Why Star Trek: Voyager's Ending Felt Abrupt To Fans (& Why It Could Never Get A Reboot)

Admiral Janeway scrunches face

Reboots, revisions, and new adaptations are all the rage these days when it comes to entertainment, though one "Star Trek" property might be resistant to such efforts.  "Star Trek: Voyager" focuses on the titular ship as it is cast far away from anything any of the crew might recognize, and even traveling at speeds far greater than even light itself, it would have normally taken the crew decades to get home. Sent far away to the Delta Quadrant, the crewmembers of Voyager are essentially on their own as they try to survive. 

However, due to the nature of "Star Trek: Voyager," which eventually sees the crew make it home to the Alpha Quadrant, it would be almost impossible to create a continuation of the story because the major focus of the show has already been completed. In addition, many fans felt like the show came to a jarring conclusion, and even though "Voyager" occupies a special place in "Star Trek" lore, it is unlikely the ending to "Star Trek: Voyager" will ever change or be envisioned through the lens of a reboot.

Over on Reddit, a conversation was started by u/TEmpTom when they asked why the ending for "Star Trek: Voyager" felt so abrupt. They specifically mentioned that "Star Trek: Voyager" wasn't canceled, and that the writers of the show knew when they had to wrap everything up. This question caused many Trekkies to respond in turn, like one Reddit user who wrote, "Because of Voyager's episodic nature. They wanted to stick to the TNG-style arcless storytelling rather than the sweeping DS9 plot." They added, "As such, no matter how Voyager was resolved, it was going to be abrupt."

Some fans were more concerned with the journey of Star Trek: Voyager and not the destination

Others also had their own thoughts as to the rapid conclusion of "Star Trek: Voyager," which sees the Voyager starship quickly return home after a double cross and some time-travel shenanigans. u/marcuzt  believed that "Star Trek: Voyager" should have ended with the USS Voyager still stuck far out in space. They added that the true ending for "Star Trek: Voyager" could then be told with a movie instead of the hasty conclusion fans received instead. u/Coolsbreeze  really enjoyed "Star Trek: Voyager" before the final episode, and they wrote, "I always thought Voyager was well written but the last episode was way too rushed."

u/NoisyPiper27  envisioned a completely different ending that would have required a serious rework of the entire show. They elaborated, "I think it would have been neat, if instead of Scorpion (or in addition to it), we got a time jump partway through the show, with aged original crewmembers and the children/new additions over the years picking up where they left off." The user further suggested that the show should do a time skip of 20 to 30 years to avoid having to use the time travel trope and to underscore that it was a tough journey home. With these comments in mind, it definitely seems like many fans wanted "Star Trek: Voyager" to truly take its time returning back to Earth, with some fans even okay with an ending that would have still seen the Voyager long from home. At least then a continuation may have been possible! 

The writers of Star Trek: Voyager struggled with coming up with the show's conclusion

In the 2020 book "Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration" (via the Hollywood Reporter ), Ken Biller, who wrote for the show, explained that he and his fellow writer Brannon Braga had some issues with crafting the ending. Biller explained, "We were really struggling with it. Is the end of the show just that they get home? That's a bit of an anticlimax. Did we want some people to die?" Considering that the entire fulcrum of "Star Trek: Voyager" hinged on the crew doing their very best to make it home, one might have assumed that doing so would be the nice way to end up the series, but doing so rapidly certainly seemed to be a little jarring to fans.

In other words, a continuation of "Star Trek: Voyager" would be a hard sell since the final episode sees the spaceship utilize a Borg Transwarp Hub to quickly arrive back home, while also at the same time dealing a fatal blow to the Borg Collective. Even a reboot wouldn't really do "Star Trek: Voyager" any justice since stranding another Federation ship deep into the Delta Quadrant would just be retreading beloved story beats. Still, for the final episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" to contain both time-travel and a technological MacGuffin that reduced the decades-long trip into a simple subspace jump might have been a little too abrupt for some fans, and it is unlikely that "Star Trek: Voyager" will ever continue or be rebooted. 

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Star trek: voyager series ending explained - how the crew gets home.

The last episode of Star Trek: Voyager incorporated many of the show's core themes, including time travel, love, and the importance of family.

Star Trek: Voyager   ran for seven seasons before delivering its last episode, "Endgame" as a two-part special on May 23rd, 2001, making for an ending that saw the crew get home and encompassed many of the show's core themes. Voyager tells the story of the crew of the USS Voyager under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, and their journey to find their way back to the Alpha Quadrant after they are accidentally thrown into the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 lightyears from their home.

This premise offers a unique perspective on the Star Trek universe, allowing the show to introduce both unexplored sci-fi concepts and new alien races on a much larger scale than other shows in the franchise had been able to do. The crew must also learn how to live and work together, as a number of them are former Maquis , members of an anti-Federation resistance force who Voyager was sent to track down. Through the seven seasons, the crew of the ship goes from wary allies to a cohesive team and, finally, to a family, as close relationships form, and bonds are forged by being so far away from home.

Related:  Star Trek Movie & TV Timeline: Original Series, Kelvin, & Discovery

Not all the challenges the crew faced were foreign, however. One of the biggest enemies dealt with in later seasons was the Borg, the famous cybernetically enhanced hive-mind race that had been terrorizing the crews of various Star Trek shows since The Next Generation . The Borg play a significant role in over half of the show's run, especially with the addition of Seven of Nine , a former Borg drone rescued by the crew. Another common Star Trek plot device that showed up during Voyager's run was the idea of time travel. The Borg and the concept of time travel serve as the main plot drivers for "Endgame", and are ultimately the two reasons the crew are able to accomplish what they have been attempting to do all series: get home.

What Happens In Voyager's Ending?

Two Janeways talks in Star Trek Voyager

"Endgame" begins 26 years in the future, a future where Voyager and her crew have made it home, although not without consequences. These consequences weigh heavily on the conscience of the now Admiral Kathryn Janeway, who decides to use a device called a chrono deflector stolen from a Klingon named Korath to create a temporal wormhole and return to the year 2378. She finds Voyager and convinces her younger self, the still-Captain Janeway, and her crew that she can help them get home. She directs them back to a network of wormholes in a nebula they originally avoided because of a massive Borg presence and provides them with technology including shipwide armor and transphasic torpedos, to protect against Borg attack. The crew adapts the technology to the ship and makes their way back to the nebula, only to find that the wormholes are part of a massive transwarp hub that if destroyed will deal a crippling blow to the Borg. Destroying it, however, will mean the crew will lose their chance of getting home. The Borg Queen communicates to Seven of Nine that, if Voyager attempts to use or destroy the hub, she will retaliate with deadly force.

Captain Janeway is furious with her older self for not telling her about the hub, and the two argue about the right thing to do before Admiral Janeway breaks her promise to not tell Captain Janeway anything about the future, and informs her of the horrors that will be wrought on her crew if the Captain does not take this opportunity; Tuvok will become mentally unstable, unable to get the cure in time for the neurological disease he has begun to suffer from. Seven of Nine will die on an away mission in the Delta Quadrant and her husband Chakotay will be so grief-stricken that he will never recover and die sometime later of an implied broken heart after Voyager gets home.

Shaken by this news, Captain Janeway tells her crew that they won't go through with the plan to destroy the hub unless everyone agrees to do it, but the crew agrees despite the risks. Touched by the crew's loyalty and love of each other, Admiral Janeway admits she was wrong for lying about the hub and agrees to help. Captain Janeway convinces her that there is a way to both destroy the hub and get Voyager home. While the Admiral distracts the Borg Queen , Voyager enters the hub and sets its destruction in motion, riding the shockwave from the explosions along a conduit the Alpha Quadrant. At the last minute, and ship is pursued by a Borg Sphere but is able to take on the Sphere and destroy it once they reach the Alpha Quadrant. The last shot of  Star Trek: Voyager  is the titular vessel triumphantly flying towards Earth, surrounded by Federation ships.

Related: Star Trek: Every Captain Who Became An Admiral

How Did The Two Janeways Fool The Borg Queen?

Star Trek Voyager Janeway Borg Queen Endgame

Getting Voyager home relies entirely on the Janeways' plan to trick the Borg Queen in the Star Trek: Voyager series finale. This hinges on Admiral Janeway pulling off some sleight of hand. When the Admiral first appears to the Borg Queen, it seems as though she had turned on the Voyager crew again. Talking to the Queen in her mind using a device that allows her to pilot her ship via a neural link, the Admiral insists that she will give the Queen the information on how to stop Voyager from destroying the hub if the Queen will send a Borg ship to tow Voyager safely home. The Queen agrees to help but then turns on Admiral Janeway once she has found the physical location of her shuttle and body. She begins to assimilate Janeway, and it seems as though the Admiral has been outsmarted, until it is revealed that before leaving Voyager, she was deliberately infected with a neurolytic pathogen that begins to work on the Queen immediately, severing her connection from the rest of the collective and beginning to destroy her body as well.

Without their Queen, the Borg have no guidance, and Voyager is able to carry out its mission to destroy the hub. The Queen makes one last valiant stand by sending the last ship at her disposal after Voyager, but by a trick of flying, Voyager manages to fly inside of the ship, ride in it the rest of the way through the transwarp conduit to the Alpha Quadrant, and then detonate the ship from the inside out. Once the ship is destroyed, they fly out to meet the Federation ships waiting for them.

Because of the pathogen, The Unicomplex housing the Queen explodes, killing her and Admiral Janeway. The Borg Queen is defiant to the last , convinced that the ship she sent after Voyager will destroy Captain Janeway and crew and that Admiral Janeway will cease to exist as a result. Voyager destroys the ship, however, and in the end, the Queen is only right in her prediction that Admiral Janeway will also cease to exist. Admiral Janeway chooses the fate of assimilation and certain death, knowing that if the plan works, she will die anyway since the future will be rewritten by her actions. She has known this from the beginning of the episode, telling the future Harry Kim that she is aware her mission is a "one-way trip" .

Time Travel And Changing The Future

Star Trek Voyager Admiral Janeway

As previously stated, time travel plays a big role in Star Trek: Voyager . In fact, there is even a precedent for a member of the crew coming back from the future to prevent dire events from happening to the crew. The season 5 episode "Timeless" deals with a future Harry Kim and Chakotay attempting to get a message back in time from a bleak future where the rest of the Voyager crew was killed in an accident while trying to get home. They ultimately stop the crew from attempting the maneuver, and rewrite the future, just as Admiral Janeway does in "Endgame". Besides "Timeless", there are a number of important episodes that deal with time travel, such as "Future's End", "Year of Hell", and "Relativity".

Related: Star Trek: How Time Travel Works In Each TV Show & Movie

The fact that time travel is a well-used plot device does not take away from how jarring it is to set "Endgame" 26 years in a future that the audience knows nothing about. From the beginning, it is a shock to see the ship safe on Earth, and the crew aged and moved on with their lives. The jump to the future is used not only as a means to a narrative end, but as a way to shock and draw in the audience to the rest of the story.

Seven of Nine and Chakotay

Star Trek Seven of Nine and Chakotay in Voyager

While the relationship between Seven of Nine and Chakotay had been evolving into something more intimate over the last eight episodes of Star Trek: Voyager 's final season, it is not until "Endgame" that audiences see it reach its fullest potential. It is revealed early on in the episode that the two have begun dating in earnest, and they are shown to become closer throughout the episode, sharing their first kiss and several tender moments as the plot progresses. The biggest plot twist is the reveal that the two were married in Admiral Janeway's timeline, proving that their nascent relationship has the potential to become something more serious.

Seven of Nine and Chakotay's relationship was a surprise to many fans, as it had only been set up to be romantic late in the season. The fact that they seem to be in it for the long haul by the end of the final episode is a twist that fans would have been hard-pressed to see coming. Similarly, their deaths in the future serve to shock the audience and make Admiral Janeway's motivation for getting the crew home sooner even more clear.

The Importance Of Family

Star Trek Voyager Finale Endgame

Voyager , more than any other Star Trek series, is at its core about a family, something that is no better demonstrated than in the case of main characters Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres. Tom and B'Elanna start off as grudging allies who are reluctant to work together. By the end of the final season though, the two are married and expecting a child, a baby girl born in the final moments of "Endgame". Family, particularly a family of choice, is a core theme throughout Voyager and something that makes the show special to fans, the close character relationships serving as the driving force that makes the plot more engaging.

Related: All 6 Voyager Characters Who Returned In Other Star Trek Shows & Movies

It really is no surprise then that love for her Voyager family is what makes Admiral Janeway do what she does in "Endgame", or that it is the thing that convinces her in the end that there is a way to both destroy the hub and get Voyager home. Much of "Endgame" is centered on the relationships between the crew; the love they have developed for each other over the years is palpable throughout the episode. Likewise, whether it is Tom and B'Elanna's happy marriage, or Seven and Chakotay's budding romance, Star Trek: Voyager 's "Endgame" makes the point that this love, this family, is going to last, even after the show is over.

The Real Meaning Of Voyager's Ending

The USS Voyager flying toward Earth in Star Trek: Voyager's series finale,

Throughout Star Trek: Voyager 's run, it was never made explicitly clear that the crew would be making it home. Even up until the last five minutes of the episode, it was unclear whether or not the crew's plan would come to fruition. The creative team behind the show could have made the choice to end "Endgame" with the ship in the Delta Quadrant, with their fates uncertain. Instead, "Endgame" makes it clear once again that not only does every single member of the Voyager crew deserve to survive, but that their ability seven years ago to put aside their differences, work together, and ultimately come to love each other like family is the singular thing that helped them accomplish their goal. " Endgame " proves that love really does conquer all, and that, in the words of Harry Kim, "Maybe it's not the destination that matters. Maybe it's the journey."

More: Star Trek: Voyager Would Have Been Completely Different Under Captain Riker

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Remembering ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ 20 Years After the Series Ended

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Star Trek: Voyager ended 20 years ago, which made it the franchise’s third consecutive series to run for seven seasons, following The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine . When the show came to a close, it marked the beginning of the end for a special era in Gene Roddenberry’s universe, which had flourished with the one-hour sci-fi dramas led by Captain Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) and Captain Sisko ( Avery Brooks) . Upon its debut in 1995 , Voyager ’s mission was to continue this success by introducing Captain Kathyrn Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ), Star Trek ’s first series with a female lead actor.  

When ET chatted with the cast of Voyager on set in 2001 amid filming the series finale, ‘Endgame,’ the ensemble revealed they were experiencing many of the same feelings behind the scenes as their counterparts on board the show’s Intrepid class starship. “We've had a couple days that were a little bittersweet,” Jeri Ryan , who stepped into the role of Seven of Nine at the start of Voyager ’s fourth season, told ET. “I've been with these people for four years and they've been together for seven. And you really do become like a family, because you see them more than your family.”

After having been stranded thousands of lightyears away from the Alpha quadrant, the ship’s crew of Starfleet officers and Maquis rebels had successfully banded together while they endured a bombardment of deadly obstacles throughout the journey home. And now, the time had come for actors and characters alike to bid farewell.

CHAOS ON THE BRIDGE

For seven years, the Voyager cast enjoyed a prime spot within an iconic pop culture franchise, one that also boasted an unprecedented fan movement that stretched across the globe. As they taped the show’s final moments, there was plenty of uncertainty at what the next chapter of their lives would look like in and outside of the Star Trek phenomenon. Ryan described the mood on set as “uncontrolled chaos.” For Voyager ’s lead star, it was a fascinating experience to witness first-hand. 

“It's intriguing to me to watch this process,” Mulgrew told ET on set. She believed the entire cast was exhibiting the first of many emotional stages in a collective grieving process that would unfold over the coming weeks. “The first will be levity. Almost revelry.” “Acting out” and “lunacy” were some of her other predictions. “Because we do everything to avoid the sadness. We do everything in nature to argue against that.”

“It's like we've been out of show business [for seven years,]” Robert Duncan McNeill, who played cocky pilot Tom Paris, told ET. In the heyday of network television’s enormous episode orders (by today’s standards), he noted that Voyager ’s intense shooting schedule had left them without a standard hiatus break year after year. Filming between 24 to 26 full-hours of TV across each of its seven seasons meant they had practically been living on the Paramount Studios lot, with the occasional short drive to Griffith Park for location shoots . “And now we're coming back to the real world.”

“I'm not gonna miss this uniform,” Robert Beltran, who played Maquis rebel leader Chakotay, told ET. He followed this up by lifting his arms and demonstrating the costume’s limited range of motion. McNeill echoed Beltran’s comments. He said while the clothes are “plain and nondescript” and look “harmless,” audiences might not realize they’re also fitted to the actor, preventing even the most basic of bodily positions. “Crossing your legs is not that easy in these suits.”

“I won't miss the corset,” Ryan said with a laugh, referencing Seven’s trademark skintight clothes. When she reprised the role for Star Trek: Picard , the character’s look received a rugged style fashion upgrade. When speaking with ET in the lead up to Picard’s debut, Ryan referred to Seven’s former wardrobe as “the cat suit,” a nod to Michelle Pfeiffer ’s costume in Batman Returns. 

Yet, amid these admissions of what they won’t miss about the job, a sense of melancholy couldn’t be avoided. It was not business as usual on set.

“The fact that they're knocking the sets down as we're finishing with them is giving us the idea that this is the last episode,” Robert Picardo told ET. (Yes, there were three ‘Robert's in this cast.) Before playing The Doctor, the ship’s medical hologram, Picardo was also a doctor across all three seasons of China Beach . The veteran actor gestured to a section of the set that had already been removed. He admitted, “It's kinda sad to see it all falling away around you.” 

THE VOYAGE HOME

“Oh, the almighty Temporal Prime Directive. Take my advice: it's less of a headache if you just ignore it.” - Admiral Kathryn Janeway. Star Trek: Voyager, ‘Endgame.’

Voyager began with a promise. Despite all the odds stacked against them, Captain Janeway would, eventually, bring everyone home. With this objective hanging over every storyline and each season-long story arc, any creative direction for the show’s end ran the risk of coming off as anticlimactic. But Mulgrew was confident in how they would be saying goodbye.

“I feel pretty good about [the series finale.] I just finished reading part two,” said Mulgrew. “I think they did a wonderful job tying it up. Very unexpected. Very unpredictable.” The contents of Voyager ’s two-hour send off received additional security measures on set, which were already considerable throughout the show’s run. 

“I don't know how it's gonna end,” said Ryan. “They're sending home scripts under armed guard practically.” Among the many benefits of being captain, apparently, was having access to the entire top secret script. As they were already in the midst of filming part one of the two-hour episode when chatting with ET, the cast still had a pretty good idea how the journey would end, even if they didn’t have the whole map just yet. Picardo joked, “I'm looking around under coats and hats around set trying to find someone with the second half.”

According to Ryan, these precautions extended to everyone behind the camera. She said, “[The crew] had no idea what was going on in the scenes that we were shooting [this morning.] They were shocked.”

“I think the audience will tune in thinking, ‘I've got this pretty well figured out.’ It'll be a game for most of them. They've calculated the odds against this. ‘What's going to happen to so and so?’ And I think they will find themselves unsettled by what, in fact, the writers have come up with,” said Mulgrew. “Which is profoundly clever and very moving.”

The first half of "Endgame" tracked two versions of the Voyager crew, one in the show's current time and the other 26 years in the future. In the latter, we learn our main characters have long since returned from their journey. But not everyone came back alive or without residual scars. Seven was killed in battle. Chakotay later died, which was hinted at being as a result of grief from her death. And Tuvok's ( Tim Russ ) illness, which required treatment starting years before Voyager eventually returned, had taken a heavy toll. Janeway, now a Starfleet admiral, decided to ignore Temporal Prime Directive guidelines and travel back in time to help her crew fast track their return to the Alpha quadrant. 

To accomplish this, Admiral Janeway traveled back in time to find Voyager and teamed up with her past self. But the Janeways are faced with two (seemingly) mutually exclusive objectives: sneaking Voyager into a transwarp corridor that would drop them on Earth’s doorstep, or destroying the central hub of the Borg empire. In a display of her trademark determination, Captain Janeway posits: “There's got to be a way to have our cake and eat it, too.” Voyager ’s producers seemed to be after the same goal with ‘Endgame.’ While our central timeline ends and fades to black just as Voyager reaches Earth, and the show’s ultimate promise fulfilled, fans were still provided a glimpse of seeing what the characters’ future might  resemble. Following The Next Generation ’s finale, which similarly showed trajectories for their core characters decades into the future, it was a tried and true storytelling approach in the franchise. Voyager ’s finale got to live in the moment and offer potential hints at what the future could bring for these characters. 

“The end of the show is very much what I, personally, wanted the show to be at the end,” said McNeill. He praised the finale’s absence of “reunion” and full circle moments with their characters back on Earth. “It's really about our cast and our crew. And their relationships. And what they've brought back from the seven years journey. The connections that they have. The lessons that they learned that they'll never forget.”

Having read ahead of the class, Mulgrew told ET that the script had left her dreading shooting the final scene. “That will be a diabolical day for me. If I get through that, then I'm stronger than I think I am.”

THE NEXT GENERATIONS

“I think it'll truly hit me on the day that the new show premieres,” Garrett Wang told ET on set of the finale, who played Ensign Harry Kim, in reference to Star Trek: Enterprise ’s impending debut that fall. “Because then we are no longer the new kids on the block.” In a sense, the end of Voyager wrapped up a section of the Star Trek timeline that had become beloved by new generations of fans. Enterprise would take Trek back to the 22nd century, leaving few ties to the characters and events from this era. 

At Voyager ’s finale party in April 2001, Mulgrew reflected on the impact Janeway had following her introduction six years and 70,000 lightyears ago. “I think it was bold,” Mulgrew told ET. “And I think that they made a timely and rather political move. A gesture that certainly I will never forget and I think [will culturally] serve as a great motivator for women.”

While the legacy of Captain Janeway has endured for two decades now, her journey continues. Mulgrew reprised the role for Star Trek: Prodigy , debuting on Paramount+ later this year. Taking place after the events of Voyager , the animated series follows a group of lawless teens who discover a derelict Starfleet ship, with Janeway appearing as the starship's built-in emergency training hologram. 

"Captain Janeway was held to a different standard than her predecessors. She was asked to embody an inhuman level of perfection in order to be accepted as ‘good enough’ by the doubters, but showed them all what it means to be truly outstanding. We can think of no better captain to inspire the next generation of dreamers on Nickelodeon, than she," Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman said when the series was announced in October.

“I have invested every scintilla of my being in Captain Janeway, and I can’t wait to endow her with nuance that I never did before in Star Trek: Prodigy ," Mulgrew said in a statement. "How thrilling to be able to introduce to these young minds an idea that has elevated the world for decades. To be at the helm again is going to be deeply gratifying in a new way for me.” 

All 7 seasons of Star Trek: Voyager , as well as the first season of  Star Trek: Picard , are streaming on Paramount+. 

ET and Paramount+ are both subsidiaries of ViacomCBS.

Watch ET's first visit to the set of Star Trek: Voyager below. 

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Star Trek: Voyager accidentally presided over the franchise’s decline

For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndication—and to profitability—has been 100 episodes. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. Many were big hits. Some found small cult audiences. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be canceled. In 100 Episodes ,  we examine shows that made it to that number, considering both how they advanced or reflected the medium and what contributed to their popularity.

When Star Trek: Voyager premièred in January of 1995, the Star Trek franchise was at the height of its expansion. The Next Generation ’s final season was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series at the 1994 Emmys, the only syndicated series to achieve such a distinction, and that series’ cast was preparing to transition into movies. Deep Space Nine had been launched two years earlier to critical applause. But Voyager was not only a new Star Trek series. It was to be the flagship for UPN, Paramount’s venture into the broadcast-network game. Luckily, the two-hour pilot, “Caretaker,” pulled in an impressive 21.3 million viewers.

At the time of Voyager ’s planning, each of the three executive producers was also overseeing some other arm of the Star Trek property. Rick Berman was focused on the film Star Trek: Generations , micromanaging every frame of footage as he had done with every other Trek he’d been involved with. Jeri Taylor ran the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation , subtly transforming the science-fiction morality play into a freewheeling family reunion. The season marks the debut of Geordi’s mom, Data’s mom, Picard’s son, Worf’s foster brother, Dr. Crusher’s grandmother, and the list goes on. And Michael Piller had similar duties on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , which had the sole spotlight in the Star Trek universe for a total of three months at the start of its third season, just as its long-term story was heating up.

Perhaps this creative overextension accounts for Voyager ’s milquetoast introduction. When Farscape ’s John Crichton slingshots across the galaxy, he immediately finds himself in the middle of a skirmish between aliens he can’t understand. When Battlestar Galactica sets off for Earth, the drama of both nuclear apocalypse and various resource crises is palpable. Even the starship Enterprise arrives in the Delta Quadrant with maximum menace, resulting in a memorable speech about exploration by John De Lancie’s theatrical, omnipotent Q: “It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.”

The starship Voyager , on the other hand, finds itself at a big satellite controlled by another seemingly omnipotent entity, The Caretaker, who presents as an old human man putting on a kind of hoedown for the crew he’s kidnapped. It turns out that his technologically advanced society had obliterated the environment of a planet called Ocampa, whose natives have life spans of about nine years, so two of The Caretaker’s species stayed behind to provide for them. Now, The Caretaker is dying, his companion has long ago moved on, and the Ocampa run the risk of being dominated by the tribal Kazon, unless the Voyager crew can help him. Captain Janeway makes the decision to destroy the Caretaker array that brought Voyager to the Delta Quadrant instead of further disrupting the balance of power in the area. Without the array and at maximum warp, it will now take Voyager 75 years to get back home.

The stakes are enormous, but Janeway barely has time to weigh her decision. The right to form a labor union on Battlestar Galactica is given more heft. Worse still, her crew doesn’t so much as wink in the direction of rebellion, and half of the members are genuine ex-Starfleet rebels known as the Maquis. Two episodes later, life on Voyager is hunky dory, give or take a reference to some rebels not fitting in. Berman was adamant about this point. In Stephen Edward Poe’s Star Trek: Voyager: A Vision Of The Future , Berman says:

“We wanted to get the Maquis into Starfleet uniforms, with a captain who had to pull together diverse groups of people into a functioning, solid, effective unit. It would get pretty irritating, and cumbersome, to have the Maquis tension in every episode.”

“Caretaker” invokes ’90s environmentalism, a superpower’s role as world police, and two oppositional parties working together to run that superpower as best as they can, but it’s nothing so much as a reminder of Gene Roddenberry’s Prime Directive. Starfleet is expressly prohibited from interfering with the progress of pre-warp societies. The Caretaker’s species had no such guidelines and nearly wiped out a whole species. Now, Voyager has the task of upholding Alpha Quadrant standards in the absence of Alpha Quadrant hierarchy.

Weirder still, “Caretaker” is told largely from the perspective of Starfleet wash-out Tom Paris, who starts off working at a penal colony on Earth and winds up risking his life to save Maquis Commander Chakotay, with whom he has bad blood. While fairly paint-by-numbers, this redemption story isn’t unexpected. Voyager ’s crew is a diverse spread of untested sailors: In addition to Paris and Chakotay, there’s the fresh-faced recent Academy graduate Ensign Harry Kim; the Latin human-Klingon hybrid B’Elanna Torres; ostensibly the first Ocampa to leave her home planet, Kes; the rogue Delta Quadrant loner Neelix; and an unnamed holographic doctor designed for use in the case of emergency. The most experienced officers are black Vulcan security officer Tuvok and Captain Janeway herself. In fact, it’s the white male crewmembers, the first officer and the human doctor, who get killed in the Caretaker’s intervention. Which makes it all the stranger that the first female captain of a Star Trek series is introduced through the eyes of a straight white male.

Mixed signals abound on Voyager , but nowhere so much as the show’s approach to feminism. With its cast of prominent female scientists who possess rich interests and social lives, the show routinely makes the Bechdel test a thing of the 21st century. But then there’s the way Janeway isn’t even the star of her show’s pilot. Janeway’s an authoritative figure, unquestionably the most stubborn of all the stubborn Star Trek captains, but her decision-making tends to seem reckless. When Voyager discovers super-powerful, super-dangerous Omega particles, Starfleet requires captains to throw out the Prime Directive and destroy them. One minute, Janeway goes on lockdown, preparing to leave her crew to accomplish this confidential task. The next, she’s spilling the beans to the ensign on her senior staff. Then there’s kidnapped ex-Borg Seven of Nine (a late addition to the cast, played by Jeri Ryan), whose dehumanized delivery is packaged in a catsuit Emma Peel would blush at and a Borg implant that doesn’t dare disfigure her face. The one cop to Maquis discontent is a woman named Seska, who spends most of the second season secretly working with the Kazon. Then, in a classic twist of Star Trek ’s famous species essentialism—the idea that its alien races were all driven by certain unchanging psychological quirks—she turns out to be a Cardassian spy embedded in the Maquis. Eventually, Seska claims to have stolen Chakotay’s DNA and impregnated herself with his child, one last soap-opera twist for the fiercely independent, baby-crazy traitor.

Speaking of species essentialism, while Seska’s Cardassian heritage makes her out-and-out evil, Deep Space Nine ’s Cardassian spy, Garak, follows in the footsteps of The Next Generation ’s Klingon Worf in upending traditional species roles. Voyager ’s sister show even makes room for subversive Starfleet officers and heroic Ferengi, traditionally a selfish bunch driven by greed. Voyager doesn’t have nearly as much faith in Roddenberry’s drive for “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” The closest it comes is Talaxian Neelix, and his journey from selfish to selfless rests comfortably inside Quark’s more extreme arc back on Deep Space Nine . Even Seven of Nine, who transcends her long history and literal hard-wiring as a member of the fearless, culture-assimilating Borg, discovers compassion as a trait inherent to her humanity. She’s not rebelling against Borg values. She’s recovering her human ones.

The main reason Voyager fails to make as strong an impression as its counterparts is its bland characters and repetitive stories. Like a Lost knockoff that retains the flashbacks but loses the intrigue, Voyager keeps telling the same stories about the same people, most of whom are defined by a single characteristic. Generic Native American Chakotay has some spiritual quest or another, often literalized through aliens. Torres resists and then gives into her Klingon heritage, undergoing the latest Alpha Quadrant ritual. Kim gets kidnapped by aliens. Neelix proves himself as a Starfleet officer. Tom Paris lusts after a woman. Voyager finds a way to get home slightly more quickly but ultimately can’t take advantage of it because Gilligan knocked over the radio or something. Several Wikipedia episode synopses read like parodies (see: “Harry Kim is contacted by a planet full of women”).

No wonder the science-fiction stories are the most potent. In season one’s “Eye Of The Needle,” Voyager finds a wormhole back to Romulan space with a final twist so good Deep Space Nine would later incorporate it. The next season has fun with quantum theory when Voyager splits into two. In season three’s “Distant Origin,” an alien stands trial on his home world for positing that his species evolved from aliens across the galaxy. He looks like a humanoid dinosaur, and it takes two commercial breaks to get to a regular character. Voyager was conceived as an action-adventure Star Trek , closer to the original series than the diplomacy-heavy sequels, and it gets close in these science-fiction morality plays. Janeway arbitrates an assisted-suicide debate among the Q, a war memorial causes the crew to experience devastating flashbacks to a war they never fought, and a two-parter traps the crew in a year of deadly attrition all because a 29th-century time-traveler is trying to temporally resurrect his murdered wife.

Voyager also boasts surprising self-awareness. The Prime Directive of non-intervention is the goal from inside the ship, but Delta Quadrant aliens tell Janeway they see the Voyager as a ship of death. Destruction invariably follows in its wake. Another off-format episode, “Living Witness,” sees Voyager in a museum far into the future as a native society educates its populace about the long-since corrupted history of the Machiavellian crew. Nevertheless, aliens are constantly lusting after Voyager ’s technology. The Kazon steal a transporter, traders steal the ship’s weapons, and still other aliens seek its warp plasma. What’s more, advanced Starfleet technology is repeatedly offered for trade in spite of the holy law. The Kazon are obsessed with the replicator, which has created an economy of almost limited scarcity and enlightened modesty on Earth. Some crewmembers conspire to trade a replicator for a powerful transporter that could hasten the journey home. A species of hunters called the Hirogen find new life in Voyager ’s holographic technology. Deep Space Nine is fearlessly upfront about the dark side of superpower-dom, but Voyager is also constantly considering the costs and concerns of power.

Holographic technology, in particular, is the focus of Voyager ’s science fiction, starting with the holographic Doctor. Designed as a follow-up to The Next Generation ’s sentient hologram villain, Moriarty, the Doctor is unusually self-aware. He’s an emergency program with poor bedside manner and the dry wit of Robert Picardo. He’s summoned by the crew when they need him and left on when they leave, unable to turn himself off and stuck alone in Sickbay until someone else comes along. Then medical assistant Kes starts to help him soften. She invites him to search for a name and encourages him to pursue interests. At first he’s confined to Sickbay, but then he gradually increases his mobility to the Holodeck, where he even creates a family, and to key areas of the ship. Later, a 29th-century mobile emitter allows him to go wherever the emitter will function, a timeline violation that Janeway allows. Over the course of the series, the Doctor goes from sighing software trapped in a Sartrean hell to a heroic Renaissance man.

And he’s not alone. Voyager encounters a murderous hologram with a prejudice against “organics,” The Doctor’s 2.0 replacement, and a whole society of holograms consigned to a life playing The Most Dangerous Game with the Hirogen hunters. The recreational Holodeck programs are mostly duds, ranging from an English governess mystery to a spitball session with John Rhys-Davies’ Leonardo Da Vinci, but it’s easy to see why Star Trek ’s famous Holodeck larks seem to take over Voyager . Janeway may have to deal with depleting deuterium, but she keeps the Holodeck perpetually running because those are people in there. She even falls in love with a holographic Irish bodice-ripper stereotype. Voyager is fascinated with, concerned by, and curious about virtual reality in the early days of the Internet. Not that the writing sells it, but in the wide view, Voyager’s preoccupation with holograms is an essential part of the Spock-Data-Odo look at what it means to be sentient, what it means to be human. In “Bride Of Chaotica!,” a Flash Gordon-style black-and-white ’30s space serial, Voyager even pulls off a successful trapped-in-the-Holodeck episode, a usually eye-rolling Star Trek staple.

Halfway through the series, the Doctor takes on the Kes role toward Seven of Nine, helping her to recover her humanity. He holds lessons on social customs and even starts to fall for his protégé. Like Picardo, Jeri Ryan has a way with dry, arrogant delivery, but with the bonus of Seven’s absolute awkwardness. From that point on, Voyager essentially ditches the ensemble focus that defines the Star Trek sequels in favor of a classic trio, Janeway, the Doctor, and Seven. There’s no Kirk-Spock-McCoy tension, exactly. Janeway doesn’t balance the other two. But these core relationships are so compelling that defanged Maquis and eager-beaver ensigns can’t compete. Ideal 24th-century Starfleet personnel may be emotionally incapable of extended conflict, but ex-Borg have no such discipline. Seven is intensely antagonistic toward Janeway, and she repeatedly defies her orders in pursuit of self-interest. But as the series heads into the home stretch, Seven and Janeway find mutual respect. The Doctor helps Seven pursue interests. And she even becomes a surrogate mother to ex-Borg children who join the crew. Voyager was designed as a ship of misfits and mercenaries grudgingly learning to work together, but it never really feels that way until the last half of its run.

Still, Voyager ’s ratings declined in tandem with its four-year project to defang the Borg, and its final two seasons underperformed Deep Space Nine at its lowest. After the new Star Trek standard of seven seasons, Voyager ended with a whimper. When the series began, Star Trek was bigger than ever, and Voyager explicitly tried to get back to basics instead of pushing ahead. In its wake came the George W. Bush era’s Enterprise —set before the original series and captained by a Southern, straight white male—and now J.J. Abrams’ original-series movies—action-adventure romps without much in the way of an explorer’s curiosity or science fiction’s moral dilemmas. Voyager may have presided over the property’s decline, such as it was, but looking back, Voyager eventually found what it was looking for: not just plot resolution, but also a character study about strong personalities longing for a place they can call home.

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Abandoned ‘star trek: voyager’ finale ideas could have given the sendoff it deserved.

The final moments of the two-parter, which turns 20 this week, ends the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anti-climactic notes.

By Phil Pirrello

Phil Pirrello

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Star Trek: Voyager

“The biggest decision was whether or not we actually wanted them to get home. That was a decision that really came down to the wire.”

That was the creative challenge facing Star Trek : Voyager ’s series finale, according to former Voyager showrunner Brannon Braga in a 2001 interview from Star Trek Monthly . Whether or not “Endgame, Parts 1 and 2” was entirely successful in meeting that challenge is a debate fans have had since the feature-length final episode aired 20 years ago on May 23, 2001.

“Endgame” centers on a future Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) altering the past to ensure that every member of her crew gets back to Earth after spending seven years stranded in a distant corner of the Final Frontier known as the Delta Quadrant. One would think our intrepid heroes would be given more than a scene or two depicting their dream coming true, of seeing their home planet again, but that’s all “Endgame” gives them. The episode’s abrupt final moments (less than three minutes of screentime!) end the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anti-climatic notes. As beloved as Voyager is among fans, even they struggle to overlook how “Endgame” falls short of giving this iconic series and crew the ending they deserved.

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Like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine before it, Voyager ’s creative staff was afforded the rare gift of essentially being able to “cancel” themselves after the series’ seven-season run. That bittersweet privilege came with a figurative kitchen crowded with cooks who had a deserved say in how the show wrapped. That included Mulgrew and executive producers Braga, Rick Berman and “Endgame” co-writer Kenneth Biller — with the latter taking over showrunner duties from Braga during the series’ final season. (Biller brought on then- Voyager staff writer Robert Doherty to help with scripting duties.) The creative input from stakeholders ultimately resulted in a “dish” that incorporated Biller and Berman’s suggestion of time travel, along with Mulgrew’s request that Janeway had to go down with the ship, “but not at the full cost of her being.”

The end result opened 10 years after Voyager’s journey ends, with what’s left of the main crew gathering to celebrate their homecoming’s 10th anniversary. A silver-haired Admiral Janeway reviews old footage of Voyager doing a flyby over and around the Golden Gate Bridge outside Starfleet Command. (This choice works in a “cool teaser” way to hook in audiences, but ultimately is less effective in the context of the overall episode; we are shown a version of Voyager’s homecoming in a way that somewhat undercuts the actual event the characters fans have invested in for seven years will experience.)

Admiral Janeway is haunted by the fact that she was unable to get all of her crew home; she lost Seven of Nine in this timeline’s attempt to get Voyager back. So, with the help of time travel — and one last explosive, big screen-worthy battle with the Borg and the Borg Queen (played by Star Trek: First Contact ’s Alice Krige) — Janeway succeeds in saving her crew and bringing all of them to Earth.

Voyager zooms toward Earth under starship escort before the end credits roll. And that’s it. After spending seven years with these characters, approximately three minutes of screentime is all that’s spent on the realization of their dream to get home. There’s no real exploration of the emotional impact this endpoint would have on the crew.

“We were really struggling with it,” writer Ken Biller recalls in Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration , Hero Collector’s 2020 book about the series. “Is the end of the show just that they get home? That’s a bit of an anticlimax. Did we want some people to die?”

Braga certainly did. Even though he no longer oversaw the day-to-day needs of the show, Biller and Berman sought Braga’s input on how to end the series, and one of his wishes was to kill off a beloved character.

“I think Seven of Nine should have bit the dust,” Braga told TrekCore.com in 2013. “I think there had to be a real sacrifice for this crew getting home; a real blood sacrifice. Seven of Nine was, for me, designed to be a character that was gonna die tragically. I planned that.” Braga was overruled by Berman at the time, and that’s a good thing; otherwise Star Trek: Picard would have been denied one of its masterstrokes of adding Seven to its cast.

But her death, or a story choice similar to it, would have helped distinguish “Endgame” from previous Trek finales, especially TNG ’s landmark “All Good Things …”, which Braga co-wrote with Ron Moore. Voyager ’s finale echoes many structural elements and narrative touchstones of that classic episode, including: time travel, a temporal anomaly requiring closure using a beam from the main deflector, and a ship being rescued mid-battle with the Klingons by an advanced Starship. “Endgame” being caught in the shadow of “All Good Things …” — or feeling like a cover of Voyager ’s 100th episode, the exceptional “Timeless” —  was not lost on Voyager ’s writers, as Biller told Cinefantastique magazine that the creatives made a conscious decision not to “shy away from that. It’s a different set of characters, and a different show, and ultimately it is a different story.”

What would have made it truly stand out would have been if Biller and company pursued some of their original ideas. In the development of the episode, one story that was floated was a mini-arc about the crew getting home before the finale — an option that castmember Roxanna Dawson was in favor of.

“My only criticism,” Dawson told Star Trek Monthly at the time, “is that I wish we had started to deal with the ending a little bit earlier, instead of just in that last two-hour episode.”

Another plot considered involved Janeway’s sacrifice and the Borg, which stemmed from discussions around a previous Voyager two-parter: “Unimatrix Zero.” While a version of this story appears in “Endgame,” the original iteration would have been nothing short of epic.

The idea was that Janeway would surrender Voyager to the Borg, and the battle-damaged starship would be assimilated by a Borg cube. But this was all a ruse by Janeway; once in the Borg’s clutches, the Doctor (Robert Picardo) would activate a reverse assimilation virus.

Then- Voyager writer Bryan Fuller pitched to Star Trek Magazine this idea’s major beats: “As we were assimilating the Borg ship from the inside, and re-assimilating ourselves, we would use a Borg transwarp conduit to get back home. The idea was this great final image of the Borg armada approaching Earth, and then out of the belly of the beast of the lead ship came Voyager, destroying all of the other Borg in its trail. It felt like an epic conclusion to Janeway’s journey with the Borg, and freeing Seven of Nine. That got abandoned somewhere along the road.”

Admiral Janeway does a smaller version of this reverse assimilation in her final scene with the Borg Queen, which allowed the writers to honor Mulgrew’s request for her character’s sacrificial play without having to truly “kill” the iconic heroine.

The episode’s needs to deliver an action-packed finale doesn’t quite shake hands with the audience’s expectations to have that action supported by emotionally honest character beats that honor what it would feel like for a crew who often thought they may never get home finally getting there. In Admiral Janeway’s timeline, her first officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is dead. One would expect the Admiral to have mixed feelings when she sees her lost friend alive and well on Captain Janeway’s bridge again; instead, the episode doesn’t even acknowledge this. We just get a montage paired with a Captain’s Log entry showing the Admiral working with Chakatoy on the bridge. And one of the show’s fan-favorite characters, the exiled Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) is reunited with his estranged father, a Starfleet admiral — but only via the viewscreen. And even then, the two characters do not exchange a line or even a look, which is a glaring missed opportunity.

Despite the uneven, half-baked storyline that its own cast bumped into — “We don’t even step foot on Earth!” Garret Wang, who played Ensign Kim, told StarTrek.com — what “Endgame” gets right really works. Janeway squaring off with her future self, at odds over changing history to save the lives of a select few, is a very Trek ian moral and ethical quandary. (These scenes also allow Mulgrew to deliver a tour de force performance, with her character’s unrelenting drive to make good on her promise to return her crew to Earth providing the actor with some of her best emotional moments in the role.) We also get to see Voyager in action one last time, with advanced armor plating and weapons against the Borg in a climactic battle that rivals what most of Trek ’s feature films have pulled off.

The last shot of “Endgame” plays in a way that viewers at home feel like maybe they missed something, as this crew’s seven-year odyssey back to the Alpha Quadrant concludes with less fanfare than that which starts the episode. And while the finale as a whole falls short in terms of the sum of its parts, it does, in its own weird and charming-ish way, reflect the equally bumpy nature and spirit of Voyager as a series. For as Ensign Kim monologues during a memorable “Endgame” scene, maybe it’s not the act of crossing the finish line that matters. Rather, “maybe it’s the journey.”

In that respect, the journey audiences shared with Star Trek: Voyager was one that was definitely worth the trip.

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The Intriguing World Of Entertainment

‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Cast: Where Are They Now?

By Christopher Covello | January 18, 2023

Star Trek: Voyager Cast

Even if you’ve never watched a single episode of any Star Trek show, you could still name at least two actors from the franchise and be able to spit out at least two famous quotes spawned from them. If you have seen a few of the different series or are even a diehard Trekkie, you’ve heard of Star Trek: Voyager. 

While not the most famous run of the Star Trek franchise, it still played an important part during its years on the air. We break down what the cast members have been doing since they last finished their mission.

Star Trek: Voyager follows the crew through the challenge of being stuck 70,000 light-years away in the Delta Quadrant and trying to get back home to the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager also gives us the first time we see a female in the captain’s seat, with Captain Kathryn Janeway sitting at the helm.

Where does Voyager fall on the Star Trek Timeline?

If you want to know where this one lands on the chronological watching order (because that’s all that matters, right?) it depends if you want to include the movies and animated series in the lineup. The show hits anywhere from fifth to ninth in viewing order based on what you want to include.

On the fictional timeline, Star Trek: Voyager takes place during the years 2371 to 2378, so 20 years after the first journey with the crew. Though we all know there will be Star Trek movies and shows coming out for years to come, we could see this journey shift along the pecking order.

How long was the show on the air?

Filming for Star Trek: Voyager started in 1993, with the first episode airing on January 16th, 1995, on the then brand-new, now non-existent UPN (United Paramount Network). May 23rd, 2001 was the last voyage for this crew.

With a hearty seven-season run, Star Trek: Voyager beamed into our living rooms for an astounding 172 episodes over the years.

Why did Star Trek: Voyager get Cancelled?

Well, actually, Star Trek: Voyager never officially got canceled. Like most shows at that time, seven seasons was about the shelf life. Though ratings did drop over time, and fans weren’t too happy with the direction of the show, Star Trek: Voyager was able to end on the note they wanted to.

Kate Mulgrew as ‘Admiral Kathryn Janeway’

Star Trek Voyager - Kathryn Janeway

Nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe, and winner of an Obie, Critic’s Choice, and Saturn award, Kate Mulgrew has been gracing our screen for decades.

In the Star Trek universe alone Kate has reprised her role as Admiral Kathryn Janeway in 2002s Star Trek: Nemesis, 2004s Star Trek: The Experience – Borg Invasion, and most recently, in the 2021 animated return of the franchise Star Trek: Prodigy.

Kate Mulgrew now

You may recognize her the most as Galina “Red” Reznikov in the hit Orange Is the New Black. You can keep up with Kate on her Instagram , where she is very active.

Robert Beltran as ‘Commander Chakotay’

Star Trek Voyager - Chakotay

Robert Beltran played Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager for the entire series. Before stepping on the Voyager, Robert had already been on the stage and screens big and small.

No stranger to TV, Robert has appeared on CSI: Miami, Medium, and Big Love, as well as dozens of TV movies.

Robert Beltran Now

Most recently Robert has used his voice to return as Commander Chakotay in Star Trek: Prodigy in 2022.

Roxann Dawson as ‘B’Elanna Torres’

Star Trek Voyager - B'Elanna Torres

Since Roxann Dawson played half-Klingon and half-human B’Elanna Torres on Star Trek: Voyager, she hasn’t really stopped working. The list of Roxann’s accomplishments and appearances on screen are way too numerous to count.

From writing plays, acting on stage, being part of documentaries, movies, TV shows, lending her voice to video games and audiobooks, and directing tv, Roxann has been one busy bee.

Roxann Dawson now

If you watch TV at all, Roxann has directed at least one episode of it. The last time Roxann truly graced the screen herself was in a 2011 episode of the hit show The Closer.

Robert Duncan McNeill as ‘Tom Paris’

Star Trek Voyager - Tom Paris

Robert Duncan McNeill had already been acting for decades before he brought Tom Paris to life on Star Trek: Voyager. 

After Voyager he switched gears and did more directing than acting. Robert went on to direct a ton of episodes of early aughts mega-hits like Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, The O.C., and Desperate Housewives.

Robert Duncan McNeill

 If you were obsessed with the show Chuck, Robert executive produced, produced, and directed the hit.

Ethan Phillips as ‘Neelix’

Star Trek Voyager - Neelix

Ethan Phillips has steadily been on TV since the early 80s and hasn’t stopped since.

Before playing Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager, Ethan was in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1990 playing Dr. Farek, and after, in 2002, he was in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2002.

Ethan Phillips now

He also appeared in the miniseries Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. Outside of that franchise, Ethan can be seen in episodes of Bones, Mental, Veep, and Girls. Most recently he was in 2020s Avenue 5.

Robert Picardo as ‘The Doctor’

star trek voyager Lewis Zimmerman

Possibly one of the most recognizable faces from the Voyager cast, Robert Picardo has been in just about every movie and TV show since the late 70s.

Playing The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager wasn’t his first hit show, as he was nominated for an Emmy for his role on the late 80s hit The Wonder Years.

Robert Picardo now

 Robert popped up in another sci-fi-star show, appearing on Stargate SG-1 from 2004 to 2007, and from 2006-2009 on Stargate Atlantis. In 2022 Roberts will lend his voice to the animated film MEAD.

He is very active on his Instagram and regularly post photos and videos of his life.

Jeri Ryan as ‘Seven of Nine’

Star Trek Voyager - Seven Of Nine

Though portraying Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager was Jeri Ryan’s first long-time TV role, she had been in episodes of shows like Who’s the Boss?, Matlock: The Fatal Seduction, and Melrose Place by then. 

Immediately following her run on Star Trek Jeri landed a leading role on the early 2000s drama Boston Public and then the drama Shark from 2006 to 2008.

Jeri Ryan Now

Fans loved that Jeri picked back up her Seven of Nine role and is back in space on Star Trek: Picard with Sir Patrick Stewart.

Tim Russ as ‘Lieutenant Commander Tuvok’

Star Trek Voyager - Tuvok

Not only has Tim Russ played Lieutenant Commander Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager, but he was in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Tim Russ Now

Other notable runs for Tim were on shows like Samantha Who? and iCarly. You can see Tim more recently in the 2020 George Clooney directed sci-fi movie The Midnight Sky.

Tim is also a musician and has started the band ‘Tim Russ Crew’. They play a mix of pop rock, blues, old school and roots music. You can check out a sample of their music here .

Garrett Wang as ‘Harry Kim’

Star Trek Voyager - Harry Kim

Playing Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager was Garrett Wang’s big break on television.

Since his Trek days, Garrett mostly sticks with the convention crowds, making appearances, being a celebrity moderator, and since 2010, being the Trek Track director for Dragon Con.

Garrett Wang now

He currently co-hosts a podcast with fellow Voyager star Robert Duncan McNeill. You can follow him on Instagram , where he posts regularly.

Jennifer Lien as ‘Kes’

Star Trek Voyager - Kes

With a handful of shows under her belt by the time she landed the role of Kes on Star Trek: Voyager,  Jennifer Lien  was all over the TV in the 90s.

After the birth of her son, Jennifer decided to step away from acting in 2002 to be a mother, and hasn’t been on screen since.

Jennifer Lien now

Unfortunately, from 2015 to 2018 Lien had some trouble with the law and decided to keep away from the camera, opting to try to start a new life as a nutritionist.

Tarik Ergin as ‘Lieutenant Junior Grade Ayala’

Star Trek Voyager - Ayala

Not everyone that makes it on screen wants to stay on, and that was the case for Tarik Ergin. After playing Lieutenant Junior Grade Ayala on Star Trek: Voyager, he pretty much stayed out of the spotlight.

Tarik Ergin now

(photo: LaxRatz )

He instead got back to his lacrosse roots. Having been a professional player in 2010, since 2011 he has been the Head Coach of the lacrosse Varsity team at Oak Park High School in California.

Scarlett Pomers as ‘Naomi Wildman’

Star Trek Voyager - Naomi Wildman

Before Scarlett Pomers played Naomi Wildman on Star Trek: Voyager she started her career appearing in Michael Jackson’s 1992 hit “Heal the World” music video.

Scarlett Pomers now

But since her days in space Kate has popped in shows like Providence, Judging Amy, and That’s Life. From 2001 to 2007 Kate snagged a main role on the hit show, Reba.

Majel Barrett (Voyager ship voice)

Majel Barrett

Once a Trekkie, always a Trekkie, and that was always true of Majel Barrett. It didn’t hurt that Majel’s husband was the creator of Star Trek, making her the official First Lady of the franchise. 

Not only was she the voice of the ship’s computer in Star Trek: Voyager, but Majel was in the original Star Trek pilot in 1965.

She played multiple characters throughout the decades, appearing in every Star Trek journey until we sadly lost Barrett in 2008 to leukemia.

Related Posts:

Star Trek Voyager - Tuvok

About Christopher Covello

Christopher Covello is a professional freelancer and published author. He writes copy, content, and SEO-focused material in various niches including music, entertainment, fitness, video games, business, travel, pet care, and eCommerce. More from Christopher

Den of Geek

Why do Star Trek fans hate Voyager?

Liam ponders whether Star Trek: Voyager deserves the derision it receives at the hands of some Star Trek fans...

why was star trek voyager cancelled

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At what point is it safe to call oneself a Star Trek fan? I’ve seen a good chunk of TOS , and almost all of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine , and Voyager. I’ve a favourite episode and have selected my preferred position on the bridge (Security and Tactical), but I wouldn’t touch a pair of pointy ears with a ten-foot bat’leth, and perhaps most egregiously in the world of Trek fandom, I don’t hate Voyager.

So thoroughgoing is some Star Trek fans’ hatred of Berman, Piller and Taylor’s iteration of the franchise, it’s manifested in YouTube channels dedicated to Voyager’s idiocy and a canonically and legally accurate series of features called ‘ The Court Martial of Captain Kathryn Janeway’ .

Star Trek: Voyager is regarded with the same feelings of betrayal fanboys have shown for The Phantom Menace and the Mass Effect 3 ending. Even appreciating that Voyager is no masterpiece, its status as an object of derision baffles when you consider the tongue-in-cheek admiration a show like Farscape (which operates on a similar plain of stupidity) is held in by fans. The Fifth Element is as shallow as sci-fi gets, yet is popularly considered a cult classic.

No, with Star Trek: Voyager ,   the hatred is mostly about those first two words in the title. After all, what is Star Trek ? For many it’s not just the most prominent science fiction franchise, it’s also the peak of the genre (yes,  Doctor Who came first, but before the reboot, Whovians were comparatively niche and Trek had a much greater international presence thanks to the films), the ultimate marriage of hard science fiction with entertainment.

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Star Trek presented a socialist utopia in which humanity had evolved beyond differences of gender, race and even species to work for the advancement of the whole. Then it used that utopia to facilitate battles to the death, tense dilemmas and Viagra viruses ( The Naked Now in case you were wondering). And it did all this with sets, costumes and creatures so distinct that fans continue to imitate them to this day. 

A lot changed between that and Voyager of course. The Next Generation eventually stopped trying to live up to Rodenberry’s utopia and allowed whole other worlds of conflict. Deep Space Nine would make its name actively challenging the concept in landmark episodes such as Homefront and In the Pale Moonlight . So when Voyager got flung into the Delta Quadrant it was now in a wild unknown where it was free to disregard the more restrictive elements of Rodenberry’s vision. Voyager was given every gift that the Star Trek universe had to offer and it mishandled every one of them.

Stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant? Brilliant. Doing it by having the Captain protect a species with a lifespan shorter than my dog (oh the Ocampa)? Less so. Integrating Maquis freedom fighters into a Starfleet crew? Brilliant. Making them completely identical to the rest of the crew? Rubbish. Worse still, the show held the principles of the Federation – and by extension Rodenberry – as some kind of religious dogma, unwavering and immutable. The captain always had to be right, the prime directive could not be breached for any reason.

All this reached a horrible event horizon with Alliances when, to ensure Voyager’s survival, Janeway attempted to negotiate with an enemy race. It would be the beginning of a new Federation of sorts, and like so much about Voyager it was a potentially great idea, but what happened? All non-Starfleet races were once again demonised as existential ‘others’ to maintain the status quo. From then on it was clear that, unlike its predecessors, Voyager had no intention of experimenting with new ideas. It was the show that was trying the hardest to live up to the legacy of The Original Series and it never could. 

Despite all this, I have never been able to bring myself to condemn Voyager. To this day I still watch the show and find pleasure in more than the prospect of being assimilated by Seven of Nine. Part of the reason was personal circumstance; I happened to stumble upon it on a good episode – season five’s Warhead , a tight ticking-clock dilemma featuring a standout performance from Robert Picardo. Even Voyager ’s harshest critics have admitted that Picardo’s role as the ship’s Emergency Medical Hologram, known as The Doctor is one of its saving graces. The man’s comedic flair can carry a scene even in an empty room.

On that note, let’s talk characters. Those on Trek have always represented the best of the best, symbols of how highly evolved twenty-fourth century humans were. Captain Picard and Mr Spock may as well have been gods on Olympus in terms of accessibility to me as a then-twelve-year-old viewer. Just by looking, you could tell they had never had to work at Argos or clean the bathroom like mere mortals. We were told the doors on the Enterprise were automatic but in truth they were just smart enough to get out of Kirk’s way.

The Voyager crew on the other hand, were a mismatched collection of incompetents. It doesn’t take much imagination to interpret Janeway as an inept captain, Neelix as a meddlesome nuisance, and Chief Engineer Torres as a university drop-out with anger issues. But in a strange kind of way characters who were rougher round the edges were a lot easier to get on board with. For people who make mistakes, a certain kinship is felt when watching TV characters do the same. 

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None of this makes for a great endorsement of the show, though if that’s what you’re looking for I’d strongly recommend seasons three through six when the Doctor began to take a much more prominent role, Seven of Nine was introduced and the Borg became a more common threat. For every clunker like The Q and the Grey and Spirit Folk, there was always a Dark Frontier , Life Line or The Thaw to enjoy. And without its diverse characters, schlocky action and comic tone I may never have watched any show that bore the Star Trek banner. Think of it as a gateway drug, if The Original Series was heroin; the ultimate high but a crippling way of life, then Voyager is cannabis; pleasant enough, easily accessible, but capable of permanent brain damage (Threshold anyone?).

There’s food for thought in that. Just how many other fans, like me, started watching The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and The Original Series because they enjoyed Voyager? And the thought of having missed out on great episodes like Tapestry, In the Pale Moonlight and Balance of Terror makes me rush right back to my original statement. I can’t say Voyager was a great show, but hate it? Never.

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Liam Macleod

Liam Macleod

Is This the End of Star Trek's Golden Age of Streaming?

With several shows either being cancelled or finishing their runs, the trekscape is shifting. but fans shouldn't be worried..

Is This the End of Star Trek's Golden Age of Streaming? - IGN Image

It had to end. In 2022, Star Trek fans were able to watch five new Star Trek series, their releases staggered across the year – Star Trek: Discovery (Season 4, November 2021-March 2022), Star Trek: Picard (Season 2, March-May 2022), Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 3, August-October 2022), Star Trek: Prodigy (Season 1, Part 1, October 2021-February 2022/Season 1, Part 2, October-December 2022) and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 1, May-July 2022). Deep down, we all knew it could not last. And that has now been confirmed with the ending or cancellation of three of those five shows.

The most recent blow to fans came with the announcement that Prodigy’s second season would not stream on Paramount Plus. That followed the news from March that Discovery will end its run with the upcoming Season 5. Picard, meanwhile, came to the end of its planned three-season story this past April.

But all is not lost. Although some of the signs are worrying, there is hope for the Star Trek franchise yet.

Star Trek: Prodigy has been removed from Paramount Plus and its second season is now in limbo.

Star Trek: A Balancing Act

Long-running, complicated franchises always have to tackle the issue of how to attract new viewers. Long-time viewers may drift away or even shuffle off this mortal coil entirely (bear in mind, Star Trek has been running for 57 years at this point) and in order to keep growing, the franchise needs new people to start watching it. That means it needs a careful balance in its programming. Picard – and especially Season 3 of that show – is brilliant and deservedly beloved by long-time fans. But it is unlikely to attract too many new fans unless their partners or parents force them to watch it.

Even someone who is interested in Star Trek and wants to give it a go might struggle to work out where to jump in. Discovery is built on a succession of season-long arcs that all feed in to the next season, the new Starfleet Academy show, announced in spring 2023, is expected to be a spin-off of Discovery, and Lower Decks is wall-to-wall in-jokes and references. Perhaps part of the reason for the success of Strange New Worlds is that, as a prequel, it is a good place for new viewers to start (there is a tiny bit of Discovery-related backstory, but the show has essentially set that aside). Its episodic format means you do not even have to start with Episode 1 (just like The Original Series).

In the glory days of 2022, the need to balance the interests of different viewers was not too much of a problem because so much Star Trek was being greenlit that there was something for everyone. Do you want something modern, arc-based, and not too intricately connected with decades-worth of old shows? Watch Discovery! Want to get your younger kids interested? Watch Prodigy! Are you a long-time fan wanting a continuation of 1990s Trek? Watch Picard! Do you fancy something a bit lighter that calls back to the series you loved back then? Watch Lower Decks! Do you just want some good old-fashioned Star Trek with some fresh characters mixed in with legacy ones? Watch Strange New Worlds!

But we have reached the inevitable point where the boom of streaming is coming to an end in a spectacular bust of cancelled programming and merging services. The expansion of both streaming services and the programming available on them could not go on forever. Viewers simply do not have enough time to keep up with every new show as it comes out, and in the face of rising costs of living in many parts of the world, they cannot afford to pay for more and more streaming services either. That means that streamers like Paramount have to look at streamlining their content, including Star Trek. And they need to provide a balance of producing shows that reward long-time fans with nostalgia, the continuation of long-term storylines, or both, while also making titles that can bring in new viewers who just want to dip their toe in to the Star Trek world.

A Shrinking Universe

We can see the immediate impact of this change in direction in the smaller number of Star Trek TV series being greenlit. Picard ended on a tantalising note, teasing a new series with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) as Captain of the Enterprise-G and a cliffhanger featuring Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) in a mid-credits scene. Despite these obvious lead-ins for a new series and online clamour from fans asking Paramount for a proposed spin-off (dubbed Star Trek: Legacy) to be greenlit, so far the show is nothing more than a twinkle in Picard Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas’ eye.

Another Star Trek series that has been stuck in development for years has now been downgraded – in terms of screentime – to a straight-to-streaming movie. As far back as 2018, Michelle Yeoh was in talks to star in a new series, Star Trek: Section 31, as Emperor Georgiou, one of her characters from Discovery. By January 2019 the series was in development, but then it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and remained in a state of limbo until spring 2023. Section 31, starring Yeoh, has finally been greenlit, but as a single feature-length film that will stream on Paramount Plus.

There are several reasons for this, not least the fact that Yeoh is now an Oscar-winner and may have other projects she wants to pursue. Paramount may also be looking at expanding the type of content they produce. Star Trek has so far avoided the limited series or one-off special presentations the Star Wars franchise and MCU have been making (Werewolf by Night, The Book of Boba Fett, etc.). With the exception of the short-lived series Short Treks (2018-2020), Star Trek has so far stuck to traditional TV series (20-30 minutes animated, 45 minutes – one hour live-action) or feature films with a theatrical release. It may be that the change of plan for Section 31 is a combination of practical issues and a desire to expand the format of the Star Trek Universe. But ultimately, the result is that fewer Trek shows are being greenlit.

Much more worrying for Star Trek fans is the cancellation of Prodigy. Along with the absence of any announcement regarding Legacy and the change in plans for Section 31, this takes us down from five currently-running Star Trek shows in 2022 to only three by 2025 (Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy). That in itself is not so bad. After all, for most of the five decades Star Trek has been on the air, there have only been one or two Star Trek series airing at the same time. But the way Prodigy has been cancelled and the uncertainty surrounding where and how fans can watch Season 1 and whether they will even get to see Season 2 is more worrying.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Images

why was star trek voyager cancelled

Prodigy: An Uncertain Future

Prodigy was cancelled during post-production on Season 2. Because it is an animated series, this is quite a lengthy process. Co-executive producer Aaron J. Waltke has been optimistic on Twitter about getting the second season finished and picked up elsewhere, but it is still very disappointing that something so close to completion has been pulled, and considering recent high-profile cases of films and shows that have been completed but never released, like Warner Bros.’ Batgirl film, there is a clear concern that we might never get to see Season 2. And to make things even worse, Season 1 has been pulled from Paramount’s streaming service Paramount Plus entirely. The only legal way to stream Prodigy at the moment is to buy it from Amazon Prime or a similar service.

We love Prodigy ( #SaveStarTrekProdigy ) but looking at this from a cold-hearted business point of view, we can see the argument for cancelling it. Prodigy is a show primarily aimed at children. Following its release on Paramount Plus in October 2021, the first 10 episodes aired on Nickelodeon from December of that year, and the Nickelodeon logo appears in the title sequence and in the show’s publicity. This can be off-putting to some grown-up fans, who seemingly can’t get past the “kids show” branding.

Prodigy is supposed to be a point of entry for new viewers, enticing kids in with an exciting story that introduces them to the world of Star Trek and gets them, hopefully, watching even more Star Trek. But the writing of Prodigy, especially the second half of Season 1, just as often seems aimed at long-time Star Trek viewers. There is an entire episode that riffs on The Original Series (“All the World’s a Stage”), an episode featuring cameos from legacy characters and Star Trek’s most famous cadet test (“Kobayashi”) and a cliffhanger that revolves around two legacy characters and an ongoing plot thread from way back on Star Trek: Voyager.

But that is exactly why some long-term fans are desperate to save the show, or at the very least to see the nearly-finished Season 2. Throughout Voyager, which ran from 1994-2001 and finished airing long before Prodigy’s main target audience was born, there was an ongoing romantic tension between Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her First Officer Chakotay (Robert Beltran) that was never resolved. Picard has established that Chakotay is no longer with Seven of Nine, his girlfriend in Voyager’s finale, and Prodigy has clearly been stirring up those long-dormant tensions in the development of its plot, culminating in a season-ending cliffhanger that revolves around the question of whether or not Admiral Janeway and her young crew will be able to rescue Chakotay from a future time period where he has been lost. Kids will be disappointed if there is no more Prodigy; grown-up Voyager fans will be absolutely livid if the possibility of resolving a nearly 30-year-old storyline is dangled in front of them and then taken away again.

The removal of Prodigy from Paramount Plus is even worse news than its cancellation. When CBS Access was re-launched as Paramout Plus in the US in 2021 with expanded content – including from Nickelodeon, which is owned by Paramount – and in some other territories in 2022, it was sold as “the home of all Star Trek.” Without Prodigy, that is simply not true. It comes back to that balance again. Star Trek overseer Alex Kurtzman told Variety back in 2021 that he wanted to make sure viewers did not have to watch every show in order to enjoy any of them, and that is a thoroughly sensible move. But it is also important to satisfy franchise fans who do want to watch every show, and the very least Paramount can do is keep them all on the same streaming service.

Part of the reason for pulling Season 1 as well as cancelling Season 2 seems to be that they want to sell Seasons 1 and 2 of Prodigy as a package to another streamer, which does at least keep Prodigy itself all in one place. But with viewers making carefully considered choices about which streaming services to keep and which to cancel in the face of the ever-rising cost of living, Star Trek fans will feel short-changed at finding they have to pay for at least two streamers if they want to be able to watch all the Star Trek shows. Putting all of Star Trek in one place was a big selling point for Paramount Plus, and fans now feel cheated of that promise.

There is no need to feel too gloomy about the future of the Star Trek franchise as a whole. One, two or three TV shows plus a movie (straight to streaming or otherwise) is a pretty decent amount of Star Trek to be enjoying at one time, and more than has been available for much of the franchise’s history. But which shows? The challenge for Paramount is to balance the needs of long-time viewers against the need to attract new viewers, and to do so without upsetting the long-time fans so much that they turn their backs on the current shows. If something has to be cancelled, viewers want to see the material that has already been filmed, and preferably they want to see it all in one place.

And we want Star Trek: Legacy , Paramount, pleaseandthankyou!

In This Article

Star Trek: Discovery

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Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine: Why They Aren’t Being Remastered

by Regina Avalos, February 8, 2017

Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are two of the most popular Star Trek series, but fans will not likely see them remastered to HD like the original Star Trek , Enterprise , and Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Trek News asked Robert Meyer Burnett about the decision to not remaster Voyager and Deep Space Nine to HD. The answer was complicated, but it does involve the type of media used to film the episodes during production. Check out the link for his more detailed explanation.

What was the bottom line? Burnett said the following:

“A complicated question with a simple answer; It takes way too much time and money to remaster  DS9  and  Voyager  into HD.”

Would you want to see remastered versions of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ? Tell us what you think.

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Please put these great series on bluray,I would definitely would buy them to add to my STAR TREK collection.

Absolutely. Voyager is totally worth it. So much creativity could be shown with that storyline!

Star Trek is an enduring series that has spanned over 50 years. That longevity alone is a reason that any opportunity to launch a new entity should definitely be done. They should also re-master any other extension of such a wonderful series. Don’t let the egg heads who make these decisions continue their stupidity and let another series like the original go by the boards.

I like the feel of the originals. I still rewatch them.

It is indeed a sad thing to know, but I don’t see myself buying and watching again these series even if is on HD. I work a lot and there is a lot of new tv shows around to catch up. So, I think I pass. But eventually if my three year old son I would like to see…

Say Whaaat?! If you can remaster TNG then you can certainly do DS9.. wasn’t much of a Voyager fan but still those fans, and us Ds9 fans deserve an HD remastered series… Besides as popular as those two shows are some consideration would be nice for the loyal following of the series

Given the popularity of Sci Fi these days, I think there are a lot of people, including me, would love to see these episodes remastered.

Of course, I want to see remastered versions of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. I’m dying to see them being remastered. Ok?

Well that… sucks.

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Star Trek: Enterprise Ending Explained: Those Were The Voyages...

Enterprise cast

"Star Trek: Enterprise" — originally just called "Enterprise," – was once considered by many Trekkies to be the black sheep of the pre-Abrams era. While it still had many of the same creative people working behind the scenes (the show was created by longtime Trek honchos Rick Berman and Brannon Braga) it deliberately struck a different tone, exploring the early, raucous days of Starfleet: before the formation of the United Federation of Planets, before the writing of The Prime Directive, way back when there was only one Earth ship trekking through the cosmos. The goal was to create a Trek show that was less anodyne than its predecessors, recapturing some of the frontier spirit occasionally seen in the original 1966 TV series. 

Other changes included an wholly updated aesthetic; the Enterprise looked a lot more like a submarine than a cruise ship, and the crew wore uniforms that looked a little bit like NASA jumpsuits. There were only two alien species aboard this time: Vulcan first officer T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) and the genial Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley), playing the previously unseen species of Denobulan. Additionally, the traditional orchestral opening of the previous five Trek TV shows was replaced by a truly, truly awful Rod Stewart ballad called "Faith of the Heart" a.k.a. "Where My Heart Will Take Me," sung by Russell "The Voice" Watson , written by Diane Warren, and originally included on the soundtrack to "Patch Adams."

"Enterprise" debuted in 2001 and was met with mixed reactions. Some critics, if recall is to be trusted, positively praised its production value and novelty, while others missed the reliable Trek iconography.

It's Been a Long Road...

When it debuted in September of 2001, "Enterprise" struggled almost immediately. Fans weren't taking to the show in the same way they took to "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" or "Star Trek: Voyager" as it was set in a new time frame which required a new push for audiences to refamiliarize themselves. What's more, it was the only Trek show on the air at the time, with "Voyager" having ended its run in May of the same year. Previous Trek shows had been doubling up, and it was the first time since 1993 there weren't at least two "Star Trek" shows on the air at the same time. "Enterprise" had a lot to prove. 

Some of the early story arcs didn't play well to mythos-minded fans, and the Temporal Cold War story, featuring an evil species called the Suliban , is rarely brought up in conversation I have with other Trekkies. A little more attention is given to the Xindi  who, in a story arc beginning in season 3, destroyed Florida in what was very clearly a 9/11 metaphor. Yes, check again the month and year of "Enterprise's" debut. 

"Star Trek: Enterprise" season 4 introduced more multiple-episode arcs, and "Star Trek," along with most TV shows at the time, began to evolve into longer-form stories and season-long arcs rather than stand-alone mini moral dilemmas that had been Trek's stock in trade for decades. But the change was too little, too late, and "Enterprise" was canceled after an inauspicious four seasons. For comparison, "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," and "Voyager" all ran for seven years each. 

A pity, really, as some have said (anecdotally) that the show was just finding its feet.

Getting from There to Here

The final episode of "Enterprise" was ... Well, it was an interesting choice. A big part of the appeal of "Enterprise" was its placement as a prequel to the original "Star Trek" series, meaning there was a mild thrill in seeing how certain things would come to be. This was, of course, after the same thing was being done with "Star Wars" starting with "The Phantom Menace" in 1999, but before "Batman Begins" pretty much popularized the "reimagined origin story" as a dominant storytelling trope throughout pop media. All of this is to say that "Enterprise" was meant to tie into what good Trekkies knew was coming in the future. 

As such, the final episode of "Enterprise," titled "These Are the Voyages..." (originally aired on May 15th, 2005), had to rush to finally connect series back to the Treks were knew and loved. Enter Jonathan Frakes, Will Riker from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a series that was set about 200 years after the events of "Enterprise." Rather than merely recite the official denouements of Capt. Jonathan Archer , T'Pol , Trip Tucker , Malcolm Reed , Hoshi Sato , Dr. Phlox , and the memorable, memorable character of Ensign Mayweather , we were given a broader view of "Enterprise" history as seen by William Riker, who was recreating life on the original "Enterprise" via a holodeck some 200 years after the fact.  

In "These Are the Voyages...," Riker imagined himself as the hardworking galley chef on the original Enterprise, a character that was often talked about but never seen. As Riker envisioned it, the ship's chef served as a personal confidant to the crew, allowing him to have elaborate one-on-one discussion with each character. He also wanted to talk to the crew of the Enterprise shortly before the original ship was to be decommissioned, meaning the episode was also a flash-forward. 

In short: "Enterprise" ended with a 200-year-old recreation of the future events of "Enterprise," as interpreted through the eyes of William T. Riker. The final episode of Trek was Mary Sue fanfic written by a Trek character. This is a nerd turducken of the highest order. 

This approach, of course, allowed for a great deal of convenient historical fudging on the part of "Enterprise's" writers. If there was any sort of plot or character inconsistency, a viewer could chalk it up to Riker changing history to fit his own holodeck fantasy. More broadly, it was a comment on how we, as a species, tend to romanticize history, altering our past into heroic narratives and easy-to-consume stories rather than a complex timeline of daily events. 

It's Been a Long Time

A bit of editorializing, if I may...

Reaction to "These Are the Voyages..." was largely negative. The inclusion of Riker, not to mention the eventual addition of NextGen's Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) robbed the "Enterprise" characters of their moment. While one can easily understand that the show's creators wanted to bring the timeline of "Enterprise" to a meaningful conclusion, skipping ahead in time and treating the show's events like a textbook column for other, different characters makes them feel distant and rarified, rather than exciting and immediate. Mild spoiler : The impersonal and abrupt death of one of the main cast members certainly didn't help either. 

If one recalls the ending of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," it was made clear that the adventures of the Enterprise-D would continue — only without us, the audience, being able to see them all. A series needn't definitively conclude if we leave comforted that everything will work out fine for the characters. Perhaps a similar approach would have made for a better final episode of "Enterprise." Please, leave us with comforting send-off that would leave audiences assured that the cast would make it safely into Trek history, even if we don't get to see it.

That second approach would also open up the Trek "expanded universe." That is: Plenty of studio-mandated novels, source books, and speculative fiction writers could fill in any gaps that were left in the narrative. Indeed, given the historical element of "Enterprise," leaving gaps in history would be perfectly appropriate. Sadly, we were left with a final episode of Trek that left a bad taste in our mouths.

Maybe that's why so many audiences embraced the 2009 "Star Trek" feature film. It was an entirely new beverage, but at least it washed away the old one.

Now, where do we rant about the Paramount+ era?

ScreenRant

Star Trek: Why Enterprise Was Canceled

  • UPN canceled Star Trek: Enterprise due to low ratings and a lack of network support for the series.
  • Enterprise season 4 involved a creative shift with Manny Coto taking over as showrunner, but it couldn't save the series from cancelation.
  • Although the show ended in 2005, Star Trek: Enterprise has gained a new fanbase due to streaming on platforms like Netflix and Paramount+.

Star Trek: Enterprise was the first Star Trek series since Star Trek: The Original Series to get canceled by its network, but why did it get the axe? Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, Enterprise (its original title) launched in 2001 just months after the end of Star Trek: Voyager. Enterprise was to be a decidedly different Star Trek series. Set a century before the voyages of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Enterprise was a prequel about humanity's first steps into deep space exploration aboard the NX-01 Enterprise, Earth's first warp 5-capable starship commanded by Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula).

Enterprise season 1 was a success for the United Paramount Network (UPN), but by season 2, ratings had dipped significantly. UPN mandated significant changes for Enterprise season 3: the prequel transitioned from standalone episodes to a serialized war story about new antagonists the Xindi, which was an effort to reflect the darker mood of post-9/11 America at the time. The now-renamed Star Trek: Enterprise 's new direction was largely well-received by fans, but the ratings continued to fall, and Enterprise changed creative gears, with the late Manny Coto replacing Brannon Braga as showrunner for Enterprise season 4. But ultimately, it wouldn't be enough to save the prequel.

Star Trek: Enterprise's 20 Best Episodes, Ranked

Why star trek: enterprise was canceled after season 4, several factors put an end to rick berman's fourth and final star trek tv series.

The cast of Star Trek: Enterprise was told upon signing on that the show intended to run for 7 seasons, just like Rick Berman's previous series, Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , and Star Trek: Voyager . There were also hopes to transition Enterprise to feature films like TNG . However, by Star Trek: Enterprise season 4 , the show's ratings were no longer sustainable , and UPN canceled the series. Another major factor that doomed Enterprise was a regime change at UPN, with incoming executives neither understanding Star Trek nor supporting the struggling and expensive-to-produce Enterprise .

It was the first time since 1987, there was no active Star Trek television in production.

In a callback to the letter-writing campaign that saved Star Trek: The Original Series from cancelation after its second season, fans launched an effort to convince UPN to give Star Trek: Enterprise a season 5 , but there would be no eleventh-hour reprieve this time. Enterprise , and the Star Trek franchise as a whole, was dead. It was the first time since 1987 that there was no active Star Trek television in production. The failure of 2002's theatrical Star Trek: Nemesis and Enterprise's cancelation in 2005 put the franchise on ice.

J.J. Abrams revived the Star Trek movie franchise in 2009, and the next Star Trek TV series wouldn't premiere until Star Trek: Discovery in 2017.

Can Star Trek: Enterprise Have A Revival?

Enterprise has gained a new fanbase since its cancelation.

After Enterprise began streaming on Netflix and Paramount+ in the 2010s, the prequel has been reassessed more positively by a newer and more appreciative audience.

Following its widely disliked and controversial series finale, Star Trek: Enterprise bore the burden of being known as 'the show that killed the Star Trek franchise' until Star Trek: Discovery premiered in 2017. But after Enterprise began streaming on Netflix and Paramount+ in the 2010s, the prequel has been reassessed more positively by a newer and more appreciative audience. Enterprise 's narrative holds up nicely to binge-watching, and today, there is a groundswell of support to see the crew of the NX-01 come back to Star Trek on Paramount+.

Connor Trinneer revived his Star Trek: Enterprise character, Trip Tucker, in the non-canonical Star Trek: very Short Treks episode, "Holograms All The Way Down", in 2023.

Unfortunately, a litany of issues prevents a full-on Star Trek: Enterprise revival. Key cast members like Scott Bakula and Jolene Blalock have moved on from Star Trek, and Enterprise' s 22nd-century setting makes it difficult to transition the characters into the current Star Trek shows set 200 years later. However, Enterprise 's actors returning to voice their characters in the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks or Star Trek: Prodigy remains a possibility. Enterprise 's Connor Trinneer also hosts The Shuttlepod Show , formerly with his co-star Dominic Keating, which relives the glory days of Enterprise and delves into the lives and careers of other Star Trek actors. Star Trek: Enterprise may have been unceremoniously canceled, but its legacy has grown stronger since the series ended.

Star Trek: Enterprise is available to stream on Paramount+.

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Showrunner Brannon Braga

Star Trek: Why Enterprise Was Canceled

IMAGES

  1. Why Star Trek: Voyager Ended (Was It Canceled?)

    why was star trek voyager cancelled

  2. Why Star Trek: Voyager Ended (Was It Canceled?)

    why was star trek voyager cancelled

  3. Sci Fi TV Flashback: Star Trek Voyager (1995)

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  4. Why Star Trek: Voyager's Ending Felt Abrupt To Fans (& Why It Could

    why was star trek voyager cancelled

  5. Remembering ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ 20 Years After the Series Ended

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  6. Star Trek: Voyager Series Ending Explained

    why was star trek voyager cancelled

COMMENTS

  1. Why Star Trek: Voyager Ended (Was It Canceled?)

    Voyager wasn't the only Star Trek series to end after season 7. Like its predecessors, Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager was given a satisfying conclusion at the end of season 7. The two-part finale "Endgame" saw an older Admiral Janeway travel through time to undo the devastating things she had to do to get her ship ...

  2. Why did Voyager end the way it did? : r/DaystromInstitute

    Why were the writers of Voyager so obsessed with time travel as a plot device? First Contact, and The Voyage Home. Star trek movies involving time travel are popular. Hence, any time-travel stuff will be popular. It's the same reason that you get waves of genres and themes in one go (zombies everywhere, before that were vampires, etc).

  3. Why Star Trek: Voyager's Ending Felt Abrupt To Fans (& Why It ...

    Over on Reddit, a conversation was started by u/TEmpTom when they asked why the ending for "Star Trek: Voyager" felt so abrupt. They specifically mentioned that "Star Trek: Voyager" wasn't ...

  4. Star Trek: Voyager Series Ending Explained

    Star Trek: Voyager ran for seven seasons before delivering its last episode, "Endgame" as a two-part special on May 23rd, 2001, making for an ending that saw the crew get home and encompassed many of the show's core themes.Voyager tells the story of the crew of the USS Voyager under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, and their journey to find their way back to the Alpha Quadrant after ...

  5. Why Star Trek: Voyager Ended (Was It Canceled?)

    Star Trek: Voyager came to an end in 2001 after seven successful seasons on the air, but was the show actually canceled? Continuing the Star Trek franchise as its fifth series, Voyager debuted with a bang, and its premiere episode was viewed by over 20 million people (via Av Club) in 1995.Though the series saw a rating decline in its time, its 172 episodes were largely well-received by critics ...

  6. 'Star Trek: Voyager': Inside the Show's Finale 20 Years Later

    Star Trek: Voyager ended 20 years ago, which made it the franchise's third consecutive series to run for seven seasons, following The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.When the show came to a ...

  7. Star Trek: Voyager accidentally presided over the franchise's decline

    Voyager was conceived as an action-adventure Star Trek, closer to the original series than the diplomacy-heavy sequels, and it gets close in these science-fiction morality plays. Janeway ...

  8. Star Trek: Voyager

    Star Trek: Voyager is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor.It originally 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. Set in the 24th century, when Earth is part of a United Federation of Planets, it follows the adventures of the ...

  9. How 'Star Trek: Voyager' Finale Missed Out on Greatness

    Abandoned 'Star Trek: Voyager' Finale Ideas Could Have Given the Sendoff It Deserved. The final moments of the two-parter, which turns 20 this week, ends the series on one of the franchise's ...

  10. 'Star Trek: Voyager' Cast: Where Are They Now?

    Why did Star Trek: Voyager get Cancelled? Well, actually, Star Trek: Voyager never officially got canceled. Like most shows at that time, seven seasons was about the shelf life. Though ratings did drop over time, and fans weren't too happy with the direction of the show, Star Trek: Voyager was able to end on the note they wanted to. ...

  11. Why do Star Trek fans hate Voyager?

    Star Trek: Voyager is regarded with the same feelings of betrayal fanboys have shown for The Phantom Menace and the Mass Effect 3 ending. Even appreciating that Voyager is no masterpiece, its ...

  12. Why did Star Trek: Voyager end in this manner?

    The premise of the show was "A Starfleet vessel lost on the other side of the galaxy." Once that's taken away, you lose half the viewers. Or they just wanted to leave something for the books. The series needed a big finish, after which, everything else would be anti-climactic; the big finish was their arrival "home".

  13. How Star Trek: Voyager Failed In The Face Of Easy Success

    Star Trek: Voyager failed for many reasons including Kate Mulgrew's off-camera issues, B'Elanna Torres's character flaws, and racism around Chakotay. By Josh Tyler. Star Trek: Voyager was the fourth Star Trek series to arrive on television. The three which preceded it were all, in their own way, resoundingly successful.

  14. Is This the End of Star Trek's Golden Age of Streaming?

    Posted: Jul 6, 2023 7:32 pm. It had to end. In 2022, Star Trek fans were able to watch five new Star Trek series, their releases staggered across the year - Star Trek: Discovery (Season 4 ...

  15. Star Trek: Voyager

    This sci-fi drama is the third live-action series in the Star Trek franchise. The series follows Voyager, a Federation starship under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). In the ...

  16. Why was Star Trek: Voyager cancelled?

    Answer (1 of 14): It wasn't. TNG set the new standard for Star Trek series, so an unwritten but clear rule was the length of the series. That was extremely clear in the narrative of DS9 and in the marketing of the last season of VOY (promoted in fact as the LAST season). Where things went wrong ...

  17. Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine:

    Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are two of the most popular Star Trek series, but fans will not likely see them remastered to HD like the original Star Trek, Enterprise, and Star ...

  18. Why was Star Trek: The Next Generation cancelled?

    60. From Star Trek: The Next Generation - Cancellation: Although the cast members were contracted for eight seasons, Paramount ended The Next Generation after seven, an unusual decision for a successful television show. Although doing so let the studio begin making films using the cast, the main reason was that additional seasons would likely ...

  19. Star Trek: Enterprise Ending Explained: Those Were The Voyages...

    Fans weren't taking to the show in the same way they took to "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" or "Star Trek: Voyager" as it was set in a new time frame which required a new push for audiences to ...

  20. Star Trek: Why Enterprise Was Canceled

    UPN canceled Star Trek: Enterprise due to low ratings and a lack of network support for the series. Enterprise season 4 involved a creative shift with Manny Coto taking over as showrunner, but it ...