25 Essential episodes to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager
By Louis Skye
S4E14: Message in a Bottle
For pure fun and unadulterated laughter, you have to watch “Message in a Bottle”. The Doctor (Robert Picardo) is sent via a holo-message to a ship in the Alpha Quadrant. The only problem? The ship has been taken over by Romulans. It’s up to the Doctor and his fellow EMH Mark 2 (Andy Dick) to foil the Romulans’ plans. But they’re doctors, not tacticians!
This episode is laugh-a-minute. The Doctor is his best sarcastic self—a trait the Mark 2 seems to have inherited, as well. Despite also being scared out of their minds, the two EMHs do their best. Can they survive the Romulans, send a message back to Starfleet about Voyager, and return the Doctor to the ship? It’s a tense 40+ minutes to find out.
Entertaining Star Trek at its best, “Message in a Bottle” is absolutely unmissable.
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S4E25: One
Interesting fact, “One” was the first complete episode of Voyager I ever watched. I didn’t understand its significance then but once I’d watched the show again from the beginning, I realized how powerful ‘One’ was, and it has been one of my favorite Seven of Nine episodes ever since.
Voyager has to navigate a nebula that will shorten their trip—but to do so, the crew has to go into stasis because they can’t withstand the poisonous effects of the nebula. Seven is the only one who isn’t affected—because of her Borg implants—along with the holographic Doctor.
That sounds like a great plan, except Seven is used to being part of a collective—the loneliness of being the only living, breathing member of the crew starts to play on her mind. Even more so when the Doctor’s program goes offline.
Star Trek thrives when it shows the humanity of characters that don’t always come across as fully human, and it’s something Seven struggles with throughout her arc on Voyager.
In “One”, the show perfectly portrays how human Seven really is, but that her upbringing in the Borg collective is still an important part of her outlook on life—it’s just that the crew of Voyager is now her new collective. Honestly, at the end of this episode, you want to give Seven a big hug—if she’d allow it.