Star Trek Voyager: Season 5

Season five of Star trek voyager was a great one.

Seven's charecter continues to develop and some new species are introduced. The season finale also has an excellent cliffhanger.

Here are the episode synopses:

Night

Voyager enters a region of space where there are no stars. It would take them 2 years to cross it but discover a shortcut

owned by someone unwilling to share it.

Drone

When Seven and the Doctor are brought onto Voyager during an emergency beam in, Seven's Borg implants fuse with

the doctor's mobile emitter creating a 29th century 'superborg'

Extreme Risk

After Tom Paris tests the new "Delta Flyer" it is revealed that Torres has been engaging very risky behavior.

In The Flesh

Voyager discovers a large space station with species 8472 on it. They have created a holographic recreation of

Starfleet Academy and are disguising themselves as humans. Janeway suspects that they may be planning an invasion

Once Upon a Time

After Ensign Wildman goes missing, Neelix helps comfort her daughter using a holographic recreation of Talaxian fairy tales.

Timeless

15 years after Voyager crash landed on an ice planet killing all but two crewmembers, they steal a Borg technology that may

enable them to send a message back in time to warn about the cause of the crash.

Infinite Regress

Seven starts to take on the personalities of individuals whom she assimilated while she was a Borg drone.

Nothing Human

After Torres is attacked by an alien parasite, she must rely on the mind of one of her enemies to help remove the parasite from her body.

Thirty Days

While confined to the Brig for a month the recently demoted Tom Paris creates a retrospective journal of the

events leading to his punishment

Counterpoint

Voyager is stopped after entering spaced owned by a xenophobic alien race.

Latent Image

The doctor suspects that someone may have deleted part his short-term memory.

Bride of Chaotica!

An alien attacks the ship believing a holodeck battle simulation to be real. Janeway then creates a character for herself to fix the problem

Gravity

When Paris and Tuvok send a distress signal to Voyager after crash landing on a planet, a gravity well prevents the

message from reaching its destination.

Bliss

Voyager discovers a wormhole they believe is leading to Earth, but Seven suspects that it is an elaborate trap and no one believes her.

Dark Frontier Part I

Janeway comes up with a plan to steal a transwarp node from a Borg vessel. During the mission, Seven is lured into staying behind.

Dark Frontier part II

Janeway starts a mission to rescue Seven from the Borg.

The Disease

After violating Starfleet's interspecies protocol by having sex with a member of the Varro species, Kim becomes infected

with an alien venereal disease.

Course: Oblivion

After several crewmembers start dying they discover that they are all duplicates of Voyager and its crew

The Fight

Chakotay begins receiving telepathic communications from an alien that uses the sport of boxing as a metaphor.

Think Tank

An alien offers to help Voyager's crew solve some problems but afterwards the price is way too steep.

Juggernaut

Voyager's crew struggle to stop an alien ship carrying toxic waste from exploding, which would obliterate everything in a 3 light year radius.

Someone to Watch Over Me

The Doctor encourages Seven to start socalizing with the crew more and offers to be her tutor.

11:59

Janeway reminisces about two of her ancestors who attepmted stop a town from being bulldozed to build a biosphere.

Relativity

Seven is given a covert mission in Voyager's past by captain Braxton to discover who planted a temoral

weapon that would destroy Voyager in the near future.

Warhead

After Voyager's crew discover a device on a planet and bring it aboard, an attempt to repair it reveals that it is a weapon.

It then arms itself and takes control of the ship.

Equinox part I

Voyager receives a distress call from a nearby ship, which to their shock is the USS Equinox from the Federation.

The ship's captain reveals that they were pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the caretaker just like Voyager was. They then try to stop the aliens, which are now attacking both of their ships.

Star Trek fans will love this!

STAR TREK: VOYAGER is an unusual show in that its worst seasons were the earliest. Virtually all shows ever made were better in their first half than in the second half, but VOYAGER is one of the few exceptions. There are two reasons for the dramatic improvement in the show over its final four seasons. First, an increasing amount of serial content. No doubt part of this was the result of a growing number of other shows on at the same time with serial formats. Whatever the cause, as more and more elements carried over from one episode to later episodes, the more interesting the series became. The second reason for the improvement in the show was the emergence of Seven of Nine as the show's most compelling character. Very shortly after her introduction at the start of Season Four, Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine became by far the most crucial character in most of the best episodes. VOYAGER did not, in fact, feel at all like the same show after Seven's appearance on the series. And as with the other three seasons featuring Seven, most of the best episodes on the show were Seven-centric.

Still, Season Five did not have as many truly excellent episodes as Season Four. On the other hand, it did not have nearly as man weak episodes as Seasons One through Three and Season Six. The two-part "Dark Frontier" is one of the exceptions, providing two of the most exciting episodes in the entire run of VOYAGER (again, a pair of episodes focused on Seven of Nine, as she temporarily returns to the Borg, learning that perhaps her having become a member of the crew of Voyager was part of a Borg plan). Still, the main virtue of Season Five is its persistent excellence, rather than its flashes of greatness.

There are some fun guest appearances in Season Five. Jason Alexander made one of his first post-SEINFELD appearances in the late season episode "Think Tank" (yet another Seven of Nine episode). John Savage appears in the end of the season episode "Equinox" (the second half of which would start Season Six). I did have a remarkable experience over a two-day period during which I encountered character actor Mark Harelik in three different shows. I rewatched an episode of the great, great series PUSHING DAISIES entitled "Bitches," in which the owner of a string of puppy stores, played by Harelik, attempts to clone the world's most perfect dog ("man's best, best friend"). Then I saw him on VOYAGER in "Counterpoint," one of the best episodes of Season Five, as Devore Inspector Kashyk. His role is one of the finest guest appearances in all of VOYAGER, as he plays a Devore officer who may or may not be attempting to defect from his people and who may or may not be trying to help Voyager. He and Janeway were really great together. Finally, I watched the second episode of the new series ELI STONE, and Harelik appeared as a defense attorney. For a brief period of time he seemed to be everywhere I looked.

All in all, a good season. But I agree with all those who think Paramount has priced these sets outrageously high. I own a very large number of shows on DVD, but not a single box set of any Star Trek series. Instead, I rely on Netflix. I strongly encourage everyone to refuse to purchase these sets at their current pricing level. Current technology makes the production of these sets extremely cheap, far cheaper than it cost to make old VHS tapes. And with little or no fees to be paid for use of music (something that represents a real expense for shows like NORTHERN EXPOSURE or SMALLVILLE) there is little in the way of overhead. There is a word for what Paramount is doing with the Star Trek DVDs and that word is "gouging." They are gouging fans of the show by forcing people to pay extravagant prices. There is simply no excuse for any box set to cost more than around $42 after discount. I can understand a show like ALLY MCBEAL costing more (if it ever makes it onto DVD) because of the licensing fees for its heavy use of music, but not a show like VOYAGER. The most I can say is that they have lowered the price somewhat. But it is still way, way too expensive. The sad part is that if they dropped the cost of the show, they would almost certainly make more money by greatly increased sales.

Less than one year following the concluding season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in 1994, executive producer/writer Rick Berman, along with Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor, created a fourth television series based upon the "Star Trek" universe originally created by Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) in the 1960's. This fourth television series, entitled "Voyager" (which is the name of the Federation of Planets starship used in the series), first aired in January 1995, and ran for seven seasons until it concluded in May 2001. Because "Voyager" aired initially in the month of January (instead of the traditional September), only 16 episodes were filmed for the first season. The succeeding six other seasons had 26 episodes each, for a grand total of 172 episodes for the entire series.

Unlike the previous three "Star Trek" television series, which (for the most part) took place within the bounds of the Federation of Planets (or in nearby sovereign areas of space, such as the Klingon Empire or the Romulan Empire) in the Alpha Quadrant, the starship Voyager is hurled tens of thousands of light-years from home into the previously unknown and unexplored Delta Quadrant, which is located at the far side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Even while traveling at warp 8 (the fastest safe speed that a typical starship can travel), it would take Voyager several decades to return to Earth. Hence, the series focuses on the survival of Voyager's Starfleet crew, who are completely isolated and unable to even maintain normal communications with Earth, as well as the crew's ultimate desire to find a way home faster than their ship is capable of doing. Also, along the way, Voyager adopts a few Delta Quadrant natives.

The primary cast members of the fourth season of "Voyager" include Captain Catherine Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran), the half-Klingon Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Lt. Thomas Eugene Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), Delta Quadrant native (Talaxian) Neelix (Ethan Phillips), the holographic Emergency Medical Holographic Program (a.k.a., "The Doctor", played by Robert Picardo), the Vulcan Lt. Cmdr. Tuvok (Tim Russ), Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) and the former Borg drone Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Voyager's fifth season begins with the episode "Night", in which Voyager has been traveling through a void that may take them 2 years to traverse and the crew is slowly going crazy. The ship is attacked by three alien ships built by natives of the seeming void; but when Voyager is assisted by another alien ship that is dumping deadly radioactive waste into the void, Voyager's crew realizes what is happening to the void's natives.

During the fifth season of "Voyager", Seven of Nine becomes an accidental mother to an advanced drone named One (J. Paul Boehmer) in episode "Drone", B'Elanna continues her ongoing struggles with her Klingon half, Kim from the future attempts to save Voyager from total destruction in episode "Timeless", Paris is punished for trying to save a watery world in episode "Thirty Days", the holographic doctor is plagued by a difficult decision in episode "Latent Image" and Capt. Janeway battles the Borg Queen (Susanna Thompson) in the two-part episode "Dark Frontier". The best fifth-season episodes, in order of airdate, include "Night", "Drone" (one of the best "Voyager" episodes ever), "Extreme Risk", "In the Flesh" (the return of species 8472), "Timeless", "Thirty Days", "Counterpoint", "Latent Image", "Bride of Chaotica!" (aliens visit Paris' holodeck program), "Gravity", "Bliss", "Dark Frontier (Parts 1 and 2)", "Juggernaut", "11:59", "Relativity", "Warhead" and the season finale "Equinox, Part 1". The least memorable fifth-season episodes include "Once Upon a Time", "The Disease" and "The Fight".

Overall, I rate the fifth season of "Voyager" with 4 out of 5 stars since it was a slightly weaker season than its predecessors, but did have some very good episodes.