USS Voyager
The USS Voyager (NCC-74656) was a 24th century Federation  starship operated by Starfleet from 2371 to 2378.

One of the most storied starships in the history of Starfleet, Voyager was famous for completing an unscheduled seven-year journey across the Delta Quadrant, the first successful exploration of that quadrant by the Federation, as well as numerous technological innovations and first contacts. 

It was the first ship in a long line to bear the name Voyager with this registry.

History

Construction and launch 

The USS Voyager was constructed at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards orbiting Mars and was launched from Earth Station McKinley on stardate 48038.5 in 2371. () Voyager was one of the earliest   starships constructed and it featured a number of technological innovations that had become available in the 2370s: bio-neural circuitry, variable geometry warp nacelles, and an Emergency Medical Holographic program were only a few of Voyagers notable technical advancements. The vessel was also the first to test the class 9 warp drive in deep space.

According to himself, Q suspected William T. Riker might be assigned to command Voyager. () Captain Kathryn Janeway assumed command of Voyager, however, doing so almost immediately before it disembarked from drydock. Vice Admiral Patterson greeted her on board with a tour of the ship. ()

First mission 

Shortly before Voyagers launch, Captain Janeway's chief of security and second officer, Lieutenant Tuvok, had successfully infiltrated the Maquis ship Val Jean, commanded by the disgruntled former Starfleet officer Chakotay. The Maquis ship, including Tuvok, went missing in the Badlands and Voyager was ordered on a three week mission to locate and capture the missing vessel. ()

At the Federation Penal Colony in New Zealand, Janeway recruited Tom Paris - former Starfleet officer, short-term member of the Maquis, and son of Admiral Owen Paris - whose knowledge of the Badlands and the Maquis were considered essential for the mission. Reluctantly, Paris agreed to be brought on board as an "observer." After leaving space station Deep Space 9 and entering the Badlands, Voyager was swept seventy thousand light years into the Delta Quadrant where it also discovered Chakotay's missing Maquis vessel - the Val Jean - which had experienced a similar fate. ()

Several crew members were killed during Voyagers violent hurtle into the Delta Quadrant, including the first officer, Lieutenant Commander Cavit; the helmsman, Lieutenant Stadi; the chief engineer; the transporter chief; and the entire medical staff, including the chief medical officer. Furthermore, crewmembers of both vessels were abducted upon their arrival and subjected to painful three-day medical examinations conducted by an entity known as the "". The Caretaker, a sporocystian lifeform who belonged to a race called the Nacene, was dying and in search of a suitable mate so his offspring could continue to provide for a species called the Ocampa after his death. He felt an obligation to the Ocampa as many years ago his race of explorers from a distant galaxy was responsible for the destruction of their planet's atmosphere, which in turn forced the Ocampa to move below ground. The Caretaker created underground hospitable areas for the Ocampa and completely provided for them.

Unable to find a compatible mate in any of Voyager or the Val Jeans crew, however, he returned them to their respective ships. Two of the crew members - B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim - became ill after the experiments, and were sent by the Caretaker to the Ocampa homeworld for care and medical treatment. Realizing the perilous state of their situation, Janeway and Chakotay decided to put aside their differences in order to locate their missing crew and then find a way to return home.

En route to Ocampa, the two ships encountered a Talaxian freighter manned by Neelix who, in exchange for water, agreed to help retrieve the missing crew. Both were eventually rescued and treated by Voyagers EMH. The Caretaker's condition continued to deteriorate, however, rendering him unable to send the two ships back to the Alpha Quadrant. He died a short time later. Although Lieutenant Tuvok believed he could activate the system that could send Voyager back, that would have meant potentially leaving the technology in the hands of a hostile native species, the Kazon-Ogla, whose malevolent use of the system would have threatened the existence of the Ocampa.

 
Instead of allowing the Kazon to seize the Caretaker's advanced technology and harm the peaceful Ocampa, Captain Janeway made the decision to destroy the Caretaker's array. She ordered two tricobalt devices, armed with a yield of 20,000 teracochranes, fired at the array, which destroyed it. This decision left Voyager stranded in the Delta Quadrant. After the destruction of the Val Jean during a battle with the Kazon, the Starfleet and Maquis crew were forced to merge for their projected seventy-five-year journey home. ()

Beginnings in the Delta Quadrant 

Voyager officially lost contact with Starfleet on stardate 48307.5. Because the Val Jean was destroyed in a battle against the Kazon, its entire surviving crew transferred to Voyager to embark on the journey home. Several key positions aboard the vessel, left vacant by heavy casualties, were filled by the new Maquis crew. Chakotay became Voyagers first officer, and B'Elanna Torres, despite a rocky relationship with then-acting chief engineer Lieutenant Joe Carey, became the new chief engineer. Tom Paris was also promoted to Helmsman and third officer. With no surviving medical staff, the EMH became the chief (and only) medical officer. His design parameters included a maximum operating time of 1,500 hours, but the engineering staff eventually upgraded his program sufficiently to overcome this hindrance. ()

Neelix remained on board and served the ship as a guide during the vessel's first two and a half years in the region, before they passed beyond the region of space that he was familiar with. He also became the ship's morale officer, chef, and eventually, ambassador. His Ocampan girlfriend, Kes, joined him and began medical training with The Doctor to become a nurse and field medic, allowing her to carry out medical treatment in cases where the holographic Doctor would be unavailable as well as treat more minor injuries so he wouldn't need to be called on for everything. She also converted one of the ship's cargo bays into an airponics bay to grow fruits and vegetables, which helped conserve power for Voyager by reducing the need for food replicators. ()

Conflict with the Kazon 

See also: Voyager-Kazon conflict

The destruction of the Caretaker's array, along with Captain Janeway's decision to withhold sharing any of Voyagers technology - in accordance with the Prime Directive - left the ship in poor standing with the Kazon who were desperately seeking to get their hands on some of the advanced Starfleet technology. To make matters worse, several Voyager crew members such as Seska and Michael Jonas - both former Maquis - did not agree with following Starfleet principles and directives, believing them to be not worth making an enemy of the Kazon and thus delaying and endangering their journey home. ()
 
In 2371, in an elaborate deception that involved secretly transferring replicator technology to the Kazon, Seska defected to the Kazon-Nistrim sect.

Much to the surprise of her former Maquis crew-mates - in particular Chakotay who had also been romantically involved with Seska - The Doctor discovered that she was in fact a Cardassian spy, surgically altered to appear Bajoran, assigned to infiltrate Chakotay's Maquis cell.

After fleeing the ship and joining the Kazon-Nistrim, Seska immediately began to reassert her Cardassian physiology and began supplying them with information about Voyager and training them in Cardassian battle tactics. Another crew member, Michael Jonas, remained on Voyager and started clandestinely supplying information to the Kazon-Nistrim sometime in 2372, before he was eventually discovered by Tom Paris and Neelix after a dangerous sting operation and killed when he attempted to sabotage the ship's weapons. ()

The year 2372 was marked by several devastating attacks by the Kazon. At one point Voyager was attacked four times in two weeks alone, losing three crewmembers and lowering morale. Commander Chakotay suggested forming an alliance with a few of the Kazon sects to ensure Voyagers safety through the region. A reluctant Captain Janeway eventually agreed to a meeting. The attempted collaboration, however, proved to be an almost futile mistake, making it impossible for Voyager to enter into any meaningful alliances with any of the Kazon sects. Hostilities between Voyager and the Kazon continued throughout the year. ()

At the end of the year, Voyager received a message from Seska saying that she had given birth to Chakotay's son and that the child was in danger of becoming a slave to the Kazon. The crew was immediately suspicious that Seska was luring Voyager into a trap, but rallied behind Chakotay and his responsibility to his son. After recovering Teirna, one of Seska's aids, Voyager set a course toward Kazon territory. Unfortunately the crew's initial skepticism proved to be correct: Seska's message was a setup, and during the ensuing battle, Voyager was captured and the crew was marooned on Hanon IV - a desolate planet in an early stage of its evolution. ()

Tom Paris had managed to escape the ship in a shuttle and reach a nearby Talaxian colony. With the help of the Talaxians, The Doctor, and Lon Suder, who had been mistakenly left behind during the capture of Voyager, Paris and the Talaxians were able to retake Voyager and rescue the crew on Hanon IV at the end of 2372. Seska was killed during the conflict, and her child was later found to be Maje Culluh's, Culluh taking the child with him. Voyager left Kazon space a short time later when it went to maximum warp while in a nearby nebula in 2373. ()

The journey of Voyager

Voyager and time travel 

Voyager had earned a reputation in the 29th century for being involved in a number of temporal incidents. One Starfleet officer of the era made note of how often the vessel showed up on the 's temporal sensors; the vessel's captain was even driven to madness due to Voyagers incursions. ()

In 2371, Voyager became trapped in a quantum singularity while responding to a distress call. It was discovered that the distress call had actually been sent by Voyager herself, and the crew was trying to rescue a time-delayed "reflection" of themselves. ()

Later that year, a wormhole leading to the Alpha Quadrant was discovered. While it was quickly found to be in an advanced state of decay and not suitable for travel, the crew was able to make contact with a Romulan ship on the other side. After finding a way of transporting the Romulan captain to Voyager, it was discovered that the Alpha Quadrant end of the wormhole was set twenty years in the past. The Romulan captain, Telek R'Mor, agreed to inform Starfleet of Voyagers location in 2371, but passed away in 2367, four years before he would have delivered the crew's messages. ()

A short time later, a future version of Kes arrived on Voyager, with the intent of handing the crew over to the Vidiians. During the ambush Kes helped set up, she was found trying to leave Voyager with her younger self and forced Captain Janeway to kill her. The younger Kes recorded a message to be played at some point in the future to make sure that the incident did not repeat itself. ()

In 2373, Voyager was attacked by a 29th century Federation vessel under the command of Captain Braxton. The ensuing battle led Voyager and the time ship to be pulled into the 20th century, with Voyager arriving in orbit of Earth in 1996, and Braxton arriving approximately thirty years earlier. During this time, Voyagers EMH acquired the mobile emitter that allowed him to exist outside of just sickbay and the holodeck which were equipped with holo-emitters. Another version of Braxton detected Voyager in 1996 and returned them to the 24th century Delta Quadrant. ()

While testing Voyagers newly-completed quantum slipstream drive in 2375, Seven of Nine received a set of phase corrections through her Borg implants. Instead of stabilizing the slipstream, however, they collapsed it. Harry Kim, who was ahead of Voyager in the  mapping the threshold, insisted that he did not send the message. Embedded in the transmission received by Seven was a Starfleet security code belonging to Harry Kim. In it was a message from an older version of himself telling the younger Kim that he had made a mistake fifteen years prior that cost the lives of the Voyager crew, and that if he was seeing the message then "all of that has changed." ()

One of the more complex temporal incidents encountered by the Voyager crew came in late-2375. Specifically, the incident occurred on stardate 52861.274 at spatial coordinates 87-Theta by 271. Voyager began experiencing numerous temporal paradoxes throughout the ship, with time passing more quickly in certain areas and slowing down in others. It was estimated that the temporal distortions would destroy the ship in a matter of hours. A few seconds before the explosion, two Starfleet officers from the future recovered Seven of Nine. She had been drafted by Captain Braxton and Lieutenant Ducane of the timeship  to prevent the explosion and capture the individual responsible for Voyagers destruction. It was discovered that the disruptor was planted aboard Voyager on stardate 49123.5621 at spatial coordinates 21 Alpha Prime by 936 Zeta. After traveling to this point in Voyagers history, the culprit was revealed to be a future version of Braxton, intent on taking revenge on Voyager for being responsible for so many temporal incursions that caused the need for him to go into rehabilitation a second time. Although Braxton was captured, several temporal paradoxes were created during the incident, such as Captain Janeway and Tuvok meeting Seven in 2372 instead of 2374. Lieutenant Ducane determined it necessary to "clean up" the timeline, and because Seven of Nine was unable to make any further time jumps without injuring herself, Captain Janeway was enlisted. She successfully captured Braxton seconds after initially setting foot on Voyager, preventing the paradoxes. Afterwards, Ducane decided not to wipe Seven and Janeway's memories of the events, but left them with orders to remember the Temporal Prime Directive and not to discuss the experience with anyone. ()

In 2376, Voyager visited a planet with a tachyon core, causing time to pass faster on the planet than the rest of galaxy. ()

In 2377, a temporal anomaly emitted a surge of energy that split Voyager into multiple time periods throughout the ship. The crew from various periods of the vessel's history were able to restore Voyager to temporal sync. Only Commander Chakotay retained memory of these events as the timeline had been reset to his time period, allowing him to prevent the energy surge. ()

Doppelgängers 
See also: Doppelgänger and Silver Blood

On two occasions, during their journey through the Delta Quadrant, Voyager and its crew duplicated.

The first occasion was in 2372 when, in an attempt to avoid going through Vidiian territory, the crew head into a plasma drift in an effort to escape the Vidiians. The plan was a success, but as Voyager was leaving the plasma drift the ship was hit repeatedly by a series of proton bursts seemingly out of nowhere that caused heavy damage to the ship and in the process the loss of Harry Kim and Ensign Samantha Wildman's newborn child, Kim being sucked out of the ship through a hull breach while the infant died to various medical complications. It was discovered that the bursts were coming from another Voyager occupying the same point in space as the now damaged Voyager due to a spatial scission. As both ships were drawing on the same antimatter reserves, their continued mutual existence was impossible, trying to recombine the ships failed, and although a spatial rift was discovered on deck 14 that allowed the two crews to travel between ships, it was soon deduced that the rift would become instable if more than ten people passed through it in either direction. The intact Voyager was later destroyed by its self-destruct after it was boarded by Vidiians. Before its destruction however, its Harry Kim and the newborn of Samantha Wildman - which had come through her birth safe and healthy - were transferred to the damaged Voyager. ()

On another occasion in 2374 a bio-mimetic lifeform, known as the Silver Blood, was discovered on a Y class planet when the crew where searching for sources of deuterium. After duplicating Tom Paris and Harry Kim, the crew discover the Silver Blood was a sentient lifeform. In exchange for letting Voyager go, along with a supply of deuterium, the crew gave their DNA so they could be copied. ()

However, by 2375 the Silver Blood Voyager crew had replicated their own Voyager. This crew attempted to journey back to the Alpha Quadrant as well, oblivious to their true origins. It was not until the use of an enhanced warp drive that they learned who they really were. The new warp drive was harmful to them and ultimately led to the destruction of the Silver Blood Voyager and its crew. ()

The Borg 
See also: Borg-Species 8472 War

Although the Delta Quadrant remained mostly unexplored by the latter half of the 24th century, one thing that was known about the region was that it was home to the Borg. The Voyager crew knew the day would come when they would come face to face with the Collective.

The first indications that Voyager was approaching Borg space came in 2373, when the remains of a Borg drone were discovered on the Sakari homeworld. A short time later, a derelict Borg cube was discovered adrift in the Nekrit Expanse. ()

Voyager finally entered Borg space at the end of the year, however, instead of facing assimilation, the crew found themselves on the sidelines of a brutal war between the Collective and an extra-dimensional alien species known only by their Borg designation of Species 8472. After determining that Species 8472 represented a significant threat to all life in the Milky Way Galaxy, Captain Janeway decided to form an unprecedented alliance with the Borg in order to drive the aliens back into their realm. In exchange for safe passage through Borg space, Janeway agreed to help the Collective construct a weapon capable of defeating the invading aliens. The Borg assigned a representative, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, to work with the Voyager crew directly.

Following the successful final confrontation with Species 8472 in their native realm, the Borg betrayed Voyager and attempted to assimilate the vessel and its crew through Seven of Nine. The crew had prepared for this eventuality and managed to disable the drone. Seven of Nine was permanently severed from the Collective and joined the Voyager crew for the remainder of their journey. ()

The next significant encounter with the Borg came in 2375, when Voyager was attacked by a small Borg probe. Captain Janeway intended only to disable the vessel and steal a transwarp coil, but ended up destroying it by accident when Harry Kim transported a photon torpedo into an area near the power matrix. After analyzing several recovered data nodes, the crew was able to conduct a successful raid of a damaged Borg sphere and get away with a working transwarp coil, although Seven of Nine was captured during the operation. An away team led by Janeway was eventually able to recover her. Using the coil, Voyager was able to shorten its journey home by several years before the coil burned out. ()

In 2376, another derelict cube was found where all the adult drones had been killed by a virus. The Voyager crew was able to liberate four adolescent drones, Icheb, Mezoti, and the twins Rebi and Azan, who had been spared the ultimate fate of the virus. The twins were eventually returned to their people, who also agreed to give Mezoti a home, however Icheb remained with Voyager throughout the remainder of its journey and intended to apply to Starfleet Academy. ()

In 2377, the Borg became aware of Unimatrix Zero. The Borg Queen immediately began to research a way to destroy the realm, believing it to be a threat to the Collective. The drones occupying Unimatrix Zero found a way to contact Seven of Nine, who had previously been able to access the region during her time as drone, and through she was able to convince Captain Janeway to assist them. Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres were inoculated with a neural suppressant and allowed to be physically assimilated in order to plant a virus into the Collective. The virus liberated the drones of Unimatrix Zero from the hive mind, allowing a resistance movement to form against the Borg. ()

Contact with Starfleet

The Pathfinder Project 

Voyager had been declared "officially lost" by 2373. Fourteen months later, Seven of Nine detected a large communications network with a sensor range capable of reaching the outskirts of the Alpha Quadrant. A Federation vessel was detected in range of one of the farthest relay stations, and in lieu of failed attempts to contact the vessel via standard hails, The Doctor was transmitted to make contact, since his program would not degrade in transit.

Upon boarding the , The Doctor found the crew dead and the ship in the hands of the Romulan military. With the help of the Prometheus EMH, The Doctor was able to return the vessel to Starfleet custody and finally report on Voyagers situation. He told Starfleet Command everything that had happened to the Voyager crew and was returned to the vessel with a message for the crew: "You are no longer alone." ()

Starfleet began the Pathfinder Project, a division of Starfleet with the goal of establishing contact with Voyager and finding a way to bring the lost vessel home. The team was led by Commander Pete Harkins and overseen by Admiral Owen Paris, but the driving force behind the project was Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, formerly of the . Thanks to Barclay's efforts, contact with Voyager was reestablished in late 2376 and regular contact was maintained for the duration of the vessel's journey. The project revolutionized long-range communications; major milestones included the ability to send monthly transmissions and eventually establish two-way live visual communication at a distance of 30,000 light years, even if only for eleven minutes a day. ()

The Equinox 

In 2375, Voyager responded to a Federation distress call from the starship  commanded by Captain Rudolph Ransom. The vessel had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker as well, and had been suffering attacks by unknown nucleogenic lifeforms. Unknown to the Voyager crew, the Equinox crew had been performing illegal experiments on the aliens in an effort to enhance their warp drive and return home sooner. Upon discovering this, Captain Janeway had the Equinox crew arrested, but they soon escaped. Janeway began a manhunt for Ransom, much to the dissatisfaction of Chakotay, who believed that Janeway was crossing the line. He convinced her to negotiate a cease fire with the aliens, but was relieved of duty for opposing her harsh attitude towards Ransom. Eventually Voyager caught up with the Equinox. Ransom, in a last minute change of heart, decided to surrender to Janeway. Unfortunately, his first officer, Lieutenant Maxwell Burke, had other ideas, and relieved his captain of duty. Ransom and chief engineer Ensign Marla Gilmore managed to beam the Equinox personnel to Voyager, but were unable to save Burke and the rest of the bridge crew. After dropping the shields around the warp core, the aliens caused a warp core breach, destroying the Equinox.

The five surviving Equinox crew members were stripped of rank and ordered to serve as crewmen aboard Voyager, under close supervision with limited privileges. ()

Official mission 
In 2378, Voyager was given its first official assignment since its entrapment in the Delta Quadrant seven years earlier. Captain Janeway's orders were to locate and retrieve an old Earth space-probe, Friendship 1, that was launched in 2067 with the directive of contacting new species. Starfleet had lost contact with the probe around 2248 but its last known location and heading had projected the probe to be somewhere near Voyagers location.

The probe was located on a highly irradiated world whose inhabitants had taken advantage of the information contained in the probe's database, with disastrous results. The survivors held the Voyager crew responsible for the current condition of their planet and people, and killed Lieutenant Joe Carey during a hostage situation that arose when an away team was sent to retrieve the probe. After rescuing the away team and repairing the damage to the planet's atmosphere, Voyager took the probe's remains into its cargo bay and resumed a course for the Alpha Quadrant. ()

Shortening the journey 

Over the course of Voyagers journey throughout the Delta Quadrant, the vessel encountered many technologies and anomalies that shortened the vessel's return to the Alpha Quadrant.

In 2374, following the conclusion of the war between the Borg and Species 8472, Kes began to experience after effects following her communications with the aliens. She began evolving towards a higher state of being, but the process proved to be dangerous to Voyager so she decided to leave to protect the ship. As her final gift to the Voyager crew, Kes propelled the ship over 9,500 light years closer to Earth, eliminating ten years off the crew's journey. ()

Later in 2374, Seven of Nine installed the new astrometrics lab in Voyager. Because of the Borg's more advanced technology and detailed knowledge of the Delta Quadrant, Seven plotted a faster course back to Earth. She commented that the new course would trim five years off the journey. () 

At the end of that year, Voyager encountered the , a vessel allegedly sent by Starfleet Command to bring the Voyager crew home. In reality, the Dauntless was part of an elaborate trap laid out by the alien Arturis to exact revenge on Captain Janeway, for what he saw as her role in the Borg's assimilation of his world. The Dauntless was equipped with a quantum slipstream drive, a highly advanced propulsion system similar to Borg transwarp conduits. Lieutenant Torres was able to modify Voyager to be able to make use of this technology temporarily in order to rescue Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine from Arturis aboard the Dauntless. After their rescue, Voyager was able travel three hundred light years closer to the Alpha Quadrant before it collapsed. Several months later, the crew revisited this technology and was able to travel another ten thousand light years before the slipstream dispersed. The technology was deemed too dangerous for use after this occurrence and was dismantled. ()

In early 2375, Voyager entered an area of space known as . The region contained no star systems and high levels of theta radiation did not allow light from any stars beyond the area to be seen from within. A spatial vortex leading to the other side of this region cut two years and twenty-five hundred light years off of Voyagers journey. ()

Captain Janeway estimated that avoiding conflicts with the Borg added two years onto the crew's journey. However, in mid-2375, the crew stole a transwarp coil from a Borg sphere that allowed Voyager to travel twenty thousand light years, which cut fifteen years off Voyagers trip home. ()

In 2376, Voyager used a "catapult" constructed by an alien known as Tash to cut three years off the journey home. ()

Q, grateful for Captain Janeway's assistance in straightening out his son's behavior, provided Janeway with a route that would take a few years off of Voyagers journey in 2378. ()

The return home 
 

In 2378, high levels of neutrino emissions consistent with wormholes were detected inside a nebula. Voyager immediately set a course, only to discover it overrun with Borg. Captain Janeway intended to continue the journey home by conventional means, until a future version of the captain from the year 2404 arrived. This Admiral Janeway provided Voyager with advanced weapons (transphasic torpedoes) and ablative generators that proved highly resistant to Borg weaponry. 

With this new technology, Voyager returned to the nebula in force. However, upon the discovery of a Borg transwarp hub at the center of the nebula, Captain Janeway withdrew and immediately began plans to destroy it. Admiral Janeway at first objected to this but a change of heart encouraged her to cooperate with her younger self. The plan called for Admiral Janeway to be assimilated by the Borg Queen herself. The admiral was carrying a neurolytic pathogen, which immediately infected the Queen and caused her to lose control of the transwarp hub's manifold shielding, allowing Voyager to destroy the hub from the inside. The pathogen continued to spread throughout the Collective, resulting in the destruction of Unimatrix 01 and the death of the Queen and Admiral Janeway. Unfortunately, a single Borg sphere that was still in contact with the Borg Queen before her death intercepted Voyager while traveling through the collapsing hub. After allowing Voyager to be brought inside the sphere, Tuvok fired a transphasic torpedo, destroying the sphere as Voyager emerged victorious in front of a Federation fleet in the Alpha Quadrant less than a light year from Earth. The excited fleet then escorted Voyager the rest of the short distance to Earth.

Voyager spent a total of seven years in the Delta Quadrant before returning to Federation space and being recovered by Starfleet. The original estimate of the time needed for the return trip had been seventy-five years but intervention by numerous alien races, time travel, spatial anomalies, and the acquisition of new technologies considerably shortened the journey. ()

Legacy  
Voyagers fame inspired a set of collectible s depicting the ship and individual members of the command crew, which Ensign Brad Boimler collected in 2381. ()

In 2401, the Starfleet Academy grounds commemorated Voyagers service under Captain Janeway's command on a plaque alongside other historic vessels, describing it as "one of the most storied starships in the history of Starfleet". ()

By the 32nd century, the  (of a re-inspired ) was the eleventh starship to bear the name Voyager. ()

First contacts 
See also: Delta Quadrant species encountered by Voyager

Voyager made hundreds of first contacts, more than any other Federation starship since the era of James T. Kirk and the original . Captain Janeway credited the distinction to being "the only Federation starship within thirty thousand light years." (, )

Technical data

Physical arrangement 
With fifteen decks, a length of 343 meters, a crew complement capacity of approximately 160, and a mass of 700,000 metric tons, Voyager was only about half the size of the  starships introduced in the 2350s. However, what the  starship lacked in physical size she made up for with technological advancements: Voyager boasted some of the most advanced sensor equipment in the Federation fleet and was capable of reaching a sustainable cruise velocity of warp factor 9.975. She was further equipped with bio-neural circuitry that contained gel-packs with bio-neural s that organized information more efficiently and sped up response time. Its computer processor was capable of simultaneous access to 47 million data channels, transluminal processing at 575 trillion calculations per nanosecond and operational temperature margins from 10 Kelvin to 1,790 Kelvin. (). The ship had 256 rooms plus the holodeck. ()

Ship's directory 
This contains USS Voyager (NCC-74656)-specific information; for more general information, see Intrepid-class decks.
 
Janeway's private dining room: Deck 2, cabin 125 Alpha ()
Lyndsay Ballard and Harry Kim Officers' quarters: Deck 2 (); also Pablo Baytart's quarters ()
Captain Kathryn Janeway's quarters: Deck 3
Susan Nicoletti's quarters: Deck 4 () and Jor's quarters: Deck 4 ()
 Tom Paris' quarters: Deck 4 ()
Ensign 's quarters: Deck 6 ()
Tuvok's quarters: Deck 6, ()
Ayala's quarters: Deck 7 ()
Lieutenant Hargrove's quarters: Deck 7 ()
Kes' quarters: Deck 8 ()
B'Elanna Torres' quarters: Deck 9 Section 12 ()
Samantha Wildman's quarters: Deck 10 ()

Defense systems 

Like many Federation starships of its time, Voyager was armed with phasers and type-6 photon torpedoes and protected by a deflector shield system. The vessel's torpedo launchers were compatible with quantum torpedoes as well, with some modification. Additionally, Voyager carried spatial charges and tricobalt devices, the latter of which were not normally carried on Starfleet vessels at the time. ()

Shortly before the vessel's return to the Alpha Quadrant in 2378, Voyager was upgraded with ablative generators and transphasic torpedoes, both of which were brought back in time by a future version of Kathryn Janeway from the year 2404. These new systems drastically increased Voyagers combat capabilities against the Borg; Borg weapons had a difficult time penetrating the hull armor and entire Borg cubes were destroyed with only one or two transphasic torpedoes each. ()

Unique characteristics

Borg enhancements 
Following Captain Janeway's brief alliance with the Borg in 2373-74, Voyager gained access to a large amount of Borg technology. During this alliance, the Borg equipped Voyager with modified torpedoes which were armed with collaboratively modified nanoprobes capable of destroying a Species 8472 bio-ship with a single shot. The modifications the Borg made to the power relays on Deck 8 were allowed to remain intact after B'Elanna Torres noted that they worked better with the Borg improvements. Additionally, an astrometrics lab was constructed with Borg-enhanced sensors by the former drone, Seven of Nine, and Ensign Harry Kim. A 29th century Borg drone encountered in 2375 was able to further enhance Voyagers defensive systems, albeit in a limited manner, in order to escape from an attacking Borg sphere. Voyagers engines were also compatible with Borg transwarp technology: in 2375 a transwarp coil was used to cut fifteen years off of their journey back to Earth. ()

Astrometrics lab 

In 2374, Ensign Harry Kim and Seven of Nine collaborated to construct Voyagers astrometrics lab. The lab's sensors measured the radiative flux of up to three billion stars simultaneously, and the computer would then calculate Voyagers position relative to the center of the galaxy, making the stellar mapping technology ten times more accurate than what the vessel had been using previously. This new technology was first used to calculate a new route to the Alpha Quadrant that would eliminate five years from Voyagers journey home. The astrometrics lab was located on deck 8. ()

Emergency Command Hologram 
Throughout Voyagers time in the Delta Quadrant, the crew encountered several situations that left them incapacitated and unable to control the ship. Voyagers chief medical officer, The Doctor, proposed an extension to his holoprogram in 2376 in response to this that would allow him to control the ship in such a situation – essentially functioning as a "backup captain". Despite some initial reluctance from Captain Janeway, the extension was completed by 2377 and put into use when the crew was abducted by the . This prevented Voyager from being captured and allowed for the eventual recovery of the crew. ()

Embarked craft

Shuttlecraft 
Shuttlecraft proved to be rather versatile, if not expendable, benefactors of Voyagers return to the Alpha Quadrant. Along with the transporter, shuttlecraft were one of the two most common conventional modes of transportation to and from Voyager. ()

Shuttles were generally used for planetary landings when transporters were inoperable or unable to penetrate a planet's atmosphere. () They were also commonly used for scouting missions, conducting search and rescue operations, or conducting trade missions. (, , )

It was not uncommon for shuttles to be used as utility vehicles, such as was the case when a Kazon shuttle was lodged into Voyagers hull, and a shuttlecraft was required to extract it from the starship. () Another time, several shuttles were used to remove the warp coils from Voyager as the ship underwent a maintenance overhaul. ()

Shuttlecraft, life support, and the holodecks were unique for being the three independent power sources found aboard Voyager. () When Voyager became trapped in "the Void" in 2377, the fact was taken into account in deciding their usefulness when considering using their warp cores to augment power on Voyager. ()

Shuttlecraft were also sometimes used when it was necessary to avoid the immediate detection Voyager would receive were it to enter a star system, as was the case in 2371, during a visit to , which was located in a war zone. However, when it was deemed that "the stakes are too high to send a shuttlecraft" back to Banea, Janeway opted to visit the planet with Voyager herself, stating that "I want to show our flag to make it clear we mean business." ()

Later in 2374, it was determined that by re-calibrating a shuttlecraft's shields to match the frequency of the B'omar perimeter grid dues to its smaller energy signature. Since Voyager was "too big to hide," it was determined that "a shuttlecraft with the proper shield modulation and its engines powered down could drift right through without so much as a peep." ()

With their advantages, these shuttles also came with their vulnerabilities.

In other cases when planetary visits were deemed too hazardous for a shuttlecraft, Voyager itself would land on a planet's surface. This was the case in 2371, when Voyager discovered the class L former-Briori colony planet, which had a lot of trinimbic interference in the upper atmosphere. Since they could neither transport through, nor use their shuttlecraft safely navigate the currents of the planet, Voyager performed its first planetary landing. ()

When Harry Kim was held behind a polaron/tachyon grid keeping them from reaching the planet Taresia in 2373, Chakotay noted that the crew aboard Voyager was "to poke some holes in [it], but they're too small to squeeze Voyager through." When Janeway considered taking a shuttle through, Chakotay doubted one would make it, and if so, he didn't think it could handle the Taresian patrol ship on the other side. () Years later, when Voyager was trapped in the Void, Neelix offered to take one of the shuttles to scavenge for supplies, namely deuterium, however it was deemed by Tuvok that a shuttle would be "too easy a target" by the nearby marauders. ()

Later that year, Vorik, who was under the influence of pon farr, disabled all communications, transporters and shuttles aboard Voyager, while the ship was in orbit of the Sakari colony planet, preventing the away team to return to be Voyager. ()

Following Voyagers defeat of Species 8472, with the assistance of Seven of Nine, Janeway instructed the Borg drone to fulfilled the Borg's end of their agreement and tell the Collective that they expect safe passage through Borg space, and offered Seven a shuttlecraft to use to rendezvous with the nearest Borg ship. ()

During the "Year of Hell" that was experienced aboard Voyager in an alternate timeline, Chakotay considered breaking the crew up and leaving Voyager behind, figuring that their chance of safely traversing Krenim space would increase setting the Voyagers escape pods and shuttles, each on their own course to the other side, thus increasing their odds of survival. ()

Spacecraft inventories 
Voyager carried aboard several Type 6, Type 8, and Class 2 shuttlecraft during her journey through the Delta Quadrant. (, et al.)

In other cases, shuttle modifications were carried out on Deck 11, as was the case in 2373, when Ahni Jetal and Tom Paris kept busy "modifying one of the shuttles, making it more maneuverable and more cool." () Other shuttle enhancements include the installation of transwarp drive and coaxial warp drive. ()

In times when resources there was a surplus in the ship's power reserve, the crew was capable of replicating the alloys needed for creating new design components, which when utilizing their stock spare parts from storage, they could construct a new shuttle in as little as a week, such as was the case with the construction of the Delta Flyer. () Examples of surplus spare parts included EPS conduit, broadband sensor matrixes, and tactical data modules. ()

From 2371 to 2378, Voyager transported Neelix's shuttle, the Baxial, which was used in several instances where discretion was required. ()

In 2375, the uniquely designed  was designed, constructed, and carried aboard Voyager, followed by her successor in 2377. ()

As of 2376, despite several losses, Chakotay noted that Voyager had "a full complement of shuttles, not to mention the Delta Flyer," when Tom Paris prospected acquiring the alien shuttle . Nevertheless, they purchased it for three used power cells and Paris' jukebox, and though they had it for only a short time, its restoration consumed many of Voyagers spare parts, deemed to be emergency supplies. ()

On various occasions, Voyager had stowed others' craft in her shuttlebay, including Jetrel's Haakonian shuttle in 2371, Vel's Akritirian cargo vessel and Arridor's Ferengi shuttle in 2373, Kashyk's Devore scout ship and Y'Sek's Hazari shuttle in 2375, Jhet'leya's Kobali shuttle in 2376, Irina's ship in 2377, and Admiral Janeway's SC-4 in 2378. (, , , )

List of craft 
 #01 - 
 #04 -  (I) and  (II)
 #05 - Sacajawea
 Aeroshuttle
 
 Baxial  
  (I)
  (II)
 
 Unnamed shuttlecraft
 Unnamed Class 2 shuttles
 Unnamed Type 6 shuttlecraft
 Unnamed Type 8 shuttlecraft

Command crew 
 Commanding officer
 Kathryn Janeway (2371–2378)
 Tuvok (2372) 
 Chakotay (2374, 2377) 
 First officer
 Cavit (2371)
 Chakotay (2371–2378)
 Tom Paris (2377)  
 Security chief
 Tuvok (2371–2378)
 Operations officer
 Harry Kim (2371-2378)
 Chief engineer
 Unnamed chief engineer (2371)
 Joe Carey (2371) 
 B'Elanna Torres (2371-2378)
 Flight control officer
 Stadi (2371)
 Tom Paris (2371-2378)
  (2372)
 Pablo Baytart (2372)
 Culhane (2375)
  (2375)
 Ayala (2378)
 Astrometrics 
 Seven of Nine (2374-2378)
 Chief medical officer
 Unnamed chief medical officer (2371)
 The Doctor (2371–2378)
 Science officer
 Samantha Wildman (2371–2378)
 Morale officer/Ambassador/Chef
 Neelix (2371–2378)
 Nurse
 Unnamed Vulcan nurse (2371)
 Kes  (2371–2374)
 Tom Paris (2371, 2374–2378)

See also: USS Voyager personnel

Crew

Complement 

Voyager was launched with a crew complement of 141 stable members, to which was added Tom Paris and probably other new crewmembers specialized to fulfill the first mission in the Badlands, since Captain Janeway said "I started with 153 crew and lost my doctor". () Her initial short assignment did not call for a counselor to be assigned. ()

The initial transfer to the Delta Quadrant was costly for the crew, over a dozen crew members were killed, including the original first officer, chief engineer, the entire medical staff, and the transporter chief. However, with the addition of the Maquis, along with Neelix and Kes, the crew complement rose to 152 in late 2371. ()

In 2372, Kes stated that there were "over 150" on board, which she called "hardly barren", while disputing 's observation that her life on Voyager was "a cold and barren place." () The same year,  Voyager gained the former Q, Quinn as a crewmember, who committed suicide a short time later. () Another addition, this time permanent, joined the ship with the birth of Naomi Wildman. () 

In 2373 it was twice stated that Voyagers crew was now at 148. ()

In 2374, Voyager lost Kes, but gained the former Borg Seven of Nine. () Janeway later noted to Seven that at the time there were 150 aboard ship. () This number remained constant through the end of the the year. ()

The following year, after Voyagers encounter with Species 8472, who were impersonating the appearances of other species, The Doctor checked each member of the crew to confirm their identity. Following the confirmation of Tuvok and Chakotay's identities, The Doctor acknowledged that he had "two down, 125 to go." () Later that year, it was stated that Voyagers crew was at 152. () Between those two instances, Neelix observed that at one point when Voyager had lost several systems, it only had "four functioning lavatories for a ship of 150 people," and that "needless to say, lines are beginning to form." () While mid year, the Borg identified only 143 lifeforms aboard Voyager. () Later yet, the same year, Voyagers crew count had dropped to 146. ()

In 2376, Voyager absorbed the five surviving crew members from the starship : Noah Lessing, Marla Gilmore, James Morrow, Brian Sofin, and Angelo Tassoni. () Sometime thereafter, both Reginald Barclay and Tincoo noted that crew size was at 150. () Later the same year, they gained four more repatriated former Borg drones, Icheb, Mezoti, and the twins, Rebi and Azan. () 

In 2377, following the departure of Mezoti, Rebi and Azan, it was still noted that Voyager had a crew of 150. () In all several species were represented on Voyager, including Humans, Vulcans, Bolians, Betazoids, Bajorans, Klingons, Ktarians – all native to the Alpha/Beta Quadrant. Of the numerous Delta Quadrant species represented, were the Talaxians, Ocampa, Norcadians, and Wysanti. Icheb, a Brunali, was the only Delta Quadrant native to return with Voyager to Earth. () In mid-2377, Lt. Torres stated that there were 140 Humans aboard Voyager, i.e., the overwhelming majority of the crew was at least partially Human. () Later,  Voyagers crew count was stated to be 141. () 

In early 2378, Neelix indicated that he had a hat with "146 sequentially numbered isolinear chips, one for every member of the crew" to make a call home. () Between then and Voyagers arrival back back at Earth, at least two crewmembers were taken off the roster, Joe Carey and Neelix. ()

Although Commander Chakotay believed that Voyager could only operate effectively with a crew of at least one hundred, various circumstances have shown this, at least temporarily, to not be the case. When circumstances required it, the ship has been able to operate effectively with even a single crew member. ()

In 2374, Seven of Nine was forced to maintain the vessel alone for several days while the crew was in stasis while passing through a nebula. Although she did have The Doctor for assistance for the first couple of weeks, eventually the nebula caused his program to go offline. ()

In 2377, The Doctor as the Emergency Command Hologram was able to engage several Quarren patrol ships while the crew was brainwashed into working for various Quarren employers on their homeworld, although he was subsequently forced to retreat to a nebula to repair the damage the ship had sustained – including the loss of life support – until assistance arrived in the form of the returned  and Chakotay, Harry Kim, and Neelix, who had been away on a diplomatic mission when the ship was attacked. ()

The Maquis 
With the destruction of the Val Jean during their first days in the Delta Quadrant, Starfleet and Maquis crew members were first forced to cooperate with one another to get their missing crew members back and then to merge aboard Voyager to embark on their decades long journey home. Captain Janeway granted the Maquis provisional field commissions with many filling the roles left vacant by the vessels losses in the initial transfer to the Delta Quadrant. Of the several key positions on Voyager that were filled by former Maquis crew members, that of first officer was filled by Chakotay and the position of chief engineer went to B'Elanna Torres. By 2377, about one quarter of Voyagers crew consisted of former Maquis members. 

Early in the ship's journey, Lieutenant Tuvok believed that with so many Maquis on board there was a serious risk of mutiny and so designed a holodeck training program to prepare for such an event. Despite Tuvok's concerns, however, the opposite proved to be the case and the two crews, for the most part, integrated well and so he deleted the program. When it was accidentally uncovered in 2373, it was treated as entertainment and none of the Maquis took offense at the subject matter, even after Tuvok revealed the impetus behind it.

However, such incidents such as Seska defecting to the Kazon-Nistrim and Michael Jonas secretly providing information about Voyager to them, along with Lon Suder murdering crewman Frank Darwin had serious repercussions for Voyager early in its journey. After a while, Captain Janeway herself stopped distinguishing between the two crews as Maquis and Starfleet and began thinking of them simply as members of her crew, to the point that she was offended when Admiral  requested their "status" in 2377 and when Chakotay made a distrinction between the two the same year. () 

Although most of the Maquis crew members integrated well into a Starfleet command structure, some had more difficulty; this caused Tuvok to organize a "boot camp" to get the insubordinate Maquis in line and familiar with Starfleet protocols. ()

News of the Maquis' slaughter at the hands of the Dominion in 2373 took a heavy emotional toll on many of the former Val Jean crew, especially in the case of B'Elanna Torres, who fell into a deep emotional chasm over the death of her Maquis companions and engaged in some rather strange and even self-destructive behavior that began to concern the crew. ()

Consequences of isolation 
Due to being cut off from the rest of the Federation, Voyager was sometimes forced into complex situations that would have been far more straightforward had they remained in the Alpha Quadrant. The lack of resources and allies forced Janeway to make various moral compromises early in their journey, such as deciding to allow the Vidiians to leave unchallenged even after one of them had stolen Neelix's lungs as she had no way to enforce justice on the species by herself, or contemplate an alliance with the Kazon despite their conflicted encounters so far. However, as the journey progressed, Voyager began to form a more positive reputation of itself, due to such actions as their willingness to sacrifice the ship to stop the Dreadnought missile and save a planet. Although keeping to the Prime Directive in terms of not donating advanced technology to less-developed cultures, Voyager often engaged in trade with other races and became more involved in local affairs than might have been permitted under the strictest definition of the Prime Directive, such as preventing apparent asteroid strikes that the local planet was not equipped to deal with where the Prime Directive might have discouraged such intervention before they learned that the asteroids were artificial creations, even if Janeway never completely disregarded it. The inability to rely on Federation resources for support prompted the crew to initiate a system of "replicator rations" to conserve energy - which also came to act as a form of "currency" on board - while trading with some other planets for key materials, and at least one occasion saw the ship run dangerously low on deuterium fuel until the dramatic encounter with the Silver Blood on a Y class planet. 

On a more ship-specific note, the ship's crew formed a different dynamic to the usual style for a Starfleet ship. While the most obvious consequence of this was the fact that the crew had to stick together with no option to transfer to other ships based on performance quality, a more subtle issue was caused by the immediate need to rely on the Emergency Medical Holographic program as a full-time chief medical officer after the existing members of the medical staff were killed in the transition to the Delta Quadrant and no true replacements were available among the crew. While there was some difficulties early on due to the EMH's awkward bedside manner and the crew's own tendency to treat him as equipment rather than a person, the efforts of the Ocampan Kes encouraged others to treat him as a person rather than an object, even before circumstances required them to rely on the EMH – who they came to know simply as "The Doctor" – in crises beyond medical emergencies. While the crew occasionally forgot about The Doctor during emergency briefings unless medical insight was explicitly required, the senior staff soon made the effort to include him in staff briefings via the conference room's screen where possible, his involvement being made easier when he acquired the mobile emitter. By the time the ship made contact with Earth, The Doctor had little hesitation in introducing himself as a Starfleet officer rather than just a hologram, and the crew made it clear that The Doctor should consider himself part of their number despite originating as essentially a piece of equipment designed to serve a key function, accepting his desire to explore himself creatively and even engaging in a long-range legal hearing to confirm that he should be accorded status as a person. In cultural terms, the crew also began to explore more independent options to sustain themselves, such as setting up means of growing their own food to help conserve their available resources or creating their own holoprograms for entertainment as they wouldn't have access to the latest resources from the Federation. 

Options were considered regarding the long-term necessity of a possible "generational ship", and relationship regulations were adjusted to compensate for the isolation, but despite the senior staff acknowledging this issue, only two children were actually born on the ship throughout its journey, one of whom had been conceived before the ship was lost and the other born just as they returned to Earth.

Appendices

See also 
 Delta Quadrant species encountered by Voyager
 USS Voyager dedication plaque
 Year of Hell
 USS Voyager prototype
 Novel series
 Comics:
 Marvel Comic series
 Wildstorm Comic series

Appearances

Background information 
The suggestion that this vessel would be commissioned and taken on its first mission in the  pilot episode  was notated in a compilation of development notes by Jeri Taylor, dated  (even before the ship itself, the series, or the episode had been named). (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, p. 186)

The first series bible for Star Trek: Voyager described the starship Voyager as being "smaller, sleeker and more advanced than the . It holds a crew of some two hundred, and does not have families on board."

Ronald D. Moore felt that, as the setting for a Star Trek series, Voyager wasn't sufficiently removed from the aesthetic of  and the Enterprise-D. During a couple of months in which he was hired to write for the series, Moore postulated that Voyager should undergo drastic changes while it was journeying home. "I kept saying, 'The ship should be unrecognizable as a starship by the time it gets home,' that by the time it got home, it should have had its own culture, its own customs, and the ship should have been, like, customized for everybody and for many purposes [....] It just wouldn't look like a starship any more. I couldn't sell anybody on that, though." ( audio commentary, TNG Season 6 Blu-ray)

One idea which Michael Okuda and others discussed, early in the series run of Star Trek: Voyager, was that the starship Voyager might have rows of plants growing in hydroponic gardens throughout the ship. This notion was motivated by the fact Voyager was so distant from the Alpha Quadrant and because the vessel's systems might fail. Though the regular writing staff or the producers never fully embraced the concept, Okuda suspected having many hydroponic gardens aboard the ship would have been fun. Ron Moore agreed, saying it was among the ideas he wanted when he was assigned to write for the series. ( audio commentary, TNG Season 6 Blu-ray)

The model of Voyager (Lot #357) was sold at the 40 Years of Star Trek: The Collection auction on  for US$132,000 including the buyer's premium (the winning bid was US$110,000). The winner of the lot, a man from Leicester, England, was interviewed in The History Channel's documentary Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier. He was also the winner of the  model.

A schematic lot of Voyagers bridge and engineering sets was sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay  as well as an engineering display graphic which includes the labels deuterium supply, matter reactant injector, antimatter supply, magnetic construction segment, dilithium crystal articulation frame, warp flow sensors, emergency override, intercoolers, dilithium chamber, magnetic quench block, and gas combiner. 

According to Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 82), Voyager traveled three hundred light years in 2371.

Apocrypha 
In the  series, looking at events after Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant, all characters were promoted after their return to the Alpha Quadrant, with Chakotay becoming Voyagers new captain, Tom Paris his first officer, and Harry Kim the new chief of security. Captain  briefly takes command of Voyager after Janeway is assimilated and killed during a Borg assault on Earth in Before Dishonor and Chakotay resigns in grief, but he returns to take command of Voyager in time to participate in "Project: Full Circle", where Voyager returns to the Delta Quadrant with a fleet of other ships using Starfleet's perfected Quantum slipstream drive. Janeway resumes command of the fleet when she is resurrected by Q's son and Kes in the novel The Eternal Tide.

The USS Voyager makes several appearances in the video game Star Trek Online. Set in the early 25th century about twenty to thirty years after Voyagers return from the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is under the command of now-rear admiral (lower half) Tuvok and assists the player in two missions, including responding to a large-scale attack by Species 8472 on the Earth Spacedock and Qo'noS.

In an alternate timeline featured in the Star Trek: Myriad Universes novella A Gutted World, Voyager was never stranded in the Delta Quadrant. It was destroyed by the Cardassians using phased polaron beam weapons obtained from the Dominion in the Dorvan sector in 2373.

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