After doing so for seven years on the small screen, the Next Generation crew returned in 1994’s “Star Trek: Generations“. But as Jean-Luc and his companions got busy meeting Starfleet royalty (hello, James T. Kirk) and delivering the Enterprise to the surface of Veridian III, Paramount decided that they should be given the opportunity to host their new United Paramount Network (UPN). In need of a flagship, Voyager was the ship tasked with taking the franchise to a new frontier, arriving on January 16, 1995. Left the spacedock for the first time.
Although the space station-set stablemate “deep space nine“Creating a new space with its increasingly complex story, the new show will mark a return to the spirit of starship-based exploration that characterized the original”star trek“. Still, co-creators Rick Berman (the franchise’s longtime manager), Michael Piller and Jerry Taylor knew they couldn’t simply create a “TNG” clone.
Item one on the agenda was the first “Trek” to put a woman in the captain’s chair – Kate Mulgrew will play Kathryn Janeway for seven seasons and beyond. It was also decided that the new show would make Kirk and Spock’s original five-year mission look like a walk in the park, by interning the Voyager crew on the other side of the galaxy, some 75 years away from home. And they’ll add some tension to the traditionally fantasy environment of the Starfleet bridge by forcing the crew to live with a group of terrorists.
It was such a brilliant premise that it should have provided an exciting new twist on “Star Trek’s” decades-old mission to explore strange new worlds. However, as it turned out, the gravitational pull of familiar “Trek” tropes proved too great, and within a few weeks, the show’s far-flung location and cohesive crew would feel like an afterthought. In the end, the world – and “Star Trek” as a whole – probably wasn’t ready for what “Voyager” originally set out to do.
Although they were excited about creating a new “Trek,” neither Berman nor fellow executive producer Piller were convinced they needed to launch another show so soon after “TNG’s” finale. Piller said, “Rick really felt that ‘Deep Space Nine’ deserved an opportunity to air on its own and that the franchise could use a little breathing space.”fifty year mission” By Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. “He wanted the studio to put ‘Voyager’ on hold for at least a year. The studio came back and more or less said, ‘Okay, Rick, we’re going to do it with or without you. We’d love to do it with you, but…” Berman finally said yes.
The pilot episode “Caretaker” sees Janeway leading the crew of the state-of-the-art USS Voyager into the Badlands in search of a runaway Maquis ship – the aforementioned anti-Cardassian paramilitaries had already been introduced in “DS9” and “TNG”. . , Both ships were pulled to the distant Delta Quadrant by an ancient alien Caretaker, but ultimately became stranded in unknown space when Janeway chose to destroy one of her passageways to protect the Ocampa under the Caretaker’s protection.
The good – some might say convenient – news for the dispossessed was that the Delta Quadrant looked a lot like the Alpha Quadrant they called home. There was a familiar feel to the planets and, despite having no experience of this area of the galaxy, the omnipresent Universal Translator ensured that communicating with new civilizations was mostly difficult. The futuristic energy source – God bless you, dilithium – and the Replicator also meant that supplies were rarely a problem, although Janeway did use the Ration Replicator to save energy for the warp drive.
And then there were the overly familiar aliens Voyager regularly encountered. The Ferengi were labeled as the Big Bads of “The Next Generation”, until the production team realized that they were not particularly dangerous. Strangely, “Voyager” made exactly the same mistake with the Kazon – tired Klingon wannabes who were rarely a match for Starfleet smarts – and came up with exactly the same solution to their problem: the Borg. Sadly, by the time the Collective became “Voyager” regulars, their best days were behind them, and a small ship light years from home proved remarkably efficient at defeating Picard’s nemesis. again. And then. And then.
The show’s biggest mistake, however, was rapidly abandoning the fascinating Federation/Maquis dynamic. It was conceived as a simple solution to the age-old problem of the Final Frontier: How do you introduce conflict into a Starfleet ship without breaking “Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry’s rules prohibiting conflict between officers?
There was always a degree of practicality and necessity in Janeway’s decision to bring the two crews together – the Maquis ship had been destroyed, and she had lost some key officers – but the pace of integration was never right. Within a few weeks, they were operating as a happy Starfleet family, with Seska being the only important fly, and she a covert Cardassian spy.
It is now clear that many of these less-than-optimal elements arose at the time the show was created. Standalone, syndication-friendly episodes were very common in the ’90s, budgets rarely allowed for movie-level prosthetics or CG, and “Star Trek” was in the midst of a remarkably unbroken 18-year run on TV that garnered 500,000 episodes. Gave birth to more than. Episodes – Is it any wonder the writers sometimes repeated themselves?
Still, it’s tempting to imagine what “Voyager” might have looked like if it had arrived a decade or so later, “battlestar galactica“had changed the rules of engagement for space-set sci-fi. In an era where complex serialized storytelling became the norm – and even Picard and Riker could have stand-up arguments on the bridge.” It’s easy to picture a scenario where it took several seasons for Starfleet and the Maquis to resolve their differences, as well, possibly resulting in a prolonged standoff between them over water supplies, or communication with a new alien race. to do Many weeks must have been spent working on the method.
And for all its undoubted shortcomings, “Voyager” got a lot right. It actually spawned some memorable villains (particularly the phase-infested, surgery-obsessed Vidiyan), while stories like the timeline-altering “Year of Hell” are among the greatest in “Trek” history. The growing fondness for the show is evident among fans and in the subsequent TV shows (both “Picard” and “Picard”).lower deck“Callbacks are featured galore), while there is a photo of the beautiful USS Voyager on the wall of this writer’s office.
And then there’s Captain Kathryn Janeway, whose emotional intelligence, calmness under pressure and intuitive management style have enhanced her reputation to the point where she is considered one of the greatest “Star Trek” captains of all time. Indeed, of all the former commanding officers of TV, He “He was chosen to advise the rookies in”Star Trek: Prodigy“- It’s hard to imagine that anyone else would do this job so well.
Every episode of “Star Trek: Voyager” is available on Paramount+ in the US and UK. UK viewers can also stream the show on Netflix.
