At the Star Trek: Voyager 30th anniversary panel at STLV 2025, executive producer and showrunner Brannon Braga didn’t just get nostalgic for the good old days of 26 episode seasons, he also took the opportunity to address each member of the cast directly and talk to them about his picks for what he felt was the best episode for them and their characters—and he wasn’t pulling from just episodes he wrote, but from across the entire series. Here is the full breakdown of his picks and why he chose them.
Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) – “Someone to Watch Over Me” [S5 E22]
“If you’ve seen it, you know what she brought. She brought all the Seven of Nine complexity and all the vulnerability, and somehow communicated both at the same time, by some miracle.”
B’Elanna Torres (Roxanne Dawson) – “Extreme Risk” [S5 E03]
“Roxanne brought engineering acumen, half-Klingon angst… But to me, she was the most dangerous character, the most cutting edge character, and in that episode, she was pushing the limits of her own psyche.”
Tuvok (Tim Russ) – “Meld” [S2 E16]
“That is just a deep Vulcan dive. He mind melds with a psychopath. And his performance in that thing—and it was one of the first episodes, very early on to be throwing that at him. And still, I think it’s the best Tuvok episode.”
Chakotay (Robert Beltran) – “Scorpion” (Part 1) [S3 E26]
“He brought the force of his rank to bear as the first officer and challenge the captain. I just thought you were at your best when you and Janeway were going at it. You made that two-parter work, because we had to understand why this was such a fucking terrible idea that Janeway was about to pull. We had to understand the danger and the risk.”
The Doctor (Robert Picardo) – “Latent Image” [S5 E11]
“That is not an episode where he’s singing and dancing or doing all that stuff. But it’s the one that’s about post-trauma as it regards to an artificial life form, and whether we should even be considering things like that. And how, with an AI, why not just delete it, and what the consequences of that are? I think it’s one of the best Voyager episodes, period.”
Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) – “Timeless” [S5 E06]
“The obvious choice, really showed off your chops in a great, great way.”
Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) – Captain Proton arc, including “Bride of Chaotica” [S5 E12]
“I know this seems like a silly answer, but I really think it captured Tom Paris and ended up being really a popular thing.”
Ethan Phillips/Neelix – “Mortal Coil” [S5 E03]
“Neelix was often the comic relief type character, but my favorite episode for him was ‘Mortal Coil’ where he lost his faith and was challenged after a near-death experience.”
Kate Mulgrew/Captain Janeway – “Year of Hell” [S4 E08 & E09]
“I want to say ‘Counterpoint’… But I have to go with the fan favorite, “Year of Hell,” because that was a complete captain’s story. It was about bringing all of her captainly instincts, all of her maternal instincts, all of her instincts to bear, to save her crew. And she went down with the ship.”
When asked which episode he felt captured the spirit of Voyager best, Braga again pointed to the two-part season 4 episode “Year of Hell”:
“It is a true ensemble. Every character has a moment. It’s about the crew fighting through impossible odds, that takes the premise of being lost in the Delta Quadrant and surviving to its absolute limit. And they stay together and they’re family down to the last moment. And that’s really what the show was about. It was Janeway keeping this family together.”
Brannon Braga with the Voyager cast at STLV 2025 (Photo: TrekMovie/Jon Spencer)
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Robert Beltran, Robert Picardo, and Brannon Braga at STLV 2025 (Photo: TrekMovie.com/Jon Spencer)
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