Seventh Season Kate Mulgrew:  "How it is that I, so far removed from any figure of authority, let alone a Starfleet captain of the 24th Century can utterly believe that when this set is lit, and the camera is rolling and someone says ‘action’, that I am no one other than Captain Janeway? I now feel completely relaxed."

H O M E   S T R E T C H

What Will HAPPEN. . . JANEWAY Can Kathryn Janeway get her crew home back to the Alpha Quadrant by the end of the season... and will she be alive to do it? SEVEN OF NINE Will Seven ever be able to completely sever her ties to the Collective and can Voyager's wild child survive on Earth?

Recent Features Captain's Holiday Season Seven Capsule Reviews Recent Polls Why Do You Watch Voyager? Are the Borg Just Really Big Exaggerators? Were Voyager's Early Years Disappointing? Punishment: How Far Should Janeway Go? Which Janeway Hairstyle Is The Best? Upcoming Episodes Q TWO - AUTHOR, AUTHOR - FRIENDSHIP ONE - NATURAL LAW - DESTINY - RENAISSANCE MAN - ENDGAME

Series Finale Scheduled

UPN has announced the airdate for the final episode of Voyager: Wednesday, May 23, airing in a two-hour block.  Originally, on Tuesday, May 22 UPN would have aired a retrospective special which would have featured, according to the Official Website, "highlights from Voyager’s 172 episodes, interviews and recollections from the cast, plus some personal video shot over the past several months as the Voyager team prepares for the end."

"Saying farewell to the exceptional cast and production team will be sad and this retrospective somewhat bittersweet," said Tom Nunan, President of UPN Entertainment, "but we wanted to share with our viewers the many fond memories of this compelling and provocative series."

After the one hour special, a Viewer's Favorite episode, to be selected by the public, was to be rebroadcast on that night.  Those plans have, however, been cancelled, although UPN hasn't commented as to why.

Brannon Braga Talks About Voyager
 

"I felt more proud of my work on Voyager than of my work on The Next Generation. I thought it was a Star Trek show that had a certain level of sophistication in its storytelling, and I certainly felt closer to it, because I was involved with it from the beginning. And I think we pushed Star Trek one step further into modern times and did some nice things. At the end of a series, if you work on a series like that for six years, you kind of look back, and you realize that out of 100 episodes, you're really really proud of 10; you're kind of proud of 30, and the rest is all varying degrees of disappointment, because it's so hard to produce a television show.  So I just hope that the fans were surprised and enjoyed the show."

"I think it's safe to say that a show never evolves as you think it's going to," Braga said. "It's very difficult to predict which characters will be popular and which won't. I think we all knew that Capt. Janeway would be the most popular character. But we didn't know that the Doctor would become as popular as he did. And we didn't know we'd be introducing a new character, Seven of Nine. And I think the show took a few years to find its creative voice, but it did eventually. And I think we're all very pleased with what happened over the course of seven years."

Voyager received three nominations from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films for its 27th Annual Saturn Awards.  The awards will be presented June 12.

The nominations are for:
Network Television Series - Star Trek: Voyager
Actress on Television - Kate Mulgrew
Supporting Actress on Television - Jeri Ryan

Kate Mulgrew won a Saturn Award in 1998 for Voyager.

Jeri Ryan Wins Saturn Award

Jeri Ryan won the Saturn Award she was nominated for in the Supporting Actress on Television category.  The awards were presented June 12.

Kate Mulgrew Q and A'd By Time Magazine

Kate Mulgrew got the Q and A treatment from Time Magazine.  The full interview can be found here.

In honor of Voyager's series finale, TV Guide's May 19th issue will offer three separate covers commemorating the end of the series.  Additionally, they will offer a fourth "wrap around" cover that will be available only on-line at the TV Guide website.

Click for large Versions of the Janeway Cover, Seven of Nine Cover, Borg Queen Cover and Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok Cover.

Voyager Makes Cover of Canadian TV GUIDE
 

Along with the four covers put out by its American counterpart, the Canadian edition of TV Guide honored Voyager with the cover of its May 12-May 18 edition.  Also on the website, TV Guide lists 20 Canadian Connections to Trek.

VOYAGER RETROSPECTIVE

Our tribute to Star Trek: Voyager looks at the past seven seasons.

Voyager was nominated for eight Emmys in the 2000-2001 season.  The list of nominations can be found here.

Upcoming Episodes

Q TWO

Story by Kenneth Biller.  Teleplay by Robert Doherty.  Directed by LeVar Burton. Guest Starring John de Lancie as Q, Michael Kagan as Alien Commander, Keegan de Lancie as Q2, Lorna Rauer as Q-Judge, Manu Intiraymi as Icheb.

John DeLanice returns as Q, for the first time since Voyager's third season.  Q's child, which he conceived with Suzie Plakson's Q Female in "The Q and Grey", now a teenager, turns to his "godmother" Janeway for guidance. Q's child will be played by his own real life son, Keegan.  During this episode Voyager will run into its old enemies the Borg, thanks to the hijinks pulled by Janeway's godson.

Full plot details for this episode can be found here.  Pictures from this episode can be found here.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR

Story by Brannon Braga.  Teleplay by Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman.  Directed by David Livingston. Guest Starring Barry Gordon as Broht, Dwight Schultz as Barclay, Juan Garcia as John Torres, Richard Herd as Admiral Paris, Joseph Campanella as Arbitrator, Robert Ito as John Kim, Irene Tsu as Mary Kim, Lorinne Vozoff as Irene Hansen.

Brannon Braga returns to write an episode in which the Doctor decides to pen his memoirs.  With Voyager coming closer to home, the crew is able to establish real-time contact with Earth.  The result is the appearance of a bundle of crew family members: Torres' estranged father, whose past relationship with his daughter was recounted in "Lineage", will appear as well as Admiral Paris, Kim's mother and father and one of Seven's relatives. Robert Ito, who plays Kim's father, is known for his role as a regular in Quincy, and also guest starred in TNG's "Coming of Age".

Says Michael Taylor: "It was a Brannon story, and it was really wonderfully written by Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman, a new writing team that we hired this year who have just done great script after great script. It's a Doctor show, Doctor front and center. There's a lot of fun to be had in it, the Doctor writes a memoir of his life of sorts, and deals with the repercussions that has. It could probably be well compared to The Next Generation's "Measure of a Man" as well, in which Data was put on trial. Is he truly sentient, is he human in a way or not? I think we deal with some of the same things here, with a twist, but we're dealing with a different character. It's more to the point of what is an artist? It's an intriguing show."

"Being a holo-novel, it's interactive, meaning the reader plays the primary character, who is the Emergency Medical Hologram onboard the USS Vortex," Picardo continues. "Paris is insulted in the way he's portrayed, and thinks Janeway will be too. You get to see all the crewmembers play the novel, and play the Doctor.  Janeway calls the Doctor onto the carpet. The Doctor realizes his error and tries to change the book significantly, only to find out the publisher has gone ahead and published it without his revisions, which he promised he would wait for."

"When the Doctor tells him to recall every copy of the book that's been issued because it's an abrogation of his rights, the publisher tells him, 'You're a hologram, and according to Starfleet law, you have no rights.' Then it becomes a legal argument -- again, 'over the phone' back to the Alphha Quadrant -- as to whether or not the Doctor is an individual. Not being a person, per se, 'an organic,' is he an artist by definition, and therefore, an individual."  According to Picardo, the storyline finally brings his character equality among the crew.

"Janeway really acknowledges that the Doctor is a unique individual and as much of a person as any other member onboard Voyager," Picardo says. "It's a nice story."

In the episode, each of Voyager's crew has an alter-ego in the Doctor's book.  Since the book is a holo-novel, the Voyager cast all play their counterpart, although their physical characteristics are somewhat exaggerated.

The crew of the USS Vortex:
Captain Jenkins - The trigger-happy, gun collecting Captain who commands the Vortex through an authoritarian dictatorship.
Katainy - Tattooed, ponytailed Bajoran first officer.
Tulvak - Human Tactical Officer.
Marseilles - Cheating womanizer with darker hair and a moustache, husband of Torrey and the villain of the piece.
Torrey - Human engineer with full Klingon temperament.
Three of Eight - Former Borg Drone and the Doctor's only friend on the Vortex.
Kimble - Hypochondriac Trill Ensign.

FRIENDSHIP ONE

Written by Bryan Fuller & Michael Taylor. Directed by Mike Vejar. Guest Starring Josh Clark as Lt. Carey, Bari Hochwald as Brin, John Prosky as Otrin, Ashley Edner as Yun, Peter Dennis as Admiral Hendricks, Ken Land as Verin.

The crew encounters an old probe from Earth that interacted with an alien culture.  One rumor had it that this episode apparently also has to deal with altered personalities, a plot element used recently in the "Workforce" two-parter.
Says writer Michael Taylor:  "Bryan and I have wrote an episode called "Friendship One", which is about when Voyager gets sent on a mission by Starfleet to retrieve an old probe. That takes us to a planet where all sorts of trying things happen to us. It's our crew dealing with the consequences of a less enlightened effort by Earthlings centuries ago in sending out this probe. The didn't quite consider the consequences, the ramifications of sending out advanced technology long before there was the prime directive, or even a Starfleet. We get to see what happens as a result of that."
The technology of Friendship One, the probe which landed on an alien planet, was used to construct new weapons by its people.  The weapons of mass destruction that the aliens innovated based on the technology of the probe were used in a war, leading most of the population to be wiped out and the rest to take refuge beneath the surface of the battered planet.  When Voyager arrives, their Away Team is taken hostage by the aliens who resent Starfleet's inadvertant tampering with their society, putting Janeway in a difficult Prime Directive situation over whether or not she should help these hostile people in rebuilding their civilization.
Josh Clark returns in this episode as Lt. Carey.  Carey was a fixture of Voyager's first season, and while he has been seen in two other episodes since ("Relativity" and "Fury"), those episodes were set either before or during the first season.  This will presumably be the first episode since the first season where he has been shown as living on Voyager in the present time period.

NATURAL LAW

Story by Kenneth Biller & James Kahn.  Teleplay by James Kahn.  Directed by Terry Windell.

Chakotay and Seven of Nine are stranded on a hostile, primitive alien environment.  Trapped on this alien world, an injured Chakotay takes the time to learn to communicate with and appreciate the alien people and environment that surrounds him.  This creates tension with Seven of Nine who favors finding the most efficient way off the planet without getting to know the people who live there.  This is not a sequel to "Human Error" and there is no romance between the two characters in this episode.
The NATURAL LAW Script.

HOMESTEAD (was: DESTINY)

Teleplay by Raf Green.  Directed by LeVar Burton.

Neelix tries to rescue a colony of Talaxians that live on the edge of the Delta Quadrant.  Michael Taylor describes this as "a quite serious Neelix episode."  Of that character, Taylor also said: "It's a pleasure to write for a character like Ethan Phillips' Neelix.  Not a heralded character, a character we're all encouraged to build shows around. He's not the captain, or the sexy Borg. But he's such a wonderful actor and he brings so much to that role that you want to write more for him."

Says Robert Duncan McNeill: "It's a story about Voyager meeting a group of Talaxians on the fringes of the Delta Quadrant. Neelix gets to reconnect and catch up with some Talaxians who are very much like him. They're a group of his own people who've traveled to the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, refugees in many ways who've tried to recreate a Talaxian home world on an asteroid. They've been very resourceful, like Neelix. It's a bonding show for Neelix."

Rumor has it that Neelix will leave the show in this episode, favoring to live with his fellow Talaxians.  This move is unexpected but not a complete surprise: according to Garrett Wang, the same thing had been planned for his character in "Nightingale", in which the writers had originally planned on letting Kim take permanent command of his alien ship, only to have him return for the series finale.  If Neelix really does leave the ship in this episode, it would not be completely surprising if he showed up again in some way for the final episode, which is just a few episodes after this one.  LeVar Burton also apparently suggested that Neelix would leave the show in this episode.

This episode was previously known as "Destiny", but a name change was necessitated by the fact that there was already a DS9 episode that used that title.

RENAISSANCE MAN

Story by Andrew Shepard Price & Mark Gaberman.  Teleplay by Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong.  Directed by Mike Vejar.

TV GUIDE synopsis:  Janeway stuns Chakotay by caving in to a ransom demand.  Upon her return from a deep-space mission, Janeway startles Chakotay with her plans to hand over the ship's warp core — the key to Voyager's interstellar travel capacity — to the R'Kaal collective. The captain's willingness to part with such a crucial piece of Voyager's technology without a fight disturbs Chakotay, who turns to the Doctor for help. The hologram insists that Janeway is mentally sound.  Chakotay, though, remains skeptical, and soon has even more reason to question her actions.

The Doctor goes undercover to rescue Captain Janeway.
Says Michael Taylor: "I might just hint that it recalls the old movie A Man of A Thousand Faces, and Lon Chaney."  The Doctor also goes undercover as certain Voyager crewmembers in his efforts to save the Captain.
A cloaked alien fleet is somehow involved in the story.  It had been mentioned that the Hierarchy aliens of "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy", who were last seen in "The Void" would be featured again before the end of the show.  This might be the episode in which they make a re-appearance.  Their involvement in the story would seem consistent with their general practice of extorting supplies from passersby.  Likewise, they used cloaks to hide their ships back in "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy" as well.
Alexander Enberg reprises his role as Ensign Vorik in this episode.  Vorik hasn't been seen since season five's "Counterpoint".
There were some rumors that the final episodes play fast and loose with time and that this episode takes place in the future, after Voyager has returned home, but that was just a random rumor.

ENDGAME
THE FINAL EPISODE
 

Teleplay by Kenneth Biller & Robert J. Doherty.  Story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Robert J. Doherty & Kenneth Biller.  Directed by Allan Kroeker. Guest Starring Alice Krige as the Borg Queen, Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman.

Twenty-three years after Voyager's return to Earth, Kathryn Janeway is a Starfleet Admiral, Miral Paris, the daughter of B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris, enters Starfleet service, Naomi Wildman is the mother of a nine year old daughter, and from within an insane asylum, an unstable Tuvok claims that Janeway is not what she seems-- that she is an imposter who has replaced the real Captain. This episode involves, in some part, the Borg.  Says episode writer Kenneth Biller: "The finale will involve the Borg, which has always been Voyager's arch-nemesis." He added, "It's going to be a rip-roaring, slam-bang action adventure full of twists and turns and surprises." Biller said, "It's certainly been a challenge to end this series in a way that is both satisfying and surprising. Hopefully, we'll give you that."

The word "endgame" means the exchange of Queens and refers to, within a chess game, the final stage of the match leading to the significant reduction of forces on either side.  With the Borg involvement and the definition of the word "endgame" in mind-- it appears that the final episode deals, in part, with the final duel between Janeway and the Borg Queen (Susanna Thompson) couched within the goal of getting the ship home.

Brannon Braga had suggested to the Star Trek Magazine recently that we would see the Borg Queen again before series' end.

Kate Mulgrew, in an April 25 interview on Fox and Friends, said that Alice Krige (who she described as "marvelous"), the actress that played the Borg Queen in "Star Trek: First Contact", would reprise the character in "Endgame".  Mulgrew said that she had some "really good stuff" with her in the finale, which confirms that Janeway and the Borg Queen will again meet face to face.

During her appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell show on April 26, she said of the finale's much rumored plot, "It's unbelievable.  It's Janeway and Janeway.  It's a double-whammy in every sense of the word."

Entertainment Weekly reviewed "Endgame", giving it a positive score.  That review can be found here.

USA TODAY reviewed "Endgame".  That review can be found here.

TV GUIDE reviewed "Endgame".  That review can be found here.

TV GUIDE did a cover story on "Endgame".

"There is a lot of action in the final act of Voyager, a lot of money on the screen, a lot of boom," promises Rick Berman, the show's executive producer and master of the Roddenberry domain. That "boom" involves an epic battle — triggered by Admiral Janeway — between the Voyager crew and the sly, vicious Borg Queen, who is backed by an indestructible armada of Borg cubes. Susanna Thompson, who previously played the queen on Voyager, was not available, due to her commitment to play ex-wife Karen Sammler on Once and Again. So the part reverted to Alice Krige, who first created the role in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact. "But the finale is really less about pyrotechnics than it is about the people themselves," insists Ken Biller, a Voyager executive producer. "We have a lot of character arcs to tie up, though not everything will have a neat little bow. Our biggest challenge has been to surprise the viewers yet still satisfy expectations."

About the ending, Rick Berman told TV GUIDE: "As recently as six weeks ago, we had two different endings — one that involved Voyager getting home and one that didn't. I believe this finale will keep people guessing until the very last moment." As for Neelix, who left to join a Talaxian colony at the end of "Homestead", TV GUIDE offered some information about the capacity in which he will appear in the finale: "Ethan Phillips, whose rascally alien character, Neelix, left the show in the May 9 episode, returns for a surprisingly sweet sequence with Ryan, in which their characters dish long-distance about their love lives."

TV GUIDE's synopsis of this episode: "After seven seasons of interstellar adventure, Voyager's journey comes to a slam-bang conclusion as Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) travels back in time to assist her younger self in a climactic clash with the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). Expect plenty of fireworks in the finale, which finds the Borg taking a last crack at Voyager, whose future rests in Janeway's hands. The action alternates between a fast-forward to the future and the crew's final attempt to reach Earth, eventually coming full circle as the aging Admiral Janeway embarks on a desperate mission to alter the outcome of a past confrontation with the Collective — with fateful consequences."

Offers Paramount's promotional press kit for this episode, "In VOYAGER's epic final adventure, a mysterious visitor from another time forces Captain Janeway [KATE MULGREW] into a deadly confrontation with her arch nemesis, the Borg Queen. In the midst of the peril, an unexpected romance ignites and a new generation of the VOYAGER family emerges."

Says Rick Berman, "We have a two-hour finale script which is being directed by Allan Kroeker, who is one of our best directors. He also directed the final two hours of Deep Space Nine. Most of the loose ends will be tied up in the final two-hour show." (Left, on the set of "Endgame", from TV GUIDE's cover story.)

The name of Naomi Wildman's daughter will be Sabrina.  In the future time frame, Harry Kim will not only have been promoted, but reached the rank of Captain.  SFX Magazine reported that one scene has an aged Janeway visit the grave of Chakotay in the future.

On March 21, Entertainment Tonight went behind the scenes on the set of the episode.  Snippits of a scene being shot suggested that Voyager will run into a temporal anomaly that has a part in the plot.  In the segment, Kate Mulgrew said that she thought the fans "will find themselves unsettled by what the writers have come up with."  She also described the ending as "profoundly clever and very moving."

Said Rick Berman on the development of this episode:  "We have spent a tremendous amount of time working on the story. Ken Biller, Rob Doherty, Brannon and myself have worked for weeks on a very complex storyline. I think we had some big shoes to fill. If you look at the final episode of TNG and DS9, they have a certain sweeping heroic quality to them. I think they focused not only on our characters, but also on an action/adventure story on the grander human scale. We wanted the same thing to be true of the last episode of Voyager. I'm very excited and I think the story we finally came up with is a great way to send the crew off."

Responding to the presumption that Voyager's characters will make the end of the episode more or less intact, Berman responded, "I don't know why you would assume that!"

Robert Duncan McNeill spoke about this episode and without giving too much away, suggested what fans should expect. "It doesn't kill any of us off," the actor revealed. "But it puts a nice punctuation on the end of the series in a real heartfelt way. I think it's going to be a really great episode. The mood on the set right now is very bittersweet and emotional."  He added, "Without giving anything substantial away, I can tell you it's got a lot of action in it, which Star Trek has become known for. It's got great space battles and action scenes. It's also got some wonderful emotional, charged scenes. Every character on the show gets real attention and their stories come full circle by the end of it, and it really brings together every character in a strong, emotional way. I'm very excited about the last episode. I think the fans are going to love it. For the show and this premise and what we set out to do, I think it really wraps it up in a wonderful way."

Rick Sternbach, Voyager's Scenic Artist, said about his work on the finale: "The finale hasn't been too terribly different for my vehicle and prop work in terms of budget or deadlines.  We've got a few new vessels, one of which required some extensive blueprinting, but that's happened during regular seasons as well, whenever we've needed highly detailed drawings for new ships. Some ships can be reworked from existing CGI (computer generated imagery) objects, and some can be created in CGI from minimal sketches (the so-called "ship of-the-week" designs). The finale spacecraft so far have been worked out pretty smoothly."

WHAT TO EXPECT:  Says Kenneth Biller, "I think the ending of The Next Generation...  I can say, having had absolutely nothing to do with that and Star Trek wasn't even on my radar then, that going back and watching that two-hour finale — that's a really wonderful, moving piece of television that seems to deliver on every level. So that's the standard we're trying to hold ourselves to.  We're trying to do something... that is going to surprise and move and excite the audience."

Says Rick Berman, "With Deep Space Nine, we had 35-odd continuing characters that we had to sort of bring to some degree of closure and tie up some threads. That was a very complicated final two hours. And we had a war that we had to end. There were a great deal of plot and character relationships that had to be tied together.  In this show, luckily, we can deal more with character and with more grand themes, I think, because we don't have that situation."

"I just want to be surprised," Voyager staff member Michael Taylor, who is not involved in writing this episode, says of his own expectations for it. "That may be tough, because I think a lot of us expect Voyager to get home. How that happens, if it happens, I want to be surprised. I don`t know if we have arcs that need to be closed or anything, but I just want to see a fun and exciting episode that pays off these last seven years. And I think we will. I know we will."

How the final episode unfolds is a tightly kept secret that even junior members of Voyager's writing staff know little about.  Says Michael Taylor: "Not only do I not know what I can give way, but I don't know much about the finale. It's very secretive, and I'm not writing it.  Even the staff doesn't exactly know what's going on."

THE PRODUCTION:  Production on this episode was slated to begin the third week of March and last for two and a half weeks.  Production is scheduled to wrap up on April 9.

Interviews and Articles

Kate Mulgrew gave two interviews, speaking about her time on Voyager.
Star Trek Monthly, January 2001
Sci-Fi Monthly, February 2001

Roxann Dawson
Fandom.com

Robert Beltran
EON Magazine

Jeri Ryan talked to the press to promote her film Dracula 2000 and to talk about the last year of Voyager and her relationship with Brannon Braga.
TV Guide
Mr. Showbiz

STAR TREK News