Product Description
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The complete first season of the TV series Star Trek Voyager.
.com
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Star Trek: Voyager began life in 1995 with some truly
fascinating prospects in its two-hour pilot episode. Opening in
the 24th century, a setting contemporary with that of Star Trek:
The Next Generation ( /exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/717/${0} )
and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (
/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/24901/${0} ) and carrying over
story elements from each of those series, "Caretaker" finds
Starfleet Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) stepping into
the middle of Federation troubles with the Maquis, an army of
rebels violently resisting the interplanetary organization's
treaty with the brutal Cardassians. In the process, both Voyager
and the Maquis ship under surveillance are accidentally
catapulted out of the galaxy's Alpha Quadrant (the familiar
stomping grounds of Starfleet personnel) by a benign but dying
being called the Caretaker. Voyager ends up in the unexplored
Delta Quadrant, some 70,000 light years away.
So much seemed dramatically promising in this debut, especially
the unwieldy alliance of Starfleet regulars and hostile Maquis,
and the likelihood that a lifetime spent in isolation, trying to
get home, would lead to the development of a self-contained
society on the ship, yet Voyager never entirely made up its mind
what it was supposed to be about. The curiously cheesy sets and
fascinating, progressive management style of Janeway (half mommy,
half taskmaster) were also new developments in Star Trek culture.
As the 16-episode season continued, character backstories were
developed in such episodes as "The Cloud" (arguably the best
episode of the season), "Eye of the Needle" (underscoring Janeway
and the crew's sadness), "State of Flux" (in which a search for a
traitor reveals a past romance between Commander Chakotay, played
by Robert Beltran, and sexy Bajoran engineer Seska, played by
Martha Hackett), and "Jetrel" (which explores the character of
Neelix, the Talaxian played by Ethan Phillips, during a parable
about scientific ethics and moral responsibility).
Among other notable episodes, "Phage" strikes a nice balance
among character development, story hook, and moral and emotional
conflict when Neelix is literally robbed of his lungs by the
Vidiians, a once-civilized people who are combating a deadly
disease called the Phage by stealing organs. (The disease would
return in "Faces," a fine showcase for Roxann Biggs-Dawson as
Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres.) "Emanations" stirred controversy
among the series' producers and some fans for its philosophical
look at death, and "Time and Again" is a unique time-travel story
in which Janeway and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) get caught
in a subspace fracture that places them just hours before they
know a planet is going to be destroyed. In "Prime Factors,"
latent tensions among Voyager personnel erupts into serious
conflict, an issue revisited in the season finale, "Learning
Curve." Despite a pat ending that resolves the Maquis conflict
much too easily, the episode drives home the fact that Voyager
and its crew are all alone, making the most of a difficult
predicament. --Tom Keogh and Jeff Shannon
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Set Contains:
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There's a rare treat in the first-season set of Star Trek:
Voyager: scenes from the pilot episode featuring the original
captain Janeway, played by Genevieve Bujold. She was quickly
replaced, and with the benefit of hind, it's easy to see
that she lacked sufficient presence for the role. That segment is
part of the set's 78 minutes of bonus features, including a
spotlight on the eventual captain Janeway, Kate Mulgrew (mostly
comprised of 1994 and 2003 interviews); a season overview;
reflections by the cast; and spotlights on visual effects,
location, Startrek.com, and the science behind the show
(wormholes, time travel). The basic format of the discs is the
same as The Next Generation (
/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/717/${0} ) and Deep Space Nine (
/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/24901/${0} ): full screen, 5.1
and 2.0 surround sound, English subtitles, and easy-to-find
Easter eggs. The discs are housed in a nicely compact Digistak
case like DS9, though with a bolder color scheme and a plastic
outer casing that fits together awkwardly. But unlike any
previous Star Trek DVD series, the opening credits of every
episode come at the very end of track 1, making it easy to skip
past them. --David Horiuchi
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