I’m a firm believer that Star Trek: Voyager has something for everyone; however, everyone is not the same, of course. For example, if I were trying to indoctrinate cajole my Grey’s Anatomy-loving coworkers into watching my favorite show, I would entice them with a completely different set of pros.
As it stands, the following list is inspired by my blog friend Ruth, who is a delightful classic-movie blogger. Several posts ago, I talked about Voyager’s still enjoyable bad episodes, and she commented that she’d never watched the show before.
That’s an Internet gauntlet, folks.
I’ve compiled this list to attract a certain kind of person, and I have faith in my tactics. And, as Captain Janeway would say, I feel lucky today!
Series Overview
Let’s get a quick rundown of what’s going on in this series before I start the list rolling. I’ll pretend anyone reading this has never watched Star Trek, so I’ll try not to be too technobabble-y.
The Premise: It’s the 24th century, and Earth and several other planets have long ago joined together to form The United Federation of Planets. Starfleet–a space navy, basically–serves and protects this governmental agency.
There’s some disputed regions on the fringes of the Alpha Quadrant (because they’ve divided the galaxy into quadrants and named them with Greek letters, of course), and a rebel group called the Maquis has sprung up to defend what they feel is their own land. Officially, The Federation sees the Maquis as terrorists, but they’re all wronged idealists, mostly (and the dudes they’re fighting [the Cardassians], who are officially in The Federation, are sneaky jerks, tbh).
Captain Kathryn Janeway and her new starship Voyager have been sent out to the Badlands to go after a particularly trouble-causing Maquis ship, on which one of Janeway’s oldest friends is serving as a spy! Quelle drama!
Before she goes, she springs a dude from jail who had been in Starfleet and then also in the Maquis to act as her guide! Quelle more drama!
Well, both the Maquis ship and Voyager get gotten by an alien who pulls them 75,000 lightyears away from Earth–all the way to the Delta Quadrant. This dying alien is trying to figure out if anybody has similar DNA so that he will have an heir to look after this planet he’s looking after. Spoiler alert: Nobody does.
Meanwhile, these other aliens are trying to get at the thing that transported everybody from the Alpha Quadrant so they can use it to gain power and take over stuff.
Janeway can’t let them gain power and take over stuff because they’re meanies, so she destroys the thing, stranding her ship and the Maquis ship in the Delta Quadrant. Quelle drama-est!
This is the first time Janeway meets Chakotay (the Maquis captain). I hope they both brushed their teeth this morning because dang.
Janeway and the Maquis captain decide to join forces to get back home, so they all take up residence on Voyager and are forced to work together.
Meanwhile, they’ve picked up a few people from the Delta Quadrant to be on their crew: a dude who’s a trader and is supposed to be good at navigating this–to Alpha Quadrant types–uncharted space and a lady (from the planet the alien who whisked them away was guarding) who has a really weird short lifespan.
Also, meanwhile, the ship’s doctor dies in the first twenty minutes or so and is permanently replaced by the Emergency Medical Hologram. His journey into sentience becomes a plot point in many episodes.
Also along the way they run into the Borg, a species that is not so much a species but an amalgamation of species who act as one unit, like a hive, and they basically steal other species’ bodies to use in their ultimate goal of perfection through putting together the best parts of every species and then enhancing themselves with robotics. The Borg are weird and scary and robotic and hard to describe, and when you’re part of the Borg, you have no personality of your own and do only the will of the Collective. Anyway, Janeway rescues a lady from the Borg, and her journey into humanity becomes a plot point in many episodes.
So, if all the sci-fi hasn’t already turned you off, let’s have a go at the list.
Honorable Mention: Clean (with a Little Innuendo)
One thing I really love about old movies is that they’re not explicit. If a couple is intimate, they cut to a fireplace. If somebody’s mad, he gives a glare and bunches his hands into angry fists instead of cursing a blue streak.
And because of the cleanness, they get to have a little more fun (and be a little more creative) when they wanna be a little bit dirty. So they say things like, “You know how to whistle, don’t ya?” instead of something yuckier.
Because Voyager aired on regular old TV instead of HBO and because we have a lady captain who is so stagy and sassy, we get cleanness, and a little bit of sassy dirtiness once in a while.
