Star Trek: Voyager - Season Three
Star Trek: Voyager is the third spin-off from the hugely successful original Star Trek series. For those not in the know, Voyager is the name of the Federation starship that, during an encounter with a rebel Maquis ship, has been unexpectedly transported to the Delta quadrant of the galaxy by an alien entity. Facing the long journey.....
Star Trek: Voyager is the third spin-off from the hugely successful original Star Trek series. For those not in the know, Voyager is the name of the Federation starship that, during an encounter with a rebel Maquis ship, has been unexpectedly transported to the Delta quadrant of the galaxy by an alien entity. Facing the long journey home and with several casualties, the Federation and Maquis crews agree to work together and the series follows Voyager's journey across the 70,000 light years of space back to the Alpha quadrant and home.
The U.S.S. Voyager, with its bioneural circuitary, is a more advanced starship than previous ships in the Star Trek universe and, along with the name change from Enterprise, we also get a stronger female cast in the form of the captain and the chief engineer. Also, like the other spin-offs, Voyager has a "special" character and this one comes in the form of the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH), a completely hologramic doctor.
In time honoured fashion the third season starts with the continuation of a cliff-hanger and sees the basic premise of getting home continue with 26 episodes spread over seven discs…
Basics, Part II - In the continuation of Season Two's cliffhanger, Voyager has been captured by the Kazon and the crew dumped on a planet in its early stages of evolution. As only Lt. Paris and Ensign Suder (Brad Dourif) have evaded capture, it's up to them and the EMH to come up with a plan to retake the ship. Meanwhile the crew struggle to survive against hostile natives and wildlife.
Flashback - After falling ill to what appears to be a repressed memory Tuvok must perform a mind-meld with Captain Janeway in order to survive. This takes them back to when Tuvok was a junior science officer aboard the U.S.S. Excelsior under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu (George Takei). Unfortuntely the mind-meld has also passed the illness to the Captain and both are in danger of dying from it.
The Chute - While visiting an Akritirian prison ship during a terrorist attack, Lt. Paris and Ensign Kim are accused of being involved and are detained in a cell at the end of a long chute. They are also fitted with a clamp that will slowly cause the convicts to kill one another. It's up to Captain Janeway and the rest of the crew to prove their innocence by tracking down the real perpetrators.
The Swarm - While Lt. Paris lies injured from a shuttle accident, Voyager encounters a region of space owned by a mysterious race of aliens that would take 15 months to go around. Upon crossing the boundaries, a swarm of ships attach themselves to Voyager's hull, which drains the ship's power supplies and threatens to destroy it. Meanwhile the EMH, struggling to cure Lt. Paris, has to face his creator, Dr Lewis Zimmerman.
False Profits - A pair of Ferengi are found masquerading as gods to a culture still in its Bronze Age. Nearby the planet they discover how the pair got here, a wormhole that leads to the Alpha quadrant but its Delta quadrant end is highly unstable and always moving. This episode continues the events that occured during the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Price".
Remember - After Voyager picks up a couple of telepathic aliens, B'Elanna starts having dreams depicting the life and romance of a woman in a time of great political and social upheaval over the shared memories of their species.
Sacred Ground - While investigating a shrine on the Nechani home world, Kes is injured by an energy blast, which leads the monks to believe that she is being punished for not believing. While Neelix delves deeper into the mystery, Captain Janeway decides to undergo a rigorous ritual in the shrine to appeal to the spirits to forgive Kes and save her life.
Future's End, Part I - Voyager is attacked by a 29th century Federation Timeship, whose Captain accuses them of causing a disaster in his time and tells them that his mission is to destroy them and change history. While trying to defend themselves, Voyager damages the Timeship and causes both of them to be pulled into a time rift. They emerge to find themselves orbiting Earth in 1996, damaged and with no way to return to their own time, while the Timeship is cast further back to 1967 where it crashes in Arizona where it is found by unscrupulous opportunist Henry Starling (Ed Begley Jr.).
Future's End, Part II - Lts. Paris and Tuvok enlist some local help in working out how to get back to their time. Meanwhile, Torres and Chakotay crash the shuttle in the desert and are captured by a gang of weapons smugglers who believe that they are from the government.
Warlord - An injured alien transfers his consciousness into Kes' mind moments before he dies. He then gains control over her and begins using her abilities to steal a shuttlecraft and return to his home world to attempt a political coup on his homeworld of Illari.
The Q And The Grey - When Voyager discovers the after effects of a civil war within the Q-Continuum, Q (John de Lancie) appears and asks Captain Janeway to bear him a child as a solution for both stability and the continuation of the Q Continuum. Matters are further complicated when a female Q appears, with a prior romantic claim on Q.
Macrocosm - Captain Janeway and Neelix return from an away mission to find Voyager adrift in space and the crew barely alive. They soon learn that the ship has been overrun by viral life forms that are rapidly growing in size.
Fair Trade - Voyager encounters a region of space named the Nekrit Expanse, which is the limit of Neelix's knowledge of the quadrant. Trying to make himself useful, he tries to obtain a map from an old friend, who cons him into transporting illegal substances. When another drug dealer is murdered, Chakotay and Paris are thought to be involved and are arrested, leaving Neelix to prove their innocence.
Alter Ego - Ensign Kim asks Tuvok to teach him Vulcan emotional control techniques when he falls in love with a holodeck character named Marayna. Kim soon becomes jealous when the character transfers her attentions to Tuvok while he investigates the program.
Coda - On an away mission, Captain Janeway and Chakotay's shuttle gets locked into what appears to be a time loop where they crash and die repeatedly. Janeway has visions of her deceased father who tells her that she is dead and must accept her situation and move on but there's more to it than that.
Blood Fever - During a visit to a colony that had been destroyed by an unknown force, Chakotay finds evidence of the Borg. Meanwhile, to complicate things, Ensign Vorik is going through the Vulcan Pon-Farr and indicates his desire to mate with B'Elanna, who starts showing signs of the Pon-Farr herself.
Unity - As they continue through the Delta quadrant, Voyager find more evidence of the Borg, including a derelict Borg vessel with a dead crew. Meanwhile, during an away mission, Chakotay discovers a Federation distress signature coming from an alien planet. After being attacked he finds a small colony and even more evidence of Borg origin.
The Darkling - When the doctor tries to improve his personality by incorporating the psychological profiles of famous and historical people it also imbues him with a cruel, unpredictable personality that makes occasional but increasingly frequent appearances. Meanwhile, Voyager meets a group of explorers and Kes feels that she is ready to leave Voyager to begin a new life so requests leave from the ship.
Rise - When Tuvok and Neelix are sent to the aid the evacuation of a planet being bombarded by asteroids, Neelix is pushed to limits by Tuvok's Vulcan attitudes. They also soon find that other forces are working against the local population.
Favorite Son - When ensign Kim experiences strong senses of dèjá vu in an unknown region of space, he soon learns that he is native to this region and that he is not human. Visiting his home planet, he hears the story of his birth and learns that he is needed to help sustain his species.
Before And After - Kes awakens to what appears to be the end of her short lifespan, her memories jump between her birth and what she assumes is present time. This cycle repeats with her getting younger all the time and each time she remembers an enemy that Voyager will face in the future.
Real Life - Discovering an old, abandoned space station, the Voyager crew try to find out what happened but anomalies in the area made it unstable and Lt. Paris' shuttle is pulled into one of them. Meanwhile, the Doctor decides he should create a holographic family in order to expand his personality. B'Elanna, disgusted by its unrealistic perfectionism, alters the program to include random events and outcomes with interesting and devastating results.
Distant Origin - An alien paleontologist discovers a common ancestral link between his people and humans. He believes that this proves that his people evolved on Earth millions of years ago and tries to prove this to his leaders. However, his theories are met with serious challanges as they go against his people's strictly held beliefs.
Displaced - One by one, the crew of Voyager go missing and are replaced by strangers who claim they have no idea how they arrived. Soon, nearly the whole crew is gone, and there is no way of stopping the strangers from appearing and overrunning the ship. Captain Janeway has to fight to regain control of the ship and get her crew back.
Worst Case Scenario - When a holodeck program is discovered, showing Chakotay and Seska leading a Maquis rebellion against Voyager, crew morale plummets to the same low that it was at in the first weeks of being marooned in the Delta quadrant. Things get worse when the program is altered and gets out of the author's control, which puts the ship in danger.
Scorpion, Part I - At last, Voyager enters Borg space and comes across what appears to be a Cube, dead in space. Investigating it, they find the drone crew all dead but are threatened by an alien who attackes Ensign Kim before they get off. While Harry fights off a bio-organic infection, the aliens attack and destroy a Borg planet and Voyager only narrowly escapes destruction itself. Captain Janeway realises that she may have to ally herself with the Borg to defeat this new threat…
Review
I have to say right at the start that Voyager was not one of my favourite offerings from the Star Trek universe. That's not to say that I didn't like it but I much preferred the longer running story arcs and stronger characters of Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation. That aside, I'll try of offer an unbiased review here as I did watch it and there were a lot of good episodes and storylines thoughout its seven year run.
This Season Three release has been a bit overshadowed by the long awaited release of the original series on DVD but there's no explanation from Paramount for that other than it's about time too. Anyway, it doesn't detract from Voyager and I'm sure fans will still buy it regardless.
Season Three basically takes Voyager out of Kazon controlled space, for which I was pretty grateful as those storylines were getting a bit tedious. There's still a little of the friction between the Federation and Maquis crew present but it's getting more friendly in there. As it progresses, there are hints of the Borg and we eventually get to the cliffhanger when the ship enters Borg space and is facing both them and the new threat of Species 8472.
The problem with Voyager, as I see it, is the lack of convincing storylines, weak characters and a lot of the episodes seem to focus on problems with particular crew members - Tuvok in Flashback, Torres in Remember, Kes in Warlord and Kim in Alter Ego and Favorite Son. On top of this we get rehashed stuff like the Vulcan Pon-Farr, the Ferengi turning up, time travel and the Borg, though of the last of these I think this was the best thing they could have done and the introduction into the mix of Species 8472 was a touch of genius.
I have to admit that, in Season One, Kate Mulgrew's character annoyed me at first with her squeaky voice and penchant for striking commanding poses. The voice is the same but the posing has mellowed a bit and she has developed the Captain into a much stronger character. The others that shine a bit more are Robert Picardo as the Doctor and Ethan Phillips as Neelix but everone else is a bit forgettable.
So what we get in this season is a mix of random and somewhat aimless episodes that serve to give us a transition towards the Borg oriented storyline, which is further developed in Season Four. Let's face it, the Borg are probably Star Trek's favourite bad guys and they live in the Delta quadrant so it was only a matter of time before Voyager stumbled onto them.
As for the episodes, I think there are a few worth mentioning as being better than the rest…- Flashback - this brought back Mr. Sulu for original series fans and it was a good idea, linking it with the sixth movie.
- Future's End
- A well developed, longer running story.- The Q and The Grey - I love Q and all thing Q - John de Lancie is excellent as ever. More Q please!
- Real Life - Good acting from the Doctor and a great way to build his character.
- Distant Origin - A good concept about dinosaurs evolving and leaving earth before the great cataclysm.
- Worst Case Scenario - A good idea resurrecting Seska and the inter-crew conflicts.
- Scorpion, part I - Plunged into Borg space at last and then meeting up with Species 8472 - wow!
The picture is presented in the standard TV aspect of full frame 1.33:1 and is a good transfer - colours are strong and vivid throughout, blacks are solid and there's no sign of any detrimental artefacts or grain, etc. The sound is presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, which only seems to have been remixed to provide some ambient surround effects via the rear channels, although this is well used in some of the faster moving battle scenes and the dialogue is clear throughout.
Extras
All of the extras appear on disc seven…
Braving The Unknown: Season Three - Co-creator Jeri Taylor, writer/producer Brannon Braga, executive producer Rick Berman, director David Livingston and Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson and Garrett Wang talk about Season Three for almost 13 minutes. They discuss their favourite episodes Basics, Real Life, Blood Fever and Future’s End and they also reveal how they took the decision to bring back the Borg and introduce Species 8472 in the season cliffhanger episode.
Voyager Time Capsule: Neelix - This an fairly entertaining interview with Ethan Phillips, who plays Neelix, the ship's self-appointed cook, morale officer and unofficial guide to the Delta quadrant. Topics include how the role developed over the seven year run, a few favourite episodes, the Star Trek Cookbook and his thoughts on leaving the series. Lasts just under 12 minutes.
Voyager Time Capsule: Kes - Jennifer Lien talks about her role as Kes, a character who only lives to the age of eight and some major moments on the show. Includes clips from Caretaker, Warlord, Elogium and The Gift. There's also some interview material featuring Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ and Kate Mulgrew where they discuss their relationship with Jennifer and Kes. Also lasts just under 12 minutes.
Flashback To "Flashback" - An interesting 13 minute feature with George Takei, director David Livingston, Tim Russ and visual effects producer Dan Curry talking about how they recreated the flashbacks to the scenes on the Excelsior during Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country for this episode, even down to rehiring original actors from the movie.
Red Alert! Amazing Visual Effects - An almost 17 minute long feature where visual effects producer Dan Curry and visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore talk about how some of the visual effects were achieved. Specifically the low flying Voyager in Basics, Part I; the lava, creature and weapons in Basics, Part II; the holodeck dinosaurs in Distant Origin; the Time Ship scenes in Future's End, Parts I and II; the virus creatures in Macrocosm and the pile of dead Borg drones in Scorpion, Part I.
Star Trek Deep Space Nine Trailer - An excellent, five minute promotional trailer for the DVD release of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Includes interview material with executive producers Rick Berman and Ira Steven Behr, Avery Brooks (Commander Sisko), Nana Visitor (Major Kira Nerys), Andrew J. Robinson (Garak), Michael Dorn (Lt. Commander Worf) and Terry Farrell (Lt. Jadzia Dax).
Real Science With André Bormanis - An interesting 10 minute piece with series science consultant André Bormanis, who's role was to make sure things were as accurate as possible within the known laws of physics. Also has contributions from real astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sallie Baliunas, where they discuss how Voyager postulated solutions to real problems and the possibility of the existance of extra terrestrial life.
Creating The Voyager Crew - A 16 minute feature with series co-creator and creative consultant Michael Pillar on how the main characters of Kathryn Janeway, Tom Paris, Harry Kim, B'Elanna Torres, Chakotay, Tuvok, Kes, Neelix and Doc Zimmerman were developed. Includes excerts from the original Star Trek: Voyager Bible.
30th Anniversary Moments - An eight minute look at the 30th anniversary celebration held at Paramount Studios in 1996. Includes brief chats with some of the people involved over the years - Rick Berman, Kate Mulgrew, the late DeForrest Kelley, Sally Kellerman, executive producer Robert Justman, Grace Lee Whitney, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, scenic art supervisor Mike Okuda, Joan Collins, Kirsten Dunst, Sharon Lawrence, Marina Sirtis, Robert Duncan McNeill and Jane Seymour, although she has no connections with the show.
Photo Gallery - A set of 40 behind the scenes photos from this season.
Star Trek The Next Generation Trailer - A short, one minute promotional trailer for the DVD release of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Borg Invasion 4D - A one-minute promotioal trailer for the new Borg 4D attraction in the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas.
Easter Eggs - There are five hidden interviews with Martha Hackett, Kate Mulgrew, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ and director David Livingston discussion where they discuss episodes Worst Case Scenario, Macrocosm, The Swarm, Blood Fever and Distant Origin. They're all on disc seven, are fairly easy to find and the whole lot lasts about 11 minutes.
Overall
The Season Three release is a pretty good deal with 26 episodes, a good picture and sound and an excellent package of extras. For fans of the series, this is a must buy and it has some very good episodes. There are also enough stand-alone episodes that will appeal to anyone wanting to sample the series or who just want to watch a bit of science fiction.
That said, it does lack a little in the way of an overall story arc but it's a good transition from Season Two's Kazon to the Borg and Species 8472 storylines in Season Four.
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