Retro Review: Caretaker
10 min readWhile searching for a lost Maquis ship, Voyager encounters a displacement wave that throws the vessel 70,000 light years from Federation space.
Plot Summary: When a Maquis ship disappears in the Badlands, Captain Kathryn Janeway recruits Tom Paris – a onetime Starfleet officer now in prison for joining the Maquis after being courtmartialed – to help her track the missing vessel. But Voyager encounters the same energy wave that overcame the Maquis ship, and the crew finds itself deep in the Delta Quadrant. Many crewmembers die from the displacement and Ensign Harry Kim disappears after the crew is abducted and scanned on a nearby array. The Emergency Medical Hologram treats their injuries while Janeway suggests to Chakotay, the captain of the Maquis ship, that they work together to find their missing crewmembers and a way back to the Alpha Quadrant. Chakotay discovers that his crewmember Tuvok has been working undercover for Janeway, but puts his anger aside to search for Kim and Maquis engineer B’Elanna Torres, who have been sent beneath the surface of a nearby planet. There, a race called the Ocampa receives food and energy by a Caretaker from the array. Determined to escape, Torres finds sympathetic Ocampa who promise to help her and Kim reach the surface. Meanwhile, Voyager comes across a trader named Neelix who offers to help find the missing crewmembers, but when Neelix introduces the crew to aliens called the Kazon on the barren surface of the Ocampa planet, Janeway quickly discovers that he only wanted to rescue an Ocampa named Kes whom Kazon leader Jabin has taken prisoner. Indebted to Voyager’s crew, Kes helps them enter the underground city, where they find Torres and Kim in the ancient tunnels that lead to the planet’s surface. But the Caretaker is sealing the tunnels, and Tuvok hypothesizes that he must be dying, trying to protect the Ocampa from the Kazon above. Once Paris has rescued the injured Chakotay so the crew can beam away, Janeway visits the array in the hope of using it to return to the Alpha Quadrant, but the Caretaker insists that it must be destroyed or the Kazon will use it to exterminate the Ocampa. After beaming his crew to Voyager, Chakotay defends the starship from a Kazon attack by flying his own ship into the Ocampa vessel. Unwilling to risk the deaths of all the Ocampa, Janeway blows up the array, stranding Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. She then invites Chakotay’s crew to join hers and makes Paris the new helm officer for the long journey home.
Analysis: Last winter my sister asked me whether I’d read a novel called Station Eleven, in which a quote from Star Trek: Voyager plays an important role. I had never heard of it. For years I’d avoided not only Voyager itself, but anything connected to the show. I had no intention of reading Station Eleven, but when I later needed a book to occupy me for a long flight, I said what the heck. I was sure it wouldn’t have much to do with Voyager anyway. The novel is set on an Earth that has been ravaged by a pandemic, where things once familiar have been utterly changed; the story focuses on a troupe of actors whose lead caravan and leading lady have a line from Voyager painted and tattooed upon them, “Survival is insufficient.” I’d been debating whether I was ready to watch the show again, whether I was capable of reviewing it fairly, and I found this novel about loss and transformation to be the perfect metaphor for thinking about it. I was, shall we say, over-involved with Voyager when it aired. For five years, I ran Kate Mulgrew’s official fan club. I’d met or interviewed nearly every member of the cast and crew. During the final season, when I was extremely bitter at how the series was concluding, I was angry at nearly all of them. I realize now that that was unfair, that no one person bears responsibility for the direction of a TV show, that there were network heads and producers and all sorts of people meddling, that Mulgrew herself had no control over Janeway’s arc. Watching “Caretaker” again now, I feel only gratitude for what Voyager gave me. I don’t want to pretend that I can be entirely objective, since running her fan club changed my life – I met some of my best friends because of it, I’m still close with several of the members, all of whom are extraordinary people. And, since I became a fan of Jeri Ryan once I could separate her from the catsuit – I loved her on Boston Public and Shark and Dark Skies when I finally caught up – I am resolved that this time around, I am not going to resent Seven of Nine. To borrow a metaphor from Station Eleven, I am going to stop dreaming of the old world. Or, to borrow a metaphor from Voyager itself (sorry about that “Persistence of Vision” review, Jeri Taylor), I am going to stop wishing for the Voyager I always wanted it to be and accept it for what it is.
I’d watched “Caretaker” half a dozen times during the show’s first couple of years on the air, yet not for more than a decade since. Rewatching now, I realize I’d forgotten all about lots of small and large things. I didn’t remember the Star Wars style opening explaining the Maquis, even echoing A New Hope with the little rebel ship being chased by the much bigger enemy warship. It’s curious that the series starts not with the Starfleet officers but with the Maquis, then immediately shifts our sympathies to Tom Paris, who’s both ex-Maquis and ex-Starfleet, an all-around bad boy (and I forgot how good looking Robert Duncan McNeill was). All the attention on Tom Paris used to bother me, especially by those who didn’t think the show was doing right by him, taming him and turning him into a proper Starfleet officer, but I can see now that they were right: Paris and Chakotay both become awfully bland awfully quickly. My concern was that if subordinate (male) officers were constantly challenging the first female captain who ever got more than one episode’s worth of screen time, it would make her look bad, but Janeway never had any trouble holding her own among them – her quick retorts to Paris, her “at ease, Mr. Kim, before you sprain something,” her getting in Chakotay’s face when he looked like he might try to punch Tuvok and Paris at the same time for betraying him – and the show had a different kind of energy early on, when it seemed like everyone might be a Starfleet rebel (possibly even Janeway to some degree, integrating a Maquis crew with whom she must have had a degree of sympathy to accept so easily). Anyway, it’s interesting that Paris is thrown at us so quickly and through him we get to know so many other characters – Kim, Chakotay, even the Doctor. Every person who treats Tom really badly is dead within the first fifteen minutes of the show. Evidently someone thought he’d be our hero. There’s quite a bit too much telling instead of showing, soon-to-be-dead pilot Stadi bragging about Voyager’s blueprints, Torres admitting to a near-stranger that she feels she can’t control her Klingon half, Chakotay narrating resentments against Tuvok and Paris that are apparent without words. Kim’s declaration that he doesn’t need anyone else to pick his friends for him is extremely reminiscent of another Harry declaring to Draco Malfoy in children’s book style that he’ll stick with Ron Weasley, not exactly sophisticated characterization or storytelling.
But these are small sins compared to those of “Encounter at Farpoint,” with which “Caretaker” compares extremely favorably. Janeway! Without my rose-colored blinders on, I can see the things many people complained about – the three changes of hairstyle in this single episode, the hands-on-hips defensive gesture and the hands-behind-back stiffness when walking, the early emphasis on her love life (she wriggles suggestively when she tells Mark he never bothers her except the way she loves to be bothered – try to picture Picard or Sisko doing that in uniform). She looks kind of embarrassed when she finds out the Caretaker thinks they’ll all feel comfortable at an old-fashioned hoe-down, something the Caretaker probably took out of her Indiana-influenced upbringing since he didn’t get it from Paris, Kim, Vorik, et al (unless one of them was a fan of Ray Bradbury or The Twilight Zone – come on, why is Caretaker wasting energy on holograms when he’s desperate and near death?). Yet I feel completely justified in my love at first sight. We as a culture are horrible to powerful women – look right now at the things being written about Hillary Clinton and Michele Bachmann regardless of politics, it’s their demeanor and hairstyles and neck wrinkles and family priorities under constant scrutiny – so given that she stepped in to the role relatively last-minute, replacing Genevieve Bujold, it’s a miracle how perfectly Mulgrew nails the balance of warmth and sensitivity with toughness and resolve. “I don’t know what you need, and frankly, I don’t care.” “‘Ma’am’ is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer ‘captain’.” “I’m not willing to trade the lives of the Ocampa for our convenience.” “You are speaking to a member of my crew.” “I need a better description than that, Mister Kim!” Looking silently pleased, all proud body language when Kes tells the Ocampa it’s time they start thinking for themselves. If Janeway’s a little too motherly about Kim, she makes up for it with the body block she throws Chakotay when he’s about to get in Paris’s face. Right from the start she reminds me of the things I love most about Kirk, Picard, and Sisko – going with her gut, taking counsel from both intimates and outsiders, never forgetting the importance of family and friends. If life in the Delta Quadrant eventually wears some of that down, who can blame her, really?
That we now know Chakotay will remain a half-scripted enigma doesn’t make him less intriguing when he starts out that way. He blows up his own ship without Janeway even asking, to protect the lives of his own crew and hers, trusting Paris to rescue himself and everyone else. We’re told that he joined the Maquis when the Cardassians threatened his people, turning his back on Starfleet, yet he agrees to work with Janeway after a single request, he puts down his weapon because she asks, he decides to become her first officer and integrate his crew with hers before he has any sense of what she’s like as a person, even if he agrees with her decision to sacrifice a quick trip home to save the Ocampa. Does he miss Starfleet? Does he just like the way Janeway thinks? He behaves like her first officer before he has any reason to suspect she’ll offer him anything besides lodgings in her brig. Though I think crew tension would have made for better dialogue and storylines later in the show, and I wish his Native American heritage had been explored in something resembling depth, I like the idea that Chakotay is a man who can put his resentments behind him. Strangely, Tuvok is the one with all the snark – he mocks Neelix outright, telling him to have a bath, being sarcastic about Neelix’s delight over the food replicator – he seems less Vulcan than Spock, who’s half-human. It’s not immediately clear how close he and Janeway are, despite the fact that she knows his family; after all, she talked to Kim’s mother, and she served under Paris’s father. At this stage Neelix is mostly a caricature and it’s hard to tell whether Kes will be interesting or just whimsical, while Torres has all the worst Klingon attributes without any of the positive ones on display – are we all tired of growling and posturing from Klingons at this stage? Like Neelix, the Doctor suffers from caricature, being used more for comic relief than drama during what could be grim medical scenes, but the potential for the character (and Picardo’s skill as an actor) shows up early: as an artificial person confined by his programming, he combines the struggles of both Data and Odo.
When I first reviewed this show, I said, and I quote, “The only drawback I can see from here is the possibility that this show will become too invested in its hung-hero premise, namely: their ostensible goal in life is to get home, but if they get home, then the series is over, so they can’t do that. I don’t want to watch a bunch of episodes about them trying and failing and being sad and comforting one another. I want to watch them growing and exploring, making new lives, deciding that the future is more exciting than the past. That’s what Star Trek is all about.” I feel that this was a valid concern because a lot of my least-favorite episodes center around that circularity, the crew wanting to get home, moping because they can’t, being angry at whomever they blame for this fate – usually Janeway, and it’s particularly intolerable in stories like “Night” when she too blames herself and refuses even to emerge from her quarters. Yet it’s also hard not to think when the ship stops so often that they’re dawdling, losing sight of the promise to get home while being distracted by every shiny planet and phenomenon they pass. Perhaps as a viewer I failed to embrace the adventure as much as the crew did at times. I want to do better this time around. I will do better this time around, because all the disappointments are in the past. I just want to relive the ride.
About The Author
I’ve never been a huge fan of _Voyager_, and indeed have never watched the series beginning to end without skipping. I’ve watched a sort of “good parts” version thanks to Netflix, having given up on the series in its original run after “Threshold”, the worst Star Trek episode ever.
But “Caretaker”? I liked a **lot**. “Caretaker” feels like someone remembered that _Star Trek_ is about more than its own mythos, and thought about an actually interesting science fiction story they could do, about a stranded crew (or two), and the being who strands them for its own necessities. As pilots go, I thought it was very strong…and far stronger than most of the next three seasons!
Voyager was a decent show when Michael Piller was in charge the first few seasons. Once he stepped aside and Brannon Bragga took over then the show became wooden and full of unbearable technobabble as a plot device.
The series finale was the product of Bragga’s inexcusable lazy writing and allowed future Janeway to get the ship home faster by cheating, lying and stealing…..and then gave the audience no resolution whatsoever as to what would happen to these characters once they returned home.
I feel bad for you having to spend the next three and a half years reviewing this dull mess of a show. Will you need more caffeine to keep you awake?
At least it had promise at the beginning. At least the visual style and special effects were top notch. At least there was the occasional interesting episode.
Enterprise deserved seven years. Voyager did not.
I agree for the most part butt there were a few great episodes later on. Overall, I’m not much of a Voyager fan. Just watched Year of Hell though. That two-parter is fantastic.
I haven’t seen the Michael McKean as a clown episode in nearly 20 years, but I remember being very impressed at the time. People on the message boards now seem to think it stunk. I need to revisit it.
And I did enjoy the Q episodes.
Too bad Ronald D. Moore wasn’t in charge of this show from the very beginning! It really could have been great.
Voyager was DOA. It was a brain-dead series that never believed in its premise, its characters, or itself. It was a weekly train wreck churned out by people who clearly were just collecting paychecks. It was awash in embarrassingly fan-wankish concepts like 29th Century miracle tech, Borg-proof armor, “multi-vector attack mode”, and endless variations on time-travel. It neutered and ruined the Borg. Its captain was a genuine psychopath who led a Stepford crew that didn’t seem to care if they ever got home or not, which in turn manned an indestructible starship with limitless supplies of energy, weapons, and people. It was loathed by large swaths of the Trek fanbase, then and now.
Which makes it all the stranger that “Caretaker” was so wonderful. And it was. The pilot was exciting and thoughtful, easily the best of all of the Trek pilots after “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” themselves. The characters were interesting. The situation was fascinating. The promise was of a series unlike anything Trek had ever given us before. The night it first aired, I was convinced that this could very well be the best Trek show yet.
But I should have known better when, in the final scene, Chakotay and his Maquis crewmen were seen standing there in Starfleet uniforms.
Year of Hell was great — right up until the reset ending that negated the entire two hours. Everything reset to zero. No complications. No consequences. Two hours of explosions that ultimately meant nothing at all in the grander scheme of the show.
Textbook Voyager.
Year of Hell was what the entire SERIES should have looked like by that point. It was a glimpse into the vast potential this show had, the potential to be the most powerful and challenging Trek series of all. Instead, we got Delta Flyers and Leonardo da Vinci.
The interview Ron Moore gave around 2000 (a year after his very brief stint on Voyager), in which he talked at length about the creative problems with the series and dropped some very interesting hints about what the behind-the-scenes environment was like, was revelatory. I’ve always believed that much of what he did on Battlestar Galactica was very consciously a response to Voyager.
I’m sitting here thinking about Voyager. There are some real dogs of episodes and they happen early on. The idea that Janeway and Paris fall through a temporal fissure is interesting but the execution was stiff and unbelievable. We’ll get to it.
But here, there seems to be a couple of problems firstly, society’s expectation about women being different in charge than their comparable male counterparts. Can I imagine Picard or Sisko talking to lovers the way Kathryn talks to Mark? No. But Kirk, absolutely. I do not think that the Maquis should have been integrated into the crew quite the way that they were. Why should these people get Starfleet uniforms when they hadn’t earned them? Chakotay and Paris had, but Chakotay had resigned to join a para-military organization that could really only be described as terroristic and Paris was drummed out of the service. There should have been more struggles to fit in . . . not a Stepford crew. And the Seska plot, we’ll get to it, should’ve been told differently . . . not gotten with the Kazon so quickly.
Finally, and this has bothered me greatly for 20 years. The question of the Prime Directive and whether or not to destroy the Caretaker’s Array is pretty complicated. I am not convinced of her logic. Even if we go by her logic, could not explosives have been set next to the power core to destroy the array AFTER they were safely home? Yes, I know, no series. But somehow, like with Generations, a bit of dialogue could have made the difference. Caretaker, “I cannot allow this station to be taken by the Kazon. They will use it against the Ocampa. Help me.” Done. In asking for help, the Prime Directive would not have applied. (BT dubs, in Generations, if Lursa and B’Etor’s torpedoes had destroyed the shield array on the first shot, then the battle would make sense.)
In any case, I remember your reviews from 20 years ago and it will be interesting to see how they differ now knowing what we do about how the series will progress.
If I remember, he had a major falling out with Brannon Bragga over this.
They evidently made up, given all the DVD commentaries/extras they’ve done together the past 10 years.
I always felt sorry for Voyager. The Kazon arc went on too long, and the writing did get progressively worse as time went by. But the concept, the cast and production values, including the ship itself were very good, and The Caretaker highlighted all that potential. In some ways it was also a poisoned chalice that the series ran alongside DS9, because it highlighted Voyager’s weaker writing and underdeveloped characters. After DS9 ended, you started to wonder what was happening back in the Alpha Quadrant!
Some episodes like Eye Of The Needle, The 37s, The Thaw, Dreadnought, Futures End I/II Macrocosm, Worst Case Scenario, Scorpion I/II The Omega Directive, Message In A Bottle and The Good Sheppard are very well done. However the increasing technobabble, a seemingly blatant disregard of continuity and real science considerations harmed the quality of the show. Added to those, the Borg overload after 7 of 9 joined the ship, and overuse of the reset button preventing any proper character development and evolution, makes Voyager less than the sum of its parts on many fronts. – DS9 gained tight thoughtful multilayer writing from TNG. Voyager got the inexplicable space anomalies, poor time travel, “treknology tool of the week” to solve a problem and sidelined characters syndrome.
Voyager is a valid part of 24th Century / TNG era Trek. However you have to turn down your ability to spot attention to detail to enjoy it properly and ignore the problems. Only in the support materials (books, comics, the computer games) can its scope be fully appreciated. A damned shame.
Voyager’s premise did have promise, but by Seasons 5 and 6, it was more like a broke man’s TNG. By then, it was “Just get home already.” Having now seen the likes of Red Dwarf, Farscape, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, I see how Voyager could have done a lot better.
Did I include Stargate Universe on that list? I take that back. SGU was even worse than Voyager outside of the pilot being among the most epic 3 hours of television IMO. The Robert Picardo and David Hewlett cameo is the only other episode worth watching.
After DS9 ended, I also wondered what was going on in the Alpha Quadrant. And that was part of the problem with Voyager and Enterprise. We never saw what happened later (except a snippet in Nemesis) in the Alpha Quadrant and that was the most interesting setting. I think that’s one of the reasons the ratings declined on Voyager and then tanked on Enterprise. All these rich layers of history and cultures that had been developed in the Alpha Quadran with TNG and DS9, we just thrown away.
I really wish we could get a new TV Enterprise ship series that is set 20 years after the end of DS9 in the Alpha Quadrant. There’s still a lot out there to explore and build upon the past as well.
Well, Braga’s saving grace was Seven of Nine though – he wrote almost all her dialogue. Piller’s vision was more cohesive and the show was being true to its premise under his watch, but it still had growing pains before Jeri Taylor’s decision to embrace the adventure and lighten the show up in season 3. As a result, it’s perhaps a toss-up between seasons 4 and 5 as to what marks Voyager’s zenith, such as it is, but either way, Braga’s influence is all over the show by then.
Voyagers first 2 seasons were simply bad. The show started to improve from the 3d season and especially in the 4th. And i can’t understand why there is so much hate against Voyager. Perhaps coming from niners?
The thing that annoyed me the most about Star Trek: V’ger was its failure to take advantage of its premise: We’re not in the Alpha Quadrant anymore, all-new aliens! And what do we get? Romulans in “Unity,” “Eye of the Needle,” and “Message in a Bottle.” Klingons on the holodeck and a bunch of them on a generational ship. Holographic Cardassians. Even everyone’s favorite (not) Star Trek aliens, the Ferengi. And then there were the Kazon, who were essentially Klingons without the “honor” and with big piles of dog sh*t on their heads. And virtually every Delta Quadrant alien was your typical Wacky Forehead of the Week you could have seen on TNG.
I thought the prime directive only applied to non-warp societies. It’s hard to imagine it would cover the Caretaker, anyway, given that he clearly was not on his native planet.
I had no problem with Janeway being a woman, she was one of Voyager’s strengths. Thought they kind of created an impossible mission for themselves with this premise. How do you make up for losing Starfleet and all its infrastructure and characters for storytelling purposes? Not to mention familiar aliens. It put a tremendous burden on an in house writing team under (presumably) tight budget restrictions. For the most part, the “aliens of the week” were not as compelling as Klingons, Romulans or Borg. And the idea of them struggling along at survival’s bare edge disappeared early on.. That said, I did watch them all and was entertained.
It would have been so easy for them to somehow keep people’s memories, or something like a log bouy that got blasted from one timeline to another. Something to say “this mattered”.
I really liked False Profits, following up on the The Price. The rest I could have done without
However if the Alpha and Gamma quadrants are full of “Wacky Forehead of the Week” type characters, why wouldn’t the delta quadrant be?
Voyager plodded along. It started well in up until about Futures End.
Season 7 was painful, I didn’t like “Workforce” one bit, a clear rip-off of SG1’s “beneath the surface”. And by this point I’d tired of my favourite character (The Doctor), who had the only redeeming part of the episode. Episodes like Dark Frontier and Unimatrix Zero really didn’t appeal. But then I loved Time and Again, and The phage, and several other early episodes (especially The 37s). Dumping Neelix so close to the end was annoying too, but all of this paled in comparrision to the second worst finale going of Endgame. If they cut out the time travel bits, spent the last 3 or 4 episodes building up to a nice deus ex machina, and get them home by the midpoint of the double-episode, with enough time to have a “parting of the ways” style finale — not with flashbacks, as you couldn’t improve on DS9 — but something like Voyager landing on Earth, a few ceremonies, etc.
Or something more impacting — after a major loss with a dozen or so red-shirt deaths (including Carey, who sacrificed himself to save Be’lana rather than a senseless boring death), Janeway tires of it, jumps in the delta flyer, and makes a deal with the borg who have just lost their queen (remember the actress wasn’t available for the finale). Janeway willingly gives herself up to be a borg, in exchange for sending the crew home, and we see her become the new queen. Voyager gets towed back to Earth, and a shocked crew (and starfleet) are left with a dilema. And perhaps a TV-film a year or so later.
More generally I did not like the treatment of Chakotay or Tuvok – they should have killed one of them off instead of Kes – perhaps have Chakotay be forced to kill Tuvok, giving Harry room to be promoted and move to tactical, bringing in Seven at ops, giving Chakotay some guilt (perhaps leading to depression, maybe even suicide) and letting Kes grow slowly, without a mentor.
The reason I dislike Voyager more and more as the seasons progress is the wasted potential. It didn’t get tired, like TNG, it just never really took off.
> “Threshold”, the worst Star Trek episode ever.
Really? Spocks Brain? Profit and Lace? Move along home?
The Way To Eden? Masks? These Are The Voyages? The Omega Glory? Nazis in space? Shades of Grey?
> How do you make up for losing Starfleet and all its infrastructure and characters for storytelling purposes?
How many TOS episodes had starfleet even mentioned?
Give the books a try — there’s an imersive continuity stretching over the best part of 100 novels now, where events have a lasting impact from one book to the next, one series to the next, etc.
There won’t be any more “prime/24th century” trek, so this is the closet thing to “canon” there’ll be.
SGU was a good start, then struggled, but by the end of season 2 I think it had really started to pick itself up again.
All epic poetry by comparison.
Before “Threshold”, “The Royale” held the record as the Worst Star Trek Ever, but “Threshold” beat it handily to the bottom.
These are many shows where Starfleet officers, officials, ships or known installations are of importance, Ultimate Computer (Commodore Wesley, 4 Starfleet ships, Starfleet space station), Tribbles (K-7 space station, station manager Lurie?, Nilz Baris? federation official, Doomsday (Commodore Decker – Starfleet starship. Enterprise Incident – Kirk sent on secret Starfleet Mission, Amok Time- (3 starships mentioned, Starfleet Admiral denies Kirk’s request to go to Vulcan, T’Pau intervenes with Starfleet to save Kirk’s career , Courtmartial – Starfleet base, Commodore Stone, several officers; Deadly Years (Commodore Stone), Tholian Web, Man Trap ( the dig), Immunity Syndrome – USS Intrepid precedes Enterprise into amoeba; Galileo Seven – Federation ambassador aboard ship, Charlie X – starfleet ship and crew; Elaan of Troyius, Scotty asks Kirk to call Starfleet for help against Klingons; Tholian Web; USS Defiant; Obsession – Kirk’s Starfleet career main plot point; even The Apple; Kirk asks Spock how much Starfleet has invested in his training; Turnabout Intruder; Starfleet command requirements major plot point; Alternative Factor; Starfleet Admiral makes General Message to Enterprise regarding Galaxy wide gravity effects; Omega Glory – Captain Tracy and Starfleet regulations re. Prime Directive major plot point… many many more instances.
Brannon Bragga was banging Jeri Ryan.
Voyager was my Star Trek, it was fun and I enjoyed the characters, I followed it through its full seven years and loved every minute of it. I started watching it when I was in college, and then I had a family and a whole lot of changes and work, during watching it. When I catch an episode, it triggers something I was doing in my life at the time it aired, which is nice. My guess is that is why people watching the other shows, have almost the same thing, since they all do talk about what was going on in their lives when they were watching TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.
Fine pilot. But I wished they had found something better as main storyline than some alien life form and its lost mate. Loved the opening theme music. My rating: 7/10.