“Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and never abandon a member of your crew.”
That is, in a nutshell, the premise of the entire Star Trek franchise. So why is the series that took it furthest one of the most hated Star Trek TV shows?
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Following The Next Generation (the peak of Star Trek for many fans) and Deep Space Nine (which has armies of diehard defenders), Voyager had its work cut out for it from the start.
Rather than copy its two prestigious predecessors, Voyager tried to do things a little differently. Okay, a lot differently.
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Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) is a complicated character, bonding with her crew or dishing out discipline when needed, and similarly able to use or bend the rules as the situation demands.
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Tim Russ’ Tuvok and Robert Picardo’s Doctor are some of the funniest characters ever seen in Stark Trek, and Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine was a captivating variation on the otherwise villainous Borg.
The distance from home freed Voyager of Star Trek’s reliance on rogue admirals, despotic Cardassians, and Klingon diplomacy for plots. That led to more experimentation, for better or worse.
We’re not here to say that Voyager is secretly the best Trek (and not just because we don’t want to make Kira Nerys mad). But it is one of the most consistently surprising parts of the franchise, able to bounce between high-minded sci-fi and crowd-pleasing goofs like none other.
Voyager may not be the best part of Star Trek, but it’s far from the failure it’s remembered as. And if you’re not convinced after watching — well, at least it’s not Enterprise.
Star Trek: Voyager is streaming on Netflix until September 30, and on Paramount+ after that.