Star Trek Voyager – The Complete First Season
Oct/095
Description
In the first season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER, while in pursuit of a Maquis ship in the Badlands, Captain Kathryn Janeway and the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager are pulled into the Delta Quadrant. After making a decision that saves an entire species from being destroyed, but leaves both crews stranded, they must join forces to begin a 75-year journey across 70,000 light years of space to return to the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation and home.Amazon.com
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
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12:51 am on October 7th, 2009
Fans of “Voyager” must have spent the years of the Original Series, “Next Generation,” and “Deep Space 9″ living in a cave. “Voyager”’s consistently miserable writing, mediocre effects, miserable writing, uninteresting/poorly developed characters, and miserable writing ruined the “Star Trek” franchise for good. No wonder “Nemesis” and “Enterprise” fared so poorly!
Paramount could give me these DVDs for free and I still wouldn’t want them.
Rating: 1 / 5
1:48 am on October 7th, 2009
Come on people. There was absolutely nothing original about this show. It was melodramatic and boring. Janeway’s politically correct starfleet line would put Madeline Albright to shame. No daring or original thought from here at all. Mulgrew’s portrayal of her was so stiff and withdrawn that one could care less if she lived or died.
I watched the first season or two and was severly disappointed. I had the unfortunate occassion to watch the last episode. Needless to say I have NO desire to find out what happen in-between.
This show made the first two seasons of TNG seem great.
Just watch the original series, last five seasons of TNG and all of Deep Space and leave Star Trek at that.
Rating: 1 / 5
2:09 am on October 7th, 2009
Paramount gave little thought to Voyager maintaining the Star Trek franchise. It was treated as the “Money Making Monster” that ‘Star Trek’ has become. Greed relentlessy dictacted the direction Voyager would take – AUTO DESTRUCT!
* It’s all but impossible not to compare it to the other Star Trek series. Voyager is the worst of them all. Deep Space Nine is by far the best!
* Voyager dwells too much on their return home and give it a “Lost In Space” feel – corny, stupid, dull and overly dependent on the special effects, i.e. read that as ‘weak story’.
* The characters weren’t quite ‘real’ and as they developed the writers put the wrong people in certain situations Ex. Janeway would head missions just like Kirk did, a blatant abuse of protocol. Sometimes Tuvok (a full Vulcan) would be the most emotional character! Most of the rest of the cast would move from overwhelming a story to just ‘disappearing’. The ensemble cast element rarely existed and when it did the actors were most likely ‘out of character’. For the sake of screen time?
* There were some fine episodes (none that I can think of in Season 1) but even most of my favorites wouldn’t make my best of list against Next Generation, DS9 or even some of the Original series!
* Being Star Trek you would expect nothing short of great packaging (consensus says no) but Paramount is just peddling something the fans are so addicted to that they will buy it in droves, no matter the packing or…
* High price for a short season, which is also one of the worst as far as stories go. It makes Next Generations’ season one look brilliant (it wasn’t).
* The sad truth is the market was prepared for the onslaught of sales of a so-so series at a very high price with the poorest of packaging and the extreme hard core fans have left everyone else wondering why? Save your money, watch the reruns.
Rating: 1 / 5
5:07 am on October 7th, 2009
Voyager is by far the worst Star Trek series. It started out ok but quickly went downhill. No amount of Jeri Ryan’s t&a could save it. To post this I had to give it at least a 1 star rating. The show doesn’t deserve that.
If you want to see the best Star Trek series, go check out DS9. If you can’t get that, then go watch the original series, or TNG, or even Enterprise. But please don’t waste your time on Voyager.
Trust me, you will regret it.
Rating: 1 / 5
7:56 am on October 7th, 2009
How people can write reviews for a DVD set that has not been released yet is beyond me. Morons, the purpose of these reviews is to let other people know whether this DVD set is worth getting. Hello, it hasnt been released yet!!
I guess this is just more proof of how stupid people really are. Oh, how I long for the day when humans are extinct and animals rule the Earth!
Rating: 1 / 5