Star Trek: 10 Episodes That Wasted An Incredible Premise

Once more, this is not a bad episode of Star Trek. It is, however, emblematic of a larger issue Star Trek: Voyager faced. In its focus on a group of errant Maquis crewmembers and on a problem with the bioneural gel packs, Learning Curve (the last episode of Voyager's first season) is, perhaps, the ultimate example of the waste of not one, but two, premises that were, in theory, supposed to be central to the series itself.

Learning Curve does its best to broach the subject of Maquis/Starfleet relations. By that point, only four of the (former) Maquis, that we knew of (looking at you Michael Jonas and Lon Suder!), were apparently having difficulty with their new working arrangements. The two crews had begun as enemies, or at least as opponents in a conflict, but in the Delta Quadrant, they rapidly became friends and colleagues. It wouldn't be entirely smooth sailing after, but Learning Curve does feel like one last bump in the road for a topic that could have been explored in far greater depth. And then, there was the cheese!

It was with a sense of urgency that Captain Janeway described the risk of running out of bioneural gel packs when one was found in need of replacement. They had 47 (there's that number again!) left in reserve, and that was it. After that, it would be bye-bye most of Voyager's critical systems, even with some isolinear switchovers! However, like for photon torpedoes and shuttles, lack was never really an issue ever again.