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Star Trek is beloved by legions of people from all ages, walks of life, and origins. But for the unfamiliar, starting on Star Trek for the first time can be overwhelming with 700+ hours of TV, over a dozen movies, and novels and comics to boot. Wondering where you should get started? If you’re looking to kick things off by watching Voyager, here are some pointers.

Star Trek: Voyager
Aired 1995-2001—7 Seasons, 172 episodes
Starring Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Lien, Robert Duncan McNeill, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Tim Russ, Jeri Ryan, Garrett Wang

Two years after the launch of Deep Space Nine (1994) and following the end of The Next Generation (1987), yet another Star Trek series was born from the minds of producers Rick Berman and Michael Piller. The series was Voyager (1995), “the female-driven one,” a program founded on a “lost in space” premise following a vessel wandering the unexplored Delta quadrant in the 24th century, located approximately 75 years away from home. In the pilot, Janeway must join forces with Federation rebels known as The Maquis, pulling story points from Deep Space Nine to build its premise. Instead of airing on a major television network like its three predecessors, Voyager aired on UPN, Paramount’s underdeveloped television network (now fused into The CW) in an effort to bring viewers to the channel.

The series is easily one of the two least popular entries in the Trek franchise but holds merit for its female-forward storylines. Trek’s overall historical reputation in regard to female storylines left something to be desired, so Voyager changed the model and employed a female scientist as captain (Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway), with woman-centered storylines where male characters played supplemental roles.

Janeway is a complex woman who molds the primary characteristics of Kirk (William Shatner) and Picard (Patrick Stewart) into a complicated, endearing, and stern female character. She is strong but compassionate, diplomatic but zealous, and can be assertive while maintaining femininity.

Where Voyager fails is in the superficiality of its storytelling and its problem-of-the-week structure. Each episode finds a new dilemma that almost always gets resolved in the final minutes, with its varied cast of characters resolving their differences via Full House-esque, “cue the violin music” tradition. Where DS9 carefully wove a more serialized thread of plots, Voyager reverted to intense procedural television. On the plus side, that makes it easier to pick and choose random episodes of the series for viewing.

Crucial Episodes:

Deadlock (Season 2, Episode 21)
An exciting technobabble episode, Voyager is nearly destroyed by proton bursts coming from an unknown source.

Star Trek: Voyager - Flashback

Flashback (Season 3, Episode 2)
When Tuvok (Tim Russ) begins to suffer from a mental breakdown triggered by a suppressed memory, a mind-meld with Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) takes him back to his tour of duty with Captain Sulu (George Takei) aboard the USS Excelsior. Flashback was Voyager’s imaginative tribute both to The Original Series and to Star Trek’s 30th anniversary, recreating many scenes from the feature film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

Future’s End, Parts I and II (Season 3, Episodes 8-9)
An effectively plotted and paced two-parter, this double-episode story tells an engaging story wherein Voyager is flung back to 20th century Earth. Ed Begley, Jr. and Sarah Silverman guest star. Producer and series writer Brannon Braga said “Henry Starling was our first great Voyager villain,” played by Begley, Jr. in one of his few bad-guy roles.

Worst Case Scenario (Season 3, Episode 25)
A buried holonovel with high entertainment value depicting a Maquis mutiny is discovered. Kate Mulgrew considers this one of her personal favorite episodes. It showed off the comedic chops of many of Voyager’s cast members and provided some lighthearted material before the big season three two-part finale.

Star Trek: Voyager - Scorpion

Scorpion, Parts I and II (Season 3, Episode 26 and Season 4, Episode 1)
As a series finale and starter, Scorpion delivers as a fan favorite—particularly for Part I which closed season three. In it, Captain Janeway is forced to enter an alliance with the Borg in order to defeat a race even more powerful than them, creating an all-new super villain (Species 8472) for the Star Trek universe.

Year of Hell, Parts I and II (Season 4, Episodes 9-10)
Year of Hell is Voyager’s most famous two-parter, often cited its best episode. Obsessed with restoring the Krenim Imperium, no matter the cost, a Krenim military temporal scientist creates changes in history that all but destroy Voyager. Using time as a weapon was a fresh concept at the time, and the visually-rich double episode executed it wonderfully. It also serves as a great episode for exploring the relationship between Tuvok and Seven of Nine.

Message in a Bottle (Season 4, Episode 14)
In this humorous episode centered on The Doctor (Robert Picardo), Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) finds an abandoned subspace relay network that has the ability to send a message, or in this case The Doctor, to a Starfleet ship detected in the Alpha Quadrant.

Star Trek: Voyager - Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy

Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy (Season 6, Episode 4)
The Doctor’s programs are infiltrated by spying aliens, but they access his daydream program and assume it is reality. The premise is inspired by The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber, in which Walter Mitty daydreams about wondrous adventures while running errands., and the episode’s title comes from a John le Carré spy novel. Robert Picardo called it one of his favorite episodes and the series’ best comedy.

Notable mentions include Course: Oblivion (Season 5, Episode 18) in which the Voyager crew faces death; Someone to Watch Over Me (Season 5, Episode 22) where The Doctor teaches Seven of Nine about dating, only to discover he has his own feelings for her; Blink of an Eye (Season 6, Episode 12) a clever episode in which Voyager is trapped in orbit above a strange planet where time passes thousands of times faster than in the surrounding galaxy; Timeless (Season 5, Episode 6), where Voyager crash lands on an ice planet and everyone dies except Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), who are forced to alter history and save the ship; and Equinox Parts I and II (Season 5, Episode 26 and Season 6, Episode 1), another of the series’ great two-part finale/premiere combos.

Are you a fan of Voyager? What are your favorite episodes for getting newbies excited about the series?

(Looking for a similar guide for The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Enterprise? Look no further.)