Distant Origin

This is a really well thought out and "realistic" offering. A couple of Saurian paleontologists from Voth have theorized, with great evidence, that their race originated on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs. But because they have a leadership that doesn't allow for challenges to its dogma, they are seen as threats. They escape in a ship and locate Voyager, the inhabitants of which will provide evidence of their theories. All that said, millions of years of entrenched dogma are hard to overturn through evidence and power loves to keep power. One of the very finest of the Voyager series.

Concetta Tomei's performance as Minister Odala is convincing and absolutely electrifying. This is the only TV episode of any show I think is worth watching just for one actor's performance. Even though you know everything for Voyager and Chuckles will be ok in the end, Minister Odala really makes you worry for them.

Beltran seems to play Chuckles very timidly in his Speech. I'm not sure if he's really doing that or if Tomei's Odala just makes it seem that way. Her glare alone is extremely intimidating, and that's with extensive facial prosthetics to boot. Her race could have been great ongoing antagonists for the show. Far better than that motorcycle gang they dealt with for two years.

Speaking of which, this episode also makes good use of the planet in that train wreck Basics. And while Voyager got a lot of flack for very limited continuity and consequences, this episode makes great use of prior episodes.

It's also told from a different point of view, which is nifty, a bit like TNG's First Contact episode.

Just don't watch the trailer before watching the episode. As almost always with Voyager, the trailers are terribly misleading.

One thing that I found odd in this episode is the absolute absence of any theory other than the one put forth by Janeway and Chakotay when it comes to the Voth: that this race of 'sauropods' evolved to the point of super-advanced technology (warp capable) at a time when the rest of the earth was populated by amazon forests and dinosaurs. And NO humans. In this situation, the sauropods evolved and thrived to the point of joining the Space Age in a big way-- and yet never bothered to explore the rest of Earth. Instead they apparently stayed on their little now-lost continent, and, when they discovered that an asteroid was going to devastate the planet, they got on space ships and flew away.

Two more likely theories (well, relatively speaking, that is) would be if either A) some race of space travelers 'rescued' the Voth species from doomed Earth and took them halfway across the galaxy. OR, option B) some debris from the collision of the asteroid and earth was thrown into space, and contained microscopic cells that later developed into life forms that eventually evolved into the Voth. But no, instead the theory is that a whole race evolved, learned, and thrived on one isolated continent, and,without ever exploring their own planet, they flew to the other side of the Milky Way.

If this 'theory' had been tempered or at least mentioned as being only ONE possibility, this episode would have been much better.

You would think "Voyager finds a race of super-smart dinosaurs who left Earth millions of years ago" would end up being dumb or corny like so many of the other more out-there episodes of the show, but everyone involved really went off. The writing is relatively grounded, there's a clear ethical message (trust science!!), and the acting and prosthetics are both killer. Also, is this the best Chakotay episode? The only other one that comes to mind is "Shattered", from season 7, which I also love. And "The Fight", of course (jk kimora).

Again, good writing. Sometimes the show can remind me of the outer limits. Clever little stories from a different point of view. I really liked the characters this time. Even the unlikable character has some charm. Cool stuff happens.