voyager characters ranked

Star Trek: Voyager - Ranking Every Major Character Worst To Best

How do Star Trek Voyager's legendary cast of characters stack up against each other?

Ah, Star Trek: Voyager. Often viewed by fans as where the franchise started to take it's downward turn, there can be many a criticism laid at it's door, but nobody can deny that the show really did attempt to go where no-one has gone before.

With the crew of the USS Voyager and the Maquis vessel Val Jean thrown across the galaxy into the unexplored and tumultuous Delta Quadrant, there was plenty of scope for exploration and new ideas, seen through that classic Starfleet lens.

But who made up the crew of this intrepid vessel? Who struck out into the darkness of space heroically and who was simply along for the ride? Who galvanised the idealism of Starfleet and who dragged their feet? These are the major characters of Star Trek: Voyager, ranked from worst to best. See if you concur or heartily disagree!

Oh Neelix, truly you weren't a very good idea. From being in an overly possessive in a relationship with a questionable age gap, to being a bumbling nuisance whose cheese almost made the ship violently ill (don't ask), there was something that never really worked about Neelix. No matter how loveable Ethan Phillips tried to make him.

While the inclusion of a native of the Delta Quadrant to Voyager's crew seemed like a good idea, there was a literal point in season 3 when the ship reaches the Nikrit Expanse and he points out that his usefulness is at an end. This being said, the fourth season episode 'Mortal Coil' is easily the very best Neelix episode there is.

Still bitter that Star Trek Enterprise got canned and almost old enough to angrily tell the kids to 'Get Off My Lawn!'

Every Season Of Star Trek: Voyager Ranked Worst To Best

When "Star Trek: Voyager" premiered on Monday, January 16, 1995, it didn't just mark the launch of the fourth live-action "Star Trek" series. Its broadcast also marked the launch of UPN, Paramount's stab at establishing a fifth American television network after CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX.

Picking "Voyager" for this important corporate duty was, to borrow a phrase, flawlessly logical. At the time, executives at Paramount saw the 1960s science fiction program and its spin-offs as so important to the studio that they reportedly referred to it as "the franchise." Indeed, with "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in the midst of its third successful season in first-run syndication and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" having made the jump to the big screen with the box office success of "Star Trek Generations," the "Star Trek" franchise was at an all-time high.

Almost 30 years later, interest in "Voyager" remains high, with characters from the series featured in prominent roles on "Star Trek: Lower Decks," "Star Trek: Prodigy" and "Star Trek: Picard." A crowdfunding campaign for a retrospective "Voyager" documentary successfully raised more than $1.3 million from nearly 12,000 backers. And many fans who didn't love the show at the time have developed a new appreciation for "Voyager."

In light of all that renewed interest in "Voyager," let's take a look at the show's seven seasons, which originally ran from 1995 until 2001, and see how they stack up against one another, from worst to best. We'll highlight specific episodes that characterize each season, but won't discuss every one — after all, there were 172 of them!

7. Season 7

They saved the worst for last. Season opener "Unimatrix Zero, Part II" all too neatly resolves the previous season's cliffhanger, but ends with an intriguing premise: a Borg civil war is brewing. The first of many empty promises. "Repression" seems like it will finally confront the fact that a quarter of the Voyager's crew are former Maquis, terrorists in the eyes of the Federation. Instead of examining this long-dormant dynamic, however, the episode veers off into a silly mind-control plot that is easily resolved and utterly without consequences.

Even the season's best installment, "Author, Author," dealing with The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and his pursuit of holographic rights, feels like a warmed-over version of "The Next Generation" episode "The Measure of a Man" and derivative of earlier episodes like "Living Witness" or "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy."

And lastly, there's "Endgame." The out-of-left-field romance between Seven of Nine ( Jeri Ryan ) and Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is awkward and unconvincing. Alice Krige reprises her role as the Borg Queen for the first time since "Star Trek: First Contact," but is utterly wasted. There's a disjointed and obligatory action finale. "Hull breaches on decks six through twelve!" shouts Ensign Kim ( Garrett Wang ), going through the motions. That much of the final episode is spent in an alternate future soon to be erased by the reset button of temporal intervention, rather than truly confronting what it will mean for these characters to finally return home, is a perfect distillation of the show's worst impulses.

6. Season 5

Season 5 is the epitome of conservative and unambitious television. There are good, even great episodes here, but they're trapped in an episodic formula with a perpetual status quo.

Consider "Timeless," the best episode of the season and a series standout. It has a cracking teaser (Voyager frozen in the ice, nearly all of the crew dead) and focuses on a character rarely in the spotlight, Harry Kim. Mostly set 15 years after the show's "present," Kim believes he made a mistake that killed all of his friends and is obsessed with traveling back in time to change history. It's a terrific yarn, but it reveals the limitations of the "Voyager" format. In an alternate future, Kim's personality can change, Chakotay can have a lover, series regulars can die, and characters can return home, but in the Season 5's perpetual present, every character is the same week in and week out.

Similarly, in "Extreme Risk," B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) confronts her trauma after learning that all of the Maquis left behind in the Alpha Quadrant perished. The thing is: B'Elanna learned this 15 episodes ago, but hasn't displayed any such behavior before now. Worse, when Torres resolves the problem du jour, it seems to magically cure her psychological problems. In the end, Torres orders a stack of banana pancakes with maple syrup, smiles, and all is well, her issues never to be mentioned again in any meaningful way. This is emblematic of the season's problems.

5. Season 6

Season 6 has several ongoing storylines that leave its characters a little less frozen in amber than in Season 5. While only one actually works, Season 6 ranks just a bit higher than Season 5 for at least trying to be more ambitious.

Voyager regains contact with the Alpha Quadrant — the season's best storyline — in "Pathfinder" and "Life Line." There's no reset button at the end of either; after "Pathfinder," the Voyager is in regular contact with the Alpha Quadrant for the remainder of the series. A second storyline involves a group of Borg children who are discovered in "Collective," then recur in three other episodes. That all adds up to a season low point, as they further the show's defanging of the Borg as a meaningful adversary. Even more unfortunate is an Irish village on the holodeck. It was abandoned after only two episodes, "Fair Haven" and "Spirit Folk," but not before subjecting audiences to more grating stereotypes than even "The Next Generation" stinker "Up The Long Ladder."

Beyond these three storylines, this is a season once again driven by episodic fare, and although there are some worthwhile installments (including "Survival Instinct" and "Barge of the Dead," both written by Ronald D. Moore), there are quite a few clunkers. Those clunkers, including "Alice," "Virtuoso," "Tsunkatse" (aka "The One with The Rock"), "Ashes to Ashes," and "Live Fast And Prosper," have nothing on "Fury," a series nadir. Marking the return of Kes (Jennifer Lien), it is a total misuse of the character, whose motivations are paper-thin and inconsistent with previous characterization.

4. Season 3

After the cliffhanger resolution in "Basics, Part II," Season 3 ditches Seska (Martha Hackett) and the Kazon. Other early-season elements, including the Vidiians, the Caretaker's race, and the Ocampa (outside of Kes) are also dropped. What's left is a series looking to remake itself as more plot-driven and episodic, and the results were mixed.

"Flashback" has fun revisiting the events of "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," but it's a hollow nostalgia trip. "The Swarm" features a great performance by Robert Picardo as both The Doctor and a hologram of his creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, but it ends with a promise immediately broken. The Doctor's memories are erased. How would this rest affect the rest of the crew, who have formed relationships with the EMH that he can't remember? Doesn't matter, it's forgotten and ignored! "False Profits" asks us to swallow the premise that the Ferengi lost in the Delta Quadrant during "The Next Generation's" "The Price" are somehow along the Voyager's narrow path home. Another miss.

The season picks up steam with "Blood Fever," a Vulcan mating story with a cliffhanger three seasons in the making: the Voyager approaches Borg territory. Followed up in "Unity," which has Chakotay encounter a group of humanoids who separated from the Borg Collective, this is more fully paid off in the season finale, "Scorpion, Part I." The Borg would become a well that "Voyager" dipped into too many times, but in Season 3 they were still a dangerous adversary.

3. Season 1

"Voyager" kicks off with "Caretaker," a solid premiere that introduces a cast of nine regulars and establishes the Delta Quadrant's new aliens, including the Kazon, Ocampa, Talaxians, and the Caretaker's species. It's the only season that treats the show's premise seriously. Janeway's abrupt integration of the Starfleet and Maquis leads to interpersonal conflicts, most notably in "Parallax" and "Learning Curve." The Voyager's need to replenish energy supplies is covered in "The Cloud," which also establishes that the ship's stockpile of photon torpedoes is finite. But, as early as the second episode, we're told the holodeck's energy matrix "isn't compatible with other power systems," which allows the writers to pay lip service to supply shortages without curtailing their holo-addiction.

The series also kneecaps itself by opting to use the Kazon as its primary villain. Deliberately modeled after street gangs in Los Angeles , the Kazon (primarily white actors in brownface) come off as a less interesting and more racist iteration of the Klingons. The Vidiians should have been the focus instead. Featured in two of the season's best episodes, "Phage" and "Faces," the Vidiians are driven by an illness that breaks down their internal organs and can only be staved off by frequent transplants, which some acquire by force.

Although front-loaded with two awful episodes ("Parallax" and "Time and Again"), the first season picks up as it goes along and really finds its swing in the back half. That cements its position on this list.

2. Season 2

Season 2 features some of the show's finest episodes and tries to push what a "Star Trek" series can be. There was even an attempt at more serialized storytelling — involving Seska, the Kazon, and a traitor aboard Voyager — which doesn't stick the landing ("Investigations" in particular is anticlimactic), but at least they tried.

"Death Wish" is the best use of Q (John de Lancie) outside of "The Next Generation." Quinn (Gerrit Graham), a fellow Q, wants to commit suicide in defiance of the Q Continuum and seeks asylum with Janeway in order to do so. Janeway pleads with Quinn to "think hard" before he gives up his life, but with Q's help, he goes through with it. Brad Dourif plays his usual character type as Lon Suder in "Meld," but he's so good at bringing sociopaths to life that it's hard to fault the casting director. His interplay with Tuvok (Tim Russ) provides the Vulcan with some of his best scenes in the entire series, and their relationship pays off when Suder returns in "Basics."

But this is also the season of "Threshold," a nonsense warp 10 story that climaxes with Janeway and Paris as salamanders. Worse is "Tattoo," the pinnacle of patronizingly vague Native American spiritualism that defined Chakotay early on. It's unsurprising that "Voyager" had no American Indian writers on staff and that Jamake Highwater, the show's Native American advisor,  was a complete fraud,  an Italian American posing as a Cherokee.

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1. Season 4

The arrival of Seven of Nine as a new regular in "Scorpion, Part II" is a hypo in the arm for the series. And although Seven's introduction means Kes' departure, the show gives the latter character a fitting send-off in "The Gift."

"Year of Hell" was originally conceived as a season-long arc  but cut down to a two-parter. It truly delivers on "Voyager's" core premise. As the ship is attacked and damaged, it stays damaged. As power becomes rationed, the crew gets dirtier, and everyday survival becomes difficult. Tuvok's blindness is the kind of character turn that should have been made permanent. Alas, even in Season 4, "Voyager" is still an episodic series, and all is undone by a reset button. "Mortal Coil" is a frank tale about death that rejects the magical realism often embraced by televised science fiction. And "Living Witness," a format-defying story that confronts the politically driven revision of history, is even more relevant today than when it first aired. On top of all this is a six-episode arc about the Hirogen, an imposing race of big-game hunters who provide the ship with its first chance in four years to (briefly) communicate with the Alpha Quadrant, finally letting people back home know that they're alive.

If there's one major misstep, it's the finale, "Hope and Fear," which dangles the possibility of returning home before the inevitable bait-and-switch. But at least it has the decency of forgoing a thunderous cliffhanger.

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Every Episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Ranked (with comments)

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VOY Ranking by Titles Only

On one level, Star Trek: Voyager feels forced. It’s like that D&D campaign where people decided to make characters they hadn’t played before, like the Orcish Ranger, the Tiefling Paladin, and the Dwarven Bard. I really didn’t take to it at first.

However, in going back to watch the entire series, it definitely rose in my estimation. For one thing, they did two-parter episodes really well — so much so that I really wonder why they went with a one-part season finale for season four. I mean, “Hope and Fear” was good, and the fifth season opener “Night” was even better, but man, I wanted another “Scorpion” or “Equinox.”

In short, Voyager did what every other Trek series has managed to do: tell some timeless sci-fi stories well. If the tone and quality was uneven — and if it seemed like they went back to particular Trek wells a bit too often rather than delving for their own– that may explain why they don’t get as high in the overall rankings. Indeed, this is a show that had both a pile of dismembered Borg and a charming storybook holodeck program designed to amuse children. I wish there was some kind of way I could drive this home…

(Want to watch or re-watch Voyager before delving into spoiler territory? Check out this viewing guide! )

Note: Everything below may contain spoilers and definitely contains some snark.

Kathryn Janeway Let me come right out and say it: this woman made Admiral for a reason. Faced with seven years of tough decisions while she had to keep a stiff upper lip that would impress Hornblower, she not only got her crew home, she did it bringing new technology and by decisively defeating the Borg. Janeway is awesome (and being an ardent scientist is an added bonus).

Chakotay Look, any XO (executive officer) is going to be a bit tough on occasion. It’s their job. When it comes to serving under XOs, Spock and T’Pol might be Vulcan sticklers and it’s well established Kira needs medical prescriptions to have fun. But Chakotay? Chakotay is that XO who understands. While Matt McCoy’s Devinoni Ral probably has him beat as “most sensitive man in the Star Trek universe,” Chakotay is definitely in the running. I bet he’ll sign your leave slip.

B’Elanna Torres Half-Human, half-Klingon, all engineer: you know the deal.

Tom Paris The would-be oh-so bad boy really comes across as more of a rapscallion. He’s not a favorite, but he sometimes adds a very necessary amount of snark to the show that could sometimes get too serious.

Tuvok Speaking of serious, let’s talk about Tuvok. If he was ever a straighter straight man, he’d be used by comedy statisticians to calibrate their instruments. He probably thinks that “comedy statisticians” are a thing. Tuvok, babe: don’t ever change.

Harry Kim Combining elements of Wesley Crusher’s enthusiasm, Geordi’s romantic mishaps, and O’Brien’s tendency to suffer, poor Ensign Kim probably had one of the worst seven-year journeys of all of them (the sad fate of Lt. Carey notwithstanding). I certainly hope he got a promotion on his return.

Seven of Nine Jeri Ryan plays a perfectly fine continuation of the character commenting on humanity from afar (even though she is human under all the Borg nurturing and nanotech). Alas, the promise of a more ambitious character arc hinted at the beginning of season 4, in which her Borg implants could be removed and she could more fully reassert her humanity, basically stalled (I’m sure the producers felt it wasn’t broken, so why fix it?).

The Doctor The clear “breakout character” of Voyager , the Doctor’s character arc throughout the series was a joy to see, even if we didn’t always dig the opera. The fact that he became more personable and well-rounded while maintaining an acerbic core is a tribute to Robert Picardo.

Neelix I’m not saying every starship couldn’t use a cheerful bar rodent (Q’s term, not mine). I’m saying he’s the Pumpkin Spice of Star Trek characters: good for certain situations, not for every storyline.

Kes What if we had someone who was just incredibly nice? Oh, and she has untapped psychic powers? And let’s not have her do much of anything, okay?

161) “Threshold” Season 2, Episode 15 Meddle not with the mysteries of the universe by going to warp 10, otherwise you too may turn into a giant space salamander, your captain will turn into a giant space salamander, and you shall mate with one another. No, I’m not kidding.

160) “Tuvix” Season 2, Episode 24 Okay, I’m going to give unequivocal props to Tom Wright for his portrayal of Tuvix. He’s a great actor who you can see doing great work in no end of films. Many consider this a great exploration of morality and identity in the grand Trek tradition. Perhaps I’d be more forgiving if it was one of the crazy-go-nuts episodes of the animated series (which got really crazy). Nevertheless, I’ve watched it multiple times and I still can’t take it seriously.

159) “Parturition” Season 2, Episode 7 Do you really need to spend an entire episode with Tom and Neelix bickering? No.

158) “The 37’s” Season 2, Episode 1 The appearance of an odd object in space (a hand, Abraham Lincoln, a truck)  never bodes well. At least some of the other episodes that start off this way have the decency to explore some intriguing ideas. This episode, however, spends undue attention to the heretofore unknown “Blue Alert” which normal people call “landing your damn spacecraft” and then proceeds to have the most interesting action of the story occur off camera (e.g., the visit to the civilization the humans’ built, the unlikely decision by all of the crew to stay on Voyager). What a sour note to start a season on.

157) “Parallax” Season 1, Episode 3 Say, how about we begin our first season with a little bit of the Maquis getting integrated with the Voyager crew and a whole lot of technobabble?

156) “Elogium” Season 2, Episode 4 Kes is feeling frisky. How about we give her and Neelix the room?

155) “Blood Fever” Season 3, Episode 16 Apparently, the only way to advance the Tom/B’Elanna relationship is by making Pon Farr contagious.

154) “Faces” Season 1, Episode 14 “The Enemy Within” without any energy and zero cute space dogs.

153) “Fair Trade” Season 3, Episode 13 Neelix wants to feel important. This episode isn’t.

152) “Cathexis” Season 1, Episode 13 An unremarkable alien possession story.

151) “The Haunting of Deck Twelve” Season 6, Episode 25 Did you really think an episode with this title would be anything more than padding to get to the season finale? Blah.

150) “Alice” Season 6, Episode 5 The possessed spaceship plot does little but reaffirm that Tom and B’Elanna do, in fact, have a relationship.

149) “Deadlock” Season 2, Episode 21 An anemic entry into the alternate timeline story is nothing special. Wait until “Shattered” and ”Endgame.”

148) “Jetrel” Season 1, Episode 15 Some good ideas about prejudice and forgiveness are explored here, but it’s proportionate to how much you like Neelix.

147) “Phage” Season 1, Episode 5 The Vidiians are introduced and, although they’re potentially a fun “villain race,” this episode is mainly unsatisfying.

146) “Sacred Ground” Season 3, Episode 7 Look, the whole matter of Janeway coming to balance her love of science with a bit of faith is okay, but not great. The main reason I’m ever rewatching this episode is for Estelle Harris, Keene Curtis, Harry Groener, and, especially, Parley Baer. And for you young whipper-snappers who don’t know who they are, get off my sacred ground!

145) “Prime Factors” Season 1, Episode 10 Tuvok betrays Janeway’s trust for what turns out to be no good reason. I mean, it’s logical, but we’re all a bit bummed by the end of this.

144) “The Fight” Season 5, Episode 19 Chakotay likes boxing so much he will even box characters that seem to be from a Jack Kirby fever dream.

143) “Vis à Vis” Season 4, Episode 20 Tom Paris is a jerk in a way that Tom Paris is not usually a jerk because of ALIENS.

142) “Lifesigns” Season 2, Episode 19 The Doctor falls in love and B’Elanna learns a bit more compassion, and, um, that’s about it.

141) “Favorite Son” Season 3, Episode 20 Alien femmes have designs on Harry Kim, which means his romantic life remains bad.

140) “Good Shepherd” Season 6, Episode 20 Janeway works on team-building, which somehow turns into a life-or-death situation.

139) “Spirit Folk” Season 6, Episode 17 Due to a glitch, the residents of Fair Haven become more self-aware and — oh, for the love of all that’s Trek, can we give the malfunctioning holodeck episodes a rest?

138) “Twisted” Season 2, Episode 6 The crew pads for time as they explore Voyager-as-Magic-Labyrinth

137) “Human Error” Season 7, Episode 18 An okay character-based episode where Seven of Nine tries to sort out how human she wants to become or can become. It errs a bit more on the frustrating versus existential side, though I suppose if it was in French with B&W cinematography it would be hailed at Cannes.

136) “Fair Haven” Season 6, Episode 11 How can Captain Janeway experience any romance on the long journey home? Why the holodeck, of course! If you’re on board for Voyager , this episode scratches a good character-based itch.

135) “Someone to Watch Over Me” Season 5, Episode 22 It’s Pygmalion with the Doctor and Seven of Nine. Tell you more? It’s nice work if you can get it I suppose, but at the end, the Doctor, pardon my English, goes girl crazy. Okay, I’ll stop with the Gershwin references.

134) “Q2” Season 7, Episode 19 John de Lancie and John de Lancie’s son play Q and Q’s son in this final Q outing. If you liked Q on Voyager, you’ll like this.

133) “Live Fast and Prosper” Season 6, Episode 21 A somewhat charming, but far from amazing episode where the Voyager crew contend with some flim-flamming imposters. If the term “flim-flam” made you queasy, this probably isn’t for you.

132) “Alter Ego” Season 3, Episode 14 Harry falls for the wrong person… again. Tuvok does not prove to be a good wingman.

131) “One” Season 4, Episode 25 Seven of Nine learns that Voyager might just be her new collective. Awww.

130) “Author, Author” Season 7, Episode 20 What rights do writers who are holograms have? The Doctor finds out.

129) “The Cloud” Season 1, Episode 6 Janeway’s coffee-based motivation is never clearer than in this episode. Not bad, but could use a bit more story cream and sugar.

128) “The Chute” Season 3, Episode 3 Tom and Harry are wrongfully incarcerated and have to go through the typical motions of a prison story.

127) “Investigations” Season 2, Episode 20 Neelix as an investigative journalist is somewhat mitigated by his efforts moving the Seska/Kazon storyline along.

126) “Projections” Season 2, Episode 3 A kind of fun take on the Trek “mind-warp” tale where the Doctor questions his holographic existence. Hey, Philip K. Dick’s android said it was okay.

125) “Mortal Coil” Season 4, Episode 12 Neelix gets very existential exploring his ideas of the afterlife. Thoughtful.

124) “Life Line” Season 6, Episode 24 Robert Picardo gets to do a father-son drama playing both parts! Decent.

123) “Pathfinder” Season 6, Episode 10 A little Barclay goes a long way and this episode gives you a lot of Barclay. Gird your holodeck loins!

122) “Learning Curve” Season 1, Episode 16 The Maquis learn that “discipline” and “procedure” aren’t just things Starfleet created to annoy them and Tuvok learns to improvise. A little.

121) “Remember” Season 3, Episode 6 B’Elanna goes on a magical mystery tour… in her mind. Okay, it’s more mystery than magical, but it’ll do.

120) “Darkling” Season 3, Episode 18 What if the Doctor was EVIL?

119) “Tattoo” Season 2, Episode 9 Thrill to the… okay, Marvel to the… Fine. Observe Chakotay’s backstory adventures in Flashback-Land.

118) “Non Sequitur” Season 2, Episode 5 Harry gets caught in an alternate timestream allowing him to suffer general AND romantic angst.

117) “Real Life” Season 3, Episode 22 B’Elanna is something of a jerk, the Doctor gets the O’Brien treatment, and your room may get a bit dusty at the end of this one.

116) “Waking Moments” Season 4, Episode 13 If you like Chakotay and lucid dreaming, you’re going to love this episode.

115) “Resistance” Season 2, Episode 12 A rather touching tale absolutely aided by Joel Grey.

114) “Child’s Play” Season 6, Episode 19 Icheb’s parents are not nice. I mean, you can understand their motivations in a ends-justifies-the-means kind of Greek mythology not-nice way, but they’re still not nice.

113) “Virtuoso” Season 6, Episode 13 The Doctor learns a great deal about fame and fads.

112) “Drive” Season 7, Episode 3 A reasonably involving story where a multi-species spacecraft race is used to illustrate B’Elanna and Tom’s relationship. They also make time for Harry to be unlucky in love again.

111) “Ex Post Facto” Season 1, Episode 8 It’s TNG’s “A Matter of Perspective” with a little smattering of DS9’s “Hard Time” with Tom as the Riker/O’Brien stand-in.

110) “Heroes and Demons” Season 1, Episode 12 A surprisingly enjoyable holodeck outing where the Doctor contends with a Beowulf-type tale. I’m still bummed he didn’t stick with the name “Schweitzer.”

109) “Initiations” Season 2, Episode 2 You get both Nog and the Vasquez Rocks in this story of a young Kazon training to become a proper dudebro Kazon.

108) “Macrocosm” Season 3, Episode 12 Janeway does her best Linda Hamilton impersonation as she takes on a macro-virus. If you’re on board for a wacky monster-of-the-week episode, it’s pretty fun.

107) “Repression” Season 7, Episode 4 Tuvok is the Manchurian Vulcan in a reasonably effective mystery-thriller.

106) “Collective” Season 6, Episode 16 Borg children are precocious. And by “precocious,” I mean “just as deadly as regular Borg if they can get away with it.”

105) “Resolutions” Season 2, Episode 25 Some attempts at serial storytelling come into play here what with callbacks to previous encounters with the Vidiians (aka, your make-up class final exam) as well as exploring the relationship between Chakotay and Janeway. However, there’s nothing exceptional.

104) “Coda” Season 3, Episode 15 Janeway experiences a bit of Groundhog Day. There’s a lot of temporary death in this episode, which, depending on how you feel about the Voyager characters, is either a plus or a minus.

103) “The Gift” Season 4, Episode 2 Let’s officially make the ensemble change from Kes to Seven of Nine and give Kes a good sendoff, okay?

102) “Extreme Risk” Season 5, Episode 3 A notable story in introducing us to the Delta Flyer as well as showing a character work through clinical depression. Because let’s face it, life in a Star Trek series is pretty taxing for one’s mental health.

101) “Emanations” Season 1, Episode 9 An enjoyably philosophical episode comfortably in the Trek wheelhouse looking at beliefs around the afterlife. Plus, Harry Kim is tormented physically and mentally, so you get to check both those boxes off your Voyager bingo card.

100) “Nothing Human” Season 5, Episode 8 Following in the footsteps of TNG’s “Ethics,” the Doctor gets to question whether he can benefit from the research of a Cardassian Dr. Mengele type. Maybe not gold medal, but still Olympic-level wrestling with morals.

99) “Before and After” Season 3, Episode 21 An entertaining enough story where Kes becomes “unstuck in time,” serving as a prelude to the following season’s excellent “Year of Hell.”

98) “The Disease” Season 5, Episode 17 Yes, Harry has another failed romance which, actually, almost kills him. In the meantime however, he gets his groove on and we get to see some okay drama about a generation ship.

97) “Imperfection” Season 7, Episode 2 Character building between Icheb and Seven of Nine which isn’t bad, but rather dependent on you being more than a casual viewer.

96) “The Swarm” Season 3, Episode 4 Irwin Allen is nowhere to be found in this installment which is titularly about xenophobic aliens and their flocks of ships, but really is more about what to do with the Doctor who has outgrown his holographic specs.

95) “Repentance” Season 7, Episode 13 A solid scenario where Federation ideals such as non-interference and no capital punishment come in conflict with a race that plans to execute some of their criminals. Good character moments for several of the crew.

94) “Rise” Season 3, Episode 19 If you like the idea of space elevators and can abide by Neelix, you’re going to be perfectly happy with this one.

93) “Riddles” Season 6, Episode 6 Neelix finally gets to be besties with Tuvok, but Voyager still needs a good tactical officer, so his possible new career path as a jazz-loving baker is cut short.

92) “Homestead” Season 7, Episode 23 The producers wisely realize that Delta Quadrant native Neelix probably won’t like being the lone Talaxian in the Federation and so they send him off in decent style, where he gets to rally a colony of his people against miners in a clear Homesteaders/ranchers homage. Bonus points for the obvious, but enjoyable bit of closure with Tuvok.

91) “Nightingale” Season 7, Episode 8 Okay, so maybe it’s okay for Harry Kim to remain an ensign for a while.

90) “Workforce” (Parts I & II) Season 7, Episodes 16 & 17 A decent, but not standout two-parter that gives some good character moments, especially, for Janeway and the Doctor — yet the story doesn’t match some of Voyager’s more epic two-parters.

89) “The Voyager Conspiracy” Season 6, Episode 9 Seven of Nine becomes a poster child for the every instructor who has ever wanted to illustrate how data is different from information which is different from knowledge which is different from wisdom.

88) “Once Upon a Time” Season 5, Episode 5 A charming tale about Neelix living up to his role as Voyager ‘s morale officer with a fun little world-building reveal at the end featuring Janeway, making you speculate whether there are holodeck versions of Goodnight Moon and Dr. Seuss books.

87) “Warlord” Season 3, Episode 10 Jennifer Lien has a field day playing a would-be military dictator who can’t quite escape Kes’ irrepressible niceness.

86) “Scientific Method” Season 4, Episode 7 Pitiless aliens experiment on the crew once again making a critical mistake pretty much all the villains make on Voyager : when you go against Janeway, you have to go all-in.

85) “Tsunkatse” Season 6, Episode 15 A decent but not particularly surprising diversion of an episode involving gladiatorial combat. You could say this episode puts Seven of Nine between The Rock and a hard place. I won’t say it, but you might.

84) “Think Tank” Season 5, Episode 20 Nefarious aliens will get what they want, and they want Seven of Nine! But have you noticed people who cross Janeway tend to wind up broken or dead?

83) “The Q and the Grey” Season 3, Episode 11 The repercussions of “Death Wish” come to pass in an entertaining enough outing where John de Lancie’s self-important Q is joined by Suzie Plakson as his significant Q other. Bonus meta points for Miss Q flattering B’Elanna about Klingons.

82) “Caretaker” Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2 A somewhat perfunctory, but decent enough series premiere gives us a taste of what to look forward to –and what we might find annoying– about the latest Star Trek series. That they revisit Janeway’s fateful decision to strand themselves in the Delta quadrant because of Federation ideals later in the series is good. It’s also nice that Voyager represents some technical sophistication after endless episodes of the Enterprise (in multiple series) being completely outclassed (and it also gives a good covetous motivation for the new villains, the Kazon).

81) “Alliances” Season 2, Episode 14 In a great move for the overall Kazon narrative, Janeway and the crew find the limits of selling the Kazon on their Federation principles. Cultures used to betrayals and power games tend not to change overnight.

80) “Day of Honor” Season 4, Episode 3 A good entry in both B’Elanna’s ongoing exploration of her Klingon heritage and her relationship with Tom Paris.

79) “Drone” Season 5, Episode 2 Mix a transporter mishap with the Borg and 29th century technology and you have yourselves a spicy meatball of an episode!

78) “Retrospect” Season 4, Episode 17 A tale of assault, abuse, doubt, and trust that offers enough great moments for Seven, Janeway, and the Doctor to make one feel properly uncomfortable.

77) “Infinite Regress” Season 5, Episode 7 Jeri Ryan gets to act her socks off and Naomi Wildman continues her quest to become the “captain’s assistant.” Fun all around.

76) “Latent Image” Season 5, Episode 11 The Doctor gets to experience conflict as never before in a thought-provoking story about ethics and choice.

75) “Lineage” Season 7, Episode 12 As with many couples suddenly facing a family addition, Tom and B’Elanna are forced to consider their heritage. B’Elanna’s struggles with her familial baggage are very real and a welcome presence in a Star Trek story.

74) “Friendship One” Season 7, Episode 21 Do you remember Lieutenant Carey? He’s been with us since season one. Prepare to be depressed.

73) “Prophecy” Season 7, Episode 14 A good story filled with enough action that will in no way alleviate B’Elanna’s anxiety about having a baby as her unborn child may be the Kuvah’magh… or the Kwisatz Haderach… or both! Also, for better or worse, we discover more about Neelix’s tastes in women.

72) “Natural Law” Season 7, Episode 22 A perfectly enjoyable Trek outing about cultural progress and survival focusing on Chakotay and Seven of Nine.

71) “Time and Again” Season 1, Episode 4 Writer David Kemper would go on to explore more time travel and causality themes in Farscape , but despite some technobabble, this is an entertaining entry. Bonus points for showing how Tom Paris can do some math in his head.

70) “Thirty Days” Season 5, Episode 9 A good framing device often adds to the richness of any story as well as drawing you in. Here, we want to know what happened that led to Tom’s demotion and we get some good wrestling with the Prime Directive as well.

69) “Survival Instinct” Season 6, Episode 2 Seven of Nine being a first-class tool back when she was part of the collective has some repercussions. Also, Vaughan Armstrong needs to play another Star Trek race.

68) “Inside Man” Season 7, Episode 6 While not as intricate a plot as the film “Inside Man,” this Dwight Schultz-packed story of deceit is reasonably satisfying.

67) “The Omega Directive” Season 4, Episode 21 The “omega particles” are about as ridiculous science as “red matter,” but it does make for some entertaining space opera amid the technobabble.

66) “Eye of the Needle” Season 1, Episode 7 A nice installment for season one, where the crew is still focused on getting out of the whole premise of being in the Delta Quadrant in the first place. Space-time twists can be the worst twists, can’t they?

65) “Juggernaut” Season 5, Episode 21 The character storyline of B’Elanna learning to deal with her rage and the plot storyline of monster aboard the freighter don’t quite mesh, but the resulting episode works well enough.

64) “Cold Fire” Season 2, Episode 10 Kes learns more about her mutant -er- psychic powers from Gary Graham, who’s clearly honing his multilayered antagonist character in advance of playing Soval on “Enterprise.” Plus, we get followup on the Caretaker of sorts.

63) “Renaissance Man” Season 7, Episode 24 We get one last relatively light adventure before the grim series finale, and focusing on the breakout character that is the Doctor is a good way to do it. If “The Blue Danube” isn’t stuck in your head by the end of this episode, you may have a natural resistance to earworms.

62) “Random Thoughts” Season 4, Episode 10 The premise of a race of telepaths who have a secret longing for unsavory thoughts makes this a fun mystery with allegorical overtones.

61) “Fury” Season 6, Episode 23 Kes is back for character-based closure –and a few explosions– and it works out pretty well.

60) “False Profits” Season 3, Episode 5 In a fun follow-up to TNG’s “The Price,” we find the Ferengi lost in the Delta Quadrant are behaving like, well, Ferengi.

59) “Dragon’s Teeth” Season 6, Episode 7 Voyager shows off its visual effects budget as we are introduced to the Vaadwaur, an ancient race not unlike the Iconians, except they used subspace tunnels versus portals as their chosen tool of conquest. Despite their antagonistic potential, we sadly never see them again in the series.

58) “Barge of the Dead” Season 6, Episode 3 Both Klingon world-building and B’Elanna Torres character-building are on display as we get a look at Klingon hell (well, mainly the metaphorical road to hell and how it’s paved).

57) “Persistence of Vision” Season 2, Episode 8 Not content to have just one crew member experience a “mind warp” episode, the writers cleverly figure out how to get just about the whole crew involved. The villain, sadly, never appears again.

56) “Ashes to Ashes” Season 6, Episode 18 The idea of an alien species reproducing by re-purposing old humanoid corpses is almost as interesting as the lengths Voyager ‘s writers will go to in order to cause Harry Kim romantic heartache.

55) “Critical Care” Season 7, Episode 5 A very blatant allegorical look at healthcare which is just as topical –if not more so– that it was when it aired about 20 years ago.

54) “Counterpoint” Season 5, Episode 10 A solid, enjoyable episode mixing elements of a heist or “long con” caper with a noble Starfleet goal of protecting people who are too different for an uptight race. Guest star Mark Harelik channels William Campbell’s Original Series performances as ingratiating villains, and Janeway gets to show her own form of three-dimentional thinking.

53) “Maneuvers” Season 2, Episode 11 Machinations with the Kazon –aided directly by Seska being the schemer she is and indirectly by Chakotay being a bit of an idiot– make this a decent entry in the overarching Kazon storyline.

52) “Nemesis” Season 4, Episode 4 Chakotay gets brainwashed to fight in someone else’s war in a story with allegorical overtones of far too many conflicts around the globe.

51) “State of Flux” Season 1, Episode 11 Seska has multiple secrets as the Kazon storyline starts taking off.

50) “The Raven” Season 4, Episode 6 We get some quality backstory on Seven of Nine just as we learn she didn’t exactly have a quality childhood.

49) “Hope and Fear” Season 4, Episode 26 A solid episode aided by a great performance by Ray Wise and a shipload of mystery. The one quibble is that, as a season finale, it lacks the heft of some of the two-parters Voyager proves to do so well.

48) “Flashback” Season 3, Episode 2 Voyager took a different, more serious take for their 30-year anniversary assignment and it’s both entertaining and ingenious.

47) “Gravity” Season 5, Episode 13 Lori Petty learns that Vulcans are hard to love as Trek writers find yet another way to mess with space and time, which works quite well both thematically and plot-wise.

46) “Displaced” Season 3, Episode 24 A surprisingly engaging mystery where the Voyager crew is cautious but helpful… and gets overwhelmed by a bunch of medieval hat fanatics. Luckily those marauding milliners didn’t count on Starfleet stubbornness and ingenuity. Bonus points for the universal translator being useless in the face of alien computer displays.

45) “Prototype” Season 2, Episode 13 Frequent Trek guest star Rick Worthy is unrecognizable under his robot costume, but the tale of artificial intelligence gone awry, plus the ethical questions Torres and the rest of the Voyager crew face are familiar and nicely done.

44) “Message in a Bottle” Season 4, Episode 14 Voyager ‘s sending out an S.O.S. The Doctor as an S.O.S. But there’s Romulans in the bottle. And by bottle, I mean pretty darn cool experimental starship located in the Alpha Quadrant.

43) “Warhead” Season 5, Episode 25 In something of a follow-up to “Dreadnought,” the crew contends with an AI that, in this case, takes over the Doctor. Entertaining variations on the theme.

42) “In the Flesh” Season 5, Episode 4 You could speculate that this was simply a cost-effective way to get another story about Species 8472, but I’m not entirely convinced it wasn’t just a ploy to get Ray Walston back to Star Trek. Nevertheless, the tale has satisfying Trekkish overtones of cold war detente.

41) “Hunters” Season 4, Episode 15 The first episode with the Hirogen is pretty solid as the newly discovered race stands between Voyager and better contact with the Alpha quadrant. Somehow, we also find time for Harry Kim’s angst. Focus on the Hirogen.

40) “Prey” Season 4, Episode 16 An immediate improvement over “Hunters” thanks to the appearance of Species 8472 and Tony Todd as an Alpha Hirogen. Plus, we get some mileage out of Seven of Nine’s adjustments to Voyager.

39) “Flesh and Blood” Season 7, Episodes 9 & 10 An occasionally ungainly two-parter that explores the aftermath of “The Killing Game” and the notion of sentient holograms. Iden’s descent into crazed would-be savior is uneven, but the moral and ethical questions raised throughout are classic Trek.

38) “Future’s End” (Parts I & II) Season 3, Episodes 8 & 9 Look, I know that Ed Begley, Jr. may not be anyone’s ideas of a villainous industrialist nor is Sarah Silverman the first person you picture when I say “plucky astronomer,” but the whole two-parter works a lot better than you’d expect. Plus, the Doctor gets a mobile emitter out of it.

37) “The Thaw” Season 2, Episode 23 Of course Micheal McKean can play a freaky clown well. His villainy creeps up into the episode quite effectively, but Janeway’s got a schedule to keep, so…

36) “Distant Origin” Season 3, Episode 23 A bold and fun story about dogma and scientific discovery with Voyager and her crew being a catalyst for questions. Though I don’t mind a Chakotay-focused episode, demerits for having Janeway and several of the others inelegantly disappear from the narrative near the end.

35) “Basics” (Parts I & II) Season 2, & Season 3, Episodes 26 & 1 The on-again, off-again Kazon storyline (with Seska seasoning) finally pays off with some inventiveness in both halves, though peaceful it’s not. Bonus points for the Harryhausen-esque monster.

34) “Dark Frontier” Season 5, Episodes 15 & 16 Much ballyhooed when it originally aired as a feature-length episode, it remains an entertaining exploration of Seven of Nine’s backstory along with some Voyager vs. Borg action that becomes a mainstay in the latter half of the series.

33) “The Killing Game” Season 4, Episodes 18 & 19 A disturbing amount of alien races in Star Trek seem to be at home in Nazi uniforms, but the Hirogen work the schtick pretty well. Plus, we get some fun moments of holodeck-imitating-life as the crew finds ways to resist in character. Best of all, the ending isn’t an unabashed win for the Voyager crew, leading us later to “Flesh and Blood.”

32) “Concerning Flight” Season 4, Episode 11 John Rhys-Davies’ outsize performance as Leonardo da Vinci makes this more than just an average get-back- Voyager ‘s-tech caper.

31) “11:59” Season 5, Episode 23 A fun exploration of ancestry, using the contemporary coming of the millennium to good effect as Janeway learns the truth and myth around some of her family lore.

30) “Memorial” Season 6, Episode 14 An unsettling episode that you’ll be forgiven for thinking wandered in from the DS9 writers’ room. Regardless, it raises some great Trekkish questions about how history is remembered.

29) “Innocence” Season 2, Episode 22 Tuvok enters and then exits, playing his part in this strange eventful history: one whose twist is second childhood and mere oblivion.

28) “Shattered” Season 7, Episode 11 Voyager does an inventive and entertaining take on the “alternative timeline” tale that makes full use of the seven years’ worth of storylines.

27) “Bride of Chaotica!” Season 5, Episode 12 Look, if you can’t enjoy this goofy homage to old Flash Gordon serials and somewhat meta-commentary on Voyager itself, you’re going to miss out on some wonderful character moments and a chock full of delight.

26) “Unforgettable” Season 4, Episode 22 Some significant suspension of disbelief is needed to accept that anyone could forget Virginia Madsen, but the tale of reclusive, biologically unmemorable aliens is a solid tragic romance tale. Bonus points for pen and paper being the solution to all the technobabble.

25) “Demon” Season 4, Episode 24 Because Voyager is ultimately not a horror movie, we end up with a very Trek end to discovering a strange new world and new life, but what a wonderfully creepy ride through a great sci-fi scenario in the meantime!

24) “Bliss” Season 5, Episode 14 Mix a TNG “mindwarp” story with TOS’s “The Immunity Syndrome” and add in a bravura performance by W. Morgan Sheppard, and you have a humdinger of an episode, you betcha!

23) “Dreadnought” Season 2, Episode 17 B’Elanna’s past sins and Voyager ‘s current problems with the Kazon are all wrapped into an action-packed race to disarm a doomsday weapon.

22) “Muse” Season 6, Episode 22 A wonderful story that explores the power of storytelling within its own plot of an ancient Greek type civilization and an artist struggling to please his patron. Kudos for having B’Elanna Torres as the irascible muse and bonus points to Harry Kim for clearly remembering all his Starfleet survival training.

21) “Death Wish” Season 2, Episode 18 A spirited, philosophical Voyager entry that takes us to the dawn of time back to the 24th century, wrestling with notions of mortality and purpose in an insouciant manner that only the Q can.

20) “Unimatrix Zero” (Parts I & II) Season 6, & Season 7, Episodes 26 & 1 What’s this? More Seven of Nine backstory, you say? She’s part of what could become a Borg Liberation Front, you say? We’re going to have a rousing two-parter with a cliffhanger that makes us wonder how our heroes will recover? Count us in.

19) “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” Season 6, Episode 4 The Doctor contains multitudes and within those multitudes can be found comedy gold — as we see in this Walter Mitty-esque sci-fi outing.

18) “Course: Oblivion” Season 5, Episode 18 A surprise follow-up to “Demon” that surpasses its predecessor and ends on an incredibly downbeat ending — while still holding true to Starfleet boldly going and the desires (and constraints) of the silver blood aliens. Well done.

17) “Night” Season 5, Episode 1 A season opener packed with moral quandary as a Janeway is presented with deal with the Devil that promises to banish her own demons.

16) “Unity” Season 3, Episode 17 An intriguing take on the needs of the many versus the needs of the one using the Borg… or a variant thereof as a stand-in. It hints at the events of “Scorpion” and the nuanced Borg stories to come.

15) “Meld” Season 2, Episode 16 The episode proves to be an almost theatrical exploration of ideas –and no easy answers– right in Trek’s wheelhouse absolutely elevated by Brad Dourif’s portrayal of the remorseless Lon Suder and matched by Tim Russ’ now placable Tuvok. Dark humor points are grudgingly awarded for naming the victim “Darwin.”

14) “The Void” Season 7, Episode 15 A quintessential piece of Star Trek as the Voyager crew is faced with ignoring their Federation ideals in order to escape the titular void, but finds a solution through those selfsame ideals. The demerits for the convenience of the alien stowaways are offset by the bonus points for them representing lifeforms that others do not value.

13) “Blink of an Eye” Season 6, Episode 12 Take a seat, armchair anthropologists, and enjoy the epic of a species’ evolution with Voyager as its constant star.

11) “Revulsion” Season 4, Episode 5 A spectacularly creepy episode of AI gone wrong due in no small part to Leland Orser’s effective performance. Plus, you get at little Harry Kim romantic angst to lighten things up.

10) “Relativity” Season 5, Episode 24 A clever and engaging time travel episode where Seven of Nine gets to shine, Janeway gets to show off more of her backstory, and Braxton gets to be more than Captain Ahab vis-à-vis Voyager .

9) “One Small Step” Season 6, Episode 8 A homage to the explorers that have inspired Trek… just as Trek has inspired people to become scientists and explorers. Seven of Nine finds your observation that the room is getting dusty entirely valid.

8) “Worst Case Scenario” Season 3, Episode 25 Yet another holodeck episode… only done right. Starting as a holodeck Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, mayhem quickly ensues thanks to the impossible appearance of Seska. Bonus points for the reprogrammed Doctor and the general meta commentary on writing.

7) “Body and Soul” Season 7, Episode 7 Sci-fi makes for a great excuse for a body-swapping farce and both Ryan and Picardo deliver. Plus, when they’re in their respective bodies, we get wonderful banter erupting between Seven and the Doctor with Harry Kim as the bewildered Ralph Bellamy straight man (come on, the character was born for this!). Megan Gallagher and Fritz Sperberg round out a great cast — and Tom Paris proves to not be a total schmuck (I think that’s a Vulcan term).

6) “Living Witness” Season 4, Episode 23 An absolute standout sci-fi tale playing with perception and how history is written that starts with Voyager and her crew, but goes far beyond it.

5) “Endgame” Season 7, Episodes 25 & 26 Give credit where credit is due: Janeway leads her crew home and wins a decisive victory over the Borg. Oh, and she picks up some fancy futuristic technology along the way. For a conclusion that ends with our crew winning, it’s surprisingly grim — even DS9’s conclusion, with its elements of genocide and a Pyrrhic victory, had a charming curtain call for the benefit of the viewers. Still, it’s a solid entry following in the footsteps of “All Good Things…”

4) “Timeless” Season 5, Episode 6 A well-told time travel story filled with heroism, regret, and a nice cameo by director LeVar Burton.

3) “Equinox” (Parts I & II) Season 5, & Season 6, Episodes 26 & 1 Obsession, duty, and the importance of choices dominate this taut two-parter with some truly freaky monsters, some truly monstrous acts, a great performance by John Savage, and a guarantee you’ll never look at the Doctor the same way again.

2) “Scorpion” (Parts I & II) Season 3, & Season 4, Episodes 26 & 1 Starting with what is arguably one of the best ever Trek cold opens (assuming viewers know of the Borg), we get an action-packed, Borg-infested, issue-wrestling two-parter that takes things to eleven and gives us Seven of Nine.

1) “Year of Hell” (Parts I & II) Season 4, Episodes 8 & 9 Take a villain with an obsessive quest, played wonderfully by Kurtwood Smith, and place it in a story that allows you to do whatever you want (thanks to a magic sci-fi reset button) and you have Voyager ‘s best episode bar none. Every member of the crew gets some great moments here and the ending lands expertly.

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The 15 greatest Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

Credit: CBS

Star Trek: Voyager was a series with a great premise and stories that somewhat frequently — but not always — lived up to it.

25 years ago today, Voyager premiered with the two-hour pilot "Caretaker" and forever changed the franchise with its introduction to the first female Captain, Kathyrn Janeway (a perfect Kate Mulgrew). Resilient, Janeway was unyielding in her efforts to get her untested crew home after they were zapped to the uncharted Delta Quadrant, 75 years away from Earth. Starfleet personnel mixing with former officers/current members of a resistance group known as the Maquis promised great, "only-on- Star-Trek " conflict — coupled with a ship stranded from the usual resources and aid afforded Kirk and Picard’s Enterprises.

Sadly, Voyager never fully embraced the full potential of that core conceit, leading Voyager to spend a big chunk of its seven-season run feeling like " Star Trek: The Next Generation lite." The ship was usually always fixed the next week if the previous one had it under attack or badly damaged. And the crew seemingly didn't mind too much about taking detours to explore and map this unknown area of space instead of doing what normal humans would — less sightseeing, more getting this 75-year journey underway as soon as possible and without distraction.

Despite Voyager 's uneven feel, when the show hit its stride, it produced some of the most entertaining hours the genre has ever seen. To celebrate Voyager 's 25th anniversary, here are the 15 best episodes.

15 . “Caretaker” (Season 1)

Voyager 's feature-length series premiere is one of the strongest pilots ever for a Trek show. Starting off at Deep Space Nine before stranding Captain Janeway and her motley crew of Maquis deserters in the Delta Quadrant, "Caretaker" has a riveting first half, peppered with exceptional character interplay. Then the pacing and tension slow in the second hour where we spend way too much time with an alien race that seems to have modeled itself after the citizens of Mayberry and The Waltons.

14 . "Eye of the Needle" (Season 1)

"Eye of the Needle" has a bittersweet twist that ranks up there with some of the best Twilight Zone endings. With the help of an anomaly via a wormhole, Voyager is able to communicate with a ship in the Alpha Quadrant. The catch? It's a Romulan vessel and not one in the same time as our lost heroes.

13 . "Dreadnaught" (Season 2)

If Speed and Runaway Train had a kid, it would be "Dreadnaught."

This compelling and tense hour of Voyager centers on engineer — the Klingon-Human Torres — struggling to reprogram a deadly missile designed by her enemy, the Cardassians, before it destroys a planet. Most of the hour is just Torres in a room, talking to a computer, and it is some of the most harrowing scenes in all of Trek history.

12 . "Mortal Coil" (Season 4)

Neelix, as a character, struggled to find solid footing among the ensemble jockeying for meaty storylines. But "Mortal Coil" remedies that with a dark, brooding storyline that takes on the afterlife and Neelix's near-death experience with it. After realizing the afterlife his culture believes in isn't really there, our favorite Talaxian suffers a heartbreaking existential crisis.

11 . "Tinker, Tailor, Doctor, Spy" (Season 6)

Veteran Star Trek: The Next Generation writer Joe Menosky — with a story from cartoonist Bill Vallely — crafted one of The Doctor's funniest outings, as the sentient hologram struggles with the hilarious consequences of giving himself the ability to daydream. The good doctor's fantasies catch the attention of an alien race's surveillance, but they think they are real — which brings about some trouble for the crew. How the Doctor saves the day is one of the best scenes Voyager has ever done.

10 . "Blink of an Eye" (Season 6) / "Relativity" (Season 5)

"Blink of an Eye" has a perfect Trek premise — Voyager orbits a planet where time passes differently for its inhabitants that for the ship's crew, so Janeway is able to watch this society evolve in, well, a blink of an eye.

This first contact scenario allows the show to invest the "explore strange new worlds" mandate with more emotion and nuance than Voyager usually affords its stories, giving fans a surprisingly poignant episode that still holds up to this day.

And despite time travel being a popular narrative trope in Star Trek , the show never failed to find new ways to explore and subvert it. "Relativity" is a fun, ticking-clock caper that sends former Borg drone Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) back in time to prevent the destruction of Voyager. Co-written by Discovery co-creator Bryan Fuller, this exciting episode keeps you at the edge of your couch cushion with an impressive act four twist.

09 . "The Equinox, Parts I & II" (Seasons 5 & 6)

In a plot worthy of a Star Trek movie, Janeway and her crew encounter another starship stuck in the Delta Quadrant, The Equinox. Commanded by a battle-hardened, Ahab-like figure, Captain Ransom (John Savage), The Equinox plots to hijack Voyager and strand her crew aboard their dying ship — in order to escape a race of subspace aliens that have been plaguing them.

Part of the fun of this excellent two-parter is never really knowing for most of its run time where the plot is going to go — for a moment, we actually think Janeway will lose this one.

08 . "Deadlock" (Season 2)

"Deadlock" is one of the few bright spots from Voyager 's bumpy early days. While the episode could take place on any of Trek 's ship-based shows, the stakes feel higher and for Janeway and her crew as they must work with those belonging to an alternate version of Voyager to get out of trouble.

When our Voyager — Voyager Prime — becomes fatally disabled, Janeway volunteers to sacrifice her ship so the other Voyager can go on. How Janeway handles the idea of this sacrifice results in the Ensign Harry Kim (Garret Wang) the show started with being replaced by his doppelganger.

07 . "Scorpion, Parts I & II" (Seasons 3 & 4)

"Scorpion" is action-packed Season 3 finale/Season 4 premiere that kicks off with a hell of a hook for a teaser: A small fleet of Borg cubes easily destroyed by an offscreen threat.

That threat is revealed to be Species 8472, a long-standing rival of the Borg in this quadrant of space — the only thing the Borg are afraid of. Enter Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a Borg attache who becomes a remember of Janeway's crew as Voyager teams up with the enemy of their enemy to both defeat the Borg and shave some time off their trip home.

"Scorpion" represents a turning point for the series and for the franchise, with the introduction of the instantly-iconic Seven — another member of Trek’s deep bench of alien characters struggling to learn what it takes to be human. Or, in Seven's case, rediscover her humanity.

06 . "Counterpoint" (Season 5)

"Counterpoint" (Kate Mulgrew's favorite episode) is arguably Voyager 's most underrated episode, with a storyline whose elevator pitch could be "The Diary of Anne Frank" in space.

Voyager is secretly providing safe harbor to a group of telepaths being hunted by an alien race that hates them. (So, basically, Space Nazis). When the latter's charming leader defects to Voyager, and sparks a relationship with Janeway, it's instantly fraught with suspicion that boils over into bittersweet betrayal. The hour is an acting showcase for Mulgrew, as she pushes Janeway to uneasy places with the hard choices only this captain can make — and learn to live with.

05 . "Latent Image" (Season 5)

The most successful medical storylines on Star Trek are those that tap into moral/ethical dilemmas with a tech twist. In "Latent Image," the Doctor finds himself caught in the middle of both as he and Seven work to uncover who appears to have tampered with his memory — and why.

What starts as a whodunit becomes a powerful drama dealing with consent and the rights afforded all lifeforms — including artificial ones like the Doctor — when he discovers that Janeway altered his program against his will. Why? Because the doctor was confronted with a hard choice that broke him: With two patients' lives on the line, and only enough time to save one of them, the Doctor chose to save his friend.

04 . "Hope and Fear" (Season 4)

A rare non-two parter season finale, "Hope and Fear" is a landmark episode in the Janeway-Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) dynamic that puts the two at odds — only to come together in the end — in ways that echo Kirk and Spock.

When a sketchy alien (Ray Wise) shows up with the promise of getting Voyager home with the help of an all-too-convenient new starship, everyone fantasizes about the pros and cons of their long journey coming to an end. But the alien's plan is revealed to be a long con — he is a Borg attack survivor seeking revenge on Voyager, specifically Seven.

After he suffers a fitting but tragic end, "Hope and Fear" wraps up with a crew overcoming the letdown of still being stuck lightyears from home by focusing on a renewed purpose to keep going.

03 . "Message In a Bottle" (Season 4)

This fast-paced mix of action and comedy is a solid two-hander between Voyager’s EMH and a more advanced version (Andy Dick) aboard a sophisticated new starship that’s been hijacked (naturally) by Romulans. The two unlikely heroes are Voyager's only hope as they must use the ship's unique ability to separate into three different sections to defeat the bad guys.

Star Trek is hit and miss when it comes to comedy, but "Message In a Bottle" finds a near-perfect balance between laughs and sci-fi action while providing further proof that actor Robert Picardo is the series' MVP.

02 . "Timeless" (Season 5)

Voyager 's 100th episode is one of the greatest ever produced on any Star Trek series. "Timeless" opens in a future where Voyager crashed on an ice planet while on its way home, and centers on Ensign Harry Kim's efforts to save his crew in a very "timey wimey" fashion. (Captain Geordi La Forge, played by LeVar Burton — who directed the episode — stands in the good Ensign’s way).

With "Timeless," showrunner and writer Brannon Braga set out to do for Voyager what "The City on the Edge of Forever" did for the classic Original Series . A high bar this entertaining, high-concept hour effortlessly reaches.

01 . "Year of Hell," Parts I & II (Season 4)

Voyager achieved feature film-level quality with this epic two-parter.

Janeway and crew struggle to defeat time-manipulating genocidal villain (a perfect Kurtwood Smith) as he risks breaking the laws of physics — and chipping away our heroes' starship with battle damage — all so he can get back to his lost wife. To right that wrong, and alter the timeline by doing so, he and his time ship destroy an entire civilization. With some of the best space battles in the franchise's history, coupled with the moral and ethical dramas only Star Trek can do, "Year of Hell" is an all-timer.

• Star Trek: Voyager

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Star Trek: Voyager's Greatest Villains, Ranked

Here's the worst of the worst.

Star Trek: Voyager encountered many villainous obstacles on its long journey back to Earth, but which among these would fans consider the best? Better yet, where do they rank compared to each other? 

I’ve been binging Star Trek: Voyager with my Paramount+ subscription , and feel like I have a solid lock on some of the show's best villains fans might remember. Ranked from great to greatest, here is a rundown of the worst Captain Janeway and her crew faced as they made their way through the Delta Quadrant. Given all the chatter as of late about Kate Mulgrew potentially reprising her role in live-action , it feels like as good of a time as any to remember why so many folks are still clammoring for new Voyager projects these days.

10. Angry Tuvok

Star Trek fans received a taste of an unhinged Tuvok in Season 2's “Meld,” where the crew worked to solve the mystery of a murder on the Voyager . The Vulcan, disturbed by the fact the Betazoid responsible for the crime didn’t have a motive, attempted a mind meld in order to try and understand what occurred. As a result ,he found himself with a murderous rage, and it took a good deal to get him back to his normal self. 

Angry Tuvok is toward the bottom of the list because, let’s be honest, he’s not actually a villain. With that said, seeing him unhinged and out of control of his emotions shows just how dangerous Vulcans were before they committed to logic and suppressing feelings. He could easily bring Voyager down if he wanted to, so I have to commend his restraint in not doing that, or strangling Neelix to death. 

9. The Nazi Hirogen

The Hirogen species had a few encounters with Voyager during the show’s run, but one particular misdeed of theirs really sticks out. The Season 4 two-parter “The Killing Game” sent the crew back to Nazi-occupied France as Janeway and the crew attempted to combat the soldiers. In reality, the Hirogen had captured them, and forced them into a holosimulation without their knowledge in an effort to enjoy the thrill of ongoing hunts. 

The Nazi Hirogen, while not truly Nazis outside of the simulation, were still pretty dastardly. They used technology to brainwash the crew, and disabled safety protocols on injuries, which required the Doctor to perform operations on the crew to keep them alive between hunts. Thankfully, Harry Kim was able to free the crew by working with the Doctor, which was one of the few times Voyager made him look competent and capable .

Devore inspector Kashyk from Season 5's "Counterpoint" was about as charming as he was conniving, and Janeway and crew were forced to deceive him to protect its telepathic passengers. While their initial efforts were effective, Kashyk duped Janeway by claiming he'd defected from his species, only to expose the whereabouts of the telepathic crew and capture them. 

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Kashyk wasn’t the worst of the worst of Star Trek: Voyager , but he was quite a snake. He also toyed with the heart of our beloved captain at a vulnerable time in her life. Luckily, she was a bit more clever, and managed to turn the tables on him yet again. Still, the guy was just a rat bastard, and I’m glad we didn’t see him again for the rest of the series. 

Some might say Seska is the primary villain tied to the Kazon, but even she suffered at the hands of Culluh. The Kazon gave the crew hell during Seasons 1 through 3, and honestly, nearly ended this mission well before it really made any progress. 

What makes Culluh especially evil, however, is using Seska and his own child in a ploy to stop Voyager , under the guise that the child was Chakotay’s. Culluh’s actions ultimately resulted in Seska’s death, which was the only thing that really led Culluh to leave Voyager be. 

6. The Clown

Some folks will argue Season 2's “The Thaw” is one of Star Trek: Voyager ’s most frightening episodes. I wouldn’t go that far, but I will agree that one of the show’s worst villains appeared in the episode, and I’d certainly hate to come across The Clown after what he put his captives through here. 

The Clown was merely a manifestation created inside of a neural network but was able to hold a group of individuals hostage in stasis for fifteen years before Voyager came along. The psychological torture is just unfathomable, and while he ultimately was defeated, there’s no doubt that the impact of his influence was felt by those affected for years to come. 

5. Icheb’s Parents

Star Trek: Voyager introduced the young refugee Borg Icheb’s parents in Season 6's “Child’s Play,” and in hindsight, we should’ve guessed they weren’t great people. After the Voyager crew convinced Icheb to reconnect with his family, it seemed like we were headed toward a happy ending. Unfortunately, we later learned that he was intentionally assimilated by the Borg, as his Brunali parents infected him with a pathogen that damaged the Borg cube and protected their people from attack. 

Icheb’s parents are here on the list because they never intended to make a meaningful reconnection with their son, but rather wanted to send him out again in an effort to infect more Borg with their virus. Pretty heartless, and upsetting for viewers.

Kes was always a complicated character for Star Trek: Voyager to tackle, and it seemed the series never knew what to do with her before writing her out of the main cast. Though Lien left the series as a main cast member, she did get a return episode in Season 6's “Fury” in which Kes went on a misguided quest for revenge against Voyager . 

Kes was much older due to her species’ shortened lifespan, but her psychic abilities made her effectively unstoppable. She would've succeeded, but her past self managed to talk some sense into her. 

3. The Wormhole Creature

Season 5's “Bliss” offers the crew hope when they seemingly find a wormhole that will transport them instantly back to Earth. Understandably so, the entire crew was thrilled and eager to go to any lengths to make it happen, but Seven of Nine had her doubts. It soon became a battle between Seven and the rest of the crew, as she attempted to save her friends from themselves. 

The wormhole creature from “Bliss” might be a wildcard choice for Star Trek: Voyager villains, but I can’t think of a more perfect creature for this list. If it wasn’t for a last-minute push from the EMH Doctor and Seven, the Voyager crew would’ve perished under the illusion they were on a fast track back to Earth. On one hand, it’s probably not the worst fate they could’ve succumbed to, but man, what a cruel fate considering all they’d been through to that point.  

2. Annorax 

The Star Trek: Voyager crew was brought to its knees during Season 4's “Year Of Hell,” after encountering a temporal scientist named Annorax hellbent on restoring the status of his homeworld. Janeway and the crew tried to fight back, but his weapon systems were engaged with a device capable of wiping an entire species from existence. This led the crew to be cautious, and engage in a long conflict that nearly wiped them out entirely. 

The “Year Of Hell” arc is an all-time great Star Trek storyline, and part of that is due to Kurtwood Smith’s incredible performance as Annorax. One man’s quest to restore his planet’s status and bring back his wife becomes obsessive and results in the deaths of countless individuals. Thankfully, the time element managed to reset things to normal, though his impact on the crew makes him an easy choice for one of the greatest enemies Voyager ever faced. 

1. Borg Queen

As if there were any choice for number one, the Borg Queen stands as the definitive villain for Star Trek: Voyager . Hell, the Borg Queen is an all-time villain for the Trek franchise. There’s definitely something special about Voyager ’s connection to the Borg, and that’s largely because of the queen's encounters with Jeri Ryan ’s Seven of Nine in Seasons 5 through 7. 

The Borg Queen is a master manipulator and always seemed capable of pulling just about anyone into her grasp if given the opportunity. This dynamic was so strong that it became a major part of the latest season of Star Trek: Picard , so it’s no surprise the Borg Queen reigns supreme in terms of the series' greatest villains. 

Stream Star Trek: Voyager right now on Paramount+ . After that, be sure to check out Kate Mulgrew’s Janeway on Prodigy , and keep that subscription for the number of other upcoming Trek shows slated for the coming months. 

Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

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Star Trek Ranks & Podcast

From @enterprisenxtra.

Episode Ranks

While I may have Star Trek: Voyager ranked as my No. 5 favorite Star Trek series, that doesn't mean I don't love it. (By the way, there is no wrong answer to the question: "What is your favorite Star Trek series?")

For me, Voyager is the Trek show with the biggest pure science fiction scope and ideas. From Blink of an Eye to Living Witness to Counterpoint , Voyager managed to build classic Star Trek morality plays around intense sci-fi e lements.  No concept was too big (see Scientific Method and Deadlock ). and  they were all faced by a captain who had to make the critical decisions without the guidance of Starfleet.

With so many great episodes to choose from, this list was not easy to narrow down, but oddly my Number One choice was never in doubt. Scroll down to find out below.

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The Greatest 'Star Trek: Voyager' Guest Stars (That You Probably Forgot About)

Did you know these actors had boldly gone to the Delta Quadrant?

How has it been 20 years since Star Trek: Voyager ended? The fourth live-action show in the franchise has found a resurgence in fans of late thanks to streaming, and rightly so. Star Trek: Voyager has its flaws, but the show also has a diverse cast, some fascinating storylines, and cool guest stars.

Star Trek as a franchise is known for its surprising cameos and guest performances. Since there are so many shows and characters, you’d be forgiven for forgetting a few notable actors who appeared during Star Trek: Voyager ’s seven seasons. If you’re wondering which names you’re missing, here are nine famous faces who appeared on the show.

RELATED: 'Star Trek: Picard' Season 2 Trailer Teases Some Wild Returns and Twists for the Paramount+ Show

Michael McKean as The Clown

Michael McKean is a veteran actor who has appeared in… just about everything. Before his recent critically acclaimed work on Better Call Saul , McKean was perhaps best known for his role in This is Spinal Tap , and has had a formidable career as a comedian. His role in Star Trek: Voyager Season 2, Episode 23, however, is anything but a laugh riot. In “The Thaw,” Harry Kim ( Garrett Wang ) and B'Elanna Torres ( Roxann Dawson ) are trapped in a computer program with the Clown (McKean) and his cohorts. Harry spends the entire episode being terrorized by this maniac, while the crew of Voyager try and figure out how to save him. The episode is an obvious attempt to subvert the expectation of both McKean’s presence and the circus iconography. Let’s just say, if you have Coulrophobia, this episode will likely exacerbate it.

Ed Begley Jr. as Henry Starling

Multiple Emmy nominee and Golden Globe nominee Ed Begley Jr. has had a prolific career playing so many different kinds of characters that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Begley Jr. guest starred in the Season 3 two-parter “Future’s End,” and boy, was he evil. He played Henry Starling, a futurist from 20th century Earth who becomes embroiled with Voyager, as the crew is trapped in the past, but can’t return to their own time without stopping Starling and correcting the timeline. Star Trek loves a time travel storyline, and an insidious villain like Starling ups the stakes considerably. He’s smarmy and considers himself the smartest person in the room, but he’s also extremely nasty. The scene where he captures the Doctor ( Robert Picardo ) is brief but still distressing to watch all these years later.

Sarah Silverman as Rain Robinson

She's a household name nowadays for her comedy, but one of Sarah Silverman ’s earliest on-screen acting roles was as Rain Robinson, also in the Season 3 two-parter “Future’s End.” Rain is a scientist in the 20th century who is the first person to spot an anomaly in the skies (Voyager’s warp signature). This information puts her life in danger, but luckily Tom Paris ( Robert Duncan McNeill ) and Tuvok ( Tim Russ ) come to her aid. Despite Tom and Tuvok’s attempts to disguise their true identities as time travellers, Rain deduces that there’s something fishy about them, and helps them on their mission against Starling. Silverman played the character with her quintessential wry humor and sarcasm, and her easy chemistry with Duncan McNeill made their characters’ budding and brief romance an adorable subplot in the episodes.

John Rhys-Davies as Leonardo da Vinci

John Rhys-Davies has such a towering presence that I could have sworn he appeared in several Star Trek: Voyager episodes. Turns out, he only starred in two of them, the Season 3 finale “Scorpion” and Season 4’s “Concerning Flight.” Rhys-Davies played the holographic version of Leonardo da Vinci, Captain Janeway’s ( Kate Mulgrew ) mentor, on the holodeck, pulling out his best Italian accent to take the captain under his wing. Leonardo acted as the captain’s confidante, as well as a sounding board for her ideas; while the character’s appearances were more ponderous than plot specific, “Concerning Flight” did give Rhys-Davies more work to do when the holographic character was accidentally transported to an alien planet. Hilarity definitely ensued.

Lori Petty as Noss

Lori Petty has such a wide-ranging filmography, but somehow her Star Trek: Voyager guest appearance is still a surprise. When Tom Paris and Tuvok are stranded on a mission in the Season 5 episode “Gravity,” they cross paths with Noss (Petty), an alien scavenger, and the trio form an unlikely bond as they remain trapped for months in the desolate landscape. Noss even learns to speak English to communicate better with Tom and Tuvok, after their universal translators are destroyed upon landing. It’s not long before Noss becomes attracted to Tuvok – his enigmatic, Vulcan aloofness was always appealing – but despite Noss’ overtures, Tuvok remains dedicated to his wife and family. Petty’s performance is more in line with her Point Break character Tyler; she’s sweet and naïve but can hold her own in difficult circumstances.

Jason Alexander as Kurros

For many, Jason Alexander has become synonymous with Seinfeld , but his role in the Season 5 episode “Think Tank” was far removed from his signature character. Alexander plays Kurros, the leader of a group of highly intelligent aliens. The Think Tank, as they call themselves, claim to have a way to prevent dangerous bounty hunters from pursuing Voyager. But the group soon show their true colors when they insist on recruiting crewmember Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan ). Alexander plays against type here — the episode would have been completely derailed if Alexander had been over the top, but instead he plays Kurros as calm and sinister, which makes the character even scarier.

Daniel Dae Kim as Gotana-Retz

In the Season 6 episode “Blink of an Eye,” Voyager gets accidentally trapped in a planet’s orbit, thereby inadvertently altering the planet’s history forever. The planet experiences a time differential which causes years to pass on the surface without much time going by for Voyager’s crew. As the generations are influenced by Voyager’s presence, two astronauts land on the titular ship. Daniel Dae Kim ’s Gotana-Retz survives the landing and although his character is mostly offscreen, he plays a significant part in helping Voyager break free. Dae Kim only appears in the fourth act, but his character arc is remarkably memorable. The last shot of his character remains a bittersweet moment in the show’s history. Star Trek has been at the forefront of diverse casting choices, and Dae Kim is part of a still short, but brilliant, list of Asian guest stars in the franchise.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as The Champion

Dwayne Johnson is one of the biggest movie stars today, but his road to stardom had an unlikely pitstop aboard the starship Voyager. Admittedly, the role of the Champion in the Season 6 episode “Tsunkatse” wasn’t very different from playing The Rock on Monday Night Raw. In the episode, the crew of Voyager are invited to watch a gladiatorial tournament, but their excitement dissipates when one of the fighters is revealed to be their own Seven of Nine. She and Tuvok had been captured by aliens, and Seven is subsequently forced to fight in the match in order to save Tuvok. Johnson is very much in his element in this role, playing to his strengths as a famed wrestler. It's more of an extended cameo than a role, but you will still be on the edge of your seat waiting to see if The Rock can beat a Borg.

Mark Sheppard as Leucon

As prolific character actors go, Mark Sheppard is high on the list. He’s appeared in everything in every genre, so why would a Star Trek show be any different? Late in Season 6, Sheppard guest-starred as Leucon Icheb, the long-lost father of Voyager’s latest resident, Icheb ( Manu Intiraymi ). Icheb was a child who had been assimilated by the Borg before being rescued by the crew of Voyager. In “Child’s Play,” Voyager locates his parents on the Borg-ravaged Brunali homeworld. Sheppard is infamous for playing morally ambiguous characters, and this episode plays to his strengths as it keeps you guessing about Leucon’s actions and motivations. In the end, this is a heartbreaking installment, and much of that comes down to Sheppard’s scene-stealing turn as a parent with a difficult decision to make.

Star Trek: Voyager is streaming on Paramount+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

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Star Trek: Voyager Cast and Character Guide

For seven seasons, the crew of Star Trek: Voyager sought a way home from the Delta Quadrant.

Star Trek: Voyager premiered in January 1995 as the flagship for the nascent United Paramount Network. The network didn't survive, but the show completed seven lively seasons and 172 episodes, joining the ranks of other classic Star Trek series of the era. The show trapped its crew in the Delta Quadrant: decades from the nearest Starfleet outpost, they were left to find a way home. It was intended to return to The Original Series' loose idea of a starship left to its own devices deep in unexplored space.

Today, Voyager is noted for taking big creative risks, resulting in both classic and risible episodes. But through it all, the sterling cast and unique characters always provided a strong reason to tune in. Below is a breakdown of the ten main members of the Voyager's crew.

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Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Janeway is notable for being Star Trek's first female lead: a no-nonsense leader willing to make hard choices to keep her people safe. With her ship stranded far from home, she places the crew above all other considerations, often finding bold, unorthodox methods to get them out of trouble. After successfully returning to Earth in the series finale, she's promoted to the rank of admiral, which she holds when she returns to the franchise in Star Trek: Prodigy .

Kate Mulgrew cut her teeth on the soap opera Ryan's Hope, the short-lived Mrs. Columbo series, and a bevy of made-for-TV movies. She stole the show in Danny De Vito's Throw Momma from the Train as Billy Crystal's scheming ex-wife and made a prominent appearance in the cult classic Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins . She has continued to work steadily in television since her stint on Voyager , most notably as one of the leads in Orange Is The New Black, for which she received an Emmy nomination in 2014.

Robert Beltran as Lieutenant Commander Chakotay

Chakotay begins Voyager as a member of the Maquis, a terrorist organization in conflict with Starfleet, shortly before the Dominion War. His ship is thrown to the far side of the galaxy along with Voyager's, forcing his crew to integrate with Starfleet to survive. He becomes Janeway's second in command: quick to support her actions and ultimately evolving into a stalwart officer. He's notable for his Native American ancestry – a first for a Star Trek lead character – and returns to the franchise as a captain in his own right in the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy .

Besides Voyager , actor Robert Beltran is best known for the 80s cult movies Eating Raoul and Night of the Comet . He also appeared in Barry Levinson's Bugsy , Oliver Stone's Nixon , and many guest roles on television series throughout the 80s and 90s. Like many Star Trek actors, he has a prominent history in the theater as well, with an emphasis on Shakespearean productions.

RELATED: Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Clip Brings Back Voyager's Robert Picardo as The Doctor

Robert Picardo as The Doctor

The Doctor is a singular character in the Star Trek franchise: a living hologram created out of necessity after Voyager's chief medical officer is killed in the series premiere. Originally intended as a short-term stop-gap, the "Emergency Medical Hologram" soon grows beyond his programming into a full-fledged crew member. He's often played for comic relief, with a snippy bedside manner and difficulty understanding the nuance of human emotions. Despite that, his unique capabilities and stalwart loyalty make him one of Voyager's most popular characters.

Picardo has enjoyed a long and successful career both before and after Star Trek: Voyager . His IMDB page lists a staggering 250 credits as an actor – including multiple upcoming projects – that speaks to his versatility and range. Outside Star Trek, he's probably best known for his long association with celebrated director Joe Dante , with prominent roles in The Howling, Small Soldiers , and Matinee.

Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine

Star Trek: Voyager explores the Borg in more detail than any other series, as Janeway's crew must pass through the heart of their territory. That leads to the arrival of Seven of Nine onboard: a former Borg drone disconnected from the collective and returning with the crew to the Alpha Quadrant. She initially struggles to shed her cybernetic chilliness and adapt to life onboard. She eventually finds acceptance, thanks partly to her friendship with The Doctor and Janeway's dogged efforts to connect with her human side.

Like many Star Trek actors, Jeri Ryan found steady work guest starring on television series in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming famous as Seven. After Star Trek: Voyager , she starred in the final three seasons of Boston Public and appeared in the James Woods legal drama Shark . Her return to the franchise in Star Trek: Picard has been cause for celebration among fans, many of whom are actively lobbying for further Seven of Nine stories.

RELATED: Star Trek: Voyager's Seven of Nine and Chakotay Romance Was a Mistake

Tim Russ as Lieutenant Commander Tuvok

Tuvok opens Voyager as a Federation mole inside Chakotay's Maquis crew. Once the ruse drops, he becomes the Voyager's chief of security and top tactical officer, serving as Janeway's trusted advisor during their long journey home. Tuvok is notable for being the first Vulcan to appear as a series regular since Leonard Nimoy's legendary run as Mr. Spock. He's different from his predecessor in many ways – moodier and more introspective – while never being less than logical.

Tim Russ guested on several TV series before playing Tuvok, including several appearances as different characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation . He continues to work on television to this day. Notable roles include Principal Ted Franklin in i Carly and Frank the Doorman in Samantha Who? and one-off appearances in American Horror Story and Poker Face . He returns as Tuvok – now promoted to captain – in the third season of Star Trek: Picard .

Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres

B'Elanna is a Maquis engineer who takes over the spot on Voyager when her crew transfers to the Federation ship. She's half-Klingon, with an ambivalent attitude about her heritage and trouble controlling her temper. She runs the engineering department with little concern for protocol or even safety at times, pushing Voyager's capabilities further in the process. She and Tom Paris fall in love, and she eventually becomes the mother of his child.

Roxann Dawson had minor appearances on various television shows before landing the role of Torres. Like many other franchise alum, she parlayed her experiences on Voyager into a career behind the camera: directing numerous episodes of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. , Under the Dome and Bates Motel , among others. She remains active in that capacity as of this writing.

RELATED: Star Trek: Lower Decks Supervising Director Reveals How They Animated the USS Voyager

Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris

Paris is the Voyager's helmsman, the first franchise character to hold the position permanently since Mr. Sulu in The Original Series . The son of a prominent Admiral was drummed out of Starfleet and later joined the Maquis, only to be caught and sentenced to prison, where Janeway finds him in the series premiere. He's released to help her hunt down his former compatriots, then becomes Voyager's pilot throughout its journey through the Delta Quadrant. His is a redemption story, as he goes from bitter washout to valued and respected crew member. He and Torres fall in love during the events of Voyager , and the series ends with the birth of their child.

Robert Duncan McNeill is known among Star Trek fans for playing Cadet Nicholas Locarno in The Next Generation : a one-shot character almost identical to Tom Paris, who never appears again. That came atop a number of TV and movie appearances before Voyager , most notably the cult classic Masters of the Universe starring Dolph Lundgren. He used his experience on Star Trek to springboard into a director's career, and has amassed a prolific resume behind the camera since. He remains active as of this writing, and returned to the role of Paris in the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks .

Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim

Harry Kim is Starfleet's perennial ensign: a top-flight Starfleet cadet assigned to Voyager just before it was lost in the Delta quadrant. He serves as the ship's chief of operations during its journey home, remaining a stalwart member of the bridge despite his low rank. He's dependable and intelligent, with a love for the clarinet and a firm grounding in several scientific fields. He's also a little unsure of himself, at least in the beginning. He and Tom Paris quickly become friends on their long trip home.

Garrett Wang had only been acting a short time when he was cast as Kim, previously appearing in just a single episode of All American Girl . He has worked sporadically since then, and appears regularly at Star Trek conventions and expos. He co-hosts a podcast with fellow Voyager alum Robert Duncan McNeill called The Delta Flyers.

RELATED: Voyager's 'Dark Frontier' Episode Foreshadowed Picard Season 3

Ethan Philips as Neelix

Neelix is a Talaxian trader, native to the Delta Quadrant , who finds himself onboard Voyager and opts to stay. He serves as a guide to the region for the Voyager crew and the ship's cook, morale officer, and general jack of all trades. He's gregarious and friendly, with an eccentric sense of humor and an eagerness to please. He stays behind in the Delta Quadrant when the Voyager completes its mission to return home.

Neelix was played by veteran actor Ethan Phillips, who boasts many supporting roles in film and television. Prominent appearances include Glory, Critters , and Lean on Me on the big screen, though TV fans know him best as sensitive press secretary Pete Downey on Benson . He's still active as of this writing, with regular guest appearances on numerous TV shows.

Jennifer Lien as Kes

When the series begins, Kas is Neelix's lover and a native of the Delta Quadrant. Her species, the Ocampans, age much more quickly than most humanoids, growing old and dying after just a handful of years. She serves as the ship's botanist and medical assistant to The Doctor and displays mild telepathic abilities. She departs the series midway through Season 4 – effectively giving way to Seven of Nine – though she returns in Season 6 to give her character closure.

Jennifer Lien's career began promisingly, with a recurring role in the TV series Phenom and a part in the animated Men in Black series after departing Voyager . She also had a prominent role in American History X alongside fellow Star Trek alum Avery Brooks. She was let go from Star Trek after mental health issues began to affect her performance. She has since retired from acting and remained largely out of the public eye.

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The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

As much as fans love to praise Star Trek as groundbreaking science fiction, it’s important to remember that, for most of the franchise’s history, Trek was weekly procedural television. Until the streaming era, each series was churning out roughly 26 episodes a year, and by the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager , some of the creative crew had been in the business of making Star Trek for over a decade. The franchise was a crossover commercial success, the kind of success that the money men like to leave exactly as it is for as long as it’s doing steady numbers.

10. Counterpoint (season 5, episode 10)

9. the thaw (season 2, episode 23), 8. mortal coil (season 4, episode 12), 7. latent image (season 5, episode 11), 6. bride of chaotica (season 5, episode 12), 5. living witness (season 4, episode 23), 4. prime factors (season 1, episode 10), 3. year of hell, parts i & ii (season 4, episodes 8 & 9), 2. blink of an eye (season 6, episode 12), 1. timeless (season 5, episode 6).

The operation was essentially on rails, and there was a lot of pressure from the studio and the network to keep it that way, which accounts for the general blandness of Voyager and the early years of its successor, Enterprise . The waning years of Trek’s golden era were plagued by creative exhaustion and, consequently, laziness. Concepts from previous series were revisited, often with diminishing returns, and potentially groundbreaking ideas were nixed from on high in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart.

That’s not to say that Star Trek: Voyager isn’t still a solid television show, and even many Trekkies’ favorite. The saga of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her gallant crew finding their way home from the farthest reaches of the galaxy may not be as ambitious as it could have been, but it is steadily entertaining, which is why new and nostalgic fans alike enjoy it as cozy “comfort viewing.” For our part, however, we tend to enjoy the episodes that have a certain emotional intensity or creative spark, that feel like conceptual or stylistic risks. As such, you might find that our list of the 10 best Voyager episodes differs greatly from some of the others out there. We like when Voyager dared to get heavy, or silly, or sappy, or mean. So, without further ado, let’s raise a glass to the journey …

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Counterpoint drops the audience into the middle of an ongoing story,in which Voyager is boarded and inspected by agents of a fascist government, the Devore. The Devore treat all travelers through their space with suspicion, but are particularly concerned with capturing and detaining all telepaths, who they view as dangerous. Despite the risks, Captain Janeway is attempting to smuggle a group of telepathic refugees to safety, all while putting on a show of cooperation for smiling Devore Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik). Much of the plot takes place in the background, obscured from the audience in order to build suspense. The real focus is on the evolving dynamic between Janeway and Kashyk, a rivalry that simmers into one of the Voyager captain’s rare romances. Kashyk works in the service of what are, transparently, space Nazis, but when he offers to defect to Voyager, can his intentions be trusted?

Beyond its intriguing premise, Counterpoint is a particularly strong production with a lot of subtle hints of creative flair. Director Les Landau and director of photography Marvin Rush, who had been both working on Star Trek since the 1980s, shoot the hell out of this story, breaking from Voyager ’s even lighting and predictable camera moves to make some very deliberate choices that build a great deal of tension around what is essentially a bottle episode. The makeup team, supervised by equally seasoned Trek veteran Michael Westmore, supplies a memorable and imaginative makeup design for an alien astrophysicist who appears in all of two scenes in this episode and is never utilized again. Most of all, Kate Mulgrew provides what may be her most subtle, human performance in the entire series, embodying Janeway’s famous conviction and strength of will while also granting a rare glimpse at her more vulnerable side without ever straying into melodrama.

If you look back at Star Trek: The Original Series , in-between the deep dramas and camp classics, you’ll find a lot of episodes that are just plain weird. The same is true for the best Star Trek spinoffs, and there’s no Voyager story as boldly off-putting as The Thaw , which guest stars This is Spinal Tap and Better Call Saul ’ s Michael McKean as a maniacal AI who literally scares people to death. In this episode, Voyager comes across a group of aliens who have been trapped in suspended animation ever since an environmental disaster struck their planet two decades earlier. To pass the time while in hibernation, the survivors have hooked their brains up to a virtual reality, where they are supposed to be entertained by a wacky character known only as “the Clown.”

Unfortunately, what the Clown finds most entertaining is probing their minds for their innermost fears and turning it into weird performance art, and he refuses to let his audience leave. When the Voyager crew attempts to rescue them, the Clown takes Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) hostage and proceeds to menace him for most of the episode. And, folks, it’s a trip.

The Thaw is a colorful, not entirely comprehensible, totally unclassifiable episode. It’s sort of horror, it’s sort of comedy, it’s sort of character study, but mostly it’s just entertaining. And for however much of it is up to interpretation, it’s a rare glimpse at the psyche of Harry Kim, one of Voyager’s least explored characters. Above all, however, it’s a delight to watch McKean perform what’s essentially his take on the Joker, a homicidal clown with a genius intellect and a poetic flair. Mulgrew, consequently, gets to play Batman, facing down his gleeful menace with stillness and determination. It’s one of the few real treats from the early seasons of the series, one whose reputation among fans has only grown since its premiere in 1996.

Aside from maybe The Next Generation ’s Wesley Crusher, no Star Trek character was as immediately reviled as Voyager’s chef, ambassador, and morale officer Neelix (Ethan Phillips). On most episodes of Voyager , Neelix is the goofy comic relief, performing folksy, unfunny antics around the mess hall or annoying the stoic Vulcan Lt. Tuvok (Tim Russ) with his naivety and effervescence. His unsettling long-term romantic relationship with Kes, who is technically a two-year-old when the series begins, is also part of Trek’s most irritating love triangle.

And yet, when Neelix is the center of an episode, it often reveals him to be one of the show’s most textured and interesting characters. Neelix is a survivor of a devastating war that destroyed his home and claimed the lives of his entire family. Beneath the persona of a “happy wanderer” resides a deep sea of melancholy and a predisposition towards depression. It’s a performance for his own benefit, as well as for the weary Voyager crew, and if it seems like he’s trying too hard, that’s because he is.

In the episode Mortal Coil , Neelix is killed on an away mission, only to be resuscitated 18 hours later by Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and her advanced Borg medicine. The crew is happy to have him back, but the experience rocks Neelix to his core. Neelix has always believed that he would be reunited with his family in the afterlife, but upon his death, he experienced no such thing. Neelix’s crisis of faith provides Phillips an opportunity to really dig his teeth into his character, and to take a heavy, nuanced look at belief, mortality, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Writer Bryan Fuller, who would go on to create NBC’s Hannibal , puts his psychological horror chops to great use here, and director Allan Kroeker sustains a feeling of dread that places the audience on edge and off-balance. The story resolves itself a little too quickly and is never mentioned again, but that’s par for the course on Voyager. But when evaluated on its own, Mortal Coil  holds up against some of Trek’s best character studies.

Following up on the popularity of Data on The Next Generation , Voyager debuted with its own artificial crewmember, the Emergency Medical Hologram (Robert Picardo), usually just called “the Doctor.” Rather than a supposedly emotionless android , the Doctor is a hologram based on the grouchy engineer who designed him and endowed with the medical knowledge of the entire Federation. At the start of the series, everyone — including the Doctor himself — considers him to be a tool intended for short-term use, rather than a person, but since he’s left online for years rather than hours, he gradually develops his own personality and preferences, becoming a sentient individual.

Unlike in Data’s case, however, it takes the crew a long time to get used to the idea of the Doctor being his own man, and they continue to infringe on his rights, his privacy, and his very programming for much of the series. Sometimes the Doctor’s indignity is played for laughs, sometimes for sympathy, and in our next episode, for horror.

In Latent Image , the Doctor discovers evidence that he performed a delicate neurosurgery on Ensign Kim 18 months earlier, but he has no memory of the event, and neither does the rest of the crew. With the help of Seven of Nine, who joined the cast in the intervening year, the Doctor attempts to unravel the mystery of what really happened, leading to a terrible discovery that calls his relationship with Capt. Janeway and the rest of the crew into question. We won’t give away the answer here, but the story digs deep into the complexity of the Doctor’s character and his nature as an ascended artificial intelligence, and offers Picardo his meatiest acting challenge. You won’t find it on a lot of Best of Voyager lists, but it remains one of the show’s greatest hidden treasures.

Lest we leave you with the impression that the best of Voyager is all gloom and doom, our next entry is one of the lightest and funniest episodes of the series. Despite being set aboard a Starfleet vessel blasted to the far side of the galaxy with limited resources and no support, Voyager assures the audience early on that the ship’s holodecks are still fully functional, allowing the crew to go on their LARPing (live-action role-playing) adventures just like on The Next Generation . Most of the crew’s fantasies proved to be pretty forgettable, until the introduction of Tom Paris’ (Robert Duncan McNeill) new favorite holonovel, The Adventures of Captain Proton . Modeled after the classic Flash Gordon film serials — right down to the cheap effects and black-and-white photography — Captain Proton became a recurring treat during Voyager ’s fifth season, and is at the center of the No. 6 pick on our list, Bride of Chaotica!

In this episode, Tom and Harry’s latest excursion into the monochrome world of Captain Proton attracts the attention of photonic beings from another dimension, to whom the fictional villain Doctor Chaotica (Martin Rayner) is terrifyingly real. War breaks out between the photonic sentients and the 1930s-style bad guys, and the only way to save the day is for the crew to play along with the campy program. And because no Star Trek series is complete without the captain getting into a silly outfit and hamming it up, Janeway must pose as Chaotica’s evil bride, the devilish Arachnia! Mulgrew and the rest of the cast are plainly having a ball with this episode, and the fun is contagious. Keeping the holodeck around for the run of Voyager  may have been one of the signs that the series was going to play things relatively safe, but it did give us one of the franchise’s best holodeck episodes.

History is written by the victors, and subject to countless revisions over the passing centuries. How much of what we think of as historical fact is actually widely accepted conjecture or outright fabrication? We’ll probably never know, unless some eyewitness from the distant past turns up in our present to set things straight. This, naturally, is exactly what happens in Living Witness , as a backup copy of the Doctor is reactivated on an alien planet 700 years after Voyager participates in a pivotal political conflict.

For the Kyrians, it’s a well-known fact that the Warship Voyager eagerly aided their aggressive neighbors, the Vaskans, in unleashing a weapon of mass destruction against their homeworld. Captain Janeway is a cutthroat who will stop at nothing to get her crew home, Seven of Nine habitually assimilates her enemies and maintains her own small Borg collective onboard, and the Doctor is an android. When the holographic Doctor is awakened, he is aghast at the way his friends have been mischaracterized and sets out to prove what really happened, or else be punished for the genocide they’re accused of committing.

The Voyager cast never got the chance to play in the famous Star Trek Mirror Universe, home to the over-the-top evil versions of our Starfleet heroes, but Living Witness offers Mulgrew, Robert Beltran (Commander Chakotay), and company the opportunity to go full cartoon baddie, all in the name of poignant satire. It’s a bizarre comedy episode with an uncomfortable, but undeniable lesson: Time flattens everything. From a distance, every person, group, or thing becomes either all good or all bad, and that evaluation changes depending on who’s looking, and from where. In order to preserve the nuance of truth, we have to be willing to treat history as a process rather than a product, or else lose all sense of reality.

For fans who hoped that Voyager would lean into its intriguing premise of a motley crew of officers and terrorists having to rough it in the wilderness of space, much of the series turned out to be a real letdown. Almost immediately, the tension between the upstanding Starfleet and scrappy Maquis crewmembers, and the added tension of having to scrape and forage to survive, began to dissolve until Voyager was more or less the same familiar Trek that fans had been getting for the previous seven years. However, early on, there are a few episodes that truly capitalize on the show’s potential. The best example of this is Prime Factors , which introduces a dilemma that divides the crew between those who hold Starfleet’s principles as sacrosanct and those who didn’t sign up for this and just want to go home.

The setup is a terrific reversal of a classic Star Trek problem. A group needs help, but helping them means violating the Prime Directive, which forbids interfering in the internal affairs of other cultures. The twist? This time, our heroes aren’t the technologically advanced institution debating the virtues of foreign intervention, they’re the party in need. The friendly, benevolent Sikarians have the technology to send Voyager home instantly, but their own Prime Directive dictates that they not share it. How do Janeway and company feel when the shoe is on the other foot? How will a divided crew take the news, and will they all be inclined to abide by the Sikarians’ ruling?

It’s a fascinating study of ethics, ethical relativism, and the smugness often projected by even the most well-meaning of privileged do-gooders. How many planets have been a Federation ship’s “problem of the week” to be solved (or not solved) and then forgotten? In Prime Factors , our Starfleet stalwarts experience what it’s like to become someone’s pet cause, and learn that the charity of the privileged and comfortable only lasts as long as it’s convenient and self-gratifying.

If Prime Factors exemplifies the potential of Voyager ’s beginnings, Year of Hell  is a glimpse of what the show could have become if it had stayed the course. In this episode, which was initially envisioned as a season-long arc , Voyager’s long journey home takes them through the Krenim Imperium, whose brutal militaristic regime treats them as invaders and repeatedly kicks the crap out of them for 12 long months. The situation aboard Voyager gets increasingly dire as the crew takes casualties and the ship falls into disrepair. Hard choices have to be made about how to survive, and whether or not their goal of reaching Earth is even attainable. Janeway and company are pushed to their limits and left with permanent physical and psychological scars.

Or, they would be, if this wasn’t also a time travel story. The thrill of Year of Hell is undercut somewhat by being a “What If?” story whose events are erased from the timeline before the credits roll on Part II, but the actual time travel mechanics of the episode are fun and interesting. From the outset, the audience knows that the timeline of the story is in flux, as the power-mad Krenim scientist Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) selectively erases entire civilizations from time in order to restore his planet’s empire to full strength and rewrite his wife’s untimely death.

However, the characters don’t learn this until nearly nearly a third of the way through the story, after we’ve already seen their circumstances suddenly change a few times. Year of Hell  becomes a story about causality, about the reverberations of the smallest actions upon the grand tapestry of history, and the futility of trying to curate one’s own fate. It’s a terrific two-hour epic, and even if we’d rather have seen it play out over the course of an entire year, we wouldn’t dare try to go back and change it.

If Voyager isn’t going to be about a struggle for survival in the wilderness of space, then it damn well ought to be about exploring its wonders. Blink of an Eye is the kind of episode that could easily fit into any Star Trek series (or a non-Trek one, as its premise is suspiciously similar to the 1980 Robert L. Forward novel Dragon’s Egg ). Here, Voyager becomes trapped in the orbit of a planet with a strange property — for every 1.03 second that occurs in normal space, a year passes below. As the civilization on the planet evolves over centuries from a pre-industrial society to a futuristic one, the starship Voyager remains a fixture in their sky, inspiring religion, folklore, and a cultural obsession with reaching the stars.

The story cuts back and forth between the Voyager crew’s attempts to escape the planet’s orbit and generations of scientists and philosophers as their understanding of their celestial visitor evolves. Where some Trek episodes such as A Piece of the Action or Who Watches the Watchers frame accidental interference into an alien culture as a irreversible calamity, Blink of an Eye  takes a more subtle approach, showing the often inspiring ways that a civilization grapples with the great mysteries of life.

The highlight of the episode is guest star Daniel Dae Kim (pre- Lost ) as one of the first astronauts from the planet to set foot aboard Voyager. Through his eyes, we get to experience the joy and overwhelming emotional power of discovery, the very thing that inspires our Starfleet heroes to explore space in the first place. Star Trek is, ultimately, a show about curiosity, about humanity’s irrepressible drive to learn and understand our universe. There are few episodes in the entire Star Trek canon that capture this feeling more perfectly than Blink of an Eye . It’s the kind of story that, though simple and relatively low-stakes, should tug on the heartstrings of anyone who has sought inner peace through knowledge and appreciation of their outside world.

For Voyager ’s 100th episode, producers Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, and Joe Menosky decided to crash the ship into a planet and kill off almost the entire cast. We’re kidding! Well, sort of. Timeless  follows future versions of Chakotay and Harry Kim, the only survivors of Voyager, which was destroyed during a test of a new form of propulsion. This new technology brought Chakotay and Kim’s shuttle all the way home, but the rest of the crew was condemned to an icy grave. Racked with guilt over his role in their deaths, Kim becomes obsessed with going back in time to undo the disaster.

The story is told across two time frames, splitting between the present of the show and a future in which Kim and Chakotay’s quest to fix their mistake has made them outlaws. It’s a thrilling time travel episode that puts the focus on the show’s most neglected regular characters. Chakotay gets to be roguish again, a quality he’d long since shed along with the rest of his personality. For his part, Wang actually gets to show some range, playing a brooding, self-loathing wreck with nothing left to lose.

Even though it’s a foregone conclusion that the time travel mission will succeed and none of this story will have happened, Timeless truly feels like an event. It’s emotional, it’s visually striking, and occasionally very funny. (Seven of Nine’s first experience with alcohol ranks among the most quotable and memetic scenes in the series.) It’s only an hour long, but it plays like a movie. The stakes are high, the scope is vast, the characters are rich, and there’s even a cute cameo from Next Generation star LeVar Burton, who also directed the episode.

Voyager is often feather-light, and occasionally, as the rest of this list demonstrates, super heavy. Timeless perfectly captures the balance of intensity and fun of a great “Star Trek” feature, akin to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or Star Trek: First Contact . It probably shouldn’t be anyone’s first Voyager , but when we’re in the mood to check out just one of the show’s episodes, this is the one we reach for.

For more Star Trek content, please check out the best Star Trek: The Original Series episodes , the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes , and the best Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes .

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This week marks the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos, one of the all-time great dramas that helped put HBO on the map with its original series. There were HBO shows before The Sopranos, but this is the one that was a breakout hit, and it increased HBO's prestige and standing in the industry. Series creator David Chase had made his name in network television, but no other shows like The Sopranos existed. It was R-rated television in an era before that was a common occurrence.

The Sopranos also made its leading man, the late James Gandolfini, a star for his performance as Tony Soprano, a family man and mob boss who is forced into therapy when his anxiety completely overwhelms him. That set off a six-season run that firmly established The Sopranos' place in TV history. In honor of the show's 25th anniversary, we're sharing our picks for the 10 best episodes of The Sopranos. 10. All Due Respect (Season 5, Episode 13)

Every Star Trek series is someone’s favorite (Star Trek: The Animated Series stans, we see you), but when it comes to the 18-year Golden Age of Trek between 1987 and 2005, the prequel series Enterprise is easily the least beloved. Airing on UPN for an abbreviated four-season run, Enterprise was meant to shake things up after three consecutive series set in the late 24th century. Imagined as a sort of origin story for Star Trek in the style of The Right Stuff, creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga wanted to capture the danger and excitement of United Earth’s early interstellar space program, even planning to spend the entire first season on Earth preparing for the launch of Starfleet’s very first Starship Enterprise. The network, however, had other ideas, insisting that Berman and Braga not meddle with the consistently successful Star Trek formula. Thus, despite taking place two centuries earlier, Enterprise became, essentially, “more Voyager,” which in turn had been “more Next Generation,” a once-great sci-fi procedural that was nearly a decade past its peak. That’s not to say that the series didn’t improve throughout its four-season run. After two years of struggling to justify the show’s very existence, Berman and Braga swung for the fences with a radically different third season that reinvented Enterprise (now renamed Star Trek: Enterprise) as a grim and gritty serialized drama unpacking the aftermath of a 9/11-scale attack on Earth. While immediately more compelling, the revamp failed to boost the show’s sagging ratings, and it was reworked yet again the following year, and leaned further into the “prequel to Star Trek” angle under new showrunner Manny Coto. This, many fans will argue, is where Enterprise finally found its legs, but it was too little and too late to prevent its cancellation. Still, each iteration of the troubled spinoff had its highlights and our list of the 10 strongest Enterprise episodes is spread fairly evenly throughout the run of the show. Warning: This article contains spoilers for each listed episode.

10. Babel One/United/The Aenar (season 4, episodes 12, 13, & 14)

New Year's Eve is over, Christmas 2023 is in the history books, but there's still one major holiday left to honor: New Year's Day. Digital Trends has a suggestion to celebrate: throw a movie party. Why go out when you can stay home, log in to your Netflix subscription, and hang out with cool people like Timothée Chalamet, Julia Roberts, or Jennifer Lawrence?

The following list includes films from genres like sci-fi, thrillers, and comedies, and boasts new titles just released and classics from the '80s and '90s. It's the perfect way to celebrate New Year's Day, and it's pretty cheap, too.

All Star Trek: Voyager main characters ranked worst to best

By michael atkins-prescott | jun 6, 2023.

Ranking Star Trek: Voyager’s characters from worst to best.

Star Trek: Voyager was a show of extremes. Even though it was remembered as the runt of the litter of 90s Star Trek, it had its highlights. Back in the days of episodic TV, when there were 26-odd episodes to a season, there was a lot of room for both highs and lows, and on Voyager, the highs were high, and the lows were low. Just like Voyager had both great and terrible episodes, it had both great and terrible characters.

It’s hard to know where to start in talking about what was wrong with Kes, easily the worst character in the main cast of any Star Trek show. Kes was a big nothing of a character. She exemplified what was wrong with the writing on Voyager, in that nothing was made of some potentially interesting ideas.

Kes’s people, the Ocampa had psychic abilities which they’d lost and all but forgotten when they were forced to live underground after an ecological disaster. As the first Ocampan to leave the homeworld in generations, her powers were beginning to manifest, and even she did not know how powerful she’d become. Foreshadowing that she may become too powerful for the safety of the rest of the crew went nowhere, which was frustrating, as that would’ve given her a darker side. Instead, she remained blandly two-dimensional. The one time she almost displayed a sense of humor, it turned out to be a hallucination .

It may be tempting to lay the blame on actress Jennifer Lien (it still tickles me that “J. Lien” rhymes with “alien”), but reading the production notes on the character, it’s clear that she was written that way. Lien was actually doing a remarkable job of giving the producers what they (for some reason) wanted. Those production notes describe her as “fragile” and “childlike”, which speaks to the now-unavoidably problematic nature of the character. The Ocampa only live to about eight or nine years old, so as a young woman, Kes was only two. The resident hottie was canonically only two years old. Whose idea was that, and are they allowed within a hundred feet of schools and playgrounds?

It’s hard to imagine that when they needed to get rid of a character to make way for Seven of Nine’s introduction in season 4, they considered getting rid of anyone but Kes (more on that later).

30 Best Episodes Of Star Trek: Voyager According To IMDb

The third spin-off for the franchise, "Star Trek: Voyager" launched not long after "The Next Generation" left the airwaves. Set aboard the U.S.S. Voyager, its first mission saw Captain Kathryn Janeway in pursuit of a group of renegade Maquis. But when both ships were hurled into the far off Delta Quadrant by a mysterious alien entity, the two crews were forced to join together as they embarked on their long journey back to Earth.

Airing for seven seasons on UPN, "Star Trek: Voyager" may not have been the ratings hit that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was, but thanks to years of reruns and streaming, its popularity has grown in the years since its conclusion, with many episodes ranking among the franchise's most watched, according to StarTrek.com . During its time on Netflix, in fact, episodes centered on the Borg, and fan-favorite character Seven of Nine proved especially popular — so much so that Paramount+ made sure to include both in the revival series "Star Trek: Picard."

But which "Voyager" episodes rank the best among its entire 172-episode run? According to IMDb, the 30 we've collected here are the ones that top the charts.

30. Scientific Method (Season 4, Episode 7)

Janeway is pushed to the brink and Seven is left to save the day in the Season 4 episode  "Scientific Method." As the episode begins, the newest addition to the Voyager crew — ex-Borg Seven of Nine — is still learning to adjust to life aboard a Federation starship, unused to the hierarchy of command and the little social niceties of life in a human social structure. 

But while Voyager explores an unusual binary pulsar, a race of cloaked aliens have infiltrated the ship without anyone even realizing it. These aliens aren't looking to conquer however, and instead have been secretly experimenting on members of the crew — including the captain — as a gruesome form of medical testing without their knowledge. With only The Doctor and Seven of Nine able to detect them, it's up to a hologram and an uncertain former Borg to expose the alien threat and save the ship. 

29. Worst Case Scenario (Season 3, Episode 25)

In  "Worst Case Scenario"  B'Ellana discovers an apparent holo-novel that reanacts a disturbing takeover of the ship by its Maquis crewmembers, led by first officer Chakotay. More intrigued than disturbed, she shares it with Paris, then Kim, and before long the narrative becomes the center of ship-wide gossip as officers rush to play the interactive program for themselves. But it's soon revealed that the story was crafted by Tuvok as a training exercise and was abandoned when the Maquis became valued members of the crew.

Sent back in to finish the story for their own amusement, Paris and Tuvok discover that the program was co-opted by former Maquis crew member Seska and turned into a deadly form of payback. Suddenly the pair find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game with Seska's elaborate scenario that's been designed to torture them, while Janeway attempts to help them outside the confines of the holodeck. Racing against time, they'll have to play by Seska's rules if they want to stay alive.

28. Hope And Fear (Season 4, Episode 26)

In the fourth season finale  "Hope And Fear,"  Seven of Nine is forced to confront her humanity when it looks like Voyager has found a way home. It starts with the arrival of a man named Arturis who helps them finally repair and descramble the damaged message they received from Starfleet in "Hunters." In the message, Admiral Hayes claims they've sent an experimental new starship out to meet them just light years away, with a new slipstream engine capable of getting them home in a matter of months.

As Seven of Nine weighs staying behind — unsure if she'll fit in back on Earth — the crew discovers that the ship, the U.S.S. Dauntless , may not be what it appears. Now, the captain must balance her desire to get her crew back to Earth with her feeling that their ticket home may be a little too convenient.

27. Life Line (Season 6, Episode 24)

We're seeing double in  "Life Line"  when The Doctor comes face-to-face with his creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. After his appearance in the "Deep Space Nine" episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume," the famed scientist is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Voyager selflessly sends their holographic Doctor back to Earth via the Hirogen communication array to make a house call. But meeting his proverbial father isn't the jubilant family reunion that he'd expected as Zimmerman wants nothing to do with his own creation.

As The Doctor works to push past his creator's stubborn streak, Reg Barclay calls on the services of Counselor Deanna Troi to help the two work through their issues. But a problem in The Doctor's matrix forces Zimmerman to step in to save him, and The Doctor finally learns the basis for his father's ill feelings. A memorable episode that featured two long time cast members from "The Next Generation," it was ultimately a tale of an estranged father and son struggling to find common ground.

26. One (Season 4, Episode 25)

In "One," Seven of Nine is attempting to learn social skills with the help of The Doctor — and struggling with it — when the ship encounters an unusual nebula too vast to go around. But the nebula is found to contain a kind of subnucleonic radiation that proves deadly to the crew, save Seven of Nine and The Doctor. The only solution appears to be to put the entire crew, including the captain, into stasis pods for the duration of the journey, while Seven and The Doctor guide the ship.

Left alone, Seven at first enjoys the solitude, but the isolation soon begins to wear on her. Just as she needs companionship the most, The Doctor's program goes offline, and Seven is left to fend for herself as her mind begins to slowly erode. As hallucinations start to confuse her, she'll have to make a fateful choice if she wants to keep the crew alive.

25. Someone To Watch Over Me (Season 5, Episode 21)

"Someone To Watch Over Me"  sees The Doctor once again trying to help Seven of Nine improve her social skills, this time teaching her the art of dating. When Paris finds out, he makes a wager with The Doctor on whether Seven will be able to successfully find a date for an upcoming diplomatic reception. But as The Doctor spends more time with Seven of Nine, he finds himself developing romantic feelings for her himself.

Ultimately The Doctor asks Seven to the event, and when it comes out that he had made a bet with Paris over her love life, things go predictably wrong. Meanwhile, Neelix is tasked with entertaining Tomin, a Kadi diplomat, and struggles to stop the conservative, monk-like visitor from dangerously overindulging in the ship's leisure facilities. A more light-hearted affair, the episode is another key step in the development of both Seven of Nine and The Doctor and their common goal to learn to become more human.

24. Deadlock (Season 2, Episode 21)

It's double trouble in Season 2's  "Deadlock"  after Voyager encounters subspace turbulence that seems to be the cause of problems throughout the ship, as the warp core is rapidly being drained. But when B'Ellanna uses a series of proton bursts to restart the anti-matter reaction, it makes things worse, and Ensign Wildman's impending childbirth in sickbay is endangered. After a catastrophic hull break kills Ensign Kim, B'Ellana discovers that the subspace field they passed through has actually created a quantum duplicate of the ship and its crew, and there are now two U.S.S. Voyagers, slightly out of phase but sharing the same anti-matter reserves. 

Unfortunately, just as they think they have figured a way out of the situation they come under attack from the organ-stealing Vidiians. Thanks to the discovery of a small rift that allows passage between the two Voyagers, the duplicate crews find a new way to work together to fend off the alien attack while severing the link between their two ships. But for one of them to survive, the other may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. 

23. Equinox, Part II (Season 6, Episode 1)

It's an all-out war with Captain Ransom in the sixth season premiere,  "Equinox, Part II."  After the renegade Starfleet commander reprograms The Doctor and takes Seven of Nine hostage, he sets off to parts unknown to continue his torture of the alien creatures he needs to power his ship. Back on Voyager, Janeway is determined to get back her crewmen — and to do it she threatens to cross the line between justice and revenge. 

With members of the Equinox left aboard the ship, the captain will do whatever it takes to get them to tell her Ransom's plans. While Ransom's EMH secretly attempts to sabotage Voyager, an unexpected ally surfaces and could be key to stopping the Equinox. But as Janeway's methods continue to become more vicious, first officer Chakotay becomes increasingly uneasy, leading to a confrontation that could change the nature of their relationship forever. 

22. Eye Of The Needle (Season 1, Episode 7)

Early in "Star Trek: Voyager" the crew was still hopeful of finding a shortcut back to Earth, and they almost find one in the first season installment,  "Eye of the Needle."  Encountering a micro wormhole, they realize they can't get the ship through, but may be able to transmit a message, and potentially use their transporters to send the crew back to the Alpha Quadrant. Unfortunately, the ship they find on the other side of the galactic gateway isn't a friendly Federation starship but a secretive Romulan cargo ship.

Attempting to convince the Romulan captain that they aren't some kind of Starfleet deception is the first hurdle they encounter, as the adversaries have little reason to trust one another. But once they finally earn the captain's confidence they discover that the wormhole isn't all that it seems to be. With hopes diminishing, they realize that getting home may be more complicated than activating their transporters.

21. Future's End (Season 3, Episode 8)

Season 3's  "Future's End"  is another classic "Star Trek" time travel adventure that sees the crew of the starship Voyager hurled back in time to the then-present day of 1996. It all happens when the Timeship Aeon emerges from the 29th century and its captain, a man called Braxton, claims that Voyager is responsible for a disaster in his time that will annihilate Earth's solar system. His attempts to destroy Voyager fail, and the two ships are instead sent through a spatial rift, nearly 400 years into the past. 

Arriving in 1990s Los Angeles, Janeway is disturbed to discover that Braxton has been trapped there for 30 years already, and the technology aboard his ship has fallen into the hands of a Steve Jobs-like industrialist named Henry Starling (Ed Begley, Jr.) who is using it to amass his fortune. Realizing that it was future technology that was responsible for the '90s tech-boom, Janeway must find a way to retrieve Braxton's ship and get back to the 24th century, all while Starling hopes to collect Voyager's technology for himself.

20. Future's End: Part II (Season 3, Episode 9)

Still trapped in 1996,  "Future's End: Part 2" sees tech mogul Henry Starling finally getting Braxton's ship operational. Janeway realizes that it's Starling's use of the Aeon that will destroy the solar system, and must find a way to stop him. But Starling manages to steal The Doctor's program, and using 29th century tech taken from Braxton outfits him with an autonomous holo-emitter, allowing him the freedom to walk about unfettered for the first time.  

To get The Doctor back, Paris and Tuvok find a friend in a young astronomer named Rain Robinson (guest star Sarah Silverman), while Janeway makes contact with Captain Braxton himself, now a vagrant living in the city's underbelly. Chakotay and B'Elanna try to locate Braxton's ship, but become prisoner's of right-wing militants. To save Earth and return to the 24th century, Voyager's crew may have to risk exposing themselves to the people of the past.

19. Shattered (Season 7, Episode 10)

Another sci-fi time-bender, the Season 7 episode  "Shattered"  sees the ship pass through a temporal distortion field that fractures the ship into different time periods. Awakening in sickbay more than four years in the past, Chakotay is given a newly developed chroniton serum by The Doctor that allows him to pass through the various time shifts aboard the ship. To bring Voyager back into temporal sync he'll need to spread the serum throughout the ship's own circuitry, but he can't do it alone.

Traveling to the bridge, he finds a version of Captain Janeway from before they met, and he must somehow gain her trust to recruit her to execute his plan. But it's easier said than done with they discover the villainous Seska and her Kazon allies are in control of engineering, during the events of the Season 2 episode "Basics." A nostalgic look back at Voyager's seven-season run, "Shattered" sees the return of several former heroes and villains from past episodes.

18. Death Wish (Season 2, Episode 18)

The immortal all-powerful trickster Q finds a new ship to annoy in the Season 3 episode  "Death Wish."  Coming upon a rogue comet, Voyager discovers that it's actually home to a member of the Q Continuum, a being who has grown bored with his endless life and wishes to commit suicide. Dubbed "Quinn," he seeks asylum aboard Voyager when Q arrives to put him back in his cosmic prison cell. Though Janeway doesn't want to get involved in their god-like squabbles, she feels ethically obligated to consider Quinn's request, and grants them a hearing aboard the ship.

While Q summons the likes of Commander Riker, Isaac Newton, and a hippie from Woodstock to give statements, Tuvok defends Q's right to not exist, should he so choose. Disturbed by the fact that granting asylum would mean Quinn's suicide, Janeway attempts to convince Quinn that life is worth living. Undergoing his own crisis of faith, Q is forced to acknowledge the problems his people face, and makes a decision that will change the Q Continuum forever.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

17. Latent Image (Season 5, Episode 11)

  "Latent Image"  begins with The Doctor finding evidence of a surgical procedure on Ensign Kim that seems to have no explanation. What starts out as an investigation into a minor mystery leads to the disturbing realization that it was he who performed the surgery, but he has no recollection of it. Soon he learns that someone has been tampering with his program, erasing his memory — and perhaps the memories of the entire crew. But with the help of Seven of Nine, he discovers that the problem is even bigger than he feared, and everyone on the ship may be lying to him.

An episode that explores the problems that come with the holographic Doctor's existence as a growing sentient being, the story shows the crew slowly discovering that he has become more than just a program. It's also an intriguing allegory for how society often treats mental illness, and gives actor Robert Picardo some of his best work in his role as the ship's resident artificial surgeon.

16. Equinox (Season 5, Episode 25)

Janeway and Voyager are shocked to encounter another Federation vessel in the Delta Quadrant in  "Equinox,"  the dramatic fifth season finale. Commanded by the revered Captain Ransom (guest star John Savage), the U.S.S. Equinox is a science vessel that was catapulted to the region by the same entity that sent Voyager there. Ill-equipped for deep space assignments, Ransom and his crew have barely been able to survive on their slow journey home, and both crews seem buoyed and hopeful by the chance meeting. 

But the happy reunion is cut short when Seven of Nine uncovers evidence of corruption aboard Equinox, and the discovery that Ransom has been capturing and killing alien creatures and using their corpses to fuel their warp drive. Furious at the violation of Federation ideals, Janeway attempts to take control of his ship. But unwilling to go quietly, Ransom kidnaps Seven of Nine, and along with The Doctor's program, escapes aboard the Equinox. 

15. Pathfinder (Season 6, Episode 10)

In a surprising episode set almost entirely off of Voyager,  "Pathfinder"  follows "TNG" standout Reginald Barclay as he seeks help from his old friend, Counselor Troi. Now working at Starfleet HQ, he's part of the Pathfinder Project, which hopes to find a way to communicate with Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. Certain that he can use an itinerant pulsar to open a fissure that would allow two-way communication, he uses holodeck simulations to test his theories. But Barclay hit a wall when his superiors didn't believe in the potential of his ideas. 

After his boss, Commander Harkins, discovered that Barclay was living inside a simulation of Voyager and grows concerned for his mental stability, he was kicked off the project. Barclay approached Admiral Paris — who was running the project — about a second chance, but didn't get the response he was looking for. After speaking to Troi, Barclay breaks into the lab to put his plan into action before the pulsar moves out of range.

14. Dark Frontier (Season 5, Episode 15)

Janeway comes up with a bold scheme to attack a Borg ship in the double length episode  "Dark Frontier,"  that saw the Borg Queen's debut on the series. The plan is to steal a Borg ship's transwarp technology, capable of getting them back to Earth much faster than their conventional engines, and Janeway will stop at nothing to succeed. But the presence of Seven of Nine on the mission causes her some concern. 

Because Seven of Nine is still adjusting to being fully human Janeway fears the experience of returning to the Borg could be traumatic for her. Unbeknownst to Voyager, though, the Borg Queen has already learned of their daring plan, and finds a way of secretly communicating with Seven of Nine. The Queen offers her former drone a tempting deal: She will allow Voyager to succeed, effectively handing them an easy way home, in exchange for Seven of Nine rejoining the Borg. 

13. Endgame (Season 7, Episode 24)

The epic feature length series finale  "Endgame"  opens in the future on Earth, with an older Admiral Janeway unhappy with how history has turned out. She did get Voyager home, but it took more than 20 years and cost them the lives of several crewmen, including Seven of Nine. But when she finds a way to travel back in time to visit her past self, she devises a plan to change history and get Voyager home much sooner.

Visited by the older, more cynical Admiral Janeway, Voyager's Captain Janeway finds her future self's story hard to believe, but the plan she proposes makes sense: sneak into the heart of a Borg Uni-complex and use one of their transwarp hubs to travel back to Earth in an instant. The plan hits a snag, however, when the younger Janeway instead wants to use the opportunity to deal the Borg a crippling blow. Now the two Janeways find themselves at odds over the choice between defeating a mortal enemy or getting Voyager home.

12. Distant Origin (Season 3, Episode 23)

A story that explores the battle between religious dogma and scientific discovery,  "Distant Origin"  is told from the surprising perspective of an alien culture. We first meet a pair of Voth scientists named Gegen and Veer, who discover the remnants of one of Voyager's earlier ill-fated away missions. Studying the remains of a human crew member, they match its genetic structure to their own, providing evidence for a theory that their people originally evolved on Earth millions of years ago.

The two scientists show their evidence to their leaders, but are ostracized for challenging long-held doctrine that the Voth are a supreme form of life. Now facing persecution for their scientific discovery, they finally track Voyager itself, and capture Chakotay. With his help they hope to convince their people that they are actually descended from intelligent dinosaurs that roamed the Earth before the first ice age.

11. Drone (Season 5, Episode 2)

A transporter accident fuses Borg nano-probes from Seven of Nine with the 29th century technology of The Doctor's mobile emitter in the fifth season episode  "Drone."   Using the emitter, the nanoprobes steal genetic material from a passing crew member to create an advanced, 29th century Borg drone unlike anything that had been seen before. Unconnected from the Borg hive mind, the newly born Borg — who takes the name One — is a blank slate, and Janeway wants Seven of Nine to be his teacher and guide to humanity.

But when the Borg Collective discovers his existence they come to assimilate him, putting the ship, crew, and entire galaxy in jeopardy as they fear the Borg getting access to even more advanced technology. As the drone begins to question her about the Borg, Janeway fears he may want to join them, forcing Seven of Nine to finally answer the question of where she belongs.

10. Relativity (Season 5, Episode 23)

A mind-bending time travel adventure,  "Relativity"  opens aboard Voyager before its first mission when Captain Janeway is touring the ship in spacedock. But somehow Seven of Nine is present, and is secretly searching for a dangerous weapon at the direction of Captain Braxton. But before she can locate it she's discovered, and Braxton pulls her out of time, killing her. Flashing back to the present, a series of space-time fractures are causing temporal paradoxes all over Voyager when they discover a highly volatile temporal disrupter hidden in a bulkhead.

Just before it destroys the ship, Braxton's men abduct Seven again and send her back to find the disrupter in the past, figure out who planted it, and why. But if she's going to save the ship, Seven may have to do the one thing she's been ordered not to: tell Captain Janeway in the past about their future and recruit her to help complete Braxton's mission. 

9. Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy (Season 6, Episode 4)

When The Doctor starts experimenting with a daydreaming program in  "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy"  things go wrong, and he finds himself unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But when a low-ranking alien agent unwittingly taps into his daydreams, he believes The Doctor is actually the captain of the ship, and devises a plan to invade and conquer Voyager. 

After the bumbling alien spy realizes that he's gotten things wrong, he tries to call off the attack but it's too late to convince his superiors. As The Doctor's fantasy's are spinning out of control, the alien makes contact in the hopes of averting an embarrassing incident. To avoid confrontation, The Doctor must convince Janeway to let him take command. A more playful episode, it successfully mixes the kind of light-hearted comedy that works well with The Doctor, with the best adventure elements the show has to offer. 

8. Year Of Hell, Part II (Season 4, Episode 9)

"Year Of Hell, Part II"  picks up two months after the events of Part I. Voyager is in ruins and manned by a skeleton crew, while Janeway herself is in rough shape, barely able to survive repeated assaults from the Krenim. Tuvok has lost his sight, and requires Seven as his guide, while much of the ship itself is falling apart. Aboard Annorax's temporal warship, Chakotay and Paris are at odds, with Paris wanting to attempt escape while Chakotay wants to help find a way to use the ship's history-altering power to save Voyager.

Janeway meanwhile is attempting to assemble a loose alliance of friendly ships in the hopes of mounting an attack on Annorax. Seven of Nine successfully develops a new kind of temporal shield that they believe will be able to protect them against the Krenim's weapons. But if their plan doesn't work, it could mean Voyager never existed.

7. Living Witness (Season 4, Episode 23)

In the closest thing "Voyager" got to a Mirror Universe episode, the fifth season episode  "Living Witness"  saw The Doctor's program activated by an alien civilization some 700 years in the future. There, two neighboring species have been arguing over who started their centuries-old war, and believe that Voyager may have played a part in sparking it. Now with The Doctor active, one historian believes that he could hold the key to discovering just what happened.

Through the use of a holodeck of sorts we view the historical account of how they believed the crew of Voyager started the war. In the recreation, a tyrannical Captain Janeway brutally attacks the Kyrian people with biogenic weapons developed by The Doctor, wiping out entire populations. Now it's up to The Doctor to set the record straight, and if he can't convince them of what really happened, he may be put on trial for the crimes that Voyager is thought to have committed against their people. 

6. Message In A Bottle (Season 4, Episode 14)

Controversial comedian Andy Dick makes an unexpected appearance in the Season 4 episode  "Message In A Bottle"  that also marks Voyager's first communication with Starfleet. Upon discovering a Federation starship on the edges of hailing range of a deep space alien communication array, they fail to make contact, so instead send The Doctor's holographic program. Aboard the experimental U.S.S. Prometheus, The Doctor also finds that the ship has been taken over by Romulans, and its entire crew killed.

But with the help of that ship's own EMH, a dismissive and snarky Mark II, it's up to The Doctor to fight back and retake the ship. Once successful, he manages to get in touch with Starfleet and finally let them know that Voyager is alive and well in the Delta Quadrant. An offbeat episode that once again mixes humor and adventure, the highlight is the impeccable comedic chemistry between the two EMH's played by Robert Picardo and guest star Andy Dick.

5. Timeless (Season 5, Episode 6)

Opening on the stunning visual of the starship Voyager buried beneath the surface of a mysterious ice planet in  "Timeless,"  we meet a small group of explorers trying to excavate it. Breaking into the ship we learn that the space-bound archeologists are none other than Chakotay and Harry Kim, 15 years into the future. Finding The Doctor's mobile emitter, they've come back to the site of a disaster that destroyed the ship, with the hopes of changing history.

Flashing back to the "present" we see that Ensign Kim has spearheaded a project to retrofit Voyager with the same slipstream technology they were introduced to in "Hope And Fear." To use it, Chakotay and Kim man a shuttle ahead of the ship, to guide Voyager through the slipstream. But a miscalculation sends Voyager off-course and while the shuttle made it safely to Earth, Voyager was doomed. With the help of Borg technology from Seven of Nine's corpse, an older and remorseful Kim must evade Captain Geordi La Forge and the U.S.S. Challenger if he hopes to succeed in his quest for redemption.

4. Scorpion, Part II (Season 4, Episode 1)

After successfully negotiating an alliance with the Borg in the Season 3 finale, "Scorpion, Part II" kicks off the fourth season with the Borg agreeing to give Voyager safe passage through their vast territory in exchange for their help in defeating an emerging new threat: Species 8472. Chakotay firmly opposes the collaboration, especially when the collective sends a Borg aboard to act as a liaison, a female drone named Seven of Nine. Despite their agreement, Janeway's first officer doesn't believe they can trust their new allies.

But thanks to the neural link that Chakotay has retained from the events of "Unity," he proves to be the key to a plan to stop the Borg should they betray them. And once Species 8472 is dealt with that's exactly what they do, with Seven of Nine attempting to assimilate the ship. Remembered for the introduction of Seven of Nine , the character helped reinvigorate the series, and would go on to become one of the franchise's most beloved characters, returning in 2020 in the spin-off "Star Trek: Picard."

3. Year Of Hell (Season 4, Episode 8)

In "Year Of Hell" Voyager encounters the Krenim Imperium, a powerful empire that rules a region of space they are attempting to pass through. But little do they know that the key to the Krenim's power is a man named Annorax (guest star Kurtwood Smith), a scientist who has developed a devastating weapon capable of altering history. Annorax has been using the weapon to alter the past in the hopes of restoring his people's empire to their former glory and resurrect his long-dead wife.

While Janeway and the crew are helpless against the Krenim's weapons, they go on the run, mercilessly attacked by the Imperium wherever they try to hide. But when Annorax continues annihilating entire planets in his quest, his calculations are thrown off by Voyager's anomalous presence and they suddenly find themselves his newest target. With the ship falling apart, and time running out, Janeway may have to abandon Voyager if they are to survive. 

2. Scorpion (Season 3, Episode 26)

In the third season finale  "Scorpion"  comes face-to-face with the Borg Collective for the first time after they discover that their territory is too big to go around on their journey home. But when they discover a corridor devoid of Borg ships they at first think it's good news. Until they discover an even bigger threat: a new race of inter-dimensional beings known as Species 8472, who are destroying the Borg, and threaten Voyager as well. 

But when The Doctor develops a biological weapon capable of defeating 8472, Janeway hatches a plan to exploit the conflict between the two warring species. Though the crew is conflicted, Janeway hopes to form an alliance with the Borg, and give them the weapon that could defeat 8472. But will Janeway really help the Federation's greatest enemy defeat the only ones who have ever been able to stop them?

1. Blink Of An Eye (Season 6, Episode 12)

In Season 6's "Blink Of An Eye"  Voyager encounters a strange planet where time passes at an increased rate where one second for Voyager is nearly a day on the planet. Approaching to take a closer look, Voyager is pulled into its orbit and trapped there, disrupting the planet's natural energy field, and causing frequent seismic disruptions on the surface. Below, the people who live on the planet are in awe at the shining new star in their night's sky, not realizing that it's Voyager. 

Over the next thousand years, the planet's civilization evolves, while just days pass aboard the ship, and Voyager — which they called "the sky ship" slowly becomes part of their society's mythology. But when a brave astronaut from the planet comes to visit (guest star Daniel Dae Kim), he's suddenly confronted with the reality that his childhood heroes aren't at all what he imagined.

Screen Rant

12 star trek female villains ranked, worst to best.

Star Trek has a long list of female villains that have faced off against Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and Sisko, but who's the best at being the worst?

• The best Star Trek female villains include complex characters like the Intendant and the Female Changeling.
• The Female Romulan Commander and Alixus offer early examples of intriguing female villains in Star Trek.
• While some female villains like the Borg Queen excel, others like Seska from Voyager fall short of their potential.

While the canon of iconic Star Trek antagonists can often feel like an exclusive boy's club, many of the franchise's best villains have been complex female characters. For nearly 60 years, many of the best known villains in Star Trek movies and TV shows have been male, from Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) to Shinzon (Tom Hardy). Looking back, it feels quite regressive, and speaks to a wider issue with how women were written in early Star Trek .

For example, the notorious Star Trek: The Original Series finale "Turnabout Intruder" features Dr. Janice Lester (Sandra Smith), who was presented as a hysterical woman scorned, rather than a multi-layered and complex villain. However, even in those early days, there were one or two memorable female villains that could hold their own against Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). While Star Trek 's movie villains have been predominantly male, the TV shows of the 1990s and 2020s introduced some truly iconic recurring female villains to the franchise .

Every Major Star Trek Villain Species, Ranked

12 alixus (gail strickland), star trek: ds9, season 2, episode 15, "paradise".

The impact of Alixus (Gail Strickland) is relatively minor. However, Alixus is an incredibly compelling Star Trek: Deep Space Nine villain who deserves to sit alongside some franchise greats. In DS9 season 2, episode 15, "Paradise", Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) are stranded on a planet that has abandoned technology in favor of a more simple life. Alixus is the leader of this traditionalist community, but Sisko and O'Brien soon unearth the darkness at its core. Alixus was a Federation scientist who had theorized that a return to nature would be better for humanity in the long run.

Gail Strickland had previously appeared with Avery Brooks in Spenser: For Hire .

To prove her point, she sabotaged the colony ship, the SS Santa Maria, forcing it to crash-land on a remote planet. Alixus installed a duonetic field generator that prevented all technology from operating, forcing the colonists to live by her new vision. To prove her thesis, she resorted to cruel punishments and stood by and let her colonists die from easily curable ailments. Gail Strickland plays Alixys with such nuance, transforming "Paradise" from a filler episode into an underrated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine classic . Her electric scenes with Sisko foreshadow the DS9 captain's later conflicts with other zealots.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, also known as DS9, is the fourth series in the long-running Sci-Fi franchise, Star Trek. DS9 was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, and stars Avery Brooks, René Auberjonois, Terry Farrell, and Cirroc Lofton. This particular series follows a group of individuals in a space station near a planet called Bajor.

11 Seska (Martha Hackett)

Star trek: voyager, seasons 1 to 3.

Star Trek: Voyager 's Seska (Martha Hackett) was a fantastic idea for a character, but very poorly executed. Introduced as one of the secondary Maquis crew members of the Valjean, it quickly became clear that Seska was hiding something. Not only did Seska want Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) to lead a mutiny against Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), she was also a Cardassian spy in disguise. These two elements combined ended up confusing Seska's character in Voyager , as an outnumbered Cardassian would surely have set their sights on an alliance with Janeway, not the Maquis .

Martha Hackett previously played the Romulan Sub-commander T'Rul in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's season 3 premiere "The Search, Parts I & II".

Eventually, Seska left the USS Voyager, to make an alliance with the Kazon in an attempt to capture the ship. The motivations for Seska's plan to capture Voyager were seemingly rooted in her disappointment at being scorned by her former lover, Chakotay. Disappointingly, one of Star Trek: Voyager 's most interesting villains was reduced to the level of Captain Kirk's evil ex-girlfriend, Janice Lester . The most successful plot by Seska was only discovered after she'd died, when a holodeck simulation of a Maquis mutiny turned into a deadly trap in Voyager season 3, episode 25, "Worst Case Scenario".

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. 

10 Asencia, The Vindicator (Jameela Jamil)

Star trek: prodigy season 1.

Janeway's ship was once again infiltrated by an enemy alien in Star Trek: Prodigy season 1. Masquerading as a Trill ensign, Asencia helped track the USS Protostar, in the hopes of activating its deadly Living Construct weapon and destroying Starfleet. Asencia's true identity was discovered after Janeway and the USS Dauntless rescued the Diviner (John Noble). Hoping that the two Vau N'AKat could work together, Asencia was shocked when the Diviner chose his daughter Gwyndala (Ella Purnell) over their plan to destroy Starfleet. In the Prodigy season 1 finale, Asencia successfully activated the Living Construct and returned to her own time .

Asencia's story will presumably continue in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 , as Admiral Janeway heads into the alternate future to rescue Captain Chakotay and his crew from the Vau N'Akat. It's therefore hard to rank Asencia higher until her story plays out in full. However, judging by the ruthlessness and cunning that Asencia displayed in Prodigy season 1, it's clear that Janeway and the crew of the USS Voyager-A will have their work cut out for them.

Star Trek: Prodigy

Star Trek: Prodigy is the first TV series in the Star Trek franchise marketed toward children, and one of the few animated series in the franchise. The story follows a group of young aliens who find a stolen Starfleet ship and use it to escape from the Tars Lamora prison colony where they are all held captive. Working together with the help of a holographic Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), the new crew of the USS Protostar must find their way back to the Alpha Quadrant to warn the Federation of the deadly threat that is pursuing them.

9 Female Romulan Commander (Joanne Linville)

Star trek: the original series, season 3, episode 4, "the enterprise incident".

In Star Trek: The Original Series , season 2, episode 4, "The Enterprise Incident", Captain Kirk is tasked with stealing a Romulan cloaking device . Part of the plan requires Lt. Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to seduce an unnamed Female Romulan Commander (Joanna Linville), who is attracted to the Vulcan. However, unlike Seska in Star Trek: Voyager , the Female Romulan Commander's ambitions lie far beyond romantic interests. She believes that capturing the USS Enterprise for the Romulan Star Empire will be a boon for her career progression, and wants Spock to serve alongside her.

Years after the events of "The Enterprise Incident", the Federation was banned from developing cloaking technology thanks to the Treaty of Algeron.

Having seemingly turned on Kirk and even killed him in a fight, Spock keeps the Female Romulan Commander interested while Kirk infiltrates the ship. However, the Commander saw through the ruse and beamed aboard the Enterprise to try and take it by force, or have it destroyed. The plan to steal the USS Enterprise is foiled, and the Female Romulan Commander is left embarrassed by falling for Kirk and Spock's fight and losing the cloaking device to the Federation. Interestingly, Spock doesn't throw the Female Romulan Commander into the brig, and instead takes her to standard quarters, implying his seduction wasn't all pretend.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.

8 Lursa and B'Etor Duras (Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh)

Star trek: tng, ds9 and star trek generations.

The House of Duras were sworn enemies of Worf, Son of Mogh (Michael Dorn) in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . After Worf killed the House's patriarch in TNG season 4, episode 7, "Reunion", Duras' sisters Lursa (Barbara March) and B'Etor (Gwynyth Walsh) were left seeking vengeance. The House of Duras tried to instigate a Klingon Civil War, and even provided a Bajoran terrorist with the explosives needed to destroy the wormhole in DS9 season 1. Following the aborted Klingon Civil War, the Duras sisters effectively became guns for hire, placing them in the orbit of Dr. Tolian Soren (Malcolm McDowell) in Star Trek Generations .

Star Trek Generations was a disappointing end for the Duras Sisters, as they never really got a final confrontation with Worf . Sidelined as Soran's muscle, the sisters and their Klingon crew did manage to destroy the USS Enterprise-D, but their own ship was destroyed soon after. Weirdly, Generations never lingered on what a big deal this would have been for Worf, given how the House of Duras had been behind many of his issues with the Klingon Empire. This dissatisfying ending means that the Duras Sisters can't make it into the top tier of female Star Trek villains.

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.

7 Sela (Denise Crosby)

Star trek: the next generation, "redemption" and "unification".

Sela was the Romulan daughter of Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), who spent years working for the intelligence services. Sela's first notable operations against the Federation were brainwashing Lt. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) to assassinate Klingon governor Vagh (Edward Wiley) in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Mind's Eye". Sela tried again to destabilize relations between the Klingon Empire and the Federation when she supported the Duras Sisters' attempt to take control of the Klingon Empire. Sela's plans were foiled by Captain Picard and a Starfleet armada that prevented Romulan reinforcements from entering Klingon space .

Denise Crosby conceived the character of Sela as a means to return to Star Trek: The Next Generation after enjoying the experience of making "Yesterday's Enterprise".

Sela became the mastermind behind an attempted Romulan invasion of Vulcan, by manipulating Ambassador Spock's reunification mission. Using a holographic duplicate of Spock, Sela hoped to convince the Federation that an incoming fleet of Vulcan ships contained a Romulan peace envoy, and not an invasion force. Picard, Data, and Spock foiled Sela's plan, and she was incapacitated with a Vulcan nerve pinch, never to be heard from again. It was an ignominious end for Star Trek: The Next Generation 's best Romulan villain.

Spock’s Star Trek TOS Romance Explains His TNG Vulcan & Romulan Dream

6 valeris (kim cattrall), star trek vi: the undiscovered country.

Lt. Valeris (Kim Cattrall) is a great Star Trek villain because there's a genuine emotional impact on the crew of the USS Enterprise-A. It may have been better if Saavik betrayed Spock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , but the weight of Valeris' betrayal is still impactful. Valeris' cold Vulcan logic dictated that peace with the Klingons was illogical , which is why she joined the Khitomer Conspiracy. Spock's protégé helped to frame Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) for political assassination, and deliberately hindered the investigation.

While Gene Roddenberry objected to her inclusion, Saavik was actually written out of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country because Kirstie Alley declined to return to the role.

Valeris' coldness makes her quite a compelling Star Trek villain, as she genuinely believes her many crimes are based on logic. It's a fascinating insight into how interpretations of logic can differ from Vulcan to Vulcan, as proved by Spock and Valeris' clash in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Interrogated by Kirk and forced to endure a controversial mind meld with Spock, Valeris finally revealed the identities of the conspirators, and was taken to the Khitomer Conference to publicly unmask the conspiracy.

5 Vadic (Amanda Plummer)

Star trek: picard season 3.

Vadic was one of the most unpredictable foes ever faced by Admiral Jean-Luc Picard. A Changeling tasked with delivering Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) to the Borg Queen (Alice Krige), Vadic took some big swings to achieve her goals in Star Trek: Picard season 3. Vadic's awesome ship, the Shrike, almost destroyed the USS Titan-A and its crew during their multiple skirmishes in the course of Picard season 3 . Vadic even found time to kidnap Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) in an attempt to secure the assistance of Captain William T Riker (Jonathan Frakes).

Amanda Plummer is the daughter of Christopher Plummer, who played the villainous General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .

It's a testament to Amanda Plummer's unique portrayal of a Star Trek villain that it wasn't immediately clear that Vadic was a Changeling . The scenes in "Dominion" in which Vadic described the brutal treatment of Changeling prisoners during the Dominion War were beautifully performed by Plummer, adding depth to Star Trek: Picard season 3's villain . It even elicited a degree of sympathy, but Vadic soon lost that when she began executing members of the USS Titan-A's crew. Eventually, she was blown out into space by Jack Crasher, where, ironically, her Changeling body solidified then exploded into pieces.

Star Trek: Picard

After starring in Star Trek: The Next Generation for seven seasons and various other Star Trek projects, Patrick Stewart is back as Jean-Luc Picard. Star Trek: Picard focuses on a retired Picard who is living on his family vineyard as he struggles to cope with the death of Data and the destruction of Romulus. But before too long, Picard is pulled back into the action. The series also brings back fan-favorite characters from the Star Trek franchise, such as Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), Worf (Michael Dorn), and William Riker (Jonathan Frakes).

4 The Intendant (Nana Visitor)

Star trek: deep space nine (various).

The Intendant, the Mirror Universe variant of Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) is one of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's most memorable villains. DS9 brought back the Mirror Universe in a big way, and the Intendant played a key role in each return visit. Kira's dark opposite was effectively the Gul Dukat of the Mirror Universe's Terok Nor, ruling the station with intimidation, manipulation, and violence. She was assisted in her tyrannical role of the station by Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson), who opposed some of the Intendant's more holistic methods .

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine producer Michael Piller had been rejecting Mirror Universe episodes since his days on Star Trek: The Next Generation . However, he and Ira Steven Behr finally figured out that the most interesting story to tell would be the aftermath of the fall of the Terran Empire, as seen in DS9 's Mirror Universe episodes.

The Intendant eventually lost control over the Terran rebels, thanks to various Mirror Universe incursions by Kira and Captain Sisko . This led to her losing her position, and being imprisoned aboard Regent Worf's flagship in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 7. Hoping to win favor with Worf, the Intendant orchestrated a plot to have the flagship fitted with a stolen cloaking device. However, the cloak was sabotaged, leaving the flagship open to attack from the Terran rebels, striking another blow against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, and giving the former Intendant a chance to escape with her life.

3 Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher)

Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher) was one of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's most fascinating characters. First introduced in the DS9 season 1 finale, Vedek Winn was a religious zealot who objected to Sisko's closeness to the Bajoran Prophets. This jealousy of Sisko eventually poisoned the calculating religious leader even further, pushing her to more and more extreme lengths to bring herself closer to her gods. Played by Oscar winning actress Louise Fletcher , Kai Winn's descent into hell across seven seasons of DS9 was compulsive viewing.

Louise Fletcher and Michelle Yeoh are the only two Star Trek stars to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.

While Kai Winn had a redemption of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's finale, it was still rooted in the cowardice and pettiness of her character. When she realized that the Pah wraiths wanted Gul Dukat as their emissary and not her, she decided to put her faith back in Sisko. While that saved Bajor from destruction, it's hard to ignore that Kai Winn's motivations were once again rooted in Bajor's higher beings ignoring her.

2 The Female Changeling (Salome Jens)

The Female Changeling (Salome Jens) was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's most interesting female villain . The spokesperson for the Dominion Founders, she was a master manipulator, and a steely villain with little regard for the "solids". The Female Changeling's attempts to manipulate Constable Odo (René Auberjonois) were compelling viewing, and ultimately solidified the Constable's loyalty to his friends aboard DS9. Seen as a god by the Vorta, the Female Changeling also appeared to delight in manipulating Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs) by playing him off against the Breen in the latter stages of DS9 's Dominion War .

Salome Jens also played the First Humanoid, now referred to as a Progenitor, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "The Chase", which Star Trek: Discovery season 5 is a sequel to.

Salome Jens' performance as the Female Changeling was utterly compelling, delivering her lines with an icy sense of superiority befitting a species that set themselves up as gods. When the Dominion War ended in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine finale, the Female Changeling was taken into custody for her multiple war crimes. However, despite Odo's attempts to educate his people to move past the Female Changeling's ideology, those like Vadic still wanted to destroy the Solids following the Dominion War.

1 The Borg Queen (Alice Krige)

Star trek: first contact, voyager, picard.

Introduced in Star Trek: First Contact , the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) is the greatest female villain that the franchise has produced . Unlike her drones, Star Trek 's Borg Queen had a personality, and used that to seduce others into joining the Collective. Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) seemingly fell under the Borg Queen's spell in First Contact , but was merely distracting her so he could avert the Collective's plan to sabotage the Phoenix's first warp flight. The Borg Queen's consciousness was stored elsewhere, able to be downloaded into a new body, which is why other actress have played the role originated by Krige.

Each Borg Queen performer has brought something new to the character, the most notable being Annie Wersching and Alison Pill's partnership in Star Trek: Picard season 2 . Their co-dependent relationship revealed new information about the Borg Queen that humanized her somewhat. Through her connection to the Queen, Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) discovered that the Borg long for connection, and the Queen is ultimately lonely. Rather than being a retcon, this was a callback to the Queen's previous relationships with Data and Picard, confirming that they were the only matches for Star Trek 's most enduring female villain.

Star Trek: First Contact is available to stream on Max.