Distant Origin

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.

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.

Veteran Trek Director David Livingston is given a try at writing, and he transwarps it out of the park.

This is the hardest science that I've ever seen inserted in Star Trek's fiction, an absolutely fascinating episode that clearly references the inquisitional trial of Galileo Galilei, with added dinosaurs. It even holds true to the result and consequences of Galileo's persecution, a bold move for a mass appeal show.

There's even a delightful nod to Larry Niven's "Known Space", letting you know that Livingston is absolutely on top of the canon.

If you have the slightest interest in science fiction, even if you have no interest in Voyager, or in Star Trek, this episode is required reading as a standalone flash of genius.