Star Trek: Voyager is the third 'new generation' Star Trek series, and ran for seven seasons from January 1995 through May 2001.The double-length pilot episode saw the USS Voyager, under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, sent into action by Starfleet to track down and arrest the crew of the Maquis raider Val Jean, led by renegade Starfleet officer Chakotay. In the midst of this mission, Voyager was yanked across the galaxy by an alien device, just as Chakotay's ship had been. During a battle with the Kazon, the local space-faring thugs, Janeway destroyed the device that had abducted them rather than let it be misused. This had the effect of stranding both crews at the other side of the galaxy, seventy-five years' travel time from home.For the next seven seasons, Voyager looked for a shortcut back to Earth while dodging or defeating the assortment of Aliens and Monsters. For the sake of familiarity, they also crossed paths with a pair of Ferengi that had been zapped to the Delta Quadrant back in Next Generation, the Q Continuum, at least one Romulan, and even another Starfleet vessel which was also kidnapped by the Caretaker. Unfortunately, the Delta Quadrant happens to be the home of the Borg Collective.Voyager was Darker and Edgier than probably any other Trek series, with intense fan drama and controversy about various issues associated with it, most notably Captain Janeway, who is usually considered the most morally ambiguous of the five captains. The show also had an extremely promising cast of characters, but tragically (and predictably, in hindsight) fell victim to The Firefly Effect after around season two.And see also the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch for the show's continuation in novel form.The first Star Trek Elite Force video game takes place in this show, and the actors from the show provide their voices for their counterparts (except Jeri Ryan as Seven-Of-Nine, until an expansion pack including her was released).
This show provides examples of the following tropes:
open/close all folders
Tropes A-G
Actor Allusion: "I've always liked Klingon females. You've got such... spunk." This is spoken by a Female Q to Lt. Torres in "The Q and the Grey." Not only did the actor playing Q (Susie Plakson) previously play a Klingon on TNG, she played a Klingon-human hybrid, like Torres.
Agent Scully: Played with in "Blink of an Eye", with two scientists trying to discover if there's anyone on board Voyager, which has been in their sky for their civilisation's entire history due to Year Inside, Hour Outside. The Scully doubts there's anyone on board, but when the Mulder asks why he's on the mission in the first place, he adds that he doubts everything - including his own doubts.
A God Am I: Invoked by a group of Ferengi, previously seen in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, who ended up getting stuck in the Delta Quadrant after getting sucked in through a wormhole. They spent no time tricking and manipulating a planet's native race to start following the Rules of Acquisition and making them believe that the Ferengi were fabled gods of local legend.
All Just a Dream: In "Nemesis", Chakotay was being brainwashed to hate the Kadrin through a simulation that depicted them as monsters. Everything that happened from his viewpoint, until Tuvok found him, never did.
Subverted in "Nemesis". The Kadrin are a monstrous race who look like beasts (and are constantly called that), have threatening voices, and are engaging in a genocidal war against the human Vori. Chakotay crash lands on the planet, and after witnessing all their atrocities, joins the Vori Defenders' cause. He had actually been captured and brainwashed by the Vori to believe this, so they could recruit him as a soldier; none of the events were actually real. The Kadrin are in fact the good guys, and helped the Voyager crew to find him. When Chakotay meets with the friendly Kadrin ambassador, he can't shake the hatred that he developed for them.
And I Must Scream: In the early episodes, the Doctor couldn't shut off his own program. This annoyed him when people would just leave the room without deactivating him. In one instance, he specifically requests that, should the crew choose to abandon the ship for any reason, they take the time to shut him off before they leave. If they didn't, he'd be stuck in Sickbay until power failed, completely alone.
Anguished Declaration of Love: B'Elanna gives one to Tom when they're minutes from death at the end of "Day of Honor."
Another Man's Terror: Paris has this forced upon him in "Ex Post Facto", where he is forced to relieve the final moments of a man he was convicted of murdering.
"Warlord": Kes's mind is taken over by the warlord in question.
"Nemesis": The episode subverts this to great effect. Chakotay crash lands on an alien planet, where he meets the human-looking Vori. They are attacked and massacred by a monstrous-looking and brutal race known as the Kradin. After seeing the Vori suffer, Chakotay develops an intense hatred for the Kradin. It turns out that it was all part of a brainwashing program by the Vori to train him as a foot soldier. The Kradin are nowhere near evil, and even helped rescue Chakotay from the Vori. The "nemesis" is in fact the Vori.
Artistic License - History: Nobody informed the writers that there was more than a single Native American Indian tribe (or the fact not all tribes had the same culture or beliefs), which meant Chakotay often spouted just about every common stereotype imaginable short of dancing around a fire in a feather hat and opening a casino.
The writers knew all right, but as there's a whole bunch of politics in how individual tribes prefer to be portrayed, they decided to leave it deliberately vague.
Slightly averted in one episode. Tuvok fashions a bow and arrows from the primitive supplies they have and Chakotay tells him sorry, his tribe never used them. He is then informed Tuvok was an archery champion at the Academy.
Armor-Piercing Question: Unlike most examples it's not world shaking but does make someone realize something. In an episode where the crew in unwillingly and unknowingly expermented on by a alien species, Janeway's aggression and irrationality is increased signifcantly. At one point she is tell Tuvok to harshly punish several crew members for very minor things. Tuvok asks "Should I have them flogged as well?". That's when Janeway realizes that something is very wrong with her. Note Tuvok knew that would snap her back to reality.
Artistic License - Physics: Neelix suggests for their honeymoon, Tom and B'Elanna take a cruise on a sea of liquid argon. Argon is only a liquid between -189 and -185 degrees Celsius! Granted, this takes place on the holodeck, but given how often the safety protocols decide to break...
Artistic License - Biology: The way Kes's species reproduces makes no real sense. The child can only be delivered standing up (the baby coming from the back), maximizing the chance of mortality from the baby falling to the ground, sex is a very complicated procedure which includes foot massaging, and they can only have ONE child in their ENTIRE lives. Even if both the men and the women of the species had babies with a 0% mortality rate (and none of those babies die between birth and having their own child) that means they can only maintain their current numbers.
Perhaps those are limitations caused by the dependence from the Caretaker.
In the second episode, Kes asked for soil samples to help her in setting up a hydroponics bay. Hydroponics is the means of growing plants without soil.
The series eventually lampshaded the Kazons' Too Dumb to Live tendencies by having Seven of Nine remark that assimilating them would weaken the Borg Collective.
In the series finale, "Endgame", Admiral Janeway infects herself with a bioweapon before meeting the Borg Queen. When the Queen assimilates her, it infects that entire collective.
Attack Pattern Alpha: Played with by the Doctor in "Message in a Bottle", when he needs to tell the computer to execute an attack and 'Attack Pattern Alpha' is the only attack pattern he can think of (luckily for him, it does turn out to be a real attack pattern.)
Back for the Dead: Poor Joe Carey in the final season. He reappears after a long absence only to be the last crew member killed before Voyager makes it home a few episodes later. Take That, Audience!
Background Halo: In the episode "The Chute", there's a close-up shot of one of the prisoners who's figured out the secret of the aggression implants where the force field ring surrounding the bottom end of the chute frames the top of his head, appearing as a halo.
Babies Ever After: Final episode - Paris and Torres' last-minute baby, Miral.
For the love of all things holy, enemies must leave Janeway's crew alone!
Any character causing harm to Neelix in front of Kes tends to end up bleeding from the eyeballs.
Neelix often acts as this to Tuvok. You can tell its taking every bit of his Vulcan restraint not to strangle him. In fact, in one episode, he actually does so... or seems to anyway, only to then utter the words "Computer, end holodeck program."
Note that this was all an attempt at seeing if his emotional control was compromised. Let us state that again. He could have seen his homeworld explode, his ship and crewmates dead, his family slaughtered by the Borg. Any one of a number of situations that could prove he was emotionally compromised... and instead of all of these, he chooses to test his emotional control by spending time with Neelix. He doesn't last five minutes.
Neelix in some episodes, particularly "Repentance". He may seem like your average annoying or fun-loving Cloudcuckoolander, but do not mistake him for an idiot.
Consider for a moment that whenever something goes horribly wrong and Tuvok is no longer capable of acting as security chief, it's always Neelix who is promoted to the position. That should tell you something about him.
Kes is a very nice, polite young woman. She's also an immensely powerful psychic that can boil your blood by accident, and when someone takes over her body, she messes with him for several minutes of perceived time, only for him to wake up and realize that maybe a second passed.
"Fury" takes this to its extreme limit, where a vengeful older-Kes powerwalks down a corridor that explodes from her mere presence.
Big Bad: Maje Culluh & Seska for the first two seasons, the Borg Queen for the last few.
The Big Race: In one episode, Tom and B'Elanna participate in a race with the Delta Flyer.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Kes (nine year lifespan, telepath, gives birth from a sac on her back, and when she reaches sexual maturity you rub her feet until her tongue swells up), Species 8472 (tripedal, five sexes, densely-coded DNA, emits a biogenic field that blocks scanning, and has an immune system that can stop Borg nanoprobes). But nothing tops the cytoplasmic lifeform in "Nothing Human". The Universal Translator can't understand its language, the tricorder can't comprehend its biology, it controls a spaceship via biochemical secretions, can leap through a forcefield in a single bound, and uses B'Elanna Torres as an emergency life-support system.
The Blank: In "The Fight", Chakotay fights a being from a region of chaotic space; the being is wearing a boxing hoodie that hides his face, when the alien is finally revealed, he has no face, only a starfield.
Brick Joke: Chakotay's bottle of cider in "Shattered."
The holographic Doctor's final name Joe in Admiral Janeway's perceived Bad Future in "End Game". Averted when Elderly Janeway posthumously made for a Good Future... maybe.
Broken Pedestal: A variation occurs with Doctor Zimmerman in "Life-Line". The Federation eventually came to regard the EMH program as a joke due to their poor bedside manner, writing them off in the end and repurposing the entire line into miners (the fact this makes them a slave-race is ignored), leaving Zimmerman bitter and disillusioned that his greatest creation is now serving as manual labour, all sharing his face. Naturally he's not too happy when The Doctor shows up to attempt to treat him.
Janeway: Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it.
In an oddly out-of-character moment, Janeway actually declines more coffee with a trope-averting comment.
Janeway: No thanks, I've had enough. One more cup, and I'll jump to warp.
Call Back: In "Year of Hell", a time distortion passes over the bridge; when it clears, Janeway is still standing in center frame, except the ship is now on high alert. This shot is taken directly from TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise."
Calling the Old Man Out: The Doctor does this in "Life-Line" to his creator. Doctor Zimmerman constantly belittles him and dismisses his program as a failed experiment, eventually getting furious and demanding to know why the Doctor is trying to treat his terminal illness. The Doctor furiously counters back that he designed him that way and whether he likes it or not, he is a Doctor and he will treat him.
The Cast Showoff: Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) sang on the show a couple of times. One episode even featured a duel with the Doctor and Seven singing a duet, in harmony.
Canon Discontinuity: The producers have stated that "Threshold" isn't canon...
Discontinuity Nod: ...and later on Paris notes that he's never traveled in transwarp. To explicitly say in the show that it isn't considered canon.
"Deuterium? You can get that anywhere!" is mentioned in one episode, seasons after the "running out of deuterium" stuff.
Janeway insisting on being called "ma'am" in the very first episode. In Star Trek: The Next Generation female superior officers were called "sir" regardless of gender.
Actually, Janeway states she prefers to be called "Captain." The crew continues to call her ma'am anyway.
The entire plotlines introduced in the episodes "Death Wish" and "The Q and the Grey" directly contradict the TNG episode "True Q". The Continuum had already been established as being willing to execute members who did not want to live within their rules. It was also demonstrated in that same episode that the Q could procreate and produce Q offspring. Thus the whole questions of inescapable immortality and what to do if Q start dying had in fact been answered in the earlier series. Both mortality and the production of new generations of Q were already shown to be possible.
Captain Ersatz: Originally the writers wanted to include the guest character of "Cadet Nicholas Locarno" from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty" as a regular. To avoid paying royalties to the writers of that episode — and because Locarno was seen as fundamentally unredeemable — a Captain Ersatz in the person of Tom Paris was created. Not only do both characters have a very similar backstory and personality, both are played by Robert Duncan McNeill as well.
Character Development: A major focus of the show. Most of the major characters' personalities change significantly over the seven year run, with the possible exception of Chakotay and Tuvok. Even the last two get development in the sense that all of the major characters' relationships with each other change over time (rivalries turn into friendships, and sometimes romances).
Seven and the Doctor got the most, with their quest for humanity.
B'Elanna Torres, Tom Paris, and Harry Kim noticeably "grow up" over the years. In the first season, Tom is cynical, immature, and won't follow the rules; Harry is naive and lets Tom "lead;" and B'Elanna has major anger issues. Over time, Tom gains better morals and learns to fit in, reworking his talent for irony into a sense of humor to lighten the mood for everyone; Harry becomes more confident, and even earns the responsibility of commanding night shifts; and Torres gains better control of her emotions, and even starts to open up to her Klingon heritage.
Janeway started out being very pro-Prime Directive, even in their situation. As time went on, she became more of a rebel and was more concerned with bringing her crew home.
Chekhov's Gun: The neural transceiver in "Scorpion". The Borg attempt to use them on Janeway and Tuvok in order to link their thoughts to the hive mind; Chakotay later uses one to link his thoughts with Seven of Nine to distract her.
In "Revulsion," on a Serosian starship, the hologram Dejaren is serving Torres a tray of food when he nearly steps on a considerable power cord exposed at one end. Torres had to warn him to "Watch out!" Later, when the hologram turned homicidal and corners Torres, she uses said power cord to destroy him.
Clip Show: Averted in "Before & After" (with Kes) and "Shattered" (with Chakotay and a first season Janeway) — the protagonist visits various time periods during Voyager's journey without any actual footage from the episodes in question.
The episode "The Fight" may not be a true clip show, but it at least deserves an honorable mention. The ship is stuck in "chaotic space," the aliens which inhabit it communicate to Chakotay in his mind by splicing together words taken from other crew members from earlier in the episode.
Come with Me If You Want to Live: In "Faces", Klingon B'Elanna plays this one (in silence) to human B'Elanna. Neither of them was aware of the other's existence, and human B'Elanna is certainly terrified of her savior (even when it was basically a portion of herself).
Communications Officer: Harry Kim got a battlefield promotion to chief communications officer, despite only being (perpetually) an ensign.
Continuity Nod: The series opens with Chakotay and his Maquis cell being pursued by Gul Evek. Evek had been established on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the Cardassian liaison to the Demilitarized Zone — which means he is logically one of the ships in range to go after Chakotay.
In "State of Flux" when evidence suggests Seska is a surgically alterred Cardassian spy, Tuvok notes that Starfleet Secuirty has documented incidents of Cardassian cosmetic alteration for espionage. Two such incidents had occurred the previous year over on DS9's "Tribunal" and "Second Skin".
Continuity Overlap: VOY ran concurrently with Seasons 3-7 of DS9 and the first three TNG films. Despite being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, the show was nonetheless affected by developments back home:
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The introduction of the Maquis (and the Badlands) on DS9 was done specifically to set up VOY. The crew also wear the jumpsuit uniforms created for DS9. And once they re-establish contact with Starfleet in Season 4, the crew finds out the hard way that not only is the Federation embroiled in a bloody war with the Dominion, but the Maquis have also been wiped out. Finally, [[spoiler: Defiant-class ships] appear in Seasons 4 and 7.
Star Trek: Generations: A semi-subversion. While "Caretaker"" premiered three months after the film was released, the Starfleet crew is nonetheless using the redesigned combadges introduced in Generations.
Star Trek: First Contact: Once VOY re-establishes contact with Starfleet in Season 4, any scenes or communications with the Alpha Quadrant have Starfleet personnel wearing the film's new black and gray uniforms. Starfleet ships introduced in First Contact also appear in Seasons 4 and 7. The introduction of the Borg Queen will also cause headaches for Janeway and company during Seasons 5-7.
Star Trek: Insurrection: The Doctor disguises himself as a female Tarlac (a species introduced in the film) while attempting to treat his creator Lewis Zimmermam back the Alpha Quadrant in Season 6's "Life Line".
Converging Stream Weapon: Species 8472 has a weapon consisting of several ships that fire simultaneously to create one of these.
Creepy Child: Suspiria in "Cold Fire", the Borg children on their first appearance, Naomi Wildman in a nightmare sequence in "Dark Frontier" and, it was hinted on a couple of occasions, Kes ("Cold Fire", "Warlord" and "Fury").
Dance of Romance: Doc and Seven get one in "Someone to Watch Over Me."
The Danza: Kate Mulgrew was hired as a last minute replacement for Nicole Janeway (played by Geneviève Bujold) and she asked to have the first name changed to her full first name, Kathryn.
Janeway's first name had originally been Katherine (note the different spelling) while the series was in development, but was changed to Nicole when the French-Canadian Bujold was cast in the role. The creators asked Mulgrew which of the two she would prefer, and she opted for a slightly altered version of the originally planned name.
Dead Fic: In-universe example with "Insurrection Alpha". Justified, as Tuvok no longer saw any point in completing an insurrection training exercise scenario when there was no longer any realistic threat of an onboard mutiny.
Dead Guy Junior: Final episode "End Game" - Paris and Torres' last-minute baby, Miral, hence: Babies Ever After, after B'Elanna's dead mom.
Deadly Euphemism: In "Nemesis", the Defenders and the Kradin refer to the killing of an enemy as "nullifying" them.
Death Is Cheap: The entire crew was offed twice. Every major character died at least once. The Harry Kim that made it home isn't even the original Harry Kim!
To clarify, an anomaly of the week duplicated the ship. Which leads to an even more disturbing alternative - the only "originals" who made it home were Harry, Naomi Wildman, and Seven of Nine. The crew never figured out which of the twin Voyagers was the original ship (if either one was). Harry and Naomi were the only two from the "other" ship who survived, while Seven joined the crew long after this incident.
This is frequently contrasted with how Sisko was treated in Deep Space Nine. He wasn't "the black Captain" the way Janeway was "the female Captain", he was just The Captain.
Some early interviews and show-related material indicate that the Janeway character was intensely examined, specifically to prevent Janeway from becoming nothing more than an ultra-feminist caricature; at the same time, a balance had to be found so that Janeway could maintain her femininity while in command. Hence, Janeway prefers being addressed as 'Captain' over 'sir' or 'ma'am' (which acknowledges that she is in command, but avoids gender politics entirely).
Determinator: Played with throughout the series, not in terms of an individual continuing despite horrific injuries, but with Janeway's let's-get-home-at-all-costs philosophy, which is switched on and off depending on whether it was raining the day the writers started on each script. See "Year of Hell" comparing the first timeline change, and consider how they could have ended up in that situation, to the last scene and the "Thanks, we'll go around" attitude.
Also bear in mind this must be a regular bridge conversation. "How long until we get home?" "At current speeds 70 years." "Excellent we'll contin... Oh Shiny" Having just spotted a random celestial phenomena out the window.
The writers tried to explain this by saying that Janeway was trained and did most of her rank climbing in Star Fleet's science division (which has a proud history of bunny-earing people) before being shuffled sideways into the command division. So the entire series is one long fight between Kathryn Janeway, Commander versus Kathryn Janeway, Ph. D. The commander half of her psyche tends to lose.
Do Androids Dream?: Quite a few (brilliantly done) episodes revolving around the holographic Doctor, including an episode where the Doctor simultaneously ponders this trope while doing it literally.
Don't Explain the Joke: In "Workforce" this is played straight from a brainwashed Tuvok.
Downer Ending: In "Course: Oblivion", the crew appears to start dying mysteriously one by one. It's quickly determined the "crew" is actually the copies from the episode "Demon". When they realize what they are, they make a beeline back to the Demon Planet. They didn't make it. To add insult to injury, the real Voyager passes through their vaporized remains without a clue.
Dream Sue: In the episode "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy", the Doctor installs a daydreaming subroutine where he imagines himself constantly having to assume command of Voyager as the Emergency Command Hologram, who gets the crew out of situations even more single-handedly and hammily than most real Star Trek captains. It turns out an alien race monitors these daydreams and thinks they're reality, eventually causing the crew to find out, much to his embarrassment.
Dream Within a Dream: Or, more exactly, holographic simulations within holographic simulations. "Projections" is particularly full of them. Finally, the crew manages to get the Doctor out of the simulation... or is the simulation still running?Kes begins to cry that their marriage should not end, Barclay appears again to tell him to blow the warp core, a Kazon appears in the door, Paris takes him to attend a patient who is himself... no, the malfunctioning simulation is not over yet.
Dull Surprise: Garrett Wang claims that the cast was constantly being given direction to tone down their performances, with Rick Berman telling him it was because it made the aliens seem more human.
Enemy Mine: Voyager teams up with the Kazon Nistrum sect, the Borg Collective, the Hirogen and several other Villains of the Week, not always successfully. Was supposed to be the original concept of the series, but the Starfleet/Maquis conflict was watered down so much that later episodes based on this schism appear ridiculous.
Enemy Within: In one episode the Doctor tries to expand his program by incorporating personality aspects of various historical figures who possessed great minds. He failed to realize that he would also incorporate the darker sides of their psyches, and develops an evil Split Personality who takes Kes hostage.
Epic Fail: Sort of. While playing billiards, Neelix left an impossible shot for Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok made his usual Vulcan speech remarking that the shot is difficult but not impossible, and with a good calculation of the angles... he sent the white ball to the pocket.
Several scenes in the pilot had to be reshot because the studio vetoed Kate Mulgrew's hairstyle.
The divisions between the Starfleet and Maquis officers were originally going to be more pronounced, but after the pilot, the network asked for this to be changed. The divisions were made more minor in Season 1 and largely ignored afterwards.
Failure Is the Only Option: There were several times the crew could have gotten back to the Alpha Quadrant but didn't, "False Profits" probably being the most egregious. The pilot is not actually a case of this, given that they would have needed several hours to bring the Array back online, which, given that they were under attack by Scary Dogmatic Aliens with a damaged ship and a sizable reduction in crew, probably made using the Array less than tenable (note what Tuvok says here: around 9:21). However, given the way a lot of characters acted in later episodes, either she didn't divulge this bit of information or the crew got disillusioned and rejected that excuse.
Averted in later seasons; while Voyager never gets back to Earth ( until the Grand Finale), it does get progressively closer to the alpha quadrant, with most of the crew's attempts to cut a few years off of the journey succeeding.
Fantastic Measurement System: The series was fond of using the unit "isoton" for mass and explosive yield, where "iso-" was supposed to be a fictional metric prefix meaning 10^<insert very large number>.
Fantastic Voyage Plot: In the episode "The Cloud" Voyager got inside a Nebula, which happened to be an alive creature of cosmic dimensions. When they realized it, they returned inside it, to heal the wound caused by their entry. Yes, the USS Voyager making a Fantastic Voyage Plot.
The Farmer And The Viper: In the two-part episode "Scorpion", Captain Janeway plans a temporary alliance with the Borg in order to combat Species 8472. When she asks for Chakotay's personal opinion, he relates the parable of "The Scorpion and The Frog" mentioned in the trope page quotes, though with a fox in place of the frog. Oddly, the story as told is more tragic than the normal telling, with the scorpion apologizing for being unable to help its nature, when the Borg would have no such compunctions.
Faster-than-Light Travel: Voyager sought various means of getting home faster besides its already top-of-the-line warp drive, including transwarp, quantum slipstream technology, subspace corridors, and a graviton catapult which can catapult a vessel across space in the time it takes to say "catapult a vessel across space."
Feminist Fantasy: The only Star Trek series with a female captain, 3 other female regulars (Torres, Kes, Seven) and a female Big Bad (the Borg Queen).
With the caveat that only 2 of the other 3 female regulars were usually there at the same time, since Seven wasn't a regular until Kes left the ship.
Though Seven of Nine practically counts as two characters with all the focus she got during her time. Though its not really fair, plenty of fans have complained or at least joked that her years could be called "The Seven of Nine Show."
Final Solution: The Borg and "Species 8472" are trying to do this to each other. It's a war, but their goal is to exterminate each other's populations rather than achieving some kind of victory where the enemy's people still exists. The whole thing started with The Borg trying to assimilate 8472, but it had already moved far past that point when Voyager showed up.
The Fog of Ages: According to Seven of Nine, the Borg suffer from this, as their memory from over 700 years ago is beginning to fragment.
Foreshadowing: Many of the events depicted in "Year of Hell" are foreshadowed in "Before & After". This despite the fact that the character used to foreshadow the events (Kes) isn't there when they eventually happen.
Even funnier when Seven addresses her as "Naomi Wildman, subunit of Ensign Samantha Wildman."
Seven often introduces herself, especially early-on, by her full Borg designation: Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01.
Funny Background Event: In the early episode "The Cloud", The Doctor is on a viewscreen in the background giving information about a nebula, and then starts ranting about how the ship's presence is affecting it. Janeway "mutes" the viewscreen, then she and the other officers continue discussing about the nebula. At first, The Doctor continues ranting about the nebula, until he realizes he's on "mute". He gets annoyed and starts pacing around his office for a good minute and a half◊ before Tom Paris informs Janeway that The Doctor is still on viewscreen. Janeway finally "un-mutes" him.
The same episode. Janeway hunts in the background for coffee while other main characters give exposition.
Future Imperfect: Lampshaded. Despite Paris being the most knowledgeable crew member of North America's 20th century history, when Voyager is sent back in time to Earth circa 1996, even he gets a few cultural references, phrases, and mannerisms wrong.
Rayne:You keep calling yourselves "secret agents", but nobody says "secret agents" anymore. You're always not quite getting things just quite right. It's as if you don't belong to this time period.
Also, a bit of Continuity Snarl in that episode, as Earth was supposed to be locked in the Eugenics Wars at that time. In fact, during Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, they openly state that their ship, the Botany Bay, was launched in 1996!
Gender Is No Object: Starfleet is supposed to be purely integrated with gender no hindrance to attaining any position. The other series didn't quite meet this lofty principle. Female captains popped up in minor, one-shot roles after TOS, and there was Obstructive Bureaucrat Admiral Nechayev, but after DS9 gave its female characters more strength and screentime, Voyager added to this by having a woman captain as a main character and increasing the gender ratio.
Get Out: "Dismissed. That's a Starfleet expression for 'get out'."
Good Versus Good: In the episode "Timeless", Harry Kim is trying to alter the timeline to make sure Voyager wouldn't crash, while Captain LaForge is trying to stop him, partly to protect his own crew, and partly because messing with Time Travel does not tend to end well in the Star Trek Universe.
Good-Looking Privates: In "Nemesis", a girl from the village says that the Defenders, which Chakotay has joined, "glimpse great" in their jungle combat gear. They're actually the villains of the story.
The Golden Rule: Used by Captain Janeway in the pilot episode. Two starship crews need to cooperate, and when the leader if the other crew insults one of her men she says: "That man is a member of my crew. Treat him with the same respect as you would have me treat one of yours."
Janeway: Coffee. Black." Neelix: I'm sorry, Captain, we lost two more replicators this morning- Janeway:Listen to me VERY carefully, because I'm only going to say this once: Coffee. Black. Neelix: Yes, ma'am. (serves coffee) "While, I've got your attention... Janeway: Coffee first. (Gigantic Gulp) "Now what's the problem?
Admiral Janeway questions why she ever gave it up in the final episode.
The Guards Must Be Crazy: With the exception of Tuvok, the only function of Voyager's security personnel is to stand in the formal 'at ease' position, waiting for the person they're guarding to stun them senseless.
Starfleet also has problems with doors. They still use a forcefield on the Brig, despite the many times we see it fail if the ship is under attack. This also doesn't excuse the fact that the one door they do have, the entrance doesn't even lock.
Tropes H-M
Half-Human Hybrid: B'Elanna Torres, Naomi Wildman. Neelix is also 1/8th Mylean, but this only crops up in one episode.
An argument could also be made for Seven, as she retains Borg implants even after being reclaimed from the collective.
His Code Name Was Marty Stu: The Doctor wrote some horrifically painful holonovels where he saves the day over and over again. And lets not forget what happens when he tries to cultivate his own ability to daydream!
History Marches On: Used in-universe in "Living Witness". A society has ended up with an incredibly biased account of history when Voyager traversed their system hundreds of years before, depicting the crew as a gang of sadistic thugs and genocidal monsters. When a copy of the Doctor is encountered among some of the artifacts, he eventually manages to set the record straight, and influence the planet's two respective cultures to live in harmony.
Seven of Nine started out as human, became a Borg as a kid, and was forcibly brought back down to human (more or less) by the crew of Voyager. While initially not happy about it (to say the least), Captain Janeway guided her through the process of rediscovering her humanity through time, patience, and care.
This side of her character development shows more and more across the series. At the start, Seven talks in a very punctual manner, foregoing emotion or expression. By the final season, Seven commonly engages in idle conversation with a more optimistic and emotionally interested inflection in her voice.
Also, it was impossible to communicate with Species 8472 before they started taking on human form, and afterwards we never saw them in their tripedal, purple-skinned, cross-pupilled Eyes of Gold form again.
Humans Are Morons: The episode "Virtuoso" introduced us to the Qomar, a Rubber Forehead Alien species highly dedicated to mathematics and sciences and far more advanced than the Federation, which the Qomar looks down upon in contempt. When the Doctor provides medical treatment for one of them, the Qomarian sarcastically asks if the process involves bloodletting. Even in an idealized future where humanity has overcome a good number of its flaws to become one of the most dominant space-faring races, we're still finding aliens who think we're dumb and primitive.
Humans Are White: Averted; though there are no black humans among the main characters, there is a Native American human (played by a Latino actor who claims mestizo — part NA — ancestry), a human of Asian origins (actor Asian-American), B'Elanna's actress is Hispanic (and the character canonically has a Hispanic dad, and her mother is a Klingon), and Tuvok is a black Vulcan.
Tuvok also marks the beginning of a wider aversion to this trope when it comes to Vulcans; apparently the writers realized that a sunny, arid planet would favor people with a lot of melanin (Well, melanin with some forehead wrinkles). After Tuvok's debut, every Vulcan depicted on screen was at least "bronzed" in appearance. Well, except for Spock and other Vulcans created before that, but they were Grandfathered in.
Hyper Competent Sidekick: SF Debris makes the case that Tom Paris easily is the most over-qualified man in the history of the Federation.
SF Debris: And this is the guy that Starfleet doesn't want?!
Hypocrite: Chakotay on occasion (such as "Initiations") will claim that his people taught him that a man does not own land or a belief in always finding a peaceful and non-violent solution to things... seemingly having forgotten that he was the leader of a guerrila army dedicated to protecting their land and often showed no mercy to the Cardassians.
Hypochondria: A characteristic of Harry's Expy in "Author, Author".
Infant Immortality: Only in parallel-yet-simultaneous realities. Voyager is copied due to some strange phenomenon; newly-born Naomi Wildman dies and is replaced by the surviving copy from the doomed version of the ship.
The race experimenting with the Omega Molecule in The Omega Directive, likely are going to continue their experiments and destroy themselves. Another possibility, which is significantly worse, is that the episode never resolves if Voyager warned them about the danger, or if they would even listen. Given how Janeway is under direct orders to eliminate the threat the Omega Molecule presents at any cost, the only way she could be certain would literally involve her destroying the race entirely.
Infinite Supplies: Sometimes played infamously straight, sometimes completely ignored... Sometimes one in one episode and the other in another. Voyager is one of the worst offenders for this trope.
Actually done by the website Ex Astris Scientia in their Voyager episode guide; Voyager lost between 10 and 17 shuttlecraft and one Delta Flyer, and used at least 93 photon torpedoes when an early episode explicitly states that they can hold a maximum of 40 and have no way to replace them. However, they routinely take on supplies - either by jerry-rigged self-purifying raw materials or buying them at friendly space stations ("Fair Trade" "Survival Instinct") - it isn't that hard to assume that SOMEONE in the delta quadrant can manufacture photon torpedoes or supply the equipment and parts necessary, with the same going for shuttlecraft.
How about the infinite Johnny Nobody crewmembers? The original crew complement was 141 at the beginning of "Caretaker". "The 37's" gives the combined Maquis/Starfleet crew count as 152. And yet we see so many different background filling extras (in the canteen ALONE, besides anywhere else) that one has to wonder whether it was deliberate...
Well give them a break. They're not going to use the same hundred-odd background actors over a seven year series.
Actually, this forum post breaks down the deaths of all the crew members portrayed onscreen, and Voyager comes home with more people than she left with (largely due to the Maquis crew), and the crew count appears to be consistently maintained throughout the series.
There were however consistent with Lt. "Extra-Man" Ayala who appeared in over 120 of the 168 episodes and all seven series as a former-Maquis tactical/security officer. Lt Carey also often appeared as a recurring extra in engineering before they killed him off.
Informed Ability: Pretty much everything involving Neelix. He claims to be a survival expert, but he does things that anyone with survival skills would never do (which resulted in at least two redshirts getting killed and a hostage situation with primitive natives, all in a single episode). He claims to be a rock climbing expert, but he nearly killed Torres while rock climbing. He claims to be a great chef, but not only did he caused a shipwide system failure with a lump of cheese, but his cooking is almost universally reviled.
Chakotay suddenly having always been interested in a certain field.
Neelix conning the crew into thinking he's an expert in something, which often gets people killed.
B'Elanna is a scientific genius, despite not knowing knowing Space has 3 dimensions and literally cannot identify crap even with a tricorder (literally- as in, in the episode "The 37's", there is a situation where she literally cannot identify the substance she is scanning as manure).
Innocent Innuendo: At the beginning of the episode "Coda", Janeway and Neelix are speaking in ambiguous terms about some sort of group event Neelix organized the previous night. With lines like "You were really good last night" and "It's been a long time for me" going back and forth between them, it seems like they're talking about an orgy. It's not until the next scene that it's revealed they were talking about a talent show.
Insane Troll Logic: Used by Seven of Nine in The Voyager Conspiracy, leading her to come to a different conclusion every time she looked over the same data.
Also, the case of an elderly Tuvok in Endgame, thanks to his medical condition. He insists to Janeway that because she's visiting on the wrong day of the week, she logically couldn't be Janeway.
EMH: Judging by these bio-scans the organism's been devouring life forms for a bit longer than thirty-nine years. I'd estimate it's at least 200,000 years old.
QATAI: The intelligent always survive.
EMH: I wouldn't go that far. It appears to operate on highly-evolved instinct. I haven't detected any signs of sentience.
QATAI: Oh, he's intelligent, all right. Smart enough to fool your crew into taking you offline.
Inscrutable Aliens: One episode had them rescue an alien that was so bizarre they had to start from scratch on trying to understand it. Its biology was such that the medical computers, including the Doctor, couldn't make sense of it, and its language was beyond the universal translators capacity to decode. In another, they played this role to a species living on a planet with a Year Inside, Hour Outside effect. From their point of view, Voyager had been in their sky for centuries, and was a complete mystery to them.
It's All My Fault: Chakotay started blaming himself after he learned that his former lover Seska had betrayed the titular ship to an enemy species; she turned out to be a Cardassian spy dolled up to be a Bajoran to infiltrate the Maquis, and Chakotay felt responsible for not catching on to her as the leader of the cell she infiltrated, especially after he learned later that he had missed several other spies among his ranks (including science officer Tuvok). It was only when Tuvok admitted that Seska had deceived him while they were in the cell, as well, that Chakotay got over it.
Its Pronounced Tro Pay: A humorous example: Neelix searched through the replicator's database and tried to remake a type of chili, which resulted in a few crewmen getting indigestion, which Tom had to cure. Neelix comments that next time he'll cut back on the "Ja-lopenos."
Just a Machine: An episode questioned the rights of the ship's holographic Doctor. His status was a background theme that ran throughout the series. This being Voyager, the writing was not particularly consistent: Sometimes the crew would treat the Doctor like a person, and sometimes he was just a device that could be shut off whenever it got too annoying. One glimpse of the future suggested holographic AIs would eventually get equal rights.
It's eventually revealed that all the other Mark I EMH's (except the Doctor) were removed because of their terrible bedside manner and repurposed into mining asteroids. See "What the Hell, Hero?" for more details.
Just Screw Q: At one point, Q hints that Voyager would get home a lot quicker if its captain formed a baby with him. As a feminist icon, Janeway rightly refuses to use her body as a bargaining chip. But in later episodes, so much emphasis was placed on how much she's willing to sacrifice to get her crew home that fans couldn't help but wonder why she didn't just boff the jerk.
Just screwing Q is one thing, and if was just that, Janeway would have likely done it, but having a child with him this way is something else entirely. Even Scifi Debris points this out, and this is the guy who consistently goes out of his way to paint Janeway as aVillain Protagonist.
Alternatively, it takes until his third appearance before Janeway even stops to Just Ask Q if he could possibly return them back to Earth.
At least one list (Similar to Skippy's List or "Things Mr. Welsh Is No Longer Allowed To Do") parodied this, saying "If a god-like alien says that he can get my crew and I home if I bear his child, I will accept and ask what I can get for two kids."
Knight, Knave and Squire: This type of relationship is present between Janeway, Paris and Kim with Squire Kim as the wet-behind-the-ears Ensign Newbie, Knave Paris as the pragmatist who's trying to influence Kim and Knight Janeway as the moral beacon for Kim and the rest of the crew.
Last Minute Hookup: Seven and Chakotay. Regarded as a Crack Pairing by some fans as there had been no previous UST between the two (except in a holodeck fantasy); in fact the producers had even rejected the suggestion that this happen when Seven and Chakotay were stranded on a planet together only a couple of episodes before they hooked up in "Endgame".
Living Ship: Voyager has Neural Gel Packs, which were probably intended to act like organic brains or at least small computers. Supposedly they were cutting-edge tech, as Voyager was an advanced ship when it was completed.
Of course, they were used several times as a plot complication generator by having them "get an infection." Janeway eventually ordered Torres to replace them with conventional circuits, but the ship never seemed to be any less cutting-edge afterward.
Species 8472 were introduced in Voyager, and they had completely organic living ships. Not even the Borg could stand up against one of those babies.
Longest Pregnancy Ever: Ensign Wildman - already pregnant in the pilot episode, gives birth mid-Season 2.
The Doctor comments on this in the episode "Fury", mentioning that members of Ensign Wildman's husband's species have a gestation that is twice as long as that of a human.
And even more ironic, considering that Naomi had a 15 month gestation, then seemed to age 3-4 years between series 4 and 5.
When Naomi's born, The Doctor mentions that her teeth will begin appearing within a month. Given this relatively accelerated growth rate, it is not unreasonable to assume that she may age at a naturally slightly accelerated rate.
Averted in the episode "Drone", a 29th-century Borg drone goes from tissue sample to fetus to full-grown adult in a day.
Long Title: In-universe, Naomi's essay about "The weird planet where time moved very fast and so did the people who lived there". Seven helps her condense it.
Lost Technology: In both "Message In A Bottle" and "Hunters," Voyager comes across a vast abandoned network of ancient relay stations (each powered by its own black hole!), enabling them to make contact with Starfleet on the other side of the galaxy. One little mistake and the entire network shut down.
The Main Characters Do Everything: A Star Trek staple, really, but Voyager really takes it to the next level. Don't be surprised if Janeway decides to fly off the ship with her first officer on routine patrol duty, leaving the impulsive and unreliable Half-Klingon rebel in command.
Married In The Future: O Ne episode had Kes witness a future where she and Tom Paris were married and had children following "The Year of Hell" but ultimately it didn't happen this way partly because Kes retained her knowledge of the future and was able to warn the crew. By the time the "Year of Hell" actually happened Kes had left the ship and Tom later ended up marring B'lanna who had been killed in the original timeline.
Mate or Die: Yup, this returns with a twist in "Blood Fever" when young background Vulcan officer Vorik tries to force himself on B'Elanna Torres during his pon farr, leading her to suffer the blood fever as well. This is the episode that launched millions of Torres/Paris shippers.
In a later episode, Tuvok also has to deal with his pon farr (it being almost seven years into the trip by this time) With a little help from the holodeck, courtesy of Tom Paris (who makes the case that technically if the hologram is of your wife, it's not cheating), he eventually manages to work through it. This is somewhat played for laughs, as the holodeck gets cut off right in the middle of the program the first time; in a later conversation after he gets the program back online for some uninterrupted quality time, he also complains that the simulated wife's ears were a bit longer than his actual wife's, to which Tom Paris responds with an appeal to artistic license.
Ensign Samantha Wildman, Naomi's mother and a member of the science department.
Lieutenant Joseph Carey, the Number Two engineer to B'Elanna Torres, until he got killed off near the end of the series.
Lieutenant Ayala, though he never quite got to be an Ascended Extra.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: features prominently in a great many episodes, but especially in "Coda" in which Janeway has one of those near-death experiences known to some of us. Is Captain Janeway's experience really just another first contact with a strange alien species (which was detectable on a medical tricorder scan of her cortex), or (far from the first) contact with someone from the afterlife? The story reports, you decide.
Just to make things more interesting, one of those unstable time loops we've seen in other Star Trek series' episodes is also suggested early on, and if the "magic" explanation is true, "Admiral Janeway" would actually be a demon come to drag Captain Janeway to Hell. The flames seen coming from what he calls his matrix would certainly support this, and Janeway herself tells him "Go back to Hell, coward!"
Mind Rape: Janeway is revealed to have done this to the Doctor in "Latent Image" after he suffered a breakdown. Janeway even justifies her actions because technically the Doctor isn't human, so she was just fixing him. It takes What the Hell, Hero? speeches before she sees why the Doctor is so horrified by her actions.
It becomes Harsher in Hindsight that the third episode, "Time and Again" had Janeway mention she was considering reprogramming the Doctor just because he was... annoying
"Memorial" where an alien device Mind Rapes crew members into experiencing a massacre (in actual fact, a more effective war memorial). At the end of the episode Janeway orders the device refuelled so it can go on to Mind Rape many more people for at least 300 years. She does however also leave a beacon some distance away to warn people about what is about to happen to them.
Misapplied Phlebotinum: The Vidiians, whose incredible medical technology (complete with transporter-based cloning in the Tom Riker model) is mainly used to murder people and steal their organs. Taking organs from nonsapient animals? Nonsense! Organ-harvest cloning? The stuff of dreams! No, murdering people and stealing their organs is the way of the future! There's also one society that uses brain-straining long-distance transporter technology to take romantic walks on planets thousands of light years away (though that may only fall under Mundane Utility).
The Mole: Seska, a Bajoran who turns out to be a Cardassian spy infiltrating the Maquis.
There was another ex-Maquis who routinely reported to the Kazon-Nistrim sect, passing vital information about Voyager's goings-on to Seska.
And of course, Tuvok begins the series as a Starfleet officer secretly infiltrating the Maquis. As Chakotay put it, "Was anyone on that ship working for me?"
The EMH aboard the USS Equinox had his "ethical subroutines" removed. It shows.
Mortality Ensues: Q does it to q at one point; it's also a result of suppressing Seven's Borg nanotech.
MST3K Mantra: Invoked in "Timeless" — Harry Kim tries to make sense of how the future version of himself could have sent the present-day Seven of Nine instructions on how to save the ship, since the future Harry's timeline was erased and he will not exist to send the instructions, resulting in an apparent Grandfather Paradox. Janeway just tells him not to bother trying to work it out, since he'll likely only succeed in giving himself a headache.
Also used in the episode where there was two Voyager's and the Kim and Naomi died in the one that wound up surviving. The Kim and Naomi from the second ship went over to the first one before the second one blew itself up to save the second one. Kim then starts to go into a bit about how he's not their Kim. Janeway tells him to stop thinking about it as he's close enough.
The Doctor:Who would have thought this group of voyagers could actually become a family: Starfleet, Maquis, Klingon, Tallaxian, Hologram, Borg, even Mr. Paris.
Also in an early episode, the Doctor was discussing with Kes his problems: he was built as an emergency software for special cases and now has to be available 24 hours a day, everyone treats him as he did not even exist, nobody tells him what's going on, nobody remembers to shut hm when leaving, he has nobody to assist him... Kes pointed that Paris was assigned to be his nurse. "Like I said, nobody to assist me".
My God, What Have I Done?: Spoken word for word by B'Elanna near the end of the episode "Prototype."
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: One of their worst offenses (if not the first) was inadvertently destroying the relay station that put them back in communication with the Alpha Quadrant while trying to fight off some Hirogen. The relay network spanned over the great majority of the Delta and Beta Quadrants, and had been fully operational for over 100,000 years, and they knocked out the whole network. Fortunately, they found others that didn't get destroyed as they continued their journey.
No Endor Holocaust: In "Faces" the Vidiians splitd B'Elanna into two halves, one fully human and one fully Klingon. Vidiians suspected, and with good reason, that Klingons (pure Klingons, that is) may be able to resist the Phage that ravages them. And in fact, she does. Both B'Elannas and the others are rescued, the Klingon one killed in the process, and the doctor took DNA from her body to restore B'Elanna to her usual self. But if you stop to think it for a moment... from the Viidian perspective, it was a Hope Spot for their race, their chance to survive, and they lost it. But the Klingon is dead, the doctor has used the DNA to fix B'Elanna, what about giving the dead body back to the Vidiians, so that they could also study its DNA and get their cure? That would even give them a much needed ally.
No, Mister Bond, I Expect You To Dine: Annorax invites Chakotay and Paris over to his ship for a meal. He waits until they're eating to reveal that the food was collected from civilizations wiped from history by Annorax's weapon.
"Mister Paris, you're devouring the last remnants of the Alseran Empire." (Paris glances at his fork, loses appetite)
Nominal Importance: The doctor taking the name Lord Schweitzer to survive
Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Reginald Barclay on Earth found a way to establish regular contact with Voyager in the final seasons, thus allowing the ship to have tactical and emotional support from home that was not possible before.
Not Rare Over There: Early in the series, they're in an area of space where water is the go-to commodity. Our heroes can make all they want (within reason) and find themselves a common target because of it.
Not So Different: After meeting Doc Zimmerman, Troi says she can see where the Doctor got his ego from.
Odd Friendship: Seven and Naomi...Seven and the Doctor...Seven and anyone...
Subverted with Neelix and Tuvok. Neelix tries so, so, so hard to be "Mr. Vulcan's" friend, but Tuvok's response is barely concealed contempt and sarcasm. And honestly, this is Neelix we're talking about here, can you blame him?
When Tuvok is afraid he's lost his self-control after mind-melding with a Serial Killer, and is testing his restraint in the holodeck, guess which crewmember he simulates on the grounds that he's most likely to push him to breaking point! To make matters worse, he did not have to program the holographic version of Neelix to be any different than normal.
Official Couple: Neelix and Kes, then Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres.
Ominous Message From The Future: In the episode "Future's End", Captain Braxton of the time ship Aeon comes back from the 29th century with information that the entire solar system has been destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion and that Voyager was somehow involved. Now he's here to destroy them before that can happen. They manage to fight him off and both ships get stuck in the late 20th century. Braxton, who arrived 30 years earlier and has been living as a homeless bum all that time, continues to try warn people of the coming disaster, but due to his position in society, and the fact that he's talking about something that won't happen for centuries, people dismiss him as just another crazy bum.
Omniglot: "Hopes and Fears" introduces Voyager to Arturis, an alien whose species is capable of mastering any language (written, spoken, and computational) after only hearing or seeing a couple words.
Once for Yes, Twice for No: A nebula alien, that learns to communicate only through the set phrases of the ship's computer.
A race of aliens found in the Void learns how to communicate using a series of tones generated via PAD Ds that are provided by the Doctor.
One Steve Limit: Averted by the actors. Three of the six male regulars are named Robert, though each fortunately has a different nickname to mitigate confusion: Robert Beltran is "Robert", Robert Picardo is "Bob", and Robert Duncan McNeill is "Robbie".
Only Sane Man: Often this is either Tom Paris, or the Doctor. Arguably Chakotay as well, with his being the constant voice of reason.
In the latter's case, when as the Emergency Command Hologram in the episode "Workforce", the Doctor's first response to being told that Voyager will be boarded and forcibly seized, is to immediatelyopen fire and cripple the enemy ship. In comparison, Janeway and Chakotay usually only return fire when the shields are down to 24% and several consoles have exploded.
The Doctor's reaction in "Time and Again" when he realises no-one informed him that Voyager was now carrying two alien passengers, Neelix and Kes. Oh and 80 Maquis now serve as part of the new crew. And he can't contact Captain Janeway because she's down on the planet below. Oh... and she is currently missing.
Doctor: It seems I've found myself on the voyage of the damned.
Organ Theft: Neelix has his lungs stolen via teleporters, forcing the Doctor to create temporary Hard Light substitutes. The Vidiians actively engaged in this as it was the only way for them to survive the Phage that afflicted their entire race... That is until a Think Tank later gave them a permanent cure for the right price.
Orwellian Editor: Janeway in "Latent Image" repeatedly attempts to delete the Doctor's memories and even ordered all evidence of Ensign Jetal to be erased from existence.
SF Debris: Whenever we get two Janeways in the same room, they will always argue with one another.
Out-Gambitted: Kashyk in "Counterpoint". He thinks he's tricked Janeway into revealing the refugees she was hiding, but she sent them somewhere else.
Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Often averted with Chakotay's Native American spirituality and some explorations of other odd species' religions. The episode "False Profits" parodied this trope to Hell and back, however, with a Bronze Age civilization venerating two Ferengi refugees as their sages (sort of ersatz deities) because their crash-landing's appearance was a lot like something prophesied in one of their sacred poems. All efforts to remove the Ferengi failed until the Voyager's crew realized the same poem ended with the appearance of certain easily-arranged celestial signs and the ascension of the sages back into the heavens, all of which could be arranged using some futuristic flares and transporter technology. Since technically this means every one of the prophecies came true, there was arguably nothing to outgrow about these people's "silly superstitions" at all!
To add to the humor, this also parodied Burn the Witch! as the joyous townspeople, spurred by the mention of their sages being taken up on "wings of flame" in the prophecy, enthusiastically rush to honor their sages by bundling them all together with some firewood and lighting the fire. Since they're beamed out before they can be burned, they truly do ascend into the heavens.
It's implied that while many do still believe in mythology, it may not be the truth, as seen in the episode 'Mortal Coil' where Neelix dies (he gets better) and is upset he didn't experience an afterlife.
Played straight in "Blink of an Eye" where Voyager is trapped in orbit over a planet where time moves rapidly, becoming worshiped as a deity by the inhabitants called "the Groundshaker" after their attempt to leave causes violent earthquakes. As we see time on the planet progress, the people invent telescopes and come to dub Voyager as "The Skyship", which by the time they've entered the Space Age, is no longer believed to be the home of their Gods, but merely an advanced spacecraft that houses alien beings.
Overranked Soldier: Inverted. Ensign Harry Kim should've gotten an automatic promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade at the eighteen month mark at the latest.
Plank Gag: In the episode "Suvival Instinct", Chakotay tried to lug a huge piece of alien sports equipment across the bridge and nearly whacked a visiting alien with it.
It probably doesn't help that the Eugenics Wars were supposedly occurring at the same time the series aired in real life.
Official Trek lore states that the Eugenics Wars occurred between 1993 and 1996. It is also known that while a good portion of North America was involved and affected (specifically, the eastern coasts,) "Future's End" served to establish that Los Angeles and the west coast in general was still one such area where life continued on as normal.
Premature Eulogy: Of the Narmy kind. One glaring example is in the episode Coda where Janeway receives four whole minutes of this while floating between life and death, watching it play out. It's to be expected in a show where people die and come back to life every week.
Which gets kind of sad when you realize that a) most of this four-minute funeral (about ten percent of the episode) is spent by having people talk about Janeway and how awesome she is, when b) the eulogy wasn't real, it was all a hallucination. So the purpose of this scene was essentially Janeway talking about how awesome she is.
The emotionless and formal Seven of Nine used a French pleat for her first 3 seasons on the show.
Principles Zealot: While Janeway has her moments, Seven Of Nine is surely the local queen of this trope. The Doctor also tries to do this once or twice.
From "Parallax": "Sometimes you just have to punch your way through."
Real-Life Relative: Q's "teenage" son was played by John DeLancie's actual son Keegan DeLancie. This was apparently somewhat of an accident; Keegan happened to be among the actors being considered for the role and the producers made it clear they didn't want him cast just for the joke. As it turned out Keegan won them over on the part and the existing Father/Son dynamic only made the episode better.
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Voyager sets were reused in the episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" when Bashir is taken to Romulus on an Intrepid-class ship, the same class of ship as USS Voyager.
Redemption Equals Death: Ensign Lon Suder (Brad Dourif) murders a coworker, and is locked in his quarters ("Meld"). Thanks to Tuvok's guidance, he had calmed himself considerably. During a siege of the ship ("Basics, Part 1 and 2"), he deeply regretted that he would have to use his murder skills again to fight off the invaders, before finishing with a Heroic Sacrifice.
Red Shirt: Averted in the early seasons by giving some screen time to crewmembers who were slated for death in later episodes (i.e. Hogan, Jonas, Carey). But eventually they reverted to bumping off anonymous ensigns by the shuttleload. A notable subversion however occurs in "Latent Image" where the Doctor is guilt-ridden over his choice to save Harry Kim as opposed to the expendable crewmember.
Joe Carey might be considered a subversion as well. Despite disappearing for years at a time except for flashbacks, the character makes it all the way to the final season before he's killed on an away mission. He is in fact the last casualty before Voyager makes it back home. Most redshirts don't last for the entirety of a series run.
This forum post has two people go to the trouble of listing all the crew that are seen, have died, or are even mentioned by name. Sure, Voyager may have lost over a dozen shuttlecraft, but as far as people go, it was pretty damned consistent.
Religious Robot: "Flesh and Blood" is about sentient holograms (also known as photonic lifeforms) rising up against their creators. Their leader believes in the Bajoran faith and spends his free time praying to the prophets.
Reset Button: Many, many times. In fact, in some circles, the ship and show were known as "USS Reset Button."
The reset featured in "Year of Hell" is one of the few fans of the show won't groan at, simply because it was too damn awesome.
Retro Upgrade: The ship's engine and hull get improved using technology based on a carburetor and the hull of the Titanic, respectively.
Revisiting the Roots: For better or for worse, Star Trek Voyager was this for the franchise: A lone Federation starship exploring the dangerous unknowns and meeting new life and new civilizations.
The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Averted in "Resistance", but somehow there's never any mention of the Maquis' terrorist origins. Except for Suder of course.
Ripple Effect Indicator: Annorax's battle cruiser in "Year of Hell." It grows more menacing with changes to the timeline; the weasley subcommander who cringed in the presence of VOY becomes very smug indeed when his guns outmatch theirs.
Robosexual: The EMH apparently gets around, especially in one of his Time Skip episodes.
Running Gag: Every single pot roast mentioned on the series was burnt to hell.
Serkis Folk: Species 8472, and the aliens in "Equinox".
Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Think about how large the Voyager would have to be to cast that reflection on the rings of the planet in the opening titles...
Sexy Discretion Shot: An episode involving one of the Doctor's romances had one that was so discreet that even Robert Picardo didn't know about it until a much later episode referenced his having had sex and he asked the writers about it.
Shout Out: The opening to the pilot "Caretaker" bears more than a passing resemblance to the opening of A New Hope: an Opening Scroll giving a bit of backstory, followed by a pan to a running lightfight between a small rebel ship (Chakotay's Val Jean) and a large enemy ship (a Cardassian Galor-class destroyer). Only difference is, the rebel ship escapes, by pulling a Try And Follow into the Badlands' plasma storms.
Captain Proton is fraught with Flash Gordon references. Dr Chaotica largely appears to be a Ming the Merciless expy, right down to the castle and its defenses. Proton's rocket ship also has clear Flash Gordon influences. Satan's Robot is the "Republic Robot", an overused prop in various Republic serials including ''Mysterious Doctor Satan''. Finally, Proton's leather jacket with jetpack controls are the same as those used by Commando Cody/The Rocketman.
The end of "Deadlock" has a subtle one to Star Trek III The Search For Spock: a Vidiian boarding party reaches the duplicate Voyager's bridge only to be greeted by the last seconds of a self-destruct countdown.
Shown Their Work: In "Meld," the death of Ensign Darwin is proven as a murder using real forensic science rather than made-up technobabble, which is frankly a rarity on the later Star Trek shows.
On the other hand the Doctor says "The DNA doesn't lie." This has never stopped defensee attorneys.
Though it does help that Federation forensics technology is demonstrably better than ours is.
Show Within a Show: In several episodes Janeway enters a holodeck program that was apparently going to turn out to be a ghost story, but this got dropped (it didn't help that it was being told slowly over the teasers for several episodes, and had nothing to do with the episode itself). A more successful example was The Adventures of Captain Proton!, a homage to 1930s sci-fi adventures like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
An alien version of this occurs, showing an evil version of the Voyager crew as propaganda between two races of aliens, until a copy of The Doctor sets the record straight... and then the entire show-within-a-show is shown to, itself be a show within a show within a show.
Space Clouds: In "Year of Hell", a crippled Voyager hides inside a nebula so dense that it produces a visible fog inside the ship's corridors. Captain Janeway even orders the hull breaches sealed to avoid having an "indoor nebula."
Space Is an Ocean: In the episode "Day of Honor," Paris and Torres put on spacesuits and abandon their doomed shuttlecraft. As they drift in space awaiting rescue, they bob up and down as if floating in an ocean.
Spike Shooter: There's a species of sentient technology-dependent hadrosaurdescendants that shoot sedative-laced barbs from their fingers.
Spinoff Sendoff: The pilot, "Caretaker", starts with Voyager docked at Deep Space Nine, with Quark trying to con Harry Kim.
Status Quo Is God: One of the, if not the biggest complaints leveled against the show.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Averted. This is surely what everybody thought at the beginning of "Death Wish", when the unknown Gerrit Graham said "Hello. My name is Q". John de Lancie, "the" Q, the one that has been annoying Jean Luc Piccard, appeared later. As for the name, it seems that all Qs are simply named "Q", but this was established back in the TNG episode "Deja Q".
Tropes T-Z
Taking the Bullet: (or the phaser shot, or similar attack; there are almost no guns in Voyager.)
Freya, a holodeck character of Beowulf, took one (or more exactly, a knife attack) to save the Doctor. She died with the name "Schweitzer" on her lips. The doctor, who had chosen that name, declined to use it afterwards, to avoid being reminded of Freya's fate.
Split in two halves, Klingon B'Elanna took the shot directed to the human B'Elanna. She died in the hands of her human self, telling that her human courage made her own death an honourable one.
Technobabble: Probably the worst offender of all Star Trek series. There's a scene where the Universal Translator is having difficulty with an alien language, so Janeway tells Harry to 'remodulate the translator'. As SF Debris points out, this means about the same thing as hitting it. He also noted (in his review of the infamously bad episode "Threshold") that one device they claim to use is "Multi-spectral warp field generator," which he says is basically a ship powered by rainbows.
Temporarily A Villain: The EMH was reprogrammed to perform unethical-at-best medicine by the Equinox crew.
Terminally Dependent Society: The Ocampan dependence on the Caretaker array. How dependent? We later learn that an Ocampan can only ever have a single child. Assuming that this is one child per Ocampa, male or female, every early death or miscarriage permanently reduces the Ocampan population.
The Caretaker gave them 5 years worth of power for the city before his death. Given how dependent on him the Ocampans were, it's doubtful they could figure out for themselves a different power-source. The forcefield protecting them from outsiders will most likely fail as the power dwindles and they'll eventually have to leave for the surface... where the Kazon are. This is probably why Kes is so pissed off in "Fury".
Or it's possibly even worse. We know that the Borg have knowledge of the Kazon, but found them so pathetic that they didn't want to assimilate them. Now, the Ocampa on the other hand have the potential to become incredibly powerful and the Borg likely became aware of them during the alliance with Voyager against Species 8472. Connect the dots.
Thoughtcrime: There was an episode where they came across a people who were extremely telepathic, so sensitive that any extreme emotions would incite them to act out on those feelings; having violent thoughts was a crime in and of itself. Torres was put under trial for having a brief violent thought when someone bumped into her, and Tuvok's investigation into the planet's culture found a sort of "violent thoughts" Black Market. Of course it examined the nature that when something was so taboo it meant their own people were unable to handle it when confronted with the situation.
Dreadnought: "False information has been entered into Dreadnought's navigational sensor array." Paris: "When a bomb starts talking about itself in the third person, I get worried."
Touché: In "Counterpoint", Kashyk admits this when he sees he's been tricked.
Transformation Sequence: Overlaps with Mundane Made Awesome in "Tinkor, Tailor, Doctor, Spy". The Doctor's transformation into the ECH is accompanied by a dramatic zoom on the Doctor's lapel as the pips appear one by one.
2-D Space: Like all Star Trek, though the large holographic Astrometrics display did avert this somewhat, showing that the route that would be best to take involves movement not only left and right, but up and down in three dimensional space. Mostly averted when multiple ships are on the same screen.
Understatement: In "Scientific Method," Janeway decides to fly Voyager between two stars, hoping to destroy the ships of some aliens who have been experimenting on the crew in the process, despite Tuvok's warning that the odds of their survival are "one in twenty, at best." Tuvok tells her that it's a far more reckless course of action than he's come to expect from her. After they manage to get away, Janeway comments to Tuvok that she never knew he thought of her as "reckless." Tuvok says that it was a poor choice of words: "It was clearly an understatement."
She had an excuse in this case — Janeway herself makes it clear that the aliens' experiments to push her to her limits through prolonged stress had driven her crazy. Well, more than usual, at any rate.
Universal Universe Time: Every species in the Delta Quadrant knows the exact specifications of the Earth minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. Nobody seems to have their own local measurement standards of time.
Un-Paused: The Doctor, when Seven switches him off in the middle of a sentence.
UST: Plenty of this between Janeway and Chakotay, but more so in early seasons.
Mostly due to the influence of Jeri Taylor, who wrote the majority of the episodes where this is prevalent. After she took a backseat as a writer, this promptly vanished.
Visionary Villain: Karr, the Alpha Hirogen who takes control of Voyager in "The Killing Game Parts 1 & 2," realizes that his species' obsession with the hunt has caused their civilization and culture to stagnate. He hopes that holodeck technology will allow the Hirogen to rebuild their society while continuing the hunt. This... sorta works, until they decide to turn it up to "Hard" mode and turn off the safeties, because "It wasn't real enough." This lead to the entire thing turning into a slaughter.
We Are As Mayflies: Kes and the other Ocampa have an average lifespan of less than a decade in length.
“Well Done Son” Guy: Tom Paris's father Owen Paris was a Starfleet admiral and Tom never felt that he could live up to his reputation. Things were strained between them and only became worse once Tom had joined the Maquis and then ended up in a Federation penal colony. It was only after the Voyager got lost in the Delta Quadrant and later established communications to Earth that the two re-connected, especially once Tom and B'Elanna became a couple and had a child. In the novels, things became strained between them again due to circumstances in part beyond Tom's control and Owen died in a Borg attack.
What Happened to the Mouse?: A Borg baby is brought on board along with several Borg children. Icheb stays while the other children are returned to their parents in a later episode, but there's never any mention of what happened to the baby.
Whatever happened to Suspiria, the Female Caretaker? She never reappeared in the series following her second season episode, but the Star Trek: String Theory novel trilogy provides (non-canon) answers.
What Measure Is A Nonhuman: With a holographic Doctor, they question of whether a projection of Hard Light and a "soul" of algorithms arises a few times. This includes encountering a race of photonic creatures in a different plane, and another which considers holographic programs to be insurgents. Even what rights the Doctor has on the ship has been explored, with him even trying to resign in one episode.
What the Hell, Hero?: Seven calls Janeway on this when she and the crew intend to delete memories causing the Doctor to almost literally BSOD instead of trying to work through his problems psychologically. She wasn't around to object the first time they did it.
Also in "Hope and Fear" with the alien blaming Janeway's decision to back the Borg against Species 8472. As the latter were forced to retreat, the Borg were able to go on and assimilate his world.
Remember back in the TNG episode "A Measure of a Man" where Picard chewed out Starfleet who were planning to disassemble Data so they could build Androids to serve on Federation vessels, arguing that it was tantamount to them actively perpetuating a Slave-Race? Well apparently Starfleet doesn't, as its revealed in "Lifeline" that they reprogrammed every single EMH Mk I in the Alpha Quadrant to mine Dilithium asteroids. The Doctor is not amused by this revelation.
William Telling: In "Coda", Janeway suggests to Chakotay that he could play William Tell and blast an apple off of her head with a phaser for Neelix's Talent Night.
Chakotay: Sounds great. If I miss, I get to be captain.
You Can't Go Home Again: This is especially true for Neelix, whose homeworld was destroyed, and Icheb, whose parents want only to use him as a weapon.
You Keep Using That Word: Various crewmembers describe things from the 19th and 20th century as being "Ancient", which is like saying that Roman Chariots and Nuclear Weapons are relatively close historically. Even more egregious considering that they are only 400 years downwind from the things they are describing.
Tuvok previously played a thief who was on the receiving end of a neck pinch from Picard. He was also a bridge officer on the Enterprise-B in Star Trek: Generations.
You Never Did That for Me: Janeway, upon learning that her best friend Tuvok used to make tea for then-Captain Sulu, complains in a mock-annoyed fashion that he never made her tea! In the novelization of that episode, he notes, quite reasonably, that she prefers coffee.
Acting for Two: "Faces". "Deadlock", "11:59", "Life Line", "Endgame"
Alien Abduction: How they ended up in the Delta Quadrant in the first place in "Caretaker". Plus there's the Vidiians seeking to steal the crew's organs to replace their own diseased tissue. And "The 37's", abducted from the opposite side of the galaxy because We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future. Also "Heroes and Demons" and "Displaced".
Dead Alternate Counterpart: "Deadlock". The 'real' Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman are killed, and replaced with duplicates from another Voyager (coming across a space-time rift) which self-destructs taking out some alien invaders.
Do Holograms Dream: "Projections", "Prototype", "The Swarm", "The Darkling", "Revulsion", "Real Life", "Flesh and Blood", "Life Line", "Someone To Watch Over Me", "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy", "Author Author".
Downer Ending: "Course: Oblivion", probably one of the few examples of the trope in Star Trek.
Genocide Backfire: "Jetrel", about a scientist that developed the Metreonic Cascade, a mass-destruction weapon that decimated a Talaxian world and burnt it to the ground, left countless victims poisoned with metreonic isotopes, and forced Talax to surrender to the Haakonians (any similarity to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... is subtle). Jetrel, treated as a monster by Neelix, now roams the galaxy trying to find a cure for the metreonic poison... or so he claimed. His real redemption plot was much more ambitious: he tried to use the teleportation technology of Voyager to atomically recreate at least one of the victims of his weapon. He failed, but Neelix finally forgave him.
God Guise: "False Profits", "Muse" (subverted in that the crew inspire a play as opposed to a religion).
Human Popsicle: "The 37s", about a number of people from 1930s Earth who were abducted by aliens and taken to the other side of the galaxy. One of them was Amelia Earhart. There were also a pair of constants troubling those XXV century guys of Voyager, like a earth vehicle propelled by refined oil (a car... floating in the space!), a 1930s airplane, and an automated S.O.S. signal.
Identical Granddaughter: "11:59", or identical great-great-great... well, you get the idea. The ancestral love interest bears a strong resemblance to Janeway's former love, as well.
Interspecies Romance: Apart from scenes involving the Official Couple there's "Elogium" (where a Space Whale tries to hump the ship!), "Favourite Son", "Blood Fever", "The Q and the Grey" ("With a Q, foreplay can last for decades!"), "Unforgettable", "In The Flesh", "Counterpoint", "Gravity", and "The Disease" (it's not what you think).
Interstellar Weapon: Both "Dreadnought" and "Warhead" revolved around trying to keep interstellar missiles from blowing up innocent people.
Made-for-TV Movie: "Dark Frontier" was written and aired as a TV movie, though it was filmed as a normal two-part episode. "Flesh and Blood" was also aired as a TV movie, though it was neither written nor filmed as such.
Parody Episode: The series homaged the early sci-fi serials like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon with the "Captain Proton" holoprogram, most notably in the episode "Bride of Chaotica!".
Post Mortem Comeback: In "Worst Case Scenario" (S3 E25), a highly adaptive hologram of Seska enters the program and manipulates it to her own ends.
The Plague: "Macrocosm". Plus any episode involving Vidiians. The Vidiian Phage is later stated to have been cured off-screen in a future episode.
Subspace Ansible: Seeing as Voyager is a lot further out than other Federation vessels, and has been presumed destroyed, even getting a message home is important to the crew. "Eye of the Needle", "Message in A Bottle", "Hunters", "Pathfinder".
Twice Told Tale: "Flashback" provides one for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Unfortunately, there are some obvious continuity errors between the episode and the movie. Most notably, the episode features the death of a background crew member who appears alive in "later" scenes of the movie.
"The Omega Directive" deals with an energy molecule that destroys no less than a 3 light year radius of subspace when it destabilizes, making warp travel PERMANENTLY impossible. The episode focuses on a large enough amount that more than half the entire Delta Quadrant would have been affected.
“Well Done Son” Guy: This is basically the entire plot of the episode "Life Line". The Doctor, an artificially intelligent hologram, learns that his creator (and the man whose image he's based on), holographic genius Dr Lewis Zimmerman, is dying. The Doctor pleads with Captain Janeway to be transmitted back to the Alpha Quadrant, assuming Zimmerman will be proud of how he's exceeded his programming... only to find his creator is a cantankerous jerk who believes he's an obsolete model better suited to scrubbing plasma conduits on waste transfer barges. Needless to say, much angst and hilarity ensue before the two are reconciled.
The Worf Effect: Ironically, the Borg are on the receiving end of this in "Scorpion" when Species 8472 are introduced. Contributed to the Villain Decay of the Borg.
Writer on Board: "Muse" is basically a plea for understanding from the writers of this oft-criticized series, showing how they're pulled between the desire to create meaningful works of art, the need to satisfy those paying their wages, and the demands of the audience for action and romance - told via a poet on a primitive warlike world who's trying to write a play based on Voyager's logs.
Wrongly Accused: "Ex Post Facto", "State of Flux", "The Chute", "Living Witness", "Random Thoughts".
Xanatos Gambit: The best example is "Counterpoint". Voyager is transporting telepaths through Devore space, where telepaths are automatically arrested, along with those helping them. Kashyk arrives and informs the crew that he knows what they're doing and how they plan to escape. He also says he's defecting and wants to help them avoid a Devore planned for them. If the crew believes him, then he betray them at a crucial moment. If the turn him away, he turns them in. If they do something to him, his superiors will wonder what happened and come looking for him. He'd win no matter what they did. Except he was Out-Gambitted by Janeway, who was prepared for his deception. If he was telling the truth, great, she'd be happy to have him onboard. If he wasn't, she was ready.
Also seen in "Think Tank", where Janeway thinks that the Hazari are covering every escape route and the ones that don't appear covered are traps, screwing the ship no matter which path they choose. Then its inverted on the Hazari's employers, who are screwed no matter what they do.
"Dark Frontier", the Borg wanted Seven of Nine to be severed earlier to develop a human perspective. If the federation hadn't taken the bait, they lose nothing. In the episode itself, the Borg Queen's plan. If Seven returns them, they leave Voyager alone. If not, they assimilate Voyager during the mission. If Seven warns Voyager, than the borg recover the transwarp coil that Voyager planned on stealing.
BBC Quarry: Harry Kim points out that "Planet X" looks identical to "The Mines of Mercury" that they visited in the last adventure.
Captain Space, Defender of Earth!: Captain Proton: Spaceman First Class, protector of Earth, scourge of intergalactic evil...at your service.
Chained to a Rock: Constance Goodheart is tied to a pillar prior to her being presented to Queen Arachnia as a "supreme sacrifice".
Cliffhanger Copout: Paris and Kim are watching a recap of last week's Proton episode, which shows their rocketship destroyed by Chaotica's fiendish Death Ray.
Kim: We didn't burst into flame in the last chapter! Why are these recaps so inaccurate?
Paris: Well they brought people back to the theaters.
Dope Slap: Paris gives this to Satan's Robot when it scares off the alien they're trying to make First Contact with. The Robot shambles off muttering sulkily about alien invaders.
Expanded Universe: Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth, a compilation of Captain Proton stories by Pulp Magazine writer D.W. "Prof" Smith (actually Star Trek novel writer Dean Wesley Smith).
Femme Fatale: Queen Arachnia. Plus the Twin Mistresses of Evil, Demonica and Malicia.
Genre Savvy: Tom Paris knows something's gone wrong in "Bride of Chaotica!" because Constance Goodheart has been killed, and that never happens to the Good Guys. Likewise he tries to warn Captain Janeway of Chaotica's fondness for hidden traps, but she falls into one anyway.
Large Ham: Frankly, the whole point of playing the program. Chaotica is the emperor of this trope, but also seen with the Doctor and Captain Janeway whose initial reaction is either contempt or amusement, but who end up playing their roles with gusto. Hilariously subverted though by Seven of Nine in "Night" (see Off the Rails, below.)
Love Is in the Air: While Tied To a Pillar Janeway uses Arachnia's vial of "irresistable pheromones" to make Dr Chaotica release her. Unfortunately Chaotica moves out of sniffing range, leaving her to get slobbered over by his ugly henchman Lonzak instead.
The Men in Black: The alien MIB version turns up in "Bride of Chaotica!" when two photonic aliens appear on the holodeck dressed as grey-suited men in fedoras. They speak in a stilted manner and though dressed like humans of the 1930's are unfamiliar with their society, mistaking the holodeck characters for Energy Beings like themselves and assuming the supervillains they encounter are a genuine threat.
Surrounded by Idiots: Lonzak's bungling gives Chaotica a frequent opportunity to emote his famous "FOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!" line. Lampshaded when Janeway is trying to get Chaotica to lower his Lightning Shield so Captain Proton can attack.
Chaotica:(suspicious) "Why this preoccupation with the Shield?"
Zeerust: It's several centuries old by the time of Voyager. Furthermore, it was specifically designed this way by Tom Paris.
Insurrection Alpha
All There in the Manual: A short story released in one of the compilations after the show had ended details both when Tuvok decided to stop writing the program Insurrection Alpha, why he did so, and that he had only completed what he estimated to be about 25% of it.
Hypocritical Humor: After Paris tells Tuvok that he's going to have Janeway execute the mutineers, Tuvok complains that this is against Janeway's established personality and that characters should not deviate so tremendously. Neelix walks over and insists that he would never betray the captain like he did in the holonovel. Paris makes fun of Tuvok over this point.
Tuvok does justify his choice of Neelix doing this- at the time, he hadn't known Neelix very well.
Out of Character: First, Tuvok got Neelix's character completely wrong. Then Tom Paris wants to have Janeway execute all the mutineers. And when Seska got at the character profiles...
Railroading: Seska programmed the holodeck to do this when Tuvok and Paris were on the verge of getting the upper hand.
The Reveal: Everyone assumes that Insurrection Alpha is an action-adventure holonovel with some Take That jabs at Janeway's command decisions. It turns out to be a program created by Tuvok to train his security officers against a Maquis mutiny.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: When the Maquis and Starfleet crewmembers end up working well together, Tuvok realizes his program could itself create tensions between the two groups and deletes it. Or so he thinks. Tuvok's expectations are subverted when they find it and enjoy it.
Who Writes This Crap?!: Paris's comment the first time he runs the program when the holographic Tuvok in the brig suggests that they might need to spend as long as a week observing their captors for weaknesses. "A week?! Who wrote this stuff?"
Badass Crew: Taken to its most terrifying extreme, the warship Voyager's crew are clearly insane. Even Neelix manages to get in an awesome line in a putdown to Paris.
Brick Joke: Also leading to a Call Back that in "Worst Case Scenario", Tom Paris suggests that a holographic Janeway execute some mutineers. We see this version of a holographic Janeway do just that to hostages.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Doctor notes that this started as a normal trading mission until the Kyrians and Valkans began shooting at each other and Voyager got caught in the middle of it. After ordering both the Kyrians and the Valkans off the ship, in reality Janeway would have ordered Voyager to leave and the crew would have barely given those idiots a second thought.
Cool Starship: It has to be said, the alternate Voyager armed to the teeth with guns isn't a bad sight.
Depending on the Writer: The curator's initial idea when he finds the Doctor is to use him to help him alter the program to make it a more accurate simulation. He admits that over the years they've had to extrapolate certain things to fill in the gaps.
Even Evil Has Standards: The biased depiction of the Vaskan leader has him going to war with the Kyrians simply to steal their land. He contracts Voyager as mercenaries to accomplish this, but even he objects on moral grounds and tries to cancel the deal when Janeway decides to effect massive genocide of the Kyrians as the best solution.
Final Solution: Evil Janeway's genocide of the Kyrians, which apparently kills at least 900,000 people.
Future Imperfect: The historian's interpretation of the event is... misguided, to say the least. This is due to the fact that he barely has any data to work with and a heavy bias against the Vaskans. The crew wear fascist uniforms and are portrayed as violent sociopaths. The Doctor is an android. Seven of Nine is still a Borg leading a contingent of captured drones. Even Voyager herself has become a darkly-lit ship, armed to the teeth and referred to as a warship.
Hand of Death: The evil Voyager crew all wear black gloves.
My Friends... and Zoidberg: The Doctor points out that the way his colleagues have been depicted in the historical recreation has morphed them into violent thugs, but he actually finds Paris to be pretty well portrayed (who from what we've seen admittedly is not depicted so much as a bloodthirsty villain rather than just cocky and prone to skirt-chasing).
These weren't the people I knew! They didn't behave like this! [Beat] Well, except for Mr. Paris.
Politically Correct History: The Kyrian recreation portrays Tedran as a martyr for the Kyrians who was executed by Janeway while trying to stop an alliance between the Vaskans and Voyager. Later averted when it's revealed that Voyager was merely trading with the Vaskans when Tedran attacked unprovoked, tried to loot the ship, and then was killed by the Vaskan ambassador without warning.
Really 700 Years Old: The Doctor himself in this episode, or rather his backup copy, which is reactivated 700 years later.
Show Within a Show: The reveal that the Doctor setting the events of the Voyager recreation straight were in turn themselves another recreation at the same museum, many years later.
Torture Technician: The Doctor is portrayed as this, much to his horror.
Writer on Board: Also subverted; the original recreation was this, while the Doctor and the curator are seen this way by the historical council when they try to correct it.
1 reviews 
