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The complete first season of the popular Star Trek spin-off series. In the pilot episode, 'Caretaker (Parts 1 and 2)', a Maquis ship inexplicably disappears during plasma storms in the Badlands. USS Voyager is assigned to investigate. To assist the mission, Captain Kathryn Janeway recruits a reluctant, cashiered Starfleet Officer who has also acted as a mercenary for the Maquis. Whilst exploring the renegade ship's last known position Voyager is mysteriously propelled 70 000 light years from home. Searching this uncharted quadrant of the galaxy, they become embroiled in a centuries-old enviromental problem on a nearby inhabited world. In 'Parallax', USS Voyager goes to the aid of a stricken vessel, only to become entrapped in a vortex of distorted time and space. 'Time and Again' sees Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Paris journey back to the past in order to solve the mystery surrounding a devastated world. In 'Phage', the quest to restock their starship USS Voyager has brought them to a barren planetoid where Neelix is attacked and has his lungs stolen. In 'The Cloud', the USS Voyager travels to the heart of a large nebula, but once inside becomes trapped and the crew realise that everything is not as it seems. In 'Eye of the Needle', Harry Kim discovers a wormhole, which the crew of the USS Voyager hope will lead back to the Alpha Quadrant. In 'Ex Post Facto', Tom Paris is convicted of murder whilst on an alien planet. In 'Emanations', the crew of the Voyager make a gruesome discovery while investigating a new element and Harry Kim mysteriously disappears. In 'Prime Factors', the crew discover that the aliens offering them lavish hospitality on their shore leave also have the technology to send the Voyager back to their own quadrant - but the alien laws forbid their use of it. In 'State of Flux', the Voyager encounters the fearsome Kazon warriors again as they investigate a wrecked Kazon starship. They soon discover evidence of a traitor in their midst. In 'Heroes and Demons', several members of the Voyager crew disappear in a holodeck recreation of the medieval poem, Beowulf. The only member of the crew who can enter the holodeck safely is the reluctant doctor. In 'Cathexis', the USS Voyager finds a shuttlecraft containing an unconscious Tuvok and a Chakotay. But when some of the crew of the Voyager start behaving strangely, it becomes apparent that the shuttlecraft has more than just two members. In 'Faces', the Vidians, a group of repulsive aliens who have contracted a disease which disfigures their faces, believe that the only cure is Klingon . The Vidians then decide to use such technology to make B'elanna a full Klingon. In 'Jetrel', a shuttlecraft hails the Voyager with bad news for Neelix, informing him that he may be suffering from a life-threatening disease. In 'Learning Curve', the crew is plunged into danger when the computer starts to malfunction. Pressures build up as some of the Maquis in the crew decide not to follow Starfleet regulations. From .co.uk ----------- 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 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 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