YMMV / Star Trek: Voyager

A-E

• Accidental Aesop: "Demon" and "Course: Oblivion" can be read as an accidental commentary on why the Prime Directive actually is a good idea at heart. Janeway's casual breach of the PD to grant individual sentience and humanoid shape to the Silver Blood lifeforms may be what led to their complete destruction in "Course: Oblivion".
• Accidental Innuendo: Janeway learns about spirit guides while trying to break in Chakotay by getting to know his beliefs better. While it's clear she's referring to Chakotay's spirit guide, she pointedly asks Chakotay if he's a bear.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Chakotay's fictional tribe has traits of various native peoples ranging from North, Central, and South America and even New Zealand. (Their cultural advisor lied about his qualifications.) Fans of the character, who is said to be from a Federation colony on the Cardassian border rather than Earth, sometimes interpret his true culture to be a newly formed one unique to the 24th Century, a sort of New Age revival movement in the same style as neopaganism.
  • Ah, Neelix. Incompetent goon or a broken man putting on a smile and surrounding himself with kids to keep from falling into the abyss? His backstory includes running away from military service, watching his homeworld be wiped out, and tooling around space on his own as a junk trader. His cheerful attitude and positive outlook may fray Tuvok's nerves, but Voyager is the only thing resembling a family he had. Conversely, Neelix often claims to be an expert at things he obviously lacks any competence in, and even gets his crewmembers killed on Away Missions, leading his haters to theorize that he's a charlatan.
  • Seska is a deep cover agent for the Cardassian Obsidian Order who blows her cover rather early on because she draws a lot of attention to herself. Then, she turns Voyager over to the Kazon who have even less of a chance of getting her home. In the end, she is stuck with a species even the Borg find too useless to assimilate who have no respect for her as a woman. Some have speculated that Seska is actually a fairly incompetent spy who was Reassigned to Antarctica when she was tasked to infiltrate the Maquis.
  • Consider for a moment that the Kobali from "Ashes to Ashes" simply couldn't have evolved to reproduce via necromancy and apparently had no difficulty traversing the 30,000 lightyears crossed by Voyager since Lynsday Ballard died. It makes more sense to speculate they're members of an insane cult that was driven off their homeworld and now is constantly moving, to avoid the countless alien authorities who've taken exception to them profaning their dead?! Given Janeway's rather dubious track record over the course of the series, one could even suggest they're following in her wake! Alternatively, they were never a naturally-evolving species in the first place, but rather a Frankenstein-style artificial population that broke away from their creators and established their own civilization. For its part, Star Trek Online (non-canon) gives a handwave that the Kobali were messing with "forces beyond their control", implying they screwed up their own genome.
  • The preposterous idea that the Voth from Distant Origin could have achieved space travel without leaving a single piece of archeological evidence either on Earth or the surrounding planets, or would have been restricted to just one small part of the world as the episode suggests despite the fact that anyone capable of interstellar space travel should also know the secrets of the boat, suggests that their ancestors were abducted from Earth and left to evolve in the Delta Quadrant as opposed to leaving it of their own free will. There is also the leadership, which either refuses to listen to anything that counters the narrative they believe in or know the truth yet forcefully push a specific narrative on their people to keep them compliant. Another theory that has gained traction in recent years that would neatly explain away these problems is that Chakotay and Gegen were just plain wrong. After all, we do know from The Chase that every humanoid species in the galaxy shares the same DNA. It really is not that much of a stretch using Star Trek science that this also stretches to the Voth and the dinosaurs in some capacity.
  • Q's line "Don't provoke the Borg!" in "Q 2". Does he fear that the Borg will eventually become able to assimilate the Q, does he fear getting into trouble for causing the Borg to do damage to other humanoids, or is it more the equivalent of telling someone not to play rough with a dog?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • One of the biggest sticking points of the series with fans, and a few of the writers, is that the Voyager crew acts so lackadaisical about being stuck on the other side of the galaxy, almost a century away from home. The plots where they worry about resources or energy are few and far between and the damage their ship suffers never lasts longer than one episode. Instead, they spend a lot of their time going out of their way to endanger the ship and waste its resources on by needlessly interacting with new alien cultures, exploring strange phenomena, and frequently having adventures on the holodeck. The show once tried to address this by having Janeway explain to Seven that they're explorers and aren't interested in just trying to make a beeline to Earth. However, this isn't true because not only is about half the crew is made up of Maquis rebels but we also learn in "Good Shepherd" that some people on the Starfleet side aren't that big into exploration either.
  • Trek author Keith R. A. DeCandido scathingly points out in his review of the pilot episode that despite many of Voyager's original Starfleet crew being killed - including her chief engineer, helmsman, entire medical staff, and first officer - Janeway and the other characters just forget about them from the show's second episode onward.
    "...if there was a TNG episode in which Riker, Ro, La Forge, Crusher, and Ogawa were all killed, it might, y’know, get mentioned once or twice... Yet the equivalent characters on Voyager are all killed, and by the second hour nobody seems to give a shit."
    • Future Janeway from the series finale doesn't care either, nor about anyone else who died or suffered significantly prior to the point where Seven dies in the future timeline. She could just have easily gone back in time to before Voyager left on their marquee hunting mission, but doesn't.
  • The Maquis part of the crew, guerrilla freedom fighters who hate Starfleet, agree to work under Starfleet rules, regulations and dress code by the beginning of the second episode with little resistance or complaint. Chakotay more or less acquiesces to Janeway's command right away and threatens any Maquis who step out of line with the brig or violence, with none of his former comrades getting upset at his behavior. The only Maquis member to truly speak out against Janeway is Seska, who is revealed to be a Cardassian spy and saboteur.
  • Voyager often comes into contact with friendly planets of similar levels of culture and technology as the Federation but no one on the crew ever wants to stay on them, preferring to continue the dangerous journey home that they likely will not live long enough to complete.
  • In "Tuvix", no one on the ship stands up for Tuvix even as he's begging and crying for them not to let Janeway kill him, despite them having spent almost a month working alongside him and the ethical dilemma of the captain deciding to destroy someone against their will to save two others. The only voice of dissent is the Doctor, who only says that his Hippocratic Oath prevents him from operating on an unwilling patient, forcing Janeway to split Tuvix herself.
• Awesome Music:
  • The stunning opening theme may be the most breathtakingly beautiful theme any Star Trek show has ever had, somehow being poignant, hopeful, and melancholy all at once and capturing the spirit of the show perfectly.
  • Rick Berman was infamous for wanting music on Star Trek to be as boring as possible, so it's surprising that he allowed a piece as exciting as the Species 8472 theme on his watch.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • VOY ranks as one of the more divisive Trek series, with fan debate and controversy continuing to this day — usually directed at Captain Janeway, who is considered the morally grey Captain. Given that Janeway had no oversight, no support, and could only share so many of her concerns and feelings with her fellow crewmembers, it's possible she simply filled whatever role she felt she needed to at any given time.
  • Neelix was a callback to several "fantasy" characters from the 1980s, particularly Hoggle from Labyrinth. Together with Kes, the writers were attempting to add alien characters who were reminiscent of the Fae. Young Trekkies supposedly loved him and his endless supply of cheer, but his hatedom is second only to Wesley Crusher. "Once Upon A Time" even had the actor add in a little bit where Neelix looks surprised that anybody could genuinely be happy to see him.
  • Chakotay is a charming presence and sex symbol to quite a few fans. To others, he's an infamous Ethnic Scrappy. The episodes with Robert Beltran noticeably phoning it in don't help much.
  • Harry Kim is s either a hopeless loser who never accomplishes much, or he's a lovable loser whose Undying Loyalty is endearing.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: There's a great TV Guide interview with Ryan from when she first joined where she stated skin tight catsuits and nine-inch heels = Masterpiece Theatre acting.
• Bizarro Episode: "Threshold". The crew's latest go-home plan involves a drive capable of infinite speed, which when tested on a shuttlecraft prompts Tom Paris to mutate into a giant space salamander, kidnap Janeway, turn her into a salamander too, and settle down on some random planet to have space salamander babies. It's small wonder no one ever mentioned it again. Plus, at episode's end they actually have a way home, and a cure for the problem it caused.
• Broken Base:
  • The issue of if Janeway could have used the array to get the crew home in the first episode. Janeway fans will give a myriad of reasons and explanations as to why Janeway couldn't have used the array to get home while others will either give counterarguments as to why she could or simply point out that the show itself repeatedly affirmed that Janeway could have used it but chose not to in order to protect the Ocampa.
  • The entire show, really. Many Trekkies like it, thinking that it's cool, funny, and action-packed. Others loathe the shaky writing, weak characterization, Neelix, and multiple cases of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. The numbers are about 50-50, and depend a lot on age (those who watched VOY growing up tend to like it more, just as those who were raised on TNG give its infamous first season a pass). The weak writing exacerbated matters, as contradictions abound—and Trekkies, a notoriously detail-obsessed fandom, will always pick over every last detail in an argument, no matter how small. In general, pickier fans rate Voyager lower than less-picky fans, although this is by no means universal. Meanwhile, fans who came to the franchise from TOS tend to consider VOY a return to form, after Next Gen got bogged down in technobabble and DS9 in a war.
  • "Scorpion". Fans of Janeway claim that she was defending the galaxy from a threat greater than the Borg. Anti-fans claim that she was using the equivalent of bioweapons against the only species able to easily defeat the Borg on the basis of limited information. The latter often point to the later episode "In the Flesh" to show that Species 8472 is nowhere near as evil as the Borg. For that matter, "In the Flesh" can itself be somewhat divisive, with some fans preferring 8472's original Absolute Xenophobe characterization, and others feeling that depicting them as such went against the franchise's ethos, and/or made them too much like the Daleks.
  • There's a split between fans who consider Seasons 1-3 to be better, and those who prefer Season 4-7. Those in the former group claim that whatever their quality, the earlier seasons at least tried to stay true to Gene Roddenberry's vision, and that the latter seasons betrayed said vision by instead going for the Darker and Edgier, more action-oriented style that DS9 and Star Trek: First Contact employed. On the other hand, those who prefer the newer seasons tend to point out that the show was in serious danger of cancellation by the end of Season 3, and that the Retool for Season 4 ensured that the show got to the full seven-season run that the two previous Trek shows did. Also, Season 4 introduced Seven, and Jeri Ryan's acting chops allowed for some very meaty stories involving the character — though this again is the cause of a divide, with some feeling that Seasons 4-7 focused too much on Seven (and to a lesser extent, the Doctor) at the expense of all the other characters, and that whatever other faults they may have had, Seasons 1-3 at least felt like more of an ensemble show.
  • While there are few who would say that Ransom in the episode Equinox was right to murder innocent creatures to get home, the controversy comes more from Janeway's uncompromising Captain Ahab level reaction that puts her own ship and crew at risk and nearly ends with her murdering an Equinox crew member in cold blood, and by all signs would have done if Chakotay hadn't stopped her. Was what he did so bad that she had to go all-out to stop him, should she have tried to be more diplomatic with him, or should she have backed off and let Starfleet put him on trial when he reached Earth? Muddying the waters substantially is the fact that the Equinox was stated to be an inferior ship to Voyager to the point that she lost half her crew within weeks of arriving in the Delta Quadrant and the rest were left starving and desperate on a broken ship that could not possibly have made it back home, meaning that this had suddenly become a kill or be killed type of situation which Janeway completely dismisses as she sits in complete comfort with hot coffee on tap.
  • Tuvix. You can barely even mention that name online without starting an argument. Basically, it's an episode where Neelix and Tuvok get merged into one guy, who calls himself "Tuvix", but when it comes time to split him, he doesn't want to "die", but gets split anyway. Some people agree that this is murder, but others are just glad to have Tuvok and Neelix back.
  • The "Think Tank" have their defenders. While they are certainly doing it for their own benefit and thus have to be thought of in that light, the fact is that they have saved millions of lives through their actions. Curing the Phage for example not only helps the Viidians but has stopped everyone in that region of space from being murdered for their organs. It does depend on where you sit on the Needs of the Many argument.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Among the many criticisms made of the show was that it featured too many holodeck episodes. However, this show actually features the smallest number of holodeck/holosuite-focused stories between it, TNG, and DS9, with such stories becoming comparatively rare after the start of Season 4. That being said, the holodeck stories that we do get include some of the show's more infamous episodes, (including the Fair Haven duology), and a lot of other episodes feature holodeck scenes that have little relation to the rest of the storyline, so it's easy to see why they've got such a contentious reputation.
  • We're told that along with the Millennium Gate, the Great Wall of China was one of the only man made objects visible from Earth's orbit by the naked eye before the 22nd century, which is certainly not the case; to name a few, the Great Pyramids of Giza, collections of cities, man-made geographical features (like Lake Mead in Nevada, Kennecott Copper Mine (an open pit mine) in Utah, and Flevoland in the Netherlands), and wakes of large ships at sea are all visible from space. What's more, the Great Wall is only visible from the lower part of low Earth orbit, and only under very favorable conditions.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Future's End" two-parter: Henry Starling was a hippie camping out in the mountains of California in 1967 when he discovers a crashed time ship from the 29th century. Starling takes tech from the ship, developing several computer products from it—creating the computer revolution of the 90s—forming a company called Choronowerx and becoming a powerful tech mogul. In 1996, Starling plans to use the time ship to go to the 29th century and steal more tech to make into products. This will cause a massive explosion that will wipe out Earth's solar system in that time. The Voyager crew arrives in 1996 to stop him, but Starling steals the Doctor's program and changes his program to torture him for information. Starling also rigs the time ship to explode if Voyager tries to beam it away, which would destroy Los Angeles. When Captain Janeway tells Starling his trip to the future will destroy the Earth in the 29th century, Starling does not care, willing to risk billions of lives for sake of his greed.
  • "Night": Controller Emck is a freighter captain for the Malon, an alien species that has technology comparable to the Federation, but also produces a large amount of toxic waste. While other Malon Controllers dump their toxic waste in uninhabited areas of space, Emck has found a vortex that leads to the void, a patch of space with no stars far away from Malon Prime. When Emck begins to release toxic gas into the void, the Night Aliens, who are native to the void, beg him to stop, but Emck refuses, caring more about his profit margins than the innocent beings he is killing. Emck's superior technology is too much for the Night Aliens to defeat, and Emck plans to continue to use their space as a dumping ground as long he can, not caring if all the Night Aliens die in the process. When the Night Aliens ask for Voyager to help, Voyager offers to give Emck tech that will get rid of the Malon's toxic waste by-product, but Emck refuses to accept it, saying it would put him out of business.
  • The Borg Queen makes further appearances. See here.
• Contested Sequel: Just scan this page. TOS, TNG and DS9 never took anywhere near as much flak, outside of the first year or so after they were broadcast. Opinions on this series finally seem to be settling down a little after the the launch of the even more divisive Star Trek: Discovery, though there's still some debate over whether this was an under-appreciated series that can now be considered Vindicated by History, or a largely So Okay, It's Average show that was usually watchable, but ultimately hurt by the producers and network not being willing to take any real risks.
• Designated Hero:
  • It is deeply uncomfortable to watch Janeway's public execution of Tuvix on the Bridge. He appeals to his friends, then when nobody speaks up in his defense, he tries to run but is dragged away by security officers.
  • Janeway might have forgotten the twenty times she has broken with the Prime Directive in order to get out of less dire situations than those of the Equinox crew, maybe due to the numerous Reset Buttons of the series causing her to develop amnesia. In the second episode she is positively psychotic in her condemnation of Ransom. (Not even Kate Mulgrew can make those lines convincing.) Chakotay is never better than in scenes where he clashes with Janeway—but, as usual, we end with, "I’ve re-instated Chakotay and we’ve set a course for home." It might as well be Braga's voice stating, Let's pretend this two-parter never happened and go back to doing high concept episodes.
• Designated Villain: Species 8472. Their initial appearance, in "Scorpion", has Janeway decide to ally with the Borg to destroy them because... one Species 8472 soldier attacked Harry while the away team was wandering around in a war zone and then fired a warning shot off Voyager's bow when they tried to tractor his ship, and because Kes (a telepath with powers that have consistently been shown to be unreliable and unstable) says that they're very angry and shouting xenophobic war cries telepathically. In fact, the show eventually walked back their status as The Dreaded in episodes like the season 4 finale, "Hope And Fear" and season 5's "In The Flesh," when Janeway does get called out on that controversial decision.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: By the cast, actually: Kate Mulgrew herself has been known to say in hindsight that she believes Captain Janeway was bipolar or otherwise mentally ill, due to the inconsistent writing of her character.
• Die for Our Ship: In romance fanfics, Chakotay or Seven is generally on the receiving end of this by J/C or J/7 shippers.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Doctor, he of endless Deadpan Snark and Character Development, was so much this, that he crossed the line into Breakout Character.
  • It may surprise some of you to know that Harry Kim has a not-insignificant fandom. For as much as Trekkies tease or lament his static portrayal (see below), it's because he's such a lovable loser that some fans flock to him, to say nothing of his Undying Loyalty.
  • Lieutenant Ayala. Never heard of him? That's probably because the character only got speaking lines in four of the 123 episodes he appeared in. Most of the images of him on his Memory Alpha article are of a slightly blurry guy in the background. But the fact that he survived seven seasons of Voyager as a bit character, plus some Silent Snarker moments, has given him his own fandom and he makes frequent appearances in fic.
  • John Rhys-Davies' holographic Leonardo da Vinci from "Scorpion" and "Concerning Flight" was well-received by fans, who wished they saw more of him throughout the series. Alas, that didn't happen due to Rhys-Davies signing on to the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy shortly afterwards.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Chakotay is sometimes seen like this. Despite being in a role of authority and a chief officer of Voyager, he's seen as a mishmash of all the worst traits of white people writing about Native Americans, including his mystical insight powers and tracking and survival mastery. Not helping the character is the background materials. All of Chakotay's backstory was Based on a Great Big Lie provided to the Voyager writers by a self-proclaimed Native American "expert" going by the name "Jamake Highwater", who later was revealed to be a fraud and had absolutely no Native American heritage whatsoever, and whose only knowledge of Native Americans came from Hollywood. The absolute worst part of this is that Robert Beltran, who is second-generation Mexican-American with a lot of Native American roots, ended up utterly furious at the portrayal he was being asked to perform, and has gone on to openly denounce his role in the show and break with a lot of the former crew (though he has a bit more sympathy for his castmates). Taken up to eleven in "Tattoo", an episode where Chakotay finds out that his ancestors were half-animal savages before magic space white men taught them how to be human. Although, according to said space men "half-animal savages" still made them the most advanced culture on the planet at the time.
• Expectation Lowerer: Ensign Harry Kim. Easily the least useful person aboard the ship. Even Neelix can lay claim to motivating the crew to do their best, or wheezing out a campfire song from time to time. Harry can't even get laid on the holodeck — that's how socially repressed he is. One tryst with a TOS-style space babe left him with a venereal disease... and Janeway wouldn't let him hear the end of it ("I wanted to leave a lasting impression"). Oddly, considering his manic desperation to get back to Earth, it is Harry who is assigned to the ship in "Future's End" While the others get to romp around in L.A. (And Harry Kim in command of Voyager is every bit as thrilling as you imagine.) He never wins one single Kal-toh game against Tuvok in their seven-year voyage, and Icheb only wins by disregarded Harry's seasoned 'advice'. After a while you begin to wonder if the show runners have it out for Garrett Wang.
  • The show runners intended to kill him off in "Scorpion", and he was only saved by Garrett Wang making the People Magazine list of "50 Most Beautiful People in the World".
  • This got even worse when it was revealed that Wang was the only actor in the entire franchise who ever had their request to direct an episode be refused by the producers. By this point he'd become so clearly constantly mistreated that some fans started accusing Rick Berman of having something against Asians.
  • At one point in "The Omega Directive", Seven solves a puzzle game that Harry is playing in about two seconds. Yes, she's a superintelligent Borg... but Harry's supposed to be an educated bridge officer! Even for Harry Kim this incident is pathetic.

F-N

• Fan Nickname:
  • "Captain Hepburn" for Janeway, due to the fact that she's basically a Katharine Hepburn look-a-like. Kate Mulgrew even starred in a play about Hepburn.
  • 'The Bun of Steel' (Janeway's original hairdo), plus her Gooey Look and Glare of Death.
  • Chakotay is often called Chak/Chuck, Commander Tat-face, and maybe Commander Studmuffin. Also "Chuckles" because Q called him that.
  • Seven of Nine's nicknames tend to focus on her... attributes, "38-of-D", "Sixty of Nine", "Barbie of Borg", "Silicone of Nine", etc etc.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Janeway and Chakotay. People who prefer this pairing (which evidently included the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch writers) tend to assume that Chakotay and Seven were just a brief fling, and that he and Janeway hooked up permanently after returning to Earth.
  • Seven and the Captain is also vastly preferred over Seven and Chakotay. For that matter, you can probably find more fans of almost any pairing than that one, even Tuvok/Neelix.
  • Since Naomi ages so fast, many fan-fics set when Naomi is older pair her and Icheb up.
• Fanon Discontinuity: There are a number of very silly plots, in the first two to three seasons in particular, that are written out of fan consciousness for the sake of mercy.
  • "Threshold", the episode where Tom Paris made it to Warp 10 and turns into a newt, is disregarded by the vast majority of fans. It helps that the episode's writer regretted it. However, Lower Decks not only treats it as canon, but says the events are now public knowledge! Prodigy has also referenced the events as canon.
  • "Twisted" isn't just hated by fans, it wasn't even well liked by the actors - in particular, it's Robert Picardo's least favorite episode, and Kate Mulgrew openly wanted it erased from canon.
  • Several of the post-TNG "Star Trek" spinoffs have had detractors in the fandom who prefered to ignore them. "Voyager" is no exception.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All:
  • Due to the fact that the crew is trapped on the other side of the galaxy with decades between them and home, the various members of the crew get shipped with everybody else on the ship (pun unavoidable). This includes Naomi Wildman, who by rights probably shouldn't be shipped.
  • And yet somehow, no one (at least on the Internet) appears to have shipped Seven of Nine and Ensign Wildman until 2015. Considering how many ships there are for characters who didn't even appear in the same series (Janeway/Dr. Crusher being a fairly common one), Seven and Samantha having shared at least one scene (Mortal Coil), AND Seven's friendship with Naomi, this seems like a natural fit.
• Growing the Beard:
  • Season 3 is commonly felt to be at least a little better than the first two seasons, with the "Future's End" two-parter in particular being considered to be where the show's overall quality started to drastically improve (in no small part due to the Doctor getting his mobile emitter). Seasons 4—7 are widely regarded as a major improvement.
  • In particular, seasons 4—7 showcased greater consistency in Janeway's character and decreased the Omnicidal Trigger-Happy aspects of her personality a fair bit. The story plots also became less stupid, to some degree, and Seven of Nine became a regular character as well (this coincided with less screentime for characters like Chakotay, which really didn't hurt at all).
  • In addition, those less popular characters like Chakotay, Harry Kim and Neelix had the traits that people found annoying toned down. Chakotay's Magical Native American mysticism faded away and he acted more normal (with a couple of exceptions, like the lucid-dream episode); Harry became less of a "dweeb" and started to stand up to Tom more, and earned command of night shifts; and Neelix's obnoxious traits were somewhat reduced as he took up the kindness and responsibilities of being a morale officer (this due largely to breaking up with Kes in Season 3, and later Kes leaving the ship, so he couldn't remain so jealous of her). It also helped that Neelix got less screen time and at one point even recognized how annoying he was in "Once Upon A Time"—ironically an episode where Neelix was being relatively innocuous.
  • Also, the Kazon stopped showing up after season 3 (except in flashbacks or as holograms) and were replaced by worthier opponents like the Hirogen and Borg.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Kes is a sweet, alien presence on the ship whose powers eventually become a great source of fear. Kes's struggles to control her psychic powers and the resulting toll on her sanity are harder to watch in light of Jennifer Lien's own subsequent struggles with mental illness. Jennifer Lien's life since leaving the show after three years' involvement has become one of those we don’t talk about it subjects.
  • The Kazon were mocked by cast and crew alike for being incompetent at their jobs, to the point where the show itself occasionally insulted them in later seasons. It becomes a little less funny when you remember that Janeway blew up the array to prevent the Kazon from having it, meaning that she gave up her crew's first chance to return home in order to keep advanced technology from a bunch of glorified pirates who couldn't figure out how to work a replicator without blowing up their ship.
  • Spock's "needs of the many" statement really hits hard over the argument of whether or not "killing" Tuvix to save Tuvok and Neelix was justified.
  • Q Junior’s friendship with Icheb in "Q2" becomes this when one remembers what happens to the latter in Star Trek: Picard.
  • In "Message In A Bottle", the Doctor gets sent to a Starfleet vessel, the USS Prometheus, which has been captured by Romulans. Eventually, the Romulans see through the Doctor's lies that he is the Prometheus's own EMH and they effectively threaten to torture him if he doesn't tell them the truth. Star Trek: Picard would show that the Romulans have a severe distrust of artificial intelligences, with Word of God describing the term "Romulan cyberneticist" as being akin to "Nazi doctor". Thus, their threats against the Doctor during his interrogation come off as much more ominous.
  • Harry Kim infamously never got a promotion on the show. While the non-canon Star Trek Online would give him command of the Rhode Island, he almost got to be the Captain of the Voyager-B on Picard—only for that planned cameo to be scrapped.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Seven of Nine's rediscovery of the humanity she lost to The Borg, as well as being mentored by Captain Janeway, winds up paying off in spades come Star Trek: Picard, when she's made Captain of the Enterprise-G, aka the flagship of Starfleet. Janeway^note who was supposed to appear to make it happen, but sadly got cut would be very proud.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Seska taking the piss out of Chakotay’s Indian mysticism in "State of Flux"... which turned out to be a load of crap being peddled by a self-proclaimed "expert" in the field.
  • In "False Profit", Neelix undergoes surgery to resemble a Ferengi in order to out-con a pair of stranded Ferengi swindlers. Ethan Phillips played a Ferengi in "Menage a Troi" on TNG. He would go on to play one of the 'first' Ferengi in the Enterprise episode. "Acquisition".
  • Watch very closely in the last act of "One", when Jeri Ryan hallucinates the cast behaving in a hostile way towards her. Only Kate Mulgrew can pull this off with believable venom. Everybody else sounds a little embarrassed. Stripping the show of everything but Seven and the Doctor was ratings dynamite, but the real star was more than a little put out.
  • In "The Voyager Conspiracy", Seven Of Nine develops symptoms similar to paranoid schizophrenia caused by self-induced information overload and cites unrelated events as "proof" that the Federation is plotting to conquer the galaxy. In 2011, a group of neurobiologists who believe schizophrenia might be caused by a lack of information filtering in the brain tested their theory by overloading an A.I. with data, which then proceeded to spout off schizophrenic statements—including taking responsibility for a terrorist bombing.
  • In "Virtuoso", the Doctor is worshipped as a celebrity/supermodel by a culture that has never experienced music before. The Doctor packs up and leaves Voyager to retire to a planet that appreciates his talents...only to find himself replaced by a singing computer program which can surpass his humanoid vocal range.
  • After the chef on this show got a mixed reaction, on Orange Is the New Black Kate Mulgrew took over the kitchen, and is one of that show's most popular characters.
  • In "Dark Frontier", Magnus Hansen tells Annika (a younger Seven) to put down the Borg cube model. "It's not a toy." It actually is a toy: the Borg cube by Playmates.
  • Captain Braxton's maxim, "A leads to B, and B leads to C", will never sound the same again in a post-Human Centipede world.
  • In "Worst Case Scenario" by Kenneth Biller, Torres pesters Paris about injecting some romance into his holo-novel. When Biller became executive producer and showrunner in Season 7, Paris and Torres moved past the occasional Ship Tease and got married.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Maneuvers," the Kazon torture Chakotay by punching and beating him, and are frustrated when he refuses to talk. Come Season 5's "The Fight," we learn that getting punched is Chakotay's favorite hobby. No wonder he was laughing at Cullah during that interrogation.
  • Chakotay aids Janeway in contacting her animal guide early in Season 1...and it's represented as a tokay gecko? Not the last time Janeway is going to be associated with lizards.
  • During "Favorite Son", the Nasari's ship name is the Nerada.
  • In "Hope and Fear", the USS Dauntless's registry is NX-01-A. On Star Trek: Enterprise, the Enterprise's registry is NX-01, so, in hindsight, this should've been a telltale sign that something was amiss.
  • The last we see of Carey is when he's confined to quarters for the duration of the investigation. In later seasons the writers would use Carey for Whole Episode Flashback scenes as they wrongly assumed he'd been killed. They realised otherwise when they needed a Mauve Shirt for Season 7's "Friendship One", creating the inadvertent impression that Carey had been locked up in his cabin all that time!
  • Mike Stoklasa brought up the fact that Voyager's Grand Finale involved Janeway traveling back in time to undo the deaths of her friends, steals important technology from the past so they'll be armed in the future, has a disagreement with her past self, is greeted by an army of her allies upon her return to regular time, and ends up sacrificing herself to destroy the villain's army. The name of the final episode? "Endgame".
  • In "Year Of Hell", Kate Mulgrew and Kurtwood Smith each eventually played characters called "Red". Mulgrew playing Galina "Red" Reznikov on Orange Is the New Black and Smith playing Reginald "Red" Forman on That '70s Show and That '90s Show. For added hilarity, all three shows co-starred Laura Prepon and That '90s Show is set in 1995, the same year Voyager premiered.
  • In "Timeless", Harry reveals that he and Chakotay got a Borg temporal transmitter from a cube found in the Beta Quadrant. In Star Trek: Picard, a wrecked cube in Romulan space (generally agreed to be in the Beta Quadrant as well) is a major plot point. In fact, Word of God confirms that they're the same cube.
• Ho Yay:
  • One interpretation of Harry Kim is that he's closeted homosexual who seeks out unattainable women in order to justify his bachelorhood and hide his unrequited love for Tom. In "Demons", where they are the first of the Silver Blood duplicates to exist, essentially making them Adam and Eve. In "Non Sequitor". Harry gives up his hot fiance and promising career to reunite with Tom.
  • Chakotay/Paris also has a sizable following. It's easy to read their feud as the result of their being bitter ex-boyfriends.
  • Any time Tuvok mind-melds with another man (see "Meld" and "Random Thoughts") the whole thing is replete with subtext.
• Inferred Holocaust: Inverted with "Dragon's Teeth". The bad guys escape to menace the Delta Quadrant... But yet, there were only 600 of them, many of whom obviously died in the preceding battle. Gedrin's attitude indicates there may be strife with within what little is left of them, but even failing that, their technology is so out of date that it takes 10's of their ships just to threaten ONE modern vessel. Further reinforced by the fact that some of them get trapped in a void later on.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Amongst the most common complaints by the series' detractors within the Star Trek fanbase is the accusation that Voyager wasted a lot of its potential by more often than not choosing to conform to the template for episode plots and overall series direction that was laid out by Next Generation, when the series, ideally, should have taken more chances and made a greater attempt at challenging or even outright break free of them, like Deep Space 9 did.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Due to how close the crew wound up becoming with each other, there are multiple fics for virtually every pair imaginable, almost all of them pretty justifiable. However, honorable mention must go to Janeway, Seven, and Tom Paris, who get the most action in the fan fiction. (Janeway, because being the captain, she had a close relationship with each senior officer; Tom, by being the guy who tried to befriend everyone; and Seven, for obvious reasons.
• Les Yay: Janeway/Seven. Particularly when Seven is seen reattaching one of Janeway's rank pips while rhe latter asks Seven if she's ever considered romance. The finale has Janeway travelling back in time to save Seven Of Nine. The deaths of various earlier crewmembers such as Carey don't register enough for Janeway to go even further back in time, or prevent Voyager from going into the badlands and saving her first officer, doctor, nurse, and helmswoman among others.
• LGBT Fanbase: Lesbians. Love. Janeway. Quite a few of Star Trek's queer fans grew up idolizing Janeway, and of course, she and Seven are a popular ship. It seems only fitting that Kate Mulgrew would wind up on Orange Is the New Black, another show with a rabid LGBT following. It helps that she actually was intended to be a lesbian before the writers chickened out.
• Memetic Loser: Harry Kim spends the entire series as an ensign, gets killed off and resurrected more than anyone else, gets kidnapped multiple times, and is the only character in the franchise to be formally reprimanded for Boldly Coming. SF Debris coined the phrase "Poor, dumb Harry" to highlight every pitiful moment he has, and there are many.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • A segment of the Voyager fandom has taken to celebrating "Threshold Day" on January 29th, the original airdate of the infamous episode. They commemorate the occasion with essays, fanart, japery, and a unanimous consensus that Chakotay should have taken the amphibified Janeway and Paris' offspring back instead of abandoning them on the planet.
  • "Are you two friends?" "Yes." "No." ^ExplanationFrom Season 3, Episode 14. Used when a group thinks they are in a good relationship with another group, when they really aren't.
  • "Humans"^Explanation This screencap of a Kazon has a striking resemblance to the Ancient Aliens meme◊. Naturally, the internet jumped on it.
• Memetic Psychopath: Janeway, largely thanks to SF Debris' take on her as a genocidal, trigger-happy megalomaniac.
• Moe:
  • Kes is kindhearted, soft-spoken, small in stature and very cute. She's even more Moe next to Neelix.
  • Quite a few fans find Harry Kim to be this trope, maybe because he's such a well-meaning Butt-Monkey.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm:
  • The part in "Flesh And Blood" where Janeway notes that the holodeck technology wasn't given to the Hirogen for them to get themselves killed. While she clearly wasn't suggesting that this was their actual goal, the implication was still quite funny.
  • "Meld" has a seriously epic Take That, Scrappy! moment where Tuvok strangles a Holodeck recreation of Neelix. Except the way Neelix's body collapses, with the weird head-tilt, isn't so much "corpse" as it is "say whaaaaat?"
• Narm Charm:
  • The perfect line from "Learning Curve": "Get the cheese to sickbay".
  • "Bride of Chaotica" is fueled by this trope, with the affectionate parody of Flash Gordon films, the Ming the Merciless-inspired Doctor Chaotica, and Janeway openly being an evil overlord. And it is GLORIOUS! There's even a moment when the holodoc, as the President of Earth, makes a joke about being unimpeachable. ^note (This was soon after President Clinton was impeached)
  • "Macrocosm" features Janeway going full Ripley on a swarm of giant-sized flying microbes that look like turnips with tentacles. It's both absolutely ridiculous and badass as all hell.
  • "Riddles" sees Tuvok reduced to a Manchild Blank Slate after an alien attack. He decides to become a Fun Personified pastry chef whose best friend is Neelix. Thanks to copious amounts of effort from both actors, it's an episode as touching as it is deeply weird.
• Nausea Fuel: While Seven of Nine's catsuit was Best Known for the Fanservice, it becomes this trope when you realize it was made to keep her organs from falling out of the holes created in her body from her mechanical parts being removed until they could heal.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Janeway's decision to intervene in the development of the Ocampa is pretty clearly a violation of the Prime Directive. She compounded this by then starting a shooting war with the Kazon and blowing up the array, stranding everyone in the Delta Quadrant. In Nemesis, she winds up commanding a desk until retirement. Critics argue that she belonged in that penal colony she pulled Tom out of. The War of the Masters (a Shared Universe on the Star Trek Online forums) chalks it up as simply being thrust into circumstances well-beyond her skill level.
  • "Threshold". Paris travels at infinite speed, becomes a catfish, and impregnates catfish Janeway. And he's cured via injections of "anti-matter."
    Brannon Braga: I’ve written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up, you know? "Brannon Braga, who wrote Threshold!"
  • Neelix fumbling his duties in "Basics Part 2", resulting in two deaths as a direct result of his incompetence in a field he claimed expertise in.
  • Neelix robbing the cradle with Kes. The writing staff were aware of Neelix's base-breaking tendencies, and the season 2 episode "Parturition" was ironically intended to kill the love triangle between him and Tom. That didn't work as planned: it resulted in Tom looking like an upright adult while Neelix behaved like a jealous psycho.
  • "Tuvix" is the result of a Teleporter Accident between Tuvok and Neelix. He's shown to be his own individual. He has the memories of both, but his own personality, thoughts, desire. Yet Janeway is absolutely gung ho about getting Tuvok and Neelix back (a process that will end Tuvix' existence and life). A conversation between Tuvix and Janeway basically has her admit that as captain she should be the one to decide who lives or dies. No one in the crew stands up for Tuvix or even call for the matter to be discussed further, even as he pleads for his life on the bridge. Eventually he resigns himself and assures the crew that they are good people despite the fact they are about to kill him. The only person who takes a stance is The Doctor, and that's limited to how he'll refuse to engage the procedure personally, so Janeway does it: beaming a sentient being out of existence because the process would revive two of her friends, effectively taking one life to save two. This decision (which is, unquestionably, one of the most brutal scenes in the whole franchise) is a heated subject of debate even today.
  • Thanks to a throwaway line in "The 37's," B'Elanna Torres gained the reputation as a Chief Engineer who can't identify anything, even with a tricorder. Even though the idea behind the line was that the Federation had moved well past the need to use animal excrement to fertilize their crops, and it was far from the first time that a character from the franchise's present day had been befuddled by something from the 20th century.^note (Admittedly, the line would probably have made a lot more sense had it been given to someone who was alien and/or had a sheltered upbringing — such as Kes or Harry — as Torres was part of the Maquis, where it's far easier to imagine their more isolated existence might force them to resort to using animal products to grow crops)
  • Harry Kim and how he never gets promoted. Or how his life just sucks in general.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Star Trek: Elite Force is widely-considered to be one of the best Trek games ever released, and the level of consistency between it and the show is probably one of the main reasons why. In the game, you're issued bulky phaser rifles, beam over to Borg cubes, and kick ass, not unlike in those VOY episodes where the show was firing on all cylinders.

O-S

• Older Than They Think: Chakotay wasn't the first depiction of a Native American in the sci-fi genre, as Andre Norton (among others) had characters like Hosteen Storm and Kade Whitehawk.
• One-Scene Wonder: The puff-nosed alien from "Counterpoint".
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The possibility that the "loved ones" you see during an Near-Death Experience are actually beings who want to devour your soul. As if this weren't horrible enough, it could also mean that many religions are essentially massive farming operations, as people conditioned to unquestioningly trust certain religious figures would be likely to follow them into the light without a second thought.
  • Well, we also know now that the Klingon religion is true, or at least can be manifested—although that in itself might be a cause for Paranoia Fuel—which indicates that other religions are true as well. We also have verification that spirituality and unknown planes of existence exists as well, courtesy of "Sacred Ground", and that belief and faith do in fact have an impact on the real world. Now that is both awesome and insanely confusing, and now we can be absolutely sure that someone is out there watching the confusion and laughing their head off. Not that Q wasn't doing a wonderful job already...
  • Although the existence of Klingon Hell seems (to some viewers) to be ambiguous, not really saying one way or another if Torres was actually in hell, or simply hallucinating due to the concussion.
• Popularity Polynomial: The show's reputation has been up and down like a roller-coaster over the years. It launched to great hype and was heralded as the true successor to TNG, but by around the early second season started being seen as an inferior rehash of that show. Seven of Nine's introduction and a slight Retool in the fourth season got things back on track for a bit, but following the franchise as a whole falling into an Audience-Alienating Era in the early-mid 2000s, the show became something of a whipping boy for Star Trek fandom. The show's reputation started picking up a little in the 2010s, however, with some coming to appreciate its light-hearted and episodic nature in light of the Darker and Edgier and Continuity Lockout-prone sci-fi shows that became popular after Voyager ended, and then it really started seeing a positive re-evaluation after the launch of Star Trek: Discovery, to the point where its current reputation may well be the best it's been at any point since the show launched. It's certainly by no means the worst-regarded anymore, by almost anyone, Discovery is far more controversial and Enterprise is more or less the fandom's designated punching bag.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Against all odds, both the writers and Ethan Philips underplay his scenes in the last years. So instead of driving home a heavy handed moral message, these scenes are actually rather affecting. He’s still the softest touch in the Quadrant but this time he backs up his opinions with hard evidence. Ambassador Neelix detects a scent of untruth about the Vaadwaur and it is nice to see him investigating behind the scenes (as opposed to his sudden inclusion on the bridge) because it adds a level of believability to the ship's everyday running. A nice reminder that he is more than just the ship's cook. Neelix still has some surprises up his sleeve in "The Void." In the end, Neelix is an Ambassador in the Delta Quadrant. Ethan Philips should be happy to have exited the show (he gets cameos in the last two episodes) on a high, rather than being shuffled into the disappointing "Endgame."
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Jay "Dutch Wagenbach" Karnes assisting Captain Braxton in "Relativity."
  • A pre-Lost Daniel Dae Kim appears in "Blink of an Eye."
  • For non-wrestling fans, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's acting debut was in the episode "Tsunkatse".
  • Kyra Hart was reincarnated as Naomi Wildman in the future of Star Trek.
  • Sarah Silverman in "Future's End", especially for non-US fans who would not have seen her on Saturday Night Live.
• The Scrappy:
  • Neelix due to his poor chemistry with the rest of the cast, particularly Tuvok (in spite of the show clearly trying to portray them as an Odd Couple), his possessiveness over Kes and in some cases, being an outright danger to the crew.
  • Chakotay has this among Native American Trekkies (as well as the actor himself!) for Ethnic Scrappy reasons.
• Seasonal Rot: Depends who you ask, but season two is frequently chosen. It contained some of the show's least popular storylines (with fans and eventually writers) and famously led longtime Trek reviewer Tim Lynch to stop watching. The show improved steadily from here, beginning by finally giving up on trying to interest the audience in the Kazons, probably the least popular recurring alien culture in Trek history.
  • Alternatively, some people would say that the first four seasons are the best, and the rot began to set in around season five, when a change in showrunner saw Janeway undergo an abrupt personality change from a Team Mom to a Depending on the Writer Designated Hero, and the Status Quo Is God kicked in to such an extent that every character developed Aesop Amnesia (especially Spotlight-Stealing Squad Seven of Nine) and learned the same lessons over and over again. Thing got worse in season six as a new staff writer brought over from Deep Space Nine quit after three episodes over how directionless the show was. Ideas, such as Voyager reviving a race of ancient conquerors, were raised and promptly dropped, two whole episodes were devoted to a holodeck village full of Irish stereotypes, and the long-awaited return of popular character Kes turned into a kick-in-the-teeth as she underwent a Face–Heel Turn for no real reason in a Timey Wimey plot that ended up not happening. Things got a bit better in season seven, as long-unresolved plot threads were picked up and there was actual character development, but there was still a high proportion of dull episodes, with a poor lead-in to a rather divisive finale.
• Shocking Moments:
  • While "Coda" had some definite problems, the scene where the Doctor euthanizes the Phage-infected Janeway is downright chilling. Also, the scene shortly thereafter where Chakotay tries and fails to bring Janeway back with CPR; this doubles as a Tear Jerker.
  • The introduction of Species 8472, easily overwhelming the Borg, is one of the best teasers in the entire show.
  • Much of "Year Of Hell" (parts 1 and 2) runs on this, with a timeship that can erase entire species and civilizations, versus Voyager, which gets ravaged till there's practically nothing left of the ship, the crew, or Janeway's sanity.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • "Threshold" has minor Cult Classic status among fans, with some even celebrating "Threshold Day" on the anniversary of the episode's original air date. It helps that unlike some other "franchise low point" Trek episodes, "Threshold" is just an extremely ridiculous Bizarro Episode rather than being outright offensive (like TNG's "Code of Honor").
  • Intentionally invoked with "The Adventures of Captain Proton" for the Narm Charm.
• So Okay, It's Average: Quite a few fans agree in retrospect that this was the show's biggest problem. It's not that most of the episodes are really especially bad — outside of the first two seasons, at least, and even then Star Trek: The Next Generation and to a lesser extent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had the same issue — as they're entertaining, but generally not as memorable as those of TOS and TNG or as risk-taking as those of DS9. While a small subset of fans actually like the series because it follows the formula of TNG so closely, the more general viewpoint seems to be that it needed to evolve TNG's format instead of just duplicating it.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • "Scientific Method." Try not to laugh when Chakotay rapidly-ages; his face is elderly, but from the neck down he's still pretty buff for an old man. Although considering Robert Beltran's seeming immortality (he still looks like he could kill you with one punch), guess this wasn't so far-fetched after all.
  • While this example by no means detracts from the beauty of it, Word of God states that in the last shot of the opening sequence (done in CGI), the three (incredibly tiny, almost window-like) grey patches on the bottom of the Voyager's nose before it jumps into warp were actually missing texture spaces.
  • "Threshold" is generally considered as the worst episode in this series. The effects certainly don't help. What makes it even worse is that it defeated DS9's highly acclaimed, heartbreaking fan-favorite "The Visitor" for a Best Makeup Emmy!
  • The lightning/plasma disc/plate on the Borg alcove, essential component of Borg technology related to the Borg's regeneration cycle and connection to the Borg hive mind, or cheap novelty item for your home?
  • In one episode, the Doctor uses a dermal regenerator on Chakotay that is obviously a carrot peeler with a glowy light where the scraper should be.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The series is essentially Star Trek does Lost in Space.
• Strangled by the Red String: Seven of Nine/Chakotay. After three and a half seasons of them having only a professional relationship and almost no interaction outside of business, Seven suddenly develops an unrequited attraction to Chakotay in the second half of the final season. But in the finale the two have suddenly become romantically involved, with Chakotay having fallen completely head over heels for her in the span of... well, the theme song. Enforced: the writers were getting back at Robert Beltran (Chakotay) for badmouthing the show by pairing him with Jeri Ryan (Seven), whom he didn't get along with offscreen.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • A great many episodes have situations in which they have an opportunity to do something that would be very advantageous for the crew, only to have Captain Janeway refuse for reasons typically related to the Prime Directive. Some character inevitably complains about her decision and points out that her moral arguments for why they can't take advantage of the opportunity don't actually make any sense, but they're always portrayed as being wrong, while Janeway is right.
  • In the pilot episode, we're supposed to see Janeway's decision to destroy the Array that brought them to the Delta Quadrant in order to protect the Ocampa, rather than using it to get home, as a noble choice. However, Tuvok pointed out that destroying the Array would not only leave them stranded but could be considered a violation of the Prime Directive because it would affect the balance of power in that sector. He's waved off with a one sentence bit of "wisdom" from Janeway about how they're already involved so the Prime Directive no longer applies. When B'lanna also objects, she's told to shut up because Janeway is the captain. What's frustrating is that they undermined the whole dilemma by having Tuvok mention that the Array would take several hours to use without the Caretaker's help and that was before a Kazon ship crashed into it, disabling the self-destruct and God knows how many other systems, so they probably couldn't use it in the time they had.
  • Shortly before she defects to the Kazon in the first season, Seska delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Janeway. While the episode tries to make her out as being a raving lunatic, it's hard not to agree with some (if not all) of Seska's criticisms... the only problem is that she wants to barter technology with the Kazon. Forgetting all ethical arguments, these people killed themselves with a replicator. Plus, Voyager with all its technology is a force to be reckoned with. Giving away its technology (which could be sold off and/or duplicated) would dilute its strategic advantage as a highly-advanced Starfleet ship.
  • A variation: in "Gravity" the audience is supposed to agree with Tom Paris that the human way of being in touch with our emotions and having them in our lives is the right way, in contrary opposition to the Vulcan master who taught Tuvok to suppress his emotions. Paris has a real problem with accepting that Vulcans aren't humans. Vulcans claim their emotions are far more volatile, erratic and all-consuming than those of humans, and that for a Vulcan being in love can be ''legitimately'' destructive, and not in the metaphoric sense that humans use.^note They're not just assuming that their emotions are stronger; remember that Vulcans have mind-melded with humans, putting them in a position to compare their emotions^note Any scientific study on the matter would require studying the emotions of Vulcans who don't bother with emotional repression, conducted by an observer (likely non-Vulcan, maybe Betazoid?) who is capable of an unbiased assessment and preferably doesn't know who does or doesn't try repressing their emotions. Not to mention that other episodes of this show have Tuvok fully justify his emotional repression by demonstrating to people what it looks like when he lets it go^note Most of those involve either mind control or are ambiguous as to whether they would have happened had he never repressed his emotions in the first place.. (This is a fairly common writing mistake with Vulcans in general: they're frequently portrayed as being just super-stuck up, repressed humans rather than The Fettered.)
• Stoic Woobie: Seven. As good as she is at keeping her emotions in check, you know when she starts getting just slightly teary-eyed or starts acting even somewhat angry, she's really feeling it.

T-Z

• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • In "The Thaw", the crew are in the middle of a difficult debate on the nature of fear, trying to find a way to deal with a Monster Clown that has taken over a Lotus-Eater Machine and is capable of physically scaring the inhabitants to death. Neelix suggests telling jokes to overcome the Monster Clown, under the reasoning that laughter overcomes fear. The rest of the crew just stare at him with a collective look of irritated disgust as he splutters out mid-sentence, realising how badly his idea is going over with everyone. Unfortunately for the audience, not only doesn't this happen every time Neelix's opens his mouth, but it's actually one of his better ideas and at least has some degree of logic to it. A very similar solution (laughter cancelling out hatred) worked in the TOS episode "Day of the Dove".
  • In "Meld", Tuvok fears he is losing his self-control after a mind-meld with a psychopath. He decides to test the limits of his self-control by exposing himself to the circumstances that he thinks are most likely to make him snap by simulating them on the holodeck. His choice? Having to share a room with Neelix at his most obnoxious. Needless to say, he discovers what his limit is.
  • In "Rise," Tuvok chastises Neelix for wasting time in idle conversation when they're under serious pressure to repair an orbital tether so they can escape a disaster. The Aesop of the episode is that Tuvok needs to lighten up and be friendlier to his coworkers, but it's pretty hard to see the situation they're in and not think, "Seriously, Neelix, just shut up and do your job for once."
  • The aforementioned line about the Borg refusing to assimilate the Kazon because they had no useful characteristics at all.
  • Neelix suffers Eye Scream in "Tattoo", the only amusing part of an otherwise interminable and racist episode.
• They Really Can Act:
  • Jeri. freakin'. Ryan. She would've been easy to dismiss as a mere Ms. Fanservice, but knocked every major acting moment out of the park, ranging from Tear Jerker to comedy. Her flawless imitation of Robert Picardo when Seven is possessed by the Doctor in "Body and Soul" alone would qualify her for this trope.
  • Garrett Wang achieved He Really Can Act status in season 5's "Timeless." It's no secret that Wang was rarely given a chance to shine by the powers that be, with Harry Kim constantly stuck in the naive, wide-eyed Ensign Newbie persona (hell, "Nightingale" from season 7 had a great scene in which he lampshades this). So when he has to carry a particularly emotional arc - in this case, an older, more driven Harry Kim, fifteen years in the future, trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong - he nails it, which is one reason "Timeless" is a fan favorite.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Just watch an episode with the crew behaving out of character ("Meld", "Remember", "Night", "Nemesis", "Timeless", "Memorial", and particularly "Workforce") to see how wasted their talents were on most weeks.
  Joe Ford: Mulgrew is trying so hard to give this material some meaning but she’s fighting a losing battle — watching her try so hard is like watching the crew trying to save the Titanic.
  • Tim Russ' performance is generally regarded as the best portrayal of a Vulcan since Leonard Nimoy's Spock, and the second-best in the Trek Verse as a whole. Tuvok's character was also just as interesting and complex as Spock's, but in different ways. Although Spock was primarily a scientist who occasionally lost emotional control, Tuvok's calling, or instinctive vocation, was as a warrior, while as a native Vulcan he had been born into a culture that had rejected violence. As such, he was a deeply psychologically conflicted individual, and despite the fact that he was able to hide it most of the time, there were incidents where the audience were shown what was beneath the surface.
  • Harry Kim. In a series primarily focused around social/political/academic rejects, Harry represented a callback to Trek's earlier depiction of Earth being a post-scarcity Utopia, which had solved most of its problems, and had rejected war.
  • Roxann Dawson is one of the unsung heroes of Voyager, often overshadowed by Ryan and Mulgrew even though she, too, can play multiple compelling characters. An overlooked relationship on Voyager is that of Torres and Kim, who come from completely different worlds and yet find themselves working together throughout the pilot trying to get home. He calls her ‘Maquis’ for a while and she calls him ‘Starfleet'. Here it is suggested, albeit briefly, that there is an attraction between them but that is immediately dropped in favor of the running gag with the Delaney Twins.
  • Seska could have been a very interesting cast member, offering morally ambiguous solutions and a point of conflict for both the Maquis and Starfleet crew if they'd let her stay—after all, she'd want to get home too—especially if/when they learned about the Dominion War and what that did to Cardassia. Instead, they made her a mustache-twirling villain (figuratively, of course) who decided to throw her lot in with a misogynistic society of rock-stupid gangbangers that couldn't even figure out how to use a replicator.
  • Most of Kes' episodes revolved around her latent powers. Which was cool and all, but the concept of the Ocampa species is basically an inversion of the Trill and Dax from DS9. Sure, it's wobbly science, but only a few of her episodes explored what it would be like for a person who has less than a decade to experience the universe.
  • This show had a horrible habit of introducing potentially interesting recurring characters and then either getting rid of them only a couple of episodes later or just never using them again. Carey mostly disappeared after the first season, Hogan was unceremoniously killed, Jonas was killed instead of imprisoned (where he could have made a good recurring anti-villain) and they phased out Wildman and Vorik for no reason. Interesting characters like Dalby, Chell, Suder, Lessing, Ceres, etc. were never used again after their introduction (with the exception of Chell, once, several years later, and not to the best effect; and Suder who was killed in his second appearance).
  • Garrett Wang openly complained about Harry Kim's utter lack of character development and being constantly written as the Ensign Newbie right up to the end of the series seven years into the journey. The Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch series and Star Trek Online rapidly moved to fix this, starting with jumping him two grades to lieutenant, and ending with him in command of the USS Rhode Island in STO's Delta Rising expansion (as he had in the alternate future in "Endgame"). In addition, fans have been pleasantly surprised to discover that Garrett Wang himself is Fun Personified at conventions and fan events, leading many to lament that Wang's real personality would've been a huge improvement over the one-dimensional Always on Duty characterization of Kim.
  • Neelix is a draft-dodger who lost his family in a war which displaced his species; he spent the rest of his life trying to survive in a hostile region any way he could. His initial role is the ship's guide. Before long Voyager passes beyond the worlds he's familiar with, leaving him with no purpose. That is the main conflict in this character, and it should be a layered performance. That's not to say that Neelix had the potential to reach Seven of Nine levels of complexity (Ethan Phillips cannot convey anger and loses all credibility when he tries), but he had a lot more promise in "Caretaker". By the last season, they’ve stopped pretending that Neelix is worth anything more than a contractual appearance in the Mess Hall while delivering bouquets to more-interesting characters. (The writers keep forgetting that they have Neelix’s junker at their disposal... because he almost never flies the damn thing!) Seven asks Neelix if he doesn’t have more important duties to attend to than playing games with her and he simply answers, "Nothing that can’t wait," when the real answer should have been "No."
  • Janeway herself. Her characterization is infamously inconsistent to the point that Kate Mulgrew actually posited that Janeway was mentally ill. Meanwhile, Mulgrew's acting is actually one of the strongest elements of the show; it's not unreasonable to state that a more consistently-written Janeway would've removed most if not all of the Broken Base moments in the show's run.
  • Chakotay. A badass rebel leader with a Native American past? Just make sure that you don't portray him as a racist stereotype and have him consistently serve as a foil to the straight-laced Janeway, he'd be essentially a Spear Counterpart to Kira Nerys in a situation much better suited to rebel-leader skills. Instead, Chakotay's role mostly consists of nodding when Mulgrew says an important line, acting out racist stereotypes of amalgamated Native American spirituality, and looking stern. No wonder actor Robert Beltran openly dissed Voyager in interviews.
  • Remember Ensign Jetal from "Latent Image", the character that died because the EMH had to make a choice to save one of two patients? She would have been the perfect character to bring back in the season 6 episode "Ashes to Ashes", rather than giving us Ensign Ballard, a character that, despite having been long-time friends with Harry Kim and had died on a mission prior, had never even been mentioned or alluded to whatsoever.
  • Remember the female Caretaker and her space station full of super powered Ocampa from Cold Fire? Remember Old Kes from Fury who had become a bitter and twisted super powered Ocampa? Remember how all these people have a grudge against Voyager? Well congratulations, because none of these interesting characters are ever heard from again despite Fury being the perfect opportunity to do so.
  • The episode "The 37's" involves the crew finding the frozen bodies of Amelia Earhart and several other humans from 20th Century Earth. After the 37's are revived, they don't do anything. One of the most famous aviators in history is a character on Star Trek, and she takes up space. There could have been an interesting story about the mysterious aliens who kidnapped people from the other side of the galaxy, but we don't get that either.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The entire series had a potentially interesting premise - a starship stranded light years from home in dangerous territory with supplies and resources depleting and reguarly suffering damage. What should have been a tense and dramatic scenario was severly undermined by the series' infamous use of the reset button and general apathy by the writers in regards to continuity and character.
  • The first episode established a conflict between Chakotay and Tom Paris due to the former being a former Maquis that's never brought up again. Think about the drama that could have been mined from a starship crew that doesn't fully trust each other (in contrast with TOS and TNG).
  • Kes and Neelix had a breakup during season 3 that didn't really get so much as lip service after it started in "Warlord" (3x10); it just ended somewhere between two episodes (3x17 and 3x18). Ethan Phillips (Neelix's actor) found this a frustrating point (after all, the relationship had featured prominently since the first episode)—and to make matters worse, they actually filmed a scene for "Fair Trade" (3x13) that decisively gave it finality, but it got deleted from the final cut.
  • The episode "Worst Case Scenario" has an excellent plot hook: Torres (a former Maquis) finds a holodeck program hidden away in the computer which depicts a Maquis revolt on Voyager. It's later revealed that it was designed by Tuvok as a way to train security to handle such a scenario. The episode completely fails to do ANYTHING interesting with this, possible because the character (by that point) didn't have the depth to make the episode interesting. SF Debris also noted on this one how sad it was that by this point, the supposed major hook of the show in having Starfleet and Maquis forced to work together had become such a non-issue that Tuvok literally had to write his own fanfiction for it to be explored at all.
  • The Agony Booth, in a review of the infamous "Threshold", points to the episode that aired a week prior to it as the death knell of the Star Trek franchise. In "Alliances", Janeway considers teaming up with one of the Delta Quadrant's factions against the predatory Kazon, potentially changing the direction of Voyager from "find a possible way home that disappears at the end of the episode" to a story about creating an improvised Federation on the frontier. Instead their new allies backstab them and Janeway dissolves the alliance, then delivers a speech about sticking to Starfleet principles and avoiding diplomatic entanglements. Or in other words:
    Dr. Winston O'Boogie: But if there's one good thing I can say about Voyager, it's that it reached such a predictable level of sameness, that it became like comfort food television. Just like ordering a Big Mac, you always knew what you would see when you opened that box. Unfortunately, this is only good for certain situations, like when you have an hour to kill and don't want to think too hard. For a series, it was ratings death. There was zero chance the show would ever get any critical notice, or become water cooler talk.
  • The infamous "Threshold" itself actually starts out with a solid premise: Paris being so desperate to prove his worth that he embarks on an incredibly dangerous experimental test flight, with tragic results. By all rights this should have been a really strong character episode for Paris, examining his Daddy Issues and his need for redemption, possibly even leading to some Character Development. Instead we got... lizards.
  • "Fair Trade" was the first episode in a while to show Neelix outside his comfort zone. He faced the end of his usefulness as a guide, as the ship was moving into a region of space he was unfamiliar with. To maintain his usefulness, he proceeded to do one questionable thing after another and agonize over the guilt. The episode ends with him accepting responsibility for his actions, but rather than be a turning point and examine different ways he could contribute, succeeding episodes continued to portray him as a comedic goofball.
  • Worse is that "Blood Fever" and "Rise," two episodes that followed "Fair Trade," actually talked about and showed Neelix trying to be cross-trained to be of further assistance on the ship, but this is effectively dropped without a word after those episodes, only given lip service in the alternate futures of "Before and After" and "Year of Hell."
  • Also, they continue to have Neelix claim experience/expertise to get him involved in the plots only for him to prove time and again he doesn't know jack. He's never seriously called out on this and they keep believing him for some reason.
  • The "Basics" two-parter was a pretty formulaic outing, but it represented potential for future stories: Seska being taken prisoner, Suder struggling with having killed again, and the matter of Chakotay's son with Seska. Instead, what we got was Seska and Suder killed off rather anticlimactically, while the baby is retconned as not being Chakotay's at all (despite it being the entire reason this whole two-parter happened in the first place). Writer Michael Piller was severely disappointed with this—noting that Executive Meddling was responsible for each development. Coincidentally or not, Piller stepped down as executive producer not long after this.
  • "The Swarm" ends with the Doctor having to be rebooted with a reinforced system after all the forming of his own personality is causing his program to break down. This appears to have erased all the character development he'd gone through, but then he starts singing opera as he gets back to work. Robert Picardo was quite disappointed that he was completely back to normal by the next episode, rather than getting a whole arc about regaining his personality.
  • The producers' abject refusal to promote Harry Kim (and the "no conflict" directive mentioned above) prevented them from capitalizing on Tom Paris' demotion to Ensign. It would've made sense to promote Harry to Lieutenant around the same time, both in-universe and because it would have been a dramatically interesting wrinkle in Paris and Kim's friendship for them to reverse positions. Come to that, the fact that Tom outranked Harry rarely if ever came up — they basically acted as equals even though Tom had the authority to give his best friend orders.
  • The Maquis-Starfleet divide was an interesting idea, and should have been a rich source of internal conflict. Unfortunately, after introducing the group in The Next Generation and fleshing them out in Deep Space Nine specifically for this show to do just that... the conflict started being downplayed three episodes in, and only sporadically mentioned until the end of the first season, when it was dropped almost completely, with an implied Hand Wave that the little conflict we did see had been largely engineered by Seska.^note In fact, letting the storyline even last that long was a concession from Rick Berman, who had initially wanted Chakotay and his crew to renounce their loyalty to the Maquis at the end of the pilot episode, and only allowed the Michael Jonas story arc in Season 2 on the condition that Jonas was shown to be an unambiguously evil character.
  • The B-plot of the episode Night was that Janeway had developed a severe depression from the consequences of abandoning her crew in the Delta Quadrant. Other than being a rather convenient background excuse for her notoriously inconsistent characterization from that point on, it really doesn't go anywhere despite being a goldmine of story opportunities that we had never seen before in Trek.
• Too Cool to Live: One, from "Drone". A Borg drone comprised of technology from a few centuries in the future, and whose humanity had been nurtured since his "birth". Unfortunately, that advanced technology also quickly made him a priority target for the Borg, and he allows himself to die to prevent the Borg from relentlessly pursuing Voyager just to assimilate him.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Compared to DS9, Voyager is much more evidently a product of The '90s.
  • The character of Chakotay is very much a product of a general societal interest in The Theme Park Version of Native American culture, mysticism, and spirituality that peaked in The '90s. Tellingly, he's the only regular character of Amerindian descent in the entire franchise.
  • Likewise, the Kazon are an allegorical representation of Los Angeles street gangs, whose exploits were a topic of national discussion at the time.
  • The fascination with "gel packs" is very indicative of the nineties, when companies began attaching silicone gel to everything from basketball shoes to toothbrushes.
  • "Macrocosm" is about the crew fighting macroviruses, viruses that have grown beyond the microscopic scale. The computing term "Macro virus" was widespread at the time due to vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office programs including Word and Excel.
  • "Distant Origin" focuses on a Voth scientist's controversial Distant Origin Theory being labelled heretical, obviously mirroring the heated debate at the time over religious belief, the Theory of Evolution, and paleontological discovery.
  • "11:59" is about Janeway's discussion of her 20th-21st century ancestors Shannon O'Donnell and Henry Janeway, and their involvement with the Millennium Gate, a tower built from January 2001 to 2012. Janeway, in the 24th century, notes the Millennium Bug wasn't a big deal, though it was when the episode aired mid-1999.
  • "Unimatrix Zero", about a shared virtual reality within the Borg collective, aired the year after the 1999 film The Matrix. "One", about a drone transcending the collective to become a super drone, aired the year prior to the film.
  • "Future's End": Fans noted the show never mentioned the Eugenics Wars of 1992-1996 despite travelling to 1996, portrayed as contemporary with no hint of a war or dystopian future. A tie-in novel duology called The Eugenics Wars lampshades this by having it all occur in the background of real history.
  • WWE wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson started his career in 1996, continued gaining popularity throughout the 90's-2000's, and headlined on a show on the same network as VOY: WWF Smackdown! (later WWE Smackdown). The Rock appears as the Pendari Champion in the episode "Tsunkatse", demonstrating both "The Rock Bottom" finisher and "The People's Eyebrow".
  • "Hunters": Neelix takes on the role of mail carrier, bringing messages extracted from the communications array for Voyager crew from the Alpha Quadrant. This firmly places the episode before e-mail and wireless communications really took off in the public consciousness, as the modern viewer would be left wondering "why aren't these being sent straight to the crew's quarters?" what with everyone having a computer in their quarters.
    • On a similar note, there's a sequence in "Good Shepard" that takes a set of orders from the bridge down to the very bottom of the ship on deck fifteen, travelling from the bridge to Astrometrics to Engineering to the plasma relay station. Why this needed to be hand-delivered, rather than relayed through a travelling PADD is a question for a modern viewer, used to emails and text messages acting as digital conversations in real time.
  • In "Bride Of Chaotica!", the Doctor has to play the President of Earth in the "Captain Proton" holoprogram, and afterwards he quips that his performance was "unimpeachable", a tongue-in-cheek nod to the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Whenever one of Voyager's crew disobeyed orders to save the ship or do what they thought was right, Janeway threw the book at them and gave them a harsh punishment (such as Seven of Nine sending an invading Hirogen and Species 8472 at war with each other back to the former's fleet while they were attacking the ship, Tom Paris violating the Prime Directive to save a planet, etc.) . While they did go behind her back, their intentions of protecting the ship and the crew were far more justified—in fact, necessary considering that they offered that solution to Janeway in the first place, only to be shot down—and yet they're treated as being unequivocally wrong for doing so. And they either had no choice but to accept the consequences of their choices, or got shot down with any counterargument they made towards their Captain. Yes, Janeway insists they have to maintain the moral high ground, but seeing as that doing so often puts the ship and crew in more danger than necessary (and could have been easily avoided had Janeway taken the more pragmatic option), their efforts feel less like them disobeying their Captain and more like doing what she should have done in the first place.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: At times, Janeway could slip into this. While she was mostly treated as A Mother to Her Men, and is unquestionably a fine Starfleet Officer, her unequivocal My Way or the Highway attitude towards her command decisions (which Tuvok even said in "Year Of Hell" that "The Captain is always right) made her come off across as inept when it was clearly unsound. Yes, a command structure needs to be maintained on the ship, but half the time, her choices place the ship in a much greater danger than necessary (such as refusing to allow a Hirogen to kill Species 8472 because she didn't want any bloodshed, even though she was already in enough hot water with the former as it was), and whenever one of her crew suggests making the sound choice, she always shoots it down and sticks to her guns. Then when said crew member inevitably goes behind her back to do what she should have done in the first place, she dresses them down for disobeying her orders, even though it winds up ending the crisis she got them into in the first place. Given that, it's little wonder she's one of Trek's most divisive Captains.
• The Un-Twist: "Scorpion" treats the fact that the Borg were the aggressors in the conflict with Species 8472 as a major revelation. Considering the mission statement and track record of the Borg, that should've been the default assumption. Chakotay comes off much more like the Only Sane Man at that point for insisting a contingency be made once Species 8472 was dealt with.
• Values Dissonance:
  • While their exact ages are never made explicit (Kes was canonically two years old when she first met Neelix but appears far older due to the Ocampa's life span being 10 years), a relationship with the age gap such as the one that exists between Kes and Neelix is more uncomfortable today with increased awareness of how older partners can exploit the naivete and inexperience of those far younger than them into entering relationships and situations they are simply not old enough to fully understand. This is not made better by Neelix displaying highly possessive behavior over Kes and hostility towards those he perceives as threats to their relationship such as Tom Paris.
  • Janeway putting Paris in solitary confinement for an entire month is this as it's become clearer how badly this form of punishment fucks people up. The United Nations considers solitary confinement lasting more than fifteen days to be literal torture, and Paris was in there twice that long. The Federation sure is enlightened, huh?
• Values Resonance:
  • The episode "Critical Care", in which the Doctor is forced to try to ethically navigate an alien crapsack hospital where treatment is given based on the wealth of the patient, not medical need, would be an on-the-nose commentary about US healthcare if it aired today.
  • The episode Retrospect has only become more relevant post #MeToo. Not only just for its message of believing someone when they make a claim of being violated, but also for just how important it is to make sure that innocent until proven guilty isn't revoked in the process. There is also an important message here about the potential fallibility of human memory.
  • 25 years after the episode "Phage" aired, Earth, in real life, would face COVID-19, not unlike the titular plague of the episode. Not only have people scrambled to keep up with the mutations of the virus, but it has put an immense stress and desperation on the world population.
  • Similarly, the episode "Night" has also been oddly prescient. Waiting for an event to end, for 2 years, with limited access to hobbies, and no change in news or routine?
  • In "Latent Image", the Doctor's struggles with his memories of Ahni Jetal's death resonate more today thanks to the greater awareness of mental health issues. The COVID-19 Pandemic in particular recognized this struggle among medical professionals, who were forced to push themselves past their breaking points through those trying circumstances.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Much like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, it's not widely beloved by a long shot, but its reputation has improved from being seen as an embarrassment to the franchise, to being seen as perhaps sub-par but not the bottom of the barrel, with Star Trek: Enterprise still being generally seen as a weaker series, and Star Trek: Discovery being way more divisive. This article makes a decent case for appreciating it for what the show became, rather than what fans expected.
  • Even the show's notorious reliance Status Quo Is God is looked on more favorably in hindsight by some fans who feel that the intensely story arc-based shows that became popular after Voyager went off the air invariably descend into Continuity Lock-Out, The Chris Carter Effect, Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, or all three at once. That being said, the fans who do appreciate the more episodic nature of the show usually will admit that it got a bit silly on the occasions when the titular ship got thoroughly trashed one week, and was completely fine the following week.
  • As with its sister series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the show got a mixed reception on its original airing but became popular on Netflix while they were there. Some fans have joked that between then, the two shows predicted the direction audience tastes would take over the next couple of decades, with DS9 predicting the trend for Darker and Edgier shows with intricate story arcs in The 2000s, and then Voyager predicting that audience tastes would start moving back towards more light-hearted and episodic entertainment near the end of The New '10s.
  • Even a few actors get this, in a way. During the show's run and in the first few years after, fan dislike for Robert Beltran was intense because of how openly he disliked the show. With increasing awareness of Native American issues, however, which feeds into an increasing understanding of just how offensive the Chakotay character is as-written, it's become increasingly easy for people to understand and even sympathize and agree with Beltran's anger over how the role turned out. Even those who dislike his lack of professionalism in places at least understand now why he did it.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The title sequence.
  • The Borg
    • The Borg Transwarp Hub seen in the series finale is quite impressive.
    • Similarly, the Borg effects in general in the finale were some of the best that had shown up in Star Trek at that point. People who worked on Star Trek: First Contact noted that the show had actually managed to improve slightly on the original Borg Queen effect (which improved quite a bit from her first appearance in the show).
  • "Unimatrix Zero", despite not exactly being one of the most well-liked episodes, at least opens with a really nice shot of eye candy, and the Borg costumes for Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok deserved more screen time.
• The Woobie: Most, if not all, of the characters have Woobie moments.
  • Harry, the young naive "dweeb," who gets killed, tortured, diseased, etc. probably more than any other character.
  • Seven gets a lot of Woobie episodes, with her traumatizing past.
  • The look on Chakotay's face every time he realizes that he's been back-stabbed by a woman or mind-raped by aliens AGAIN, is heartbreaking. The famously funny line "Was there anyone on that ship who was working for me?" was clearly not intended to be funny, but rather to verbalize his frustration at his own failures as a leader.
  • B'Elanna Torres
    • When she finds out that the Maquis were all slaughtered by the Dominion. She even goes so far as to run dangerous scenarios in the holodeck with no safety on, the 24th Century equivalent of self-harming herself (or at least risking self-harm) over the guilt she feels at surviving.
    • As if her life wasn't sad enough, the universe seems to personally have it in for her: she is killed in two alternate futures ("Before and After" and "Fury"), and her duplicate is the first to die in "Course Oblivion."
  • The Silver Blood duplicates of the crew, particularly Harry Kim. One of the few genuinely heartbreaking Voyager moments that doesn't involve the EMH or Seven is Harry Kim's duplicate, sitting on the bridge, desperately hoping for salvation as he dies, and failing himself, his ship, and his crew as he dies an ignoble death that ends up as little more than a note on Janeway's log. Most viewers, fans and anti-fans alike, will freely admit to tearing up during this scene.
  • On the surface, Neelix is nothing more than an arrogant, lying, incompetent asshole, and most fans hate him, feeling that he was little more than a prototype of Jar-Jar Binks. However, while his species was xenophobic, arrogant, and generally incompetent to begin with, many of his kind were killed when his home colony was vaporized in a violent war with another race—made worse by the fact he was a cowardly war deserter that suffered survivor's guilt because he only survived due to having run off to another planet. His time as a junk scavenger placed him under the watch of the Kazon, and the woman he loved was not only abused by the Kazon but only had a lifespan of 9 years. Try as he might to help the crew in their situation he often annoyed them. He lost his lungs to the Vidiians and had to receive an emergency transplant from Kes just to survive. At one point a transporter accident bonds him and Tuvok into one being (with "Tuvix" being a bad example—he had to be "killed" just to save the two that made him). Kes eventually broke up with him due to his abusive and hyper-jealous treatment of her, and Neelix was consistently stuck inflicting his incompetence on Tuvok, which eventually caused him to snap and chew out Tuvok—Tuvok did learn to be a bit more tolerant of Neelix's persistent incompetence, though. Then as Voyager moves out of the area of space he knows he finds himself feeling even more useless and commits a criminal act hoping to get a useful map. On one mission he is killed, his only salvation being Borg nanoprobes that revive him but sends him into a temporary depression, believing that he is merely a reanimated corpse and that the "real" Neelix died. Dealing with the possibility that Samantha Wildman may die led to extreme troubles in dealing with Naomi Wildman. The series didn't really let up on treating him like a punching bag until his final episode, in which he meets a colony of Talaxian refugees and stays with them shortly before Voyager returns home.
  • Kes. Abused by the Kazon, then "rescued" by her abusive boyfriend who becomes homicidally jealous when Kes dares to spend time platonically with another man something like a month after she said that she wanted to have his baby on the one occasion in her entire life that she would be able to do so. Also, she will grow old and die before all of her friends have even aged a decade.
  • "Hunters" is a massive Woobie episode for virtually all of the major characters, as they get letters from home, some containing heartwarming news, and others heartbreaking.
  • Even some of the show's actors might qualify.
    • Robert Beltran (Chakotay) has a negative reputation among some fans, for his problems with the show's writers and some instances of unfriendly behavior at cons; but he has cause to be upset. He was forced by contract to play a character that turned out to be a racial stereotype; he had only signed on to work with Janeway's original actress, Genevieve Bujold, but was stuck when she was replaced by Kate Mulgrew. His performances in later episodes range from wooden to openly expressing his loathing of his part in his tone. He becomes even more sympathetic when one reads up on the actor; he grew up "low income" with a brother who had Downs Syndrome, and as a result now does charity work for low-income kids and the disabled. It's easy to see why he doesn't think the writers of Star Trek or their middle-class fans deserve his sympathy (not that this is an excuse for unprofessional behavior, but it does make his actions understandable).
    • Ethan Phillips. My god, the man tries so hard. He's a good actor, too — his work on Benson isn't half bad. But Neelix is consistently written as a lying, incompetent braggart who refuses to do the job that he gave himself and gets people killed through his own incompetence while saying schmaltzy lines. On top of that, Phillips had to be in the studio extra early in order to be covered up with makeup that made him look like a hedgehog on drugs, and some fans take their undying hatred for his character over onto the actor. (Mulgrew and Beltran long suffered from this to a lesser extent.)
    • Garret Wang, Harry Kim's actor, who loves Trek and is generally a nice guy in Real Life, but was constantly screwed over by the writers.
    • Jennifer Lien (Kes), in light of later events, has become this to anyone familiar with mental illness and/or drug addictions. And of course because she's a minor celebrity, her embarrassment was reposted all over the Internet. Luckily, some Star Trek fan groups on Facebook instated a new rule that anyone posting links to the news articles about that or any other incident she was involved in would be banned from the group.

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