star trek voyager episode basics

Basics, Part II (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Story and script
• 4.4 Production
• 4.5 Effects
• 4.6 Continuity
• 4.7 Reception
• 4.8 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Special Guest Star
• 5.4 Guest Stars
• 5.5 Co-Stars
• 5.6 Uncredited Co-Stars
• 5.7 References
• 5.8.1 Meta references
• 5.9 External links

Summary [ ]

Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew are struggling to survive on the desolate planet on which the Kazon have abandoned them. It becomes immediately clear that their number one priority is to seek shelter from the elements. They move into one of the caves that appears to provide adequate protection given their circumstances. While Captain Janeway's team makes camp in that cave, one of the other teams, led by Neelix , is searching the surrounding area for food and supplies. Near the entrance of a cave, he and Hogan find humanoid bones. Neelix orders Hogan to gather the bones up so they can use them for tools and weapons. As Neelix goes to help another crewmember, Hogan gets attacked and dragged into the tunnel by an unknown predator. They rush to save him, but are too late and only find a few scraps of his uniform.

Act One [ ]

Lt. Tom Paris tries to repair the shuttlecraft he escaped in and fends off a Kazon patrol ship that has been sent to find him, destroying it.

Back near the cave, Neelix is upset, blaming himself, thinking that if he hadn't ordered Hogan to collect those bones, he wouldn't be dead now. Janeway, who herself is deeply saddened by the news of Hogan's death, tells him that there is no time to worry about blame; Hogan was a fine officer, and she wants to make sure that his death was the last one for a long time. She orders her crew to be more careful and to hold on, as she will not allow them to be destroyed by this planet. She declares the tunnels off-limits and wants clear safety protocols established. Lieutenant Tuvok informs her that he has already begun to design some rudimentary weapons. Chakotay suggests that, as unpleasant as it sounds, he can use the remains of Hogan's uniform to make solar stills in order to produce water. When Neelix informs her that their search for food has come up with nothing, she tells the crew to start turning over rocks and eat insects if need be, and to make it clear to anyone who is disgusted as the prospect to consider themselves under captain's orders since they'll likely make the difference between life and death. Leading by example, she manages to find one and promptly eats it.

Back on the USS Voyager , Seska goes to sickbay to have The Doctor examine her child. She also informs him that the Kazon have taken over the ship and wonders if he has a problem with that change of command. The Doctor lies and tells her that he couldn't care less about who is running the ship for he is there to provide medical treatment to whoever needs it. He also tells her that lying and blunt deception are not part of his programming. After he finishes examining the baby he informs Seska that the DNA scan proves that her baby is not Commander Chakotay 's son as she thought he was. Seska doesn't believe him at first given the child's appearance, but The Doctor explains that the baby is the first Cardassian-Kazon hybrid and therefore there is no reference in regards to his appearance but will likely develop more Kazon features as he grows. Visibly upset about the news The Doctor has given her, Seska rushes out of sickbay and deactivates the EMH . The Doctor, however, manages to reactivate himself again as Seska leaves and begins conducting some research of his own.

As he asks the computer for the crew complement, he finds out that in addition to the 89 Kazon, there is also one Betazoid , Lon Suder , on board. He contacts Suder and informs him about the situation. He tells him to make it to sickbay and asks the computer to delete the signature of Suder's combadge from the system to ensure he isn't counted among the crew complement and therefore be hidden from the Kazon.

Back on the planet, the crew is still struggling with meeting their basic needs. Night has fallen and temperatures have plummeted and they are forced to huddle together for warmth. Ensign Harry Kim and Lt. jg B'Elanna Torres return with eggs and some equivalent of cucumbers they found only two kilometers from where they found shelter, allow the crew to put off eating more insects for the time being. Ensign Wildman 's baby , however, is starting to fall ill. Unfortunately, there's no way to diagnose what's wrong with her and she may simply be having difficulty coping with the planet's environment. Chakotay is upset at himself for not being able to start a fire, but recalling some survival advice taught by his father, later manages to do so when using Janeway's and other crew members' donated hair as kindling.

Later in the evening, while sitting around a fire to warm up, Neelix suggests putting some rocks around it to reflect the heat better. He sets off looking for more rocks, but disappears in the dark. When Kes follows him, she is captured by one of the natives.

Act Two [ ]

Tom Paris contacts the Talaxians who inform him that Voyager has been taken over by the Kazon-Nistrim, who have been flooding every subspace frequency with the news. Despite initial misgivings and hesitation to help Paris and Voyager , Commander Paxim is persuaded to help Tom with his mission to make repairs to the shuttle-craft and rescue Voyager 's crew .

Back on Voyager , The Doctor and Suder attempt to plan a way of retaking the ship – a plan which, much to the dismay of Suder, may involve the use of violence and even necessitate killing. Suder feels uneasy about such prospects, especially after he has worked so hard over the past few months to control his violent impulses. But The Doctor tells him that even Tuvok would agree that there are times where violence is required to defend one's ship and one's crew. He asks Suder to trust him and promises to help him in any way he can: one hologram and one sociopath may not be much of a match for the Kazon, says The Doctor, but it will have to do.

Down on the planet, Chakotay informs Janeway of signs of a struggle near the edge of the camp and of Neelix' and Kes' disappearance. Janeway decides that they cannot wait until the morning to look for them and sends out search parties right away. Chakotay's party finds them and he tries to communicate with the leader of the group. The elderly leader tries to appease Chakotay by letting him have Neelix but he and the group are reluctant to hand Kes back because they obviously think of her as a suitable and desirable mate, going so far as to fight over her amongst each other. Chakotay and Neelix refuse to leave without her and the leader offers one of the group's young females in exchange for Kes. Neelix is angered by the offer, but Chakotay tells him to stay calm. He tries to reason with the leader by telling him that the girl belongs with them and that Kes must go with him and Neelix. He tells Kes to calmly get up and walk away with him and Neelix. But this enrages the natives even more and they start to chase them. Even as Tuvok and others try to fight them, they are forced to enter one of the caves in the hopes that the natives know of the dangerous creatures inside them and will not follow them in.

Act Three [ ]

Back on Voyager , Culluh's men have trouble completing repairs to the ship. Seska suspects sabotage and orders a ship-wide search for an intruder, including the use of Starfleet tricorders. The Doctor and Suder, in sickbay, are listening to Seska's orders on a monitor. Suder decides to use a thoron generator to mask his lifesigns from the tricorders as he proceeds back into hiding.

Meanwhile, the natives force Chakotay's team deeper into the cave where they are forced to struggle with one of the ferocious creatures and even lose one of their crew members to it. Outside, Janeway and her group attempt to distract the natives away from the tunnels so that Chakotay and his crew can come back out. Torres and two other crew members manage to distract the natives away from the cave entrance, while Janeway and the remainder of her team move near the cave entrance for a rescue attempt. She is able to reach Chakotay and his search party, who have barely escaped the creature within the cave. Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim are the last ones who manage to make it out of the cave just in time, but not before they collapse the tunnel entrance with falling rocks and debris to keep the creature away.

Act Four [ ]

A Hanonian land eel

Back on Voyager , The Doctor receives a masked subspace message from Tom Paris, who informs him that he is bringing help but that he needs The Doctor to block the discharge from the back-up phaser power couplings when the attack begins, he needs those backups to overload when the Kazon switch to them. Just then, Suder returns with a dead Kazon, whom he was forced to kill before he could alert Seska to his location. After doing this, he returns to sickbay, visibly distraught over what he was forced to do. The Doctor tries to calm him down by telling him that he did what needed to be done and offers him drugs to calm him down, but Suder refuses wanting to do it on his own. Meanwhile, Culluh gets a fake message (courtesy of Tom Paris) claiming that the shuttle has been destroyed, but Seska reminds him that two crewmembers were unaccounted for when the ship was captured. Culluh tells her that the search for an intruder has been slowed by a thoron leak, which makes Seska certain there's an intruder as she remembers that the Maquis used thoron particles to fool tricorders .

Seska storms into sickbay, asking The Doctor about the thoron generator. He tells her that it was damaged on a recent away mission , but Seska doesn't believe him. She says she knows that a Maquis is involved in the sabotage, but The Doctor claims full responsibility for it all, stating that he has been the one sabotaging the ship all along, together with the computer, and that he in fact was forced to kill one of the Kazon who walked in on him and caught him in the act. Seska still doesn't believe him, no matter what he says. Angrily, she rushes out of sickbay, telling the computer not to accept any more voice commands by Starfleet personnel and then damages sickbay's holoemitters, thus taking The Doctor offline.

" Break camp. We've got to get out of here before it blows! "

Successful at escaping both the savage natives and the creature in the cave, the senior officers begin debating as to whether they should prepare to engage the natives again. Tuvok believes that the crew should prepare to engage the natives, although Janeway and Chakotay would rather find a way to coexist peacefully with them. Tuvok warns that may not be possible; although they understand the natives' position, the natives clearly don't appreciate theirs. Meanwhile, Wildman's baby is deteriorating and is now having trouble breathing. However, priorities shift quickly when seismic activity increases rapidly and a nearby volcano begins to erupt. Janeway orders an immediate evacuation of the camp.

Act Five [ ]

Suder comes out of hiding and unsuccessfully tries to access the EMH. However, The Doctor, who has programmed a message to play for him in case he is disabled, tells Suder that the fate of Voyager solely depends on him. He tells him that he has full confidence in Suder's abilities and that he is fully confident that Suder will do the right thing.

On the bridge , the Kazon follow the attacking Talaxians into a nebula , in order to teach them a lesson. Commander Paxim informs Tom that the Kazon are following them as planned. As Voyager enters the nebula, Tom follows through with his plan of attacking the phaser power couplings.

Back on the planet, the crew flees in search of higher ground and encounter the group of natives once more. However, Chakotay manages to gain the group's trust by saving one of the young female natives from a lava stream. The leader of the natives leads the crew to safer ground.

In main engineering , Suder sets out to follow through with his plan, attacking and killing all the Kazon in engineering. Just as he finishes up to execute Paris' plan, he is fatally shot by one of the Kazon from behind. Slumping against the console and collapsing to the floor, Suder manages to execute the settings as he dies.

On the bridge, the Kazon identify their mystery attacker: the Federation shuttlecraft they thought they had destroyed. Culluh orders it destroyed with the ship's phasers but the attack has knocked the primary phaser power off-line. Seska barks an order to switch to backup systems, restoring power. Culluh opens fire, but, an alarm sounds on the bridge. Before the Kazon can react, the overloaded power couplings short out all the consoles on Voyager , disabling the Kazon crew.

Hearing her baby's cries from the ready room, Seska struggles to her feet to answer the child. As she enters the ready room, she barely has enough strength left to reach out to her baby before dying. Culluh, overcome with grief over the loss of Seska, takes the child in arm and orders the Nistrim to abandon Voyager upon hearing a report that they are being boarded by the Talaxians. Paris and the Talaxians beam into the bridge and set to work repairing the ship, allowing the Kazon to escape via the escape pods and their shuttles.

On the planet, the crew has finally made peace with the natives with one of them giving the baby an herb that helps her to breathe more easily. Everyone's attention is suddenly drawn to the sky as Voyager arrives on the horizon, much to the surprise of Janeway and Chakotay. Paris welcomes the Captain back aboard, who once again assumes command and congratulates him on his successful retaking of Voyager . Paris remarks he had help from the Talaxians, The Doctor and Suder, informing Janeway that Suder's last act was to disable the phasers before he was killed by the Kazon. In sickbay, The Doctor also commends the actions of Suder to Tuvok, who offers a Vulcan prayer to the Betazoid in the hopes that he has finally managed to find the peace he so desired. On another biobed, Chakotay also bids farewell to Seska despite all the havoc she had wrought upon him and the Voyager crew.

With Voyager capable of sustained flight, Janeway orders Paris to take them away from their "new home" and to set a course for the old one. After two years of sustained hostilities, Voyager finally moves beyond Kazon space and deeper into the Delta Quadrant.

Log entries [ ]

" Medical log, stardate 50032.7. I have determined that Commander Chakotay is not the father of Seska's child. I only wish there was some way to inform him. What am I supposed to do? Lead a revolt with a gang from Sandrine 's? Conjure up holograms of Nathan Hale and Che Guevara ? I'm a doctor, not a counterinsurgent. Get hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram. You're a Starfleet hologram. Maybe… maybe I could access a tactical database, teach myself guerrilla warfare. But that would take time. "

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Don't push yourself. That goes for everyone. Perspiring wastes water. "

" I don't have time for this! "

" I told you I don't have time for this! "

" It's my fault. If I hadn't told Hogan to pick up those bones. " " You shouldn't blame yourself. " " Stop it. There is no time to worry about blame. Hogan was a fine officer and a good man. And our job is to make sure that his death is the last one for a very long time. I will not let this planet destroy my crew. "

" I'm a doctor , not a counter-insurgent. Get a hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram, you're a Starfleet hologram! "

" Huddle together in groups, that'll preserve body heat. This is no time to be shy. "

" Trapped on a barren planet, and you're stuck with the only Indian in the universe who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. "

" If you can help me with repairs, we can be on our way in a few hours. " " Lieutenant, our ships are no match for Voyager and your shuttlecraft can hardly– " " Commander Paxim, my people are counting on you! Look, no one knows Voyager like I do. I know every vulnerability, every blind spot. Don't worry, I have a plan. " (sigh) " Very well. We'll rendezvous in an hour. Paxim out. " (to himself) " One hour. I should be able to come up with some kind of plan in one hour. "

" One hologram and one sociopath may not be much of a match for the Kazon, but… we'll have to do. "

" You're more talented in the art of deception than you led me to believe. " " I was inspired by the presence of a master. "

" I won't play these games with a trick of light. " " Sticks and stones won't break my bones, so you can imagine how I feel about being called names. "

" The other two seem to be trying to figure out what to make of us… In a manner of speaking, not in a culinary sense, I hope. "

" Engineering to Maje Culluh! We're being boarded! " " Abandon ship. "

" You would have been proud of him, Mr. Tuvok. " " I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr. Suder. May your death bring you the peace you never found in life. "

Background information [ ]

Story and script [ ].

• The writing staff of Star Trek: Voyager was initially unsure of how it should resolve, in this episode, the problematic situation in which the Voyager crew finds itself, in the previous episode. Co-executive producer Jeri Taylor recalled, " Did we know, when we wrote the cliffhanger, how we were going to get them out of there? No. I think, by the end of the [second] season , the writing staff was so exhausted and just trying to make it to the end of the season. And you know you've got a great cliffhanger, and you're done, and you want to go off and just sort of sleep for six weeks. And then, you come back and you're faced with the problem of, 'What do we do?! How do we get them off of there?' And that's one of those corners you paint yourself into. So we had our work cut out for us, when we came back, and we got them off. " ( Braving the Unknown: Season Three , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)
• This was co-executive producer Michael Piller 's last Voyager script, though he remained a creative consultant on the show. Piller originally wanted Seska's baby to die. Shortly after writing the episode, he explained, " There was some concern about the violence in the second part, which we have toned down. This story had Seska experiencing the ultimate culmination of all her evil. I had the opinion that she needed to lose something very dear to her to pay for her crimes, so it was my opinion from the beginning that her loss should be what she loves most, her child. " ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages ) Another factor that inspired Piller to come up with this notion was that it would serve as a mirror to a birth within the Voyager crew. Piller later recalled, " I wanted the child of Chakotay and Seska to die […] as a counterpoint to the birth of Ensign [Wildman]'s baby on the planet. " ( AOL chat , 1997 ) This birth was evidently, at some point thereafter, moved to instead being a plot point of the second season installment " Deadlock ". In accordance with Piller's wishes, the original draft of this episode's teleplay had Seska live and her baby die. [1]
• However, the idea of having the baby die was vetoed by Piller's fellow executive producers. " Rick and Jeri felt that it was in extremely bad taste and too violent, " Piller remembered. " Although the studio liked the ending that I wrote, Rick and Jeri felt that they could not live with it, so we started exploring other endings. Those included having Seska grab the baby and having Culluh die, which was certainly doable – if you believed that Seska really loved Culluh and moaned about losing him, but I don't think anybody would buy that. I didn't think that was satisfying enough, that she didn't get her just reward. The next alternative was to kill Seska, which certainly would be a dramatic reward, but that left us with Chakotay's baby on the ship. Chakotay would not just let anybody take that baby off the ship. Jeri wanted no part of a baby being left on board, so she vetoed that one. Well, the only other solution I could think of, somewhat contrived, I will admit, is that it turns out it's not Chakotay's baby after all. She thinks it is, but it's not. " ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages ) Piller later remarked, " [The original idea] was deemed to be thematically too violent and so the baby lived but turned out to be not Chakotay's after all, which undermined the effectiveness of the story I was trying to tell. I was a lame duck and leaving, so I couldn't fight very hard. That's the only thing I ever remember not getting that I wanted in my entire Star Trek career. " ( AOL chat , 1997 ) The decision to settle on the alternative of killing Seska (while also having Culluh remove the unwanted baby, his own son) was made only two or three days before the episode entered production. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83; Star Trek Monthly  issue 34 , p. 38)
• Michael Piller wanted the character of Lon Suder – whom Piller had created, earlier in the second season – to survive the events of this episode, but Jeri Taylor was uninterested in further developing the character, who is consequently one of many who die in the episode's final moments. Piller commented, " It's a real wipeout. Jeri never cared for Suder and had no interest in developing him any further, so there was no point in keeping him alive. And a dramatic arc is fully realized by having his death occur at the end of part two. He heroically sacrifices himself for the ship. " ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages ) According to Jeri Taylor herself, the decision to have Suder killed was made because the writers couldn't see how he could really be redeemed and he was simply too difficult to integrate with the other characters believably and well. ( Delta Quadrant , p. 129)
• The final draft of the episode's script was submitted on 2 April 1996 . [2]
• Seska actress Martha Hackett became aware of the changes to this episode's conclusion, having seen that the original script draft had Seska live and her baby die. " I got the page changes, so I saw that two days later it had reversed, " Hackett recalled. [3] She clarified, " In fact [in] pages I got three days before the shoot, I lived, and then 24 hours later I died. " The actress added, " They were having a heated debate about it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83) Martha Hackett also remembered, " I didn't know I was going to be killed off until three days before we started shooting the episode. They had different versions of the script, and I [originally] thought the baby was going to be killed and [the crew] were going to blast Seska off into space. " The actress then noted that this conclusion would have made it possible for Seska to return at some undetermined point in the future. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 34 , p. 38)
• Martha Hackett was disappointed by the episode's final version. She remarked, " They [were] retreating from the story lines. They just wanted to get out of there. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83) Despite these frustrations, Hackett also thought "these are things that actors don't have any control over; these are all producer decisions." She added, " For someone like me who is a recurring character and not even a series regular, it's not something you argue about. " [4]
• One particular plot point that Martha Hackett was unhappy about was her own character's death. " Even after they killed me I thought, 'Maybe tomorrow they'll change their minds,' " Hackett remembered. " I wished if they were going to do away with Seska, that they'd done it in a more pointed way. I thought a face-off was an opportunity that was missed. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, pp. 85 & 87) The actress elaborated, " I felt if Janeway or Chakotay had to kill her in self-defense, or to protect someone else, it would have had more impact. Here was this nemesis who was able to take over the ship, and then she just gets killed in an accident. It seemed like they deflated what they already built for me. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83) In addition, Hackett commented, " I was always grouchy about the way they killed me off, because there should have been a showdown between Janeway and Seska. This whole thing with the ship getting bumped, and the baby survives but I don't? That's nutty! For Seska to die that way was like rolling over. " [5] The actress also remarked, " I think it was a mistake to kill Seska. I just felt that if they were going to kill her off, they should have done it in a more fantastic way. It would have been interesting if it had been something that came down to being between Seska and Captain Janeway, or Seska and Chakotay. She was their nemesis, and for her to die in a ship blast seemed like an easy way out. There were other opportunities for a face-off where they couldn't help but kill her off. But that's just me talking. I suppose the writers felt like they were at the end of that storyline. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 34 , p. 38)
• Another facet of the story that irritated Martha Hackett was that the father of Seska's baby was changed from being Chakotay to Culluh. " I was disappointed that it wasn't Chakotay's child, " Hackett related. " That was a plot point that came at the last minute too, and I just thought that took the wind out of the sails a little bit. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83) Hackett also said, " To not make the child Chakotay's was a wimpy move. If the child is his, it provides a lot more complex stuff for him later on down the line. Like it or not, that is a more complicated experience, so they kind of took the wind out of their own sails. " [6]
• Robert Picardo was very pleased by the inclusion of Brad Dourif and his character of Suder in this episode. Picardo enthused, " I liked that Suder proved himself to be a hero […] I thought [Brad Dourif] was terrific in 'Basics, Part II'. I was very pleased to have a few scenes with him. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 10 )
• Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew , who counted this episode as one of her eight favorite installments from Star Trek: Voyager 's third season, also thought highly of Brad Dourif's performance here. " Wasn't Brad Dourif wonderful in that? " Mulgrew rhetorically asked. ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 14 , p. 32)
• Visual effects producer Dan Curry worked on designing the primitive weapons of the Hanonians in March 1996, creating at least three sheets of concept sketches (misspelling the word "primitive" each time, the groups of sketches were named "primative weapons," "more primative weapons," "even more primative weapons," and "still more primative weapons"). This design process was influenced by memories from his youth. " When I was a boy, my mother gave me a book on the history of weapons by Edwin Tunis, " Curry recalled. " And I remembered all those drawings of the early cave weapons and stuff like that. So when this episode came along, it gave me the opportunity to kind of delve into those childhood memories and design some vicious but practical things that would be wielded by these primitive people. So, because [of] a childhood interest in, I guess, growing up watching adventure movies and a childhood interest in various weapons of different historical periods, it gave me the background [to] – from memory and using my own imagination – come up with weapons that seem appropriate for the level of technology of those people. " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)

Production [ ]

During this episode's production, director Winrich Kolbe stands amid Hanonians

• This episode was not filmed back-to-back with the previous installment of the "Basics" two-parter. Remarking on this aspect, Jeri Taylor said, " It doesn't matter, because we have so much time in postproduction, we can film the [first four episodes of the next season] in any order we want. " ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages ) Indeed, this episode was one of four that were filmed at the end of the second season yet intended for the third season, the others being " Sacred Ground ", " False Profits " and " Flashback ". ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. ? )) Evidenced by both this episode's production number as well as the books A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager and the Star Trek Encyclopedia  (2nd ed., p. 37), this episode was the last episode of the second season to be shot. Commenting on this episode, Jeri Taylor stated, " We waited because the second half of the cliff-hanger is a heavy location show and with daylight saving time and longer daylight hours, we simply got longer days in which to film outdoors. " ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages )
• The extensive location filming took place in Alabama Hills , Lone Pine, California , requiring the cast and visual effects team to spend a considerable duration away from the Paramount Pictures lot. The opportunity to go on location was enjoyed by cast and crew alike. Dan Curry remarked, " One of the fun things about [working on 'Basics'] was we shot on location in Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine, California. And Alabama Hills was the scene for such classics as Gunga Din [and] King of the Khyber Rifles . About half the Westerns ever made were out there. And so it was almost like going on to an archaeological expedition, because we found the footings for the elephant bridge from Gunga Din." Remembering how the visual effects team and director Winrich Kolbe scouted the area, Dan Curry stated, " We poked around and said, 'Okay, where's the lava going to be?' And we found a dry stream bed, so Rick Kolbe and I kind of climbed down and said, 'Okay, we're going to have Chakotay jump over here and we can have the stranded Neolithic woman surrounded by deadly lava on that rock.' And so it was kind of a little mental exercise, trying to figure out, 'What would we see if it were really there, but it's not really there now?' " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features) Samantha Wildman actress Nancy Hower reflected, " We shot for a week in the desert in Lone Pine, Calif., and that was great fun – except for the fact that I was getting over pneumonia . Other than that I had a really good time. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 121 , p. 64) Winrich Kolbe noted, " We had a wonderful time shooting it up in the hills north of LA. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 ).
• In his podcast with Robert Duncan McNeill , Garrett Wang related a story regarding himself, Tim Russ and Jennifer Lien staying in a hotel with the other main cast members some distance from the town, and being forced to walk back in the middle of the night after Russ insisted on having $50 worth of poker winnings changed for a bill at a local restaurant, forcing everyone to miss the hotel shuttle. Wang recounted how he feared he and Russ might be murdered, as a memo from production had gone to Wang, Russ and Robert Beltran warning the non-Caucasian actors to be wary in the conservative area.
• Scenes set on the surface of Hanon IV were not only filmed on location, however; a massive planet set on Paramount Stage 16 , Paramount's largest soundstage, was built to additionally represent the planet surface, consuming more than half the soundstage (which simultaneously housed the Chez Sandríne set). The construction of the Hanon IV set involved tons of dirt to be hauled in and heaped up around rocks and cave walls, the stage's wooden floor to be built up in several areas and covered with more dirt, as well as a few shrubs and scraggly-looking plants to be added, providing touches of greenery in the otherwise predominantly earthy environment. ( A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager )
• The last day of filming on this episode was Friday, 19 April 1996 , which turned out to be a tiresome and long day for most of the individuals involved. The makeup call on that day was at 7:30 a.m. and, that evening, Rick Kolbe filmed a scene on the Hanon IV set at 10:30 p.m., while the stage contained many more extras and production crew members than was usual; the extras numbered about twenty, with most playing unnamed Hanonians but some wearing Starfleet uniforms. The scene that was being filmed was the one in which Chakotay lights a fire by causing friction with the use of primitive implements. Actor Robert Beltran had difficulty with starting the fire, despite the best efforts of the shooting crew to lend some support. After having shot multiple takes of Beltran struggling to spark the fire, Kolbe, at 11 p.m., surrendered to the inevitability of having to fake the scene, remarking, " We'll show him doing that business with the bow, then we'll cut to smiling happy faces as everybody reacts to Chakotay's success, then we'll cut to the fire. " Relieved to be done with the scene, Beltran handed the "fire-starting tools" to property master Alan Sims and momentarily walked off the set. Meanwhile, the extras began to be released as they finished their scenes. Beltran and Tim Russ were not finished with working on the episode until 1:40 a.m. early the next morning, by which time all the extras had left. After Beltran and Russ completed their last scene, everyone else present gave them a big round of applause and there was a brief interval from shooting, in order to prepare for the next scene, the last to be shot. The only performers involved in the final scene were Kate Mulgrew, Roxann Dawson and Garrett Wang . Dawson tiredly began to get into position for rehearsing the scene, which was being filmed by 2:10 a.m. but also required numerous takes. Kolbe did not like the first take and sound mixer Alan Bernard had considerable trouble with the sound levels but everything worked perfectly on the fourth take, after which everyone left on stage applauded the actors before they all went home. ( A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager )

Effects [ ]

• The Hanonian land eel of this episode was the first alien lifeform on Voyager to be generated entirely by CGI techniques. Voyager 's visual effects team would experiment with CGI as a means of creating non-humanoid aliens again in " Macrocosm " before doing so to design the look of Species 8472 for the season finale, " Scorpion ". Prior to generating the Hanonian land eel in CGI, however, Dan Curry drew conceptual art of the creature, one example of which is dated February 1996 and refers to the creature simply as "tunnel dweller." A maquette of the beast was also created. Regarding the process of designing the Hanonian land eel, Dan Curry remembered, " The script called for a creature that lived in the tunnels and was always hungry […] Whenever I design creatures, I try to use [the] Darwinian approach where, 'What's its environment? What would it need, to exist in that environment?' So, since it was a cave-dweller, I thought it would be cool if it had certain eel-like properties – that was very voracious and had a big mouth – but gave it radically symmetrical appendages, like big claws, so it could kind of scramble up tubes. And like a puffer fish, that it would have air bladders, that it could squeeze itself into a tube and fill it, so it could kind of hang out there or contract itself, so it could go forward. And that's how we arrived at the creature that you saw in the show. " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)
• The Hanonian land eel of this episode was Foundation Imaging 's first association with Star Trek . CGI effects director Ron Thornton recalled, "' The guys from Star Trek approached us about doing a creature because they liked some of the work we had done on Babylon 5 , so we were taken on just to do a handful of shots of this worm creature for the 'Basics' two-parter. We started on that creature just as we were finishing season three of Babylon 5 , and one of our animators, John Teska […] came up with some wonderful stuff. The producers were very pleased with it, but there was no indication that they wanted to use us for anything else. It was absolutely a one-off. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 16 ) However, John Teska's creation was such that Dan Curry became convinced that Foundation was up to the task of providing CGI for the series and, from VOY : " The Swarm " onward, Foundation became the regular CGI supplier for Star Trek: Voyager . ( Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 6 , page 46)
• Visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore cited this episode as one of many featuring a creature (in this case, the Hanonian land eel) whose design was unknown at the time of filming the live elements in the shots involving the creature: " It's a lot of times where, at that stage when we're shooting it, we don't know what it is. We don't know what it's going to look like, we're in the middle of design and stuff like that, which can make it very difficult. But I remember a lot of that happened with the snake. The hard part was it had to snatch somebody off and eat them. And it's like, 'Okay, ah… we don't know what it is, but we know it's gonna eat this guy.' " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)
• Filming the sequence in which an officer falls victim to the land eel's voracious appetite involved stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone playing the doomed officer as well as several visual effects that were later applied in post-production. Ronald B. Moore commented, " Dennis 'Danger', the stunt man, was very good… to simulate this, and we could pull him off the rocks. And then we have twofold, then; we have to remove whatever he needed to assist him, which would be cables or anything else, and then animate the creature to make it look like… he got pulled off. Setting that stuff up can be tricky, but fun. " Jokingly, Moore added, " And we didn't really eat him! " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)
• The visual effects team had difficulty with the shots involving the lava. " The biggest challenge on 'Basics,' " Dan Curry recalled, " was the lava. So, we found some 16mm footage of real lava – taken from a lot of different angles in Hawaii – and steadied it and tweaked it and skewed it into the perspective that we wanted it, then added a lot of liquid nitrogen – smoke to make it look hot and steamy – and traced where it would be running in the dry stream beds. And it worked very well, because it was real lava, and therefore, it gave a greater sense of reality than a lot of the cinematic lava we've seen in the past. " ( Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects , VOY Season 3 DVD special features) Curry also explained, " We created the lava streams by carefully cobbling together elements of real lava, and manipulating it into the perspectives that are appropriate, working with compositing editor Don Greenberg at Digital Magic . I electronically air-brushed very soft mattes so I could feather different pieces of lava together, hiding the seams with smoke, either CO2 or liquid nitrogen. I think that gives the lava sequences a reality that I don't think we could have obtained with the more traditional synthetic lava techniques. The volcanoes were matte paintings. Then we took pieces of lava that were shot at night in Hawaii. Because there is a great contrasting ratio between the black night and the bubbling lava, we were able to isolate the glowing lava, then key it into our volcanoes. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 112)
• One of the scenes for which the lava was required was the one in which Chakotay rescues a stranded, female Hanonian from the streaming lava. " There's one shot where we see our people running and lava trickling through the rocks, " Dan Curry commented. " I traced where I wanted the lava to go and then we'd matte it into little windows, so it had the natural look of trickling around the rocks, with steam. Those were accomplished in a very 'painterly' way, working with […] Don Greenberg. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 112)

Continuity [ ]

• This episode marks the deaths of recurring characters Seska (Martha Hackett), Suder (Brad Dourif) and Hogan ( Simon Billig ).
• The deaths of Suder, Hogan, and an unnamed crew member (to the land eel) in this episode bring the total number of confirmed crew deaths since the series premiere " Caretaker " to 11, the previous death having occurred in " Basics, Part I ". This leaves Voyager with a crew of 142, given Voyager 's crew compliment of 152 established in " The 37's " (after the first of these deaths).
• Although Culluh actor Anthony De Longis had hoped his character would – in this episode's conclusion – promise to return before leaving Voyager ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 ), this episode marks Culluh's final appearance on Star Trek: Voyager . However, his picture is shown to Seven of Nine aboard the 29th century timeship USS Relativity in " Relativity ", albeit as part of a data file depicting the Kazon in general.
• Voyager never encounters the Kazon again (although a temporal anomaly causes Engineering to regress to this period in time in " Shattered "). They are also briefly seen again in " Living Witness ", in a deeply flawed recreation of Voyager in which a few Kazon are enslaved crew members on board Voyager , where they are used as members of the warship Voyager 's fighting force. The decision that this episode would be the last substantial appearance of the Kazon was an intentional one. Jeri Taylor, who felt they were overused as villainous aliens, commented, " After the cliffhanger, which does involve the Kazon, it is my intention to leave them behind and to find new and I hope more interesting aliens. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 18 ) Taylor later recalled, " I personally had long since tired of the Kazon, before that episode was ever produced or even conceived, and was glad to be able to say that's the last that we will see of the Kazon. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 83) The next major enemy race (the Borg ) do not make their full appearance until the end of the third season.
• We learn in this episode that Tuvok taught Archery Science at the Vulcan Institute for Defensive Arts for several years.
• The remnants of Hogan's corpse are later excavated by the Voth , and help the alien species come in contact with USS Voyager in " Distant Origin ".
• The Kazon crew wear the Starfleet combadges on the right side, instead of the familiar left.
• After retaking Voyager from the Kazon in this episode, Janeway orders Paris to " Take us away from our new home and set a course for the old one. " In " Basics, Part I ", Seska refers to Hanon IV as the "new home" of the joint Starfleet/Maquis crew.
• When the Doctor asked for the crew complement, the computer says 89 Kazon and 1 Betazoid on board. Apparently the computer forgot to mention Seska and her baby, a Cardassian and a Cardassian-Kazon hybrid, respectively.

Reception [ ]

• Rumors that circulated prior to the airing of this episode, claiming that a regular character would be killed off during the course of the third season, were reported as perhaps having been influenced by the death of Hogan in this episode. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 20 )
• This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 5.9 million homes, and a 9% share. [7] (X) Rick Berman was happy with the episode's viewing figures. During the third season, he commented, " We just got the ratings for Voyager 's season premiere and they are marvelous. We came in first in about seven or eight cities and out of the six networks, we came in third. I'm very pleased that people watched the second part of the ['Basics'] cliffhanger. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 109 , p. 14)
• An element of the viewer response to this episode, however, was the fact that most of the series' viewers were surprised and disappointed by Seska's sudden departure. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 34 , p. 38)
• Cinefantastique rated this episode 3 out of 4 stars. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 85)
• Star Trek Magazine scored this episode 3 out of 5 stars, defined as "Warp Speed". Additionally, Lou Anders , a writer of the magazine, reviewed the installment. After mentioning that it contains "unexpected shocks," he critiqued, " 'Basics, Part II' is a very exciting tale, full of good performances and high action. The beautifully rendered computer-generated giant lizard monster is enough on its own to make this episode stand out, and one hopes that, now that the door has been opened, Star Trek will continue to bring such imaginative non-humanoid creations to life. The story is not as coherent as it is exciting, however, but one gets the impression that 'Basics, Part II' is a sort of housecleaning – a tying-up of the previous season's loose ends in order to make way for the new, retooled Star Trek: Voyager of season three. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 23 , pp. 58-59)
• The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 131) gives this installment a rating of 7 out of 10.
• After the episode's initial airing, Jeri Taylor commented, " 'Basics, Part II' continued in that same rousing action-adventure mode [of 'Basics, Part I']. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 10 ) In addition, she enthused, " It had all the requisites of a season opener. It was big, it was epic, it was sweeping, there was lots of jeopardy. I think for what it needed to be, it did it very well. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 85)
• Also following this episode (which Robert Picardo noted involved "a very provocative situation because I ended up having to counsel Suder, which is not exactly what I've been programmed to do"), Robert Picardo suggested a storyline to the writers in which his own character of The Doctor would have counseled Paris about his relationship with his father . Picardo noted, " It would be an extension of what we saw in 'Basics, Part II,' I guess. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 10 )
• Several costumes and props from this episode were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, including the costume worn by Russ Fega (as Paxim ). [8]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 3.1, 13 January 1997 .
• As part of the UK VHS collection Star Trek - Greatest Battles : 16 November 1998 .
• In feature-length form, as part of the UK VHS release Star Trek: Voyager - Movies : Volume 1 (with "Future's End"), 14 August 2000 .
• As part of the VOY Season 3 DVD collection.

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay
• Roxann Biggs-Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres
• Jennifer Lien as Kes
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor
• Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok
• Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim

Special Guest Star [ ]

• Brad Dourif as Lon Suder

Guest Stars [ ]

• Anthony De Longis as Culluh
• Martha Hackett as Seska
• Nancy Hower as Samantha Wildman
• Simon Billig as Hogan
• Scott Haven as a Kazon-Nistrim engineer
• David Cowgill as Hanonian #2
• Michael Bailey Smith as Hanonian #1
• John Kenton Shull as a Hanonian medicine man

Co-Stars [ ]

• Russ Fega as Paxim
• Majel Barrett as Narrator / Computer Voice

Uncredited Co-Stars [ ]

• Michael Beebe as Murphy
• Rod Damer as Talaxian officer
• Brian Donofrio as sciences officer
• Tarik Ergin as Ayala
• Heather Ferguson as command officer
• Sue Henley as Brooks
• Kerry Hoyt as Fitzpatrick
• Donald R. Jankiewicz as Hanonian
• Patrick Jankiewicz as Hanonian
• Emily Leibovitch as Wildman baby #2
• Samantha Leibovitch as Wildman baby #1
• Susan Lewis as operations officer
• Dennis Madalone as sciences officer
• Linda Madalone as Hanonian
• Mark Major as Kazon-Nistrim
• Lorin McCraley as Hanonian
• Louis Ortiz as Culhane
• Shepard Ross as Murphy
• Lydia Shiferaw as command officer
• Jennifer Somers as sciences officer
• Charles Spector as Talaxian officer
• John Tampoya as Kashimuro Nozawa
• Joan Valentine as operations officer
• Seska's baby
• Three unnamed Hanonians
• Kazon engineer

References [ ]

Alpha Quadrant ; antimatter injector ; archery science ; away mission ; bedside manner ; Betazoid ; blind spot ; boarding party ; bow and arrow ; bowels ; cave ; Class 2 shuttle ( unnamed ); coach ; combadge ; crew complement ; damage ; decathlon ; DNA ; dozen ; egg ; Emergency Medical Holographic Channel (aka Emergency Medical Channel ); Emergency Medical program ; escape pod ; evasive action ; Federation ; fever ; freedom ; Guevara, Che ; Hale, Nathan ; Hanon IV ; Haon IV-neighboring nebula ; Hanon system primary ; Hanonian ; Hanonian land eel ; heroism ; improvoline ; internal scanner relay ; Interspecies reproduction ; Intrepid -class ; Intrepid class decks ; Kazon ; Kazon-Nistrim ; Kazon patrol ship ( unnamed ); kilometer ; kindling ; Kolopak ; leader ; lie ; logic ; Maquis ; medical care ; morgue ; Native American ; nucleotide sequence ; piggyback ; Prema II ; radiation burn ; revolt ; runner ; savage ; search team ; sickbay ; solar still ; stabilizer acceleration sensor ; Starfleet Academy ; Talaxian ; Talaxian ship ; temperature ; thoron ; thoron generator ; thoron radiation ; track and field ; tricorder ; visual playback log ; volcano ; Voyager , USS ; Vulcan ; Vulcan Institute for Defensive Arts ; Vulcan prayer ; warp core

Deleted references [ ]

Kazon-Halik ; Runara IV

Meta references [ ]

47 references ; " I'm a doctor, not a... ";

External links [ ]

• "Basics, Part II" at StarTrek.com
• " Basics " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Basics " at Wikipedia
• " "Basics, Parts 1 and 2" " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• 1 Rachel Garrett
• 3 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)

Star Trek: Voyager

Basics, Pt. 1

Cast & crew.

Brad Dourif

Crewman Lon Suder

Anthony De Longis

First Maje Culluh

John Wollner

Martha Hackett

Henry Darrow

Information

© 2009 CBS Corp. All Rights Reserved.

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• Sep 4, 1996

Summary Star Trek: Voyager follows the adventures of the Federation starship Voyager, which is under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway.Voyager is in pursuit of a rebel Maquis ship in a dangerous part of the Alpha Quadrant when it is suddenly thrown 70,000 light years away to the Delta Quadrant. With much of her crew dead, Captain Janeway is ... Read More

Directed By : Winrich Kolbe

Written By : Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Lisa Klink

Where to Watch

Created By : Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor

Season Episodes

Kate Mulgrew

Capt. kathryn janeway, captain jenkins, shannon o'donnell.

Robert Beltran

Cmdr. chakotay, cmdr. katanay.

Roxann Dawson

Lt. b'elanna torres, b'elanna torres, dreadnought.

Robert Duncan McNeill

Lt. tom paris, ensign tom paris, lt. (j.g.) tom paris.

Ethan Phillips

Robert Picardo

The doctor, dr. lewis zimmerman, equinox emh.

Lt. Tuvok, Tulak, Tuvok

Garrett Wang

Ensign harry kim, ensign kymble, tarik ergin, lt. ayala, satan's robot, security guard.

Majel Barrett

Voyager computer, computer voice, computer.

Seven of Nine, Three of Eight, Two of Three

Jennifer Lien

Kes, palaxia, richard sarstedt, william mckenzie, ankari trader, crewman henard, starfleet admiral, scarlett pomers, naomi wildman.

Martha Hackett

Susan henley, ensign brooks, manu intiraymi, jennifer gundy, science division officer, ensign, alexander enberg, ensign vorik, third malon engineer, susan lewis, operations division officer, transporter technician, mikhal traveler, user reviews.

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The Trial of Jean-Luc Picard

If memory serves, such sweet sorrow (part 1).

Basics (Part 1)

In Basics Part 1, the crew of the Starship Voyager is on the search for a missing shuttlecraft, only to find that the planet they are searching from has been taken over by a race of alien creatures known as the Kazon. With the crew unable to leave the planet, the Kazon take control of the ship and its crew.

Captain Kathryn Janeway and First Officer Chakotay are taken captive by the Kazon and subjected to various psychological and physical torture techniques. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew, including Lieutenant Tuvok, Lieutenant Paris, Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres, and the Emergency Medical Hologram, continue to search for the missing shuttlecraft.

When the crew discovers the missing shuttlecraft, they come to the realization that the Kazon are planning to use the technology found inside to build their own powerful weapons. The Kazon’s plans are quickly thwarted, however, when Janeway and Chakotay convince the Kazon leader, Maje Culluh, to spare their lives in exchange for the shuttlecraft and its technology.

The crew is then faced with the difficult task of rebuilding Voyager and finding a way to get home. With the Kazon still in control of the planet and the ship, the crew must find a way to survive and eventually escape. With no other options, Janeway and the crew come up with a daring plan to jettison the ship’s warp core and use it as a diversion to distract the Kazon.

The crew manages to successfully execute the plan, but the Kazon take over the ship once again. Now, the crew must find a way to outsmart the Kazon and find a way off the planet. With their backs against the wall and their lives at stake, Janeway and the crew must use all of their ingenuity and courage to find a way out. This is only the first step in the long journey home.

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Equinox (part 2), persistence of vision.

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Star Trek: Voyager

“Basics, Part II”

Air date: 9/4/1996 Written by Michael Piller Directed by Winrich Kolbe

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"Sticks and stones won't break my bones, so you can imagine how I feel about being called names." — Doc to Seska

Review Text

Nutshell: Some well-executed adventure, but the episode too often feels like a pre-determined, calculated exercise.

"Basics, Part II" is a show I tried to enjoy. And, at times, I did enjoy pieces of it. It's sort of a brainless adventure romp with some well-directed action sequences that hold reasonable entertainment value. Unfortunately, the problem with "Basics, Part II" is that it is merely the painfully obvious and predictable resolution of " Basics, Part I ," a somewhat entertaining episode in itself that, nevertheless, probably should never have been used as a season cliffhanger simply because of how pointless the underlying premise is.

I mean, come on. Did anybody have the slightest doubt in their mind that Voyager would be retaken? That somehow Doc, Suder, Paris, and the Talaxian convoy would outsmart the Kazon with a clever plan? That the crew would not be marooned on the planet forever?

No, of course not.

Well, one reason the two "Basics" shows aren't all that compelling is that they don't really give us many character dynamics to ponder. "Basics I" gives us an extreme situation, "Basics II" quickly resolves it, and the two shows sit there and hope that we'll genuinely care about everything that happened in the progress.

Well, I tried very hard to put aside my cynicism and thoughts of how silly the first part's setup now seemed, and, for a while, it kind of worked. Like I said, "Basics II" has a number of worthwhile moments. In fact, part two is more fun than part one was.

The show picks up exactly where the first half left off, with the crew stranded on the planet, searching for food, water, and shelter. Some of the hassles the crew faces in its new planetary environment include a primitive tribe of humanoids whom cannot be easily communicated with, and a...well...monster that dwells in a cave and promptly eats Ensign Hogan when he ventures too near its habitat in the episode's opening minutes. (Hogan, who has been a reliable extra character in several past episodes, finally meets his now-obviously-always-inevitable demise. I couldn't help but chuckle at the fact.)

Meanwhile, Seska and Culluh set the ship on a course for who-knows-where (so long as destruction with their newfound arsenal is possible), distancing themselves from the planet. Paris turns out to be (surprise!) alive and well in his shuttlecraft and, with the help of the Talaxians, is ready to perform trickery to retake the ship. Doc tracks down Suder (who's been hiding in the ship's vents) and informs him of Paris' plan: Suder must go to engineering and rig the backup phaser couplings (or something) to overload so that after Paris uses his hotshot piloting skills to disable Voyager 's primary couplings, the Kazon will overload and burn out the phasers the moment they try to return fire. The problem: Engineering is full of Kazon, and if Suder goes down there, he will have to kill or be killed.

The one character I did care about in both "Basics" episodes was Suder. Here is a guy who is completely torn up inside, and in order to do what is right for his ship and crew, he will have to resort to violence. Suder does not want to kill again; he has worked so hard to get where he is now—to a point where his inner demons have been nearly silenced and his lust for violence quashed. Brad Dourif again carries the role terrifically, bringing the sense of detached instability and personal torment to the character—a character that we can empathize with.

The Doctor also comes across as quite interesting in this episode. The situation gives him the chance to take initiative, and his acerbic, sarcastic responses to Seska's interrogations are always amusing, especially when he claims to be the sole effort against her plans.

So as the episode switches back and forth between the A/B-stories, the show gives us some decent, albeit derivative, action scenes. The best is a sequence where Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, Kes, and some unnamed crewmen are forced to hide in the monster's cave after they're chased by angry members of the primitive tribe. The monster, evidently a computer-animated creation, is an impressive special effects display. (No points, however, for guessing that it's one of the unnamed crewman who will be eaten by it, and not Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, or Kes.) And, of course, the respectable, even if predictable, Star Trek mentality dictates that the primitive tribe and the Voyager crew will eventually become friends once Chakotay risks his life to save one of them from falling into a pit of molten lava (Oh yeah, did I mention this planet has active volcanoes?).

The scope of the episode is impressive. The planet scenes are all shot on location, and every time the crew survives one crisis, there's another—progressing from the lack of fire and water, to kidnappings, to fleeing from angry tribes, to fighting big monsters, to leaping from rock to rock across a pit of molten lava. This planet has everything.

One thing, however, about "Basics II" that really began to annoy me was how carefully every scene seemed measured and calculated to resolve the setup pieces from part one. At times, I felt more like I was watching a pre-determined, pre-programmed exercise playing out than I was watching a real story unfold. The events are tidy— too tidy. "Manufactured" would be most accurate.

For example, after the Doctor's further examination, it turns out that Seska's son is not Chakotay's son, but Culluh's. That's a cop-out—a loose end from which the writers so easily let themselves off the hook. Here it is—the source of all the exposition that caused Chakotay to turn the Voyager into this trap in the first place—becomes an issue that, with a few lines of dialog, never needs to be addressed again.

And how about Suder? Here's the only truly interesting character we can care about, and after an eye-opening scene where he phasers a roomful of Kazon in engineering and completes his mission, one of the dying Kazon shoots him in the back and kills him. That made me angry, because it was so obvious and easy for the writers to do, sealing all options concerning what to do about his life sentence in his quarters. I somehow expected this all along, but I was hoping I might be wrong. I wasn't.

And Seska? She dies an anticlimactic and arbitrary death, apparently caused by injuries from the phaser overload. Considering her villainy, Seska's death is an event that just sits and shrugs. I personally think it would've been more interesting to keep her alive and have her caught by the crew where she would answer for treason. Nope. Wrote her out of the picture in ten seconds flat.

And the damage to the ship after all this? A non-factor (despite the fact that the overload practically made the Voyager look like it was on fire). Once the crew retakes Voyager , the ship, of course, looks practically like new.

Really, under scrutiny, Michael Piller's teleplay for "Basics" looks like little more than a machine that gives us all the parts in the first half, and then brainlessly assembles them in the second half. This is too bad, because "Basics, Part II" has many strengths, including some standout performances, one of Dennis McCarthy's better scores (even featuring some themes), good special effects, and a first-rate direction by Winrich Kolbe, who sets the show at a fast pace and uses some impressive photography and interesting camera angles on the locations.

I dunno. Perhaps this show and its abrupt wrap-up is all a statement that Voyager is moving on. "Basics, Part II" is reported as the last time we will see the Kazon (which is just fine with me). I suppose as wrap-up it works okay, but a less obvious and calculated approach might have been nice.

Previous episode: Basics, Part I Next episode: Flashback

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72 comments on this post.

Too true. I read somewhere that in Piller's original teleplay, the baby's father WAS Chakotay. The baby died, while Seska survived and escaped. That might have been better

SpideyTerry

Yeah, I had read (in the last day, as a matter of fact) that Piller revealed in a chat different intentions - the baby was indeed Chakotay's, the baby would die, and both Suder and Seska would survive this two-parter. Memory Alpha has the transcript with the details: memory-alpha.org/wiki/Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Michael_Piller/pillrcht.txt Interesting stuff. Who knows if it all would've worked, but the changes certainly didn't benefit this episode and the two-parter as a whole. Picardo and Dourif were solid, though.

I never really liked Fresca, but I thought it was cool that they were able to bring her back a couple of times through the magic of holotechnology and time travel, especially because we didn't expect to see her again. If she had survived "Basics II" and escaped the ship, I think it would have been too much like Vader's just happening to be off the Death Star when it blew up: "Yeah, we're gonna see him again."

Paris: "I do know what makes an interesting story & that's unexpected plot twists." Oh, you mean like, Paris & B'Elanna hooking up, Kes getting kicked off the show rather than Neelix, Harry leaving his beautiful fiancee for no reason yet going apesh!t over being apart from the chick in "The Disease," 7's parents knowing about the Borg years before "Q Who," and (the biggest doozy) Paris & Janeway having sex after going Warp 10 in "Threshold." Yeah, Voyager was full of unexpected plot twists, wasn't it?

Sorry, I meant to put that on the "Worst Case Scenario" board and accidentally hit the link to this one.

Actually, there was one scene of genuine character development this episode and that's when Cullan tenderly scoops up what he still thinks is Chakotay and Seska's baby and walks off with it. I'm almost sad we'll never see him again just when he finally exhibits something beyond cartoon villainy.

Poor Hogan! 1) Why did he have to call Neelix "yes sir"? Since when Neelix had been a Starfleet officer? 2) And why the hell didn't Neelix stay and collect these damn bones and been eaten himself instead of poor Hogan? And of course, the biggest question still remains alive: Why, oh why, had Janeway and Chakotay to go after Seska's baby, putting in risk the whole crew and their starship? Bad writing... :(

Having the baby not be Chakotay's was one giant copout by the writers. And it made his vision-quest converstion with his father completely meaningless. The episode could have played out exactly the way it did except Doc never tells Seska it's Cullah's baby and Cullah leaves it behind in the Captain's ready room once he finds out Seska's dead. Then Chakotay could have raised it - either by himself or with Janeway's help. Or B'elanna's. How interesting would it be for two Maquis to raise a half-Cardassian child? Answer: very - IF the writers and producers had the balls to explore it instead of playing it TV safe. Blech.

Both the first part and second part were ok to good but I must agree that killing off Suder was pretty stupid. An excellent character that was more worthy than being just shot in the back. Kinda reminded me of the lame death of Capt. Kirk in, Generations. I would have loved to have seen him more in upcoming episodes and if he were to eventual be killed off, I would hope that it would have been much better than what this episode had to offer.

What's depressing is Voyager, arguably, got less ambitious after this episode and after the second season. I'm in the extreme minority, but I like second-season Voyager (as a whole) better than any other season. It's the only time when the creators decided to deal with the central premise of the show. There were a LOT of problems ("Deadlock" is still inexcusable and "Threshold" was ridiculous). The problem with season two is that the creators got gunshy about this kind of storyline because they picked bad guys who were kind of stupid. Had the Kazon been more interesting -- and they could have been, with just a few tweaks -- the second season would have been pretty good. Had a few details not been reset, the second season would have been very good. But instead of making the continuing storyline concept work, the creators went for less continuity. The "Hunters" arc was especially bad and the Borg were so badly neutered. For the rest of the series, the best we could hope for with Voyager was a good one-off episode every now and then. The continuing arcs were really bad after season two and the lack of resources/struggle to survive wasn't done with much authority. Even lines like Janeway's from part one about not having torpedoes to waste are gone from the later seasons.

I was very angry with the deaths of Hogan and Suder. I like to see familiar faces, recurring characters and Hogan's death was senseless. As for Suder's, it's a shame because of the wonderfull arc they could have done with him. Not only was the character interesting, but the actor was stellar ! I also don't understand why the captain would make Neelix or Kim leader of a team. Agreed, Neelix knows a lot about basic survival but he's not an officer. And Kim is just an ensign, there are many on the crew who outrank him. What redeems this episode are the doc and Suder. Too bad, it had a lot of potential.

"Agreed, Neelix knows a lot about basic survival but he's not an officer." Like what? He wasn't able to make fire, didn't know there are bugs under rocks you can eat - and this is important - Wasn't able to keep anyone alive! His stupidity got Hogan killed (his death BTW proved he was 100%ˇright in Alliances) and partially caused conflict with the natives. The asshole would get himself killed if Chakotay wouldn't come to save his ass.

Joe Joe Meastro

Does Suder kind-of remind anyone else of Barclay; in terms of his facial features and his neurotic, nervous body language? He just had a Barclay look to him hehe. I did love the adventurous spirit of the episode, taken on a 'fun' level rather than on a serious one because as Jammer rightly says the plots' conclusions were never in doubt. I'm in two minds about the death of Suder and the fiery conclusion of the Kazon arc. There was a nice irony in the fact Suder dies in a pretty glorious bloodbath after all of his efforts to become a peaceful person, his end has a twang of tragedy in it. The same with Seskas' death leaving Culluh to care for a baby he might never know is the father to. Perhaps the writers should have went all Blakes' Seven on our asses and upped the tragic/ironic/grisily/dark ending to epic proportions! Or maybes that's just me revealing my inner Suder *gulp*! On the whole, a cool 2-part adventure even if it fails to be anything particularly spectacular.

Wormtongue dies again! Poor Brad Dourif. Because of his unique look he always gets cast as the psycho evil dude since all the way back in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. He is so good at it though. This is actually the first time I have seen him as a sympathetic character, and, yeah, he was the only character I cared about in this two parter! Tragic. One thing that annoys me is, how did Paris survive? I guess just not showing it is enough of an explanation? And did his original plan make any sense? In the middle of a battle in which Voyager is already half-way to dead he is going to take a shuttle to go get someone to help? Huh? Voyager would be taken and long gone by the time he even got to the Talaxians. I know that this was just a way to get Paris off the ship to save it later, but it just made no sense to me. I really have a lot of sympathy for the writers of shows like this. They have to try to come up with original epicness regularly and fit it into a very limited format. It's no wonder that a really good result is rare.

I noticed a problem at the end - Paris and the Talaxians beam onto the bridge, with Culluh still in the Ready Room where he found Seska and the baby. He then orders the Kazon to abandon ship, but he has no way of actually leaving the Ready Room other than through the Bridge. I guess he could've beamed onto an escape pod but they should've at least shown the beam out.

@Awful--it's not terribly important, but there is another door to the readyroom which leads off to a corridor to deck 2.

Story A: Crew on the planet. Awful ... just awful. Pointless and boring. Story B: Taking back the ship. Pretty entertaining, but with lots of missed opportunities for thrills and excitement. If we'd followed Suder more closely around the ship - hiding from the Kazon, killing one of them etc. - it could've been excellent. Instead we get lots of "this is what happened" explanations. This, to me, is a trait of the series - not showing key dramatic moments, but having the characters explain that it simply happened (or just skipping it altogether), then quickly moving on. It's terribly bad drama and horrible storytelling. A good example is the ending of an episode - how many episodes have ended without addressing what ended up happening with big chunks of the main story? It just seems so sloppy and messy. Not a terribly riveting episode in my eyes. But, then again, I'm afraid not many Voyager episodes are. There's just too many gaping plot holes, nonsensical decisionmaking and bad, bad writing/directing/editing of the stories to really ever make the series good. To me, that is.

Chris, it's even worse than that. Neelix was made a team leader because of his "survival skills" which have never been seen. Neelix told Hogan to collect the bones because they might be useful (true); however, he neglected to notice they were at the mouth of a cave which usually means a predator that ate that creature. Later in the episode Chakotay tries to make nice with the natives by speaking calmly and acknowledging they can only understand his tone and not his words. What does Neelix do in this tense situation? Gets right in their faces and starts yelling. Not to mention the Kazon became Voyager's enemies only because Neelix started a fight with them in the very first episode!

Watched this two-parter again last night. It might be the single most frustrating example of Voyager. And not just because it used the reset button, but because it was used SO BADLY. Think about it: Culluh and Seska get Voyager, finally. The Nistrim is apparently able to repair the entire ship relatively quickly and know how to run it (hard to swallow, but maybe Seska prepared them well enough). Then, they dump the crew on some planet. If you were the Kazon, what would you do next? I'd set course for my nearest base where I'd dissect Voyager for all its secrets. I'd make sure that whatever happened to the ship that the Nistrim would have replicator and transporter technology. I'd make sure not to delay, for fear that another sect or maybe even someone like the Talaxians the Trabe or the Vidians, would try to take Voyager from me. And, I'd certainly make sure the four ships that helped attack Voyager would be with me at all times. What do Culluh and Seska do? At warp speed, they head for some unknown destination. They must either not have gone very far or moved very fast, because Paris and the Talaxians are able to catch up with them. Granted, Suder and the doctor disable the warp drive, but it takes them a while to do it. And, without the four Kazon ships that attacked Voyager (or the four others that retreated in part one) they're an easy target. Why not keep their strength in numbers? WTF. Meanwhile, why are the Talaxians so OK with helping Paris? The Kazon are known for being ruthless and they hold grudges. Even if they like Paris's plan, aren't they worried about retribution? Granted, Voyager apparently gets out of Kazon space after this episode, but the Talaxians have to go on living there. Honestly, this might have made more sense if Neelix were with Paris. Also, it's amazing that the Kazon don't put up more of a fight when Paris and the Talaxians board the ship. Culluh orders everyone to abandon Voyager, but he must know that his 80-plus crew could put up a fight. Culluh's been trying to capture Voyager's technology for nearly two years. He gets it, and then gives up so easily? Lastly, it seems like Voyager gets back to Janeway et. al pretty quickly. So, either Seska and Culluh were dumb and didn't make it very far or a lot of time passes between Chakotay saving the native woman and when Paris flies the ship back to the planet. Some of the reset stuff at least makes logical sense (like the stuff with Seska's baby) even if it doesn't make a lot of sense in a dramatic way. But, like so much of Voyager, there's not enough logic or continuity. What a waste.

The death of Hogan hit me. Not that I was bawling on my couch, but more that I was disppointed that this "small" crew of ~150ppl, which seems so intimate, gets so few recurring characters to make it feel intimate. Hogan was one of those - and yes, he looked like a nice guy to have a synthale with. Look at the list of recurring characters on Mem A's wiki/Recurring_characters And see how few Voyager recurring characters have more than just a handful of episodes compared to people like Yeoman Rand, Leeta, or even Spot the Cat. They didn't need to have entire episodes dedicated to them, but just seeing some of the same faces regularly would have helped add to the feeling of being "lost" with these same people. PS. Farewell Mr. Piller!

Why would they kill off Souder and Seska?!?! The two best guest actors on the show (my favorites, anyways) and they both get offed . . . this has to be the worst decision the producers ever made.

Entertaining and visually well done. My issues with part one effect part two but this does seem more like its own entity overall. I agree with Jammer that everything that transpires in front of us actually feels more manufactured than organic. I could almost hear the wheels turning as it progressed. As a wrap-up to all things Kazon it could have been better, but then the quality of writing concerning the species was never that good to begin with. So, unfortunately, as it stands, that means what we got here is to be expected based on everything before it. Kind've makes me sad. At least we are finally done with being near the "heart of Kazon space" (whatever) after months of warp travel. 2.5 stars.

It's interesting to see that by season 3 Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise were all force to shake up their shows. They obviously decided just like Deep Space nine did to move a more stand alone adventure show. Maybe Trek would had been a lot more easier on the creative staff if they had to produce 13 episodes a season instead of 24. After completing Battlestar Galatica Ronald Moore did comment on how grueling is was doing TNG to produce over twenty episodes a season. Manny Coto did comment on how tough it was on Brannon Braga to produce season worth of episodes. With the exception of Darkling, Rise and a few more epsidoes I don't mind season 3. I understand how upset fans when Voyager abanadon 80% of it's lost in space premise.

@ Arachnea "And Kim is just an ensign, there are many on the crew who outrank him." Yeah, why is Kim always at the staff meetings with "the senior staff"? Maybe because he's a bridge officer?

Without their communicators and universal translators how did the crew understand each other? I can imagine Tuvok knowing english but what about Neelix and Kes?

The Dreamer

@Toony Very good observation. Another suspension of disbelief :-) Galactic Basic

Well, I guess you can't really expect a high quality 2nd part when the first part only rated a 2.5. Many times we see that the best part of the 2-parter is the 1st part, especially a season ender. Hogan - You know, I didn't want to see him go because he seemed like a good actor to me, but if you're dumb enough to perch yourself over a pile of bones at the mouth of a cave... then so be it. Jesus, Daniel Boone-Neelix didn't even notice that lunch had been served many times there. Seska - I would have liked to just erase this whole story line with her. I love Martha too much to not want the character on the ship. But I think her death here was probably the right thing to do. Is she going to fly shotgun forever here? I would have been better for Chakotay to have to kill her though. Suder - Awesome character played incredibly well by Brad Dourif. He just nails these types of parts. I was screaming "NOOOOOO!!!!!" when I saw that tree-head moving in the background. I didn't want him to die. Why hasn't this guy ever landed a leading role? Is it because he's too damn good at bit parts? The baby - So glad the baby didn't die. I actually felt sorry for Culluh at the end. I too wondered how he was going to get off the ship. The Kazon don't have transporters you know. I wanted to see Janeway pop one of those worm-thingys in her mouth when she was barking out that she didn't want to see anyone turn up their noses. :-) Funniest line? "CHAKOTAY: Trapped on a barren planet and you're stuck with the only Indian in the universe who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I was never good at this as a child and I'm still not good at it." :-) :-) :-) Nice... I laughed out loud at the screen here. A fun action packed season opener... couple head-scratchers, but there were some in part 1 as well. I too am tired of Aliens just popping on Voyager and seeming knowing how to run everything. Wonderful observation about the universal translator Toony!! That would have been a nice monkey wrench to throw in there on the planet. I enjoyed the actions/dilemmas on the planet. I've seen worse B stories for sure. The cavemen weren't half bad. As large as that monster was, it seemed pretty real to me. It could have come across much worse. 2.5 stars for me. ...are we out of Kazon space yet?

ZurielSeven

"Computer, what is the crew complement?" "There are 89 Kazon... and one Betazoid on board." Spoken by the writers rather than a computer and proving the writers don't know how to count. The writers can't count crew, torpedoes, available shuttles, food stores, warp cores, or any other consumable because Voyager is apparently good at being the most heavily resourced starship that Starfleet ever deployed. Seska was a crew member and she's 100% Cardassian, which the computer would know how to identify but apparently forgot to count. Perhaps the cuteness of the first Cardassian/Kazon baby interfered with the targeting scanners...

@ZurielSeven It's a testament to their laziness. Or as Beltran put it "Cavalier attitude towards the show". [The actor felt that the people who must bear much of the blame for Voyager's poor performance are the writers. "[They] had a whole year to prepare, but they waited until the final two episodes to fix things. To me, that’s just a symptom of their uncaring cavalier attitude towards the show."]

I enjoyed this episode but a lot annoyed me; Neelix. Why couldn't they have eaten him to survive? He can't find water. He can't find food (child of the 24th century Janeway does in 5 seconds though). He can't negotiate (shouting at aliens during a tense standoff while outnumbered and out-speared) and this "survival expert" got 2 people killed on that planet (Hogan and the blueshirt as they only ended up in the cave due to Neelix shouting at the natives). Its sad when the "morale officer" is doing more to destroy the crew of Voyager than the Kazon! Janeway not knowing why the Kazon were firing at starboard ventral when she studied the specs for weeks before taking command is a major lack of judgement right up there with Hawk in First Contact saying the Borg stopping at Deck 11 that only has deflector control on it was stupid as it wasn't a "vital system". Least he paid for his stupidity, its the crew that pays for Janeways. And Seska dying by exploding console was such an anticlimax. All that stuff with Chakotay and it just stops. Funny how no one prattled on about the Prime Directive after the natives saw Voyager land on their planet... why weren't they beamed up anyway? Surely it can't use more power than landing the whole ship. Twice. And I've always wondered how much precious Starfleet tech the Kazon got away with when the abandoned Voyager? They literally could have started stripping the ship or at least copy the database. I'd have laughed if when Neelix got back he found Baxial missing!

Diamond Dave

A step down even from part one, which was no classic in and of itself. The whole thing just feels flat, and there's no tension because we all know they will be retaking the ship at the end of the episode anyway. What I find most irritating is how some of the more interesting plot lines are just thrown away. Suder, Seska and Chakotay's baby are tossed aside, and without even much ceremony at that. This seems like a big missed opportunity, and the episode suffers because of it. In a smaller way, even Hogan is thrown to the wolves without remorse. But at least there was some good Doctor action. "I'm a doctor, not a counterinsurgent" indeed. 2 stars.

Forgive me for not wishing to suffer through Janeway's brainlessness that occurs whenever the kazar kazon whatever their name is, come around. I skipped part 1 and went straight to the end of part 2 where they, of course, got the ship back.

George Monet

" Jesus, Daniel Boone-Neelix didn't even notice that lunch had been served many times there." Actually he did. Hogan says that the bones looked like they were placed there intentionally and postulated that the local tribe were cave dwellers presumeably living in that cave. Neelix points out that the bones look like a "do not disturb sign" and then orders Hogan to pick up the bones at the mouth of the cave, the one with the "do not disturb sign" in front of it. What exactly did Neelix plan on using a bunch of rib bones for? A pelvis? Hogan's death was painfully forced and painfully artificial as are many deaths in tv shows.

FlyingSquirrel

Is it possible that Dourif had enough of a career outside of Trek that they weren't sure he'd be available for future appearances as Suder? I agree that keeping the character around would have been preferable, but I'm wondering if they'd have been able to have him appear regularly after this.

Points for Hogan being eaten as opposed to 100% red shirt but the poor bastard's last words were 'Yes sir'; to.... Neelix. XX@@X!!

Didn't mind seeing the back of Seska or the Kazon, but killing off Suder was just awful. They should at least have given him a dying conversation with Tuvok and the captain where he gets some appreciation for his heroism. I really thought they were going places with Suder: can a sociopath be "cured" by mind meld and Vulcan techniques. Those are the sorts of questions Trek should be asking.

dave johnson

Would have liked a Suder episode once a year... he was an interesting character. That guy played someone in B5 that was an evil person who was mind wiped as punishment and put into an order of monks and it was an interesting episide. They didn't have a budget to commit to someone being signed as a recurring, and I think they wanted to keep the focus on the main group and not have people pay attention to extras. They had very few recurring crew members unfortunately. Someone in the thread went on about how they had translators when way from the ship. There was an episode in DS9 where the Ferengi said they had chips in their ears that did the translating... one can assume everyone had that technology.... although they didn't explain how the humans without any translators could understand Quark when his chip was working.... :) Trek was against having alien languages other than Klingon and a very minimal amount of snippets from beings they met. We just have to suspend belief on that one. I don't get Jammer bitching about the predictability (everyone surviving, voyager saved, etc)....... what do you expect? This is a long term series and so no matter what premise you have, the ship and the main cast are likely to survive.. that doesn't make perilous episodes a joke. Sure, they could kill off a main character but that is not what they were about. Everyone survives unless their contract is not renewed. I do agree on the ship always being nice and fancy and brand new after the most devastating of circumstances. Show us 3 - 4 episodes where things are still being fixed and broken, etc. I know this is episodic and they wanted it to be a situation where you could watch any show and not be lost...however, they did have some recurring stuff like Kazon or Phage ,etc and certainly could have done that from tiem to time. I often have wondered why they chose to make Harry Kim such a dull and empty character who made no progression in the show. Even a promotion one rank up would have been something..... nobody of good merit in Starfleet stays an Ensign that long as far as we can tell. They gave him shifts running the bridge and he was considered a senior officer because he was on the bridge, yet never got promoted. Hell Tom got commissioned back into starfleet, demoted and re-promoted. was he intended to be an inside joke? Was it a slight on asian characters? was the actor so soft that they didn't care to develop him?

Really enjoyed this episode and Part I asides from the bits with Neelix. Agreed with one of the former posters that the Voyager crew should have eaten him. The man's a walking and talking liability, not to mention irritating to the extreme. Enough's been said about poor Hogan's demise; I think it's basically the first chapter of 'Outdoor Survival 101' that you do not loiter near the entrance of an unsecured cave, least of all one with ominous humanoid bones at the entrance, which as other people have pointed out indicates a carnivorous presence. What was Neelix thinking when he ordered Hogan to pick them up - oh wait, he doesn't have brains. The scene where he wandered off during the night, away from the campfire by himself (another basic rule of outdoor survival that a self-professed aficionado like Neelix should have known well) and got himself caught was eyeroll inducing but oh so predictable. Then of course Kes had to go looking for him and get herself caught too, and a major rescue mission had to be mounted in order to save them both, during which Neelix throws a tantrum at one of the natives and provokes them, and jeopardises the lives of several dozen more crew members, one of whom gets eaten. Apart from an annoying scene where Neelix laments Hogan's death and is comforted by Kes and Janeway, there is no retribution for his actions. Imagine what Hogan and the other redshirt's families would have to be told back in the Alpha Quadrant: 'Yes your son/husband/brother is dead because an annoying and completely useless alien, whom Janeway somehow decided to take on, asked them to carry out orders which completely went against basic safety regulations/ provoked aliens due to lack of self control. Was he punished? No of course not - and he remained the darling of the crew and the captain in particular.' I want to like Janeway, I really do, but episodes like this make that very difficult. TBH I can't see anyone else on the ship getting away with the amount of stuff Neelix does - they'd probably be threatened with a court martial or something. The man's a menace and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever that I can see - bad cook, petty mean nature, and just generally irritating. When he delivered soup to Lon Suder's quarters I was mentally pleading for Suder to murder him. Speaking of Suder, the series would probably have been a lot better if the producers had cut out all of Neelix and given his screen and plot time to Suder instead, who is a truly fascinating and charismatic character, despite the fact that he's a psychopath.

Ugh...... Not having the baby be Chakotay's Not letting the baby die Killing off Suder because he's "not interesting" Killing off Seska in the weakest way possible I hate Jeri Taylor - 1.5 stars

You'd think a member of a tribe that evolved on a highly volcanic planet would know not to get stuck on a rock surrounded by lava.

I know my comment on this review is coming a bit late, but it seems to me that the constant complaint about episodes ending with foregone conclusions is missing the point of Star Trek. Star Trek has always framed things in terms of a problem and then coming up with a way to resolve it. Granted, there are some resolutions which are copouts or cheats, or could've been done better, but it goes without saying that certain things will not change. These aren't movies after all. It just seems to me that complaining about Star Trek episodes having a foregone conclusion ending is like complaining about the passenger space on a motorbike or how waterproof sandals are. We know this is how it's going to be, so the review should be done with that in mind.

So I was to believe that Seska taught them abut voyager from memory, or did she manage to download the tech manuals to her IPod? (Voyager for Dummies)? I saw this a few days ago and the crew looked like 1st year cadets, and yes, it was too predictable.

She's a villain, but I thought Seska came across as awesome. Maj complained about keeping women in their place, but you can see how he had to grudgingly respect and tolerate Seska because her points were irrefutable. Sure grudging respect is not ideal, but it reflects well on Seska that she was able to gain even that. Good work Martha Hackett.

I must echo many of the sentiments above me regarding the character of Suder. I have read elsewhere that Jeri Taylor vetoed the decision to keep Suder alive because she thought his character was "not redeemable". This seems to me to be an example of how people's thinking can be constrained by the metaphorical bubble that many of us are surrounded by and to which people in showbusiness seem to be particularly prone. Even if you don't believe that an alien murderer in the 24th century can be "redeemed" (whatever that means, we certainly do know that they can, in certain instances be rehabilitated in the 21st century) the question that is begged is "why does he have to be redeemable?" There is no good reason! The character was compelling, sufficiently different from all the other characters to be able to feature in a multitude of interesting stories and was played by an excellent actor. He had the potential to be Voyager's answer to Garak. But they killed him off because of the small-mindedness of a single person. Individual error compounded by systemic failure that allowed such an egregious mistake to happen.

The worst problem with this episode, I think, is the sense that nothing on the planet matters at all. This is maybe unavoidable given the set-up. It would probably be much worse if the crew managed to rub two sticks together and create an interstellar ship that could lead to them retaking Voyager. But it just shows the problem with this set-up. The draw of the cliffhanger to the episode (it's in the title!) is the crew being stranded, having to deal with The Basics, but ultimately they are going to be rescued by the three characters who aren't on the planet, who are doing the important work on the ship. That's why the story on the planet ends up going into a "can we work with hominids...can we have peace?" warmed-over nth-iteration story. It's not as if, in one episode, they are going to make a credible story about how to build and structure a community while stranded on a deserted island, I mean, deserted planet. Even if they could do a survival story of sorts, I feel like the scope is wrong. There are lots of survival-y Trek episodes (and television episodes in general, of non-survival shows) that feature a single character or a small group struggling with their situation, and can be effective. Resolutions is controversial but it worked fairly well for me, for example. But the draw of Basics is specifically supposed to be that it's not just a handful of people but the *whole crew* stuck on this planet, and on that particular promise the episode fails miserably. How would you organize a hundred plus people? How would they react to having been stranded because of the decisions of the highers-up? Would command break down, or would it become more deeply authoritarian? Or we could do some hominid bonding stuff and some scenes where they run from a dinosaur or something. It's not that fighting monsters and dealing with locals might not be interesting to deal with in a survival story, but here they aren't really used to tell us much about the crew; the closest thing comes from the Chakotay/Tuvok conflict over whether they should treat the hominids as potential friends or enemies. The result just feels like a lot of wandering around -- epitomized maybe by the scene where Chakotay et al. are running from the hominids, go into the cave, try to pass the monster for a while, and then after the crew comes and throws rocks at the hominids, they turn back, only after the monster has killed one crew member. The only concluding beat that seems to follow dramatically from what the crew are doing throughout the episode is that Chakotay's saving the hominids means that the hominids are able to save the Wildman baby. My wife pointed out that in effect this is the result of the crew benefiting from the fact that the hominids don't mind sharing their technology, which is really very funny. Hey, does the crew have any responsibility not to interfere in the hominids' development or something? The question is not asked, and maybe that's for the best. I mean, the thing is, these are people with language, and so as a result they maybe have enough sophistication to be affected by an alien species being brought down by a gigantic ship flying in and leaving and then coming back and picking them up. Pulaski memory erasure procedure, anyone? Oh well, whatever. I'm being a little facetious here; the realities of the situation are such that total isolation isn't an option. I'm trying to think of anything to say about it, really. On the ship: Paris' entry and that weird phaser thing is totally unconvincing as a way to retake the ship, especially because the fact that, you know, Culluh managed to successfully get a huge lot of Kazon ships to band together to take Voyager has already been forgotten. The Kazon lose the ship as quickly as they got it, this time from a tiny force, and it makes them look dumb, and makes the Voyager crew look even dumber for having lost to the Kazon. The Kazon take until near the end of the episode, after looking for a saboteur for a while, to seal off Starfleet voice commands. The computer apparently can count the number of people of each species but neglects to include Seska and her baby. Seska's death from...uh...I guess she died from the phaser attack thing?...is a weird, ignominious death for an inconsistent but sometimes interesting character. The revelation that the baby isn't Chakotay's, so as to get Chakotay (and the crew in general) off the hook from actually having to get it back, is a cheat. The Doctor as counterinsurgent is great, and Suder's material is strong up until he gets shot. Even there, the Doctor's casual insistence that Suder can and should kill the Kazon to take the ship back seems to me to be a bit misjudged. From literally any other character I could see it, but shouldn't the Doctor be at least struggling with the Hippocratic Oath, which surely is made absolutely central to his program? I get that he's still Starfleet and all, and as such would recognize that there are circumstances in which violence is necessary, and that it's not like *he* is the one killing the Kazon, but he still seems pretty blithe about not just supporting but actively encouraging killing. But yeah, Suder's moral dilemma is really strong and we get some sense of what he was like in the Maquis. If only he wasn't killed at the end, and could be allowed to continue.... I think it's largely a failure as a follow-up to part 1, and as an episode in and of itself, though on the plus side the Kazon stuff is finally over. 1.5 stars -- just barely under 2.

It was hard to buy Seska allowing the Doctor to "stay as he is for now". I'd think she'd remember his "have I been called to testify?" crack from "State Of Flux" that led to her exposure.

Terrible episode. I'll skip over most of the terrible things in it that others brought up already and mention some of the other terrible things in it. Chakotay takes the dead guys suit and says he'll make solar stills from it to collect water. How would that work exactly? How does a starfleet uniform convert into a solar still? And how would that give enough water for 150 people? So the kid isn't Chakotay's. Seska had taken a DNA sample from Chakotay's spine in the earlier episode. Seska I guess accidentally used Cullah's DNA instead of the DNA she collected from Chakotay when she made the baby, so how did that happen? She can genetically engineer a baby from spinal fluid but, oops! she got the spinal fluid mixed up with Cullah's sperm! Or something. And she didn't ever do any sort of test to make sure who's baby it was? And a Cardassian/Kazon hybrid baby looks totally human except for one small bump on it's forehead. All that is stupid. EMH: 'Computer, emergency medical priority one one four. Delete the signature of Mister Suder's comm. badge from the system. There is to be no record of his being on board.' Because that is a medical emerency for sure. And why would he have the ability to do that at all? Paris convinces the Talaxians to help him by saying he has a 'plan'. And they say 'OK we'll meet you there!'. Because they wouldn't ask what the actual plan was or anything. TUVOK: '...I taught archery science for several years at the Vulcan Institute of Defensive Arts.' LOL. Whatever you say Voyager. The best way to rescue people held hostage by a band of aggresive armed cavemen is to walk right up to them and explain to them gently in an alien gobbledygook language that they are all going to leave, and then walk away. Yep. That would work. Then after the dude gets eaten by the monster, they poke two sticks at the ceiling and cause the entire tunnel to collapse in a massive cave-in. Yep. That would work. TUVOK: You may find nobility in the savage, Commander, but he is only interested in killing you. CHAKOTAY: I don't believe that. Because so far all they have done is kidnap two people and chase after you with spears and axes trying to kill you and then try to smoke you out of a cave so they can capture you and/or kill you, then chase after some more people with spears and axes. But no, Chakotay thinks they are nice. :) And of course he's right in the end, because, you know, Star Trek. Chakotay rescues that cavewoman from the lava, by walking down a slope, and jumping onto a large rock and then onto her rock. Because there is no way she could have just done that herself, or anyone else could have, like maybe her caveman friends. Not to mention forgetting that it would be about 1000 degrees celsius where she is, but lots of shows/movies ignore the temperature thing (Revenge of the Sith and Return of the King spring to mind), so I won't blame Voyager too much for that bit. The Kazon also used escape pods to leave Voyager, so they lost probably half of those this episode, but I guess they just made some new ones the same way they remake all of their shuttles and photon torpedoes. The caveman puts a leaf with a rock in it(?) or something on Wildman's baby's chest and it's cured. Because of course primitive alien caveman medicine from the other side of the galaxy would treat a Human/Ktarian hybrid baby's fever and respiratory problems. Part 1 wasn't very good, but it wasn't terrible. I gave it 2 stars. Part 2 is completely awful. Zero stars for the planet nonsense, and 1 star for the space nonsense. So 1/2 star overall.

Shouldn't Janeway have immediately ordered her crew to commit mass suicide when they realized there was an indigenous alien race on the planet? They all should have jumped into lava rather than violating the prime directive by being seen by primitives on the planet.

"And the damage to the ship after all this? A non-factor (despite the fact that the overload practically made the Voyager look like it was on fire). Once the crew retakes Voyager, the ship, of course, looks practically like new" One of the big complaints I have about this series is that Voyager never shows any wear or tear despite the fact it so far away from any Federation drydock or outpost. Every season Voyager is attacked some hostile alien species and yet by the end of the series it still looks the way it did in the pilot episode. Contrast that with Battlestar Galactica which had a far more realistic depiction of a ship and crew far from home.

The ending was a letdown after a good Part I and many decent elements of Part II. Best of all was Suder's character showing the pain at killing again and yet continuing to do what he can to repay the Voyager crew -- this is quite a compelling character who finally dies, not unexpectedly -- but it was one of the few poignant moments. Basically the ending wraps up too quickly and conveniently -- a common flaw in weaker Trek episodes. So Culluh decides abruptly to abandon ship and leave in escape pods? Another boneheaded move from the cartoon villain Kazon leader. Seska's death just sort of happens -- one has to feel a lot more could have been done with that event. And as for the backup phaser overload apparently causing massive damage on the ship and yet when Janeway and crew get back on it can get to warp 8 -- no problem. Again, I have to be amazed (or suspend my disbelief) at what Paris can do in a shuttle. Shouldn't he have been destroyed like 3 times over?? There are some convenient wraps in this episode with the baby not being Chakotay's, Suder and Seska dying. Clearly time for the series to move on. As for the natives on the planet -- I found them to be highly inconsistent. They have a leader who is like Chakotay's father -- at times they can appear to be total savages, yet Chakotay walks right up to them and rescues Kes/Neelix. The natives were unpredictable but did whatever helped the story: if action/fight scenes were needed they would be the antagonist, if some scenes of understanding a culture etc. were needed the leader would step up... It also seemed quite fortuitous that Chakotay and co. could create a cave-in to stop/kill the creature that killed Hogan and not get injured themselves. And losing Hogan was a bit surprising right at the start -- VOY couldn't find somebody less meaningful to sacrifice? 2.5 stars for "Basics, Part II" -- definitely not as strong as Part I especially with the quick/convenient/miraculous wrap up of all loose ends, rather unsatisfying. Sad to see Suder go after all he went through. VOY tried to go all-out on "Basics" and had some good ideas but the action scenes in Part II didn't have the same edge as in Part I. The survival aspect didn't really get a chance to take hold as it seemed like whatever time the Voyager crew was on the planet, it went by quickly. The second part also suffers from high predictability without enough plot twists.

Part 1 is better, but this held my attention and was enjoyable. Liked that Suder redeemed himself before death. He was a very interesting character, so sorry to see him go, in that regard. But this was a good ending for him. Hogan on the other hand, was an interesting character whose end wasn't so fitting. The on-ship stuff was better than the on-planet stuff. The savages were pretty boring. Am again mystified by the reset button criticisms . . . yes, of course I knew they'd get their ship back, but I always knew Kirk and Spock would make it back to their own time, Picard wouldn't stay as Locutus, Earth wouldn't be destroyed by the Xindi, etc., etc., etc. I didn't think "it's not Chakotay's" baby was a cheat, since we learned Seska was lying about everything else . . . it made sense, it was part of the set up. She already knew she was pregnant and used it to set up Chakotay. Her "I used your DNA to impregnate myself" story was pretty wild (I mean . . .why bother?). It made much more sense for it to be Culluh's. Looking forward to the rest of the season.

Well, at this rate I might get to TNG by the time my teeth fall out. Is everyone excited about Picard? Onward. Teaser : *.5, 5% We pick up on Planet Palpatine or whatever with Ensign Wildman stumbling about with baby Naomi. Chakotay, the ethnic one, offers his sage advice about not wasting water. Oh yeah, WATER! That's supposed to be super rare in the DQ, right? One touch I love is how a couple of the extras are carrying around big sticks even though there are no trees in sight. Basics, people. Sticks. Janeway's team discovers a cave which she deems worthy of “making camp.” Meanwhile, Hogan and Neelix discover some humanoid bones at the mouth of another cave. I normally think SFDebris is way too harsh on Voyager, but he is completely right about Neelix here. He notes that the bones are likely a warning of danger, tells Hogan to collect the entire ominous skeleton for “tools,” DROPS the one femur he was holding onto the pile and runs off so that Hogan can collect all of the bones by himself in the shadow of the ominous cave of ominous warnings. Fucking hell, Neelix. So naturally, this means Hogan is eaten by a steady cam, no doubt the land-eel we saw teased at the end of part 1. Act 1 : *.5, 17% The episode proper begins with the reveal that Chewy, I mean Tom isn't remotely dead. He's still in his shuttle, fixing things while Caligula's patrol vessel is still trying to take him out. While making his customary quips to NO ONE, he easily blows up the Kazon ship and carries on. Wow, what drama. The crew examine Hogan's remains on the now twilit planet. Kes placates Neelix' stupidity, per their idiom. What works here, as usual, is Kate Mulgrew. She says, “there's no time to worry about blame,” but let's be honest here; Janeway is feeling guilty. She's been undulating between her desire to foster community and shepherd her crew home in the wake of her controversial decision since “Caretaker.” And now, with her entire crew stranded on a planet that seems to be quickly eating them, she must feel like a complete failure. She barks out orders, clearly desperate to stave off the inevitable. Stay out of the tunnels. Make weapons. Eat these worms. Just. Don't. Die. On the Voyager, Seska brings her baby to the sickbay and the Doctor gets to flex his character development. SESKA: Tell me, is it within your program's capabilities to lie or be deceptive? EMH: I've learned that a bedside manner occasionally requires me to, how should I put it, soft-pedal the truth. But bald-faced lying, calculated deceit? I don't have much experience with that sort of thing. But my programme is adaptive. If you really need me to be deceptive, I'm sure I could learn. On an R-rated version of this show, I think Doc would have started bragging about the penis he added to his programme in “Lifesigns.” Anyway, while Seska is assuaged (I suppose Michael Jonas couldn't have been bothered to keep her updated on him), there is a rather surprising retcon trotted out: the baby isn't Chakotay's at all, it's actually Caligula's. Apparently, Kazon technology is so shitty that they can't even do DNA tests. Besides the Doc's antics, one character touch I like is Seska's obvious disappointment at learning she failed to conceive with Chakotay. Whatever her tactical reasoning, this whole baby drama was clearly personal for her. After she leaves, the EMH monologues in his “medical log” (Medical Monologue? That might become a thing). He gets some fun lines. EMH: What am I supposed to do? Lead a revolt with a gang from Sandrine's? Conjure up holograms of Nathan Hale and Che Guevara? I'm a doctor, not a counterinsurgent. Get hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram. You're a Starfleet hologram. He asks the computer about the crew complement, and it chooses to respond in the form of (inaccurate) racial profiling. There are 89 Kazon and 1 Betazoid aboard. I guess Seska and her baby don't count as crew, but the boarders and the murderer do? And I guess Caligula is so god damned stupid that he hasn't thought to scan for Voyager crewmembers before cruising off into the sunset? Yeesh. Well luckily the medical hologram with no rank has the authority to delete Suder's record of existing entirely. Ironic. On Planet Whatever, the crew is collecting eggs, worrying over Naomi...Chakotay is engaging in jilted ethnic stereotypes that I feel *have* to be deliberate parody. CHAKOTAY: Trapped on a barren planet and you're stuck with the only Indian in the universe who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Now, if I had some poker chips, that would be something...Yikes. Anyway, Captain Sampson gives up a lock of her hair to the cause and Chakotay is able to get a fire going so the crew won't die quite as quickly. Neelix decides to look for some rocks—alone, because he's a moron. Kes goes looking for him but gets snatched by one of the locals. What the hell am I watching? Act 2 : *.5, 17% Meanwhile, Paris has made contact with those Talaxians who should have been around before this mess started. He pleads with them and somehow convinces them that he can devise a clever plan to retake the Voyager somehow. Anyone care to guess how this story ends? Suder makes his way to the Sickbay and the EMH starts babbling about their counterinsurgency strategy. Suder himself is...distracted. SUDER: I'm going to have to kill some of them. EMH: It is possible. Violence might be required to retake the ship. SUDER: I've worked so, so hard over the last few months to control the violent feelings. I'm almost at peace with myself. I mean, I see the day coming when I could be. … EMH: We must do this together, Mister Suder. If you don't trust yourself yet, then trust me. I will help you anyway I can. One hologram and one sociopath may not be much of a match for the Kazon, but we'll have to do. Actually, from what we've seen the Kazon are probably over-matched in this fight. Well, with Neelix and Kes captured, the stranded crew have something to do, I guess. CHAKOTAY: This is thoughtful of you Tuvok, but my tribe never used bows and arrows, and I've never even shot one. This HAS to be parody. So it seems the natives have surrounded Neelix and Kes where they proceed to sniff and prod them. I would have awarded four stars to this scene if one of them threw a bone into the air and we smash cutted to the Voyager. Anyway, Commander Spirit Walker just strolls up them and speaks in a calm, condescending Hollywood fantasy tone that is supposed to remind us that he's the ethnic one, and we have a DEEP respect for the ethnic ones (please pay no attention to the natives hopping around like baboons). They...negotiate for an exchange of prisoners or something. Neelix starts screaming at the native leader when it seems they might just keep Kes, because his job is to be a useless as possible. They walk, then run away as the Voyager back up crew arrive and start shooting the natives with their improvised weapons. What the FUCK am I watching? The Indiana Jones crap continues as the crew hide in one of the forbidden tunnels, hoping the natives won't follow. Act 3 : **, 17% On the Voyager, the warp drive has stalled and Seska, the only Nistrim with half a brain, realises they're being sabotaged. Suder is given a thoron dildo or something to help him stave off tricorder scans and is tasked with getting some weapons. Tough break. Meanwhile, baby Naomi is now sick for some reason, because there aren't enough artificial conflicts in this story. Did I say artificial conflict? Well Chakotay's party is now being smoked out of their tunnel by the natives, deeper into the ominous tunnel...I'm getting bored typing this stuff. Everything on the planet is just plot beat after plot beat. I'll say this though, the music is quite a bit more interesting that has been typical of Star Trek for many years. Act 4 : **.5, 17% Suder continues to elude the Kazon search parties and sabotage the Voyager. Paris manages to make contact with the EMH with instructions on how he will be able to tech-tech the ship's phasers to make Tom's inevitable success more...inevitable. Suder then brings a Kazon he was forced to kill back to the Sickbay so he could be hidden. The effect on the quasi-reformed psychotic is quite visceral. He performs a Vulcan meditation to quiet the voices. In the readyroom, Caligula...lol...delivers a report to Seska and the baby. She sees right through the subterfuge for all the good it will do. On the planet, Tuvok is suggesting they make more weapons to deal with the locals, but Janeway doesn't like the idea of perpetually foregoing diplomacy, which is good, and Chakotay has some new age bullshit informing his opinion, which is stupid. Oh, and because there aren't yet enough artificial threats, there's now and EXPLODING VOLCANO!!!! about to flood their camp with magma. Wow. Seska confronts the EMH, convinced that he is behind the sabotage. They spar a bit, which is pretty fun. Finally, she locks out Federation voice commands and shoots a panel, disabling the Doctor's programme. Act 5 : *.5, 17% Tom and the Talxians have begun their attack while Suder is left with a recording from the EMH, triggered by his attempt to activate his companion. Having been informed that his wish from part 1, to make amends for his transgressions, has been fulfilled, Suder's arc is complete. On the planet, one of the natives has been stranded on a rock above a river of lava, but thankfully, Chakotay's magical Indian powers allow him to rescue her and provide the lynch-pin to the new alliance between the crew and the natives. Weren't they going to give him this woman as a prostitute wife a couple scenes ago? In what I assume is meant to be an ironic twist, Tom hen-pecks the Voyager much the same way Seska had in part 1 with his shuttle, forcing Caligula to engage the back-up phasers, which of course, means Suder's up to complete the Very Important Task. This begins with him killing every single Kazon in the Engine Room, which is admittedly impressive. The skill needed for this comes like second nature to him, but the toll it takes on his soul is very clear. But right before he can push the magic button, one of the Kazon who wasn't *quite* dead yet, mortally wounds him. The phaser overload causes the inside of the ship to get fried real good, which...yeesh. Many of the Kazon are dead, but the baby has just been woken up from his nap I guess. Seska dies trying to reach him, and Caligula takes the baby with him as they escape into some novels I'm sure no one wanted to write. On the planet, the natives put a leaf on the baby's throat which helps her out, I guess. And just in time for the Voyager to make its return to the planet. All things aside, it's a pretty epic shot of the ship with a sweeping inclusion of the Voyager theme. In a better episode, this would have been an impressive climax. We close out with Tuvok wishing Suder's corpse farewell and Chakotay putting Seska in a bodybag. Wow, what a resolution! Episode as Functionary : **, 10% How's this for a timely comparison? This reminded me a bit of “The Rise of Skywalker”—not that Basics I was anything close to as good as “The Last Jedi,” but Basics II is completely uninterested in exploring themes, developing relationships or engaging on any level with its audience beyond spectacle. The plot is *resolved*, there are a couple of interesting moments, and that's it. As others have noted, the best parts are probably Suder and the Doctor. Suder's tragic little story gets about as fitting an end as we could expect. Remember this line from “Meld,” SUDER: I can promise you this will not silent your demons. If you can't control the violence, the violence controls you. Be prepared to yield your entire being to it, to sacrifice your place in civilised life for you will no longer be a part of it, and there's no return. A stronger ending for him would have been for him to survive the encounter, but commit suicide before the Talaxians boarded, but between Dourif's excellent performance and the directing taking momentary breaks from its frenetic pace to dwell on his reactions, this worked for me. The Planet Plot was a complete waste. Instead of, as I hoped, having these characters deal with the weight of their choices—Janeway and her struggle between community leader and pragmatic captain, Chakotay struggling with consequences of his relationship with Seska (oh, and convenient that the kid isn't his anymore, so all that talk with his father didn't matter at all, I guess)--instead of any of that, we get land-eels, offensive natives, volcano silliness and Neelix getting people killed. This is Star Trek; I don't expect to actually be worried that the crew isn't going to be rescued, but I want to see them make use of their isolation from the ship. “Basics” could have referred to the basics of human psychology as well as the basics of survival. But this was not to be. The most disappointing aspect of this story for me is how it unceremoniously casted off Seska. I already lamented how they flattened her character into almost nothing in Season 2, but I was hoping for at least a token resolution between her and Chakotay. A braver ending would have seen Suder accidentally kill the baby and mortally-wound Seska. After all, they should know each other. Killing an innocent baby would be the impetus for Suder's suicide and this would have given a foundation to a final conversation between Seska and Chakotay before she perished. Overall, a big disappointment, despite some good production values. Final Score : ** (barely)

An excellent analysis as always, Elliot! Glad to see you're back.

Good write up Elliott. Looking back on what I wrote, I see I couldn't think of what they *should* have done on the planet, and your suggestion of going to the "basics" of psychology makes some sense. Obviously what they did planetside is bad either way. It occurs to me that it may have worked better to fold in aspects of Resolutions into Basics 2 - - instead of focusing on a Survival Story for ten minutes and then a Can We Ever Get Along With These Savages? story for a few more, have the setup in part 1 be that they clearly do have enough basic tools to survive on the planet, and so the issue is what happens when they no longer have a ship to run (and thus time to think). One of the things Part I suggested was that Culluh wanted to punish Janeway for not giving him replicators. The episode was also maybe attempting to show the Voyager crew having to live like the Kazon and the Kazon living like the Voyager crew. Culluh thinks it's all a matter of tech, but Culluh is too stupid to use the tech he's given and squanders any such advantages, whereas Janeway and Chakotay can make peace with other random tribes rather than playing the endless musical chairs of internal war that the Kazon do. It's not just technological superiority that makes the Voyager crew, well, better. I guess that could work, but peace with the Ewoks isn't really all that impressive here and the Kazon are so hopeless that it's not exactly a compliment to come out on top of them.

I’d give it 2, maybe 1.5 stars. And that’s ONLY for how well Suder was portrayed, and to see his redemption completed was pretty strong stuff. But the stuff on the planet? Yawn. And on top of that, you take Hogan, who started off annoying (like Neelix), but eventually became more and more likable (like Tom), and eventually became one of my favorite side characters.... and you kill him off screen like some Random Randy Redshirt? That, plus all the weird veiled Native American digs, it just didn’t live up to expectations for me.

Also, forgive me if I’m wrong, but in order to have Chakotay’s baby, she stole his DNA which would mean she would have to directly fertilize her egg with that specific DNA sample, making it impossible for the baby to be anybody’s BUT Chakotay’s. That’s not just lazy, it’s dumb.

Voyager kills off 3 of its 4 most interesting recurring characters (and writers all but forgot about the 4th, Carey) to serve a mediocre plot. Actually, Hogan’s death barely even had anything to do with the plot, and Seska went out with a bit of a whimper given all the intrigue with her character leading up to it. At least Suder’s end was interesting, though it feels like there were still a lot of possibilities they could have explored with that character. It was already straining credulity seeing the Kazon and Talaxians this far into the journey home (or the Vidiians in the previous episode) so to some extent this had to be the end of a chapter, but it was quite a bit of a letdown, which makes it a fitting way to kick off Voyager’s weakest season.

Just saw this episode last night. I agree with many posts written here. But I enjoy the episode every time I watch it. I did feel bad for Hogan, and yes, it only brought the point up that when they need to kill a "major" character, they pick my favourites: Hogan, and then later, just before getting back to the Alpha Quadrant, Carey. On first viewings, I missed the grieving moan given by Culluh on seeing Seska dead. Kazon for the most part were not interesting to me. Exceptions were the young Kazon Kar played by Aron Eisenberg, and Anthony De Longis' Culluh. He always amused when he acted chauvinistically, even slapping Janeway for daring to ask a question. Yet we know he cared about Seska. And once on Voyager, he stomped around some more, complaining about Federation females, making his mourning her death all the more touching. Great job by DeLongis.

The difficulty of retaking the ship without causing catastrophic damage, or at least without the departing Kason stripping the damaged ship of vital technology or even deliberately sabotaging it, is grossly underplayed. My elegant solution: During the Kason occupation of Voyager, besides whatever mayhem Suder carries out, the Doctor should have flooded the air ducts with a Kason-specific pathogen he quickly improvises. If that seems too brutal, it wouldn't even have to be a lethal microorganism - just some disease that slowly but surely causes the Kason to waste away, interfering with their thinking process, thwarting their plans, and which, ultimately, "softens them up" to the idea of peacefully relinquishing control of Voyager when the original crew shows up (perhaps Janeway promises a cure in exchange for the return of an intact Voyager).

Bleh, at least it wraps up the silly Kazon and absolutely insanely implausible Seska. The Kazon came very close to destroying Voyager— the series. The Kazon reeked of cheapness, and that they are even still in the story line in the THIRD season is cheap too. Has Voyager made ANY progress toward Earth by this time? The whole planet plot was obviously irrelevant filler from the get-go. And yes, I agree, the only interesting thing here is Suder.

While DS9 mastered the art of developing guest stars into great secondary characters, Voyager excelled at killing them. It seems like Voyager loves to kill off its crewmen like the good old redshirts of TOS. Brad Dourif did a wonderful job as Suder, and to see his character arc continue as he redeemed himself and perhaps even rejoined the crew one day would have been rewarding. Hogan was a likeable character...similar to O'Brien...and killing him off was just dumb. Also, does any Federation ship ever win a battle? It seems that they let other ships pound the living shit out of them, consoles blow up (fuses weren't invented until the 27th century), engines are always disabled, and their weapons have no effect.

Michael Miller

This episode had so many flaws lol, 1st of all, why would the ship's computer allow an alien species that just invaded the ship to lock out the command codes? How could a shuttle's phasers cut through Voyager's shields? How could the sensors detect things hundreds of light years away, but then have a BLIND SPOT underneath the ship? The whole ship short circuited after the phaser couplings overloaded, yet they repaired it as good as new in a few hours? But yeah a star fleet computer would TOTALLY allow alien intruders to lock out the computer!

To begin with, I totally agree with recent prior comments: by Skater777 & Michael Miller, insofar as Basics 1 & 2 while fun in a way, were hard to take in. Patent, unremitting stupidity at every turn. Given that the writers want to telegraph Voyager's terminal ill-preparedness, it probably would have been a good idea to have Janeway in the holodeck in Victorian garb arguing with that witchy housekeeper when the Kazons burst in. Better yet, the witchy housekeeper turns into Seska, freaking out Janeway for a few seconds while swinging a brass candlestick at her head before the Kazons burst in. As much as I like volcanos, the part on the planet reminded me of a kid's show I saw a long time ago. It had a rubber dinosaur suit-guy and a nubile girl in tattered skins I think. There were some other people too, but they were less watchable. Every Saturday morning, they got into a predicament. Poor Hogan! He was doing so well up till that travesty with Neelix and the bones. At least no one had to get eaten in the kid's show. But for me the ignominious end of Seska in near total darkness, took the cake. After all those episodes where we viewers had to suffer through her obnoxious line "Hello Chakotay" the writers consign her to oblivion without a parting line. I sense a backstory in which the actress' agent quibbeled over compensation, and got her killed off ad hoc.

Yep, and it also just seems silly how every random invading alien species masters control of the ship, including repairs, virtually instantly. Like in "displaced" they instantly knew how to operate and fix all the bridge systems. Also that scene where Chakotay is rescuing that caveman girl who's stuck on the rock when the volcano erupts, wouldn't the 2300 degree magma burn you to a crisp if you get within a foot of it? But he just hops over it like its nothing. And what setting did Sudor have his weapon on when he shot up engineering? Like seriously be sure they are all dead, set it to maximum and vaporize every one of them, not just casually toss the weapon into the pile of bodies and turn your back! And assuming the Kazons had their weapons on kill, would he really have those few seconds to hit the panel? But yeah I can't stop laughing at a 24th century, warp-driven, starship equipped with subspace systems and interstellar scanners with a BLIND SPOT underneath it. LOLLL

Good thoughts. Oh man! Don't remind me about Sudor....he of all people should have known better than to let his guard down. I think he was probably distracted by thoughts of ordering 2300 degree magma take-out. LOL

Just a note on Brad Dourif. In March 2023, he passed his 73rd birthday. IMDB has 173 acting credits for him. It also lists 3 projects for him as "upcoming." The man has been working steadily since he was Billy Bibbit in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" 48 years ago (1975). That role earned him an Academy Award nomination.

I was not to convinced regarding his character and characterisation in his first apperances. It was somhow to "flat". In this episode though, his fight with his inner demons and his dilemma was executed very fine. I did not now he was Billy Bibbit. That was excelent performance. A magnificenct sceen when Nurse Ratched / Louise Feltcher / Kai Winn had the showdown in cuckoos nest. RIP

Watching voyager all the way through for the first time, I keep wanting to maintain an open mind, but the writing and plotting is just so shoddy there’s really no salvaging these first two seasons. The plot holes, loose threads, lack of coherent continuity, and constantly stupid decisions are so numerous it’s brutal. The fact that seska’s baby turns out to not be chikotay’s kid essentially means that voyager set out on a mission to kidnap someone else’s child. Granted they didn’t know that when they started, but at this point believing anything seska says is the height of stooopid. By now janeway has lost all credibility as captain and I find it incredulous that the crew wouldn’t begin expressing some level of concern over her terrible decisions. There’s just too many head scratching writing choices to get into and above commenters have probably mentioned them all, so I’ll just finish by venting my intense dislike of neelix. Why in the world would he have the authority to form a team and take a command position while they were stranded on the lava/caveman planet? I mean, poor hogan even takes orders from him and calls him sir! Wha?? Aside from being a total idiot neelix is the self appointed ‘morale officer’ and barely tolerated ships cook, he has no business giving orders to anyone let alone ranking star fleet officers. It’s just…blech.

This episode was on again a few days ago. The most laughable part is actually: Doctor: "There's a Betazoid on board? Who is it, where is he??" 24th century computer with bio-neural circuitry: "Please re-state a single question." LMAO!!!

Then of course the 24th century AI bio-neural circuitry star fleet issued computer will readily and willingly lock out all the command codes of the crew when an invading alien species simply tells it to do so. Jesus Christ, it's easier to invade and commandeer voyager than to login to my Gmail account from a different device. Why didn't the doctor lock out the command codes first, if an alien species can? I agree with all the points about Nelix being a total moron, I thought they managed to pull blue shirt guy up though or didn't they? Oh yeah and run into a cave where there's definitely a dinosaur-eel-snake fusion when you can just keep running away from the natives. And as someone mentioned the species evolving on a volcanic planet not veing able to leap across the rocks like Chakotay did. And the shuttle veing able to destroy an entire kazon supership, yet their smaller ships can take over voyager in 10 seconds. Why didn't more crew members hide in the Jeffrey's tunes. Why the fuck did Tuvok randomly teach archery science for several years WTF, of all specialties that what a Vulcan scientist would choose??? Please. Perfect points everyone! I personally find the dumb computer the best though. AI brain-style circuitry computer that runs a starship but can't keep track of 2 questions and has left safety protocols than Gmail and other stupid internet verifications LOL

*less safety protocols, sorry for so many typos lol

I'm not sure how everyone else felt about this episode, but I think it is pretty good. Neelix's people come in handy too-although if they are that friendly, why didn't Voyager use them before for supplies (if they are willing to fight for Voyager, wouldn't they be willing to sell some food/fuel? Voyager seems to scavenge for this a lot-especially food) I do remember Suter dying at some point. I guess it makes more sense thematically than knowing he is locked away for the rest of the show. I was sorry to see Hogan die (I guess that should have been mentioned in the first part) I always got him confused with the guy who was a traitor (secretly contacting Seska) I really like how Chakotay befriended the tribe by saving the alien girl. I guess I can understand his suspicion, but I don't like how Tuvok was dismissing them as being unrepentantly hostile The Sarlacc-type monster was pretty cool. A shame he killed another crewman in this episode.

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I Don’t Think Michael Piller Recreated His TNG Success With Star Trek: Voyager Season 2’s Finale

• Michael Piller wanted Star Trek: Voyager's "Basics" to mirror "The Best of Both Worlds" success
• Despite Piller's past success, "Basics" failed to live up to the iconic status of TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds"
• Unlike TNG's game-changing impact, "Basics" did not influence either Voyager or the wider franchise much after it aired.

Star Trek: Voyager 's season 2 finale failed to recreate the success of one of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's best episodes, despite producer Michael Piller's intentions. Piller began his tenure in the Star Trek franchise as a writer on TNG and worked as executive producer/showrunner on both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager . Although Piller departed the franchise after two seasons on Voyager , he is still remembered for his significant contributions to the 1990s-era Star Trek series , having written some of the franchise's best episodes during that time period.

One of these episodes was the TNG season 3/4 two-parter, "The Best of Both Worlds, Parts 1&2," which saw Starfleet's first major conflict with the Borg and Captain Jean-Luc Picard's (Patrick Stewart) transformation into Locutus. "The Best of Both Words" is widely regarded as TNG 's best episode of all time and one of the most iconic and important storylines in the franchise. The distinction of having written it is high praise for Piller, which makes it unsurprising that he would want to recreate this success on other Star Trek series, including Voyager .

How To Watch All Star Trek TV Shows In Timeline Order

Michael piller wanted to recreate tng’s best episodes’ success with voyager’s season 2 finale, piller wanted "basics" to be voyager's version of "the best of both worlds".

Piller specifically sought to recreate "The Best of Both Worlds'" success in Voyager 's season 2 finale and season 3 premiere episode, "Basics, Part 1&2." The episode was the last that Piller wrote for Voyager , and on the surface has several things going for it in terms of an ambitious plot and engaging characters. "Basics" was the culmination of Voyager 's Kazon storyline , featuring the final showdown between the crew, Maje Culluh (Anthony De Longis), and Seska (Martha Hackett). As a season finale/season premier duo, it also needed to tell an ambitious story to keep audiences engaged.

Given that Piller was leaving Voyager after "Basics," he likely wanted to leave the show with some good material to explore heading into season 3. Voyager 's first two seasons were strong enough to get the series continually renewed, but many episodes were hit or miss. The fact that Piller had already contributed some of Star Trek 's most memorable episodes in previous shows should have set him up for success when crafting "Basics" as his farewell to the franchise.

Why Voyager’s “Basics” Wasn’t As Good As TNG’s “The Best Of Both Worlds”

"basics" unequivocally did not live up to tng's most famous episode.

However, despite Piller's wishes, "Basics" was entirely unsuccessful in recreating the fame of "The Best of Both Worlds" or any of his other popular episodes. "The Best of Both Worlds" succeeded because it fundamentally changed the Star Trek franchise going forward. Introducing the Borg as Starfleet's most formidable enemy and Picard's time as Locutus informed Star Trek storylines for decades to come, weaving out a web that left many future series interconnected back to the episode in some way.

In contrast, "Basics" was never going to achieve anything so ambitious. Voyager 's premise prohibited many of its storylines from influencing the wider franchise , and the main issue with "Basics" was the episode's villains. Unlike the Borg, the Kazon were almost universally hated at the time "Basics" aired, and the one memorable thing the episode did was end their storyline on Voyager for good. "Basics" wasn't even Star Trek: Voyager 's best two-parter , let alone anything close to the level of quality that "The Best of Both Worlds" exemplified.

Source: Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman

Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: The Next Generation are both available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before. 

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date

Streaming Service(s)

Franchise(s)

Writers Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Showrunner Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation is the third installment in the sci-fi franchise and follows the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew members of the USS Enterprise. Set around one hundred years after the original series, Picard and his crew travel through the galaxy in largely self-contained episodes exploring the crew dynamics and their own political discourse. The series also had several overarching plots that would develop over the course of the isolated episodes, with four films released in tandem with the series to further some of these story elements.

Cast Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Writers Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Ronald D. Moore

Showrunner Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Rick Berman

Our episode database profiles every episode of Star Trek: Voyager . Each episode features background information (plot • trivia • interviews • behind the scenes info • shooting script) and DVD screencaps.

Jump to Season : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 View Season Overview : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

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Star Trek: Voyager 's Must-Watch Episodes

So far, our guides to the unmissable episodes of each   entry in the Star Trek franchise have dealt with lauded icons of the series. The esteemed original . The beloved Next Generation . The revered, dark Deep Space Nine . And now, we’re at Star Trek: Voyager , a show which is...well, not loved as much as those (but very much loved ). Rest assured, we can certainly still guide you through its highest highs.

As part of our ongoing efforts to give you things to distract yourself in the moment of history in which we live, io9 is offering up weekly guides to the very best that each Star Trek show has to offer. So if you’re about to follow our advice and help yourself to all the Star Trek , here are at least some highlights you can look forward to as you boldly go absolutely nowhere outside.

Caretaker, Parts 1 and 2 (Episodes 1 and 2)— On a routine mission to root out some Maquis fighters in the Badlands, Captain Janeway suddenly finds herself thrown into the crucible when a mysterious presence catapults Voyager and the Maquis into the Delta Quadrant...70 years away from Earth.

Phage (Episode 5)— On an away mission, Neelix finds his lungs stolen right out of his chest by the Vidiians, a race that resorted to literal body part pillaging while combatting a horrifyingly lethal plague.

Eye of the Needle (Episode 7)— A small wormhole gives the crew a chance to try and send a message to the Alpha Quadrant...only to find that there’s a Romulan agent on the other end.

State of Flux (Episode 11)— Voyager is betrayed by one of its own when it’s discovered the Kazon have stolen some of their replicator technology.

Faces (Episode 14)— Harangued by the Vidiians again, Torres is captured and literally split between her Klingon and human selves as part of an experiment.

Learning Curve (Episode 16)— Struggling to bring the Maquis survivors up to Starfleet standard, Tuvok tries to whip some of them into shape. Cheese is taken to sickbay .

Projections (Episode 3)— The Doctor finds himself alone on Voyager , only to discover that he’s apparently his actual creator running a fictional holoprogram, and not stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

Maneuvers (Episode 11)— Seska the Cardassian turncoat is back with her new Kazon friends, stealing transporter tech from Voyager that sets Chakotay on a personal vendetta.

Resistance (Episode 12)— Captured on an away mission, Janeway recruits the help of an old man who’s convinced she’s actually his daughter.

Prototype (Episode 13)— A race of sentient androids kidnaps Torres and forces her to help them find a way to...procreate, essentially?

Alliances (Episode 14)— As Seska and the Kazon’s alliance needles at Voyager ’s defenses, Janeway decides to try and team up with some locals to take the fight to the Kazon.

Meld (Episode 16)— Wow, you watched this run of episodes in order, and then suddenly episode 15 never happened ! What a funny thing . Anyway, after a crewman is murdered aboard Voyager , Tuvok quickly finds the perpetrator—and is desperate to find out why they did it.

Deadlock (Episode 21)— A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day happens aboard the Voyager . Until suddenly...another Janeway shows up?

Resolutions (Episode 25)— Infected with a seemingly incurable disease, Chakotay and Janeway are forced to be left behind together on an uninhabited planet. The birth of a million Janeway/Chakotay fics ensues.

Basics, Part 1 (Episode 26)— Seska lures Voyager into a trap, leaving the ship in the hands of the Kazon.

Basics, Part 2 (Episode 1)— Left on a harsh world by the Kazon, the Voyager crew has to find a way to get the ship back...if they can survive long enough.

Flashback (Episode 2)— Tuvok has a mental breakdown, and the only way to help rectify it sees Janeway mind-meld back into his memories of his time serving under Captain Hikaru Sulu. Oh my .

Macrocosm (Episode 12)— When giant viruses incapacitate the crew while she’s on an away mission, Janeway returns and immediately gets her Alien on.

Unity (Episode 17)— Injured in a shuttlecraft accident, Chakotay finds himself recuperating on a world inhabited by former Borg drones severed from the collective.

Distant Origin (Episode 23)— An alien scientist believes he’s found proof tying the evolution of his species to Earth, and must battle dogma and his peers alongside Voyager to reveal the truth to his people.

Displaced (Episode 24)— The crew finds themselves disappearing one by one...only for each missing crewmember to be replaced by an alien as confused as they are.

Scorpion, Part 1 (Episode 26)— Voyager   hits Borg space, only to be beset by a threat even more powerful.

Scorpion, Part 2 (Episode 1)— As her uneasy alliance with the Borg to stop Species 8472 crumbles, Janeway finds herself between a rock, a hard place, and Seven of Nine , Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One.

The Gift (Episode 2)— Now severed from the Borg Collective, Seven of Nine tries to acclimate to becoming an individual and part of Voyager ’s crew. Oh, also Kes has headaches, turns into a space cloud, and buggers off. Bye Kes!

Day of Honor (Episode 3)— On the Klingon spirtual holiday marking the day of Honor, Torres has an extremely bad day.

The Raven (Episode 6)— An unexpected find on an away mission leads to Seven of Nine uncovering a crucial part of her life before the Borg.

Scientific Method (Episode 7)— Everyone on Voyager is in a hell of a mood with each other, but as it turns out, it’s because of invisible alien experiments and not having spent four years trapped on one spaceship with each other.

Year of Hell, Parts 1 and 2 (Episodes 8 and 9)— A time-manipulating scientist of the Krennim Imperium warps the timeline to give Voyager a...well, a year of hell.

Message in a Bottle (Episode 14)— When Seven finds a subspace beacon she can ping a message to the Alpha Quadrant with, the crew decides to send the Doctor’s holoprogram instead...only for him to find himself in the middle of the heist of an experimental Starfleet ship.

Hunters (Episode 15)— Trying to recover a response to the message relayed by the Doctor last episode, the crew encounters a deadly new threat: the Not-Predators the Hirogen.

The Killing Game, Parts 1 and 2 (Episodes 18 and 19)— The Not Predators Hirogen capture Voyager , and decide that the ultimate game is to in fact use the holodeck to turn the ship into World War II-era France and pit themselves as the Nazis against the crew’s French Resistance.

The Omega Directive (Episode 21)— Seven uncovers a mysterious particle with profoundly dangerous ramifications for warp travel, only for Janeway to engage a mysterious, ultra-secret Starfleet protocol.

Living Witness (Episode 23)— Reactivated seemingly after seven centuries offline, the Doctor finds himself on an alien world with a history recalling a very different version of Voyager .

Hope and Fear (Episode 26)— When a seeming response to Voyager ’s attempts to communicate with Starfleet leads to a swanky Federation vessel landing in their laps, the crew finds themselves daring to hope.

Night (Episode 1)— Navigating a dark void of space with no stars or star systems, Janeway and the rest of the crew develop a bit of existential cabin fever.

Drone (Episode 2)— A transporter malfunction merges Seven’s borg nanoprobes with the Doctor’s mobile holoemitter, creating a new kind of drone. Significantly better than Voyager ’s last “ Transporter Fusion Accident ” episode.

Extreme Risk (Episode 3)— Increasing stress leads B’Elanna to get trapped in an almost deadly game of pushing herself to the limit.

Timeless (Episode 6)— Fifteen years after an attempt to catapult themselves home leads to most of the Voyager crew perishing, haunted survivors Harry and Chakotay attempt to change the past.

Counterpoint (Episode 10) —Janeway establishes a dangerous relationship with a Devore commander as she tries to help smuggle telepathic refugees through their space.

Latent Image (Episode 11)— The Doctor’s new holophotgraphy habit leads to him discovering a crew member who’s not in his memory banks.

Bride of Chaotica! (Episode 12)— Everyone takes a break and vamps it all the way up inside Tom Paris’ Captain Proton holonovel, an extremely camp take on ‘50s sci-fi serials.

Dark Frontier, Parts 1 and 2 (Episodes 15 and 16)— A plan to swipe a transwarp coil from the Borg leads to the Borg Queen capturing Seven of Nine and offering her a futile choice: Rejoin the collective, or Voyager gets assimilated.

Course: Oblivion (Episode 18) —The crew begins succumbing to a mysterious, fatal disease, only to uncover some shocking revelations about themselves in the process.

Someone to Watch Over Me (Episode 22)— Experimenting with her humanity, Seven of Nine allows the Doctor to teach her the ways of romance. Heartbreak ensues, naturally.

Relativity (Episode 24)— As temporal fluctuations wreak havoc on Voyager , Seven finds herself working with the Starfleet of the 29th Century to save the ship from certain doom.

Equinox, Part 1 (Episode 26)— The crew find another Starfleet ship that’s been trapped in the Delta Quadrant for years, only this one...did not cope as well as they did.

Equinox, Part 2 (Episode 1)— Attempting to bring Ransom and the Equinox to some kind of Starfleet justice, Janeway finds herself crossing some lines too.

Barge of the Dead (Episode 3)— Torres dies in a shuttlecraft accident—as one does—only to find herself on the way to Klingon Hell with her mom’s soul—as one does .

Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy (Episode 4)— The Doctor crafts himself a subroutine which allows him to daydream that he’s become a backup Command Hologram in case of emergencies. Which is bad news when a spying Malon vessel picks up his daydreams and assumes they’re real.

Pathfinder (Episode 10)— Good news: Voyager finds a way to communicate with home. Bad (?) news: Loveable holo addict dope Reg Barclay from TNG is the one trying to get it to work.

Tsunkatse (Episode 15)— This is not a good episode of television. But it does feature Dwayne “The Rock Johnson” space-kung-fu-ing with Jeri Ryan, so actually, it is?

Collective (Episode 16)— Voyager finds a Borg Cube, only to find it operated by child drones who’ve been severed from the collective.

Child’s Play (Episode 19)— Encountering the species of one of the liberated Borg kids they recovered, Seven’s maternal instincts kick in when she believes something is up.

Fury (Episode 23) —Kes is back! Oh no. Kes is   pissed. Oh no .

Life Line (Episode 24)— The Doctor is sent back to the Alpha Quadrant on a personal and professional mission: cure his dying creator, Louis Zimmerman.

Unimatrix Zero, Part 1 (Episode 26)— Discovering a secret virtual haven Borg can tap into while regenerating, Janeway sees a way to deliver a decisive blow to the collective.

Unimatrix Zero, Part 2 (Episode 1)— Playing a gambit that sees her, Tuvok, and Torres assimilated, Janeway plots to release a virus that could allow the drone minds of Unimatrix Zero to fight back against the Borg Queen’s rule.

Imperfection (Episode 2)— When three of the Borg children the crew picked up last season decide to return home, Seven finds herself overwhelmed with emotion...which would be understandable, if this wasn’t Seven of Nine.

Repression (Episode 4) —When former Maquis are targeted by mysterious assaults aboard the ship, Tuvok goes on an investigation.

Body and Soul (Episode 7)— Captured on an away mission by aliens who despise holographic beings, the Doctor is forced to hide his program inside Seven of Nine’s implants. Jeri Ryan gets to act the hell out of this scenario.

Lineage (Episode 12)— Torres and Paris discover they’re having a child, which leads the former down an emotionally traumatic path as she tries to deal with her own upbringing as a half-Klingon.

The Void (Episode 15)— Trapped in a region of space with no stars, planets, or seemingly any kind of energy, Janeway must navigate pirates and her own morals to try and find a way out.

Author, Author (Episode 20)— Voyager takes on a not-as-effective version of TNG ’s “ Measure of a Man ,” when the Doctor tries to fight for the right to get a controversial holonovel pulled after it’s published without his consent in the Alpha Quadrant.

Homestead (Episode 23)— When the crew finds a Talaxian settlement in need of its help, Neelix finds himself torn between his people and his family aboard Voyager.

Endgame, Parts 1 and 2 (Episodes 25 and 26) —Reflecting on the years lost by the Voyager crew in its long journey home, the Admiral Janeway of 2404 hatches an audacious plan to bring her ship home a good few years earlier than it did.

Star Trek is available to stream, currently for free, on CBS All Access .

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Screen Rant

Star trek: voyager’s seska actor thinks her character’s death was “a mistake”.

Star Trek: Voyager killed Seska off in the season 3 premiere, but actor Martha Hackett felt that the way Seska's death was handled was a mistake.

• Martha Hackett thought Seska's Star Trek: Voyager death was a mistake due to a lack of proper confrontation with Janeway or Chakotay.
• Seska's death was a victim of a failing storyline involving the Kazon in Voyager's plot.
• Seska, a potentially great villain, was underutilized by the show's writers, missing out on her full narrative potential.

Star Trek: Voyager actor Martha Hackett felt that Seska's death at the beginning of season 3 was a mistake. Seska was first introduced in Voyager season 1, episode 3, "Parallax." As a former Maquis and someone who had a romantic history with Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Seska quickly became a recurring member of Star Trek: Voyager 's cast throughout most of season 1, until it was revealed late in the season that she was Cardassian spy within the Maquis and had been stealing and sharing technology with the Kazon since she joined Voyager 's crew.

Seska quickly defected to the Kazon when her deception was discovered, and became a villain for the majority of season 2, working alongside Maje Culluh (Anthony De Longis) to antagonize the USS Voyager. This culminated in the Voyager season 2 finale/season 3 premiere episode, "Basics Parts 1&2" where Seska and the Kazon briefly managed to take over the ship and strand the crew on an alien planet. Luckily, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) was able to retake Voyager and stop the Kazon for good, but this ultimately came at the cost of a few significant lives, including Seska's.

Every Voyager Character Who Has Returned In Star Trek (& How)

Martha hackett thought that seska’s star trek: voyager death was a mistake, hackett felt that seska's death should have been handled differently.

In an interview with Star Trek Monthly issue 34 (now called Star Trek Magazine ), Martha Hackett outlined her issues with the way that Seska was killed, even going so far as to call the decision a mistake. Hackett's bigger issue with her character's death seemed to be the abrupt way it happened, which gave no time for a final confrontation between her and Captain Janeway or even Chakotay , the two characters she maintained the most antagonism with throughout her run. Read Hackett's full quote below.

"I think it was a mistake to kill Seska. I just felt that if they were going to kill her off, they should have done it in a more fantastic way. It would have been interesting if it had been something that came down to being between Seska and Captain Janeway, or Seska and Chakotay. She was their nemesis, and for her to die in a ship blast seemed like an easy way out. There were other opportunities for a face-off where they couldn't help but kill her off. But that's just me talking. I suppose the writers felt like they were at the end of that storyline."

Seska's death in "Basics Part 2" was dramatic in a sense. Although being felled by a series of overloaded consoles wasn't exactly memorable, Seska's final attempt to reach her newborn baby in Janeway's ready room was legitimately heartbreaking to watch. Still, Hackett's assessment that "Basics" essentially wasted Seska's potential is accurate. Excluding the possibility of a showdown between here and Janeway or Chakotay left a large part of her story feeling unfinished. Unfortunately, Seska was the victim of being caught up in an already failing storyline.

Why Voyager Killed Seska Off At The Beginning Of Season 3

Seska was the victim of being dragged into a dying storyline.

Involving Seska in Voyager 's Kazon storyline sealed her fate from the beginning. Unfortunately, the Kazon were nearly universally hated after their introduction in "Caretaker." Voyager never found a way to make them work, and it was inevitable that their storyline would end not with a bang but with a whimper. If the Kazon had been the only victims of the end of season 2, it would arguably have been a victory for the show, but the storyline had the unfortunate side effect of taking Seska with it.

Seska was objectively a much more interesting nemesis than the Kazon, and a tie-back to a familiar set of Star Trek villains with her Cardassian heritage. Having her join the Kazon after betraying Voyager did make narrative sense, but had she been allowed to function on her own, the possibilities for her story might have been more expansive. If Star Trek: Voyager had given Seska more independence, her death might have ended up being closer to the one Martha Hackett envisioned, instead of an aborted ending where she felt under-utilized.

Source: Star Trek Monthly issue 34

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

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The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before. 

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Episode list

Star trek: voyager.

S5.E11 ∙ Latent Image

S5.E12 ∙ Bride Of Chaotica!

S5.E13 ∙ Gravity

S5.E14 ∙ Bliss

S5.E15 ∙ Dark Frontier

S5.E16 ∙ The Disease

S5.E17 ∙ Course: Oblivion

S5.E18 ∙ The Fight

S5.E19 ∙ Think Tank

S5.E20 ∙ Juggernaut

S5.E21 ∙ Someone To Watch Over Me

S5.E22 ∙ 11:59

S5.E23 ∙ Relativity

S5.E24 ∙ Warhead

S5.E25 ∙ Equinox

S6.E1 ∙ Equinox, Part II

S6.E2 ∙ Survival Instinct

S6.E3 ∙ Barge of the Dead

S6.E4 ∙ Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy

S6.E5 ∙ Alice

S6.E6 ∙ Riddles

S6.E7 ∙ Dragon's Teeth

S6.E8 ∙ One Small Step

S6.E9 ∙ The Voyager Conspiracy

S6.E10 ∙ Pathfinder

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