By BWilliams / 10:48, 6 December 2004 / Reviews - Products

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As the sixth season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER premiered, it headed into a season where it was the only STAR TREK series in town. The third NEXT GENERATION feature film, INSURRECTION, had been released to lukewarm reviews and box office response, while DEEP SPACE NINE had just completed a successful seven-year run, leaving the fourth series on its own on UPN with seemingly no other challengers to the TREK franchise. Already, rumors had begun of a fifth STAR TREK series set to replace VOYAGER upon its completion, and the rumors ran rampant from an all-Klingon series to a series spotlighting George Takei and the crew of the Excelsior, to even a further NEXT GENERATION spin-off set in the 24th century. But before such rumors coalesced into reality, executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had a large task on their hands: keeping VOYAGER alive and kicking and bringing the series to its inevitable conclusion. I remember this season fondly as the season where our local Time Warner Cable managed to pick up not only VOYAGER but also other UPN programs as part of the local WB station, until clearance issues with the city council made it possible for the city's UPN station to be incorporated into Time Warner Cable's programming.

Picking up where the fifth season left off, "Equinox, Part II" continued the cliffhanger story of Captain Janeway and the crew of Voyager encountering another Starfleet vessel with a corrupt captain and crew doing whatever it took to get themselves home, no matter what the cost to the ship, alien life forms, or duty to Starfleet. It soon becomes a race for survival as Janeway and the crew must not only negotiate with the alien life forms threatening them and the Equinox, but also convince Captain Rudolph Ransom (played with convincing menace by John Savage) of the error of his ways. In the hands of director David Livingston and writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, "Equinox, Part II" featured more spectacular visual effects that topped the previous season's efforts and a hard, brutal decision for Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) to make.

The follow-up episode "Survival Instinct" continued to flesh out Seven of Nine's (Jeri Ryan) character and background even further, by providing her with members of her own collective unit. When three humanoid visitors board Voyager, they present Seven with a most unique gift: a collection of Borg neuroprocessors from their days as part of the collective. From the pen of writer Ronald D. Moore, "Survival Instinct" gave Seven a deep inner conflict within herself: should she allow her fellow comrades to rejoin the Borg collective, or should they be free to explore their individual lives? The final act's denouement leaves a tragic, yet inspiring, impact upon the viewer. And returning guest star Vaughn Armstrong gives another rich, textured performance in his role as the former Two of Nine.

"One Small Step" was perhaps one of the most enjoyable and speculative episodes of VOYAGER's entire sixth season, offering viewers a look into the very near future. With the recent flurry of activity from NASA to explore Mars, it was only fitting that STAR TREK postulate what could very likely happen 30 years from now. When Voyager passes through a gaseous anomaly, the crew discovers the remains of the Ares IV, a Mars explorer thought to have been destroyed some 350 years before. Under the command of Lieutenant John Kelly (played by frequent TREK and SEINFELD guest star Phil Morris), the Ares IV records what happened when Kelly encountered the same gaseous anomaly in the past. Skillfully and convincingly directed by Robert Picardo (the E.M.H.), "One Small Step" paints a realistic look at what we may see in future real-world space program.

The episode that marked a major turning point for VOYAGER was the acclaimed and very atypical episode "Pathfinder", marking the return of NEXT GENERATION star Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi and TNG guest star Dwight Schultz as Reginald Barclay. What makes "Pathfinder" an unusual VOYAGER episode is in its scripting and execution, making it seem more like a NEXT GENERATION episode than a typical VOYAGER adventure. A vacationing Troi visits Barclay, who appears to have returned to his holo-addictive ways by creating an interactive program that puts him among the Voyager crew, taking up more of his time from his job at Starfleet Command. Barclay is convinced that he can make contact with the real Voyager through his holographic program, despite charges of insubordination and theft. But the final act's payoff culminates in what viewers had awaited to see since 1995: Voyager's first successful contact with Starfleet Command, making the once-shy Barclay the hero of the day.

Barclay and Troi would return later in the sixth season episode "Life Line", based on a story co-written by Robert Picardo. When the holographic Doctor receives word that his creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, is dying of a neurological disease, Janeway transmits his program to the Jupiter Station in the Alpha Quadrant. Expecting his creator to be much like himself, the Doctor is in for a shock when Zimmerman views him as nothing more than an obsolete program in the wake of the three later Emergency Medical Holograms. Troi attempts to convince Zimmerman of the value of his first creation, while Barclay reveals how far the Doctor has grown in the past six years beyond the sum of his programming. While this is not the first time viewers have seen Picardo as Zimmerman (he appeared as Zimmerman on an episode of DEEP SPACE NINE), "Life Line" gave Picardo the challenge of a lifetime to act opposite himself in a story of his own creation(if you recall, early in the first season the holographic Doctor was referred to in the closed-captioned text of the series and in promotional clips as Doc Zimmerman, though the Doctor had yet to select a name for himself.)

Continued...

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