Caretaker (Voyager episode)
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| Star Trek: VOY episode | |
| "Caretaker" | |
 The Caretaker’s Array |
|
| Episode no. | 1 and 2 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 101 & 102 |
| Airdate | January 16, 1995 |
| Writer(s) | Michael Piller Jeri Taylor |
| Director | Winrich Kolbe |
| Guest star(s) | Richard Poe Josh Clark Alicia Coppola Gavan O’Herlihy Armin Shimerman |
| Year | 2371 |
| Stardate | 48315.6 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "N/A" |
| Next | "Parallax" |
Caretaker is the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It was originally shown as one double-length episode, but has been split into two parts for repeats. The episode (and the series) features Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway, but footage was shot with this role played by Geneviève Bujold, who quit before completion.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The story began with a battle between the Maquis and the Cardassians in an area of space known as the Badlands. After evading the Cardassian vessel in a plasma storm, the Maquis ship, commanded by Chakotay, was hit by a massive displacement wave moving too fast for them to outrun.
Shortly after these events transpired, the Federation starship USS Voyager was sent to investigate the missing Maquis ship, as Voyager’s Chief of Security had been operating as a spy on board. Before their departure, Captain Janeway enlisted the aid of Tom Paris, a former Starfleet officer who had worked for the Maquis, and was serving time in a penal colony in New Zealand. Entering the Badlands shortly after leaving Deep Space Nine, Voyager was scanned by a coherent tetryon beam, and seconds later hit by another massive displacement wave.
Voyager and the Maquis ship were both transported to a location in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light years from their previous location in the Badlands, and were in the presence of an enormous alien array, which was firing pulses of energy towards a nearby star system. The Maquis vessel was abandoned, and Voyager’s crew began to repair the damage caused by the displacement wave; the First Officer, Lieutenant Commander Cavitt, had been killed, along with the helm officer, Lieutenant Stadi.[dubious — see talk page] In Sickbay, a console had blown out, killing both the ship’s doctor and nurse, and in Engineering the Chief Engineer had died. The warp core had suffered a micro-breach, and Captain Janeway had to work with engineer Joe Carrey to seal the breach before it destroyed the ship. Moments after they had done this, Voyager’s surviving crew were transported aboard the array.
When they arrived, they saw a scene reminiscent of a farm on Earth, where a friendly hostess assured them they should get comfortable while they waited; she declined to state for what they would be waiting. Investigating the farm, Paris and Ensign Harry Kim discovered a holographic generator in the barn, and the Maquis crew, who appeared to be undergoing medical experiments. The crew of Voyager were subjected to these, before being returned to their ship—each missing one person: for the Maquis, B’Elanna Torres; for Voyager, Ensign Kim. At Captain Janeway’s suggestion, the two crews agreed to work together to solve their common problem, at which point Tuvok was revealed to Chakotay to be a Starfleet spy.
A combined away team transported to the array, where the scene of the farm remained, but only a single inhabitant, an elderly man who had been playing the banjo in their initial “welcoming bee.” After making references to there being “not enough time!”, he clapped his hands, and the entire team found themselves back on Voyager’s bridge.
Torres and Kim awoke to find themselves in an advanced medical facility, being cared for because of growths on their wrists. Although the medics there assured them they would make them comfortable, and considered them guests, they also admitted that there was no known cure, and everyone sent to them in that condition ultimately died. After initially having to drug Torres due to her violent resistance, they later took their two guests on a tour of their underground city, and briefly explained their history and culture; their people, the Ocampa, had initially lived above the surface but moved underground when the water had vanished from the surface; their energy needs were thereon provided for by the Caretaker, and those supplies had been increasing, giving the Ocampa a five year store. All of their needs were met, and all he ever asked them to do in return was to care for the people he sent them, all of whom had been infected with the fatal illness.
Following the energy pulses towards the planet, Voyager and the Maquis ship came upon a local called Neelix in a debris field. He informed them that the Caretaker had been abducting ships and their crew for years, and that he would help them to find their crewmembers. Upon their arrival in orbit of the planet, Neelix gave them beam-down coordinates for a group of people called the Kazon. He also advised them to take a large amount of water for bargaining purposes. After securing the release of his companion—an Ocampa called Kes—he wanted to leave, but Kes persuaded him to stay and to help them find their people.
Kes explained that she had escaped the underground city by the ancient tunnels that her people had originally used to enter it; whilst they were covered by force-fields, centuries of neglect had caused breaches to appear. Transporting through one of these, Voyager’s away team located the clinic in which Torres and Kim had been cared for—their arrival, however, was too late, as they had already procured digging tools, and begun their escape up the ancient shafts. During their climb, the Caretaker repositioned the array, and began firing weapons instead of energy. As a result, Tuvok formulated a hypothesis: the Caretaker was dying. He had mentioned a debt that could not be repaid, he had massively increased the energy he was sending to the Ocampa, and then he had begun to seal the conduits by which the energy was transmitted to their city. For the away team, the more immediate concern was that the weapons fire was irradiating the surface, meaning they could no longer transport through the gaps in the force fields, but would instead have to climb to the top and dig their way out.
After escaping in this way, during which Chakotay was injured when a platform he was standing on detached from the rock wall under the stress of the bombardment, Voyager and the Maquis vessel returned to the array, their crew members cured, in an effort to secure their return to the Alpha Quadrant. They were, however, not alone, and a Kazon Ogla fleet engaged them in battle, rather than allow a people as technologically advanced as Starfleet to board the array. Janeway managed to transport aboard, and discovered the reason the Caretaker had brought them there, along with all the others Neelix had told them about: he was indeed dying. His people, a race of explorers, had accidentally caused catastrophic damage to the Ocampan atmosphere, necessitating their move underground. He and another had been chosen to stay behind, to care for them, but his mate had long departed, and the Ocampa were soon to be left with nobody to care for them. He had been scouring the galaxy for a compatible genetic makeup with which he could procreate, as only his offspring could bear the responsibility of caring for them—while some, such as Kim and Torres, had shown promise, he had ultimately failed in that task. As a result, he felt he had to destroy the array, in order to keep it out of the hands of the Kazon.
Whilst the Alpha Quadrant vessels were technologically superior to their Kazon opponents, the numbers, size, and brute power of the Kazon ships made them more than a match. Ultimately, the only way to destroy the lead Kazon vessel was for the Maquis ship to ram it, Chakotay manually piloting, and only being beamed out a moment before the collision. The collision, however, caused the Kazon vessel to collide with one arm of the array, disabling the self-destruct the Caretaker had set. Whilst they could then have used the array to return home, after grappling with the Prime Directive, Janeway decided to use Voyager’s weapons to destroy the array, in accordance with the Caretaker’s wishes. After she did so, the Ogla Maj assured her that “you have made an enemy today” before withdrawing his fleet.
At the end of the episode, Janeway granted Tom Paris a field commission as a lieutenant and conn officer, replacing the deceased Lieutenant Stadi. The Maquis crew were also integrated with Voyager’s, with Chakotay serving as Janeway’s First Officer. At their request, Neelix and Kes were permitted to remain on board, to impart their skills and local knowledge, and Voyager began her anticipated 75-year-long journey home to Earth.
[edit] Notes
- Geneviève Bujold was the first actress chosen to play Captain Nicole Janeway and several scenes were filmed with her. She was later replaced with Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway. There is some controversy over the reasons for this—Bujold herself states that she quickly found the schedule for shooting serial television too demanding. Others say that Paramount found her performance unsatisfactory and dropped her. Several pieces of Bujold’s filmed scenes can be found in the Season One DVD extras.
- Several days re-filming took place, after it was decided to change Mulgrew's hairstyle.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Poe, Stephen Edward (1998). A Vision of the Future: Star Trek Voyager. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-53481-5.
[edit] External links
- "Caretaker" article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
| Preceded by: N/A Series Premiere |
Star Trek: Voyager episodes | Followed by: Parallax |
