Looking Back at Star Trek Voyager

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Why Star Trek: Voyager holds up so well even after thirty years​

It's been thirty years since Star Trek: Voyager debuted on UPN. A unique version of Star Trek, this bridge was led by a female captain whose authority was unquestionable. Captain Kathryn Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] owned that bridge, and the crew that helped Voyager make its way across the Delta Quadrant were some of the best on a Star Trek show. Unfortunately, Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't give the female officers much to do. Voyager corrected that, makihng, the women integral to the ship's journey, more so when Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine came aboard. They worked in tandem with the rest of the crew, never backing down from a challenge or a fight.

Though Star Trek: Deep Space Nine put Major Kira [Nana Visitor] in a position of authority, she was still under Commander/Captain Sisko's [Avery Brooks] command. With Voyager, the buck stopped with Janeway, and viewers got a first look at a woman who inspired them to reach for more.

The entire cast of Voyager worked, for the most part, like a well-oiled machine. Yes, there were some blips along the way, but for a 1990s show, Voyager was innovative and fresh. To this day, it, and the cast members, remain a beloved part of Star Trek history. Though Jennifer Lien, who portrayed the Ocampan Kes, during the first three seasons of the series left at the beginning of season four, Jeri Ryan was able to step in and fill the gap. The series didn't miss a beat in its later seasons, and while there are a few episodes that can be skipped if you prefer, the vast majority are close to being creatively perfect.

Some examples, without including the more obvious ones like Year of Hell, include The Chute, Someone to Watch Over Me, Living Witness, Meld, Day of Honor, Mortal Coil, Nemesis, Timeless, and Prey. These are all must watch episodes and are perfect examples of why Voyager hit its mark time and again. Thirty years later, it remains a beloved part of the Star Trek franchise.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlpMNtAPxUo


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Star Trek: Voyager Ending Explained​

"Star Trek: Voyager" debuted in 1995, making it the third show of the franchise's most prolific heyday. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" made a hugely successful run from 1987 to 1994, and had recently moved to the big screen with "Star Trek: Generations." In 1993, a darker counterpart to "Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" debuted, setting a lot of older Trek tropes on their ear. Feeling ambitious, Trek-makers Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor tried to keep the ball rolling with "Voyager," a more traditional series about, well, Trekking.

The premise was fun: a super-powerful alien reaches out across the galaxy and magically whisks the U.S.S. Voyager -- a brand-new, super-advanced vessel -- 70,000 lightyears away from Earth, depositing it in the Delta Quadrant. By Trek's own science, 70,000 lightyears would ordinarily take 75 years to traverse, so the Voyager is essentially stranded. The series follows their long journey home. To add drama, a cadre of Federation-hating terrorists called the Maquis live on board, and it's up to Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) to keep the peace.

The series hinted at a lack of resources, but never really got too many stories out of its initially proposed austerity. Instead, it soldiered on, sometimes running into wormholes, superfast engines, and other means to shorten its trip back to Earth. After only seven years of adventures, the Voyager made it home, as dramatized in the series finale, "Endgame" (May 23, 2001). That episode employs time travel, and advanced portal-based Borg technology to shave off the final leg of the Voyager's voyage. In true "Star Trek" fashion, it also presents an ethical dilemma, although Captain Janeway is so brazenly defiant of rules, it isn't much of a dilemma after all.

The plot of "Endgame" is a little unusual. The episode begins with a flash-forward to the year 2404, 26 years after the penultimate episode. The characters are now older, and had happily been living on Earth for the last decade. It's explained that the Voyager took 23 years to arrive home, a marvelous feat unto itself. Janeway is now an admiral, Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) is a captain, and the holographic Doctor (Robert Picardo) has married. In this future, however, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) has died, leaving her would-be lover Chakotay (Robert Beltran) emotionally destroyed. 23 other members of the crew died as well. Additionally, the Vulcan Tuvok (Tim Russ) has developed a rare neurological disorder on the voyage home, something he would have been cured of back on Earth. A pity. He's the best Vulcan of them all.

Janeway is happy she got the U.S.S. Voyager back to Earth, but feels that she could have done much better. Using an illegal time-travel widget, Janeway goes back to the year 2378 -- and back out to the Delta Quadrant -- to offer high-tech, futuristic aid to her younger self. Future Janeways lets Present Janeway know about a nearby enclave of hyper-advanced Borg technology that can essentially form portals in space, more or less capable of teleporting the Voyager home. It would, she argues, save them 16 years of travel. Present Janeway refuses to exploit the knowledge, however, knowing that tinkering with timelines leads to nothing but headaches. Why alter the future?

Present Janeway says that destroying the Borg portals would be more helpful to the galaxy at large -- the Borg have assimilated and killed trillions of people -- and the two Janeways come up with a scheme to do both.

Future Janeway equips the U.S.S. Voyager with supra-defensive technology, and the ship charges into danger. In the fracas, however, Future Janeway is captured by the Borg Queen (Alice Krige, returning from "Star trek: First Contact"), who says she'll let the Voyager go if Future Janeway gives her the secrets of her future technology. Of course, Future Janeway knows better than to trust a deal with the Borg. The Queen, perhaps predictably, goes back on her deal and begins assimilating Future Janeway into the Borg collective. Future Janeway, however, injected herself with an advanced pathogen that instantly works its way into the Borg's central brain, destroying it from within.

As the Borg portal transwarp hub explodes, the Voyager flies through one of the portals. There is a final battle between the Voyager and a small Borg craft inside a transwarp corridor (!), but Present Janeway expertly dispatches the ship by flying inside of it. The Voyager is victorious, and arrives close to Earth. The Borg are defeated, the future timeline is erased, and the lost crew members are saved. A 75-year voyage only took seven years.

As mentioned, there was a brief ethical dilemma when Present Janeway refuses to use futuristic technology, knowing that it would taint the flow of history. It doesn't take very long, however, for the two Janeways to reach a compromise. In a fun twist, Present Janeway is unimpressed when she sees her future self. She's so focused on the present, and with keeping her crew safe, that the appearance of a time traveler is tiresome to her. Just another crappy thing to deal with.

Oh yes, and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) have a baby during all this.

"Endgame" illustrates what might be one of the unintended themes of "Star Trek: Voyager," namely that the ends justify the means. Janeway was always a stalwart, commanding presence, leading by her instincts and having little tolerance for pushback. Her underlings rarely gave her static, as she would override their suggestions most of the time. Over the course of "Star Trek: Voyager," Janeway became increasingly authoritarian, often making risky decisions and putting her crew in jeopardy just because it was her decision to make. She referred to her crew as her family, but the vibe was much more "My way or the highway."

This was the captain, after all, who more or less doomed the Ocampa by destroying the Caretaker's array in the "Voyager" pilot episode. She once pointed the Voyager at a sun and began flying it into the corona just to get infiltrators off the ship (in the 1997 episode "Scientific Method"). Infamously, she murdered Tuvix (on "Tuvix" from May 6, 1996), a being who was born when Tuvok and Neelix (Ethan Phillips) were merged in a transporter accident.

"Endgame" shows that Janeway has a very loose moral code, and will do pretty much whatever she wants if the result is positive in the moment. She gives brief lip service to retaining the timeline and warns against the deliberate alteration of the future ... before just doing it. Janeway is a wonderful character, in that she masks her authoritarianism under Starfleet ideals. As was once said on "Deep Space Nine," it's easy to be a saint in paradise. When your ship is stranded, and retaining the lives of the people on board is your only goal, your moral cleanliness swiftly begins to vanish. Janeway, by "Endgame" had few lines she was unwilling to cross.

Not everyone loved "Endgame." Garrett Wang once said that the final shot of the Voyager approaching Earth was unsatisfying; he wanted to see the characters actually set foot on terra firma. Many fans found "Endgame" to be mediocre in general, ending the series with an action/adventure story rather than something complex and clever. It was also disappointing to see the Voyager finally arrive back at Earth ... only to end the episode only three minutes later. There is no dramatization of their reintegration, nor do we see how they were greeted. None of the characters' story arcs really come to a close.

In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, one of the "Endgame" writers, Kenneth Biller, admitted that the three-minute epilogue was paltry at best. He felt that the climax of the series should have been ... more climactic. Perhaps someone could have died to raise the dramatic stakes. Indeed, co-writer and show co-creator Brannon Braga once said that he wished Seven of Nine, the show's emergent star, should have been killed in the climax. In a 2013 interview with TrekCore, Braga said the character was more or less designed to be killed tragically.

Some of the writers and cast members felt that if the Voyager was to return to Earth, it should have been before the final episode. That way, more time could have been devoted to reintegration. It also would have allowed more soulful moments between Future Janeway and the friends who had died in her own timeline. One would think she would pause to hug Chakotay, Seven, or Tuvok, happy to see them well. Nope. It's all plot, all action, all business.

Although "Endgame" ended abruptly, most of the "Voyager" characters would return to the "Star Trek" franchise many years later. Janeway would return twofold in the animated series "Star Trek: Prodigy." Mulgrew played both a holographic tutor version of Janeway, as well as the real-life version. That series also featured the return of Chakotay, now a captain, and in command of the U.S.S. Protostar.

Seven of Nine, meanwhile, would return as a main character on "Star Trek: Picard." By the events of that series, however, she had given up on Starfleet and become a bounty hunter. After another reckoning, however, she would become a Starfleet officer again after all, serving as the second in command on the U.S.S. Titan-A. After the events of the third season of "Picard," Seven, too, would become a captain, commanding the Titan-A after it was rechristened as the Enterprise-G.

Tuvok also appeared in "Picard," and several "Voyager" characters have had cameos on the reference-heavy "Star Trek: Lower Decks." In that show's final story arc, a gaggle of Harry Kims from alternate dimensions unite in an act of comedic villainy. One of the main characters on "Lower Decks" also has a Tom Paris collectible plate, like the one the Franklin Mint used to sell. B'Elanna Torres, Neelix, and the short-lived Kes haven't had many returns to "Star Trek," however. It seems clear who the favorites are.

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Why Tuvok Was Underutilized On Star Trek: Voyager, According To Tim Russ​

While most "Star Trek" shows are ensemble dramas, one can always tell when the series' writers favor one character over another. On "Star Trek: The Next Generation," for instance, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) received the lion's share of stories, while some of the other characters -- Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) especially -- got hardly any. The same can be said of "Star Trek: Voyager." The show's writers clearly loved Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), and she became the crux of most "Voyager" plots. The wealth was shared a little bit on "Voyager," though, as characters like Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Neelix (Ethan Phillips), and the Doctor (Robert Picardo) all got their moments to shine.

But when Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) joined the show in its fourth season, she more or less became the star, siphoning much of the writers' attention toward herself. The writers loved Seven so much that they pretty much ceased writing stories for characters like B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Harry Kim (Garrett Wang, who was definitely underutilized), and Tuvok (Tim Russ).

Overlooking Tuvok was especially egregious since, as /Film has noted in the past, he is the franchise's best Vulcan. (Apologies to Spock.) Tuvok was a great member of the "Voyager" ensemble and brought a stern sense of seriousness to the show's desperate premise. He served as the security officer on board the Voyager, which seemed to be a great idea; if someone is going to investigate crimes on the ship, you're going to want someone with a logical mind. Sadly, Tuvok rarely had episodes all his own, often supporting the other players through moments of crisis. He was a calming presence on the series. It's a pity he wasn't often the focus.

In a 2020 interview with TrekMovie, Russ mused about why Tuvok was underutilized on "Voyager." In short, he felt that the cast was too large for everyone to share the spotlight equally. He also pointed out that Seven of Nine got a lot of screen time.

It should be noted that "Voyager" had several main characters (as listed above). With such a large cast, Russ posited, it was hard for the show's writers to give everyone ample time:

"It could have been different. We introduced other characters -- like Seven of Nine, later on in the series -- which I think changed the dynamic of how many storylines were going to be allotted to everyone. Plus, we had nine people in the cast. So that's nine characters to all have backstories and storylines. And then some of them are ensemble storylines. It doesn't leave a tremendous amount of room for everybody to get that many storylines that are interesting or different, and we don't know how many stories they might have broken that were not used."

Tuvok, it seems, was a member of the show's cast that simply never got to take center stage. Russ was positive, suggesting the show's writers did indeed think of interesting things for Tuvok to do on "Voyager," but that they often pivoted toward more ensemble-friendly storylines or momentous "event" episodes. More than anything, though, Russ felt Seven was the real reason he was pushed into the ensemble. Not only did the series' writers like her, but her late entry to "Voyager" also required a lot of "catch up" episodes to explain her backstory and her character. As Russ put it:

"They focused on her to do that. And it would have taken a few storylines from everybody just getting [that] process done. That was a decision they made. We didn't go with that the regular cast the whole entire time through. It happens. That's the way it works. I have no problem. I got at least three, four, or five storylines out of there that I was very happy with."

Tuvok eventually returned for a cameo on "Star Trek: Picard," however, so he was always part of the "Star Trek" family. As for Russ, he seems to be at peace with the size of his role.

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Star Trek: Voyager’s Infamous Amelia Earhart Episode Isn’t As Bad As You Remember​

Star Trek: Voyager's infamous episode introducing Amelia Earhart (Sharon Lawrence) to the Delta Quadrant isn't as bad as you might remember it being. Written by Voyager co-executive producers Jeri Taylor & Brannon Braga, Star Trek: Voyager season 2, episode 1, "The 37's", was a hold-over from the first season that was repurposed into the season 2 premiere. In it, the USS Voyager encounters a 1936 Ford pickup truck floating in space, which leads the crew to a group of humans held in cryo-stasis for over 400 years—including Earhart, a personal hero to Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew).

According to Star Trek, Earhart was one of several 20th-century humans who were abducted by aliens called the Briori. The Briori, who aren't seen in the Voyager episode, once used humans as slave labor, until a human revolution drove out the Briori and destroyed the ship that brought them to the Delta Quadrant. For fifteen generations, humans have thrived on the unnamed planet that the USS Voyager crew finds. Although the Briori ship being destroyed means that a way home is once again elusive, the cities' similarities to Earth present a tempting opportunity to settle here instead of continuing onward.

Star Trek: Voyager's Amelia Earhart episode was a solid start to Voyager season 2. After some humor with Lieutenant Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) being a history nerd, and excitement about the USS Voyager landing on a planet, "The 37's" is ultimately about Captain Janeway reckoning with leadership. It's the first time settling in the Delta Quadrant is an option, andJaneway has doubts about deciding to take the long way home. Earhart has a narrative purpose, too; by reminding Kathryn how she values self-determination, Janeway knows the crew has to decide for themselves whether to stay or go.

"The 37's" was originally intended to be Star Trek: Voyager's season 1 finale, which makes Janeway's decision to ask the crew what they want to do a great narrative mirror for Janeway deciding to destroy the Caretaker's array in the premiere.

The flaws in "The 37's" are more about narrative structure than Amelia Earhart. Janeway's doubt as the emotional core of the story only emerges in the second half. Before the possibility of staying comes up, "The 37's" sets up a mystery about who the 37's are, how they got to the Delta Quadrant, how they'll adjust to the 24th century, and whether Voyager can get home faster. When colonist John Evansville (John Rubinstein) explains the Briori and human cities, those questions are resolved. That leaves time to explore the growth of Janeway's leadership style since Star Trek: Voyager's premiere.

Amelia Earhart being in Star Trek: Voyager was a controversial decision that hasn't sat well with fans who are critical of "The 37's". For one thing, having characters who are historical figures in Star Trek can be one of the sillier aspects of the franchise. Abraham Lincoln (Lee Bergere) appearing in Star Trek: The Original Series season 3, episode 22, "The Savage Curtain", sticks out as a series lowlight. Star Trek: Lower Decks' "twin Twain" joke hangs a lampshade on Star Trek: The Next Generation's 2-part episode, "Time's Arrow", when Mark Twain (Jerry Hardin) boarded the USS Enterprise-D.

Star Trek: Voyager's "The 37's" is a product of the mid-1990s fascination with UFOs, the same way that Star Trek: The Original Series' space hippies were very 1960s. Amelia Earhart's disappearance being revealed as an alien abduction, and Janeway seemingly confirming a conspiracy theory about Earhart being a spyaren't meant to be disrespectful of the real Earhart; instead, they're ways Star Trek's timeline diverges from our own. Star Trek: Voyager definitely took artistic license with its Amelia Earhart story, but "The 37's" is a great character piece and a turning point in Captain Janeway's story.

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Voyager was my favourite of all the Star Trek series, with Deep Space Nine a close second favourite...I enjoyed the scenario of Voyager out so far in the galaxy from home in uncharted territory...There is so much great material in the Voyager series that could be easily expounded upon in future Star Trek series...For instance, new Hirogen or Voth stories could be written into future episodes, extending from the original Voyager contact, both species are outstanding additions to the Star Trek universe...The main and perhaps only thing I wished they had not done in this series was how they finished it...The Borg should not have been a part of the finale, nor the way Voyager got back to Earth...The Borg as a whole was much stronger than Star Fleet, there is no doubt if they went in mass they could assimulate the Federation and for Janeway to come up with a simple plan to severly cripple the Borg was a weak story, little to no effort...There are a dozen other ways they could have written the finale to get Voyager home, don't get me wrong though, its a great episode and a good finale, wonderful to watch...Anyway, I like this series the best, but it also could not have been possible without the previous series and their impressive mark on Star Trek as a whole....

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Star Trek Voyager Is Back But Not How You'd Expect​

Publisher Daedalic Entertainment and developer gameXcite showed off their brand new Star Trek game today, in the form of a new story-based survival game. The game, titled Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown, is described as a “brand-new story-based survival strategy game,” and is set in the Star Trek universe. The title is currently in development for both PC and consoles, and will see players step aboard the U.S.S. Voyager and explore some of the deeper reaches of the Delta Quadrant.

In Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown, players will be able to traverse “12 vast sectors” of the Delta Quadrant. Along the way, they’ll have to do things like manage systems and crews, engage in diplomatic acts with people, face “difficult moral decisions,” and more.

"Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown is a project driven by passion-both for storytelling and for the legacy of Star Trek," says Jonas Hüsges, COO at Daedalic Entertainment. "We're excited to bring the U.S.S. Voyagercrew back into the spotlight in a way that feels true to canon while offering new narrative frontiers to explore."

The game currently has no official release date, but is available to wishlist on places like Steam, which has more screenshots and posts about how the game will function.

Check out the trailer for the game, which features the legendary Star Trek ship, below:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-0brgSYDEM


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24 Years After Its Finale, Star Trek: Voyager To Return For New Captain Janeway Mission​

IDW Publishing is kicking off a whole new chapter of Star Trek: Voyager, and fans will barely have to wait a week to dive into it for themselves. IDW Publishing's upcoming Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming #1 from writers Susan and Tilly Bridges and artist Ángel Hernandez is officially set to make its way into comic book stores everywhere next week. The first issue of Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming will be available on September 3, giving readers plenty of time to catch up on the original series' most important moments before it arrives.

Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming #1 stands as the first of five issues in a new limited series that will pick up shortly after the events of the original 1995 television series. Per the official synopsis for Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming from IDW, "Voyager has just returned to Earth. Everyone is looking forward to reuniting with their friends and family after the crucibles they've faced — but there is a deadly secret in store, one that takes the crew far from home. Voyager delves back into the breach, all those aboard determined to make it back to their loved ones no matter what, even if there's hell to pay."

When the series was announced back in May, IDW Publishing editor Heather Anto discussed artist David Nakayama's stunning variant cover art for the first issue of Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming, which prominently features Jeri Ryan's iconic Seven of Nine. "Seeing David Nakayama bring Janeway and Seven of Nine to life like this is an absolute thrill," Anto said at the time. "His cover for Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming perfectly captures the legacy of these iconic characters. This is Voyager like you've never seen it before, and I couldn’t be more excited for fans to join us on this bold new journey."

Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming is just one of several new Star Trek comic book series from IDW Publishing this year. In July, the first issue of Star Trek: Red Shirts from writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Megan Levens was released, giving readers a more gruesome kind of Star Trek story than they have grown accustomed to over the franchise's decades-long history. Writer Robbie Thompson and artist Travis Mercer have also teamed up to bring readers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The Seeds of Destruction, which will see USS Enterprise nurse Christine Chapel embark upon a mission unlike any she could have imagined.

Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming #1 goes on sale September 3 from IDW Publishing.

Captain Janeway Returns in Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming #1​

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