As we mourn Abrams’ macho Trek obliteration, it’s a good time to revisit Voyager, at once the most Star Trek-ian of accomplishments and the most despised object of fanboy loathing in the franchise's nearly 50-year history. From 1995-2001, it offered American audiences something never seen before or since: a series whose lead female characters’ agency and authority were the show. It was a rare heavy-hardware science fiction fantasy not built around a strong man, and more audaciously, it didn't seem to trouble itself over how fans would receive this. On Voyager, female authority was assumed and unquestioned; women conveyed sexual power without shame and anger without guilt. Even more so than Buffy, which debuted two years later, it was the most feminist show in American TV history.

Voyager wasn’t some grrl power screed in Starfleet regalia. The ideas and emotions it explored were very much in the Star Trek wheelhouse; it just came at them from a fresh--and to some viewers, off-putting--angle. Led by Kathryn Janeway (Obie-Award-winner Kate Mulgrew), the first female Trek captain to carry a series, Voyager brought us some of the most convulsively inventive humanist science fiction this side of early Stephen Moffat-era Doctor Who.

Set in the 2370s, Voyager episodes ping-ponged wonderfully between genres and modes. We got a revolution fought in the safety of dreams (“Unimatrix Zero”) and a metaphor-rich engagement with childhood violence and memory (“The Raven”). Some episodes spotlighted the kinds of spiritual engagements that frequent Voyager scripter Ronald D. Moore would import whole-hog to his post-9/11 remake of Battlestar Galactica.

And yet to this day, Voyager is often despised in the most grotesque terms, as a Star Trek apostate. The loathing isn't as severe as it was when the show went off the air, and Trek Today published an ongoing "mock trial" titled “The Court Martial of Captain Kathryn Janeway." But while fan consensus seems to have swung around during the last 18 years, albeit with the agility of an aircraft carrier course-correcting, Voyager still inspires loathing so deep that whole Youtube channels may be required to feed it. As recently as October 2012, the sci-nerd bellwether site Den of Geek asked “Why do Star Trek fans Hate Voyager?” as if the assumption were so widely accepted as to stand unquestioned. The article hit the carotid artery of fanboy animus when it suggested that “the hatred is mostly about those first two words in the title. After all, what is Star Trek?” The self-evident answer: not Voyager.