seacow's Full Review: Star Trek: Voyager - Episode 3
The original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation both had very solid followings. Deep Space Nine had a little controversy due to its similarity with Babylon 5. Voyager, if I recall, didn’t have quite as much of a fan base. Too many people saw it as Star Trek’s version of Lost In Space. In the pilot episode, the Federation Starship Voyager was pulled 70,000-75,000 light years from home and left to wander back into Federation space.
This is listed as the third episode, but that’s assuming you count the pilot as two separate episodes. This is effectively the first episode after the pilot, meaning that it’s the first episode that’s going to have to really show that the series can do something other than have everyone whining about how far away from Earth they are. To boot, Voyager has lost a significant portion of its crew, including its chief medical officer and its chief engineer.
The Emergency Medical Hologram, referred to simply as The Doctor throughout the series, is beginning to realize that he will have to fill in as the chief medical officer, seeing as how the entire medical crew was killed. He’s assigned two people to help him as aides, but that’s not nearly enough. He’s a hologram and can’t leave sickbay. (I never understood why they never installed holographic emitters throughout the ship. Even when someone else did it, they were removed.)
As for the chief engineer, Commander Chakotay wants to see B’Elanna Torres fill the vacancy. At first, Captain Janeway is hesitant, pointing out that Torres broke the nose of the ranking Starfleet engineering officer. However, Torres gets the chance to prove herself when the ship is stuck near a singularity. The ship is brought in by what the crew thinks is a distress call, but it turns out that it’s really a future version of the ship trying to hail itself. Yes, it sounds strange, but Torres manages to save the day and proves to the crew (and to herself) that she can be chief engineer.
The Doctor is starting to come into his own in this episode. He’s still being treated as a program, but people are starting to realize that they’ll be needing him and that he’s got a personality of his own, no matter how much people don’t like it.
The one thing that I noticed upon watching the episode again is that Kes and Nelix were both underdeveloped. Both are natives of the area that Voyager landed in. The crew took them in during the pilot episode and didn’t seem to really have much for them to do yet. In this episode, Kes is told to work in a hydroponics bay that she suggested, but Nelix still hasn’t found his purpose yet.
I have the gift of hindsight here, having seen the entire series. It seems to me that the show is still coming together, but is doing so in a good way. The writers aren’t trying to throw all the characters at us at once. Perhaps it’s a good thing that Nelix hasn’t yet taken on all of his responsibilities yet. The Doctor and Kes are showing some good interaction.
I give the episode four stars. It’s a pretty good start to a series that I liked. It doesn’t really fall into any of the traps that a developing show usually does.
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