[Retro Review] Lost In Space: The Caretaker. Voyager S1E1.

Retro Review

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These days we’re a bit spoiled as Star Trek fans. In less than ten years we’ve had three live action series, two animated shows and there’s more on the way. And we have the internet so naturally we’ll see everyone complain about it before there’s even a trailer. In the mid-90’s, things were a little more exciting. The hurdle of Next Gen replacing the original – now fully retired – crew was out the way. DS9 had taken a risk away from the Enterprise and now it was time for a new ship to carry the idea of boldly going forward. In comparison to the giant Enterprise flying the flag of the Federation, Voyager was a more average low key type of deal with a a bit of a makeshift crew that would have everything from a rookie to a traitor on the bridge, as well as some (un?)welcome guests tagging along.

Building a little more on the mystique of the Maquis, well established in TNG and DS9 at this stage, Captain Janeway recruits an imprisoned Maquis sympathiser to help track down one of the Maquis ships in the chaotic Badlands. Instead of catching the bad guys and bringing them to justice for leaving the mighty Federation, both Janeway and her target Captain Chakotay find their ships mysteriously whisked away to the other side of the galaxy by an ancient alien force.

Suffering damage and heavy losses, as well have having surviving members of their crew kidnapped, Janeway and Chakotay have to work together to figure out who took them, why they took them and where their missing crew are all the while getting caught up in the middle of a weird dispute between two groups of locals on a desolate planet.

Voyager’s launch was a big deal at the time, and the build to it was fairly cool at the time with the show being a bit of a tease on a misfit crew and cool new ship stuck far from home. It also felt like the first exploration show with a clear purpose. The Enterprise wandered around and did things at random. Voyager did things because they were stranded, struggling and needed to find a way home; a point the whole episode leans on with the big focus being how weird and scary it is to be this far out of your comfort zone.

For an opening episode, it holds up fairly well as an introduction to the mission and the crew. Tom Paris kick starts the introductions as we quickly learn he’s misfit ne’er-do-well everybody hates who’s forcefully befriended by ships rookie Hary Kim out of sympathy. Chakotay becomes the duality of the Maquis being the honourable traitor who spouts some cheese alongside his roguish ways. Bellana’s the angry one. Tuvok’s the calm one. The Doctor’s the grumpy backup program only switched on because the medical staff were all killed in action. And Neelix is the local weirdo that just wants to find his suspiciously young fling.

There’s really no time wasted pondering who’s who as you get their highlights in their first scene with Janeway as the leading explorer trying to figure it all out. The base story is fairly simplistic and a tad cliché; far from home theres a primitive world hats hiding a semi-advanced society guarded form an angry mob by an alien watcher. The alien confesses that it’s his fault he planets in a mess and he’s been Caretaker to the Ocampa in an underground paradise, guarding from the Kazon who live in squalor above ground.

In trying to find a new Caretaker, he’s been hauling ships from all over the galaxy and conducting weird experiments on them to see if they have the genetic properties needed to take his place. It’s a story Janeway buys quite easily. Which is a bit of a shame as seeing the crew being experimented on is a wonderfully creepy part of the story. In fact, the whole first half is quite fascinating for a Star Trek pilot. We have unsettling alien experiments, we have action and chaos with half the ships crew dying and we have a fairly compelling build up between two opposing ships working together. Finding Neelix and him guiding them to the Ocampa underground paradise is the awkwardly dull part as the explanation of what’s going on kills the unsettling threat a bit too quickly.

There’s also the Kazon problem. The disparity between the Ocampa’s home ands the Kazon settlement is a basic story. On the surface it’s a desolate land with few resources which leads to Janeway bribing them with a scarce resource; water. Problem here though? The Kazon are the bad guys and a threat to Voyager, and to make that threat credible, they have warships capable of taking on Voyager itself.

As a space faring species, they can head up to their ship, pop over to Aldi Ceta Five and stock up on Pakled Springs with relative ease. But for some reason they still scramble with cups trying not to lose a drop of bribe water from Voyager. It’s a plot contrivance that bugs me a little more every time I watch it. Angry primitive people as a threat to highlight the idea of being out in the wildest of wests? Sure. Why not. But thats a mental plot hole and the whole presentation of the primitives who cant figure out they can get water on any other planet does make them seem a little less threatening.

But a threat they are, and they drive the second half of the story. The Caretakers about to pop his clogs and getting desperate. He needs to protect the Ocampa, and the Kazon want his super special space station. Possibly for a map to the nearest reservoir. So it’s all action from there as on the ground the scattered Voyager crew need to find a way out of the Ocampa city and back to the surface, and in orbit they need to stop the Kazon from gaining power over the planet by making sure they don’t get hold of the Caretakers array.

The end result being a rather nice action sequence for the time, and some nice effects as Chakotay Kamikaze runs into the Kazon to buy Voyager time; which was a nice mix of tension and lovely effects for the time and more than made up for the ridiculously cheesy lines they gave Chakotay earlier in the episode.

It’s a kind of mixed feeling looking back at as there are a few plot holes that still come up. The most common is why blow up the caretakers array and strand yourself when even in 1995 we had enough Star Trek to know the multiple other options available? We also kind of brush over the horrific realisation that the Ocampa have been living in a repressed little bubble of control their entire lives and it’s still odd that, after everything that happens, Janeway just accepts the Caretakers word that he’s not a complete headcase. Same with Neelix being welcomed aboard as a local guide despite him likely getting side eye when they hit an ocean world in an episode or two.

But there was a lot that was quite good, and especially fun to see on screen in the mid-90’s which still works. The alien abduction scenes still give a serious unease. The pacing is still fairly good and how the characters all come together, from their base introduction right to Chakotay calmly giving his allegiance to the last captain standing, makes for one of the best set ups the franchise had seen at that stage. Sure, the Kazon-Ocampa felt a little run of the mill for 90’s Trek and it felt like the Caretaker idea could have been a little more than it could have; but as backdrop to welcoming a new ship, crew and mission, the episode still holds up fairly well for setting the stage; and despite the debate since of what could have been – the crew sacrificing their only way home to save the Ocampa was a very Starfleet move which, after the perfect crew introductions, gave a perfect welcome to new fans of what Star Trek was all about.

Voyager is available to watch in it’;s entirety exclusively on Paramount+ alongside almost all Star Trek entries from the Original series up to the upcoming season three release of Strange New Worlds! Star Trek Prodigy – featuring the return of Voyager’s Janeway, Chakotay and the Doctor – is available exclusively on Netflix.

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