"Hope and Fear" is the 26th and final episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager.

Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet and Maquis crew of the starship USS Voyager after they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant far from the rest of the Federation.

In this episode, the Voyager crew discover a ship sent from Starfleet that could take them back to the Alpha Quadrant in just 3 months, but it will mean abandoning their vessel.

However, it is all revealed to be an elaborate trap as the alien Arturis (Ray Wise) attempts to gain his revenge on the crew for preventing the destruction of the Borg.

Wise was cast as Arturis without auditioning, and the character's makeup was re-purposed by Michael Westmore from a design created for another television series.

Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) continues to struggle in deciphering an encrypted Starfleet message that they previously obtained through the Hirogen relay system ("Hunters").

Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) orders Voyager to pursue the Dauntless into the slipstream, aware that the system has not been fully tested yet.

[1] Pre-production began 24 days prior to shooting,[2] with a morning meeting attended by Taylor, Brannon Braga, Joe Menosky, Kenneth Biller, Lisa Klink and Bryan Fuller.

The pitch would have seen modifications made to Voyager, which enters a slipstream and finds itself on an "intergalactic freeway" with other vessels travelling so fast as to make the ship look like a horse and buggy in comparison.

One involved Seven's Borg implants suffering severe side effects from being in the slipstream, but this was discarded as it felt similar to the episode "One", which was due to air immediately prior to the finale.

Berman made several suggestions for the plot; that Janeway shouldn't decode the message immediately at the start of the episode,[5] and that the vengeance seeking alien should be decrepit and attempting to deceive the crew.

[7] A smaller team reconvened during the morning of February 3, as Biller was preparing for work on the episode "One", while Menosky was completing the script for "Living Witness".

[7] Menosky and Biller joined the group after lunch, with the duo agreeing that the alien's ruse was going to be a problem, instead suggesting that the episode should be played "straight" with the main drama focused around the Janeway/Seven conflict.

In the early hours of February 4, Braga worked out how to fit everything together by having the episode become a retrospection of the entire season and called Menosky during the night to discuss it.

[12] The new bridge was built in the alien configuration but with additional panels and props created which could affix to the set in order to lend it a Starfleet appearance.

James' designs were not as elaborate as Kolbe suggested, but together with visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore they worked out a means of enabling the director to film from above.

[15] James produced a foamcore model of the Dauntless bridge,[16] to both illustrate the final construction and to enable Kolbe to plan out his camera angles while it was still being built.

[15] The exterior of the Dauntless was developed by illustrator Rick Sternbach,[17] who had previously designed several vessels and props for the Star Trek franchise including the USS Voyager itself.

[19] The production team had opted for a computer generated version of the ship rather than a physical model due to the time constraints, and the difficulty that would have caused for the effects shot when the slipstream drive is activated.

One of those actors who were not required to audition was Ray Wise, as he had previously appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Who Watches the Watchers".

[28] Where the script called for him to be shot by weapons fire, a burn on the shirt was created by key costumer Kimberley Shull using the hair color product Streaks and Tips.

[29] Prop creator Alan Sims created Arturis' pistol weapon, intending for it to be held horizontally to give it a more alien appearance.

The design proposed by Kolbe did not make it into production due to the cost and complexity of it, but he was still pleased with the final result as it enabled some different shooting positions than the usual Voyager set.

Furthermore, the results of the bubbles being sent through water tubes that represented part of the engine core created noise issues for the sound technicians; they asked for it to be turned off whenever it wasn't placed in shot.

[40] A version was screened on March 30 for Moore, Peter Lauritson, Dan Curry, J. P. Farrell and Dawn Velazquez to better inform the post-production optical effects which were under production at the time.

[44] In two of the pieces, McCarthy worked in Jerry Goldsmith's Voyager theme, both at the end of the episode and several bars of it as the ship engages the Dauntless in the slipstream.

He called the score "wonderous", the sets "impressive" and the direction of the episode "stellar", but said that the plot was "cobbled together out of unlikely coincidences and prior story events that have been twisted to fit the end result.

"[48] Lisa Granshaw listed "Hope and Fear" as one of the top ten episodes of Voyager for Blastr, saying that it showed an important step in the development of Seven of Nine as the character declares that she does not want to return to the Borg.

[55] They praise a fitting but tragic ending that leaves the audience and crew with a renewed sense about of hope with their journey back to Earth, while having explored the morality of revenge.

[55] "Hope and Fear" was first released for home media use on VHS within the United Kingdom as part of the collection of two-episode issues alongside "One" in 1998.