A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Starfleet norms. Areas ripe for exploration and many storytelling opportunities were quickly squandered by the fledgling series closing down these avenues so soon.
    However,
Voyager
broke new ground by following up
Deep Space Nine
’s African-American captain with
Star Trek
’s first female series lead in Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Producer Rick Berman saw the decision as a breakthrough for
Star Trek
. ‘When it came time for
Voyager
, we knew we had to do something different. The decision was to develop a show that had a female captain’, he said on ‘Braving the Unknown: Season One’, an extra feature on the
Voyager
season one DVD. ‘The feeling was that the best direction for us to go – in terms of trying new things, being socially responsible, which
Star Trek
has always been – was to go for a female captain.’ Jeri Taylor admitted that, ‘The search for the captain was a long and difficult one. This is the person that gets the white-hot glare of publicity as the first female ever to head [a]
Star Trek
series and she had to be just right.’ Berman added, ‘We didn’t want to just create a captain and cast it with a female. We wanted to create a female captain who was somewhat more nurturing and a little bit less swashbuckling than Captain Kirk, a little bit less sullen than Captain Sisko, and a little bit more approachable than Captain Picard. And Kate [Mulgrew] delivered a feminine nurturing side and, at the same time, a sense of strength and confidence.’
    Mulgrew was a late replacement for French-Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold as Captain Nicole Janeway, who’d dropped out of the series after just two days’ filming. The public reason for her departure was that the actress was more used to the slower pace of moviemaking than the more hectic production process of weekly episodic television. Other suggested reasons were that Bujold disliked her character and the producers mayhave been dissatisfied by her early performance. In
TV Guide
in October 1994, Berman simply described Bujold as ‘not a good fit’ for
Star Trek
.
    The rest of the cast was largely made up of unknowns, most of whom had appeared in many episodic TV guest spots over the years. Robert Beltran played Chakotay and Tim Russ was Vulcan security officer Tuvok. Russ had previously screen-tested for the role of Geordi La Forge on
The Next Generation
and played minor background roles on
The Next Generation
,
Deep Space Nine
and the movie
Star Trek Generations
. He was something of a knowledgeable
Star Trek
fan, who came to the series well aware of Vulcan lore. Robert Duncan McNeill played the rebellious Tom Paris, and would go on to direct episodes of the series as well as follow-on
Star Trek
show
Enterprise
. Roxann Dawson was Torres, and she followed McNeill’s example by moving into directing
Voyager
and
Enterprise
episodes. The young and inexperienced Operations Officer Harry Kim was played by Garrett Wang, while Ethan Phillips portrayed the ship’s cook and morale officer Neelix, disguised under heavy alien make-up. Jennifer Lien played the alien Kes during the first four seasons, while Robert Picardo filled the Spock/Data role as the holographic ship’s doctor who would explore issues of humanity. A later addition to the cast was Jeri Ryan, playing a freed Borg drone dubbed Seven of Nine who joined the
Voyager
crew and became a key character, also fulfilling some of the Spock/Data function in commenting on humanity.
    The jumping-off point for the location of the series was ‘Q-Who?’,
The Next Generation
episode that had been used to set up the arrival of the Borg. Malevolent God-like being Q had caused the
Enterprise
to be propelled into unknown space and face an encounter with the Borg in an attempt to warn humanity of the dangers ‘out there’. When creating
Voyager
, Michael Piller noted, ‘We remembered the episodes, many episodes, where Q would show up and throw one of our ships or one of our people off to a strange part of the universe. And we’d have to figure out why we were there, how we were going to get back, and ultimately– by the end of an episode – we’d get back home. We started to talk about what would happen if we didn’t get home. That appealed to us a great deal . . . You have to understand that Rick, Jeri and I had no interest in simply putting a bunch of people on another ship and sending them out to explore the universe. We wanted to bring something new to the