Star Trek: 20 Supporting Characters That Deserved More

12. Samantha Wildman

Samantha Wildman has excellent thematic timing. She stepped into the spotlight when she announced her pregnancy perfectly in tune with the discussions of sex and family in Elogium.

Her journey as a single working mother in the Delta Quadrant isn't easy, beginning with the heartbreaking loss of her baby in Deadlock. But Naomi's duplicate is swiftly rescued from Voyager's doomed counterpart and reunited with our Samantha.

Despite the traumatic start, Voyager soon became home to the young Naomi Wildman, and slowly, but surely, we started to see far more of the girl than her mother. But we'd have loved to have known Samantha better.

Samantha's frequent onscreen absence creates a strange sense of Naomi as a sort of floating wild child of Voyager...which may well have been intended, but feels a little odd now and then. While Naomi's experience of growing up on a ship is frequently explored, we see little of what it's like for Samantha to balance duty and motherhood so far from home and family.

We do get a powerful moment in Once Upon a Time, when Samantha almost dies on a shuttle and has to leave an emotional farewell message to her daughter. But it only makes us realise how much potential Samantha's story had.