This feature contains spoilers.

Poor Star Trek: Voyager spent many years as the under-appreciated black sheep of the Star Trek family (until Enterprise came along, at least). This was at least partly because, following its excellent pilot, it got off to a rather slow start. Season one has its high points (Eye of the Needle, Faces) but also some memorably bad lows (Learning Curve’s “Get the cheese to sickbay!” for one) while season two is, to put it bluntly, bad. Although it contains the occasional impressively thought-provoking hour (Meld, Death Wish, Tuvix, The Thaw) the season was far too concerned with its interminable Seska/Kazon plot, and it also has the honour of having produced Threshold, the only episode to give Spock’s Brain a run for its money in the competition for Worst Episode of Star Trek Ever Made, so bad it was later ret-conned out of Voyager’s canon.

But this is not the whole story. In season three, Voyager found its feet and seasons three, four and five are all excellent examples of classic Star Trek. Yes, story arcs tend to take a backseat to more stand-alone storytelling for the most part, and the show tends to press the re-set button at the end of every episode, but as season two had proven, complex, plot-driven story arcs were not really Voyager’s forte (though it was a bit better at long-term character development through smaller arcs). The rest of the show focuses mainly on the crew jumping around from one Planet of Hats to another, because that is what Star Trek is at its heart, and seasons three-seven of Voyager do their job with enthusiasm and a sense of fun sometimes missing from more po-faced iterations of the franchise.

Season three was the season that found the right tone and finally dropped sub-standard Klingon substitutes the Kazon for more stand-alone stories and, eventually, a much better recurring bad guy, the Borg. Following their introduction toward the end of season three, the show became somewhat obsessed with the Borg; season five is the last season in which these formerly terrifying bad guys really make an impact. Season six floundered a little and included two episodes which, as far as we’re concerned, are actually much worse than Threshold (which has a certain cheesy, so-bad-it’s-funny awfulness to it); Fair Haven and Spirit Folk are painful to watch. Season seven became a tad self-congratulatory and introduced some controversial developments in the personal relationships amongst the crew, but brought the ship home with its dignity mostly intact.