The least disliked episode 2021 - VOY Season One

[BlueStuff]

Our addictive biyearly game of rapid elimination returns - now able to include Disco's third season as well as the debut years of Picard and Lower Decks. It's generally a lot of fun, providing a chance to mentally revisit those episodes you may not have thought about in a while. With that in mind, why not play again?

So, here's the game. The basic idea is your standard elimination game. I'll provide a list of the episodes for each season and you need to eliminate your least favorite or the one you deem the 'worst.' Please provide an EXPLANATION for why you are eliminating your choice and be sure to copy and paste the list with your choice removed. Finally, leave at least 2 eliminations by other posters before you eliminate another episode.

No tactical voting! You cannot remove an episode just because you feel they would threaten your preferred episode's chance to win. Pretty simple. Enjoy!

Hall of Champions
2011 - Meld
2013 - Living Witness
2017 - Blink of an Eye
2019 - Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy
2021 -

Season One

Caretaker
Parallax
Time and Again
Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Ex Post Facto
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[BigDaveX]

Parallax is first to go. When you actually stumble through the event horizon of a black hole, usually you'd be a little too dead to spend the next 40 minutes technobabbling your way out of the problem.

Caretaker
Time and Again
Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Ex Post Facto
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[Claudia]

Caretaker
Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Ex Post Facto
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

Time and Again - so immemorable that I don't even remember any details about that one.

 

[freethinker]

I am just new here but I am a big fan of Voyager so if I may:

So I am going to eliminate "Ex Post Facto" as the conclusion is based on the behavior of a dog... a bit flimsy if you ask me.


Caretaker
Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[Qonundrum]

Well, this may be a bit corny but too much of Caretaker comes across as an uninspired episode of Hee-Haw but without the intentional comedy. The episode is stuffed with too-wooden and/or over the top acting, corn on the cob, guitar pickin' nose pickin', and Klingon ripoffs Kazon, and feels like less than the sum of its parts. Especially when there's an attempt to feel like harder sci-fi again with VOY, mixed with the potential of combining numerous factions, most of which being full of delicious antipathy toward the others, but it all feels too by-the-numbers and even forced when it should have been meatier. Yeah, the criticisms about the lack of Ronald D Moore seem not unreasonable. Also, at the start, there's even some nice long sleep-incuding narration worthy of Star Wars films, which flits by at twice the speed yet feels four times as slow to slog through.

Also, water isn't as rare as all that.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Hark, is that the music from "Deliverance" twanging in the background? The only thing missing is the other player. Unless that's the audience thinking the tune out of the cob holder boredom.

That aside, it's still better than "The Naked Now", "Code of Honor" and a few other episodes when all is said and done, despite it all. But despite the potential, I'd much rather re-watch "Farpoint" or "Emissary" or a group of mold spores breeding on a slice of bread via a microscope. They weren't perfect, not even the moldy bread, but they felt less corny and got more right. The bread was whole-grain too. Thankfully VOY would still find its own way, but it had even a rougher start than TNG despite an established universe of a sandbox in which to play.



What's left:

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[Claudia]

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Emanations
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

Heroes and Demons - yet another holodeck-episode... whether TNG or VOY, doesn't make it any better.

 

[Orphalesion]

Heroes and Demons because the whole "people turned into energy" stuff was just as silly as the stereotypical Norsemen costumes.
Edit: Ninjad

Emanations because really....Voyager was pretty inept when it came to topics like that and the reveal at the end is blah.

What's left:

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
State of Flux
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[freethinker]

"State of Flux" because now it's a crime to make mushroom soup without asking Neelix first!!

Yeah, someday you'll see Chakotay, you'll hide cider from him. Take my word for it.

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve

 

[BigDaveX]

Jetrel. It so desperately wants to be Duet 2.0, but just comes across like an inferior copy of that episode.

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
Cathexis
Faces
Learning Curve

 

[Qonundrum]

Hmmm, Chakotay is apparently brain dead in the stunner-of-the-week moment. Was a Cathexis used to suck out his brain energy? Paris making course corrections and not knowing about it? The hard sci-fi, mind altering, alien abduction stuff is iffy (par for the course for season one) but the "energy alien fritters taking over the crew's brains and/or bodies" was done in TNG various times, and done better too. The notion Chakotay's neural whoobiedoobletreknobabble can take over other minds to counter the real baddie didn't translate well from the rough draft, though it's an innovative twist. The music, par for the course, is more affect-less wallpaper goo dripping off the walls too. Now consider they had nice sizeable orchestras and not "one person and their keyboard" to do incidental music with and a lot of stuff from the 1960s was eminently more effective, by comparison or otherwise.

What's left:

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
Faces
Learning Curve

 

[Orphalesion]

Faces...because...seriously the Vidiians have the power to split B'ellanna into her human and Klingon halves, creating two separate, fully functioning beigns? Also how stupid was the Vidiian in trying to impress Klingon!B'ellana by wearing the face of her crewmate?

What's left:

Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
Learning Curve

 

[freethinker]

"Phage" because now Neelix and Kes only have one lung but it will be forgotten by the next episode and never spoken of ever again.

The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors
Learning Curve

 

[Brennyren]

"Learning Curve" was predictable as hell. Also, wow, enough of the disrespect for Bajoran cultural symbols.

The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors

 

[BigDaveX]

The Cloud. I'll give it credit for doing the "giant space wedgie is really a life-form" thing before it became too cliched, but apart from that, it's just a really middle-of-the-road episode.

Eye of the Needle
Prime Factors

 

[Orphalesion]

I never realized this, but Voy Season one is kinda worse than TNG season one.

 

[Brennyren]

At least it was shorter.

 

[Takeru]

I almost missedEye of the Needle is out because it was a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't get home, so all of those "We might get home, omg" scenes fell completely flat

Prime Factors wins

 

[freethinker]

Well, I guess I'll eliminate "Prime Factors" because it was one instance when Janeway could have bent the rules a little...

So the winner is:

Eye of the Needle

A camel can't pass through it but the Voyager crew almost did...

 

[freethinker]

Well, Takeru, it seems that you beat me by a few seconds. Congratulations.

 

[Takeru]

Well, Takeru, it seems that you beat me by a few seconds. Congratulations.

It doesn't really matter, they'll both make it to the final round and I have a feeling they'll both be removed early then.