Star Trek: Voyager is an American science fiction series created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor. It aired from January 16, 1995, to May 23, 2001, on UPN, with 172 episodes over seven seasons. It is the fifth series in the Star Trek franchise, the first of two Trek series to air on UPN, as well as the first show to air on the network. Set in the 24th century, when Earth is part of a United Federation of Planets, it follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel as it attempts to return home to the Alpha Quadrant after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy.
Paramount Pictures commissioned the series after the cancellation of Star Trek: The Next Generation to accompany the ongoing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They wanted it to help launch UPN, their new network. Berman, Piller, and Taylor devised the series to chronologically overlap with Deep Space Nine and to maintain thematic continuity with elements that had been introduced in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The complex relationship between Starfleet and ex-Federation colonists known as the Maquis was one such element. Voyager was the first Star Trek series to feature a female commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), as the lead character. Berman was head executive producer in charge of the overall production, assisted by a series of executive producers: Piller, Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Kenneth Biller.
Set in a different part of the galaxy from preceding Star Trek shows, Voyager gave the series' writers space to introduce new alien species as recurring characters, namely the Kazon, Vidiians, Hirogen, and Species 8472. During the later seasons, the Borg—a species created for The Next Generation—were introduced as the main antagonists. During Voyager run, various episode novelizations and tie-in video games were produced; after it ended, various novels continued the series' narrative.
Production Development As Star Trek: The Next Generation ended, Paramount Pictures wanted to continue to have a second Star Trek television series to accompany Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The studio also planned to start a new television network, UPN, and wanted the new series to help it succeed.
Initial work on Star Trek: Voyager began in 1993, when the seventh and final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the second season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were in production. Seeds for Voyagers backstory, including the development of the Maquis, were placed in several The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes. Voyager was shot on the stages The Next Generation had used, and where the Voyager pilot "Caretaker" was shot in September 1994. Costume designer Robert Blackman decided that the uniforms of Voyagers crew would be the same as those on Deep Space Nine.
Star Trek: Voyager was the first Star Trek series to use computer-generated imagery (CGI), rather than models, for exterior space shots. Babylon 5 and seaQuest DSV had previously used CGI to avoid the expense of models, but the Star Trek television department continued using models because they felt they were more realistic. Amblin Imaging won an Emmy for Voyagers opening CGI title visuals, but the weekly episode exteriors were captured with hand-built miniatures of Voyager, its shuttlecraft, and other ships. This changed when Voyager went fully CGI for certain types of shots midway through season three (late 1996). Foundation Imaging was the studio responsible for special effects during Babylon 5s first three seasons. Season three's "The Swarm" was the first episode to use Foundation's effects exclusively. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began using Foundation Imaging in conjunction with Digital Muse in season six. In its later seasons, Voyager featured visual effects from Foundation Imaging and Digital Muse. The digital effects were produced at standard television resolution and some have speculated that it cannot be re-released in HD format without re-creating the special effects. However, Enterprise has been released in HD, but the special effects were rendered in 480p and upscaled.
Casting
In the initial drafts, Captain Janeway was meant to have the name Elizabeth Janeway, and the actress Geneviève Bujold was cast for the role. Bujold had previous experience in films, but not in long TV series. Feeling uncomfortable with the demanding production, she left after only two days of filming the pilot. To keep production working and meet the deadlines the role was given to Kate Mulgrew, who had already been considered an option during the casting. Mulgrew also proposed to rename the character as Kathryn Janeway. Mulgrew, with more experience in episodic TV series, soon became a fan favorite. Robert Beltran knew nothing about the Star Trek franchise or the significance within it of the role he was auditioning for. He just got the "Caretaker" script from his agent, liked the story and the character, and successfully auditioned for it. He was aware, because of being familiar with the industry, that a pilot episode may eventually lead to an ongoing series. Robert Duncan McNeill had played the character of Nicholas Locarno in The Next Generation'''s "The First Duty." Initially, Locarno would have returned in the Voyager series, but was later changed to a new character, Tom Paris. The casting notes mentioned that the producers wanted "a Robert Duncan McNeill type", which was noticed by McNeill's agent. He was eager to play the new character. He explained that "I get a call. My agent says, 'Hey, remember that Star Trek episode you did a few years ago?' He goes, 'They’re making a new show called Voyager and they literally put out a casting notice saying 'a Robbie Duncan McNeill type.' They put my name. Kinda like the character on TNG. Like, my name was in [it]. And I’m like, 'I’m right here! That’s me!' And so [my agent says], 'I think you should… you can do this.'"
Robert Picardo auditioned for the role of Neelix, but his friend Ethan Phillips got it. Philips had already been cast in several minor roles in earlier Star Trek productions. Reflecting on that, Picardo said, "And in that moment, I saved myself 6,000 hours of my life spent in a makeup chair." However, after failing in the audition he was suggested to try for the character of the Doctor, which he got. He was initially unsure of his way to manage the character because of his limited participation in the pilot, and feared that he would be compared unfavorably with Brent Spiner. Spiner played the fan-favorite Data in The Next Generation, another non-human being. "I was afraid I would be compared to him endlessly and unfavorably because he was so lovable and kind of childlike in his role and I was kind of, you know, crusty and curmudgeonly, and ... pissed off. And not a very cuddly character". He secured the job by improvising a line in the pilot. When he's left alone in sickbay and all scripted lines were said, he added "I believe someone has failed to terminate my program". He concluded saying "I'm a doctor, not a nightlight", imitating the catchphrase of Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), the doctor of the original Star Trek series. The people laughed, and he was hired some hours later.
The series added a new main character during the mid-run, Seven of Nine, by Jeri Ryan. Rick Berman explained that "I think after our first three years, the feeling was we wanted to add a bit of pizzazz to the show. We all agreed that we needed something to bring something fresh to the fourth season". Berman was interested in the character of Data, a machine that wants to be human, but inverted the formula with a human that was turned into a machine and faces humanity as a new thing. For this purpose they used the Borg, villains from The Next Generation that had a positive reception. Ryan liked both the premise of the character and the optimist view of the future of the Star Trek franchise, which she preferred over the darker series she could audition for at the time, and got the job with little problem.
Music
Unlike The Next Generation, where composer Jerry Goldsmith's theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture was reused, Goldsmith composed and conducted an entirely new main theme for Voyager. As done with The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, a soundtrack album of the series' pilot episode "Caretaker" and a CD single containing three variations of the main theme were released by Crescendo Records in 1995 between seasons one and two. In 1996, the theme was also released as a piano solo songbook.
In 2017, La-La Land Records issued Star Trek: Voyager Collection, Volume 1, a four-disc limited-edition release containing Goldsmith's theme music and tracks from Jay Chattaway's "Rise", "Night", the two-parter "Equinox", "Pathfinder", "Spirit Folk", "The Haunting of Deck Twelve", "Shattered", "The Void", and the two-parter "Scorpion"; Dennis McCarthy's "The 37's", the two-parter "Basics", "The Q and the Gray", "Concerning Flight", "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy", and the two-parters "Workforce" and "Year of Hell"; David Bell's "Dark Frontier"; and Paul Baillargeon's "Lifesigns".
In 2020, Newsweek magazine said that the Voyager theme by Goldsmith was the best of all Star Trek television series' themes. The article elaborates, "...Voyager recaptures some of the spacey ethereality of Courage's original vocal melody, while adding a deep space resonance that evoked the series' lost explorers, far from home among uncharted stars."
Reunions
In August 2015, the main cast members (except Jennifer Lien, who had retired from acting in 2002) appeared together onstage in Las Vegas for the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager at the 2015 Las Vegas Star Trek convention.
Following a path set by Leonard Nimoy, the first Star Trek actor to also direct in the franchise, Robert Duncan McNeill (Paris) and Roxann Dawson (Torres) went on to direct episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, while Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, and Andrew Robinson (Garak of Deep Space Nine) all directed episodes of Star Trek: Voyager.
The sets used for USS Voyager were reused for the Deep Space Nine episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" for her sister Intrepid-class ship USS Bellerophon (NCC-74705). The sickbay set of USS Voyager was also used as the Enterprise-E sickbay in the films Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Insurrection. The Voyager ready room and the engineering set were also used as rooms aboard the Enterprise-E in Insurrection.
Production of episodes ran from June or July to March or April each year, with each episode typically taking about seven days to shoot. Shooting started at 7 a.m. each weekday and continued until finished for the day. The pilot episode "Caretaker" took 31 days to shoot and was one of the most expensive television pilots shot to that date.
Plot
In the pilot episode, "Caretaker", , under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, departs the Deep Space Nine space station on a mission into the treacherous Badlands. They are searching for a missing ship piloted by a team of Maquis rebels, which Voyagers security officer, the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok, has secretly infiltrated. Tom Paris, a disgraced former Starfleet officer who joined the Maquis and was subsequently arrested, agrees to help find the Maquis ship in exchange for his freedom. While in the Badlands, Voyager is enveloped by a powerful energy wave that kills several of its crew, damages the ship, and strands it in the galaxy's Delta Quadrant, more than 70,000 light-years from Earth. The wave was used by an alien entity known as the Caretaker to pull first the Maquis ship, and then Voyager into the Delta Quadrant. The Caretaker is responsible for the continued care of the Ocampa, a race of aliens native to the Delta Quadrant, and has been abducting other species from around the galaxy in an effort to reproduce and have a successor.