Star Trek: Voyager

In the pilot episode, "Caretaker", USS Voyager, under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, departs the Deep Space Nine space station on a mission into the treacherous Badlands. They are searching for a missing ship piloted by a team of Maquis rebels, which Voyager's security officer, the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok, has secretly infiltrated. Tom Paris, a disgraced former Starfleet officer who joined the Maquis and was subsequently arrested, agrees to help find the Maquis ship in exchange for his freedom. While in the Badlands, Voyager is enveloped by a powerful energy wave that kills several of its crew, damages the ship, and strands it in the galaxy's Delta Quadrant, more than 70,000 light-years from Earth. The wave was used by an alien entity known as the Caretaker to pull first the Maquis ship, and then Voyager into the Delta Quadrant. The Caretaker is responsible for the continued care of the Ocampa, a race of aliens native to the Delta Quadrant, and has been abducting other species from around the galaxy in an effort to reproduce and have a successor. The two crews join forces to retrieve crew members being withheld for this purpose and eventually agree to permanently join forces. After the Caretaker dies, Janeway decides to protect the Ocampa from imminent invasion by another local alien species, the Kazon, by destroying the Caretaker's transport array, also their means for returning home the way they came. To begin their now projected 75-year journey home, Chakotay, leader of the Maquis group, is made Voyager's first officer. B'Elanna Torres, a half-human/half-Klingon Maquis, becomes chief engineer, and Paris becomes Voyager's helm officer. Due to the deaths of the ship's entire medical staff, the Doctor, an emergency medical hologram designed only for short-term use, is employed as the ship's full-time chief medical officer. Delta Quadrant natives Neelix, a Talaxian scavenger, and Kes, a young Ocampa, are welcomed aboard. Neelix eventually becomes the ship's chef/morale officer and Kes becomes the Doctor's medical assistant. Due to its great distance from Federation space, the Delta Quadrant is unexplored by Starfleet. As they continue their long journey home, the crew passes through regions belonging to various species: the barbaric and belligerent Kazon; the organ-harvesting, disease-ravaged Vidiians; the nomadic hunter race the Hirogen; the fearsome Species 8472 from fluidic space; and most notably the Borg, who control large areas of space that Voyager has to move through in later seasons. They also encounter perilous natural phenomena, a nebulous area called the Nekrit Expanse ("Fair Trade", third season), a large area of empty space called The Void, toxic dumping grounds ("Night", fifth season), wormholes, dangerous nebulae and other anomalies. Voyager is the third Star Trek series to feature Q, an omnipotent alien—and the second on a recurring basis, as Q made only one appearance on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Starfleet Command learns of Voyager's survival when the crew discovers an ancient interstellar communications network, claimed by the Hirogen, into which they can tap. This relay network is later disabled, but due to the efforts of Earth-based Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, Starfleet eventually establishes regular contact in the season-six episode "Pathfinder", using a communications array and micro-wormhole technology. In the first two episodes of the show's fourth season, Kes leaves the ship in the wake of an extreme transformation of her mental abilities, while Seven of Nine (known colloquially as Seven), a Borg drone who was assimilated as a six-year-old human girl, is liberated from the collective and joins the Voyager crew. As the series progresses, Seven begins to regain her humanity with the ongoing help of Captain Janeway, who shows her that emotions, friendship, love, and caring are more important than the sterile "perfection" the Borg espouse. The Doctor also becomes more human-like, due in part to a mobile holo-emitter the crew obtains in the third season which allows the Doctor to leave the confines of sickbay and even the ship itself. He discovers his love of music and art, which he demonstrates in the episode "Virtuoso". In the sixth season, the crew discovers a group of adolescent aliens assimilated by the Borg, but prematurely released from their maturation chambers due to a malfunction on their Borg cube. As he did with Seven of Nine, the Doctor rehumanizes the children; Azan, Rebi and Mezoti, three of them eventually find a new adoptive home while the fourth, Icheb, chooses to stay aboard Voyager. Life for the Voyager crew evolves during their long journey. Traitors Seska and Michael Jonas are uncovered in the early months ("State of Flux", "Investigations"); loyal crew members are lost late in the journey; and other wayward Starfleet officers are integrated into the crew. In the second season, the first child is born aboard the ship to Ensign Samantha Wildman; as she quickly grows up due to alien biology, Naomi Wildman becomes great friends with her godfather, Neelix, and develops an unexpected and close relationship with Seven of Nine. Early in the seventh season, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres marry after a long courtship, and Torres gives birth to their child, Miral Paris, in the series finale. Late in the seventh season, the crew finds a colony of Talaxians on a makeshift settlement in an asteroid field, and Neelix chooses to bid Voyager farewell and live once again among his people. Over the course of the series, the Voyager crew finds various ways to reduce their 75-year journey by up to five decades (barring any other delays they may encounter): shortcuts, in the episodes "Year of Hell", "Night" and "Q2"; technology boosts in "The Voyager Conspiracy", "Dark Frontier", "Timeless" and "Hope and Fear"; a subspace corridor in "Dragon's Teeth"; and a mind-powered push from a powerful former shipmate in "The Gift". Several other trip-shortening attempts are unsuccessful, as seen in the episodes "Eye of the Needle", "Prime Factors", "Future's End", and "Inside Man". After traveling for seven years, a current (yet returning) shipmate reveals that the journey was reduced to 23 years, but helps instigate a series of complex efforts which shortens the remainder of the journey to a few minutes in the series finale, "Endgame".

Plot from Star Trek: VoyagerCC BY-SA 4.0