Friendship One

Stardate: 54775.4

As we see on Enterprise, the Vulcans established a presence on Earth since First Contact, and supervised Earth's progress with warp technology and space exploration. Shortly thereafter, Earth sends the "Friendship One" probe to pre-warp civilizations.

Fast forward to the present: With regular communications to the Alpha Quadrant established, Starfleet sends a mission to Voyager: retrieve the 21st Century probe sent from Earth.

Once the probe is located on a nearby planet the away team is shocked to learn of the non-friendly impact it has made.

This is sort of interesting. Voyager and her crew are victimized by a man who speaks for a culture that nearly destroyed itself by trying to adapt technology from an Earth probe. When people do outrageous things and don't look at the consequences, the first they to do is to blame someone else. After 300 years, how could Voyager have anything to do with this destruction. The probe could just as easily have brought prosperity these people. They made their own beds. And to make matter worse, this megalomaniac decides it's his right to deprive everyone else based on his own hatred. He talks about how nothing they do will bring back all the dead. That is such a ludicrous statement, designed for him to keep his hatred and venom intact.

Voyager receives its first official Starfleet assignment to locate the historical Friendship One probe.

The concept of the probe is excellent and is an important part of the Star Trek franchise, but unfortunately the plot devised to explore Voyager's mission to retrieve it is unoriginal and not very well done.

I don't have a problem with the themes the writers incorporate nor the points of view presented in the story. I have my own opinions on most of the themes covered Star Trek but don't take the franchise as seriously as some of the more angry reviewers. Ultimately the writers have the creative freedom to incorporate whatever issues they want into the material. End of!

What I struggled with is how annoying the characters become and frustrating it is with the focus fixed solely on the probe's consequences. Personally, I think they should definitely have covered these issues, but not let it dominate the episode. There could have been a short scene or sequence that address the ethics and then concentrated the remaining time on putting it right. Rather than string out a relatively tedious hostage drama, the suspense could have been created from the crew devising and executing the solution.

Oh and the less said about Lt. Joe Carey the better!

Excellent idea, but disappointed they didn't take a different or more original approach.

It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.

Now that the Federation can have regular contact with Voyager, they ask that they look for the Friendship 1 probe that was sent to the Delta Quadrant a long, long time ago. However, when the shuttle team land, they find that the place IS inhabited (despite the sensors) and these people are really angry. They blame the Earth for their plight, as they used the technology that powered Friendship 1 (antimatter) and destroyed themselves. Sure, a few folks remain, but they look nasty and are suffering from the aftereffects of the antimatter explosion. Not surprisingly, these folks are very hostile and soon take some of the away team prisoner. Now they try to use the team as a bartering tool and things get even nastier very quickly.

This episode features some very nice make-up effects. The sore- covered aliens look really realistic and nasty. While the baby didn't look great--the rest of them sure did. In addition, the story is pretty exciting and worth seeing.

By the way, this story seems a lot like an episode from "Space: 1999" concerning a probe powered by a 'Queller Drive'. This system ended up killing things because of its toxic emissions--and soon folks effected by it come looking for retribution!

Considering how close we are to the end this is a remarkably good episode.you know nothing good is going to happen when an extra is sent on an away mission but I felt the plot worked incredibly well loved the little kid.