#voyager did a good deal of the delta quadrant but they also did a bunch of 4-10k lightyear jumps

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Deep Space Nine starts with the Borg and ends with the protagonist being thrown into an unknown part of the galaxy

Voyager starts with the protagonists being thrown into an unknown part of the galaxy and ends with the Borg

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Bottom Five Star Trek VOY Episodes

by Ames

Star Trek: Voyager gets a lot of flak for not always capitalizing on its unique circumstance, as a show about a cumulative journey meant to take a lot of time. Some of that is the episodic nature of the show: audiences needed to be able to tune in randomly and not feel as lost as the crew were. But some bad episodes just had no excuse. And you’ll see a lot of that in A Star to Steer Her By’s picks for worst episodes of the show. 

We’ll miss all our Delta Quadrant friends, enemies, and alien races, sure. We’ll miss the ship and the crew. But there’s also a lot that we won’t miss, as there were a good deal of missed opportunities, clunkers, and just plain offensive episodes along the way. Good riddance to those! Scroll on to see what we mean in our bottom five episodes of Voyager below, and/or listen to our coverage over on the podcast (series review starts at 1:29:20) with some audio-exclusive picks from guest star Liz! It’s finally time to self destruct this ship.

[images © CBS/Paramount]

“The Fight”: Ames I’m pretty clear on my stance on dream sequence episodes, but for those of you sitting in the back: I hate them. They’re contrived, they’re convenient, they’re too literal. Just ugh all around. Which is a shame because there’s something in this episode that could have been interesting for Chakotay to do for a change, but it got lost somewhere in boxing metaphors and some Native American spiritualism. Talk about a bad dream!

“Tattoo”: Chris Speaking of Native American spiritualism, this episode is just plain uncomfortable and it all comes down to the one line of dialogue that goes too far: “Forty five thousand years ago, on our first visit to your world, we met a small group of nomadic hunters. They had no spoken language, no culture, except the use of fire and stone weapons.” Oh writers, you done screwed up to imply that the only reason Native Americans have culture is because aliens. A-koo-chee-moh-no.

“Alice”: Caitlin Caitlin surprised us a couple times in her series picks by opting for episodes she hadn’t even included in her season-by-season lists! So welcome, “Alice,” to the bottoms list. The femme fatale ship was just too tropey and icky and really brought Tom’s character down a few pegs. It’s episodes like this that make us wonder how on earth Torres stayed with him throughout the show.

“Ex Post Facto”: Jake Tom did some more suffering in this early-seasons dud of an episode. We’ve seen Star Trek do film noir to a slightly better effect in something like DS9’s “Necessary Evil,” but this one just whiffs hard at the style. It doesn’t help that the Baneans’ hair feathers are distracting as hell and that the conclusion that the damn dog helps solve stretches credulity to its very limits. Have the writers never met a dog before?

“Concerning Flight”: Caitlin You’d think John Rhys-Davies playing Leonardo da Vinci would elevate an episode to something greater, but somehow this baffling episode proved to be a waste of time. We spent most of it confused by pretty much everyone’s motivations. Why did Tau keep da Vinci around? How did da Vinci not notice anything was out of the ordinary on this planet? Does the sun always set in the same place on this planet? Who knows!

“Body and Soul”: Ames I’ve clumped a bunch of really gross, sexist episodes together if only to rile myself up because I hate these kinds of episodes so much. But how can one not get riled up when Seven tells the Doctor that he violated her and his response is to blame her? What should be a fun romp watching Jeri Ryan get to pretend to be another character is horribly tainted by that “she was asking for it” attitude. And then for Seven to be the one to apologize while the Doctor never sees what he did was wrong: VOMIT!

“Retrospect”: Chris Oh look, more violating Seven of Nine! This show really couldn’t help itself sometimes. What else was there to do when you had an attractive woman on the cast but to exploit her? If this episode was trying to debunk false memories, it failed hard by making it about a violation of a woman character because then the only thing you can see is the allegory for fake rape allegations, and that is not the message you want to send. Plus the doctor suddenly peddling pseudoscience is just nonsense.

“Blood Fever”: Ames Here’s another gross sexual act that I’ve never been quite okay with. Pon farr as a plot device was fine enough in “Amok Time.” Weird and kind of illogical, but fine. But when Vorik goes and sexually assaults Torres and everyone tries to sweep it under the rug because it’s some weird Vulcan bullshit, that’s not fine. And when Tom makes it clear that it would not be consensual for him and Torres to bang it out but Tuvok insists they do, I am all the more disgusted. No means no, Vulcans!

“Sacred Ground”: Ames, Jake We’ve got some overlap in our remaining bottom picks, starting with this absolutely nonsensical debate between science and faith that just boils down to: believe everything you’re told without questioning it and maybe magic is real. There’s a reason this franchise usually shies away from addressing religion in this kind of way. It’s one thing for a character (or a person in real life!) to have faith; it’s quite another for miracles to just happen for plot convenience (unless you’re part wormhole alien or something).

“11:59”: Caitlin, Chris, Jake The hatred for Henry Janeway is strong in this room (though that might be because Chris skews the curve a bit). But he’s just a wet blanket of a character who’s just taking his son and his whole damn town down to his level through sheer obstinance. Add to that the fact that he seriously has no chemistry with Shannon – like really, he could be her father – and you’ve got a massive clunker of an episode on your hands.

“Fury”: Caitlin, Chris, Jake The series as a whole wasted Kes as a character, which was quite the shame to watch, but the one thing it did do was give her a poignant and powerful farewell in “The Gift.” But Voyager can giveth and Voyager can taketh away, and this return of Jennifer Lien as the hardened, hellbent, furious Kes basically attempts to ruin her character. This was not the Kes we knew and loved, and damned if we even understand how she got there. How dare they do this to our sweeting!

“Elogium”: Ames, Caitlin, Chris, Jake Finally, the one we all agree on is some other weird sex claptrap. The Vulcans may have their pon farr (which I hate enough on its own), but the Ocampa have elogium, which somehow makes even less sense! Biology aside (blegh), the rest of the episode is confused in its messaging: these are people who are not ready for a baby, but instead of really exploring what that means for them, we’re stuck with this weird Ocampan heat thing. This whole episode has lost its sex appeal!

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See also: our Top Five Star Trek VOY Episodes list! And why not: here’re all the seasonal tops and bottoms from seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7!

We’ll still miss the Voyager and her plucky crew of misfits… just not when they were being racist or misogynist for no reason. And while I’d love to say we’re glad all those bad episodes are over, there’s always more bad ideas to go around. Let’s see how our next show in the rotation compares as we prepare ourselves for our next watchthrough: Star Trek: Enterprise! We’d love for you to watch along with us on SoundCloud or whatever podcast platform is your favorite, to hang out with us on Facebook and Twitter, and to really brace yourself because we know more pon farr action is on the way. Ew.