Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday. I'm back with my review of the series premiere of Star Trek: Voyager, "Caretaker", which originally aired on Monday, January 16th, 1995. There will be spoilers, as there have been in all of my Star Trek pilot episode reviews, so that's your warning. Let's get into it.
While "Caretaker" is nowhere near as strong as "Emissary" as the series premiere of a '90s Star Trek TV show, it's still really good. Of course, by the time this episode was produced, the people working on it were Star Trek veterans, with the majority of them having worked in the franchise since the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So they knew how a series premiere should be. However, Voyager was the first live action Star Trek series on network television since TOS went off the air in 1969, and the first series in the franchise to be on network television since TAS went off the air in 1974. Add on top of that, the fact that it was launching a brand new network, and the end result was the best it could be under the circumstances.
After a Maquis ship, under the command of former Starfleet officer, Chakotay (played by Robert Beltran), disappears in the Badlands, Starfleet Command sends the new U.S.S. Voyager (NCC-74656), under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew) to investigate. However, the ship is flung into the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light-years from Federation space by a being known as the Caretaker (played by Basil Langton). With most of her bridge crew killed and being forced to destroy the Caretaker's Array following the death of the Caretaker, Janeway invites Chakotay and the other Maquis to join her crew for the long journey home.
Besides Janeway and Chakotay, the crew consists of Lieutenant Tom Paris (played by Robert Duncan McNeill), the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok (played by Tim Russ), Ensign Harry Kim (played by Garrett Wang), the half-Human half Klingon Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres (played by Roxann Dawson), a Talaxian named Neelix (played by Ethan Phillips), the Doctor (Emergency Medical Hologram played by Robert Picardo), and an Ocampan named Kes (played by Jennifer Lien). The Voyager cast is one of my favourite Star Trek casts next to TNG, SNW, and DS9. While the DS9 and SNW crews are some of the most well developed crews in the entire franchise, Voyager's crew feels more like a family rather than a crew, because of how far from Starfleet Command they were. Janeway could loosen things up in terms of daily procedure and the day to day operation of the ship because they were the only crew around being that they couldn't just go to a Starbase for crew transfers like a starship normally does.
Voyager is the series that I probably have the most nostalgia and fondness for next to TNG. I was eight years old when this episode premiered. We didn't have cable at the time, so Nana and Grandpa taped it off the TV for us, and I think Mom and Dad watched it first to make sure it would be okay for my siblings and I to watch, since I was eight years old, my sister wasn't quite five yet, and my brother wasn't quite four yet. I remember all five of us sitting in the upstairs common area, that my brother, sister, and I used for our playroom, with my siblings and I on the floor in front of the TV, and my parents on the couch they'd put up there for us, watching the premiere on VHS. And then we'd be allowed to watch an episode occasionally after Nana had taped it for us, and Mom and Dad watched it first. But it wasn't until 1998 when I was 11, my sister was 8, and my brother was 7 that we started watching it together on a weekly basis. Season 6 and season 7 are the ones I remember the most. And then in the 2000s, when I was in high school and the series had ended, it remained in reruns for an extremely long time, so I would watch it every day after school, loving the characters even more.
Voyager is also the Star Trek series that was the most accessible. Despite it's very obvious flaws due to it being run by people who weren't the best individuals, i.e. Rick Berman, because it was led by a female captain, women seemed to enjoy it the best. I had a friend in high school who was not into Star Trek at all, but she loved Voyager. In fact, we'd sit on the phone with each other and watch it together after school when it was on in reruns, as the reruns were on a channel I had on the rabbit ears on the TV in my bedroom. And even a few years ago when I showed my friend, Katie, both this episode, and the season six episode, "Fair Haven", she was open to watching more of the show, despite her not liking Star Trek in general.
And I think that not only has to do with there being a female captain, but, the show, despite being the second live action show to be spun-off of The Next Generation, doesn't rely on people having seen the previous shows before watching this one to understand what's going on. Even the whole concept of the Maquis is explained in the opening crawl at the beginning of this episode, as well as the entire opening sequence with Tuvok, Chakotay, and B'Elanna on the Maquis ship before we ever see Voyager or meet Captain Janeway.
This episode does feel a bit wonky at times just because the POV shifts throughout the episode. As I mentioned, it opens with Chakotay, but then shifts to Tom Paris, and we get his POV until Voyager gets transported to the Delta Quadrant, and then it splits between Janeway and Harry and B'Elanna, as Harry and B'Elanna are on the Ocampan homeworld. And then we just stick with that the rest of the episode.
Because of this constant shift in POV, it does slow the episode down a bit, just because we're being introduced to Neelix, Kes, the Doctor, the Ocampans, the Caretaker himself, and the Kazon-Ogla, led by Maje Jabin. Personally, I think the Kazon aren't great villains. They aren't scary like the Vidiians, they aren't tough like the Hirogen or the Borg, and they aren't as re-usable as the Malon, who also aren't great either. Sure they have a bit more of an advantage against Voyager once Seska joins them later in the season, but then we don't see Seska and the Kazon again until the second season, so it kind of takes the bite out of them a little bit.
I also like that Chakotay immediately accepted Janeway as the captain once the Maquis ship was destroyed and his crew joined with the surviving members of Voyager's crew. That moment where Janeway announces she's going to destroy the Array, B'Elanna angrily asks, "Who is she to be making this decision for all of us?" and Chakotay calmly replies, "She's the captain.", shows that, despite leaving Starfleet to fight for his people against the Cardassians, Chakotay still respects Starfleet and everything it stands for. Even when he discovered that Tuvok was a Federation operative, assigned to infiltrate his crew, Chakotay understood that Tuvok was simply doing his duty as a Starfleet officer.
It also feels weird that Voyager had a first officer, a chief engineer, a pilot, and a chief medical officer before Chakotay, B'Elanna, Tom, and the Doctor filled those roles. Just because we don't get very much time with them before they're all killed due to damage caused by the Caretaker's displacement wave grabbing the ship. In fact, when Janeway orders Tom to take the helm before she and Tuvok beam over to the Caretaker's Array, I thought, "now Tom Paris is where he belongs on the ship". He flies the ship, just like Ortegas does, so to see Tom do anything else is weird to me.
The last thing I want to mention is Quark's cameo appearance in this episode. I love Quark, he's one of my favourite characters from DS9, but, unlike Picard's appearance in "Emissary", which was rich and connected to Sisko's backstory, Quark's appearance in this episode was pointless. The character actually felt off compared to how he is portrayed on DS9. Especially around this point in DS9's run. "Caretaker" aired midway through DS9's third season, premiering the day after "Past Tense Part II" aired, so Quark had grown quite a bit in the two and a half seasons the show had been on for. The way Quark is portrayed in this episode made him feel like he'd regressed to the way he was in the first season. It also felt like a really bad way to introduce Harry Kim, because it makes him look like a complete idiot. I mean, sure, he just graduated from Starfleet Academy, and Voyager was his first assignment post-graduation, but even the greenest cadet is trained well enough to not say "we were warned about Ferengi at the Academy" to a Ferengi. It was weird.
Overall, this was a great start to a series that I feel is very underrated. Between being on a brand new network that ended up failing and merging with The WB, another failed network, to form The CW only ten years after it's creation, and the fact that Star Trek as a whole just wasn't as popular as it had been during TNG's original run, Voyager had the potential to grab people's attention and be successful, and it just wasn't. Unlike DS9, Voyager felt safe, because Rick Berman was, well, he was Rick Berman and that's all I'm going to say about that. If you know about this show's production history, you know why I dislike Rick Berman.
And that my friends is it for me for today. I'll be back either tomorrow or Saturday with my review of the first five episodes of Goosebumps. When I do the review, will depend on how long episodes are and how long it takes me to watch all five that are coming out tomorrow. So until then, have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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