I watched "Caretaker" this saturday and I guess that I will continue watching Voyager for a while.
I must admit that I've watched "caretaker" many times and I still find it great to watch. That moment when Kim says "we're on the other side of the galaxy" still gives me goosebumps as it did the first time I watched the episode and thought "now the action really begins".
It's a nice introduction to all the main characters and I remember starting liking all of them during this episode which is rare for me. The only series i've watched which gave me a similar feeling was NCIS, a series I still watch and like.
The only character I had some doubts about after watching "Caretaker" was The Doctor. But he definitely won me over in "Time And Again" after this conversation:
NEELIX: Is something wrong?
EMH: Yes, terribly wrong. Your brain is not on file. Either your government failed to transmit the standard fifteen five or one crew personnel report or somebody at Starfleet Medical really fouled up.
KES: I'm not a member of the Starfleet crew.
NEELIX: We came aboard at mid-expedition.
EMH: And no one asked you for your medical histories when you arrived? Of course not. That would be the ship's doctor's job. My job, if anyone had bothered to tell me about new passengers, but I seem to be just about the last to know about everything around here. So, tell me, just how many other new arrivals are there?
NEELIX: Just us.
KES: And the crew from another ship that was destroyed.
EMH: Another crew. That's nice. This is the Emergency Medical Holographic system to Captain Janeway.
NEELIX: She's not on board. She's missing on the surface of a planet.
EMH: Missing. The Captain is missing. It seems I've found myself on the Voyage of the Damned.
I found that comment about Voyage of the Damned hilarious and still think it is!
however, The Doctor must have been suffering from memory loss because he should have been aware of the arrival of both Kes, Neelix and the Maquis crew, especially since he did treat both Kes, Chakotay and Torres in "Caretaker" plus the fact that two months had passed since the events in "Caretaker". But maybe the time dabbling which happened in "Time And Again" caused what looked like a memory loss.
Anyway, still a funny scene to watch!