Star Trek: Voyager is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. It was produced for seven seasons from 1995 to 2001, and is the only Star Trek series to have a female captain, Kathryn Janeway, as a lead character. The show was a spinoff of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and was created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor. The show was based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry. It is sometimes shortened to ST:VOY or VOY.
The series follows the adventures of the USS Voyager and her crew who have become stranded in the Delta Quadrant, seventy thousand light-years from Earth. Unless they can find some kind of shortcut, it will take them seventy-five years to return to the space of the United Federation of Planets.
In the pilot episode, "Caretaker", Voyager is sent on a mission to locate a ship piloted by a cell of the Maquis, a terrorist organization created in protest of a treaty between the Federation and Cardassians. Tom Paris (a former member of the Maquis) is brought out of prison to help find the ship. During a chase through the dangerous Badlands, both ships are transported to the other side of the galaxy by an ancient alien known as the Caretaker. While being pulled across the galaxy, several members of Voyager's crew are killed, including the ship's first officer and doctor.
Both ships are attacked by Kazon raiders intent on capturing the Caretaker's Array. Rather than using the Caretaker's Array to return home, Captain Janeway decides to destroy it to prevent it from being misused.
The raiders destroy the Maquis ship, but not before its crew are able to transport safely to Voyager. The Starfleet and Maquis crews are forced to integrate and work together as they begin the long journey home. Chakotay, the leader of the Maquis group, becomes first officer. B'Elanna Torres, a half-human, half-Klingon female, becomes chief engineer, beating out Lieutenant Carey, a Starfleet crewman who would have been promoted to the position. And the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH Mark I), designed for short term use only, becomes ship's doctor after the death of the entire medical staff. Along the way home, the crew must contend with organ-snatching Vidiians, the relentless Borg, and the extra-dimensional Species 8472.
The conflict between the fiercely independent Maquis revolutionaries and the by-the-book Starfleet crew is a central theme of the first season, but by the second season, it is largely forgotten and there is scarcely any conflict among the crew. Only Janeway remains anguished for the entire run of the series over the consequences of her decision to destroy their way home.
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