Star Trek: Voyager 1-01: Caretaker, Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the second and final part of my review of Caretaker. If you want to jump back 70,000 light years and read the first part, CLICK HERE.

I should probably put some trivia here to fill up the space. Uh... Star Trek: Voyager started in January, so that's kind of unusual. Trek series usually like to start around September.

Deep Space Nine was already 12 episodes deep into its third season at the point that Caretaker aired, but after Past Tense the series took a two week break so that Voyager could be the only new Trek on television for a fortnight. They really wanted as many eyes on this as possible, and it seems like they got around 12.4 million viewers in the US on that first airing. It's a bit of a step down from Emissary's 17.7 million, but it's still a really good number, not much lower than what the Original Series (13.1m), Next Gen (13.9m), and Enterprise (12.5m) got on their debut... possibly. To be honest I calculated these figures myself from numbers I found on the internet and I don't trust any of them.

SPOILER WARNING: Caretaker probably isn't the only episode that's going to be spoiled here, as I'm considering everything from TOS's The Man Trap to DS9's Past Tense to be fair game.

---

Previously, in the first half of this episode:

Captain Janeway's mission to hunt down a Maquis ship hasn't gone well. She found the ship just fine, but both vessels are now trapped over 70,000 light years from home (which is a huge distance in Star Trek). If that wasn't bad enough their crews have been probed by a mysterious alien on an equally mysterious array, and Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres have gone missing. Now the two ships have two goals: to figure out how to convince the alien to send them back, and to rescue their crewmembers. Their only lead is a nearby desert world: the mysterious destination of a series of mysterious energy pulses being sent from the array.

And now, the conclusion:

ACT FIVE

Act five starts with the second captain's log in three minutes, as Voyager and the Maquis ship enter a junk field, basically just because there might be someone there to talk to. Chakotay's ship is called the Val Jean by the way, but the name's not revealed until season 7 so I hope that doesn't count as a spoiler.

I'm glad we've got the two ships hanging out and going on adventures together, in this story at least. Though you know what would've been better? If Gul Evek's Cardassian cruiser had been swiped and brought here as well. They could've gone off on their own at the end and become a recurring element in the show for a while. We could've seen how they made different choices and where those choices got them.

Anyway, Voyager finds a ship with one humanoid life form aboard and hails them.

Oh no.

The episode was going just fine without Neelix! I didn't at any point think "You know what would make this story just a little bit better? An obnoxious comic relief character whose two jokes are 'he's bad at things' and 'everyone finds him annoying'." He looks pretty good in that coat though.

Neelix guesses that they were brought here from somewhere else in the galaxy, as he's been hearing that same story for months. He says that the people that the Caretaker kidnaps end up with the Ocampa, who live on that planet they're heading to. Unfortunately he can't be any more help that that as he's very busy looking through this trash today...

After a more lines, and a few good reaction shots from Paris and Janeway, Neelix finally agrees to help them find their missing crew in exchange for... water.

Then we get the first sign that things are a bit different in this region of space: Neelix has never heard of a transporter. Granted we just saw the Caretaker beaming people around a few minutes ago, but regular humanoids don't seem to have that tech. Janeway assures him that it's harmless, which is good to hear! This finally resolves all those arguments people have had about whether the device kills you and creates a clone with your memories at the destination to carry on with your life. No, it doesn't, it's harmless.

Then the episode cuts to Voyager's awesome transporter room, which was built from the Enterprise D's transporter room, which was built from the Motion Picture's transporter room... basically Trek had been rebuilding sets originally constructed for Star Trek: Phase 2 since the late 70s. Also that pattern on the floor was inherited from Star Trek VI and those six Fresnel lenses in the ceiling date back to the Original Series.

We also get our first look at Voyager's transporter in action, and it's very similar to the Next Gen transporter beam, except with some lens flares instead of the shower effect. It takes a little longer, but that's the price for a more stylish and elaborate transporter beam. This kind of transporter didn't seem to catch on though, as all the Starfleet ships on DS9 continued to use the old school Next Gen effect... even after First Contact introduced another style of transporter beam.

There is one other ship that uses the Voyager effect though: Chakotay's Maquis raider. We saw his transporter in action when he beamed to the bridge earlier and it looked just like this. I guess he was able to pick up a cutting edge Voyager-type transporter for cheap when it turned out no one else wanted them.

Some main cast Trek actors have had to put up with more elaborate makeup jobs than others, and poor Ethan Phillips had to have had it at least as bad as Armin Shimerman on DS9. He also has a very long owl on his shirt.

Tuvok introduces himself as a Vulcan, Neelix introduces himself as 'Neelix' and then comes over to give him a big hug. It immediately sets up Neelix as being the opposite of Tuvok... and now that's done he'll never hug another person like that again in the whole series. I mean as far as I remember.

Starfleet officers use sonic showers, but Neelix apparently stinks so bad that that Tuvok suggests he takes a bath instead. Neelix of course has no idea what a bath is, because water's so scarce in this region of space. Though hang on, he didn't always live out here, he's been all over the place! Surely at some point in his life he's been on a planet with enough water to take a bath.

Meanwhile, back in the mysterious medical room, Torres wakes up from sedation and finds it's just her and Kim in there now. He introduces himself, giving away the fact that he's Starfleet and his ship was looking for theirs, which she doesn't take well.

She tries attacking the door again and Kim stops her, being very careful not to close his hands in case it messes up the makeup. Torres has been less careful, which you can tell by the way the seam has torn on her gown.

Torres is a half-human, half-Klingon hybrid like K'Ehleyr from Next Gen and she has the same anger issues, but she apologises for losing control. Though their situation makes me think back to another Trek pilot with another Starfleet officer stuck in a room, and if Captain Pike was here he'd totally be attacking that door as well, testing every inch of his prison for weaknesses.

The two of them are provided with clothes and given a tour of the LA Convention Center, which looks suitably sci-fi. In fact this underground Ocampan city looks a lot more impressive than Farpoint station did back in Encounter at Farpoint, and they even went to the trouble of given the extras alien makeup this time. This was a really expensive episode of television for the time!

We learn that the Ocampa have been living underground for over 500 generations now (which isn't actually as long as it sounds). When the surface turned to a desert they were saved by the Caretaker, who has been looking after them ever since. He's given them food machines and the energy to run them.

He also gives them sick people occasionally, like Kim and Torres, but none of them have ever recovered from their mysterious illness. That news is so disturbing that the two of them just sit in silence, staring forwards, as the camera zooms in. Then it fades to black.

ACT SIX

I love these new corridors by the way, even if they're kind of tiny. I'm fascinated by how well lit they are just from a few curvy lights in the corners. I guess there must be more light coming from those glass windows in the ceiling than it seems.

In fact I love Voyager's sets in general, even if they are a bit cold and monochrome. And the helm console on the bridge is way too big. In fact that whole bridge is bloody huge. Uh... what was I meant to be talking about again?

One thing this episode has in common with Encounter at Farpoint is that it starts to lose its focus and get distracted in the second half as it gives all the other characters a bit of screen time. So instead of following Janeway, Chakotay or Paris, our three best candidates for a lead character, we're following Tuvok as he goes to visit Neelix.

Is this the first time we've ever seen crew quarters with a bathtub? Is this the first time we've seen a bathtub at all in Trek? It's definitely the first time we've seen a naked Neelix singing in a bath and maybe even the first time we've seen someone drinking his own bath water, depending on what's in that glass. Neelix has gone mad with water.

Ethan Phillips had to suffer enough with his makeup when we only saw him from the neck up, but here he had to have his torso made up as well, and it's pretty clear that this stuff doesn't come off your skin with soap and water.

Neelix gives them a destination to beam down to and suggests getting water ready for barter. He also asks if he can have a uniform like Tuvok's but that's apparently not going to happen. The Maquis outlaw Janeway took out of prison gets a uniform, but not him.

That's a great looking shot! It looks like a location footage combined with a matte painting. Unfortunately it also looks like Neelix has already lost his awesome coat and is wearing a colourful pastel suit instead. Janeway's beamed down as well, which is generally discouraged for captains. I guess she doesn't have a first officer to stop her anymore.

The place is in ruins, but there's some aliens walking around in the distance and they've got spaceships parked on the left. Anyone who's seen Star Wars knows that space travellers are drawn to lifeless desert worlds like moths to a light, but these particular aliens are here to mine cormaline. Neelix reveals that they're not the Ocampa however, they're the Kazon Ogla, which causes Janeway to ask the obvious question: "Who are the Kazon Ogla?"

Turns out that the Kazon are kind of like Klingons, except with orange skin and stuff stuck in their hair.

Right away Janeway gets a lesson in why the captain shouldn't come down on away missions, as the Kazon just come over, grab their weapons and take Neelix away. Maybe it would've been better for the tactical officer to keep a tactical distance!

This is Jabin, the leader of this group, and it turns out he's a bit angry with Neelix after he borrowed some of his water. But Neelix tells them that his friends' ship has technology that makes water out of thin air! Which was a really bloody stupid thing for him to say.

Janeway orders Voyager to beam down some containers of water and starts to negotiate.

As they talk about the Ocampa, one of them comes out from behind a wall, and it looks like she hasn't been treated great.

We learn that Ocampa only live nine years, with is roughly 130 years fewer than a human at this point I think, and Janeway learns about that Ocampa city two miles underground. It's protected by a barrier that stops the Kazon from stealing their water, though this one got out somehow.

Neelix attempts to make a deal for the Ocampa girl's release, but Jabin wants Janeway's replicator technology and there's no way she's ever giving that up, so he tries a different approach...

... and holds Jabin at gunpoint.

Neelix is a bloody idiot. First he tells the Kazon that Voyager has replicators, then he antagonises them. He knows that the Ocampa girl has the information Janeway wants and he knows that Voyager has transporters, so why the hell didn't he just suggest beaming her up?

Then Neelix goes and shoots the water containers Voyager just beamed down, causing them to leak everywhere and sending the Kazon running off with buckets. It's a great distraction and an even better way to piss them off even more.

The away team beams back up to Voyager, where they learn that Neelix was playing them all from the moment he appeared on the viewscreen as part of a scheme to save his girlfriend!

Then we get a beautiful matte painting of the subterranean city and all its water. I always appreciate it when I get a panning shot to stitch together like this. A glimpse of what Voyager could look like in widescreen.

This is a pretty nice shot as well. You don't generally get imagery like this in Berman era Trek.

Kim and Torres are still suffering from their mystery illness, and the Ocampan nurse from earlier approaches them with some medicine. She explains that some of the Ocampa have left the city to start their own farm and they accidentally discovered that the moss has healing properties. By leaving the Caretaker's protection they've begun to come up with new ways to improve their lives, like space penicillin.

The nurse reveals that the Caretaker's been acting really strange lately, abducting people and boosting their power supply. They've got about five years of energy stored up now, which means they must have some awesome battery technology. Though they're encouraged not to dwell on why they're being given so much power, as the Caretaker's basically their god at this point and it's not for mere mortals to question them. This is a very Star Trek story!

She also mentions that there are tunnels to the surface and their energy barrier has weakened and left holes, but she really doesn't recommend they try to get out through them.

Okay, I think I've seen enough of this now to form a proper opinion: I like Kim's hairstyle, but I'm not so keen on Paris' hair in this story.

The pixie girl they rescued has had her wounds healed by their amazing Federation technology, but their emergency holographic doctor is sick of everyone having a discussion in sickbay and orders them out. So Janeway immediately makes it clear who has actual authority here by simply ending his program.

The thing he's holding isn't part of his program though, so it falls out of his hand as he disappears. It's a nice touch!

Neelix is keen to take his girlfriend and go at this point, but she wants to stick around and help them. She wouldn't tell the Kazon a thing about how to get into the Ocampan city, no matter how much they tortured her, but she's totally willing to help these complete strangers. Also we finally get a name for her: she's called Kes. Now we just need a name for the doctor and we've got the set.

They used a multiplane effect here, with the foreground moving faster than the background as the camera pans across. It's a nice effect, but it means I couldn't make a panorama composite this time.

This is the view from further back in the Ocampa cave, showing the farm that lies just outside the city. At first I was thinking they were going to struggle to grow food without sunlight, but they've got lights set up so they've clearly thought of that.

The crew manage to beam an away team straight into the cave through a gap in the barrier, though the transporter is an expensive effect so we don't actually get to see it this time. The Ocampa are a bit curious about the mysterious aliens that just walked onto their farm from off-screen, but they're happy that Kes is back.

Toscat shows up (I think he was the one who showed Torres and Kim around the city, but not their doctor) and starts talking telepathically. Kes asks him to speak with his mouth, for the benefit of their guests/intruders and he does. It's fortunate really that the Ocampa all learned to speak even though there's apparently no need for it. Except to make it obvious which of them is talking I guess.

Anyway the important thing about this scene is that I keep noticing how terrible their phaser holsters look. They were basically asking for their guns to be swiped off them earlier. Also here's a fun fact about these scenes in and around the Ocampan city: they all had to be reshot because the studio didn't like Janeway's original hairstyle. They got all the extras back and put them in makeup, they rebuilt sets from scratch, they rehired the LA Convention Center, it was crazy.

TOS Cat

Unfortunately Toscat has no interest in being useful as that might go against the Caretaker's wishes, and Kes is clearly sick of his kind of thinking. She reveals that they've grown so dependent on the Caretaker that they've even lost their telepathic superpowers! Kind of a clunky bit of exposition there, to have her drop that into conversation out of nowhere.

ACT SEVEN

Meanwhile the two crewmembers they're looking for are currently making their way to the surface, which adds a bit of a complication. If they'd stayed put they could've all beamed out together, but they had to drag the episode out by escaping!

Man, this story has more painted backgrounds than an episode of The Animated Series. I think everything below the light on the left is part of the set though, judging by how Torres is able to shine her flashlight around.

Kim's really weak from his mysterious illness at this point, so Torres decides they should rest a moment. She gets another opportunity to mention how frustrating her Klingon side is and then they have a chat about Starfleet. Turns out that she was at Starfleet Academy for two years, but it wasn't working out.

Is this the first escalator in Star Trek? Everyone looks completely out of place on it.

The entire main cast is on the planet at this point (aside from the Doctor), so they've got Ensign Rollins running the ship. He lets them know that the array has stopped sending pulses and is realigning itself to fire weapons and seal the energy conduits permanently.

They split into two teams, with Paris, Neelix and Kes going to the ancient tunnels to look for their missing crewmembers, while Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok go chat to the doctors to learn about their mystery illness. It works better this way, as if Chakotay went with the others he might be at risk of getting something to do.

Tuvok's solved one mystery at least: the Caretaker must be dying. That's why he's given the Ocampa five years of energy and then sealed up the conduits after a millennium of looking after them, because they won't be getting any more from him. Tuvok wasn't actually around when Kim and Torres were told about the five years of energy, or how many generations they'd been down here, but I don't see that as a plot hole. The Ocampa have been pretty open about everything so they could've told him off screen.

Janeway has another mystery for him though: if the Caretaker dies, how the hell do they get home?

Shining a flashlight through a composited forcefield effect, that's just showing off!

The good news is that Paris' team have managed to catch up to Kim and Torres. The bad news is that no one can't beam through the barrier anymore, so they're going to have to ascend two miles to the surface on foot, and Janeway's team are going to have to get out this way as well. They also have to squeeze through this narrow gap, as touching the barrier will burn your skin off. I hope someone lets Janeway know.

It's funny watching this right after Encounter at Farpoint, as that episode also features a scene where the characters escape from underground tunnels during an attack from space. This is so much more elaborate though.

Their exit is blocked, so Paris tells Neelix to get out his phaser and blast a way out.

Wait, Neelix's weapon is a phaser? They've gone 70,000 light years to the other end of the galaxy, found a dude who doesn't know what a replicator or transporter is, but he's still using a phaser? Couldn't Paris have just said 'gun' or 'weapon'? Maybe everyone could've been using Star Wars blasters in the Delta Quadrant!

They could've at least made his beam look like it was from the Original Series or something, and not 100% identical to Paris' phaser.

They all climb out of a hole and find themselves out on location in California. There's no reason they can't beam up now, but another energy blast hits nearby and they lose contact with Janeway's group.

So renegade mercenary Tom Paris immediately decides to go back to save the others. Neelix takes two moments to decide, then follows him. Kes has apparently had enough heroism for one day though and stays with the others.

Neelix and Janeway get Tuvok out, leaving Chakotay with his nemesis Paris. Chakotay's sure he's got a broken leg and would rather Paris left before the stairs collapse entirely, but Paris is determined to save him.

Paris is also really determined to say the word 'Indian' over and over, as he quips about how Chakotay's life will belong to him after this and how he should turn into a bird and fly them out. This comes out of nowhere and is really jarring and out of place in a Star Trek episode. Actually that's not entirely true, as it reminds me of how McCoy and Spock would trade barbs about each other's race. Doesn't really feel as appropriate though when it's a real people that Paris is joking about, especially when Chakotay's actor doesn't belong to that group and neither do any of the writers. They did hire a consultant at least, Jamake Highwater... but he was a huge fraud and just made things worse.

This collapsing staircase set is cool though.

ACT EIGHT

Alright, Paris manages to get Chakotay out and the doctor fixes them all up so they can turn their focus back to the array.

Wait, hang on, we're not even going to get a line about Kim and Torres being cured? They just get up off a bed and that's it? We don't get to learn what was happening to them and we definitely don't get to learn how Torres got her outfit back. More time is spent on the Doctor's annoyance at everyone rushing out without turning him off. The guy just doesn't seem to want to exist!

It's nice to see Voyager and Val Jean still investigating things together like spaceship bros. Plus the Kazon have turned up too!

This is a weird situation for a Starfleet crew to be in, as Janeway assures Jabin that they actually don't want to do any science here or get in his way, they just want to use the array for their own selfish benefit! Jabin doesn't want them anywhere near it though, because they've got too much technological knowledge. Way to go Neelix, you've screwed everything up by telling them about the replicators earlier.

In fact Jabin decides to start shooting their technologically advanced starship with his tiny inferior Kazon vessels, because... I don't even know.

The two Alpha Quadrant ships return fire, and Janeway finally gives Paris the conn! It's a bit of a vague term in Star Trek, as it can mean 'you have the bridge' or 'you have the helm', but Paris decides to sit down at the wheel. Janeway and Tuvok are beaming over to the array, there's no one in her chair giving orders, but he's been dying for a chance to pilot the ship.

Wait, they're beaming over in a fight? What about the shields?

That's Rowlins sitting up front by the way. He had been flying the ship, but with Tuvok gone he makes his way over to the tactical station, because Rowlins can do everything. And he'll never be seen again after this episode sadly. He was played by Scott MacDonald, who played five characters in four different Trek series, including a recurring villain in Enterprise. But I feel like people probably know him best as Tosk in the DS9 episode Captive Pursuit.

Janeway and Tuvok find the Caretaker hanging out in his holodeck playing his banjo, like he does.

Turns out that he was the one who turned the Ocampa's planet into a lifeless desert. He was from a ship of explorers from another galaxy and they accidentally screwed everything up. Two of them were chosen to stay behind to look after the Ocampa, but one of them left to set up a sequel episode down the road.

And Kim and Torres' mysterious illness was a result of being incompatible with... something, I dunno. The Caretaker was dragging people in from all over the galaxy trying to find a being with a cell structure compatible enough with his own for him to have kids. Somehow those two were the closest, but not close enough. He knew he was dying, so he needed to have an offspring quick, because the Ocampa are his children and only his new born child would be able to take on the responsibility of caring for them. But that plan failed.

He explains that he can't help them get home as he has to use the last of his strength to seal off the tunnels and stop the Kazon stealing the Ocampa's water. But it's only a temporary solution. In five years' time their lights will go out and the food machines will stop working, and they'll have to come to the surface where they'll all die. So he's a bit depressed about that.

Janeway's a bit more optimistic about their chances of survival, saying she's seen plenty of species evolve to face adversity without a Caretaker's help. Those species were probably living on planets capable of rain though. It's a shame the guy couldn't have used that 'grab ships from 70,000 light years away' tech to move the Ocampa to a less terrible planet.

Meanwhile a big-ass Kazon super-ship has come to ruin their day. These things are apparently the size of a Star Destroyer and would dwarf any Federation starship. So that's not good.

Torres figures that even between the two of them they can't take on that ship, so Chakotay immediately decides to ram them with the Val Jean! He tells Torres to get their crew over to Voyager (reminding her that they need to drop shields first), then tells Paris to have someone ready to beam him off at the last moment.

It's great seeing pro-active Chakotay just go and do things! It's a bit of a shame though that Paris goes and spoils the moment by saying "Don't for one second think this makes us even, Chakotay. Your life is still mine."

It's also great how Chakotay stops for a second to thank the transporter chief after being beamed away a second before colliding with the other ship. It's a nice character moment for a guy who's barely even been a character in this story.

The good news is that they took out the Kazon carrier! The bad news is that it went and crashed into the array! Tuvok had just managed to find the system to send them back home as well... though it will take several hours to activate.

The holographic environment glitches out, leaving Janeway and Tuvok facing the true form of the Caretaker: a CGI blob. Then the creature dies, shrinking into a small rock which Janeway picks up.

Tuvok asks if he should start the process of getting them home, but Janeway's thinking about the Caretaker's last words, which were basically "Oh crap, the self-destruct's broken, the Kazon will kill the Ocampa if they get hold of the array!" He points out that the Prime Directive says that they shouldn't get involved in situations like this, though they really didn't get any choice in the matter this time.

Janeway and Tuvok beam back and get the tricobalt warheads armed. Dilithium is twice as good as lithium, but tricobalt is three times as good as cobalt! Makes me wonder why they didn't fire them at that Kazon ship.

This is the big moment in the episode where Janeway decides that she won't let the Ocampa die for their own convenience. It's a decision she makes entirely on her own without consulting any of her crew first, though to be fair they are in a bit of a space battle at the moment and they've already lost one ship.

The only resistance she gets over this choice is from Torres, who questions why she has the right to make this decision for all of them, but Chakotay stops her and says "She's the captain." Sure would've been nice if Chakotay could've gone on an emotional journey to reach this conclusion. Maybe he and Janeway could've even had a conversation! It really feels like the writers were obligated to contrive a reason to get Maquis crewmembers onto the ship to set up later episodes, but weren't really interested in telling a story about it here.

And Voyager blows up the gigantic ultra high-tech array with just two torpedoes. That was much easier than blowing up the tiny low-tech spaceships!

Jabin pops up on screen to let them know he'll be their recurring antagonist, saying "You have made an enemy today," and then his ships all fly off to go find some water or whatever. I doubt we'll be seeing him again though. Unless their engines are as fast as the most advanced ship in Starfleet and they've developed a single-minded determination to get to the Alpha Quadrant, the Kazon are going to be left in Voyager's dust.

The big question is, why didn't the Voyager crew just use timed explosives? That way they could've gone home and then blown the array up behind them! Actually the big question is why wasn't any of this discussed for a moment, seeing as this event is supporting the entirety of the series on its back.

They really got their money's worth out of this explosion, all the little arms are coming off and everything.

It seems to me that there was nothing stopping the crew from setting some explosives and starting the process to send them back home, but then Voyager would've had to hold the Kazon off for hours. Chakotay had to sacrifice his ship just so they could survive the first wave, they weren't going to win this. The scene makes it seem like Janeway had a choice, and she did, but the choice was between:

1. Blow up the array, remain stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
2. Don't blow up the array and let the Kazon have it, remain stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
3. Keep fighting the Kazon, get blown up in the Delta Quadrant.

And why were they so keen to roll the dice on this machine anyway? Last time the Caretaker used it on them it killed a significant percentage of the crew, and he knew how to use it!

I wonder if they had to reshoot that photo to change her hair as well.

It's just occurred to me that Janeway's ready room is absolutely gigantic compared to Picard's. Partially because they gave her some of Ten Forward's windows (with another set being used for the briefing room on the other side of the bridge). The rest of Ten Forward became Voyager's mess hall.

Paris drops by for a bit of exposition, and we learn that Chakotay's crew will be merging with Voyager's crew, with Chakotay becoming her first officer... which means a weird pattern is beginning to form. For a couple of years every first officer in televised Star Trek was a former terrorist.

Also Paris will be getting a field commission of lieutenant and the position of helmsman! It's lucky he was already wearing the uniform really.

Oh no. Please just go to your ship and go live fun exciting fulfilling lives somewhere else!

Neelix and Kes volunteer to stay aboard as part of the crew, with Neelix explaining that he can be a guide, a cook, he can tell them where to find supplies... basically he's the exact person they need in this situation. And Kes pretty much just stands there.

I get why Janeway puts Chakotay's crew in uniforms, it's so that they feel like they all belong to the same team, but she's being really inconsistent about it. Chakotay's crew all get provisional rank insignia, even the ones that had been in Starfleet, but Paris gets a proper rank insignia. Meanwhile Neelix and Kes don't get uniforms or ranks, even though they're serving as part of the crew. It just seems kind of arbitrary to me.

I also don't get why there isn't one good shot of the whole bridge in this episode, even at the very end. It's very inconsiderate of people taking screencaps for articles they're writing 25 year later.

The last scene of the episode is pretty much all one speech by Janeway, where she lays out the premise of the series. They're a Starfleet crew, so they'll be seeking out new worlds and exploring space, but their main goal is to get back home. It'll take 75 years at their best speed to get back to the Federation, but they'll looking for any sci-fi shortcut or FTL technology that could get them back faster. Plus there's that other Caretaker out there to find.

I've just thought of another thing I don't get: why do they keep saying it's a 75 years trip in later episodes, when Janeway admits it's an unrealistic estimate based on speeds they can't sustain? If she'd said "Our best estimate, assuming we're travelling at cruising speed and taking 26 breaks a year for action-adventure, is a 75 year trip," it would've made much more sense!

In reality they're going to be travelling at warp 6 most of the time and this voyage is going to take centuries. It might be that all they're really doing here is sending their great grandchildren to a world they've never known. It's kind of a horrifying situation really.

The final shot is also our first shot of the warp engines tilting up and the ship going to warp. This one's definitely a CG effect, as making a physical model do the warp stretch effect would've taken a lot of time and effort and it wouldn't have looked as good in the end.

They actually did build the physical model to be able to tilt its engines however, and the series does feature a shot of it happening... eventually. You have to wait until the end of the season for it though.


CONCLUSION

---

Caretaker had three jobs: it had introduce all the regular characters and tell us why we should care about them, it had to set up the premise for the next seven seasons, and it had to tell a damn good story.

The episode basically has two protagonists: Captain Kathryn Janeway and Tom Paris. I was going to talk about how Janeway gets less focus than the other captains in earlier pilots, and how she's especially sidelined in the second half, but then I ran the script through a spreadsheet and discovered that she has over twice the lines of Paris, who has almost twice the lines of anyone else. Granted some of those lines are "On screen" and "Go ahead" but she also gets some long speeches and Kate Mulgrew delivers them perfectly. She doesn't get the chance to bounce off a strong antagonist like Patrick Stewart did in Encounter at Farpoint, dealing with a frustratingly uncommunicative banjo player isn't the best demonstration of her talent, but she gets enough to do here to prove she was the right choice for the role. Even though she wasn't the first choice (hey, William Shatner wasn't their first choice either).

In last place by a long way is the Emergency Medical Holographic program who gets even fewer lines than Kes. It just feels like more because the character's so much more interesting and memorable. The guy just has no interest in the events going on outside of sickbay, he just wants things handed to him and to be turned off afterwards. He's going to inevitably end up raising some awkward questions about whether it's ethical to use hologram technology if they can become self-aware just by leaving them on long enough, but here he's maybe the highlight of the episode.

The spreadsheet indicated that it's actually Chakotay who has to be the overall loser. Sure he's in fifth place for lines, but none of those lines say anything about him or what he thinks about the situation. He seems like a placeholder for a character that will developed later. In fact the whole Maquis situation feels like nothing but set up for later stories. Beyond the scrolling text at the start there isn't one single moment spent on establishing who these people are or what they're fighting for. We get basically no scenes of Janeway and Chakotay really talking; they never come into conflict, debate anything, or even get to know each other.

In fact if you alter the premise so that Chakotay is the captain of a lost Starfleet ship it'd would change just two scenes as far as I can tell: the one where B'Elanna finds out who Harry is and the one where Chakotay finds out that Tuvok was a traitor. For the rest of the episode they might as well just be Starfleet as they immediately do the sensible thing and join up with Janeway for their common interest and never push back in any way. The only antagonism is between Chakotay and Paris, who isn't even in Janeway's crew! Except he basically is.

One of the problems with Paris is he set up for a redemption arc, but all of his mercenary behaviour is in the past tense and he's a consummate professional, so he's already at the destination. It shows that Federation rehabilitation works I guess! (He must have left just before they taught him to stop being creepy around women). Plus the 'kicked out of Starfleet' half of his backstory becomes entirely irrelevant from the moment they reach the Delta Quadrant, as Janeway always treats him like a regular Starfleet officer and everyone on the crew who has a problem with him gets killed off! It does lead to a nice moment with Kim though, and their friendship is another highlight of the episode.

Then there's the story itself, and it's... alright.

It's definitely a slicker, less ridiculous production than Encounter at Farpoint, as you'd expect from a team that had already been doing this for eight years and had better technology to work with, plus it's better paced as well. But the Caretaker and Jabin aren't going to make anyone's 'Greatest Star Trek Villains' lists. Okay that's unfair to the Caretaker, as he's not really a villain, it's his inability to just tell people what's going on that's the real antagonistic force in the story. It means the crew have to go searching for the answers, and that just makes those answers more disappointing when we finally get them. Kim and Torres' mysterious medical condition is left just vague enough to be unsatisfying and there's a huge question mark over whether anything anyone does here is going to save the Ocampa in the end. The sad thing is that the Voyager crew were drawn into the Delta Quadrant as part of a failed experiment and basically did nothing except for blow up a ship and rescue Kes. They lost big time and did very little good in the end. Not exactly a triumphant ending.

On the plus side, the episode's almost absurdly Star Trek in its themes, like they were following a checklist. There's the trip to a mysterious realm that all the pilots have, the godlike superbeing, the religion that's formed around them, and it makes the argument that people need leave their gods behind and face adversity to grow. Plus there's a big moral choice at the end that tests who the characters are as people. Well, it tests Janeway anyway, she doesn't let anyone else get a say.

The episode's about the consequences of interference in other cultures and a person's responsibility to others. The Caretaker's crew made a mistake and nearly wiped out a civilisation, and he's spent hundreds of years on his own trying to keep the Ocampa alive out of guilt. Janeway prefers a more 'hit and run' style of intervention, as it's the Starfleet way. They say the Prime Directive prevents them from interfering... but then they go and make a huge choice that'll affect a whole culture and then get the hell out of there as soon as possible. Was it the right thing to do? Probably, the Kazon suck. It would've been nice to have gotten more than the slightest bit of discussion about it though. They could've come together as a crew at the end when all the main characters were in the same place at last... but nope.

The episode also had to set up the premise of the series, with two crews from different factions stranded together on the same ship, 75 years from home, and it definitely did that. It also sets up that the technology level may be a bit lower out here, with things like transporters, replicators, phasers and baths being unknown concepts.

But I've already mentioned how it completely drops the ball on setting up who the Maquis are and it doesn't even do a great job of setting up what home is. It's the place with the picturesque penal colony where Janeway left her fiancé and dog, and if you want to know more than that you're going to have to watch the other series. Though the other series are about people spending years at a time on spaceships and space stations, so right now the crew's predicament doesn't seem all that different from what they'd signed up to be doing anyway. And who even knows what the Maquis crew cares about. There could've been some scenes of the characters actually talking about all this, making us understand what they want and why.

On the plus side, the episode leaves the series in a situation full of potential. Voyager has a crew filled with renegades at senior positions and they're trapped far away from Starfleet support or orders, completely on their own. There'll be no missions escorting delegates to conferences, every single planet they visit on this journey will be a strange new world, every episode they'll be exploring somewhere new, and every alien will be unfamiliar. Unless it turns out that Gul Evek's ship got yanked over to the Delta Quadrant after all. We know the Caretaker had been hijacking ships for a while and it wouldn't be too unlikely for the crew to come across other Alpha Quadrant vessels occasionally if they're all taking the same route back home.

Overall Caretaker's not an amazing episode, but it kept my interest and it gave me some good scenes and likeable characters, so I can't complain. It's better than Encounter at Farpoint but not on Emissary's level. Plus despite all my whining, I think my biggest problem with it might actually be the dull 90s Star Trek music. And Paris's hair, obviously. And Neelix's suit.

---

NEXT EPISODE

It's possible that Star Trek: Voyager may return to my site at some point. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about the pilot episode of a Star Trek show too ashamed at first to wear the name. It's Enterprise - Broken Bow.

If you want to leave your own thoughts about Caretaker, there's a comment box below. Plus Sci-Fi Adventures has a Discord!