Season 2, Episode 7 – Parturition
The jealousy of Neelix over Kes and Paris’ friendliness which has actually been allowed to build through several episodes prior to this one. Then after having a food fight the two get assigned to fly down to a planet together. Oh my what happens next – they go down to the planet to get some supplies and get stranded. Then they go into a cave and find a baby reptile hatching from an egg. They become the surrogate parents for the reptile that looks like it’s straight out of the sitcom Dinosaurs. (Not Good). Their plight makes them realize that they should be buddies and not be jealous. They lose another shuttle here as they beam back to the ship and leave their downed shuttle on the surface.
1 Shuttlecraft Destroyed(Lost)
Season 2 total: 2

Season 2, Episode 8 – Persistence of Vision
This is a semi interesting everybody goes a little crazy episode when the crew members all have visions or illusions of the people from home who are close to them are with them on the ship. Really it is just an alien race that is trying to trick them into surrendering. The way it is put together is a little less than maximal I think because you know what is causing the illusions after the first few minutes and so there is no mystery, just deception that you are waiting for the crew to ultimately overcome.

Season 2, Episode 9 – Tatoo

Once again we’re exploring Chakotay’s spirituality as he remembers a trip he took with his father to Earth to seek out his ancestral home. This is spurred by finding the same symbol on a planet they are on to open the episode. Of course, they are just on the planet we don’t know how they discovered it. This leads them to another planet where Chakotay eventually finds that his people had come from the Delta quadrant. More interestingly and also continually confusing, the Doctor is infected with a cold so that he will try to be able to sympathize with his patients and improve his bedside manner. I don’t know how you can make a hologram experience pain but he does, and Robert Picardo does it admirably. The flashbacks of a young Chakotay and his father are interesting as well, we see a little more of the aggressiveness and impatience that led him into the Maquis presumably.

Season 2, Episode 4 – Elogium

This episode was a bit boring to me. It was a little like Birth of Junior where there are spaceship sized organisms flying around in space. Of course the ship is endangered but also the organisms make Kes’ anatomy speed up and she has to decide if she wants to have a baby. This leads to Neelix being the scared potential father and having a heart to heart with Tuvok. To the extent that a Talaxian and Vulcan can have a heart to heart. The most interesting part are the two short scenes of Janeway and Chakotay discussing whether or not they should allow the crew to have children. And then we all of a sudden have Ensign Wildman on the bridge, truly out of nowhere, who at the end of the episode comes in to tell the Captain that she is pregnant. Surprise!

Season 2, Episode 5 – Non Sequitur

Harry Kim wakes up – on Earth! This is the first time we’ve seen Earth since Voyager got lost. He’s told that he wasn’t a part of the Voyager crew, his friend got his position aboard the ship. He’s still the Harry Kim we know, but the world is different. It remains a mystery for a significant portion of the episode then he gets arrested because he’s acting strange and he’s gone to see Tom Paris who is also not a part of the Voyager crew – because of Kim possibly? This is kind of like It’s A Wonderful Life – Harry Kim wants his old life back and finds out he was in a time stream – he has to recreate his accident to get back to Voyager and even then the chances aren’t good he will get back he could end up anywhere else in time. Of course, this being an episode of Voyager, the chances are 1 in 1 that he makes it back. I distinctly remembered the part in this episode where Kim wears an ankle bracelet for monitoring. This is the first time we get to see a Harry Kim episode and he’s almost the only one in it the whole time. It’s entertaining enough but it seems like if this were a TNG episode this would be one that knocks it out of the park, whereas here this is just a decent installment of the show.

Season 2, Episode 6 – Twisted

This is a pretty good episode. The ship encounters the standard spacial anomaly that they of course don’t try to study from a distance but only turn back when it’s too late and pretty soon they’re engulfed. The anomaly begins reorganizing the ship so the crew wanders around in circles most of the episode – which is a lot more entertaining than it might sound. The holodeck is the last place to be affected so they are hanging out in Paris’ Marseilles pool hall. In the end, the anomaly comes through the ship like a baryon sweep but this time it passes through them, distorting them only temporarily. They find out afterward that a huge amount of data has been added to the computer core and their own data has been downloaded, leading to the conclusion the anomaly wasn’t an anomaly at all but a traveling data cloud of sorts with its own way of making contact.

Season 2, Episode 1 – The ’37s

No grand introductions, not even a “Captain’s Log” to start off the new season. Just a pick-up truck floating in space. The big moment comes when Voyager lands on the planet they’ve discovered. So this is the whole enchilada for once, the discovery of the planet AND the landing. The away team discovers a plane from the 1930s and then 8 bodies in stasis, including Amelia Earhart. When she was abducted (along with the other humans) in 1937 (hence the episodes title). The 37s momentarily take the away team hostage because they don’t believe where they are or what year it is. Upon talking them down and exiting the stasis chamber the crew is fired upon, by… more humans! These humans are quick to put their weapons down when they see the Voyager crew are humans – they are descendants of the abductees and thought Voyager was the return of their abductors. They have built three cities on the planet and there are over 100,000 humans living in the Delta Quadrant. BUT we do not get to see the cities! Janeway goes and visits them and we catch up with her sitting in her ready room staring out an empty window – which looks odd because there is blue sky and clouds outside instead of a star field. This is the clearest example yet of the lacking budget and the inability to show certain scenes. Maybe if we bring in a hot Borg lady eventually that will change?

So the big moment is when Janeway offers anyone on the crew the opportunity to stay on the planet. She is worried that too many people will want to stay and there won’t be enough crew members left to staff the ship – but surprise! nobody wants to leave and the now more united crew takes off from the planet with Amelia Earhart watching from below.

Season 2, Episode 2 – Initiations
Chakotay takes a shuttle out to perform one of his sacred rituals in the solitude of space which doesn’t last long when he is attacked by a Kazon boy. Chakotay defeats him in the space battle but when he brings him back to the main Kazon ship they are both taken prisoner. Then they escape and get back in the shuttle and proceed to get the shuttle blown up right after they beam down to a Kazon training moon. Here the Voyager crew join in the pursuit and seem to be working with the Kazon, until they’re not. But in the end, the boy gets back the honor lost when he originally failed to kill or be killed in his first encounter with Chakotay and Voyager gets their first officer back. I like the way the character of Chakotay is played but it would be very hard to believe the way he acts most of the time had we actually seen him when he was an undoubtedly ruthless commander of a Maquis ship.
1 Shuttlecraft Destroyed
Season 2 Total: 1

Season 2, Episode 3 – Projections

The Doctor is activated and finds out there isn’t anyone on board. This episode was entertaining enough when we believed that the Doctor was the only one who could save the ship (as we often saw Data do in TNG) – THEN – Barclay shows up (the first TNG appearance in Voyager) and tells the Doctor he’s real, this is a holodeck and the Voyager crew are fake. This would have been a little more threatening of an idea in season one but at the same time it would have been a little too soon to bring a TNG character back. The doctor doesn’t know who to believe, Barclay makes a very convincing case until Chakotay shows up and tells him the same thing. Robert Picardo is so good as the Doctor that it is sometimes frustrating that he can’t do more. It always seems odd to me that they would bother to give a hologram emotions, especially when he’s a doctor, but beyond that, he’s got memories and they are emotional memories as well. That really seems to cross the line of what would have been practical for an EMH program. Regardless this is another good chance to see the Doctor tackle a new situation and be in nearly every scene of an episode.

Note: As you can see above, I will be counting various things like Shuttlecraft lost and crewman lost throughout the series (I should have been doing this in Season One) because theoretically, Voyager has a very small crew and a limited number of Shuttlecraft, right? This should be fun.

Season 1, Episode 15 – Jetrel

A doctor who created a weapon of mass destruction that was used against Neelix’s people in a war shows up and Neelix refuses to talk to him. We find out that Neelix fought in a war, was ashamed of it, has baggage, etc. His relationship with Kes expands a bit. There isn’t much to say about this episode but Ethan Phillips does a very good job with some very serious material recounting the horror of his war stories. Neelix has thus far been the most expressive and often lighthearted character but this shows another side of him (and another side of Phillips’ strong acting abilities).

Season 1, Episode 16 – Learning Curve

All of a sudden, here we are at the last episode of the season. It’s not a cliffhanger as we have grown accustomed to from Star Trek series past but an episode with two only tangentially related story lines. The bio-neural gel packs that Voyager uses are malfunctioning and they don’t have many extras on board. Well, it turns out Neelix is making cheese that is entering the vents of the ship and making the gel packs ‘sick’. At the same time, Tuvok faces some insubordination from some Maquis crewman and Janeway and Chakotay decide they should get some extra Starfleet training. Just as things seem to be reaching a breaking point between Tuvok and the Maquis and some cheese might end this journey home early, it all comes together. Crewman Chell appears for the first time in this episode, I expected him to appear more frequently based on his full role in the video game Elite Force.

I’m not sure why this was the last episode of the season, I was fully expecting a two-parter ‘To Be Continued’. Overall I think this is kind of a weak season (though Voyager may turn out to be a fairly weak series as I go about re-watching some it and finally watching the rest of it). According to Memory-Alpha there were more episodes filmed during this season but they were held back until Season 2 and ‘The 37s’ could have been a two-parter but ultimately wasn’t. I’m really hoping this show gets going in the next season. It does eventually get a lot more action-y as I recall and since it can’t seem to get to the level of TNG (with it’s much more intellectual approach), at least it can get somewhere.

Season 1, Episode 13 – Cathexis

Once again, Chakotay goes missing, instead of in the holodeck, this time on an away mission with Tuvok. The ship attempts to go to the Nebula where it happened but mysterious occurrences keep preventing the ship from going there. Basically, Chakotay is a ghost and he’s floating around the ship keeping the crew safe from themselves by going to the Nebula. This was a pretty weird episode.

Season 1, Episode 14 – Faces

Once again, here we are in the middle of the situation, not at the beginning of the discovery. B’Elanna has been captured by the Vidiians and her Klingon DNA separated from her Human DNA, resulting in two B’Elannas. (I don’t get how this works either, even in the 24th century.) Klingon B’Elanna is strong and angry, while the Human B’Elanna is timid and afraid, but more able to reason. The Vidiian experimenting on her finds Klingon DNA impervious to the Phage and will somehow be able to use this as a cure. But of course, if you let them have the cure, you can’t let the Vidiians chase Voyager around the Delta quadrant for the next 6 seasons. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, after she is rescued, the Doctor is able to put B’Elanna back together again (after the pure Klingon version is killed in the rescue).

Season 1, Episode 12 – Heroes and Demons

We’re only a dozen episodes deep into the series but this is the 4th trip to the holodeck by my count. I don’t know where they get the energy for this what with the limited resources of the ship, but maybe the writers just can’t be stopped. Harry Kim is missing in the Holodeck’s Beowulf program and Tuvok and Chakotay venture in to find him only to go missing themselves. When Grendel comes in the night Tuvok and Chakotay also go missing, so the Doctor is sent in because of his unique holographic properties, he at first retreats from the assignment but embraces it. While on the holodeck he forms a bond with a female character and is called Schweitzer. He ‘defeats’ Grendel by realizing it is a form of alien and asking it to return the crew. Basically a joyful romp in the holodeck involving the Doctor wielding a sword.