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The Twenty Year Wormhole From Thirty Years Ago, When Star Trek: Voyager first aired, plenty of viewers — like our friend “Bob” — thought they knew exactly how its premise would work: every week, the crew would try to get home… and fail.
But in Eye of the Needle, the writers flipped that expectation on its head. Instead of a simple “wormhole that doesn’t work” plot, they crafted a four-act twist that kept hope alive until the very last moments — only to pull the rug in a way that was even crueller than a straight-up failure.
In this video essay, I break down how the episode manipulates narrative structure to surprise its audience, why its ending stings so much, and how a quiet B-plot about Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram manages to ask one of Star Trek’s most enduring moral questions: what makes someone a person?
Background Music: “My Little Chromatic Bastard” by SamuelFJohanns Licensed via Pixabay. Used with permission. https://pixabay.com/music/ambient-my-little-chromatic-bastard-11660/
Background Video: “Shades Of Lights In The Outer Space” by Oleg Gamulinskii Licensed via Pexels. Used with permission. https://www.pexels.com/video/shades-of-lights-in-the-outer-space-2611250/
Fair Dealing Notice: Clips from Star Trek: Voyager (and other Star Trek series) are Copyright Paramount Global (formerly CBS) and are included under UK fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review. All rights remain with their respective copyright holders.
Clips from The Prisoner (1960s series) are Copyright ITC Entertainment, now part of ITV Studios/ITV plc. Clips from The Fugitive (1960s series) are Copyright Warner Bros. Television.
All clips are used under UK fair dealing for the purposes of critique and review.
