I wrote this in another thread but I have to repeat it again since my start of Voyager was a bit unplanned and I do have some fun memories from it.
For me it was the 8 January 1997. Some months earlier I had gone to a rock concert, by doing that I missed the evenings episode of DS9 which was "Move Along Home". I taped it on my VHS but unfortunately, there were some problems with the airing of the episode so when I was trying to watch the episode next day, there was nothing but a gray screen for most of it.
That 8 January, I went down to a shop which rented movies and such to see if they had that episode. They had very little DS9 and not "Move Along Home" but they had all season 1 of Voyager, a series I knew very little about at that time (I live in Europe). So I decided to borrow a copy of "Caretaker" instead.
And what a great pilot it was and still is! Excitement from the first minute to the last and the main characters are introduced in a very good way.
On the contrary to many other series I've watched, even TNG, DS9 and TOS, I took an immediate liking to all the main characters. The only one I did have some small doubts about was The Doctor but that changed in the coming episodes.In fact, the only other series I ever watched where I took an immediate liking to all the main character was NCIS.
I remember that I got goosebumps when Kim says "We're on the other side of the galaxy". Now the real adventure starts, I thought. In fact I almost get the same feeling when I watch it today as then.
After watching "Caretaker" I became a fan and could hardly wait to watch next episode.
My local station started to air Voyager in the spring of 1998 but at that point I was already watching season 2 on VHS tapes which I rented from the same store.
The only problem occurred when I had to wait six months to watch the second part of "Basics". That was six long months.
At that time I tried to avoid the Voyager websites because I didn't want to spoil the excitements of watching the episodes. However, that changed in 1998 due to certain events.