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5. Time and Again

Time and Again wasn’t a great episode, but the first season of Voyager was pretty short, so it made the cut. The plot did have some nice twists and turns, and characters navigating a pre-warp civilization covertly is usually a good time. Maybe I’m just a sucker for time travel.

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4. State of Flux

State of Flux may not make some people’s top 5 for the mere fact that it features the Kazon, who can be a bit of a joke as villains. But once you’re over that, the episode has a lot to offer in the action/thriller vein, something that Trek shows don’t often pursue. (Except for Enterprise).

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3. Caretaker

Caretaker was a good premiere that tactfully unfolded a number of promising ideas that Voyager would hopefully be based around. A lot of those ideas where more or less abandoned, or only returned to sporadically, but we can’t hold that against the first episode.

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2. Eye of the Needle

Eye of the Needle makes a couple moves that I would’ve thought were mistakes before seeing the episode: Finding some reason to feature a Romulan, and teasing Voyager with a way home (which will obviously fail). I was surprised by an intriguing plot that kept getting more interesting as the story progresses, as well as one of the most moving examinations of Voyager’s predicament.

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1. Prime Factors

Prime Factors touches on some truly interesting ideas that haven’t been covered over and over in previous Trek episodes, which is a real feat. Putting the crew on the opposite side of a Prime Directive type of rule was a great idea, and the turmoil that this causes within the crew is fantastic. The episode isn’t without its faults, but just the frank discussion between Tuvok and Janeway near the end of the episode is enough to rank this episode high.