Distant Origin

"Distant Origin" is a highly creative episode--perhaps the most creative in the series. It begins with a molecular paleontologist, Gegen, finding remains of the human killed in the season 2/season 3 cliffhanger episodes "Basics". He brings these to show his superiors on Voth--but they don't want to hear about his research and his crazy theory. What is this crazy theory? That his race and that of the body parts they found have a common ancestry--so a reptilian species and a mammalian one are, in fact, cousins of sorts.

To prove his theory, Gegen and his research assistant go in search of the ship from which this dead man originated. Soon they find Voyager and use their advanced cloaking technology to sneak aboard the ship. Unfortunately, the crew are able to detect their presence and soon an unexpected first contact occurs.

Up until this discovery, you never seen or hear anything from the viewpoint of the Federation--it's all Voth. I don't think another episode has been done like this. Additionally, what happens AFTER is something that was really creative and makes this a must-see episode. I nearly gave this one a 10, but it did seem a tad preachy late in the show.

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.

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.

This episode covers the classic battle between scientists with new learning and religious obstinacy or "doctrine" as it's referred to here.

What's great about this episode is how cleverly it brings this debate into play. For the first ten minutes we don't even see the Voyager crew. only the Voth archeologists and their discovery of human remains. They take a scientific approach to uncovering the mystery of "Voyager" and the ultimate interaction between the Voth scientists and Voyager crew is both fascinating and humorous at times.

Just a great job of writing this episode and the casting and acting of the Voth. The Viyager crew does their usual great job as well and this episode is up there with the best of Star Trek.

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.