Tear Jerker / Star Trek: Voyager

"I'm going to miss you."

Season 1

• The deaths of Voyager's original doctor and second in command in "Caretaker". True both men had been rather cruel to Tom, but it's still a bit tragic.
  • When Kim is missing, Janeway lets her guard down and, sounding so beaten, tells Tuvok that Kim’s mother called, asking if she should send a clarinet.
  Janeway: I barely knew him. I never seem to have a chance to get to know many of them.
  • The caretaker is ultimately a sad, lonely, dying man, scared that his children can’t look after themselves, and Janeway clearly sees some of herself in it; the moment after she picks up its dead, shrunken, crystallized form and simply holds it in her hands is very telling.
  • Janeway’s Beneath the Mask Establishing Character Moment, as she’s no-nonsense with Paris, casually giving orders with her fiance, but is genuinely upset when he assumes he’s bothering her.
• Despite his Scrappy status for many people, Neelix's back story, revealed in "Jetrel", is heartbreaking. Talax was at war with the Haakonians, and he was a draft dodger, refusing to join up. While he was there, the Haakonians unleashed the Metreon Cascade on the moon of Rinax, wiping out the entire population, Neelix's family included.
  • Made worse when one reads the novel Pathways, written by Jeri Taylor, one of Voyager's co-creators - it's not just that Neelix's family was on Rinax when the Cascade hit. They were roughly at the epicenter of the blast. And Neelix went to Rinax as part of the medical evacuation and rescue teams, so he had to witness the results of his home ripped apart by the Haakonian's deadly attack.
• "Eye of the Needle". The Voyager crew was so damn close to getting home; the Romulan they meet is entirely willing to help transport them back. Until it's revealed that the wormhole also goes back 20 years in time and they're not about to change history just to take a shortcut across 70,000 light years. Oh that's right, they can just have said Romulan deliver a message to Starfleet at the right time to reassure them that the crew is all right and misses their loved ones dearly...except once the Romulan returns to his home time, Tuvok reveals that the poor guy died four years before their present time, and now the crew doesn't know if he was able to get the message through somehow... and just to make it even worse, there are indications in later seasons that the Romulan high command have been keeping a close eye on Voyager, indicating that they became aware of the information that the crew's Romulan ally was holding onto.
  • Before the reveal that the wormhole can't take the crew home The Doctor and Kes have a conversation about how that will mean leaving the ship adrift in the Delta Quadrant and the Doctor along with it. The sheer sadness and loneliness the Doctor expresses while maintaining his professional demeanor is just heartbreaking.
  • The Romulan has been in space for a year, and hasn’t seen his wife or baby daughter. Janeway, who just wants her crew to be able to message their family, plays on this.
  Romulan: I knew when I accepted this assignment, there would be a price to pay. Perhaps I didn’t know how high that price would be.
  • Harry really wants it to work, as he misses his family, and has always called them at least once a week, even on his training missions.
  • B’elanna admits that her father left the family when she was five, and thinks her Klingon mother is on the homeworld. When asked about it, she tells Harry they don’t get along very well. Everyone who cares about her is on the ship instead of back home.
• Poor Ptera in "Emanations". She expected to wake up in the Next Emanation, but after being cured by the EMH discovers that the Negative Space Wedgie that her species reveres as the portal to the afterlife just dumps her people's corpses on a random asteroid. It's brutal to watch the poor woman's hope that she was going to be reunited with her deceased loved ones get crushed.
  • There's also Hatil Garan. Crippled in an accident, his family pushed him towards passing on to the Next Emanation in the sincere belief that he'd be better off there, but Harry appeared just before he was set to pass on, and having learned what was really waiting for him, he's filled with both dread about his fate but also guilt that he's reconsidering passing on.
• In “Prime Factors” Janeway’s betrayed reaction to B’Elanna and Tuvok going behind her back to retrieve a mechanical component in a way that would break Federation regulation.

Season 2

• That poor old crazy codger in "Resistance" who thinks Janeway is his daughter. The fascistic Mokra have so thoroughly destroyed him that there's hardly a scrap of a man left.
  • The real heartbreaking moment comes when Augris reveals that Caylem's real daughter is long dead just like Caylem's wife.
  • Watching how Janeway's reactions toward him change. At first, when she realizes he's insane and believes her to be his daughter, she embraces him with a disturbed look only the viewer can see. Later, once she learns what happened to his wife and why he's so determined the two of them must rescue her, she becomes more and more supportive of him—defending him to Darod, doing everything she can to protect him, and giving him a genuine embrace. At the last, when he and Augris end up in a Mutual Kill, she finally gives in to Caylem's delusion, telling him she is Ralkana, that they saved his wife, and both of them forgive him, so he can die happy. The episode ends with her in her ready room, clutching Ralkana's necklace as she gazes off with a teary-eyed, Thousand-Yard Stare.
• "Prototype" has B'Elanna trying to design a new power module for a dying race of robots. She's so proud of creating a new prototype unit, but once she realizes that they're programmed to never stop fighting a war, she has no choice but to destroy her prototype.
• "Threshold" may be one of the worst episodes of any Trek series, but still gives us a marvelously acted moment by Robert Picardo as the Doctor starts to put his hand off Kes' shoulder after Tom's death, then backs off.
  • The whole death scene is incredibly moving between all three of them, Tom, the Doctor, and Kes. For a couple of minutes, you forget you're watching "Threshold" and focus on the fact that Tom is dying and they can't save him.
• What Harry and the aliens of the week were put through in "The Thaw" is a cross between this Fridge Horror and Nightmare Fuel. Let's put this into perspective: the aliens were the innocent victims of a natural disaster. The simulation that was supposed to take care of their subconscious minds accidentally created an entity from their fears, "the Clown". Then the Clown went about happily torturing them for nineteen years. Then, despite the Voyager crew's best efforts (mainly the Doctor's) only two of them survive and escape. This is hardly enough to repopulate their species; though it's possible, it's generally accepted that at least twenty breeding pairs are needed for enough genetic diversity to be viable.
  • The Doc probably has it pretty bad in this, despite his abilities in the simulation. He's still ultimately unable to save one of the very people his seeming invulnerability was meant to be used to protect.
• Tuvix, trying to rally some support among the bridge crew. He's about to be executed, and he's literally committed no crime.
  • The whole ending sequence of that episode, where Janeway has to un-merge Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix, is one of the most harrowing (and controversial) moments in the entire franchise. Janeway's face afterward makes it even worse.
  • Regardless of where you fall on the ending of "Tuvix," the scene where Kes goes to Janeway after he's asked her to interfere on his behalf is heartbreaking.
    Kes: Captain, Tuvix has asked me to speak to you on his behalf. But I can't.
    Janeway: He shouldn't have put you in the middle of this.
    Kes: But I am in the middle. I have been since the moment of the accident. I don't know how to say goodbye to Neelix and Tuvok. I know this sounds horrible, and I feel so guilty for saying it, and Tuvix doesn't deserve to die, but I want Neelix back. (breaks down crying as Janeway hugs her)
• In "Lifesigns", there's the Vidiian doctor who only has a few days to live as a hologram before she goes back to her body, which is deformed, achy and in poor condition. She also says that she felt that she "was a disease" when she had the Phage, because people were scared of her sick appearance. However, there is a bright side, though. In "Think Tank", it's revealed that the Phage was cured and Memory Alpha says she's alive. Maybe she got cured and no longer has the disease.
• In "Death Wish" Q tempts Janeway with the prospect of returning the ship to Earth. She looks at that beautiful blue sphere hanging outside the window, knowing that Q will soon take it away. Even after Q leaves along with the planet, her expression is frozen for a few seconds as she tries to recover. One can only imagine how conflicted her thoughts are.
  • The Q species were being responsible gods by ending Q's antics, and in doing so sentenced themselves to eternal boredom.
    Quinn: Look at us. When life has become futile. meaningless, unendurable, it must be allowed to end. Don't you see? For us, the disease is immortality.
• The death of Red Shirt Bennett near the beginning of "Innocence" is surprisingly moving. As he's dying, he mentions that he regrets not having anyone back on Earth who will miss him. Tuvok tries to help him die happy, mentioning at least one female crewmember might mourn him. The poor guy isn't given much time to contemplate that, as he dies seconds later.

Season 3

• Tuvok mourning Suder at the end of "Basics, Part II".
  • Suder in general. A stone-cold serial killer, he recovers. He realizes what he's done and how terrible it is and how terrible a person it has made him. Yet circumstances force him to take on that role again. In the end, his death in the process was a mercy.
  • For all that she put Voyager and her crew through, it's tragic watching a dying Seska stumble towards her crying son, and not quite reach him before she dies. Hell, even Cullah's grief-stricken cry as he realizes that she's dead qualifies.
• "Alter Ego" has a surprisingly moving climactic scene. Marayna, who is seemingly a holodeck character in Neelix' luau program, somehow manages to take over the ship out of an obsession with Tuvok, and causes chaos that endangers the crew. Finally, they discover it's actually a projection of someone outside the ship, and they trace the signal to a cloaked station, from somewhere within the nebula the ship is passing through. Tuvok beams over to confront the real Marayna, and their confrontation reveals that Marayna isn't some trickster god, or bloodthirsty warrior, or anything like that. Marayna is just a sad, lonely alien, who's been working by herself in the station for way too long and in desperate need of someone in her life. Even Tuvok feels for her plight. Just listen to her threaten the ship - Marayna never even sounds angry; she's begging Tuvok to be with her, and he just can't.
  Marayna: I have done it before. Tapped into the computer of a passing alien vessel, examined all the little details of their lives. But I never expected to find something as diverting as your holodeck. I never expected to find you. You are like nothing else I've ever encountered. And I can't be without you. Stay here with me, and I will let your ship resume course.
  Tuvok: If it is the only option, I would willingly sacrifice myself to save my crewmates.
  Marayna: No, that's not enough! You have to want to be with me!
  Tuvok: If you truly understood who and what I am, you know that I could never return your affections.
  Marayna (starting to cry): But... you are more like me than you are like them! I've seen the way you isolate yourself! Even in a crowd of people, you are alone! We should be together!
• It's hard to not get a little teary eyed in "Future's End, Part II" when the Doctor is given his mobile emitter and steps outside for the first time in his existence. He stands in the middle of downtown LA and just looks around, amazed by all the things he's experiencing. Doubles as a Heartwarming Moment.
• Chakotay cradling the dead Janeway's body in "Coda", even if it turns out to be a hallucination. The anguished cry he lets out is absolutely heartbreaking.
  Chakotay: KATHRYYYYN!!!
• In the episode "Real Life," when the Doctor's fictional daughter Belle is fatally injured in a sports accident. At first he ends the program at her deathbed, unable to stand it. Tom convinces him to go back and see it through, reminding him that real families don't have that choice. The Doctor and his family—at that point, reprogrammed to be more difficult—gather at Belle's bed, and the Doctor has to tell his daughter that she's going to die. It ends on the Doctor and his family pulled together in grief after Belle passes on.

Season 4

• In "The Gift", Kes' powers surge so suddenly and violently that she has to leave the ship or she'll tear it to pieces in her ascension to energy being. Tuvok tries to ground her with a mindmeld, but it doesn't work, and he and Janeway have to rush her to a shuttle. The only goodbye they can manage is Janeway radioing the bridge and informing them that Kes has to leave, with only a brief shot of their stunned faces. Afterwards, Tuvok dresses in his ceremonial robes and lights his meditation candle in the window as a tribute to her, looking out into space.
• In "The Raven," Seven remembering her last moments before she was assimilated. She only reluctantly agreed to exist as a human; this is when the magnitude of what the Borg did to her finally hits home.
  "And then the men came. Papa tried to fight them, but they were too strong. I tried to hide. Maybe they wouldn't find me because I was little... but they did. And then Papa said we were going to crash and the big man picked me up. And then suddenly, we weren't on the ship anymore; we were somewhere else. And then I became Borg."
• Tuvok saying goodbye to Janeway in "Year of Hell, Part II". The hug.
  • Basically all of "Year of Hell." The once proud and beautiful USS Voyager, battered again and again until it is little more than a barely functional hulk while the crew took heavy casualties. It's hard to watch. Thank god for the Reset Button.
  • During part one, the conduits on deck five blow out, effectively destroying the deck. As the computer counts down to their failure, the Doctor is evacuating crew to the Jefferies tubes. As he holds the door, two crewmen appear at the end of the hall, but the computer is still counting down. And there is no way for them to make it. The Doctor holds the door until the last second, but must close it to protect the majority of the evacuees, and in the moment that he realizes that those two won't get there, you can see the torment he is going through.
    • Eventually, it spills over in a conversation with Tom on matters of medical triage - even knowing that it was for the good of the crew and the ship, the Doctor is programmed to preserve life, and he had to let these two die in order to save the lives of numerous others, which clearly weighs on him.
  • Janeway giving the order to abandon ship at the end of part one - she had earlier made the assertion that there was no way that she would split up the crew. But here it is, a couple of months later and half of the ship is uninhabitable, everyone has been injured in some fashion, and they've just gained the personal ire of Annorax and his time ship, which makes Voyager even more of a target than it had been before. She assembles the crew in the Mess Hall for a rousing speech about how the crew must separate for their safety, and she intends to reconnect with all of them on the other side of Krenim space... But it's hard to believe that even she believes it by this point, even before we see how driven she becomes to stop Annorax at all costs in the second part.
• The episode, "Mortal Coil" counts as this for poor Neelix. After dying (and staying dead for 18 hours), he's revived and brought back to life. Sounds like a reason to celebrate, right? Wrong. Neelix believed that after death, his spirit would journey to a place called the great forest, reunite with his dead loved ones, and journey together to the afterlife. What did he experience? Nothing. The rest of the episode follows him as he tries to make sense of what happened, and realizing that his life-long beliefs about the afterlife may have been a lie. Even worse is when he tries a vision quest, and encounters his long dead sister, who says the afterlife is a lie, and mocks him for believing in it. As one of the series writers put it, "What would be worse than having your own dead grandmother come back and say, "You know, there is no God. This is all a figment of your imagination, you're going to die, and there's nothing after. You disappear, and that's that. See ya!" Poor Neelix...
  • Made worse by the fact that this episode aired on December 17th, 1997. Two years later, however, we got a good TearJerker episode based on a similar subject, only B'Elanna is on the receiving end, where she goes to Klingon Hell to successfully rescue her mother.
  • And he tried to beam into a nebula and was talking about how he felt like a different person.
• The Doctor's return at the end of "Message in a Bottle" can be one of these, albeit more Tears of Joy than anything else.
  The Doctor: I spoke directly with Headquarters. Apparently, Voyager was declared officially lost fourteen months ago. I set the record straight; I told them everything that's happened to this crew. They said they would contact your families to tell them the news, and promised that they won't stop until they've found a way to get Voyager back home. And they asked me to relay a message: they wanted you to know ... you're no longer alone.
  Janeway: Sixty thousand light-years ... seems a little closer today.
• The end of the episode "Hunters", when the signal from Starfleet destabilizes and the relay network Voyager had used to contact the Alpha Quadrant goes offline. For the first time in three years, the crew had contact with home, and they were getting letters from their friends and family—given some of the letters' contents, a heartbreakingly mixed blessing. (Dear Kathryn, I held out hope longer than anyone and then I moved on and married someone else.) And all too soon it's snatched away. Tom and B'Elanna's reactions are especially TearJerker-y, with B'Elanna finding out that all her Maquis friends are dead or imprisoned and Tom dreading hearing from his admiral father only to never get a chance to read his letter.
  • The whole Maquis thing brings up a Fridge Tearjerker: In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the feisty Bajoran crew member, Ro Laren, joins the Maquis, meaning that by now she's either dead or imprisoned. Thankfully, Star Trek: Picard would show that it was the latter though Ro still loses her life after her return to the franchise.
  • It's especially sad watching Harry go place to place, anxious for his letter. Remember that he's possibly the youngest member of the crew and this was his first assignment. Furthermore his parents are rather elderly and he's their only child. He might have more homesickness than the rest of the crew combined, so the fear of his letter getting lost must be extremely stressful.
• The death of the Alpha Hirogen Karr near the end of "The Killing Game" two-parter. Yes, he did do terrible things. But his acts of cruelty were out of the simple desire to save lives by preventing the Hirogen from dispersing themselves to far across the galaxy. Even Janeway herself admits his intentions are in everyone's best interests when he admits this. She also appears genuinely saddened when he dies.
• Seven trying to come to grips with glimpsing her holy grail in "The Omega Directive".
  Seven: For 3.2 seconds...I saw perfection. When Omega stabilized, I felt a curious sensation. As I was watching it, it seemed to be watching me. The Borg have assimilated many species, with mythologies to explain such moments of clarity. I've always dismissed them as trivial. Perhaps I was wrong.
• The ending of "Unforgettable" (Chakotay has to part with his girlfriend, who belongs to a species that everyone forgets when they go away), only Chakotay's writing everything down on paper manages to prevent a complete Downer Ending.
• The Doctor or rather a backup copy of him recovered 700 years in the future gets one in "Living Witness". Not only does he struggle to cope with the fact that the Voyager crew are long dead by this point, but also the realization that his very rediscovery is bringing centuries-old tensions on the alien world he's on to their breaking point. He eventually becomes so distressed that he practically begs to be deactivated. Fortunately though, it gets resolved.
• Arturis from "Hope and Fear" may be the villain for trying to feed Janeway and Seven to the Borg, but it's clear that he's been broken from watching his people be assimilated. His reason for going after Janeway is because she helped the Borg fight Species 8472, which in his mind doomed his race.
  "I don't blame [the Borg]! They were just drones, acting with their collective instinct! You...you had a choice!"

Season 5

• In "Night", Neelix's behavior. He's all negative and jittery, quite unlike the Neelix we know.
  • Also, Janeway sits around in her quarters all day angsting about destroying the array and getting the crew locked in the Delta Quadrant, to the point of wanting to abandon the crew.
  • The only one who tries to be positive (apart from Chakotay later on) is Harry, but everyone else, including Neelix and Janeway who are usually optimists themselves, Tom who's Harry's best friend, and Chakotay who later agrees with Harry, just snark at him for it.
• "Drone":
  Seven: You must comply! ... please ... you are hurting me.
  One: You will adapt.
  • At the beginning of the episode, Seven is looking in a mirror and practicing smiling. After One dies, she looks in the mirror again and just stares, watching herself mourn.
    • For context, the whole reason why Seven is mourning is because One, the accidentally-created drone, is dying but not letting himself be treated because he believes he "was an accident". In addition to that, now that the Collective is aware of One, he knows they'll never stop trying to assimilate him as long as he is aboard Voyager.
• In "Extreme Risk", Torres dealing with depression and her utter inability to feel anything (caused by the death/imprisonment of the Maquis), so she starts hurting herself. Her utter apathy and numbness while Neelix tries to make her happy by giving her banana pancakes shows how far she's fallen.
  • In particular, it's not even that she's suicidal. She's just so emotionally numb after this that she doesn't feel ANYTHING. It's not suicidal intent, even if the behavior could have that result. It's just a desperate attempt to feel something again, even if it's pain, because at least that makes her feel alive.
• "Once Upon A Time." After bottling up his feelings for days, Neelix has a huge emotional outburst at Janeway, over the prospect of having to tell Naomi Wildman that her mother might be dead. Knowing about Neelix's family makes it sting so much worse: he can't do this to her because he's been there, and he just doesn't have the heart to inflict that kind of trauma on a little girl.
  Janeway: I realize you care about Naomi, and you're only trying to protect her. But you've got to tell her the truth.
  Neelix: "Good morning, Naomi, would you like some papalla juice with your cereal, and by the way your mother is buried under thirty kilotons of rock?!"
  Janeway: Neelix...
  Neelix (slowly becoming frantic): When we know something for sure, when we find her mother, alive, or dead... [stammering] I'll tell her then. Not before.
  Janeway: If you can't do it, I will.
  Neelix: YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S AT STAKE HERE!!! When you were her age, you were safe and sound on Earth with two healthy parents to take care of you!! You never had to worry about the possibility of being ALONE!!! You take it from me; you wouldn't have liked it!!
  • Watch Janeway during this conversation. She's not the least bit angry at him for insubordination or anything like that; she understands completely why Neelix is so terrified, and she looks heartbroken for her friend.
  • To say nothing of poor little Naomi Wildman herself. She hasn't heard from her mother, Samantha, in days, so what does she do? After waking from a nightmare, she slips out of her room and finds her way to the bridge herself, where she discovers that the crew is preparing for the worst. Neelix's What Have I Done face at seeing her immediately run away in horror says it all. Thankfully, it's not long before Samantha Wildman makes it back onto the ship to give her daughter a big hug.
• The frozen bridge in "Timeless". Chakotay sitting in his chair for the first time in fifteen years, and realizing that the last time he did... his friends were alive.
  • More than that, future Harry's breakdown over not being able to get Voyager home. (Garrett Wang gives his most moving performance in the franchise in this episode.)
    Harry: It took me ten years to make these corrections, I can't fix it in three minutes.
    Doctor: You've got to try!
    Harry: I can't! It's not working! (smacks the console) Why won't it WORK?!? .....I killed them!
    Doctor: Control yourself!!
    Harry (weeping): They trusted me and I KILLED THEM!!!
  • And then his jubilation when he manages to save them at the last moment.
  • For a more low-key example, watch Harry's reaction to the log entry at the end. He's having a subtle but present My God, What Have I Done? moment as the full enormity of what almost happened because of him sets in.
  • Fridge Horror: Even though it's not shown, one of the frozen bodies on Voyager is little Naomi.
• One of the assimilated personalities that Seven channels in "Infinite Regress" is an older woman who was going to meet her son, a Starfleet lieutenant, at Wolf 359 when the Borg attacked. Unaware of the nine years since then, or that she was herself taken by the Borg, she begs Janeway to help her find him and tell him that his mother is all right.^note (Oh, and just to make things worse, she says that her son was serving aboard the USS Melbourne. Which, if you don't remember, it was the ship Riker turned down command of and whose saucer section the Borg completely disintegrated with a single shot near the start of DS9's pilot episode "Emissary". Her son was almost certainly killed in the opening seconds of the battle, and she spent her final minutes as an individual completely unaware of this fact)
  • It's Fridge Tearjerking, but there's also the personality of the girl who's about Naomi's (physical) age - we see Seven acting like a kid, smiling and just looking for fun. The stark contrast to standard Seven, combined with the knowledge that she never got to be like this before in her life...
    • ...and then when Tuvok mindmelds with Seven in an attempt to save her, we see the little girl crying and begging to go home, then screaming for Tuvok not to leave her. But she and all the other people captured and assimilated by the Borg can never leave.
• Near the beginning of "Counterpoint", Inspector Kashyk indulges (albeit unintentionally) in a Kick the Dog moment by bringing up the deceased Ensign Suder. For her part, Janeway didn't look very happy for the reminder.
  • The interactions between Kashyk and Janeway have an undeniable romantic spark, to the point where when he kisses her before returning to the Devore, she kisses him back. Making it all the worse when not only does it turn out that he'd been using Voyager to get to the telepathic refugees they'd been hiding, as well as the wormhole they used to escape Devore patrols.
    Kashyk: You created false readings!
    Janeway: That is the theme for this evening, isn't it?
• The Doctor's breakdown when learning what really happened during "Latent Image", and his attempts to deal with it in the end, with the crew keeping a round the clock vigil to ensure that he avoids another system crash.
  • It goes deeper than that. At first Janeway coldly claims that the Doctor's memory was altered because she and the crew saw him as nothing more than a malfunctioning piece of technology. But it's far too easy to hear the blatant lie in her voice. Just watching her, B'Elanna, Tom, and Harry's behavior throughout the episode, you can see that they didn't erase his memories because they were inconvenient. They did it because they care about him and they didn't want to see their friend suffering.
  • One thing the episode doesn't focus on much is Harry's thoughts on the situation. No doubt he feels (though totally unjustified) responsible for the Doctor's mental breakdown and suffering because the reason why the Doctor freaked out was because of a moral dilemma about which ensign to save and he chose Harry, leading to the woman dying.
  • In the end, he does find some measure of peace, but his demeanor shows that what happened still grieves him; all he's really managed to do is find a way to live with it.
• Tom Paris being being demoted to ensign and spending a month of solitary confinement in the brig in "Thirty Days." He deserved punishment because he did disobey orders, but for the person who was such a life of the party 'people' person this was a very low point for the character. Fridge Horror kicks in for people watching twenty years later, when we're realizing that solitary confinement is in fact a form of torture.
  • Tom is sent to solitary confinement over a failed attempt to destroy a mining operation that it is abundantly clear will destroy a highly bureaucratic planet unless they somehow manage to go against their ingrained systems to take action faster than ever before to reverse the damage. Even removing Paris from the equation, it is sad and relatable watching 5 Only Sane Man scientist on that planet trying to do something that will save his people and failing.
• "Bliss" sees everyone except Seven, Naomi, and the Doctor get the happy ending they wanted, only to have it ripped away when they're freed from the telepathic pitcher plant. Especially harsh is when the Doc manages to interfere with the creature's telepathy enough to wakes B'Elanna up, but not enough to break the hallucination. She sees all her Maquis friends, miraculously alive.
  Doctor: B'Elanna, focus on my voice.
  Qatai: She doesn't want to....They never want to.
• In "Dark Frontier," the crew is planning a risky raid on a Borg sphere and Janeway asks Seven to go over the Hansens' log entries from the Raven. Seven isn't eager to study the belongings of people she considered "misguided," but it's Neelix of all people that makes her reconsider.
  "A faded holo-image. That's all I've got left of my family. A picture of my sister. (holds his chest) Except, of course, what I keep in here. What I wouldn't give for a treasure trove like this."
  • Of course, then Seven starts reading the logs and finds that her parents weren't just unlucky, but that they took many unnecessary risks in studying the Borg.
    "My parents underestimated the Collective. They were destroyed. Because of their arrogance, I was raised by Borg."
  • Seven tells the Borg Queen You Killed My Father. In reply, the nearest drone steps forward. It's Seven's father.
    "Papa..."
• "Course: Oblivion" is one Tear Jerker after another. The fact that they were the crew's clones from the Demon Planet, and by all measure the real crew had no idea their clones are gone, is of little comfort.
• "Someone To Watch Over Me." The Doctor falls for Seven of Nine, but in the end Cannot Spit It Out.^note The writers didn't want to develop the Doc-7 ship, and ended the series with the unconvincing Last-Minute Hookup between Seven and Chakotay. The gut-wrenching ending sees the Doctor drowning his sorrows at the piano to a little Gershwin.
  Won't you tell her please to put on some speed?
  Follow my lead
  Somehow I need
  Someone to watch over me.

Season 6

• In "Equinox", the Doctor's ethical subroutines are deleted by the villain in order to coerce him into extracting information from one of Seven of Nine's Borg implants, a procedure that will leave her mentally disabled. During the procedure, she lies motionless, her expression vacant as the Doctor probes her. With his ethical subroutines gone, he amuses himself by singing "My Darling Clementine", stimulating Seven's implants to get her to finish each line of the song. It's truly heartbreaking to see how little he cares for her in this state, regarding her as little more than a toy for his amusement, while knowing she will be practically lobotomized if it's completed (this after fighting so hard to have her mind back after being a drone). It feels as if he's forcing a mentally disabled woman to sing a duet with him as he experiments on her. And the episode's end shows she remembers the whole thing.
  • There's also the fact that one of the ensigns on the Equinox has PTSD because of the actions of the crazy captain, and when Chakotay worries that Janeway is Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• In "Survival Instinct", when the drones from the crashed Borg ship are disconnected from the Hive Mind and start to remember their old lives, it's a cross between Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker.
  • The reason the three escaped drones are still connected to one another is all the worse. They'd been assimilated as adults, so when their individuality reasserted itself for them, they were remembering who they'd been before the Borg had assimilated them, remembering the horror of assimilation, yes, but also the joy of their lives before the Borg. But for Seven, she was assimilated as a child, and the memories that reemerged for her were of the scared little girl, afraid of the men who'd taken her mama and papa. Unable to cope with the rush of fear, Seven FORCED them back into the collective consciousness, because she could not cope with the terror that came from her memories of individuality.
• In "One Small Step"
  "The Yankees...In six games."
  • Commander John Kelley's log entries in general. He died alone in a subspace anomaly God knows how many light years away from any other human, but he didn't see it at a failure, instead gathering as much information on it as possible in the hopes that one day, humanity would find him.
  "Watch me dad... I'm flying."
• "Pathfinder." Reginald Barclay has his greatest triumph - getting through to Voyager from Starfleet Command. The crew are clearly emotional at hearing a glimmer of hope after all this time. Tom's face when he hears from his dad, Admiral Paris, is moving enough, but then Janeway's last words of the transmission just put the cap on it.
  Janeway (on the verge of tears): Keep a docking bay open for us! We hope- [transmission is cut off]
• The baby Borg in "Collective". Especially powerful to anyone who has had an infant family member be in mortal distress.
  • There's also the fact that the impromptu leader of the Borg children dies. True he was grumpy and had a preoccupation with being Borg, but he was still a teenager.
• Seven's goodbye to Icheb in "Child's Play".
  • And Icheb finding out that his parents bred him to infect the Borg with a virus. Imagine the idea of only existing to be assimilated.
• Zimmerman's tale of the EMH Mark 1 in "Life Line". He had a vision of holographic doctors saving lives, and he created a program that, without question, is a fantastic doctor. But because he based it on himself, people complained about the bedside manners and the entire series was reassigned to menial labor. So now there's hundreds of holograms with his face doing demeaning work, all because one flaw outweighed all the benefits. Thankfully, the Doctor is still out there doing what he was meant to, which is some consolation.
  • When he's making out his will, Zimmerman realizes that Barclay is the only friend he has that isn't a hologram. While he adores Haley and the other creations at his lab, it really dawns on him on what a lonely life he's led.
    Zimmerman: She's been as real to me as anyone I've ever known... not that I've known many people. I've created most of my friends. [has another attack and, once it passes, looks at his iguana] Don't worry. I'll find a home for you, too.
  • Also, Deanna Troi feeling bad after the now-famous moment of calling the doctors jerks.
    Troi: "I'm starting to think you called the wrong counsellor, Reg."
    Barclay: "You'll figure something out. You always do."
    Troi: "Things are worse now than when I arrived. Lewis won't come out of his lab and the EMH is hiding in a holodeck."
    Barclay: "He's feeling homesick. I let him use my Voyager simulation and it seems to be cheering him up."
    Troi: (frustrated) "A hologram fighting to save the life of his creator, who just so happens to be the same man his own personality is based on. I think I'd need a whole team of therapists just to get them in the same room."
    Haley: (handing Troi some ice cream) "Mr. Barclay said this is your favourite ice cream."
    Troi: "I hardly deserve it but thanks."

Season 7

• There were several tearjerker moments in "Imperfection".
  • It even begins with a tearjerker: Mezoti and the Borg twins leaving and everyone in the vicinity already starting to miss them. Seven of Nine even hugs Mezoti, who is the biggest sadness provider because she wants Icheb to come with her and he wants her to stay.
  • The revelation that one of Seven's parts is malfunctioning and she may die. Of course, she doesn't, but everyone getting ready to possibly say goodbye to her and Seven of Nine accepting she may die is very sad to watch.
  • Seven of Nine being confined to Sickbay, despite feeling ready to do her duties, as the Doctor needs to keep an eye on her. No wonder she's angry.
  • And it ends with Seven crying.
• "Critical Care" features the Doctor being put to work in a hospital where the more "valuable" you are to society, the better treatment you get. Watching him trying to squeeze the system for any kind of justice for the "less worthy" patients on Red Level is brutal. It gets worse when he finds out the ill boy he was treating with pilfered medicine died from a secondary infection. A secondary infection they didn't treat because the Doctor had already run through his allotment of medicine treating the original illness.
• "Inside Man" delivers yet another emotional blow to Reg Barclay, The Woobie of the franchise. He meets a pretty woman who falls for him — until she steals information about Voyager from him and deep-sixes him. When she's being interrogated, she tells Admiral Paris that she left Reg because he was boring, looking straight at him as she does so, and in front of his friends and co-workers. Reg immediately leaves the room looking like he's about to break down in tears. And then she twists the knife further when he asks her Was It All a Lie?. "Just the parts where I expressed affection for you." Honestly, how the poor man remains as functional as he does is a minor miracle.
• "Lineage," pretty much as a whole once it starts digging in. First of all, it's got flashbacks to a camping trip with her father, overhearing him complaining about living with two Klingon women, later revealing that he left B'Elanna and her mother about two weeks later. These flashbacks are also filled with young B'Elanna feeling isolated and alone among her human cousins because of her Klingon heritage. Her own father didn't want to punish them for putting a worm in her food as mockery of gagh (although her uncle was properly angry about it). Meanwhile, in the present, B'Elanna learns that she's pregnant. Because of the dominance of Klingon genetics, her daughter is going to have the distinctive cranial ridges. B'Elanna goes to extreme lengths, including reprogramming the Doctor, to do genetic modifications that will remove them, make her look human. When Tom confronts her, she breaks down in Sickbay, because of her fears that because she was part-Klingon, that was what drove her father away, and she doesn't want to drive Tom away. Then Tom assures her that he isn't going anywhere and wouldn't be against more children.
• In "Repentance", the crew find a group of alien men who were formally criminals or thought to be criminals, who are set to be executed, which brings several tearjerkers.
  • Neelix talks to a man who may or may not have committed a murder and finds out that the law enforcement seems to have Fantastic Racism as they arrest more members of that man's species than their own. (This gets mitigated when he proves himself to be a true sociopath, manipulating Neelix into feeling sorry for him as part of his plan to have his brother attack Voyager and facilitate a breakout. On the other hand, the look on Neelix's face when he realizes how much he'd been played...)
  • One man (Iko) had killed someone only because of a defect in his brain. The Doctor cures him and he instantly gets his guilt and sympathy back and wants to be a better person. In fact, feeling guilty actually nauseates him. Even worse is the Downer Ending when he's still sentenced to be executed at the end.
    • Seven of Nine tries to help that man, drawing an example from Janeway saving her, making the downer ending even worse. There's also the fact that she, someone who finds emotional stuff irrelevant and is generally stoic, lied about her past experience for a purely emotional reason.
    • The warden in charge of the prisoners refuses to believe that Iko has changed and deserves a second chance — until Iko saves his life. He's genuinely sad when telling Iko that his appeal has been denied.
• An amnesiac B'Elanna beginning to remember her old life and wondering if the similarly-amnesiac Tom will ever love her again in "Workforce".
• "Author, Author." B'Elanna, having a few moments of transgalactic communication, reconciles with her estranged father after years of animosity, but their limited time expires before they really have a chance to talk things out.
  • The episode doesn't linger on it, but from the crew's perspectives, seeing their alter egos in the Doctor's holoprogram had to be something of a punch to the gut - he used their likenesses for these characters, it'd be hard for them not to stop and wonder "is that really what the Doctor thinks of me?" Probably especially hard on Tom, who at this point is a happily married man and expectant father, yet "Lieutenant Marseilles" is a horrible lech, cheating on his wife with multiple women. He's the one who drives this point home to the Doc.
    Paris: Look...I don't care if the entire Alpha Quadrant mistakes me for Lt. Marseilles. What bothers me is that you think that's what I'm like.
    Doctor: Obviously you're nothing like Marseilles! He's self-indulgent, immature—
    Paris: And how would you describe me?
    Doctor: (Beat) Well, you're a married man...with a child on the way...a lot of responsibilities.
    Paris: I'm surprised you noticed. You know, I thought I'd begun to earn your respect. Maybe I was wrong.
• The final moments of "Homestead." Neelix leaves the ship to stay with the newly-discovered Talaxian colony, and the ship's crew line the hallways for him. And the episode ends with Neelix having what he really wanted from Voyager for all these years - to have a family again.
• "Endgame (Part 1)", Admiral Janeway visits a degeneratively-ill Tuvok, fighting back tears that she'll change the past to change this present outcome, and thus, never see him again.

Miscellaneous

• The fact that Kes' species has only a 9 year lifespan. She was born in the year 2369; we can be sure that Kes has died sometime before the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, which takes place 10 years after her birth.

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