Star Trek: Voyager – Season 1 DVD – Kate Mulgrew, Tarik Ergin

Star Trek: Voyager, the first Trek spin-off to be made without any input at all from Gene Roddenberry, made its debut in 1995 and quickly established itself both as markedly different from cosmic cousin Deep Space Nine and as the successor to The Next Generation. Despite a lack of originality in its premise (Lost in Space anyone?), Voyager was nonetheless often a bigger ratings success than any of its predecessors. In the first series the crew of the Federation vessel Voyager must somehow try to get back home after being catapulted unwittingly to the far-flung Delta Quadrant (in the opening “Caretaker”). The ghost of Katherine Hepburn lives on in Kate Mulgrew’s forceful Captain Janeway, who has an equivocal relationship with the Maquis renegade who becomes her first officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran). Tim Russ gives possibly the franchise’s first fully realistic (yawn) portrayal of a Vulcan, and to enhance the alien quotient there’s cuddly chef Neelix (Ethan Phillips). Garret Wang must have drawn short straw for character development, since his Harry Kim is never imbued with any of the drama of rebellious pilot chum Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), who was later to get the series’ only romance with the seemingly inescapable resident half-breed B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson). Right from the start, though, the fans’ favourite character was the deadpan funny man role of Robert Picardo’s nameless holographic Doctor. Jerry Goldsmith’s graceful theme always opens the show in style. –Paul Tonks