The Best Star Trek: Voyager Episode Got A Quick Shout-Out On Lower Decks

Reading this article before watching the latest episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" would be highly illogical. Spoilers abound.

The more you think about it, the more it makes sense that the writers of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" would find something of a kindred spirit in "Voyager." Both shows deal with Starfleet crews that ended up overlooked and almost completely forgotten, both feature unusual protagonists that we've never seen as a functioning part of the Federation before, and both ended up embracing a certain tone that could only ever exist in their specific shows. While the track record of the animated series (including the fifth and final season, which /Film's Jacob Hall reviewed here) is much smoother than "Voyager," nobody should be surprised by the fact that creator Mike McMahan continues to pay homage to arguably the most maligned show in all of "Trek."

Where the season 5 premiere decided to include a deep-cut reference to "Voyager" character Naomi Wildman (a name that I will forever read in the voice of Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine), "Lower Decks" opted for an even more obscure reference this week — one that alludes to the best episode in all of "Voyager," in fact. Titled "The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel," episode 3 brings the crew of the USS Cerritos face-to-face with a rogue nanite cluster currently infesting an interstellar cruise ship. What they don't know, however, is that this microscopic infestation is actually a Starfleet vessel from another dimension entirely, hopelessly trapped on a subatomic plane with no way of escape but to consume metal and self-replicate. Once the main emotional and story conflicts are resolved and the lost starship Endeavor makes contact with Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) to explain their situation, the desperate captain makes one statement that ought to make any "Voyager" fan perk up.

And it has to do with the two-part episode "Year of Hell," commonly regarded as one of the most memorable hours in the entire series.

Despite a compelling premise that ranks among the very best of any "Trek" series, "Voyager" hardly ever lived up to the potential drama of a Federation starship hopelessly lost and cut off from all allies in the furthest reaches of the Delta Quadrant — except for one episode in particular, that is. The season 4 two-parter "Year of Hell" turned out to be a refreshing change of pace from a series that otherwise treaded water, taking Voyager's endless quest to return to Earth and putting a fresh spin on it by truly putting the crew through hell and back in their toughest challenge yet. An innocuous encounter with a hostile (but harmless) alien race suddenly transforms into something else altogether when a wave of temporal energy hits Voyager. Without anyone realizing, it changes the timeline into one in which the starship is battered, bruised, and on its last legs, with the crew suffering heavy casualties and unable to find any end to their misery in sight.

That's an awfully dark episode for a comedy like "Lower Decks" to blithely reference, but it's just the latest example of the animated show dropping one-liners for diehard fans to pick up on. When the Cerritos rescues the microscopic crew of the Intrepid-class vessel (the same as the USS Voyager, naturally), their visibly-frantic captain explains their circumstances and builds to the gut-busting punchline, "We've been through a month of hell!" ... only to be met by Mariner's unimpressed response of, "A month?" Compared to what Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Chakotay (Robert Beltran), and the rest of the Voyager crew experience, the plight of the USS Endeavor hardly measures up. Still, it's always nice to know that even the most maligned eras of "Trek" history can be remembered and homaged in any given installment of "Lower Decks," whether it be that gross lizard-mating episode or the return of Robert Duncan McNeill's Tom Paris.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" premiere on Paramount+ every Thursday.