Several of you have asked me, “Hey, we loved the article Vagabond Prime wrote about DS9. You’ve covered the Original Series and Next Gen series and films, and even talked Enterprise. When’s the article about Voyager?” To which I reply: Never. Because Voyager never happened.
Hear me out. I’m not saying that Voyager, aside from Enterprise, had the lowest hit-to-miss ratio of any Star Trek series, or that its cast was ultimately boring and led by the least interesting of all of the Trek captains. Despite that, Voyager had some fun things in it. I liked the episode where they’re caught on the planet where health care is only given to the rich. (Prescient, much?) I’m amused by the fact that they went back in time to the 1990’s and Sarah Silverman was on the show. A lot of the things involving Seven of Nine, the Borg, and Species 8472 were interesting. And poor, naive genius Ensign Harry Kim (7 years in the Delta Quadrant and no promotion?!?!), maverick pilot with daddy issues Tom Paris, and the holographic doctor remain some of my favorite Trek characters of all time.
But. . . Borg children? Captain Proton? Those low-rent Klingons you call the Kazon? Bleh. And you should’ve left the Maquis out of it. That was a plotline that was getting old and boring even in DS9 even before it got picked up on Voyager.
Which is why it’s good to know that none of it ever happened.
Hear me out.
Voyager began because on its maiden voyage, it was flung to the far side of the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker array. This happened after the Voyager entered the Badlands looking for Tuvok, the ship’s security chief, a Vulcan who was undercover with the Maquis.
But it is unlikely that Tuvok was ever born. According to his biography on the Memory Alpha wiki, Tuvok was born in the year 2264. But in the new Trek timeline, Vulcan was destroyed in 2258– six years earlier. I believe that it is incredibly likely that one, or both, of Tuvok’s parents were killed, making Vulcans into what future-Spock called “an endangered species.”
“Now hold on!” all you Voyager apologists are saying. Tuvok was born on the lunar colony, not on Vulcan itself. Yes. So, it may be possible that everything happened as it did in the timeline where Vulcan was not destroyed, but I find that highly unlikely.
With their planet having been destroyed, do you think parents would still have a child on the same schedule as before? Or would those plans change? Would Tuvok, if he had been born, still have been pushed by his parents to pursue a career in Starfleet, or would he have engaged in rebuilding a new planet and new Vulcan society based first on procreation to ensure survival of their species? The logical choise would be for Vulcans to spend many hundreds of years trying to “be fruitful and multiply” so that infinite diversity in infinite combinations (of Vulcan dna) can be preserved.
Even if he did manage to be born, I find it highly illogical that by 2371 he would be infiltrating Maquis ships under the orders of Captain Janeway. And thus, without a reason for Voyager to be in the Badlands and be pulled to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker, it just never happened.
So, take this for what it’s worth– a fan theory, a fringe theory even — but I argue that Voyager never happened. That way I can pretend that all the good stuff that I liked still kind of happened. . .but maybe it all took place in the mind of a young child playing with a snowglobe.
Don’t like the theory? Great. Keep your Voyager if it is that precious to you. But for me and my house, Voyager is essentially Berman/Braga/Piller/Taylor fanfic that had its good moments. But we’ll skip the one where Janeway and Paris evolve into space lizards and get it on.