10 Times Star Trek: Voyager Went Woke

10. Equal Healthcare For All

Even now, we're still arguing about the best and fairest way to deliver healthcare to everyone in need. And Voyager decided to wade into the debate back in November 2000 with the episode Critical Care.

The Doctor is sold to a hospital ship that assigns medical resources based on social status. The patients are separated into wards, with the higher echelons receiving overly abundant care while the lower classes remain cramped and under-treated.

What's more, treatment for a patient is only authorised based on their 'TC', a number assigned via a formula that weighs up their skills, profession, accomplishments and societal worth. While high TC patients are given medication just to increase their life expectancy, low TC patients are denied the same medication even when their lives depend on it.

The US Health Maintenance Organization allegory is savage. Yes, you can have doctors, medication and facilities, but an administrative system will decide how much, for how long, and whether you even qualify at all. And it's clear that this allusion to HMOs isn't a coincidence.

Robert Picardo himself described the episode as 'the Doctor's abduction by an alien HMO'. And producer Ken Biller reportedly suggested that the episode would be reminiscent of The Original Series tackling contemporary political and social issues.

Not that Star Trek has always been woke, right...?

This is against the backdrop of 1999 figures that showed 42.6 million people were without medical insurance in the US. And that was actually an improvement on the previous year. 

The issue of healthcare was all over the 2000 US election campaign, with Al Gore in favour of a patients' bill of rights, and George W. Bush proposing tax credits to help lower-income families.

So while at first glance Critical Care might seem like just another Doctor abduction story, there was far more going on under the surface.