Star Trek: Voyager is an American science fiction series created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor.

Voyager was the first Star Trek series to feature a female commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), as the lead character.

He goes, 'They’re making a new show called Voyager and they literally put out a casting notice saying 'a Robbie Duncan McNeill type.'

He was initially unsure of his way to manage the character because of his limited participation in the pilot, and feared that he would be compared unfavorably with Brent Spiner.

Ryan liked both the premise of the character and the optimist view of the future of the Star Trek franchise, which she preferred over the darker series she could audition for at the time, and got the job with little problem.

As done with The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, a soundtrack album of the series' pilot episode "Caretaker" and a CD single containing three variations of the main theme were released by Crescendo Records in 1995 between seasons one and two.

[19] The article elaborates, "...Voyager recaptures some of the spacey ethereality of Courage's original vocal melody, while adding a deep space resonance that evoked the series' lost explorers, far from home among uncharted stars.

They are searching for a missing ship piloted by a team of Maquis rebels, which Voyager's security officer, the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok, has secretly infiltrated.

While in the Badlands, Voyager is enveloped by a powerful energy wave that kills several of its crew, damages the ship, and strands it in the galaxy's Delta Quadrant, more than 70,000 light-years from Earth.

The Caretaker is responsible for the continued care of the Ocampa, a race of aliens native to the Delta Quadrant, and has been abducting other species from around the galaxy in an effort to reproduce and have a successor.

As they continue their long journey home, the crew passes through regions belonging to various species: the barbaric and belligerent Kazon; the organ-harvesting, disease-ravaged Vidiians; the nomadic hunter race the Hirogen; the fearsome Species 8472 from fluidic space; and most notably the Borg, who control large areas of space that Voyager has to move through in later seasons.

Starfleet Command learns of Voyager's survival when the crew discovers an ancient interstellar communications network, claimed by the Hirogen, into which they can tap.

This relay network is later disabled, but due to the efforts of Earth-based Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, Starfleet eventually establishes regular contact in the season-six episode "Pathfinder", using a communications array and micro-wormhole technology.

In the first two episodes of the show's fourth season, Kes leaves the ship in the wake of an extreme transformation of her mental abilities, while Seven of Nine (known colloquially as Seven), a Borg drone who was assimilated as a six-year-old human girl, is liberated from the collective and joins the Voyager crew.

As the series progresses, Seven begins to regain her humanity with the ongoing help of Captain Janeway, who shows her that emotions, friendship, love, and caring are more important than the sterile "perfection" the Borg espouse.

As he did with Seven of Nine, the Doctor rehumanizes the children; Azan, Rebi and Mezoti, three of them eventually find a new adoptive home while the fourth, Icheb, chooses to stay aboard Voyager.

Late in the seventh season, the crew finds a colony of Talaxians on a makeshift settlement in an asteroid field, and Neelix chooses to bid Voyager farewell and live once again among his people.

Over the course of the series, the Voyager crew finds various ways to reduce their 75-year journey by up to five decades (barring any other delays they may encounter): shortcuts, in the episodes "Year of Hell", "Night" and "Q2"; technology boosts in "The Voyager Conspiracy", "Dark Frontier", "Timeless" and "Hope and Fear"; a subspace corridor in "Dragon's Teeth"; and a mind-powered push from a powerful former shipmate in "The Gift".

Several other trip-shortening attempts are unsuccessful, as seen in the episodes "Eye of the Needle", "Prime Factors", "Future's End", and "Inside Man".

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force drew revenues of $15 million and sold roughly 300,000 units worldwide by 2003.

[37] Metacritic gives Star Trek: Voyager a score of 66 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[40] Critical and scholarly accounts noted the prevalence of women in leadership roles and with scientific expertise, but also the series' adherence to the gender binary and heterosexual norms.

[41][42][43][44] In an article about Voyager, Ian Grey wrote: "It was a rare heavy-hardware science fiction fantasy not built around a strong man, and more audaciously, it didn't seem to trouble itself over how fans would receive this.

On Voyager, female authority was assumed and unquestioned; women conveyed sexual power without shame and anger without guilt.

"[45] About her years on Voyager, Kate Mulgrew said: "The best thing was simply the privilege and the challenge of being able to take a shot at the first female captain, transcending stereotypes that I was very familiar with.

"[46] In 2015, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted a Janeway quote from the episode "The Cloud", "There's coffee in that nebula", from the International Space Station.

[50][51] In 2016 Netflix made an agreement with CBS for worldwide distribution of all then existing 727 Star Trek episodes (including Voyager).

[52] Star Trek: Voyager has not been remastered in high definition and there are no plans to do so, due to the costs of reassembling each episode from the film negatives and recreating visual effects.

[56] The reunion broke the Stars in the House single-episode fundraising record, drawing donations totaling $19,225 for The Actors Fund's efforts to assist entertainment professionals in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[57] In 2021, plans for a Star Trek: Voyager documentary made news when it raised over $638,000 in the first two weeks of its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.