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Voyager's single best episode?

Gaith

Vice Admiral
Admiral
I know this seems like a hopelessly basic question (to which the answer is not "Basics"), but I realized the other day I don't a particular answer for the question: What is Voyager's single best episode? What's more, a search of the forum archives shows there was a game thread for the least disliked episode last year (won by "Year of Hell, Part I"), but that's not quite the same question. (For that matter, I don't have a ready answer for Enterprise, either.)

Now, I'm not a Voyager scholar, and I haven't seen every episode, let alone recently enough to make a definitive statement, but off the top of my head, my top five nominations would be: "Death Wish," "Living Witness," "Pathfinder," "Life Line," and, uh... shoot, I don't know, maybe "Meld"? "Projections," or "The Killing Game" (both parts)? (Just not "Year of Hell," please. I find that episode to have some good bits for sure, but I think it's more notable than it is great, and Janeway's decision to disperse most of the crew in freaking escape pods is too mind-blastingly dumb to tolerate.) Now, I do like Voyager - I do! But it certainly says something that I tend to like the show best when it crosses over with my all-time favorite TNG, as with four of the seven episodes I mentioned above.

If I had to pick a single greatest episode right now, I might have to go with "Pathfinder," even though it only briefly features the real crew at the end. When Barclay and Janeway are finally able to speak to each other, I get a lump in my throat every time.

What would your choice be? Should there be a poll thread? Or would any vote just default to a consensus pick for "Year of Hell" (ugh)? :p
 
If you were asking for titles to put on a poll I would've suggested that these would be pretty safe choices:

Distant Origin
Scorpion
Year of Hell
Message in a Bottle
Living Witness
Drone
Timeless
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy
Blink of an Eye
Author, Author

But Pathfinder didn't make it anywhere near my carefully calculated list so it's already failed! And personally I'd pick Future's End as my favourite. Or maybe Year of Hell.
 
Well, please note the question is about best, rather than favorite, though they can of course be the same if one likes.
 
I see Year of Hell mentioned in a lot of Voyager top 10 lists. Personally I would nominate Scorpion I as Voyager's best episode, but Year of Hell probably has more notoriety.
 
Cold Fire!
A masterpiece!

My top 10 favorites:
1. Cold Fire
2. Persistence Of Vision
3. Caretaker
4. Warlord
5. Basics 1 and 2
6. Future's End 1 and 2
7. Projections
8. The Swarm
9.Darkling
10. Jetrel
 
I see Year of Hell mentioned in a lot of Voyager top 10 lists. Personally I would nominate Scorpion I as Voyager's best episode, but Year of Hell probably has more notoriety.

Well, sure, it's the singularly grim and gritty outing, so it's easy to point to as a standout. That doesn't mean it's the best, though.


One thing that leaps out at me here from all the above nominations is there's no single consensus pick that really aims for or achieves profundity. TOS has the almost Greek tragedy of "City on the Edge of Forever," TNG has the philosophically meaty "Measure of a Man" and the poignant "The Inner Light," and DS9 has the psychologically harrowing "Duet" and the morally complex "In the Pale Moonlight" (though I've never been a big fan of that one). Voyager had some message episodes and some gripping human drama episodes, but it seems that none are widely agreed to have risen to the level of those classics. Sure, an ep like "Scorpion" is fun and all, but does anyone think it's great in the way those are?
 
Blink of an Eye is near Inner Light level of great episodes in my mind. Voyager, inadvertently, violates the Prime Directive and changes the development of a pre warp society. The ship being worshiped as a God for millennia. Plus the audience sees events from the alien perspective for a lot of the episode. Daniel Dae Kim was great in it.
 
So many!!!

My number one would have to be Year of Hell.

I love so many episodes. Some close runners-up would be:

Blink of an Eye, Living Witness, Relativity, Timeless, Death Wish…

I could go on…

:techman:
 
Blink of an Eye is near Inner Light level of great episodes in my mind. Voyager, inadvertently, violates the Prime Directive and changes the development of a pre warp society. The ship being worshiped as a God for millennia. Plus the audience sees events from the alien perspective for a lot of the episode. Daniel Dae Kim was great in it.

"Blink of an Eye" is indeed quite good; it's just a shame about that completely nonsensical detail of the the humanoids not experiencing the normal flow of time as soon as they reached orbit, and walking through the time-frozen Voyager. That, and I wish there'd been a companion episode entirely devoted to the Doctor's time on the planet. It's not my personal pick for the series' best, but I respect it.
 
Hard to come up with a single best. Not long ago, I came up with a Top 10 list with 10 Honorable mentions


My top 10 for VOY, in production order of course:

1. "CARETAKER"
2. "FACES"
3. "DEATH WISH"
4. "MELD"
5. "DEADLOCK"
6. "DISTANT ORIGIN"
7. "MORTAL COIL"
8. "LIVING WITNESS"
9. "BLINK OF AN EYE"
10. "MEMORIAL"

Honorable Mentions:

"EYE OF THE NEEDLE"
"PROJECTIONS"

"MANEUVERS"
"THE THAW"
"SCORPION"/"SCORPION, PART II"
"MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE"
"TIMELESS"
"COURSE: OBLIVION"
"SURVIVAL INSTINCT"
"TINKER TENOR DOCTOR SPY"
 
Sure, an ep like "Scorpion" is fun and all, but does anyone think it's great in the way those are?
I find Scorpion has a better cliffhanger than Best of Both Worlds. Part of that is I've seen BOBW so much that I find it a little Overrated now, but Scorpion was such a shocking cliffhanger. A species that can just obliterate the borg? Janeway making an alliance? Visually speaking, Scorpion I was an insane finale. I wish it had gotten the remastered treatment just for episodes like that.
 
I think Fury is objectively the best episode

Beyond that, Blink of an Eye is very well rated and has a decent amount of intrigue and consequence.

Personally I like Relativity despite walking all over the continutity
 
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