Darkest Voyager Episodes

They did that story in "Live Fast and Prosper." and there was a lot of that in the first 2 seasons when Voyager would approach a planet, the people would be like "Voyager you say? Thanks, but no thanks. We've heard ALL about your 'peaceful cooperation.'"

To which Janeway would say "Lies! Spread by the filthy Kazon Nistrim...they are WithOut honor"

This happened(Voyager's negative reputation preceding them) in Prime Factors, Cold Fire, Dreadnought, Innocence, etc.

 

While I wouldn't say "Distant Orgin" was one of the darkest Star Trek episodes, it did have a rather sinister dark side to it. Odala, the matriarch of doctrine, was like the old style Roman Catholic church punishing Galileo for his beliefs. The first sign of a possible dark episode was finding the obvious Voyager crew member remains on a planet. It left some presumption that Voyager met its demise somewhere down the line. In some respects, it looked like the planet where the Voyager crew was marooned by the Kazon and some of the crew were killed by the lizard creature.

So these Voth aliens appear on Voyager observing the crew clinically as "specimens"... and it's unclear if they'll decide to abduct some of the crew. They ultimately do end up taking Chakotay.

Then there's the Voth mothership, demonstrating immensely superior technology. While we know that Voyager must continue, as the series has multiple seasons ahead (so the ship can't be destroyed), there is this point where it's uncertain if the ship might be permanently detained or destroyed. When Odala places judgement, we're suddenly seeing the whole crew of Voyager possibly doomed to live their lives on an alien prison colony. Finally, Odala strong arms her paleontology scientist to retract his claim, and thankfully Voyager is freed. That Odala matriarch was quite unnerving. Very powerful, and very arrogant.

The actress who played Odala was Concetta Tomei. I'd never seen her in other productions. I thought she was an absolutely perfect choice for that role, as she wore it very convincingly.

 

Critical Care was rather dark. Poor cute as a puppy Tebbis didn't get a happy ending there and I can't help but think that things went back to business as usual after the EMH left.

 

That was the planet the Kazon left them on.

 

The Voth have this very dangerous combination of attitudes. (1) They seem to consider themselves innately superior to other species, especially 'mammals', which is partly understandable (not excusable!) if they've really been around so much longer than everybody else. Even the best of them (prof. Gegen) is shown to have this attitude even though he struggles with it, and (2) they seem to have an extremely intransigent/rigid culture. Which, again, might be an understandable result of being around that long-- even the Q were shown to be fossilized to a certain degree.

 

Agree with this one... not only what happened to Tebbis, but the entire episode touched on a health care issue that is still pertinent today (and dark in the sense that the masses largely get screwed for health care and insurance, so that others with more money, but less need can suck up the services).

 

"For the love of money is the root of evil."

 

And even with Tebbis, he showed aptitude to be a doctor and in being a mechanic, when he fixed the device others had thought was not fixable. So the Allocator was also screwing Dinaal society by not factoring in aptitudes in calculating TC. Considering Tebbis was supposed to be only about fifteen or so, aptitudes should have been a big factor in calculating his TC. It's like what's been said about our own society: What if the cure for cancer is in the mind of someone who lives in the ghetto, who can't afford to go to college?

 

Yeah I remember that part fondly-she made me genuinely nervous for Voyager's fate.

 

Year of Hell seems like a gimme

 

One other thing I liked about Distant Origin is that Voyager didn't fight its way out, couldn't use some techno science to get out, and they couldn't maneuver their way out. They were literally at the Voth's mercy with every avenue of action eliminated.

That rose the tension a lot. It came to Gegen basically surrendering his pursuit of truth to save innocent lives.

I really do love that episode.

 

You mean "DISTANT ORIGIN", not "YEAR OF HELL".

 

Fixed.

 

“The Thaw” the Clown there was more terrifying than Pennywise.

“Critical Care”,

And

“Faces”.

 

Just watched "Darkling". The Doctor was a pretty messed up, sadistic, psycho most of the episode. Paralyzing B'Lana for info was creepy. Picardo did a great job as the twisted EMH. Then he massacred the holo-characters of Ghandi, Byron,T'Pau,and Socrates; whom he cut in half.

Fun episode!