The original plan was simple enough.
I reactivated my subscription to Paramount+ back in March as the second season of "Star Trek: Picard" was underway. The intent was to shut it down again in July once the first season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" reached its conclusion. Four months, total.
We are now at the end of August.
I still have not stopped my Paramount+ subscription and with the second season of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" recently starting it's beginning to become unclear when I'll let it go.
This has been a very Star Trek heavy year for me. After Strange New Worlds concluded, I was still in the mood for more space adventures.
I had already rewatched the entirety of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" some years ago when I broke my knee. And it wasn't long ago that I binged my way through "Star Trek: Enterprise," the last of the shows to air before the franchise's 12 year lull.
This left one obvious choice. "Star Trek: Voyager," a show I hadn't watched since it was originally on the air back in the mid-late 90s.
In some ways, Voyager was my first Star Trek. Sure, I had seen a scattering of episodes of TNG and DS9 here and there, but never with any regularity. The syndicated Star Trek programs aired on Channel 3 late on weekend nights. I would watch the occasional episode here and there, but I was a child and didn't really understand the complexities of space politics and philosophical issues the series addressed.
It wasn't until Voyager came around, when I was a much more mature ten-year-old, that I was there on the ground floor of a new Star Trek show. That the mid and late-90s was when television shows started focusing less on standalone episodes in favor of overarching storylines helped encourage my investment as well, along with helping foster a life-long habit of staying up late.
In spite of this though, I never actually finished watching Voyager. At some point in 1999, as Season 5 was airing, I dropped out of the habit.
I don't remember why, but I suspect it might have something to do with the conclusion of DS9 that same year. The two shows ran back-to-back for most of their time on the air, but DS9's latter seasons vastly overshadowed Voyager in terms of compelling storylines. My best guess is that when DS9 ended, Voyager alone wasn't enough to draw me back week after week.
For whatever reason I stopped watching, that gap in my viewing history is finally being resolved. It's taken me most of the summer but I've binged my way into the seventh and final season.
I've always been under the impression that I hadn't missed much out of these last years of Voyager. Already overshadowed by its much more popular predecessors, Voyager is widely regarded as the point when the shine of the franchise started to fade.
To be fair though, by the time Voyager was on its final seasons Star Trek as a franchise had been on television for more than a decade, largely run by the same people. Keeping a show fresh after literally hundreds of episodes is no easy task.
That said, with about a quarter century of perspective to look back on, I've been pleasantly surprised with the consistency of Voyager's quality. Sure, not every episode is a winner and the show doesn't reach the highs that other Star Trek shows hit, but the stories have been fun, the characters are generally compelling, and they definitely know which actors are bringing their A-Game given the number of episodes centered on Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan.
I'll probably wrap up Voyager soon, finally giving me an excuse to shut down my Paramount+ subscription.
Unless I decide to watch the original series…
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is up to explore strange new worlds.
