Thoughts: For Voyager's first real season finale, it just felt pretty average to me, and so I rated it accordingly. We'll get a much better finale at the end of Season 4.

Thoughts: Despite the title of the episode, the alien swarm feels much more like the B-plot. The real story here is the Doctor's program degrading and how they eventually manage to fix it.

Thoughts: The problem with Ferengi episodes is that they are usually comedies, and too often it seems like the only type of comedy that Star Trek is familiar with is farce. Farce has a very fine line between humorous and obvious/insulting, and sometimes the Ferengi cross that line.

Thoughts: I gave this one 3½ stars because I felt it was just a touch above average.

Thoughts: I don't mind this episode as much as the other people who rated this, apparently. I liked that, at the end, Janeway and Chakotay's positions have been swapped, with Janeway having faith in the spiritual belief and Chakotay preferring science.

Thoughts: Others have rated this average or even below-average, but I thought it was a good story, and I thought Jennifer Lien (Kes) did a wonderful job with it. Oh, I forgot about the opening teaser. I never, EVER want to see Neelix make that face EVER AGAIN. 🤮

Thoughts: This episode has a really awkward ending, with some light jazz as the ship flies away, that just makes you go, "Oh, okay then." Besides that, the Tak Tak are stupid, the science is dubious, and the CGI is unfortunately not great. I also find it hilarious that Neelix mysteriously disappears less than 15 minutes into the episode and we never get any confirmation that he survived the ordeal. Ha! That makes the last scene all the more awkward – it might have been nice for Janeway to see Neelix alive and well again and make some remark acknowledging that she was worried about him.

Thoughts: This episode makes kind of a big deal of the Nekrit Expanse, saying it's a "vast territory" and "no one knows much about it." The expanse is ominous looking, with dark purple clouds and plasma storms. Apparently, the region is so unstable that it's impossible to chart it. And yet, it will be another four episodes before it's even mentioned again, and then it's really only an afterthought – it has nothing to do with the main story. It's unclear if Voyager waited to enter the expanse or if they started traveling through it in the very next episode, but the more likely explanation is that the writers just forgot about it.

Thoughts: It has all the makings of a fun time-hijinks episode, but then the story takes a weird turn and, to me, just falls flat on its face. Why do I say that? Well, Spoiler » because there's no reason for many of the scenes. First it's time loops, then it's the Phage, then the Doctor murders Janeway, and you want it all to make sense somehow in the end, but the explanation is just, "Oh, I dunno, magic alien is making Janeway hallucinate because he wants to eat her, or whatever." The reveal cheapens everything that came before it.

Thoughts: I'm really not sure why the Doctor thought using the holodeck for sex was such a novel idea. Let's be honest here.

Thoughts: We open with Chakotay in a shuttle with a crewmember we've never seen before, so obviously she's not going to make it past 5 minutes into the episode. Womp womp! (Okay, technically she had a minor role in "Future's End" but we knew she was not long for this world.)

Since this is the first Borg episode of the series, I need to talk about how this series nerfs and humanizes the Borg to an extent that I don't care for. That is to say, Star Trek: Voyager manages to weaken the Borg and make them more relatable, even pitiable in some cases. Yes, The Next Generation did something similar with Hugh in TNG 5x23: I Borg, but in that story there was always an ominous undertone of danger and serious concern for even having the drone on board the Enterprise. In the coming seasons of Voyager, Janeway will casually keep a 29th-century pet Borg on the ship and teach it to do tricks, she'll adopt some Borg kids for the fun of it, and... well, she'll do something so ridiculous I won't mention it here, so as not to spoil the surprise.

Anyway, in this episode, we have a group of humanized ex-Borgs, which I can let pass in this case since it is sort of the Borg "warm-up episode."

Thoughts: I don't particularly like this episode, even though others have rated it as above average. To me, it's all manufactured drama. The Doctor creates this hilariously perfect family for himself on a whim, so B'Elanna decides to make it more "real" by going to the opposite extreme. (By the way, if the Doctor's holographic wife sounds familiar, it might be because you've heard her as the voice of Francine on American Dad!) Anyway, while the Doctor ineptly tries to wrangle his family, there's barely a B-plot about some weird space phenomenon, but it doesn't go anywhere. It only serves as a way for the Doctor to misplace his frustration over his family onto Tom Paris, instead. The end of this episode is heart-wrenching, and I'm sure that the Doctor has learned a valuable lesson about the human condition, but again, this is a holographic family... we consider the Doctor to be sentient because he has grown beyond his programming, but that doesn't mean every hologram has free will. The Doctor's family is a computer program, nothing more. We can see that when B'Elanna easily reprograms them from one extreme to another. Since the family isn't real, the episode fails to strike a chord with me.

Overall, I think the idea here would have been better served if the Doctor's family had been a running subplot over several episodes, rather than just cramming it all into one. If the family's changes had been more gradual instead of comically abrupt, we might have had more time to come to appreciate the characters and, thus, been more emotional about the tragic end of this story.

Thoughts: This is the second episode in a row that I am rating lower than most. I'm not trying to be overly-critical here – I don't think this is a bad episode, but it's only just average in my eyes. I'm willing to learn and understand what about this episode is so popular. One thing I don't like, in general, is when a Trek episode sort of flippantly writes things that have pretty huge implications for our past. I'm reminded of the character of Flint from The Original Series... I'm not a fan of the idea that Trek just decided that some of the most famous names in Earth history were actually all just one immortal dude. And here, in this episode, I feel like someone just said "dinosaurs in space!" and ran with it. I will admit that the episode has a strong political message, which is what makes some of the best episodes of Star Trek, but I just can't get over the silly premise they came up with to present that message.

Thoughts: This two-part story is definitely one of the best Voyager has to offer. But I would be remiss if I didn't point out that it marks the beginning of the series' nerfing of the Borg. Spoiler » Janeway forms an ALLIANCE with the Borg? Just... *sigh*... no. She even says at one point, "we have them over a barrel"... because the story conveniently invented a species even MORE powerful than the Borg! (But don't worry, they'll get nerfed later, too.) It's an interesting concept, I just wish the Borg had held on to their forbidding, unstoppable evil force vibe. Even if the Borg were desperate since they were losing a war, I just can't imagine them negotiating like they do here.