YMMV / Star Trek Voyager S 1 E 1 "Caretaker"

• Broken Base:
  • Janeway's decision to destroy the Caretaker's array without attempting to use it to get home split the fanbase right down the middle from day one. While the episode tries to make it clear that Voyager would never have been able to use the array, as it would have taken hours to activate (and that's assuming that they could've made it work properly and survived the attempt after taking heavy damage the first time it was used) and more Kazon ships were en route, the way it's depicted gives both sides ammunition for their arguments; on the one hand, Torres comes across as a complete idiot for thinking that Voyager trying to take on a Kazon armada without shields or phasers is going to end in anything other than them being on the losing side of a Curb-Stomp Battle, but on the other hand, Janeway makes the decision to destroy the array before finding out about the reinforcements, meaning that it just comes across as a lucky guess rather than a carefully considered decision, and she does a poor job of explaining the situation to Torres (though to be fair, Torres shouldn't have needed it explained, considering she found out about the reinforcements at the same time as Janeway).
  • This is also a big one on the "was Voyager's writing situation hopelessly bad" argument, because for many, it sure seems like a couple tiny changes — like, say, a massive warship crashing into the array resulting in the "send vessels across the galaxy" function being disabled due to damage and this being mentioned — would undo the entire problem, yet the above writing quandary evidently never occurred to a single person in the production office during the entire production process and went to print as it was. Others argue that the stresses of production, especially with the way not just Trek but TV in general was produced at the time, are the exact sort of conditions that can make it hard to not realize this sort of thing until it's too late and you have no time for rewrites or reshoots.
• Franchise Original Sin: Even here the "Native American" stuff is happening with Chakotay. Granted, here it's largely used as a trivia point and is mostly used in service of providing (quickly-dropped) antagonism between Chakotay and Tom and mostly serves to make clear that Tom's... well, kind of a dick and at the start of his Character Development. But especially in hindsight, it's discouraging to see the seeds of the issues being planted right on day one (and one has to imagine what Robert Beltran thought of it coming up that early).
• Squick:
  • The image, literally and mentally, of Neelix taking a bath.
  • For those Afraid of Needles, watching Janeway and Harry Kim Strapped to an Operating Table as very long needles sink into their stomachs.