Equinox: Part 1 (26 May 1999)

Voyager encounters the Federation Starship Equinox, a Starfleet vessel trapped in the Delta Quadrant by the same alien who brought Voyager there. Equinox is heavily damaged and running with... See full summary »

Director:

David Livingston

Writers:

Gene Roddenberry (creator), Rick Berman (creator),

Stars:

Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson

Cast

Episode credited cast:
Kate Mulgrew	...	Captain Kathryn Janeway
Robert Beltran	...	Chakotay
Roxann Dawson	...	B'Elanna Torres
Robert Duncan McNeill	...	Tom Paris
Ethan Phillips	...	Neelix
Robert Picardo	...	The Doctor / Equinox EMH
Tim Russ	...	Tuvok
Jeri Ryan	...	Seven of Nine
Garrett Wang	...	Harry Kim
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Majel Barrett	...	Voyager Computer (voice)
Olivia Birkelund	...	Ensign Marla Gilmore
Steven Dennis	...	Crewman Thompson (as Steve Dennis)
Scarlett Pomers	...	Naomi Wildman
John Savage	...	Captain Rudy Ransom
Titus Welliver	...	Lt. Cmdr. Maxwell Burke

Storyline

Voyager encounters the Federation Starship Equinox, a Starfleet vessel trapped in the Delta Quadrant by the same alien who brought Voyager there. Equinox is heavily damaged and running with a skeleton crew. Happy to have found each other, Voyager assists Equinox in fighting off an non-humanoid alien race attacking them. But Equinox has earned the aliens hostility. Captain Ransom and his crew have been kidnapping and killing the aliens and using their unique physiology to enhance their warp drive. When Janeway imprisons the Equinox crew they stage a revolt. The Equinox EMH commandeers The Doctor's portable emitter and poses as The Doctor aboard Voyager. The cliffhanger leaves Equinox in retreat, with The Doctor and Seven of Nine hostage, and Voyager under attack by the alien race.

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Plot Keywords:

cliffhanger | 24th century

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

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Details

Release Date:

26 May 1999 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Television

Did You Know?

Trivia

The USS Equinox is a Nova-class starship. According to the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual", the Nova-class starship was originally considered as a successor to the Galaxy-class starship, and as a possible design for the Enterprise-E.

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Goofs

Commander Burke states in the dialogue that they are going to take Voyager's shield generator, after which they will have "...shields, weapons, they'll survive." Yet, in later dialogue, once the shield generator is taken from Voyager, suddenly Voyager has no more shields.

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Quotes

Lt. Cmdr. Maxwell Burke: I'm not the "petaQ" I used to be.

User Reviews

Janeway the Tyrant

The appearance of the Equinox makes for a great new plot element to Voyager, one which based on experience with Voyager, you know will ultimately lead to nothing, due to status quo and Magic Reset Button.

However, this is just another lead-in to Janeway the Tyrant; Janeway's opinions and interpretations are law, and anything counter to that is inherently evil.

Captain Ransom of the USS Equinox is under attack by weirdy aliens that are like ghosts, with powers to instantly remove shields and create holes in subspace to enter into the ship and attack people. Voyager finds them and rescues them.

Apparently this ship got caught by the Caretaker as well, and has been travelling through the Delta Quadrant trying to reach home.

Skipping past all the character introductions and meeting their Voyager counterparts, it turns out the Equinox and Captain Ransom have a DARK AND EVIL SECRET, because nothing like this ever happens in the Trek universe without the other captain being blatantly evil.

So it turns out that these spooky ghost-y aliens are actually nucleogenic lifeforms, and they traded an energy converter with the keeper species for one of them. They wanted to study it, but it died, and they realized they could somehow convert its bodily substance into energy to make them go home faster. They travelled 10,000 lightyears in two weeks.

It's NEVER stated in the episode whether they took more of these creatures to kill them and use their body, nor is it explicitly implied---given that they only took ONE and then travelled TEN THOUSAND LIGHTYEARS AWAY, it's kind of impossible for them to go back on a raid for more.

Nevertheless, Janeway the Despot decides this is EVIL, UNJUST, and a VIOLATION OF THE PRIME DIRECTIVES! And because SHE decides it, that makes it true, despite the fact that the Equinox didn't have the sort of special adventures the Voyager did that allowed them to HAX time and space and find wormholes or Kes or quantum multi-spectral interferometric bullshit bullshits to let them get home faster.

A one-hundred plus year journey (because the Equinox cannot go past warp 8) could be cut down to less than two months, but JANEWAY THE DREAMCRUSHER says THIS IS WRONG AND EVIL because it involved killing ONE alien spooky ghost thing.

So she decides in her insane mind to arrest ALL the crewmembers, regardless of innocence or guilt or the captain being responsible for their actions, and locking them in their quarters, where once they reach Earth in 20 or 30 years, they'll be put in prison for 30 years for... FOLLOWING THE PRIME DIRECTIVE IN TRYING TO FIND THE QUICKEST WAY HOME AND TO SAVE AS MANY LIVES OF THEIR CREW AS POSSIBLE! Yes, JANEWAY THE BABYKILLER sees breaking ONE part of the Prime Directive in order to follow ANOTHER part as not a moral ambiguity or a conundrum of survival, but an ABANDONMENT OF OUR OWN HUMANITY! She believes that the Equinox and all their crew should have just dropped dead under nonstop hostile alien attacks (unrelated to this issue of using the ghost alien) or else die of old age trying to travel to the Alpha Quadrant, rather than bending the rules for a greater good.

It's something SFDebris once stated as a comparison between Sisko, Picard, and Janeway; Sisko follows the Prime Directives, and breaks them only when they get in the way of human decency and compassion. Picard follows the Prime Directives, no matter what usually because of human decency and compassion.

Janeway the Tyrant, meanwhile, follows the Prime Directives no matter what, usually to the detriment of human decency and compassion.

And that malevolent scumbag Janeway has the GALL to claim that abandoning our principles is abandoning that which makes us human. And bending strict, inflexible, easily interpretable rules in order to SAVE HUMAN LIVES apparently makes us less than human, in the eyes of Janeway the Terrible.