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Notes -
While we're on the subject of Star Trek Voyager episodes with interesting allegories for race, there's Living Witness (which was directed by Tim Russ, the actor for Tuvok, even!). There's two alien races living on the same planet and Voyager's passage caused a war after which one of the races subjugated the other. Centuries have passed and relations between the two races have improved, but a copy of the Doctor wakes up and finds out that this relatively peaceful state of affair is based on a rather false retelling of the events where the race that won the war was belligerent and had Voyager kill the leader of the other race for them, when the doctor knows the subjugated race actually attacked Voyager unprovoked. The Doctor is stuck between leaving things as is, even if it's based on a lie, or pursuing the truth, which threatens the peace as some of the subjugating race always felt bad about the way they were cast as the villains and the subjugated race wants to clings to a view of history where they were blameless. Eventually it's settled on the truth. The whole episode has a feel of exasperation towards grievance politics.
Voyager got maligned for having some of the worst episodes (and the worst multi episode arcs) in Star Trek, but it had some great one-offs too. And it's funny to me how a show like Star Trek that's meant to be progressive can be "left behind" by an ideology that by design keeps moving.
IMHO, Voyager beats the pants off anything that came after. When I binged TNG, DS9 and Voyager in a row, I found myself really enjoying Voyager in a way similar to how I enjoyed TNG. DS9 was good, but Voyager was a return to form for me. None of the cast really had the swagger or the gravitas to really elevate it, but they put out some remarkably solid Trek stories. Even if they did start leaning into Jeri Ryan's assets.
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