The complete first season of the popular Star Trek spin-off
series. In the pilot episode, 'Caretaker (Parts 1 and 2)', a
Maquis ship inexplicably disappears during plasma storms in the
Badlands. USS Voyager is assigned to investigate. To assist the
mission, Captain Kathryn Janeway recruits a reluctant, cashiered
Starfleet Officer who has also acted as a mercenary for the
Maquis. Whilst exploring the renegade ship's last known position
Voyager is mysteriously propelled 70 000 light years from home.
Searching this uncharted quadrant of the galaxy, they become
embroiled in a centuries-old enviromental problem on a nearby
inhabited world. In 'Parallax', USS Voyager goes to the aid of a
stricken vessel, only to become entrapped in a vortex of
distorted time and space. 'Time and Again' sees Captain Janeway
and Lieutenant Paris journey back to the past in order to solve
the mystery surrounding a devastated world. In 'Phage', the quest
to restock their starship USS Voyager has brought them to a
barren planetoid where Neelix is attacked and has his lungs
stolen. In 'The Cloud', the USS Voyager travels to the heart of a
large nebula, but once inside becomes trapped and the crew
realise that everything is not as it seems. In 'Eye of the
Needle', Harry Kim discovers a wormhole, which the crew of the
USS Voyager hope will lead back to the Alpha Quadrant. In 'Ex
Post Facto', Tom Paris is convicted of murder whilst on an alien
planet. In 'Emanations', the crew of the Voyager make a gruesome
discovery while investigating a new element and Harry
Kim mysteriously disappears. In 'Prime Factors', the crew
discover that the aliens offering them lavish hospitality on
their shore leave also have the technology to send the Voyager
back to their own quadrant - but the alien laws forbid their use
of it. In 'State of Flux', the Voyager encounters the fearsome
Kazon warriors again as they investigate a wrecked Kazon
starship. They soon discover evidence of a traitor in their
midst. In 'Heroes and Demons', several members of the Voyager
crew disappear in a holodeck recreation of the medieval poem,
Beowulf. The only member of the crew who can enter the holodeck
safely is the reluctant doctor. In 'Cathexis', the USS Voyager
finds a shuttlecraft containing an unconscious Tuvok and a
Chakotay. But when some of the crew of the Voyager start
behaving strangely, it becomes apparent that the shuttlecraft has
more than just two members. In 'Faces', the Vidians, a group of
repulsive aliens who have contracted a disease which disfigures
their faces, believe that the only cure is Klingon . The
Vidians then decide to use such technology to make B'elanna a
full Klingon. In 'Jetrel', a shuttlecraft hails the Voyager with
bad news for Neelix, informing him that he may be suffering from
a life-threatening disease. In 'Learning Curve', the crew is
plunged into danger when the computer starts to malfunction.
Pressures build up as some of the Maquis in the crew decide not
to follow Starfleet regulations.
From .co.uk
-----------
Star Trek: Voyager began life in 1995 with some truly fascinating
prospects in its two-hour pilot episode. Opening in the 24th
century, a setting contemporary with that of Star Trek: The Next
Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and carrying over story
elements from each of those series, "Caretaker" finds Starfleet
Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) stepping into the middle
of Federation troubles with the Maquis, an army of rebels
violently resisting the interplanetary organization's treaty with
the brutal Cardassians. In the process, both Voyager and the
Maquis ship under surveillance are accidentally catapulted out of
the galaxy's Alpha Quadrant (the familiar stomping grounds of
Starfleet personnel) by a benign but dying being called the
Caretaker. Voyager ends up in the unexplored Delta Quadrant, some
70,000 light years away.
So much seemed dramatically promising in this debut, especially
the unwieldy alliance of Starfleet regulars and hostile Maquis,
and the likelihood that a lifetime spent in isolation, trying to
get home, would lead to the development of a self-contained
society on the ship, yet Voyager never entirely made up its mind
what it was supposed to be about. The curiously cheesy sets and
fascinating, progressive management style of Janeway (half mommy,
half taskmaster) were also new developments in Star Trek culture.
As the 16-episode season continued, character backstories were
developed in such episodes as "The Cloud" (arguably the best
episode of the season), "Eye of the Needle" (underscoring Janeway
and the crew's sadness), "State of Flux" (in which a search for a
traitor reveals a past romance between Commander Chakotay, played
by Robert Beltran, and sexy Bajoran engineer Seska, played by
Martha Hackett), and "Jetrel" (which explores the character of
Neelix, the Talaxian played by Ethan Phillips, during a parable
about scientific ethics and moral responsibility).
Among other notable episodes, "Phage" strikes a nice balance
among character development, story hook, and moral and emotional
conflict when Neelix is literally robbed of his lungs by the
Vidiians, a once-civilized people who are combating a deadly
disease called the Phage by stealing organs. (The disease would
return in "Faces," a fine showcase for Roxann Biggs-Dawson as
Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres.) "Emanations" stirred controversy
among the series' producers and some fans for its philosophical
look at death, and "Time and Again" is a unique time-travel story
in which Janeway and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) get caught
in a subspace fracture that places them just hours before they
know a planet is going to be destroyed. In "Prime Factors,"
latent tensions among Voyager personnel erupts into serious
conflict, an issue revisited in the season finale, "Learning
Curve." Despite a pat ending that resolves the Maquis conflict
much too easily, the episode drives home the fact that Voyager
and its crew are all alone, making the most of a difficult
predicament. --Tom Keogh and Jeff Shannon