Fridge / Star Trek: Voyager S5 E25, S6 E1: "Equinox"

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The fact that that Ransom's crew are all humans, and apparently have not picked up any Delta Quadrant natives or other unusual characters as Voyager has on its journey. The lack of diversity on Ransom's ship is an indicator of his fatal captaining style. The reason Janeway's ship has had a Talaxian, an Ocampan, ex-Borg drones, former Maqius, and an EMH who was allowed to expand his programing, all of whom offered unique skills that saved the ship on countless occasions, is because Janeway put compassion for strangers in need before her desire to get home. Ransom's method of getting home as fast as possible by any means, to the point of murdering alien civilians and deleting his EMH's ethical subroutines for the sake of convenience, were eventually his downfall.
  • Janeway's claim to have bent the Prime Directive on occasion, but never broken it — which the audience knows is bullcrap — makes a bit more sense if you assume she's simply lying; that she's unwilling to admit the truth to a fellow Starfleet officer, and maybe not even to herself. In which case, it actually serves to foreshadow the fact that Ransom is lying his ass off when he claims he's "walked the line once or twice, but nothing serious".
• Fridge Horror:
  • There are recurring hints of Captain Ransom and Max Burke acting...shall we say "disrespectful" to women, throughout both parts of this episode. (Ransom's promise to Max that there will be "plenty of women on Earth," and not in a romantic tone; and the invasive face-stroke Ransom gives Seven when he has her captive, just to name a couple examples.) Combine that with how they treat everyone else, from the aliens, to Voyager's crew, to their own underlings—with everything from emotional manipulation to torture and murder, all for short-term personal gain—and the daily reality of Ransom's female officers during the Equinox's journey home becomes pretty horrifying. The visible PTSD of Marla Gilmore, one of the only female Equinox crewmembers left when Voyager arrives—adds a horrifying weight to this.
  • The surviving Equinox crew will have to spend the rest of their journey on Voyager seeing an EMH who looks and sounds identical to the one whose ethical subroutines they deleted, a daily reminder of their heinous crimes aboard their old ship.
  • On a more humorous note: the fact that the surviving Equinox crew members are punished by being demoted to the rank of Crewmen (a literal death sentence in the "Star Trek" universe!). Amplified by the fact that they're never seen or mentioned again.

• Fridge Logic:
  • While the lack of diversity in Ransom's crew can be partially explained by the above Fridge Brilliance, it's still a bit of a stretch for an entire Starfleet ship to be all-human by the 24th Century, even if humans do make up the majority of Starfleet officers. Furthermore, nearly all of them have English sounding first names!
  • It's also ironic that Ransom, an exobiologist (someone who studies alien life forms), would have only his own species onboard.
  • Drifts into Fridge Horror, when you realize Ransom likely "started" with a more diverse crew... before they were all killed off.
  • Why would deleting Doctor's ethical subroutines result in him immediatelly betraying Voyager, when Equinox's EMH stayed loyal to them, even when it became inconvenient?