Trivia / Star Trek: Voyager

A-J

• Ability over Appearance: Tuvok was initially developed as a middle-aged Vulcan, with an actor in his 50's or even early 60's playing him. In the original character concept, he was described as "Hercule Poirot with pointed ears". None of the actors in that age range satisfied producers, and so instead, Tim Russ became Star Trek's first black Vulcan. They kept the idea of Tuvok being well over 100, however.
• Acting for Two:
  • Very early on, Roxann Dawson (B'Elanna) gets split between her human and Klingon halves in "Faces".
  • Also in "Faces", the same actor plays both a Red Shirt and a Vidiian surgeon who later grafts the former's face over his own.
  • The entire ship gets twinned in "Deadlock" and "Course: Oblivion". Likewise, "Demon" is the prequel plot to "Course: Oblivion", which features twins of Paris and Kim for the majority of the episode.
  • Kate Mulgrew plays her ancestor, Shannon O'Donnell, in "11:59".
  • "Endgame" also featured two Janeways: One is from the far future who travels back in time to speed Voyager's return.
  • The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and his creator, the cantankerous, misanthropic Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, in "The Swarm" and "Life Line".
  • Picardo also played the "evil" EMH of the USS Equinox in "Equinox" and "Equinox, Part II".
  • "Author, Author" is a stealth parody of Star Trek: Voyager penned by the Doctor. In revenge, Tom tweaks the program so that the Doctor isn't spared by the unflattering portrayals of the crew (allowing Picardo to, in essence, make fun of his own role while playing another).
    Doctor: This is outrageous!
    Tom's Doctor: [sporting a combover and wielding a ridiculous sci-fi golf club] What's "outrageous" is that I'm going to miss my tee time.
  • In "Living Witness", Picardo plays three different versions of the Doctor: "A backup" copy who is revived after laying dormant for centuries, a flashback of the show's usual Doctor, and an evil version from an inaccurate historical record who is an android (à la Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) instead of a hologram. The 'real' Doctor considers the "Warship Voyager" crew to be over-sensationalized..."well, aside from Mister Paris..."
  • In "Relativity", Seven is enlisted by the Federation Time Police to stop a saboteur on Voyager. In the third act, Seven leaps into our time period (that of Season Five) and falls prey to temporal sickness, and her up-to-date version takes over from where the sick Seven cannot continue. The passing of the baton includes such chucklesome lines as "Seven of Nine is efficient", and "Seven of Nine to Seven of Nine, what's your status?"
• Adored by the Network: BBC America just loves showing reruns of this series. They have the rights to TOS and TNG as well, but of the three, this series gets the most airplay during the week.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Robert Picardo originally wanted to play Neelix but was passed over for the role. He only reluctantly read for the Doctor after, admitting he didn't see the point of the character, but won the role by ad-libbing a few joke lines during the audition, which went into shaping the character further by the third episode.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) sang on the show a couple of times. One episode even featured a duel with the Doctor and Seven singing a duet, in harmony.
  • That's actually Robert Picardo singing in that Operatic voice, first heard in the episode "The Swarm" and occasionally thereafter, especially after "Someone To Watch Over Me".
• Costume Backlash:
  • No one liked the uniforms, as they were hot and only fit properly when standing straight. Even the slightest movement would cause the crotch to ride uncomfortably high.
  • Jeri Ryan despised the Seven of Nine catsuit (especially the first iteration, which was so tight it cut off circulation and caused her to pass out four times. They had nurses and oxygen tanks on set.) so much, in an interview, she said if they had let her take it with her after the last episode, she would’ve burned it.
• Creative Differences: There was a lot of infighting amongst the show's staff: both cast and the writing crew, not to mention the executives at UPN. Robert Beltran and Ron D. Moore are among the better-known examples of internal dissent.
  • Michael Piller was the first to go. Rick Berman warned against the inclusion of story arcs and recurring characters, and stuff like the Kazon only confirmed his worst fears. Jeri Taylor was in full agreement, and promptly killed off all of Piller's original characters when she took over as showrunner. (Apart from Ensign Wildman; this is Star Trek and no matter how much they object to recurring characters they couldn’t quite bring themselves to kill a child's mother.) For reference, Taylor had only a middling opinion of S1's "State of Flux", a plot-heavy episode revolving around priceless Federation tech being leaked to the Kazon and Seska's defection.
  • Shortly after Deep Space Nine wrapped, Ron Moore was invited by Rick Berman to come over from CBS and write for Voyager. During Moore's short stint on the show, Brannon Braga was busy holding secret meetings with the other production members at his house. Moore concluded he had no input so he left. Moore and Braga eventually patched up their relationship and recorded several DVD commentaries together.
    Moore: I went over with different expectations than that show was prepared to do creatively and internally. And Brannon and I had a falling out and a creative clash and a personal clash and I just decided I didn’t want to work like this. I had always been proud of the fact that I tenure at Star Trek there were only two days I didn’t want to show up at work in the ten years of being there. Then I was at Voyager and found I didn’t want to go into work any day, so I just quit because I didn’t want to work like that.
• Creator's Apathy:
  • The writers were apathetic about being consistent in their writing, resulting in characterization, particularly Janeway's, shifting dramatically from episode to episode. It was enough for Ronald D. Moore, one of modern Trek's mainstays, to simply walk out after a few weeks.
  • Robert Beltran was very vocal about his displeasure at the inconsistent writing, and would demand more money at the end of every season hoping they'd just let him go, only to be thwarted every time. His performance as Chakotay gets noticeably more wooden as the series goes on. You can actually see Beltran dying behind his eyes when reciting his dialog. He's long given up on the show giving him opportunities to act (and he was very vocal about it), and it's darkly hilarious to see how badly he is phoning in Chakotay.
  • Jeri Ryan almost bailed on the final season entirely since her contract was up by then, but her mother was diagnosed with cancer and she stayed on to pay for her treatment (fortunately, she made a full recovery).
  • Tim Russ, who auditioned for many Trek productions and is one of its biggest fans, says he was drained working on the set and flat out of juice; he doesn't even bother to hide his indifference in his DVD interviews.
  • Ron Moore has spoken at length about the nonchalance of the writing team and the barriers put in his way while trying to make a quality product. The last straw was reportedly when he asked what B'Elanna's reaction to a certain situation would be, and he got the reply, "We don't know, do whatever you want."
• Creator Backlash:
  • Jeri Ryan:
    I said, "OK, well, I’m just going to totally sign away a few years of my life, I should watch the show", which I did like this. [running her hands down her cheeks] In tears. It was the worst hour of television that I'd ever seen. I can't tell you what episode it is, everybody's asked...So I walked in, I was like "So, I watched the show last night" and all three of [the Executive Producers] went "Oh God no! Not that episode!" So it wasn’t just me!
  • The Kazon have gone down in history as a bit of a misfire, and the ending of "Alliances" is a big reason why: Janeway decides that since this alliance didn't work out, she was right all along and Federation rules are paramount and no negotations will ever be allowed. Even Jeri Taylor regrets putting those words into her mouth.
  • Not long into VOY's run, Robert Beltran stopped playing Mister Nice Guy and openly expressed his loathing of the show's plot, his co-stars (he only signed on to act alongside Geneviève Bujold), the producers, himself for playing such a formulaic and at times borderline racist role, and most of all you for watching it (causing some disillusioned Trekkies to flee a Star Trek convention in tears — true story!). His co-stars fired back in separate interviews, and the showrunners publicly told him to muzzle it. There were even rumors that he attempted to force his exit from the show by demanding an outrageous amount of money during contract renegotiations, only to have it given to him without complaint.
    • Years later, Beltran claimed on Reddit that the public took his "flippant" comments too seriously and that his overall experience with the show was positive. Of course, he was plugging a movie at the time.
    Joe Ford: "Robert Beltran has resigned himself to the fact that Voyager is never going to be the vehicle he hoped it would be and so he limps his way through each episode praying for the end. Watch the way he enters the bridge around 11 minutes 50 seconds into the episode and tries to give a technobabble explanation about why he vanished in the turbolift. Clearly he has nothing but contempt for the vacuous dialogue he is being given to say."
  • The male officers of VOY, who still vacation with each other yearly, gained a reputation for being cantankerous and uncooperative as they spent an enormous amount of time sitting on the bridge with nothing to do. This is part of the reason why Harry Kim was never promoted in-show; The writers wanted to keep him a perpetual Ensign Newbie despite Garrett Wang's complaints, and the producers didn't want to fire him for publicity reasons. Wang did not direct a VOY episode despite many requests and grew frustrated enough to make several heated statements to Trek fanzines about the people involved in production. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, though, and Wang now spends his days defending VOY at cons. He is a major evangelist for Captain Janeway.
  • Both Jeri Ryan and Garrett Wang have been open in their dislike (hatred, in Ryan's case) of the "Do you wish to copulate?" scene.
  • Kate Mulgrew gradually lost her patience with the scattershot handling of her character throughout the show, and was deeply frustrated by a number of executive decisions and the generally poor writing her character suffered from.
  • On The Delta Flyers podcast, Robert Duncan McNeill has been bluntly and unsparingly critical of the stereotypical aspects of how Chakotay was handled. He's also expressed dislike for Tom Paris being "sleazy" in early seasons (including his own performance).
• Creator's Favorite Episode: The cast loved holodeck episodes like "Fair Haven" because they'd get to ditch their Starfleet uniforms for loose-fitting period costumes for a few days.
• Creator's Pest:
  • For Chakotay, they consulted with a guy who straight up faked being a Native American for much of his life and contributed a ton of negative stereotypes. Then couple that with Michael Piller's firing and the showrunners wanting nothing with the Maquis, and you have Chakotay as a yes man with no character growth. One can see why Robert Beltran was fed up with the show and recalled, "I guess they gave me that relationship with Seven so I'd have something to do."
  • The writers didn't want to deal with Harry Kim because they found him boring. His subplot in "The Killing Game" was only expanded because the episode ran short. Notably, when the writers were told they needed to write out one of the main cast members to make room for Seven of Nine, he was their original pick before Executive Meddling forced them to change it to Kes.
  • Nobody beside Michael Piller liked the Kazons, the sentiment being that they were dumb and ineffectual retreads of the Klingon who had far overstayed their welcome by the end of the second season. The show would phase them out after the third season opener outside of flashback and hologram sequences, with a later episode establishing that the Kazons are among the few species the Borg refuse to assimilate because they're just that useless.
• The Danza: Kate Mulgrew was hired as a last minute replacement for Nicole Janeway (played by Geneviève Bujold), and she asked to have the first name changed to her full first name, Kathryn. Janeway's first name had originally been Katherine (note the different spelling) while the series was in development, but was changed to Nicole when the French-Canadian Bujold was cast in the role. The creators asked Mulgrew which of the two she would prefer, and she opted for a slightly altered version of the originally planned name.
• Dawson Casting: B'Elanna is supposed to be 22 at the start of the show, but Roxann Dawson was 36.^note Dawson's "publicity age" was 30 at the time, it was discovered she was really six years older after the show ended. Tom Paris is also supposed to be in his twenties, however, Robert Duncan McNeill was in his thirties when the series was in production.
• Defictionalization: Paramount put out a Captain Proton paperback in '99. It is purposefully bad.
• Diagnosis of God: Kate Mulgrew got so fed up with how inconsistently Janeway was written that she decided that her character had bi-polar disorder.
• Dueling Works:
  • A Season Seven two-parter, "Workforce", is a fairly obvious clone of Stargate SG-1's "Beneath the Surface" which aired a year before. SG-1 also attempted a very similar episode to "Drive" called "Space Race"...
  • Trek and Stargate borrowed liberally from each other. Colm Meaney (O'Brien from TNG and DS9) turned up as Cowen, the head honcho of Stargate Atlantis' Genii (themselves a guerrilla outfit similar to the Maquis). In turn, Voyager used the telltale blue tunnel effect from Stargate for their more-advanced "slipstream drives" and "transwarp conduits".
  • The Q Continuum as glimpsed in "Death Wish" is remarkably similar to the "Astral Diner", a facsimile of an American roadside cafe in SG-1's "Threads". The Ancients are so old that they've run out of things to say, and so they do nothing but sit in silence, just as the Q do.
• Executive Meddling: Many creative decisions came about due to VOY being a network-owned show, unlike TNG and DS9. At the time, Paramount wanted the show to be the flagship series of its own new broadcast channel, UPN. This led to some unusual decisions from UPN and Paramount both:
  • It's easy to just blame 'inconsistent writing,' but then which one is the actual Janeway? Is she the hard nose martinet enforcing her iron will, or the flighty scientist wanting to poke at every nebula and pulsar, or maybe the mopey emo who hides in her cabin for months, or the warm motherly type who enjoys a trashy holo-novel? Because she’s all of these at some point. Janeway’s most dubious decision involves her dismissing the Prime Directive in "Caretaker", odd given how much she uses the Prime Directive as a cudgel in the future. According to early promotional materials, the character of Janeway was handled very carefully to balance her authority with her femininity, and avoid presenting her as a stereotype in either situation. When Mulgrew talks about her experiences in the early days of shooting and how the suits were there on set every single day waiting for her to slip up or to give them some excuse to recast the part again, it's suddenly very apparent why Bujold left. Any other actor would have crumbled.
  • According to the production staff, including the late Michael Piller, UPN execs wanted TNG-caliber ratings, and they decided the best way to achieve that was to turn VOY into TNG-Lite. The result: little or no character conflict, no ongoing story arcs ("Year of Hell" was originally planned to last an entire season but was vetoed by UPN), and a barrage of TNG aliens who had no business being in this sector of space.
  • The infamous Rick Berman luncheon. Shortly before shooting began, Berman got the cast together and told them the Powers That Be wanted the aliens to be the show's real stars, and that the human characters were forbidden to steal the spotlight. (Presumably because Star Trek's previous breakout characters, Spock and Data, weren't human.) Indeed, it became difficult for the writers to save money on bottle episodes—typically character/psychological dramas—without attracting the ire of executives. They found a loophole by switching focus to the EMH (originally intended as a Drop-In Character) and adding a mini-Borg Collective to their "alien" roster.
  • A majority of scenes in the pilot had to be reshot... because the studio vetoed Kate Mulgrew's hairstyle. Mulgrew once commented on the myriad of "crazy hairstyles" they tried out. See Trivia/StarTrekEnterprise for a similar story involving Scott Bakula.
  • The divisions between the Starfleet and Maquis officers were originally going to be more pronounced, but after the pilot, the network asked for this to be changed. The divisions were made more minor in Season 1 and largely ignored afterwards.
  • Season One and Two both had four episodes held back for the following season. Season One is shorter than the others because of this decision.
  • A favorite story of Garrett Wang's to tell at conventions: The last shot of the series finale was meant to be Kim crying tears of joy at arriving home. The shot did wind up in the show... in an entirely different context altogether: It was shortened to Kim weeping at the birth of another character's baby. Wang phoned up CBS in a fit of rage to ask why it was used in that context.
  • Wang himself was the punching bag of many of the producers. A whole list of reasons would end up as long as this page itself. (It's a miracle he is able to go from con to con and tell stories about the experience with a sense of humour.) Wang had a couple of flare-ups with executive producer Rick Berman: When he asked the latter why he wasn't promoted higher than his character's standard rank, Berman replied, "Well, someone's got to be the ensign".
  • Berman struck again, this time with the usage of the aeroshuttle, the never-used auxiliary vehicle on the underside of the ship's saucer. He didn't want the potential launch sequence to overshadow the similar captain's yacht launch sequence from Star Trek: Insurrection. Thus the aeroshuttle remained unused and unreferenced, with the Delta Flyer eventually becoming a sort-of replacement.
• Fake Nationality: Robert Beltran is Latino, specifically Mexican, but plays a member of an unspecified Native American nation.
• Follow the Leader:
  • "Real Life" has the ship facing a CGI "Astral Eddy" space tornado. The episode aired the year after the film Twister, a disaster film featuring a CGI tornado.
  • "Distant Origin". Ah yes, the episode which UPN promoted by inviting comparisons to The Lost World: Jurassic Park! Dinosaurs on a spaceship!
  • "In the Flesh" seems to be taking inspiration from The Truman Show with its rotating day/night Earth replica cooked up by Species 8472.
• Gay Panic: Janeway was initially going to be a lesbian before the producers chickened out. Mulgrew herself was supportive of the idea, so this is still a stick in the craw for many fans given that Star Trek did not feature an explicitly gay character^note Jadzia Dax appears to be bi, though the fluidity of "joined" Trill gender identity makes this ambiguous. until Star Trek: Discovery in the late 2010s.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: During season 4 selective camera angles and a large work smock were used to hide Roxanne Dawson's pregnancy. During the two-parter episode "The Killing Game" the writers got creative and had her character on the holodeck be pregnant, including a Leaning on the Fourth Wall moment when she gripes to Tom over how realistic her pregnancy is.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • An additional cast member and a second pilot revitalized Deep Space Nine. Flash-forward to Voyager. Seven's arrival aggravated the preexisting tensions in the cast, there were reports of an unnamed co-star making life difficult for Jeri Ryan.
    Ryan: Before every close-up, the hair and makeup and wardrobe teams come in and do touch-ups and everything to make sure everything's right. They shut the door to the set, and said, "She's fine. LET'S GO." Wouldn't let them in. Just stupid, stupid stuff like that.
  • The star in question was widely suspected (correctly as it turns out) to be Kate Mulgrew. Decades later, this was confirmed in interviews with the cast and crew, namely Rick Berman, Jeri Ryan, and Garrett Wang. Mulgrew was rankled by the firing of Jennifer Lien, Jeri Taylor's habitual lateness in delivering scripts, and the writers shifting focus away from the Captain (nominally the show's star and spokesperson when dealing with the press) and toward the voluptuous Seven of Nine. She resented sacrificing time with her family for a series Janeway no longer starred in, and it's a wonder she didn't pop a blood vessel from frustration. Every time she snaps at Seven on the show, it has the added frisson of knowing that there was genuine tension between the two actors. Mulgrew is an old pro who has always denied the rumors, never disparaged Ryan in public, and admitted the Seven character probably saved VOY from cancellation.
  • Garrett Wang, who shares more in common with his character than he lets on, compared the Mulgrew/Ryan feud to his "mother and sister fighting", and says he was reduced to tears on more than one occasion. In fact, just talking about the experience makes him weep even today. He did his best to "broker peace" between the actors at convention halls—and he seems to have succeeded.◊
  • Due to the complications in casting Janeway, with Kate Mulgrew brought in after original choice in Geneviève Bujold couldn't handle the schedule, there was a lot of network pressure to deliver. Almost every exec was on set when Mulgrew did her first scene and some stuck around for the first six months waiting for an excuse to replace her.
• Inspiration for the Work: The premise of Voyager was rooted in the TNG episode "Q Who." In it, Q sent the Enterprise into deep space and about two years time from Federation territory where they encountered the Borg. While it was just for that episode as Q brought them back, the idea of a ship in entirely unfamiliar territory and requiring years to return home formed the bedrock of this series premise. Other TNG episodes including "The Price" would make references to the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager would eventually made a Sequel Episode.

K-Z

• Killed by Request: Robert Beltran hated playing Chakotay and expressed a preference to not be on the show any more, demanding more and more money in the hopes that they'd get rid of him; but they just kept meeting his demands (as an oft-forgotten aspect of the show was that its merch made money hand over fist for much of its run) so he was forced to continue.
• Memorial Character: The character of Ensign Samantha Wildman was named after a little girl who died tragically in an accident. The girl's organs were donated to save the life of the wife of Episode Writer Jimmy Diggs. The real Samantha loved animals, so Ensign Wildman was written as the head of Voyager's Xenobiology Department.
• Method Acting: In "Scientific Method", Janeway's been awake for several days with an induced migraine and realizes she and her work mates are being used as lab rats. This is the ep where Mulgrew quit smoking, and she was pretty miserable. After 17 hours without a smoke she used that nicotine fit as a release of fury toward the aliens.
• Money, Dear Boy: Jeri Ryan originally signed a three-year deal. She planned to split the moment her contract was up, thanks in no small part to tensions on set (not to mention that damn suit), however her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and health care isn't exactly cheap in the U.S. so she agreed to stay on for an additional season, which turned out to be the show's last. (Happily, her mother made a full recovery.)
• The Original Darrin: Alice Krige was replaced by Susanna Thompson as the Borg Queen for a number of episodes starting with "Dark Froniter", but brought back for "Endgame".
• The Other Darrin
  • Susanna Thompson originally auditioned for the Borg Queen in First Contact, but picked up the role when Alice Krige was unavailable to shoot VOY.
  • Allan G. Royal in "Future's End" and Bruce McGill in "Relativity" both portrayed Captain Braxton.
  • Scarlett Pomers replaced Brooke Stephens to play a slightly-older Naomi Wildman in the last three seasons. Lampshaded by stating that Naomi aged faster due to being half alien.
• The Other Marty: Geneviève Bujold was highly sought-after by the studio to play Captain Nicole Janeway, formerly Elizabeth Janeway, as they wanted a high-profile award-winning actress for the first female Trek captain. Rick Berman has said he had reservations about casting her because she was not accustomed to the rigors of a television shooting schedule. After a day and a half of filming she left because she couldn't keep up, and there were already rumblings about her performance not matching what was expected for the show (her performance was noticeably more subdued than previous Trek captains and her French Canadian accent carried a different cadence trying to do Techno Babble in English). Footage of Bujold as Janeway shot for the pilot "Caretaker" can be found on the first season DVDs. Production shut down for a week while they searched for a new captain. Kate Mulgrew was a veteran television actress and was already known to the producers from the audition process; she auditioned one more time on a Friday and started work on Monday.
• Promoted Fanboy: Unlike most Trek actors, Tim Russ came into the series as a full-fledged Trekkie. He would get into arguments over how a Vulcan would behave, but still his portrayal of Tuvok was likely the best Vulcan performance since Leonard Nimoy and Mark Lenard. In fact, Russ' first try at getting into Trek was auditioning for Geordi La Forge on TNG. He would eventually do a small guest star role there (funnily enough, as a villain who gets nerve-pinched) and on DS9, as well as play a bridge officer on the Enterprise-B in Generations.
• Prop Recycling: Voyager is the only series which did not provide new uniforms for its cast; they were leftovers from DS9. The DS9 cast abandoned them at the first opportunity when new Starfleet duds were introduced for Star Trek: First Contact. (The TNG cast briefly switched to the DS9 uniforms for Star Trek: Generations but they, too, couldn't stand them.) But the cast of Voyager, whose characters were stranded in the Delta Quadrant, were stuck with the old ones.
• Real-Life Relative: Q's "teenage" son was played by John de Lancie's actual son Keegan DeLancie. This was apparently somewhat of an accident; Keegan happened to be among the actors being considered for the role and the producers made it clear they didn't want him cast just for the joke. As it turned out Keegan won them over on the part and the existing father/son dynamic only made the episode better.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle:
  • Captain Janeway's "Bun of Steel" from the early seasons was the result of Kate Mulgrew's hair reflecting so much light on camera that it rendered early footage unusable. The tight bun was a hasty workaround that stuck until Mulgrew switched to a shorter cut midway through the show's run.
  • Kes changed from a pixie cut to a longer hairstyle that covered her Unusual Ears because Jennifer Lien became allergic to the glue used to put them on.
• Recycled Set:
  • The ceiling used for the transporter room in this show is the same one which was used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  • TNG's "Eye of the Beholder" features the Nacelle Tube, which is clearly the narrow section of Voyager's engineering.
  • Most of the VOY sets are actually converted TNG sets that survived the filming of Generations (ex. the corridors, Main Engineering, Sickbay, etc). This was done a cost-saving measure. Similarly, Voyager sets would later be used in First Contact for the Enterprise-E's hallways and Sickbay.
  • The cockpit of Chakotay's Maquis Raider in "Caretaker" is actually a redressed runabout cockpit from DS9.
  • In DS9, the Voyager sets were reused in the episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" when Bashir is taken to Romulus on an Intrepid-class ship, the same class of ship as USS Voyager. Pretty surreal.
  • The bridge of the Equinox was also used a few times in different settings, including the bridge of the Prometheus.
  • This was supposed to happen with the aeroshuttle, whose design was specifically based around the runabout cockpit, but was ultimately never seen and replaced with the Delta Flyer.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • Jennifer Lien was let go after season 3 because of her recurring mental instability and substance abuse problems, though this was kept under wraps for decades afterward, to the point that a famous story about Garrett Wang being up for the axe instead (but only being saved at the very last minute by his surprise inclusion in a People magazine article listing the "50 Most Beautiful People" during the off-season) was very widely circulated, including on This Very Wiki, without Wang (or anyone else) ever denying it (to protect Lien's reputation).
  • Wang, for his part, has gone on record as claiming that an early interview with a reporter led Berman to deny him the chance to direct an episode, purely out of spite.
    • He's not entirely blameless. Reportedly, during the first two seasons, he frequently came in late and hungover from his weekends in Vegas. Wang was put on notice, and even though he cleaned up his act, he was discreetly punished by being largely written-out of a few episodes.
• Romance on the Set:
  • Jeri Ryan began dating the co-executive producer, Brannon Braga, although it's a little unclear whether they were involved before or after she joined VOY. (She claims it was after, and joked the atmosphere on set became much more genial after that.) They split up shortly after the show wrapped.
  • Kate Mulgrew dated Winrich Kolbe (director of 40+ Trek episodes across several series, including Voyager's pilot "Caretaker") for three years.
• Science Marches On: "Distant Origin" features a species of Lizard Folk scientists, one of whom discovers the remains of a Red Shirt from a previous VOY episode. They express alarm that the remains, which turn out to be a distant cousin of theirs, is an endotherm (warm-blooded). This was in 1997, prior to the discovery that Earth's dinosaurs were probably endotherms.
• Star-Making Role: Seven of Nine for Jeri Ryan. While still busy, for a time in the late 90's she was everywhere.
• Technical Advisor: Jamake Highwater was hired as a "Native American culture advisor" to help write for Commander Chakotay. Unfortunately, they failed to adequately vet his credentials: Highwater, real name Jackie Marks, had been exposed over a decade earlier in The Washington Post for fraudulently claiming a Native American background for business purposes, resulting in Chakotay embodying just about every Magical Native American stereotype known to Hollywood.
• Trolling Creator: Robert Beltran, in his Reddit AMA, threw a bunch of red meat out to the J/C shippers. Whether he was in Sarcasm Mode or not, YMMV...
• Troubled Production:
  • Due to the cost of building VOY's bridge, converting the old TNG sets, reshooting the scenes shot with Geneviève Bujold and Janeway's hair debacle,^note Kate Mulgrew's hair reflected so much light that it rendered much of her early footage useless. The hair and make-up department hastily came up with the bun of steel as a fix. some very pricey special effects scenes and a substantial amount of location filming, "Caretaker" had a final budget of US$23 mil, making it the most expensive episode in the history of Star Trek. When adjusted for inflation, it proved even more expensive than Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A running gag on-set was, "I wonder if we'll get this pilot shot before the series is over." At the eleventh hour the climax involves climbing a staircase for ten minutes. Eventually the money ran out.
  • There was considerable debate behind-the-scenes on exactly how Voyager was going to stand out against both TNG and DS9, with the initial premise leaning into being sent into a region so far from Federation space there would be dwindling resources and the crew would be merged with a terrorist group forcing an Enemy Mine situation. This was primarily the result of Michael Pillar's influence and trying to adapt the more serialized format DS9, but many people at the network were looking into a spiritual Sequel Series for TNG. Ronald D. Moore said he fought against having the Maquis crew wearing Starfleet uniforms, as once they were part of one unified crew the stress of the mixed crew would be gone.
  • Most of the Pillar-created storylines and supporting characters introduced in the first two seasons were quickly eliminated in the first episode of the third season, where Jeri Taylor took over as showrunner. While the show found its own rhythm, top-down network demands enforced Status Quo Is God, with the writers room becoming a very territorial group looking to one-up each other and actors were exhausted trying to keep their characters personalities consistent. Ronald Moore famously transferred to VOY after DS9 ended but left after a couple episodes seeing the stark difference between the passion from his previous show and the apathy here.
• Wag the Director:
  • Kate Mulgrew is a tough customer who knew what she was getting into with the Star Trek "boys' club." The second season episode "Death Wish" is apparently where she'd had enough; Q's outrageously (and unceasingly) sexist dialogue wasn't as amusing as Michel Piller had hoped. She was also the one to nix any romance between Janeway and Chakotay, knowing the backlash that would occur if the first female captain is also the first to get involved with a subordinate.
  • According to Trek legend, Mulgrew's reaction to discovering a padded bra sewn into her uniform was to tear it out with her bare hands, march into the writer's room, and slam it on the table, flatly stating "I'm not wearing this."^note She's one of only two female regulars from Berman-era Trek to go without "enhancement" - Nana Visitor is the other. When asked about the story, Robert Picardo wasn't able to corroborate it but conceded that "it sounds like something Kate would say".
• Word of Gay: Robert Beltran jokingly said in one interview that Chakotay was a homosexual. For fans of slash fiction, this is the last bit of evidence needed to confirm that Chakotay and Paris are bitter ex lovers, and that Seven is merely his beard.
• Word of Saint Paul: Although Chakotay's tribe is never identified during the series, Robert Beltran has speculated that Chakotay was possibly either an Aztec or Mayan native. Both are noted for their contributions to the fields of astronomy and mathematics.
• Written-In Infirmity:
  • Jennifer Lien was allergic to the smoke caused by the exploding consoles on the bridge. Effectively, she couldn’t be in any action scenes where Voyager is getting shot at. There were some hair issues with Kes in Season Three; Lien has longer hair here because she wasn’t responding well to the prosthetic makeup.
  • Seska's pregnancy was written into the show because actress Martha Hackett became pregnant in real life.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Kurtwood Smith, Annorax from "Year of Hell", had previously been the Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and played the Cardassian predecessor to Odo in a flashback episode of Deep Space Nine.
  • Susanna Thompson played a couple Romulans on TNG before taking over the role of the Borg Queen here.
  • Tim Russ had a number of guest appearances in the franchise before being cast as Tuvok: a hijacker in TNG's "Starship Mine," a Klingon in DS9's "Invasive Procedures" and an Enterprise-B bridge officer in Generations.
  • Suzie Plakson was Doctor Selar and Worf's mate K'ehleyr in TNG before playing the female Q.
  • Robert Duncan McNeil previously appeared on TNG as a headstrong, feckless cadet in "The First Duty". Both he and Tom Paris were caught covering up a piloting error which resulted in the deaths of some crewmen. Reasons for not simply bringing back the Nick Locarno character have varied, the two given is the character would involve royalties^note Due to being a one-off character they would have to pay Naren Shankar and Ronald Moore which would total upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they wanted more flexibility in defining who the character was^note [McNeil said Locarno was a charismatic character hiding an evil side while Paris was trying to hide the fact he was a decent person underneath. In any event, despite beginning the series as a prison inmate, ex-terrorist, and undercover informant, by episode two Tom Paris was pretty much unrecognizable from his role in "Caretaker" (Tom would never nod along and help cover up someone's killings, let alone hatch the idea himself!), much less Locarno.
    Cracked: Tom actually appears as the same character in a TNG episode, but was given a new name for Voyager to avoid paying royalties to a former writer, because fuck, all writers are loaded.
  • Martha Hackett (Seska) had two appearances as T'Rul, a friendly (well, sort of) Romulan attache who entrusts Sisko with the Defiant's cloaking device (DS9). Her performance was strong enough to earn her notice from upstairs, and she was greenlighted for a role on VOY.
  • Lindsey Haun (known from Village Of The Damned and The Color of Friendship) played two holograpic characters: Victorian girl Beatrice Burleigh in Janeway's program and Belle, the EMH's "daughter".

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