A Love Letter to My Favorite Line in Star Trek: Voyager’s Pilot

Thirty years ago today, Star Trek: Voyager began its trip to the Delta Quadrant with the debut of its pilot, “Caretaker.” Famously, Voyager‘s production got off to a rocky start: it lost its already groundbreaking female lead, Geneviève Bujold, just days into filming. But Bujold’s loss was Star Trek‘s gain with the arrival of Kate Mulgrew to slide into Voyager‘s captain chair, coffee mug in hand–and what made her perfect for Star Trek was clear from the get-go.

There are lots of weird and wonderful things in “Caretaker.” There are the big, bold ideas, like stranding the ship tens of thousands of lightyears from Federation space, or how the devastation of its crew during the initial accident necessitated Janeway’s Starfleet officers brushing shoulders with new guerrilla allies from the Maquis they were trailing. There’s small ones, like how utterly fabulous Roxann Dawson’s B’Ellana Torres hair is before it’s sadly straightened out the second she becomes part of Starfleet again (a crime!), or the look on Kate Mulgrew’s face when she has to react to the line “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a man’s angla’bosque” (30 years on and we’ve never learned what angla’bosque was, so we must clearly be living empty lives).

Much of the delight in what makes “Caretaker” work as a pilot is centered around Mulgrew. Her immediate grasp of who Janeway is—and how the episode itself never lowers itself to grappling over the idea of having a female captain leading the show—gives Voyager a momentum and energy that arguably the show itself didn’t always manage to capitalize on over the next seven seasons. She is in some moments a complete hard-ass, in others a caring leader; we see her pushed and pulled through this bizarro scenario she’s been handed in a routine mission turning into a fight for her and her crew’s very lives in the face of unknowable power, and facing it with this perpetually simmering sense of justice and compassion. It’s almost absurd to think that that Mulgrew was not there from the start: it feels like Janeway was made for her. And yet in spite of all this, one line read of hers in “Caretaker” has been burned into my mind ever since I first saw it.

It’s a completely absurd one, one of many among Voyager‘s notable quotables. The scene: Voyager has just encountered the Talaxian trader Neelix, who offers to help act as guide to the strange new region they find themselves in exchange for supplies of water. But first, he leads them to a world where the crew believes several abducted Maquis and Starfleet officers have been taken to, only for Neelix to quickly admit that he’s lead them astray: they’re helping him make a deal with a local species, the Kazon. Or more specifically, one of their subsects, the Kazon-Ogla.

“The Kazon-Ogla,” Janeway asks, scrunching her face against the bright light of the desert world they’ve beamed down to. “Who are the Kazon-Ogla!?”

It’s not a funny line. It’s a completely normal line. It’s a completely normal reaction to Janeway realizing Neelix has gamed them. But Mulgrew sells this absurd incredulity in the moment in such a way that I cannot help but laugh every time I’ve watched “Caretaker” over my lifetime as a Trek fan. The exasperation, the confusion, the rise and fall in her voice as she accentuates “Kazon-Ogla.” She’s not making a mockery of the line or at having to spout alien names and technobabble, though; what nails it is the complete and utter earnestness behind it all, dripping from every syllable of the sentence. The Kazon-Ogla? Who are the Kazon-Ogla! I can’t explain why it speaks to me in such a particular way, beyond Mulgrew’s conviction as she says it. In that moment, the Kazon-Ogla, whoever they are, are the realest thing in the world to her, and she makes you believe it, no matter how peculiar it seems to be.

Janeway and the rest of the crew would go on to have many iconic moments, and many sweeping, earnest, funny, brave, inspired speeches and exchanges across Voyager‘s seven seasons. But of all the moments in Voyager beyond it, of all the moments I’ve seen now having watched Star Trek for the best part of my life, it’s this one that just creeps into my head at random like a mental tic—one that I’m still thinking, and laughing about, 30 years later.

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