#1 CARETAKER (PART I) (SERIES PREMIERE) **** out of 5

It's the 24th Century and a renegade band of freedom fighters known as the Maquis are operating outside of Federation guidelines. When one of their ships gets stranded in an area of space known as "The Badlands" the Federation decides to send the USS Starship Voyager, captained by Kathryn Janeway, to its rescue. Upon arriving in "The Badlands" both the Maquis vessel and Voyager are swept up in a bizarre phenomenon that catapults them 70,000 light years away to a previously uncharted area of space.

The two crews must band together to escape the clutches of an alien force they come to know as "The Caretaker." Along the way, the Maquis ship is destroyed, and its crew must board Voyager to survive. These two crews encounter several new alien lifeforms, and ultimately invite two -- Neelix and Kes - to join them aboard the ship. Together, this disparate group of people must work together to find their way back home.

As they try to find their way back to known Federal Space, the crew of the Starship Voyager finds itself faced with a unique situation. They come upon a quantum singularity - a star that has collapsed in upon itself thereby creating a powerful energy field that surrounds it. They believe another ship to be in jeopardy, and begin the task of saving it from destruction. After several unsuccessful attempts, Captain Janeway and B'Elanna Torres discover that it isn't another ship caught in the distortion, it is just a mirror image of the Voyager. They must find the rip in the singularity that they entered through and pass out of it before it collapses, forever trapping them.

A massive shockwave passes through space, turbulently jarring Voyager in its wake. Exploring the source of the disturbance, the crew discovers a devastated world. Endeavouring to deduce the cause of the detonation, Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Paris become trapped in the past, shortly before the catastrophe.

The crew of Voyager encounter aliens who are being ravaged by a disease that attacks their bodies - forcing them to harvest organs from other lifeforms in order to save themselves.

Endeavouring to replenish energy reserves, Voyager travels to the heart of a large nebula. Once inside, after encountering stranger force fields and peculiar electromagnetic phenomena, they become trapped. Finally, the crew realise to their dismay that what they have flown into is not an inanimate cloud of gas.

The crew of Voyager think they've found a possible way home when Lt. Harry Kim discovers a small wormhole in space.

While on an away mission, Tom Paris is blamed for a vicious murder and his sentence is to relive the violent moment of the crime from the victim's perspective every fourteen hours for the rest of his life.

While exploring an uncharted planet, Harry Kim is caught up in a subspace vacuole and is transported to the alien culture's homeworld where his presence causes many to doubt their traditional belief in the afterlife.

The crew of Voyager encounters alien beings known as the Sikarians and discover that they have the technology to "fold" space and travel more than 40,000 lights years in an instant but the hospitality of the Sikarians is not all it seems on the surface and both races' code of ethics is put to the test.

Upon responding to the distress calls of a Kazon warship, the crew discovers upon investigation that the ship was damaged by an accident due to Federation technology and that they may be harboring a traitor.

The Ship's Holographic Doctor must overcome his computer programmed limitations when the ship's Holodeck is taken over by an alien lifeform that transforms living crew members into pure energy.

During an away mission, Chakotay's neural energy is depleted and unless it is returned in the near future, Chakotay may be doomed to a life as a brain-dead host.

After being split into two separate identities, B'Elanna must decide whether or not to try and recapture her dual nature through advanced scientific technology, or to continue on as a completely singular being.

Neelix is confronted by the Haakonian scientist named Ma'bor Jetrel, the man responsible for creating the Metreon Cascade, a device that was used to annihilate a major portion of the Talaxian race, including Neelix' own family.

When several former Maquis crew members break Federation rules, it is up to Tuvok to train them in the finer points of Star Fleet protocol and discipline in order to re-establish harmony among the Voyager's crew.

When the Voyager crew finds an ancient artifact from Earth floating in space, their discovery leads them to an uncharted planet. Upon further investigation, the team finds a massive chamber containing eight Earthlings in cryogenic units, one of which is Amelia Earhart, the first woman aviator.

When First Officer Chakotay borrows a Shuttlecraft to perform the Pakra, a solitary Indian ritual commemorating his father's death, he inadvertently drifts into Kazon-Ogla territory and becomes the target of a Kazon youth attempting to earn his Ogla warrior name by killing the Federation enemy.

The Doctor struggles with the limitations of his programming when he thinks the crew of Voyager have abandoned the starship after an encounter with the Kazon.

Aggressive space-dwelling lifeforms attach themselves to the Starship, creating an electrophoretic field. The occurrence increases Kes' metabolic activity and accelerates her reproductive process, causing her to prematurely enter the elogium -- the time of life when Ocampa bodies become fertile.

Ensign Harry Kim is confused when he awakens to find himself on Earth -- in 24th century San Francisco -- working as a design specialist at Starfleet Engineering and engaged to be married.

A spatial distortion phenomenon occurs not only in space but inside the ship as well, changing Voyager's structural layout and completely disabling it. As Voyager is compressed and twisted by this unknown anomaly, the crew must work frantically to stop it.

Neelix and Tom Paris must work together to sustain a newborn alien.

As they ready for a first encounter with the Bothan alien species, a strange psionic field causes the Voyager crew to succumb to a delusional state and their most deeply buried thoughts to surface.

While Chakotay leads an Away Team to drill for minerals on a moon's surface, they accidentally disturb a village and encounter its defensive inhabitants - a group with Indian origins. A regretful Chakotay then experiences flashbacks of himself as a defiant 15-year-old who disappoints his father by not embracing the traditions of his tribe.

The crew is hailed by Ocampa colonists on an alien space station who, at long last, lead them to the female mate of The Caretaker, a mysterious being who may have the ability to send them home. As Tuvok tutors Kes in honing her rapidly maturing mental abilities, it's concluded that her burgeoning powers have been extremely underestimated.

Kazon intruders board the USS Voyager and steal a Transporter control module. That collateral enables their leader, Culluh, to persuade rival sects to join together to conquer the Federation ship.

In search of precious tellerium needed to power the ship, Janeway, Tuvok, Torres and Neelix transport to an Alsaurian city occupied by the hostile Mokra. Tipped off to the Voyager crew's presence, Mokra soldiers capture Tuvok and Torres. During the commotion, Janeway is secreted away by Caylem, a local eccentric who believes she is his long lost daughter.

When the crew finds a deactivated humanoid robot with an unfamiliar power source floating in space, Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres is able to repair this mysterious mechanical man. When it comes to life, the sentient artificial lifeform, Automated Unit 3947, explains that its kind is near extinction and asks Torres to build a prototype for construction of more units. In accordance with the Prime Directive, Torres must decline the request, but when 3947's Pralor homeship is located, the robot abducts her and threatens to destroy Voyager unless she constructs the prototype.

After Voyager is severely attacked by Kazon and one of its crewmen killed, Chakotay appeals to Janeway to start thinking more like the Maquis. Janeway knows she must strengthen Voyager's position in the quadrant and, although it's a difficult decision and is against her beliefs and training, she agrees to take steps toward a strategic alliance with leaders of several Kazon factions.

Lieutenant Paris makes history by becoming the first person to make a transwarp flight.

When a crewmember is murdered, Tuvok's investigation leads to another crewman, Ensign Suder, who finally admits he is the perpetrator. Vulcan instincts prohibit Tuvok from determining a logical motive for committing such a crime, so he attempts to understand the violent impulses of a criminal by performing a mind-meld on Suder - with deadly results.

Voyager spots a Cardassian designed, self-guided missile carrying a warhead capable of significant destructive force. As it travels towards Rakosan, a heavily populated planet, Torres reports that she's partly responsible for its virtually unstoppable status. When she was a Maquis, she intercepted it and changed its program to assault the Cardassians, but it later went astray and now she's the only hope in stopping it.

A rebel Q escapes imprisonment from inside a comet and demands asylum aboard the USS Voyager.

Voyager detects a distress call from a weakened lifeform aboard a small spacecraft and quickly beams a deathly ill Viidian female to Sickbay.

Tom Paris is relieved of duty to become a pilot with a Talaxian convoy - leaving a saddened Voyager crew behind. Almost immediately, the Kazon-Nistim and the scheming Seska attack the Taalaxian fleet, kidnap Paris and attempt to coerce classified information from him. Meanwhile, Neelix suspects someone aboard Voyager has been secretly communicating with the Kazon and his sleuthing leads him directly to Paris.

Astounding consequences occur when Voyager, while attempting to evade pursuing Viidian vessels, enters a plasma cloud. Before they can clear it, the engines stall, anti-matter supplies drain and Proton bursts, originating from within the ship, cause heavy casualties and breach the structural integrity of the hull. When Ensign Kim and Kes disappear into a void in space, Captain Janeway discovers a duplicate Voyager with an identical crew exists in a parallel universe.

Tuvok and Bennet's shuttle crash lands on a sacred haven for the Drayan, an alien race, which has shunned outside contact for decades.

Voyager activates an automated messages from members of the Kohl settlement who, years earlier, survived an environmental catastrophe by submitting themselves into artificial hibernation. When the crew transports the Kohl's hibernation pods on board, they find humanoids in deep stasis with suppressed metabolic activity - but with active minds and complex sensory systems controlled by a computer - and that is where the nightmare begins.

A bizarre occurrence causes Neelix and Tuvok, who are attempting to transport back to Voyager from an away mission, to arrive aboard ship as one.

When Janeway and Chakotay contact a deadly virus from an insect bite, the Doctor cannot find a cure. Unable to perform her duties, Janeway is forced to turn over permanent command of the ship to Tuvok and retreat, with Chakotay, to a small planet which shields the effects of the fatal disease.

The crew of Voyager are forced to abandon their starship after being tricked by Seska and the Kazon.