Star Trek: Voyager first premiered in 1995, a golden age for Star Trek as a franchise. At the time, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was still airing and Star Trek: The Next Generation had only reached its own dramatic finale a year earlier. On the one hand, this was great for Voyager since it meant that the series should have an existing fan base from day one. On the other hand, however, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were both popular enough shows that Voyager had some pretty big shoes to fill.
But while TNG's Enterprise was the flagship of the Federation patrolling the Alpha Quadrant, and while DS9's wormhole was the gateway to the Gamma Quadrant, Voyager's showrunners launched the show all the way to the Delta Quadrant. This meant that the USS Voyager was not only facing threats never seen before in Star Trek, but also completely isolated from any help from Starfleet. While this radically different setting might have made some early viewers nervous, the five best episodes in season one prove that Voyager was always going to be legendary.
5"Faces" Season 1, Episode 14
Written By Kenneth Biller and Jonathan Glassner - Directed By Winrich Kolbe
One of the defining aspects of Star Trek: Voyager is that half of the USS Voyager's crew are not Starfleet officers, but Maquis rebels stranded in the Delta Quadrant at the same time as Voyager. And perhaps the most iconic of these Maquis crewmembers is Voyager's half-human, half-Klingon chief engineer, Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson). Lt. Torres was a polarizing figure for Voyager's crew, but her confidence and indominable sense of justice made her instantly beloved by viewers. And the season one episode, "Faces," is the episode that solidified Lt. Torres's characterization for the rest of the show.
What makes "Faces" succeed as an episode is how explicit it makes the conflict that B’Elanna will face for the rest of the show. Namely, the tension Lt. B'Elanna Torres feels between her human and Klingon heritages, and the corresponding tension she feels between Starfleet structures and Maquis freedom. In almost every episode, B'Elanna Torres is successful as a chief engineer because she is able to unite the two sides of her nature in order to come up with practical, out-of-the-box solutions to the complexities of the Delta Quadrant.
The tension Lt. B'Elanna Torres feels between her human and Klingon heritages, and the corresponding tension she feels between Starfleet structures and Maquis freedom.
"Faces" is a window onto the psyche of one of Voyager's most interesting characters, and it sets up a conflict that will matter for the rest of the series. For anyone new to watching the series, "Faces" certainly promised good things for the rest of the show. But although "Faces" is certainly in the top five episodes of season one, it really only focuses on one character's story. And Voyager is not a story about just one character, but the entire cast of characters that became the Voyager family.
4"Prime Factors" Season 1, Episode 10
Written By David George, Eric Stillwell, Michael Perricone, And Greg Elliot - Directed By Les Landau
At the end of Voyager's premiere in the two-part episode, "Caretaker," Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) made a promise to her crew that she would do her best to get Voyager home as soon as possible while staying true to Starfleet principles. In the first nine episodes of the show, those two values seem not to be in conflict; there are episodes where Voyager has chances to get closer to home, and there are episodes where Voyager has to uphold the Prime Directive, and in the first nine episodes the balance between those two ideals seems easy to maintain.
In "Prime Factors," however, Captain Janeway has to choose whether or not to go against Starfleet principles and regulations in order to bring her crew home almost instantaneously. In "Prime Factors," Voyager encounters the Sikarians, a species with advanced portal technology and their own version of the Prime Directive that prevents them from sharing technology with outsiders. While Captain Janeway is willing to push back on this decision, she feels bound as a Starfleet officer not to take things further by attempting to forcibly remove the technology.
Although Captain Janeway does not condone the actions of her crew in "Prime Factors," she does not totally condemn them either. After dressing down the officers involved, Captain Janeway asks that Tuvok not act on his Vulcan logic behind her back again.
What makes "Prime Factors," a fantastic episode is that the crew is not united behind Captain Janeway's decision. Initially, Lt. Torres led a group of both Starfleet officers and former Maquis to steal the technology, but, when Security Chief Lt. Tuvok (Tim Russ) discovered the conspiracy, he becomes the leader himself. In this moment, "Prime Factors" revealed the deep unity of the Voyager crew better than any other episode of Voyager. Anyone who watched "Prime Factors" was not only confronted with the central conflict of Voyager, but also was shown the strength of the crew that made Voyager so fantastic.
3"Eye Of The Needle" Season 1, Episode 7
Written By Hilary Bader, Bill Dial, And Jeri Taylor - Directed By Winrich Kolbe
"Eye of the Needle" is one of the best episodes of Voyager's first season because it is a perfect encapsulation for the rest of the show – the crew encounters something that should be a clear path back to Earth, only to have their hopes dashed. In this case, a micro-wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant, only to discover the wormhole transcends time as well as space, leading to a point 20 years in Voyager's past. What makes this episode so iconic is that, when you watch it, "Eye of the Needle" almost feels like watching the essence of Voyager distilled into one episode.
Tragically, later episodes of Voyager confirm that the messages sent back in time in "Eye of the Needle" were never actually transmitted to the Federation.
Every single crewmember has to engage in both the hopeful action of writing letters home and then face the devastating reality that they are talking to someone in the past. That the writers could handle both of these emotional extremes so well shows what a great show Voyager was always meant to be. Furthermore, that the crew has to work with a Romulan further parallels the dynamic of Starfleet and the Maquis on Voyager and lays the groundwork for future uncomfortable alliances (like the Borg).
2"Jetrel" Season 1, Episode 15
Written By James Thompton, Scott Nimerfro, Jack Klein, Karen Klein, And Kenneth Biller - Directed By Kim Friedman
One of the best aspects of Deep Space Nine was its willingness to delve into darker subject matter than earlier Star Trek shows, particularly The Next Generation. In particular, the parallels between the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor and real-world genocidal regimes immediately signaled to audiences that Deep Space Nine would have a more serious tone. The episode "Jetrel" is Voyager's own way of exploring darker themes with real-world parallels, and, as the penultimate episode of season one of Voyager (which was better than Voyager's season one finale), "Jetrel" made it clear that Voyager had the capacity to take Star Trek to the next level.
The scientist, Jetrel (James Sloyan), invented a Star Trek equivalent of an atomic bomb which devastated Neelix's (Ethan Phillips) home and came to Voyager seeking redemption. When Jetrel fails at his mission and it’s clear he will die on Voyager, Neelix makes the shocking choice to forgive Jetrel as one of his victims. Until this point, Neelix had just been a comic relief character, so "Jetrel" made it clear no character on Voyager was without depth and nuance. Furthermore, that Voyager included this storyline in season 1 was proof that they were aiming for greatness from the beginning.
1"Ex Post Facto" Season 1, Episode 8
Written By Michael Piller and Evan Carlos Somers - Directed By LeVar Burton
"Ex Post Facto" is the best episode of Voyager's first season, and there are two main reasons why it really stands out, even among other great early Voyager episodes. Firstly, since Lt. Tuvok started the series by betraying the Maquis, it was so important to prove to audiences that he was willing to defend every member of the Voyager family. Lt. Tuvok was the first Vulcan main cast member since Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and "Ex Post Facto" was the episode of Voyager that first established what a Vulcan security officer was truly capable of.
Secondly, and more importantly, "Ex Post Facto" is a direct parallel to the eighth episode of The Next Generation, "Justice," and it completely blows "Justice" out of the water. It seems like director LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge in TNG, brought all his experience and expertise to Voyager to make the best version possible of the plot. In "Justice," TNG's young Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) is sentenced to death for a crime on an alien world; in "Ex Post Facto," ensign Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) is similarly punished for an alien crime.
There was no better indicator of the future quality of Star Trek: Voyager than taking a classic Star Trek plot and doing it better.
Notably, however, Voyager resolves the conflict in accordance with Banean law, whereas in TNG the conflict is resolved through literal divine intervention. This simultaneously connects Voyager to earlier Trek while also establishing that Voyager, as a lone ship in the Delta Quadrant, is going to be playing by different rules than something like the Enterprise. Early on in the show, there was no better indicator of the future quality of Star Trek: Voyager than taking a classic Star Trek plot and doing it better than the original.
