Thirty years ago today, Star Trek: Voyager began his journey to the Delta Quadrant with its pilot debut“Keeper.” famous, VoyagerThe production got off to a rocky start: it lost its first groundbreaking female lead, Geneviève Bujold, just a few days into filming. But Bujold’s loss Star Trekthe profit of Kate Mulgrew arrives to slide on VoyagerThe captain’s chair, coffee mug in hand–and what makes him perfect Star Trek was clear from the start.

There are a lot of weird and wonderful things in “Caretaker.” There are big, bold ideas, like the ship being stranded ten thousand lightyears from Federation space, or how its crew was destroyed in the first accident requiring Janeway’s Starfleet officers to fight new guerrilla allies from the Maquis they follow. There are the little ones, like how Roxann Dawson’s B’Ellana Torres hair looked before it was straightened the second she became part of Starfleet again (a crime!), or the look on Kate Mulgrew’s face if he has to react in line. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted someone’s angla’bosque” (30 years have passed and we haven’t learned what Angla’bosque is yet, so it should be clear that we’re living an empty life) .

Much of the joy of what makes “Caretaker” work as a pilot Centered around Mulgrew. Her immediate understanding of who Janeway is—and how the episode itself doesn’t lower itself to grapple with the idea of ​​having a female captain leading the show—provides Voyager a momentum and energy that the show itself might not always capitalize on over the next seven seasons. He is at some moments a total hard ass, at others a caring leader; we see that he is pushed and pulled in this strange scenario that he is entrusted with a routine mission that becomes a fight for his and his crew’s life in the face of an unknown power, and facing of it with this ever-flowing sense of justice and mercy. It’s almost absurd to think that Mulgrew wasn’t there from the start: it felt like Janeway was made for him. And despite all this, one line he read in “Caretaker” has been burned into my mind since I first saw it.

This is a complete absurdity, one of many Voyagerfamous quotes. The scene: Voyager recently encountered the Talaxian merchant Neelix, who offered to help act as a guide to the strange new region they found themselves in exchange for water supplies. But first, he leads them to a world where the crew believes that many kidnapped Maquis and Starfleet officers have been transported, so Neelix quickly admits that he misled them: they helped him negotiate with a local species , the Kazon. Or more specifically, one of their sub-sects, the Kazon-Ogla.

“The Kazon-Ogla,” Janeway asked, frowning against the bright light of the desert world they were shining on. “Who are the Kazon-Ogla!?”

It’s not a funny line. This is a perfectly normal line. It was a perfectly normal reaction for Janeway to realize that Neelix was playing them. But Mulgrew sells this silly disbelief in the moment in such a way that I can’t help but laugh every time I watch “Caretaker” for the rest of my life as a walking fan. The anger, the confusion, the rise and fall of his voice as he emphasized “Kazon-Ogla.” He doesn’t slur the line or have to say foreign names and technobabble, though; what nail it is is the complete and utter fervor behind it all, dripping from every syllable of the sentence. The Kazon-Ogla? WHO are the Kazon-Ogla! I can’t explain why it spoke to me in a particular way, beyond Mulgrew’s conviction as he spoke it. At that moment, the Kazon-Ogla, whoever they were, was the most real thing in the world for him, and he made you believe in it, no matter how strange it was.

Janeway and the rest of the crew continue to create many iconic momentsand many sweeping, passionate, funny, courageous, inspiring talks and exchanges throughout Voyagerseven seasons. But at all times Voyager more than this, of all the instances I now see watching Star Trek for the better part of my life, it was one that stuck in my head like a mental tic—one that I still think about, and laugh about, 30 years later.

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