The 37's

Plot

On stardate 48975.1, the USS Voyager detects an ancient distress signal and traces it to a Class L planet. Because atmospheric interference prevents standard scanning, Captain Janeway orders the ship to land. She leads an away team to the signal's source, finding a Lockheed Model 10 Electra aircraft, modified with an alien generator to keep the SOS broadcasting. Meanwhile, Commander Chakotay's team discovers a cryostasis chamber holding eight people from the 1930s, among them Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

After being revived, Noonan pulls a handgun on the Voyager officers, refusing to believe their story and demanding to speak with J. Edgar Hoover. Janeway speaks privately with Earhart, explaining her place in history and her personal significance to Janeway. Earhart, as Noonan's superior, orders him to cooperate, and the group leaves the caves.

Outside, three hooded figures open fire on the Voyager team. Janeway circles around and disarms them, learning they are human. They had mistaken Voyager for a ship belonging to an alien race called the Briori.

Janeway discovers that the Briori came to Earth in 1937, abducting about 300 humans and transporting them to the Delta Quadrant as slaves. The humans eventually revolted, driving the Briori away permanently. Over fifteen generations, the population grew to over 100,000 people living in three cities. The last eight cryogenically preserved individuals—the "37s"—were thought dead by the settlers, who came to regard them as ancestral monuments.

The settlers cannot provide the Briori technology that brought them here, as their ancestors dismantled the alien ship long ago. However, they invite any Voyager crew member to join their society.

This presents Janeway with a moral dilemma: she cannot force all 152 crew members to endure a 70-year journey home, but if fewer than 100 choose to stay, the ship cannot function. Earhart, though fascinated by Voyager, decides she and the other 37s feel a stronger connection to the planet's people and will remain. In the end, Janeway lets her crew decide for themselves, and every single one chooses to continue aboard Voyager.

Writing

"The 37's" was a collaborative effort between Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga. It was one of four episodes produced for the first season that ended up airing during the second season, alongside "Projections," "Elogium," and "Twisted." UPN held these episodes back so that Voyager's second season could premiere ahead of competing networks' fall lineups, a scheduling move that shaped how this particular story was developed. The writers originally intended the episode to close out the first season, using it to show the Starfleet and Maquis crew members finally uniting as a single team, accepting the reality of their long journey, and, as they put it, "whining less about home." They also wanted the spectacle of Voyager landing on a planet to serve as a season-ending visual highlight.

Braga initially pushed for a two-part story, citing what he saw as an abundance of material—a sentiment Kate Mulgrew later echoed by noting that "every scene" seemed to contain a monologue. The rest of the writing staff opposed ending the first season on a cliffhanger, so Braga condensed the story into a single episode. He admitted that this compression caused him difficulty, as the first three acts had a noticeably different tone from the final two. Still, he was ultimately pleased with how the narrative refocused on the Voyager crew by the end.

The colonists' cities, described in the episode as impressive, amazing, and something to be proud of, were never shown on screen. Taylor explained that the final act was written late in production, and budget and time constraints made it impossible to depict them. While Braga and series creator Michael Piller felt that omitting the cities hurt the episode, Taylor did not consider the compromise a significant loss.

Production

Production number 120 of Star Trek: Voyager, "The 37's," was overseen by producers Brannon Braga, Merri Howard, and Peter Lauritson. Robert Lederman handled the editing, Marvin V. Rush served as director of photography, and Dennis McCarthy provided the musical score. The casting team of Junie Lowry-Johnson, C.S.A., and Ron Surma assembled the guest cast, which included John Rubinstein as John Evansville, David Graf as Fred Noonan, Mel Winkler as Jack Hayes, James Saito as Nogami, and Sharon Lawrence as Amelia Earhart.

Casting

Lowry-Johnson already knew Lawrence from their collaboration on NYPD Blue. Lawrence believed her role on that show, which she described as a character with professional strength, helped her land the part of Earhart. The actress was enthusiastic about playing a version of the famous aviator, noting that she preferred roles centered on professional connections rather than domestic or family ones. In this episode, Lawrence was particularly interested in the bond between Earhart and Captain Janeway, seeing them as two accomplished women pilots who had achieved great success in their fields.

Beyond the historical figure, Lawrence also enjoyed the alternate-history premise, the "what-if" scenario of Earhart's fate. Growing up, Lawrence had watched Kate Mulgrew play Mary Ryan on the soap opera Ryan's Hope. Coming from a family where women typically became homemakers, Lawrence found Mary Ryan—with her career and New York City life—to be an exotic and inspiring character. On the Voyager set, Lawrence and Mulgrew often discussed their careers, theater backgrounds, and the challenges of balancing work and home life.

Lawrence believed that her real-life rapport with Mulgrew influenced the on-screen dynamic between their characters. Mulgrew complimented Lawrence's performance, stating that she "really played the hell out of that role." Lawrence, in turn, praised the entire Voyager cast for their professionalism and their ability to handle the show's large amount of complex, often unreferenced dialogue.

Reception

"The 37's" debuted on UPN in the United States on August 28, 1995, drawing a Nielsen rating of 7.5 percent, meaning 7.5 percent of all television viewers at that time tuned in. It became the season's most-watched episode and achieved the highest ratings since the first-season installment "Ex Post Facto." Kate Mulgrew later said she loved filming every moment of the episode, specifically commending the writing, Sharon Lawrence's portrayal of Amelia Earhart, and director James L. Conway.

Tim Russ, who played Tuvok, called it a strong example of science fiction and expressed a desire for more episodes like it. Brannon Braga thought the episode had enjoyable and exciting elements, including meeting Earhart and landing Voyager, but felt it lost momentum after the colonists were encountered and their cities on the planet were never shown. Co-creator Michael Piller found the premise hokey, likening it to "old Star Trek," though he praised the ship's landing as "pretty amazing." Fellow co-creator Rick Berman simply called it "a great episode."

Critic Dale Kutzera of Cinefantastique argued that the episode crammed too many unrelated ideas together. He believed Amelia Earhart served little purpose as an object of Janeway's admiration, especially compared to Captain Kirk and Abraham Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain," and noted that she largely vanishes from the second half. Kutzera also pointed to the much-discussed but unseen cities, giving the episode two out of four stars. In the book "Science Fiction Television Series, 1990–2004," authors Frank Garcia and Mark Phillips singled out the episode as gimmicky, citing the appearance of both "a phony-looking, 1936 Ford truck" and the long-missing aviator Amelia Earhart.

David McIntee, in "Delta Quadrant: The unofficial guide to Voyager," described the acting as watchable and felt the episode was saved by small moments like the conversation between Earhart and Janeway or Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres debating whether to leave the ship; he rated it 6 out of 10. David Greven, in "Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek," also called the plot hokey but found the episode contained "a powerful feminist narrative of shared female aspiration and daring."