10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Voyager

Aside from a nice Easter egg on Soji's lunchbox in Picard, this creation has no place on Voyager. At this later stage of the series to pull out an episode that rivals the inanity of Threshold must have been quite a challenge to accomplish.

Framing a poor-Gorn's Teletubbies adventure against the more serious backdrop of a missing parent, the fifth season's Once Upon a Time offered a parallel story that truly took any nuance or seriousness away from Ensign Wildman's potential peril.  Originally an Alice in Wonderland concept, its narrative was ripped apart and rewritten by committee giving rise to the ever blue Flotter.

Rather than spending quality time with Naomi, the crew allow her to bury herself away in the fantasy of the holodeck and with the worst two rolemodels possible in the watery Flotter and the wooden Trevis. Neelix's strains at becoming a parent only feel undermined further by the inclusion of the holodeck which hauntingly reminds viewers of Barclay's predicaments back in TNG's Hollow Pursuits.  

But there's also another side to this episode in that making the Flotter doll it was hoped that fans would demand for one to be made and the merchandising money would flood in. The demand didn't come. Flotter is one of those points like Chef in Enterprise or Lt Vilix'pran budding in DS9. Viewers didn't need to see it to understand it. Bringing the character to life was an infuriating cash-grab that Star Trek's powers that be should have stepped away from and respected the intelligence of its audience.