10 Utterly Devastating Star Trek Endings That Came Out Of Nowhere
9. Eye Of The Needle
Star Trek: Voyager's main premise was the journey to reach home, with some interpersonal conflict thrown in for good measure. Despite the theme of opposites learning to work together being dropped almost immediately, that constant strive to get home never fades - leading to sad outcomes, more often than not.
Eye Of The Needle depicts the crew's first real chance of getting home - though not to the home they imagined. They encounter a wormhole that leads home - twenty years in the past. The Romulan scientist that they encounter via the viewscreen, Telek R'Mor, offers to transmit personal messages from the crew to their families once time catches up.
However, this bittersweet ending takes a decidedly more tragic turn after Tuvok discovers, via the ship's records, that Telek R'Mor will die four years before Voyager leaves the Alpha Quadrant and that there is no way of knowing if he got to send their messages or not.
As Voyager went on, it is more or less confirmed that he wasn't able to send them. Episodes like Message In A Bottle and Hunters show the crew's elation at contacting Starfleet to let them know that they had survived. It makes Eye Of The Needle an even sadder episode in retrospect, adding weight to that definite downer of an ending.