Wow, what an exciting series premiere! Such a strong, specific premise,
so many potentially interesting storylines and character arcs being established — if
the series follows through on literally any of that, it’s gonna be fantastic! I can’t wait!
This is a review of the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager,
“Caretaker.” If you have not seen this episode,
and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be warned: spoilers beyond this point!
If you’ve watched a lot of my videos over the years this probably won’t come as a shock to you,
but if you’ve only seen a little of me, you might be surprised to learn that, actually,
I really like the first episode of Voyager. There’s a strain of absolutism in the thinking
of many Trekkies — and many fans of various other things — and humanity in general, really — that
assumes if you don’t like a thing, or you’ve had critical things to say about a thing, you
must therefore dislike all parts of that thing. Not true. I have a pronounced dislike of most
of Zack Snyder’s work, but I think his Watchmen movie is excellent. I am not really a fan of the
Young Bucks, or Kenny Omega, or Adam Page, but I thought their tag team match against each other at
Revolution 2020 was outstanding. I thought Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie was the absolute shits,
but there was that scene near the end with Elvis and Priscilla in the limo at the airport where it
finally settled down and felt like a movie about human beings for a few minutes — I liked that.
Such is the case with Star Trek: Voyager. Not my favorite Star Trek series. In fact,
for years I’ve said it is my least favorite Star Trek series — although some formidable
challengers have emerged recently. But, just because my opinion of the series
overall is pretty low, that doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects of Voyager that I appreciate,
even admire. One of those aspects is its first episode, “Caretaker.” It’s a really,
really good first episode. In fact, I would place it behind only the first
episode of Deep Space Nine, which I reviewed previously, in my rankings of Star Trek pilots.
Star Trek pilot episodes, I mean. We all know who the best Star Trek pilot is:
He’s pretty much the best at everything he does. Talk about a Mary Sue.
Speaking of Tom Paris, he’s as good an entry point as anything for a review of “Caretaker”
because he’s arguably the most important character in the episode. Kathryn Janeway is the captain of
the ship and the series lead, and eventually she gets the largest amount of screen time — I think,
anyway — I didn’t time it with a stopwatch. But, Tom Paris is our point of view character for
most of the episode. And, he’s the character with the most obvious and significant arc.
After a very Star Wars cold open, complete with expository title crawl and “big ship chasing
little ship” space battle, where we’re introduced to Chakotay, Tuvok and B’Elanna, we get the main
title sequence — which is another mark in the plus column for Voyager, I’ve always loved the
theme song and the opening credits — anyway, after that, we fade in on a Federation penal colony in
New Zealand, and Tom Paris, and from that point on he’s our guide and our anchor for this episode.
We’re following him when we meet Captain Janeway, when we first see the starship Voyager,
when we meet Harry Kim, when we meet the Doctor — Paris follows Harry to sickbay after the ship
gets zapped to the Delta Quadrant. And, because he’s our point of view character,
he gets more development than most of the others. We learn that he’s in that penal
colony because he joined the Maquis after being kicked out of Starfleet;
we learn he was kicked out of Starfleet because he lied in an attempt to cover-up his responsibility
for an accident that cost the lives of three other officers; we learn that he must not be all bad,
because eventually he came forward and told the truth about lying and accepted
the consequences of his actions. He’s the bad guy who’s secretly a good guy!
We also see that Tom and Chakotay have some lingering tension between them left over from
Tom’s brief stint in the Maquis, and by the end of the episode Tom has saved Chakotay’s life,
and Chakotay has agreed to take personal responsibility for Tom’s safety aboard the
ship going forward. Plus, Tom and Harry have a budding big brother/little brother
dynamic happening, and there’s an interesting relationship between Paris and Janeway where he
recognizes her authority as captain and does what he’s told, but is a little more relaxed
and informal toward her than the rest of the crew seems to be, owing to his status as an outsider.
Lots of Tom Paris stuff! So much so that at times, especially early on,
it feels like the pilot for a series called Star Trek: Tom Paris! Or maybe Tom Paris: Voyager. Or,
what about: Paris: A Star Trek Story? Nah, that should be the title of the prequel movie where
we learn the unnecessary and stupefyingly inane origin of his last name. My point is,
“Caretaker” is in large part the Tom Paris show, and that’s not a bad thing,
because Paris is an interesting character and Robert Duncan McNeil does a good job playing him.
But, one interesting character played by one actor giving a good performance doesn’t equal
a good episode — everyone else in “Caretaker” does fine work, too. At the time this episode
originally aired, all eyes were on Kate Mulgrew, of course — she was the first woman to lead a Star
Trek series, she was replacing the original actor cast in the role, Genevieve Bujold.
If Mulgrew felt any pressure under the circumstances, it doesn’t come across
on screen. Watching the episode this morning to prepare for this review,
what struck me the most about her performance is how relaxed she seems. Already in the first
episode, she appears comfortable in the role. She seems to have figured out who Captain Janeway is.
She projects confidence and authority in front of the crew, and vulnerability in private,
without pushing too hard in either direction. And, through her performance,
she fills in a lot of blanks left open by the script. This is mostly a well written episode,
but the writing doesn’t give us a whole lot when it comes to Janeway’s personality,
nor does she have much of a character arc in this episode. Mulgrew has a lot of space to work in,
but also a lot more work to do in order to bring Janeway to life, and she does it.
One of the few specific details Janeway is given in the script that she greatly benefits from is
her scientific and engineering expertise. After Voyager is heavily damaged by the trip to the
Delta Quadrant, Janeway heads down to the engine room to personally oversee emergency repairs.
I don’t think we’d ever seen a captain do this before. Usually, Star Trek shows depict a pretty
strict division of labor between the captain and the chief engineer — Captain Kirk will tell
Scotty “Make the ship go faster!” and you get the impression Kirk has no idea how Scotty is going to
accomplish this — it might as well be witchcraft. But Captain Janeway obviously knows her stuff.
The scene in engineering is almost entirely incomprehensible technobabble, but the story of
the scene is simple and clear: in this extremely precarious situation, with highly technical
problems needing to be solved, Janeway is able to grasp what is wrong and knows what to do.
As for the rest of the cast, we get to see enough of them to have a sense of who they are: Harry,
the rookie; Tuvok, the captain’s trusted advisor; Chakotay, the rebel leader turned ally; B’Elanna,
the feisty one; Neelix, the slightly shady but not entirely unreliable local guide; Kes, the . . .
Kes seems nice; and the Doctor, the irritable supplementary hologram designed for temporary
use who is just starting to realize he has much more of a long-term job ahead of him. We don’t get
much more than an impression of these characters, but that’s okay, this is only the first episode.
This is the setup. We meet them, we get a handle on who they are or at least what their type is,
seeds of various relationships are planted which we expect to see grow as the series goes on.
The plot to which these character introductions are fastened is well worn but sturdy Star Trek
fare: a powerful alien does something wacky for reasons that are initially mysterious
but are ultimately revealed to be rooted in a basic human motivation. The Caretaker is dying,
and has been finding and yanking people to it from all across the galaxy,
hoping to find someone biologically compatible so he can produce an heir to carry on his work after
he dies. That work involves supplying power and protection to a small colony of people,
called the Ocampa, on a nearby planet — a planet which the Caretaker’s species accidentally
turned into a barren desert when they first arrived in this part of space centuries ago.
All of that works fine. So do the scenes aboard the Caretaker’s array,
when the Voyager crew is transported aboard and suddenly find themselves in the middle of
an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Characters discovering Earth-like environments in distant
parts of the galaxy where they have no business being is a Star Trek trope going all the way back
to the franchise’s original pilot, “The Cage,” where Captain Pike, while a captive on Talos IV,
is placed for a time in a telepathic recreation of a park near his hometown of Mojave,
California. The scenes in “Caretaker” set in the farm simulation also have a slightly surreal and
inexplicable quality reminiscent of an episode of The Twilight Zone, which works very well.
The whole thing works very well as a plot for the pilot episode
and a way of establishing the premise of the series. There’s really only one major flaw,
and it’s one I’ve spoken about at length in videos in my Trek, Actually series. It’s that
Captain Janeway’s decision to destroy the Caretaker array and strand the ship in the Delta
Quadrant only really makes sense if we accept what we’re told rather than what we’re shown.
What I mean by that is, Janeway decides to destroy the array rather than use it to
send everyone home because, with the Caretaker himself having died, she doesn’t want to leave
his technology in the hands of the Kazon, who could then use it to attack the Ocampa. We’re
supposed to receive this as a principled act of sacrifice on the part of Janeway, and it is,
except for the fact that there would seem to be alternatives that could both protect the Ocampa
and get Voyager home. The array’s self-destruct function is destroyed during a Kazon attack,
but Voyager has the ability to destroy it. What about some kind of time bomb,
set to detonate sometime after the array returns Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant?
That’s just one possibility that leaps immediately to mind. And, I’m not saying that’s what Janeway
should have actually done — the premise of the show is that the ship is stranded in the Delta
Quadrant, so they need to still be in the Delta Quadrant at the end of the pilot. And,
I do like the idea that Janeway is forced to make a choice that results in them staying there rather
than just being passively stranded there by the actions of someone else. But, for her choice
to stay rather than use the array to leave to really make sense, to feel like a choice someone
in Janeway’s position would actually make, those alternative routes need to be recognized and then
closed off. We need to not just be told that Janeway had no choice but to do what she did,
but to have it established, definitively, that it was either: stay and stop the Kazon from using the
array against the Ocampa, or return home and leave the Ocampa at the mercy of the Kazon controlling
the Caretaker’s technology. The episode doesn’t do that, and as a result Janeway’s decision to remain
in the Delta Quadrant and destroy their only way home doesn’t have nearly the impact it should.
But other than that, it’s a really good episode, and it sets up a premise and a cast of characters
that promises adventure and excitement and conflict, and just feels loaded with dramatic
possibilities — possibilities which the series rarely actually followed up on in a meaningful
or compelling way. Which is a shame, because it really does get off to a terrific start.
Those are my thoughts on the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Please do share your thoughts
in the comments. If you’d like to support this channel — and I sure wish you would,
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I’ll be back next week for a retro review of the series premiere of
Enterprise, “Broken Bow”! Thanks for watching, and take care, everybody.