All 5 Times Star Trek: Voyager’s Starship Was Destroyed, Ranked

Although Star Trek Voyager never permanently destroyed its flagship, there were a few times the USS Voyager was blown up or badly damaged on-screen.

Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) with the USS Voyager being destroyed in the background.

Summary

Star Trek: Voyager never permanently destroyed the USS Voyager, but that didn’t stop versions of the ship from being destroyed on-screen.
“Course: Oblivion” showcased a dramatic destruction of Voyager with a heartbreaking twist and race against time.
Other episodes, like “Timeless,” “Deadlock,” and “Year of Hell” included increasingly dramatic destruction scenes.

Star Trek: Voyager‘s flagship, the USS Voyager, was destroyed five times on screen, but some of these scenes were better than others. Although Voyager was never wrecked permanently, unlike the USS Enterprise or Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, it certainly took its fair share of damage over the show’s seven seasons. Being so far away from the Federation, Voyager had a harder time repairing this damage but still somehow succeeded in getting home in one piece.

However, this did not mean that Voyager was never depicted being destroyed on-screen. On several occasions, a version of the ship was either blown up or damaged beyond repair, often taking Voyager‘s cast of characters with it. These instances usually occurred to a duplicate version of Voyager or in an alternate timeline that was then erased, but all of them were undeniably dramatic and made for a compelling plot element to add to an episode. Inevitably, some of Voyager’s destructions were more exciting than others.

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5 Course: Oblivion

Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episode 18

“Course: Oblivion” was perhaps the most bizarre destruction of the USS Voyager, taking place as it did to a duplicated version of the ship and crew. Acting as a sequel to the season 5 episode, “Demon,” “Course: Oblivion” initially tricked the viewer into thinking the plot was following what was happening with the real Voyager. This illusion was shattered when the crew began suffering from an unknown, untreatable illness that resulted in the deaths of some core characters, including B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson).

Once the crew determined that they were actually biomimetic copies of Voyager’s real crew, it was a race against time to get to the original Voyager to ask for help, a race that the duplicated crew did not win. Although watching beloved characters slowly disintegrate was heartbreaking, the final shot of the destroyed Voyager did not pack the same dramatic punch that other instances of the ship’s destruction did. “Course: Oblivion” is a depressing and memorable episode, but in terms of Voyager’s ultimate destruction, there are better examples.

4 Timeless

Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episode 6

The USS Voyager under the ice in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Timeless"

As the 100th episode of Voyager, “Timeless” featured an action-packed plot from start to finish. It was also one of the few times that Voyager was not destroyed by being blown up, instead depicting the ship crashing on an ice planet which resulted in the deaths of almost the entire crew and the ship being frozen in a glacier. Thanks to the use of time travel, Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) were ultimately able to stop the disaster from happening.

There is no denying that watching Voyager’s crash-landing in “Timeless” was shocking. However, the episode foreshadowed the crash scene heavily, meaning that it wasn’t a surprise in the same way that other destructions were. Additionally, given the show’s premise, it was inevitable that the crash would be reversed by Harry and Chakotay’s actions by the end of the episode, meaning the stakes were less high in terms of knowing whether Voyager and her crew would be saved or not. “Timeless” is another classic Voyager episode with a great destruction scene, but the drama is lessened by certain factors.

3 Relativity

Star Trek: Voyager season 6, episode 24

Although “Relativity” wasn’t as popular an episode as some, the storyline did feature a very dramatic destruction of the ship thanks to sabotage. The episode focused on Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) as she traveled back and forth through Voyager’s history to try and locate the time-traveling saboteur who had planted a bomb on the ship, with mixed results. “Relatively” also featured the return of Captain Braxton (Bruce McGill), a recurring character first introduced in the season 4 two-parter “Future’s End” who ended up being the culprit.

Similarly to “Timeless,” the drama of Voyager’s destruction in “Relativity” was somewhat tempered by the fact that it was clear the timeline would simply be reset. However, the abruptness of the explosion was certainly surprising and helped drive home the urgency of the episode’s premise. Given that it was one of only a few times that Voyager was destroyed by explosion, “Relativity” ended up delivering a better, more dramatic destruction scene than “Course: Oblivion” or “Timeless.”

2 Deadlock

Star Trek: Voyager season 2, episode 21

Two Janeways face off in the Voyager episode Deadlock.

“Deadlock” was the first time Voyager was destroyed on-screen, and although the destruction was expected, certain plot aspects combined to make the whole scene well-executed. One of these aspects was the episode’s ambiguity about whether the version of Voyager that self-destructed was the original version or not. Having been split into two identical copies due to a quantum singularity, the only difference between the two Voyagers was that one of them had taken heavy damage thanks to the event, but there was no way of knowing which one had come first.

“Deadlock” also packed an emotional punch with the apparent deaths of Harry Kim and the newborn Naomi Wildman, who were only resurrected thanks to the undamaged Voyager sending them over before activating their self-destruct sequence to stop the Vidiians. The scene where the Vidiians get to the bridge and realized the self-destruct was imminent was wonderfully dramatic and reminiscent of a similar scene with the Klingons in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Overall, “Deadlock” had one of the better Voyager destruction scenes.

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1 Year of Hell

Star Trek: Voyager season 4, episodes 8&9

“Year of Hell” has consistently been held up as Voyager‘s best episode, and the destruction of the ship included in the episode corresponds with this honor. “Year of Hell” combined several elements that made for great Star Trek episodes, including being a two-parter and exploring the use of time travel in a unique way. It also left a lot of ambiguity about the ultimate fate of Voyager and the crew as they endured a brutal year-long attack by Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) of the Kremin Imperium.

Captain Janeway’s (Kate Mulgrew) ultimate decision to use Voyager as the last weapon at her disposal and ram it into the Annorax’s ship, blowing them both up, was certainly the dramatic height of “Year of Hell” and perhaps of the whole series. As a storyline that was foreshadowed a season earlier, “Year of Hell” unequivocally lived up to the hype of its premise, and the ship’s explosion clinched the episode’s stunning conclusion. Star Trek: Voyager delivered some truly memorable destructions of the USS Voyager, but none was more memorable than “Year of Hell.”