50 Fun Facts About Star Trek: Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager was the first series to air on which new network in January 1995?

Paramount commissioned the show partly to launch the network, and it ran there for all 172 episodes until May 2001.

Voyager is stranded in which quadrant of the galaxy?

It is on the far side of the Milky Way, and the crew's goal for seven seasons is simply to get back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Roughly how far from Earth is Voyager when the Caretaker's wave strands it?

At maximum warp that works out to about 75 years, which the crew whittles down with wormholes, Borg tech and one very helpful admiral.

How long is the journey home projected to take when the ship sets off?

Janeway strands them deliberately, destroying the Caretaker's array so the Kazon can't use it against the Ocampa.

Which actress plays Captain Kathryn Janeway?

She was already on the shortlist when the original choice walked, and it was she who suggested the first name Kathryn.

Which film actress was originally cast as Janeway but quit after two days of shooting the pilot?

She had asked for the character to be renamed Nicole; unhappy with the punishing TV schedule, she left and the part was recast within days.

In early drafts, what was Captain Janeway's first name?

Kathryn was the eventual star's suggestion; the character was later given a birthplace of Bloomington, Indiana, where fans now want a monument.

Which actor plays the Doctor, Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram?

The EMH Mark 1 wears the face of its creator, Lewis Zimmerman, and was only ever designed for short-term emergency use.

Robert Picardo auditioned for Voyager's Neelix, a part that went to which friend of his?

He later joked that losing it 'saved myself 6,000 hours of my life spent in a makeup chair'.

The Doctor's actor won the part by improvising a line riffing on which classic Trek catchphrase?

Left alone in sickbay with no lines left, he ad-libbed 'I'm a doctor, not a nightlight' and was hired within hours.

Who plays Seven of Nine, who joined the cast at the start of season four?

Rick Berman wanted 'a bit of pizzazz' after three seasons and inverted the Data idea: a human turned into a machine rediscovering humanity.

What was Seven of Nine's human name before the Borg assimilated her?

Her parents Magnus and Erin were exobiologists studying the Borg, and the episode 'The Raven' digs into what happened to them.

How old was Seven of Nine when she was assimilated?

Her full designation was Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01; she later returned as a series regular in Star Trek: Picard.

Which two-part episode introduced Seven of Nine and a species from "fluidic space"?

The title comes from the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which Chakotay tells with a fox, warning Janeway against allying with the Borg.

Which enemy, native to fluidic space, is so powerful that Voyager allies with the Borg to fight it?

The Borg started that war themselves by invading fluidic space to assimilate the newcomers' superior technology.

Which Delta Quadrant species harvests organs from other races because of a disease called the Phage?

They, the Kazon, the Hirogen and Species 8472 were all created for the show; the Borg were borrowed from The Next Generation for the later seasons.

Which nomadic hunter race controls the ancient relay network that first lets Voyager contact Starfleet?

The Doctor is beamed across it to the Alpha Quadrant in 'Message in a Bottle', where he lands aboard the experimental USS Prometheus.

Which Next Generation character establishes regular contact with Voyager from Earth in 'Pathfinder'?

Barclay's obsession with the lost ship pays off with a communications array and micro-wormhole tech.

Kes belongs to the Ocampa, a telepathic species with a lifespan of how many years?

Jennifer Lien left the show early in season four in 'The Gift' and returned once, in 'Fury'; she retired from acting in 2002.

Neelix, the ship's cook and morale officer, belongs to which species?

His family died in a Haakonian attack on his home moon of Rinax; late in season seven he leaves to live with a colony of his own people.

Tuvok is the only crew member promoted during the journey. What rank does he reach?

The Vulcan had secretly infiltrated Chakotay's Maquis ship before both crews were flung across the galaxy.

Which actor plays Tom Paris?

The casting notice literally asked for 'a Robert Duncan McNeill type', which his agent spotted.

Robert Duncan McNeill played which disgraced cadet in The Next Generation's 'The First Duty' before Tom Paris?

The producers swapped Locarno for a new character with a near-identical backstory, reportedly to avoid paying royalties to the TNG writers.

Before joining Voyager, Tom Paris was serving time at a Federation penal settlement in which country?

The son of an admiral, he had been dishonourably discharged and then arrested flying for the Maquis.

Chief engineer B'Elanna Torres is half human and half what?

She marries Tom Paris early in season seven and gives birth to their daughter Miral in the series finale.

Which actor plays first officer Chakotay?

He knew nothing about Star Trek when he auditioned; he just liked the 'Caretaker' script his agent sent over.

Ensign Harry Kim, played by Garrett Wang, holds which post aboard the ship?

Fresh out of the Academy in the pilot, he is still an ensign when the ship gets home seven years later.

Which crew member has a child, Naomi, the first baby born aboard Voyager?

Naomi grows up fast thanks to alien biology, makes Neelix her godfather and becomes an unlikely friend to Seven of Nine.

Which former Borg child chooses to stay aboard Voyager after being rescued from a malfunctioning cube?

The other three eventually find adoptive homes; Icheb's fate years later became one of Star Trek: Picard's most controversial scenes.

In which Voyager episode, often called Star Trek's worst, does Paris break warp 10 and turn into a salamander?

Janeway ends up mutated too and the pair have amphibian offspring, which the crew leaves on a planet; the episode still won an Emmy for makeup.

What is the being called when Tuvok and Neelix are merged in a transporter accident?

Guest star Tom Wright played the merged character, and Janeway's decision to separate them again is still hotly debated by fans.

Which That '70s Show actor guest-starred as timeline-rewriter Annorax in 'Year of Hell'?

The events had been foreshadowed a season earlier in 'Before and After', and the whole year is undone by the reset button at the end.

Which Voyager cast member directed 'Living Witness', where a backup Doctor is reactivated 700 years later?

The episode about historical revisionism is regularly named among the series' best; its ending is the last we ever see of that Doctor.

Which TNG star directed the 100th episode, 'Timeless', and cameoed as Geordi La Forge?

The episode opens with Voyager buried under ice, and Janeway's log marks the moment the question changed from 'if' they get home to 'when'.

Tom Paris's black-and-white holodeck serial, the setting of 'Bride of Chaotica!', is called what?

A small fire on the bridge set during production forced scenes to be rewritten or moved elsewhere on the ship.

In 'Message in a Bottle', the Doctor is transmitted to the Alpha Quadrant and lands on which new Starfleet ship?

The episode was also the first time the Voyager crew were seen in the First Contact-style uniforms, which they'd missed out on in the Delta Quadrant.

What is the Borg-enhanced shuttle, introduced in 'Extreme Risk', that replaced Voyager's standard shuttlecraft?

It could even submerge and travel underwater, a trick borrowed from the aquashuttle of The Animated Series.

In the finale, Admiral Janeway travels back in time from which year to get the ship home sooner?

In her timeline the ship took 23 years to get home, Seven of Nine died and Tuvok developed dementia; she decides that's a history worth breaking.

What is the title of the two-hour series finale?

The crew destroys a Borg transwarp hub on the way, and Torres gives birth as the ship bursts out of the conduit near Earth.

Voyager was the first Star Trek series to do what for its exterior space shots?

Amblin Imaging won an Emmy for the CGI title sequence, though weekly episodes still used miniatures until midway through season three.

Which composer wrote the show's Emmy-winning main theme, rather than reusing his Motion Picture music?

In 2020 Newsweek called it the best of all the Star Trek television themes.

Roughly how many US viewers watched the two-hour pilot 'Caretaker' in January 1995?

The pilot took 31 days to shoot and was one of the most expensive TV pilots made up to that point.

How many days did the pilot 'Caretaker' take to shoot?

Regular episodes took about seven days each, filming from 7 a.m. on the stages The Next Generation had used.

How many episodes of Voyager were made across its seven seasons?

Reviewers have timed a full binge at about three months, at two episodes a night on weekdays and three at weekends.

USS Voyager, registry NCC-74656, belongs to which starship class?

Its variable-geometry warp pylons let it exceed warp 5 without damaging subspace, an issue raised in a TNG episode.

Voyager's sickbay set became which ship's sickbay in First Contact and Insurrection?

The ready room and engineering set also doubled for the Enterprise-E in Insurrection, and the whole ship played her sister the USS Bellerophon on DS9.

Which astronaut tweeted Janeway's 'There's coffee in that nebula' from the ISS in 2015?

A Dragon cargo craft was arriving with the ISSpresso machine, and she posed in a Starfleet uniform for the photo.

In which animated series does Janeway return, first as a hologram and later commanding the USS Dauntless?

She is hunting the missing USS Protostar, whose captain at the time of its disappearance was her old first officer Chakotay.

How much did the 2021 campaign for 'To the Journey' raise, a record for a crowdfunded documentary?

More than 11,000 donors chipped in; the same company made the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind.

Which 2000 first-person shooter, set aboard Voyager, sold around 300,000 copies?

It earned about $15 million and got a sequel in 2003; a new game, Across the Unknown, was announced in 2025.