Caretaker, VOY 1
The pilots for The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, let’s face it, sucked. Voyager’s pilot, Caretaker, is the first one to be even close to decent.
I like the way we meet the characters and I like that there are many of them. I’m having trouble buying Tom Paris, though – he’s supposed to be some rebel outlaw but he looks like a clean cut Midwestern kid. How the hell did he get cast? His sudden affection for Harry Kim is a little odd, too, but I’ll leave that to the K/S set to work out.
Janeway doesn’t have it easy. All the IDIC in the world isn’t gonna make you forget that it’s a woman in the Captain’s chair and there’s a lot of mental comparison going on. Choosing to stay behind and tinker with the Ocampan situation rather than taking the Array’s express beam back to the Alpha Quadrant – a good command decision? Certainly a good story decision….
We now enter the world of Voyager. Let’s see what happens next.