The Most Underrated Episodes Of Star Trek: Voyager

"Star Trek" producers took the franchise in a new direction with "Voyager," which began its seven-season run in 1995. The series set out to explore some strange new worlds with an all-new crew aboard a starship trapped in the far-flung Delta Quadrant. Led by Kate Mulgrew's Captain Janeway, the crew's ultimate goal is to get back home. The series charted a course for Earth and never looked back.

While "Voyager" didn't produce many of the franchise's overall best installments, it may well be the most consistent "Star Trek" series of the era, with fewer growing pains than "The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine." It aired plenty of standout episodes, while its worst have become downright legendary. But in between there are also a number of great stories that never get the respect they deserve.

From stories about the former Borg Seven of Nine and moral dilemmas for the Doctor to Captain Janeway classics, we've compiled a list of some of these unheralded gems. So purge the bio-neural gel packs and raise temporal shields, these are the most underrated episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager."

While it might not be the best double-length episode that the series has ever produced — it's hard to top the likes of "Year of Hell" and "Equinox" — "The Killing Game" deserves to be in the discussion. This enthralling two-parter, which aired on a single night, sees the return of the Hirogen and explores a different side to the Predator-like race of hunters.

In the episode, we learn that the Hirogen have taken over Voyager and are using the crew in elaborate war games at the behest of a leader who wants to guide his people to a new way of life through simulated hunts. They've turned most of the ship into one big holodeck and are reenacting World War II, with the Hirogen in the role of the Nazis. Janeway and Tuvok are Parisian resistance fighters, and Seven of Nine is a newly arrived French lounge singer who has joined the underground. With no knowledge of who they really are, the crew must find a way to defeat the Hirogen — disguised as the Third Reich — with only the Doctor and Harry Kim on the outside with any idea of what is really going on.

A loving homage to classic Hollywood war movies, the episode's extra length is used to good effect, with big battle sequences and action that goes from the streets of 1930s Paris to the bowels of a 24th-century starship. It might not be the best big episode, but it's an underrated one that deserves more love.

Once Jeri Ryan joined the cast of "Voyager" for its fourth season, she quickly became the center of some of its best episodes. But, despite all of the highly rated standouts focusing on Seven of Nine, a few remain sorely underrated, and a prime example of that is the Season 5 story "The Voyager Conspiracy." While it may be hard to convince audiences that long-time characters are secretly sinister villains, the episode still manages to keep us guessing from start to finish.

The story begins with Seven of Nine experimenting with a new way of absorbing data by feeding information directly into her Borg implants from the ship's computer during her regeneration cycle. At the same time, Janeway and Voyager meet with an alien scientist who claims to have developed a new method of stellar travel that could, in theory, allow them to traverse thousands of light years in mere minutes. But as Seven begins integrating the alien's data into her implants with the ship's records, she finds disturbing evidence that suggests some members of the crew may be part of a vast conspiracy that intentionally got them stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

A lesson on the dangers of paranoia and wild conspiracy theories, things spin out of control when she manages to pit Janeway and Chakotay against one another. It may not be the most shocking or action-packed episode, but it's an underrated one that will have you wondering if even the most trusted characters are hiding something.

Nobody saw a bigger and more impactful character arc across the seven seasons of "Star Trek: Voyager" than the Doctor. Starting out as an unsympathetic, robotic, and pre-programmed holographic assistant, the Doctor slowly became a fully formed and well-rounded person, earning the respect of his shipmates as a valued member of the crew. While highly rated episodes like "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," and "Latent Image" show the Doctor's growth as a character, one of his most underrated stories that illustrates his strides as a dutiful and compassionate physician is "Critical Care."

Being a program within a holographic system poses a problem for the Doctor in the episode, with his mobile emitter stolen and sold to an alien hospital on a far off world. There, the Doctor finds himself forced into service on a planet where healthcare is rationed by social status and strictly meted out by a computer system called the Allocator. Under the thumb of a tyrannical administrator named Chellick (Larry Drake), the Doctor is horrified to learn that the Allocator will not give him the resources he needs to treat the sick because it has deemed his patients unworthy. As the situation grows more dire, the Doctor is forced to do the unthinkable to save his dying patients.

Set almost entirely away from Voyager, "Critical Care" has the courage to ask if healthcare is a right or a privilege, making a powerful statement on a hot-button political issue.

"Star Trek" is known for venturing into a variety of genres, and in the under-appreciated installment "Bliss," it goes full monster movie in a story about a malevolent space-borne beast that feeds on the ship. It's also another Seven of Nine episode, this time pairing the former Borg drone with young Naomi Wildman (the mixed-species daughter of the human Ensign Samantha Wildman and the Ktarian Greskrendtregk), firmly establishing Seven as a big sister role model.

In the episode, Voyager comes across an apparent wormhole that seems to lead directly to Earth. Though Seven discovers that the anomaly is not what it appears, Janeway and the rest of the crew become oddly obsessed with returning home, ignoring obvious signs of deception. Once inside the galactic gateway, the crew is knocked unconscious, and Seven of Nine makes contact with another vessel piloted by an alien named Qatai (W. Morgan Sheppard). A rogue monster hunter, Qatai has been hunting what he reveals to be an interstellar creature that feeds off starships, inducing telepathic illusions based on their crew's innermost desires that trick them into entering its belly.

Using the crew's quest to get back to Earth, the beast deceives them, with only Seven, Naomi Wildman, and the Doctor immune to it. A satisfying monster story, "Bliss" also explores Seven of Nine's feelings of isolation among the Voyager crew and brings her one step closer to accepting her humanity.

One of the many criticisms levied at "Star Trek: Voyager" is that it recycles old plots. Such is the case with the Season 5 episode "Warhead," a story that is not dissimilar to "Prototype." But just because an episode shares common themes doesn't mean it isn't great. "Warhead" gives Robert Picardo the chance to flex his acting chops, playing the episode's psychotic villain: A sentient weapon of mass destruction.

Coming upon a distress signal, Voyager diverts to a remote planet and Ensign Kim is put in charge of the away mission. What he discovers is not a ship in trouble, but an undetonated warhead with an apparently self aware computer. When the warhead is brought onboard and B'Elanna attempts to disarm it, the A.I. takes over the Doctor's program and reveals its mission — to strike at its enemy's territory and obliterate an alien world. Held hostage by a sentient bomb, it's up to Ensign Kim to reason with it and convince it to spare millions of lives.

A classic "Star Trek" story about a sinister living computer, "Warhead" is loaded with social commentary about the futility of war. With an important message on top of its thrilling suspense, the episode might also be Kim's finest hour, and it deserves more attention for that alone.

Much was made of the deadly new adversary known as Species 8472 when they were introduced in the Season 5 finale "Scorpion." These all-CGI humanoid aliens defeated the Borg, proving themselves a terrifying new threat. They wouldn't last long, though, and many fans have lamented the fact that "Voyager" almost immediately softened Species 8472 from the most frightening new franchise menace into a potential Federation ally. But what is often overlooked is the episode that did just that, and how compelling a drama it really is.

In the Season 5 episode "In the Flesh," Voyager is stunned to discover an apparent recreation of Starfleet Headquarters at a space station in the Delta Quadrant. Going undercover, Chakotay is confused to find that it's an exact replica, and full of what seem to be Starfleet officers and cadets. But when he makes the shocking discovery that the humans there are actually Species 8472 in disguise, and they are planning a takeover of the Federation, Chakotay is taken prisoner, sparking a tense standoff with Voyager.

Perhaps inspired by Soviet-era recreations of American cities said to have been used to train KGB operatives, "In the Flesh" is a tense, hair-raising affair. Some fans felt that it declawed a compelling villain too soon, but it's still a satisfying story about finding common ground with enemies.