Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More
The disappearance of Amelia Earhart has puzzled the world for decades. Fortunately, Star Trek: Voyager is here to provide some solid answers to the riddle of what happened to one of the most famous aviators in history. You might have thought the plane just crashed, but it was actually aliens! And now, “The 37’s” have a hard decision in front of them.
The Wikipedia plot summary for “The 37’s”:
The crew of Voyager follows an ancient SOS to a Class L planet whose atmospheric interference requires landing the ship to investigate. On the surface, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) leads an away team to discover the source of the transmission: a Lockheed Model 10 Electra[9] with an alien generator added to sustain the SOS. Joining Commander Chakotay‘s (Robert Beltran) team, the crew finds a “cryostasis chamber” containing eight humans preserved since the 1930s, including Amelia Earhart (Sharon Lawrence) and her navigator, Fred Noonan (David Graf).[3]
After resuscitation, Noonan uses a handgun to hold the Voyager officers hostage, disbelieving their story and insisting on speaking to J. Edgar Hoover. Janeway speaks to Earhart and explains her significance to human history and to Janeway herself; Earhart, as Noonan’s boss, tells him to cooperate, and some of them exit the caves. Outside, a firefight breaks out between the Voyager away team and three hooded figures. Janeway flanks the attackers and disarms them; they are human, and are surprised that Janeway is too. They had assumed the Voyager was a ship belonging to an alien species called the Briori.
Janeway learns that the Briori visited Earth in 1937 and abducted some 300 humans, bringing them to the Delta Quadrant to use as slaves. The humans later successfully rebelled against the Briori, who fled and never returned. Fifteen generations later, there are more than 100,000 humans living in three cities on the planet. The last eight un-revived humans in cryostasis were believed dead by the others, who came to revere “the 37s” as “monuments to [their] ancestors”.
The settlers cannot offer the Briori technology that brought them there, as their ancestors dismantled the alien ship long ago, but they do offer to accept any of the Voyager crew into their society. Janeway thus faces a crisis of conscience over whether she can condemn all on Voyager to the 70-year journey home to Earth. Yet, if the choice is presented to the crew and only some decide to continue onward, the ship cannot be staffed by fewer than 100. Meanwhile, Earhart says that as much as she admires Voyager and yearns to learn more about it, she and the other 37s feel a stronger affinity to the people on the planet and they will all be staying. In the end, Janeway allows her crew to decide for themselves, and they all opt to stay aboard.
In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “The 37’s” and never getting to see the Garden of Eden. Plus! The guys chat about people who disappeared, wearing a suit while flying a plane, and the endless micro-aggressions of Neelix.