home.
Star Trek Voyager is different from the other Star Trek series, the recurring theme, the search for home, is the main storyline and therefore takes up most of the episodes. Although there are also individual episodes to be expected that fortunately do not detract from the story. The crew consisting of Starfleet members and Maquis members sometimes fight each other. Like the stubborn half-human half-Klingon B'elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson, The Lyon's Den), who regularly gets into trouble because of her Klingon temperament. Or the hologram Doctor (Robert Picardo, The Mentalist) who really has no bedside manners, but completely thaws out when he befriends the Borg/human Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan, Shark and The O.C.).
All in all, through that recurring theme and the strange encounters that Voyager often had, you sat in front of the tube every week to enjoy their adventures. Because Janeway has no contact with Starfleet, she sometimes has to bend the rules. This occasionally led to some conflicts between and with Vulcan Tuvok (Tim Russ, iCarly) and Human Chakotay (Robert Beltran, Big Love). The encounters with the Borg are also exciting. Janeway will sometimes have to team up with the enemy to get what she wants, a quick way home. Supplies and energy also pose problems for Voyager, but each episode is a step closer to home. Human Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill, Chuck) and Human Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), and the many crew members and Delta Quadrant creatures we see pass by provide a cheerful and sometimes serious note.
Star Trek Voyager was a worthy successor to Star Trek: Next Generation for seven seasons. Janeway is not inferior to the gruff Picard and Tuvok, Chakotay and B'elanna are also worthy successors to their famous predecessors from earlier Star Trek series. Fortunately, with Voyager they didn't really change the concept, they just added a continuous storyline and that worked fine. Unfortunately, as with all other Star Trek series, you notice that technology has caught up with them.
7 points for 7 great seasons.
About the writer, Karzal
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
