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Thirty years ago today Star Trek: Voyager began his trip to the Delta Quadrant with the debut of the pilot“The caretaker.” famous, Voyager‘s production got off to a rocky start: just days into filming, it lost its already groundbreaking female lead, Geneviève Bujold. But it was Bujold’s loss Star Trekearns with The arrival of Kate Mulgrew to slide Voyagercaptain’s chair, coffee cup in hand – and what makes it perfect Star Trek it was clear from the start.
There are a lot of weird and wonderful things in Gadici. There are big, bold ideas, like the ship being tens of thousands of light-years out of Federation space, or the dispersal of its crew in the first crash, forcing Janeway’s Starfleet officers to ride shoulder-to-shoulder with new guerrilla allies from the Maquis they left behind. There are the little ones, like Roxann Dawson’s B’Ellana Torres hair before it’s sadly straightened the moment she becomes part of Starfleet again (crime!), or the look on Kate Mulgrew’s face when she has to react to a line. “You haven’t lived to taste a man’s anla’bosque” (30 years have passed and we never found out what it was. anla’bosque, so we must obviously be living empty lives).
This is what makes Gadici’s work as a pilot the most enjoyable Centered around Mulgrew. She immediately realizes who Janeway is, and that the episode itself never grappled with the idea of having a female captain running the show. Voyager A momentum and energy that the show itself hasn’t always benefited from over the next seven seasons. He is a strict leader at times and a caring leader at others; we see him push and pull through this strange scenario, handed over to a routine mission that turns into a fight for his and his crew’s lives against an unknown force, and confronts this ever-simmering sense of justice and mercy. It’s almost absurd to think that Mulgrew wasn’t there from the start: it’s almost as if Janeway was made for him. In spite of all this, one verse he sang in “Kadici” burned in my mind from the day I first saw him.
This is absolutely absurd, one of many Voyagerare noteworthy quotes of Scene: Voyager encountered Neelix, a Talachian trader who offered to help act as a guide to the strange new region they had just discovered in exchange for a supply of water. But first, he takes them to a world where the crew believe several kidnapped Maquis and Starfleet officers have been taken, only for Neelix to quickly admit that he misled them: they’re helping him make a deal with a native species. Kazon. Or more precisely, one of their sub-divisions, Kazon-Ogla.
“Kazon-Boy,” Janeway asks, straining her face against the bright light of their filtered desert world. “Who are the Kazon-Boys!?”
Not a funny line. It is a completely normal line. Realizing that Neelix is playing tricks on them is a perfectly normal reaction for Janeway. But Mulgrew sells this absurd disbelief in such a way that I couldn’t help but laugh every time I watched Caretaker for the rest of my life. Track fan. The rage, confusion, rise and fall in his voice as he emphasized “Kazon-Ogla”. He doesn’t make fun of the line or feel compelled to spout alien names and technobabble; what a nail, behind it all is a complete and utter seriousness that drips from every syllable of the sentence. Kazon-Boy? WHO Kazon is a boy! I can’t explain why it spoke to me in such a special way, beyond Mulgrew’s belief, as he put it. At that moment, Kazon-Ogla, whoever he is, is the most real being in the world to him, and as strange as it may seem, he makes you believe it.
Janeway and the rest of the crew will continue many iconic momentsand many broad, serious, funny, brave, inspired speeches and exchanges Voyagerseven chapters. But of all the moments Voyager Also, of all the moments I’m watching right now Star Trek it’s what popped into my head like a mental tic for the better part of my life – something I still think about and laugh about 30 years later.
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