10 Greatest Redemption Stories In Star Trek

We don't know a lot about Lon Suder. We know even less about Frank Darwin, other than the fact that his side career as a hand model was well and truly over by the beginning of Meld. Killed by coil spanner and shoved into an EPS conduit, crewman Darwin's journey home ended on the nightshift in engineering.

Not much of a 'whodunit' in this case, it was Suder, the murderer, of course. A Betazoid tormented by his violent tendencies, Suder had joined the Maquis as a way of letting off some of that homicidal steam, but aboard Voyager, he had no such release-valve mechanism. When the red mist descended, Suder succumbed to his baser instincts. He killed Darwin pretty much because he didn't like the way the guy looked at him. That or he really had something against the theory of evolution.

Tuvok, in all his Vulcan-ness, couldn't accept the apparent illogic of murder without motive and so melded with Suder to get some answers. That turned out to be a far better experience for Suder than it was for Tuvok. After Tuvok had calmed down a bit, the pair continued to work together. Suder, arrested in his quarters, made strides towards a more mindful existence, free of violence. Later, without Suder's help and self-sacrifice, Voyager would most likely never have been retaken from the Kazon.

If Darwin's murder was a visceral expression of the rift between the Maquis and Starfleet crews, Suder's redemptory death was the catharsis. Out of the worst of themselves, the two crews had shown the best of themselves. They could now move forward together.