Star Trek Voyager. Remember that show? You should after Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan) turned up during Star Trek: Picard’s first season and looks to be a regular character on that show moving forward.
But in case your having some difficulty, let me jog your memory. Airing between 1995 and 2001, it told the story of Captain Katherine Janeway and her crew trying to find their way home after being hurled across the galaxy by a near omnipotent alien force, bumping into a whole bunch of new alien races and civilizations along the way.
Voyager was supposed to be a game changer for the Star Trek universe. It was supposed to be revolutionary. It was the first show with a female captain (played by Kate Mulgrew) and it’s cast contained members of the rebellious Maquis, suggesting that both the characters and their motivations would be a little rough around the edges and not the product of the emotionally sterile storytelling some previous Trek fare became notorious for.
And perhaps more importantly, it would be so far removed from standard Star Trek geography (by a handful of galactic quadrants, to be exact), it would be free of the restraints of franchise canon. It could tell any story it wanted, free of the burdens of previous ones. The shackles of lore were thrown off and the show could stretch it’s wings like no other Trek show before it. The Delta quadrant was literally brand new territory, a clean narrative slate and the storytelling gloves were off. The possibilities were endless.
Or they should have been.
But from the word go, Voyager seemed determined to follow standard Star Trek operating procedure. It chose safe over exciting, stale over imaginative. What little conflict there was between the characters felt forced, too often the stories were unremarkable and the characters became cookie cutter versions of common stereotypes.
This isn’t to say the show didn’t have some highlights-it did-but it was mostly defined by the failure to live up to its potential. It wasn’t too long until they were stumbling across lost Klingons or other members of the Federation (apparently Voyager was the 47th Alpha quadrant ship to stumble into the farthest reaches of the galaxy), Q made some guest appearances and it wasn’t long before members of Voyager’s crew were somehow turning up on Earth.
And perhaps no Trek show relied on time travel as a storytelling device nearly as much as Voyager (until Enterprise came along and told everyone to hold it’s beer).
The show had unlimited possibilities but chose to play it safe. It chose to be timid. It chose to be Star Trek in other words. And outside of neutering the Borg as a genuine threat (remember all those times a single Borg cube brought the entire Federation to its knees, annihilating whole fleets and coming within a heartbeat conquering the entire Alpha quadrant? Yet time and time again, Voyager-a single Federation ship that was only a fraction of the size and power of the USS Enterprise-made a habit of besting dozens and even hundreds of Borg cubes on Borg turf) Voyager accomplished little else.
There are a lot of fans who love Voyager but the truth of the matter it doesn’t enjoy the same consideration as the original Star Trek, the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine when conversations about the best Trek show come up.
And that’s why fans should be excited about this week’s debut of the third season of Star Trek: Discovery.
Discovery has had it’s own share of controversy and is likely the most polarizing Trek show ever. There are some long-time fans who downright hate it while others have enthusiastically embraced it. But it’s biggest criticism (and weakness) has been it’s inability to fit into the revered (and many feel sacred) Star Trek Canon.
Star Trek fans are among the most passionate about franchise continuity and both Paramount and CBS invited unparalleled scrutiny and resentment by dating Discovery just before the original Star Trek. The powers that be invited more fan venom (and euphoria) with appearances by many original characters (especially Captain Pike and Spock), the original Enterprise and portraying events like the Klingon War and the foundation of section 31. When it introduced Michael Burnham as Spock’s secret adopted sister, you could hear the howls of fan rage on the moon.
Every detail in the show’s first two seasons that breached or defied accepted franchise canon has been fodder for the very vocal portion of the Star Trek fandom that has hated the show since it first hit the airwaves.
But having travelled nearly a thousand years into the future at the conclusion of its second season, Discovery has now removed itself from the restraints and restrictions of canon and can do what Voyager always seemed afraid to do.
It can stretch it’s wings and become its own entity.
Could it fail the way Voyager did? Of course, but given the chances Discovery has taken in its first two seasons, it seems more likely that it will push the creative envelope in ways Voyager could have never dreamed.
And Discovery has proven it’s all about taking chances and letting the chips fall where they may. And now it has the room to do that as much as it wants, unshackled by the canon that so many consider infallible.
It’s tough to not get the feeling that is where the show was headed all along. That the first two seasons were all about introducing the characters and the circumstances that pushed them to where they are now. And while those seasons also inspired a few new shows (Strange New Worlds-which will see Anson Mount reprise his popular role as Captain Christopher Pike-and Section 31 starring Michele Yeo), the mission statement of those early years seems to have been to get the Discovery and her crew as far beyond accepted Star Trek mythology as possible.
Discovery can essentially run in any direction it wants to now without having to worry about colliding with another show or rigid chapter of Trek history. It now enjoys the kind of freedom that no show has had since Captain Kirk.
Now, the stars are truly the limit. Â
Image CBS Television Studios
