Star Trek: Voyager®, "Caretaker"

'''"Caretaker." Star Trek: Voyager®,''' 16 and 17 Jan. 1995. Winrich Kolbe, dir. R. Berman, M. Piller, J. Taylor, story; Piller and Taylor, script. Premiere episode. 2 hour time-slot.

The Intrepid, we learn early in the episode, comes equipped in some of its systems with "bio-neural circuitry," and The Doctor for most of the episode is computer-generated (a hologram that can act in the world). Otherwise, very little of interest for users of the list in this episode itself. The Caretaker figure, however, is similar in function to Vaal in the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Apple" and fairly close to the space-based "god" in the 1987 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Justice" (both listed in this Category). The pattern is significant for Trekkian theology and politics: on a first reading, the doctrine of Self-Reliance for humanoid species as opposed to depending on a mysterious "Caretaker," who may stand for God or the U.S. Federal Government. Summarized in "Voyager Guide" 1995: 34.