These Are the Voyages...

[Velorath]

Of the starship, uh... Voyager.

It's mission: To get the crew back to the Alpha Quadrant, even if the Prime Directive gets violated harder than an Orion slave girl at a pon farr orgy. To remind the Kazon that they're the most dogshit recurring villains in all of Trek. To get some measure of use out of having just rewatched seven seasons of mediocre Star Trek, which was still easier for me than getting through one season of The Expanse.




Edit: Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown (just going to toss that in for the search engine).

[Velorath]

Captain's Log:

Our tale begins with the newly launched Voyager being tasked to track down a Maquis ship in the Badlands. Who are the Maquis you may ask? You know what, it doesn't really matter. This story takes place far away from all the context that defines their group and their goals. Suffice it to say that they're outlaws and many of them are former Federation. Notable members include fan favorite-ish Ro Laren, and generic white dude Michael Eddington. The story of Voyager features 4 3 2 notable Maquis characters. Maybe the guy that played Chucky in the Child's Play movies will show up here, I don't know. Likeness rights, they are a bitch.

But getting back to the start of things, this is what we're working with:







A former current convict, and the franchise's own Charlie Brown.

We're just going to rapid-fire through this first bit of setup here because it all just happens and there's fuckall for choice involved:

[Velorath]

Captain's Log:

Options were admittedly low at this point so the best we could do was to canary-in-a-coal-mine two expendable crew members into the ominous structure.






I'm sure our banjo-playing abductor was trying to put us at ease but missed the mark with the Deliverance vibes.






Kim and Paris attempted to make the best of it, determined to put on the greatest show ever performed in a barn.





Instead, they found themselves faced with the decision of whether they should wake up the half-Klingon woman or the guy who has the superpower of occasionally turning into a bad Native American stereotype when he gets a spotlight episode. Night of the Comet is great, but this was no hard decision.

[Velorath]

Captain's Log Supplemental: It was time to beam the Maquis on board Voyager. Two crews, once enemies, now working together in an arrangement sure to cause mildly explosive tension once or twice a season.




Tuvok got the team-building off to a great start by revealing himself as a duplicitous bitch that was working for me the whole time.









As fun as this was, it was time to get Banjo man on the line and move the plot along.





Not very helpful, but after a quick wardrobe change (was he just wearing his Starfleet uniform under the Maquis disguise), Tuvok had a lead.

[Velorath]

Captain's Log: With the Caretaker proving useless at the moment we turned our attention towards a lead for getting Chakotay and Paris back. I'm sure as hell not going on any away missions myself and I need the fodder.





Speaking a body to put in harm's way...








Neelix claimed to have a contact on the planet who was the leader of a tribe of Kazon; a species that would have been laughed out of any other quadrant, and most of the Delta quadrant as well. While the Federation was on the verge of war with the Dominion, our nemesis for the early going would a bunch of space hobos who couldn't pose a threat to us even when we helped them.





Once it became apparent that the Kazon were only marginally more fond of Neelix than we were, things escalated quickly





As it would turn out, Neelix's main motivation in taking us to the Kazon was to recover his child bride from them.







I've got plans for you Neelix...

[Velorath]

Captain's Log Supplemental: You do this job for any amount of time and you quickly learn that not all species develop like we do. Even so, Neelix bringing his 2-year-old girlfriend on board raised some eyebrows.

Our flesh and blood doctor died when our ship got brought here. Don't think I ever knew the guy's name. That left Kes to get examined by our EMH backup.





Say the line Doc.





Then it was back down onto the planet to have Kes lead us to the city she came from, where we'd hopefully find Paris and Chakotay.





The people there were surprisingly helpful. In a failed attempt at adding drama, there was an earthquake as we were leaving. I'll spare you the part where the away team had to make up a flight of stairs as the ground shook, because who cares?














At this point, Tuvok presented his hypothesis that the Caretaker fucked up the planet at some point and now takes care of the Ocampa as a way to make amends. They have the life-span of fruit flies so I'm not entirely sure why he bothers. Anyhow, the Caretaker is dying and he's been abducting people like us to find someone genetically compatible enough to turn into his replacement. At least we think that was his plan

With Paris and Chakotay back on board, it was time to head back to the Array and get ourselves home.

Spoiler: We do not get ourselves home.