RETROACTIVELY MAKING STAR TREK: VOYAGER GOOD, Part X
Star Trek: Odyssey will, in the end, consist of 176 episodes, the same length as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Star Trek: Voyager was only 172 episodes long; UPN screwed around with its schedule and cut the first season so that only sixteen episodes aired, though twenty had been produced. The remaining four episodes were integrated into the second season, and the four extra episodes from season two were integrated into season three. To correct this deviation, only twenty-two episodes were produced for season three, totally twenty-six broadcast episodes including the refugees from season two. So, Odyssey's first season will be twenty episodes long, with each subsequent season composed of twenty-six episodes.

This entire endeavor has been about showing how good the Voyager concept could have been; so, as a tip of the hat to the writers, flawed though their work was, I have borrowed and improved many of their episodes. Where I have done this, I will credit the original episode by title. Example: "The Stars My Destination, Parts I and II"... ("Caretaker, Parts I and II"). Some episodes are more loosely borrowed than others; these will be denoted: "Reign of Khan, Parts I and II"... (sorta "Future's End, Parts I and II"). Please see startrek.com for complete writing credits.

Episode Guide
Season One
"The Stars My Destination, Parts I and II" - The two-hour TV movie series premeire. We meet the crew and watch as both Torres's Maquis ship and later the U.S.S. Ulysses are pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker. The crew meets the Talaxian trader-cum-pirate Neelix, the deadly Vidiians, and Kes, Neelix's Ocampa girlfriend. There is an adventure in the Ocampa city, the Caretaker's motives and mission are revealed, and the Starfleet and Maquis crews learn to work together to save the naive Ocampa from the Vidiians. In the end, the Caretaker is dead, the Vidiians want blood, and both crews are now living together aboard the Ulysses as they try to make their way home. ("Caretaker, Parts I and II")

"Chain Reaction" - The Ulysses comes across a recently devastated civilization and through a temporal anomaly paradoxically learn that they caused it. After retroactively preventing the disaster, the crew follow the Prime Directive and do not make contact with the pre-warp society. ("Time and Again")

"The Bright City" - A peaceful city is not what it appears to be when the crew learns non-corporeal beings have forcibly possessed the humanoid population and try to do the same to them.

"Horror Show" - Desperate for supplies, the crew sneak into a Vidiian-occupied colony. They witness the horror the Vidiians have inflicted upon the natives and decide they must step in. Aiding a local resistance cell, they destroy the Vidiian government house and cover the escape of the colonists. Benicio backs Captain McKenna's decision to intercede, despite Sovok's objections; it is one of the first times McKenna and Torres have agreed.

"Ex Post Facto" - Nick is accused of a murder he didn't commit and it is up to Sovok to clear his name and uncover the conspiracy to frame him. ("Ex Post Facto")

"Eye of the Needle" - Using a randomly happened upon wormhole, the crew are able to make contact with a Romulan science ship in the Beta Quadrant. However, because wormholes are breaches in both time and space, the Romulans are twenty years in the Ulysses's past. Nevertheless, a message for Starfleet is given to the Romulan captain, who promises he will deliver it when the time is right. ("Eye of the Needle")

"Lights in the Sky" - The only source of desperately needed supplies is a pre-warp planet, which the Prime Directive forbids the ship from contacting. A compromise is reached when local broadcasts speak of the mysterious sighting of "unidentified flying objects" by many people. The crew disguise the ship to match the local UFOs and head toward the surface. (This is the first time we see the Ulysses's atmospheric flight abilities.) Encountering some locals, the crew pretend to be "visiters" and make off with the supplies they need; of course, later very few people on the planet believes the wild stories of visiters from the stars.

"Life Eternal" - Accidental interference with alien burial rituals leaves Dan stranded in another dimension, where his very presence causes a crisis of faith. He is eventually retrived, but the dimensional shift has left him able to "see" certain frequencies of the subspace spectrum. ("Emanations")

"The Long Road Home" - The crew meet a hedonistic society who posses a transporter with a range of 40,000 light years, halfway back to the Alpha Quadrant. The Sikarian canon of laws does not permit the sale of the technology; so, Sovok, Cole, and K'rena's Starfleet rival, Joe Carey, spearhead an effort to illegally purchase the device from a group of dissidents. The attempt to use the "trajector" fails and the Ulysses is further damaged. The Sikarians explain that the trajector only works within the planet's atmosphere; insulted by the illegal purchase, they insist that the ship leave orbit. McKenna disciplines the conspirators, expressing her particular disappointment in Sovok, whom she considers one of her closest friends. ("Prime Factors")

"Dominion Over All" - The crew are greeted by a group of friendly aliens living in an idyllic city: Vidiians not infected by the phage. Sadly, due to blackmail by the infected Vidiians, it's a trap and the Ulysses only escapes by forcing a Vidiian ship to crash into the city, thus introducing the phage. Elisabeth quotes Poe to Benicio, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

"In Wartime" - A Haakonian ship is rescued from Vidiians and the sole survivor is the man who killed Neelix's entire family, Dr. Ma'Bor Jetrel. The Talaxians had lost a war against the Haakonians fifteen years earlier; they had surrendered after the Haakonians devastated the Talaxian moon of Rinax with a weapon of mass destruction called a metreon cascade, invented by Jetrel. Though hailed by his people as a great conquerer, Jetrel has been crushed by guilt of "murdering" over 300,000 Talaxians; he has been trying for fifteen years to atone for that one day. Neelix reflects upon his service as a fighter pilot in the war, which he admits to Kes his people had started with a sneak attack upon the peaceful Haakonians. Jetrel's attempt to reconstitute those disintegrated by the cascade fails and he confesses he is dying from a slower-acting form of the cascade, which he had acquired by developing the weapon. Neelix remains too bitter to forgive the Haakonian, who insists he does not deserve forgiveness. ("Jetrel")

"Maelstrom" - The Ulysses encounters a Talaxian convoy in dire straits; one by one, the ships are being drawn into a spatial anomaly and smashed to bits. In classic Starfleet style, Captain McKenna decides to rescue them. This causes major tension onboard, as the ship is very nearly destroyed for, many argue, no good reason. This marks a turning point for Neelix, who had previously stuck around just to be with Kes.

"All the Pasha's Treasure" - The crew conduct the survivors of the Talaxian convoy to their destination, the first world of the Sankur-Hobii. (This is the first appearance of the Sankur.) On the way, they are attacked by a rival pashate, the Sankur-Nistrim, and meet its leader, Kazon Pasha. Jabin Pasha of the Hobii is grateful to the crew for rescuing and defending the convoy. Things take a nasty and complicating turn when the Nistrim draw the Hobii fleet away and then launch a raid on Jabin Pasha's treasury. (This is also the first appearance of the Sankur's technician-slaves, the Trabe.)

"The Mutiny, Part I" - Hunter Cole is not happy that Captain McKenna "wastes" her time freeing slaves from evil energy beings, helping "organ donors" escape from the Vidiians, and easing the consciences of dying Haakonian weapons engineers; she should be expending all her effort tracking down the Second Caretaker and then forced her to return the Ulysses to the Alpha Quadrant. More than that, though, he is enraged that his friend and former commander Benicio has sold out to "that Starfleet witch." He is not alone in his frustration with being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Moving boldly, the mutineers seize the ship and assault the bridge, but cannot stop McKenna from using her command codes to lock out the main computer. Still, at the end of season one, Hunter Cole controls the Ulysses.

Season Two
"The Mutiny, Part II" - Sovok escapes from his quarters and leads a campaign of sabotage, while Cole's skeleton crew stuggle to maintain control. However, when Cole captures and executes one of the saboteurs, the mutiny falls apart. Cole murders Joe Carey, his chief aid, but cannot escape before McKenna tracks him down. Faced with a dilemma, McKenna cannot simply put twenty-five people, a fifth of her already undersized crew, off the ship, nor can she lock them in the brig for seventy years. The majority of the mutineers are stripped of rank and confined to their quarters when not on duty for six months; however, Cole and five others are deemed too great a threat to stay. The Ulysses lands near the outskirts of an alien spaceport and leaves them behind. In the spirit of reconciliation, Captain McKenna allows Lt. Carey to be buried with full Starfleet honors.

"Secrets and Lies" - Cesca, Benicio's old flame from back in their Maquis days, is revealed to be working with the Sankur-Nistrim, attempting to give them a transporter. Before she defects, but after Sovok suspects, Benicio tries to defend Cesca, who once aboard a Nistrim ship reveals her true name to be Elar Korat; she is not a Bajoran freedom fighter, but an operative of the Cardassian Obsidian Order assigned to infiltrate the Maquis. Between Sovok working for Starfleet and "Cesca" for the Obsidian Order, Benicio laments to K'rena, "Was anyone on that ship working for me?" "I was, jefe. Always." ("State of Flux")

"Deadlock" - A spatial anomaly (love 'em, don't'cha?) creates out-of-sync duplicates of the Ulysses and the crew. While the two ships are destroying each other, both Docs are delievering a baby in Sickbay. The Dan of one ship and the baby from the other are killed, but one ship, with both aboard, survives when the other sacrifices herself by self-destructing. ("Deadlock")

"Possibilities" - Dan finds himself in a series of disjointed, contradictory timelines: he was never asigned to the Ulysses; he's aboard the Ulysses, but the ship was never abducted by the Caretaker; he's back at the Academy on the day he learned his girlfriend was cheating on him with his best friend.... Eventually, Dan's altered sight allows him to see bizarre subspace aliens observing each permutation of his life; everything he's seen has been part of the aliens' research. Releasing him with their apologies, Dan finds that he was abducted without ever leaving his quarters. ("Non Sequitur")

"The Good of the Many" - A transporter accident combines Sovok and Neelix, killing them, but simultaneously creating a third, unique being, who takes the name Sovix. For several weeks, Sovix struggles to establish an identity and make a life for himself. When a technique for recovering both Sovok and Neelix is developed, Sovix argues that he has a right to live as a unique sentient being. While McKenna agrees, she orders his death in order to salvage the two others, logically citing the good of the many over the good of the one. ("Tuvix")

"Children of the Phage" - The crew find a group of Vidiian children, too young to have contracted the phage, on a ship adrift in space. A recorded message informs them that the children's parents have given them up in the hope they can be spared the ravages of the deadly disease. Alas, the phage has mutated to lay dormant in young children without revealing its presence (Doc finds it with more than just a little luck). Having no choice but to leave the children on a nearby planet to die, one of only two nurses decides to stay behind and easy the children's suffering.

"The Weapon" - The ship finds an interstellar cruise missile floating dead in space and accidentally reactivate it. The weapon's A.I., reawakened after being damaged by a plasma storm, resumes its mission to destroy the capital city of a nearby planet, thus restarting the war it had been meant to win, a war that had ended decades earlier. Trapped aboard the weapon, K'rena struggles to stop the destruction of an entire city. ("Dreadnought" and "Warhead")

"The Armistice" - The crew encounter a large fleet of free Trabe, who ask them to help negotiate an armistice with the coaltion of Sankur pashates. Seeing an opportunity to help stablize the entire region, McKenna uses her influence with the Hobii, one of the most powerful pashates, to gather many different pashas. Included among them are Kazon Pasha and his chief adviser, a once again-Cardassian Elar Korat. Sadly, it is a trap by the Trabe to assassinate the Sankur pashas and the Ulysses finds herself stripped of her few allies among the Sankur. ("Alliances")

"The Carnival" - The crew come across an entire race of humanoids in suspended animation. The aliens' minds are connected into a central computer core; so, they cannot be safely revived without their cooperation. To find out why they are still in suspended animation long after their computer sez they were supposed to be revived, McKenna, Kes, and Dan are plugged in. They find themselves in a twisted version of a carnival, presided over by the maniacal Clown. The aliens have not left suspended animation because the sadistic Clown won't let them. ("The Thaw")

"Upgrade" - A sentient robot is discovered drifting in space amid the wreckage of an alien warship. Revived by K'rena, the robot sends out a homing signal and is soon picked up by a starship populated by identical robots, the soldiers of the Praelor. The Praelor warbots kidnap K'rena and force her to perform several upgrades, upgrades which will allow them to be free of organic Praelor control and launch a genocidal war of conquest. ("Prototype")

"Occupied Territory" - The Ulysses calls upon Neelix's homeworld of Talax, under the adminstration of the Haakonian military for the past fifteen years, since Rinax was devastated by the metreon cascade. Neelix's relationship with Kes is irrevocably damaged when he becomes involved with Fazik, his former girlfriend and squadron mate during the war. Fazik, now a terrorist against the Haakonian-supported government, tries to recruit Neelix, but eventually he turns her over to the authorities. Denounced as a traitor by Fazik and broken up with Kes, Neelix returns to the ship feeling all alone in the universe. (from "Fair Trade")

"The Raid" - Elar Korat engineers a magnificently executed Nistrim raid on the ship, making off with several crucial transporter components. While Kazon Pasha uses the transporter to convince other pashas to help him seize the entire Ulysses, the crew devise and execute a daring counterraid to sabotage Kazon's flagship and destroy his transporter. ("Maneuvers")

"Monster" - Lon Suder, a Betazoid Maquis with a long history of violent behavior, murders a fellow engineer in cold blood. In an effort to render Suder a more cooperative prisoner, Sovok performs a mindmeld. While Suder does somewhat adopt the Vulcan's calm demeaner, Sovok experiences painful memories of Suder's crimes and several days of severe loss of emotional control. ("Meld")

"The Race" - Having taken a year and a half of beatings (the passage to the Delta Quadrant, the Vidiians, the Sankur, the maelstrom, the Praelor warbots, et al.) with no time in spacedock, the Ulysses is on her last leg. The only way to get the money necessary to pay for the parts and repairs is for the Talax Falcon to win a local space derby. The only way for the Falcon to win is for Nick and Neelix to get over their feud over Kes and work together. In the end, the Ulysses is in better shape than at any other point since leaving the Alpha Quadrant.

"Sleeper" - Before joining Starfleet, Sovok was for fifty years an agent of the V'Shar, the Vulcan security ministry. When it becomes clear someone among the crew is a mole working for Korat and the Nistrim, he has to match wits against Korat's Obsidian Order skills in a race to uncover the sleeper's identity before the Ulysses is delivered into the hands of the Cardassian. ("Investigations")

"Marooned, Part I" - Korat lures the Ulysses into an inescapably devious trap and the Nistrim, joined by ships from several other pashates, overwhelm the ship's defenses. Having fought a not insignificantly sized flotilla of Sankur vessels and with Sankur troops fighting their way to the bridge deck by deck, McKenna orders Neelix and Nick to make a desperate run for help in the Falcon. Kazon Pasha and Korat gain control of the ship and, to Korat's horror, maroon the crew on a primative planet with potentially unfriendly Stone Age natives. The season ends with the crew watching as the Ulysses flies off without them. ("Basics, Part I")