Read an Excerpt
FOREWORD
The U.S.S. Voyager has never had a technical manual of its own so we’re delighted to be able to present the first in-depth guide to Captain Janeway’s ship. The show was conceived when STAR TREK had been back on air for almost seven seasons and after the launch of DEEP SPACE NINE. As such, it built on the work that was done on TNG, looking for ways to take it further. The writers described Voyager as looking like a bullet – it was a much smaller ship than the Enterprise-D and since it was stranded in the Delta Quadrant it would face very different challenges. The design team worked tirelessly to make the ship and the show look more advanced than its predecessors, with Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda paying particular attention to how everything worked. As a result nothing you see on VOYAGER was an accident. In an age when electronic tablets and video conferencing have become commonplace, some of the ship’s technology, such as the bio-neural gel packs, still seems futuristic, and the upgraded warp drive and transporters are still belong to a dream of the future.
On the pages that follow you will find isometric drawings of all the key locations, with detailed artworks of the bridge stations, and illustrations showing uniforms, phasers, tricorders and Borg implants. You’ll see areas of a ship such as astrometrics that had never been a regular part of a STAR TREK TV show before, a detailed account of a warp core ejection and you’ll find CG renders of Voyager itself, and the Delta Flyer.
As with the other volumes in this series our hope is that the book will give you a senses of Voyager as a real place – somewhere that the crew and the viewers called home for seven years as they made their incredible journey from the Delta Quadrant to Earth.
OPERATIONAL HISTORY
Thrown 70,000 light years across space into the midst of the Delta Quadrant, the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager found themselves exploring a region of the galaxy where no Starfleet vessel had gone before.
Launched in 2371 on stardate 48038.5, the U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656 went missing during its first mission under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, and was officially classified as lost by Starfleet in 2373. The ship’s fate remained unknown until 2374, when Voyager was able to transmit a status report from the depths of uncharted space.
Investigating the disappearance of a Maquis ship in a region known as the Badlands, the U.S.S. Voyager had been intercepted by an immense tetryon beam and a polarized magnetic variation displacement wave that had propelled the ship 70,000 light years across the galaxy. An entity known as the Caretaker, who had been abducting ships from across the galaxy using a powerful array, was responsible for drawing both the Maquis vessel and Voyager to the Delta Quadrant. However, the Caretaker died before both ships could be returned home, and Janeway’s decision to destroy the array rather than allow its technology to fall into the hands of a warlike species, the Kazon, resulted in Voyager being stranded in an unexplored region of the galaxy, some 75 years distant from the Alpha Quadrant if traveling at maximum warp.
LOST IN SPACE
With the Maquis ship destroyed and several casualties among the Voyager crew, including both the first officer and chief medical officer, the survivors of both crews agreed to operate as one, with medical care provided by Voyager’s EMH (Emergency Medical Hologram). A local Talaxian, Neelix, and his Ocampan partner, Kes, joined the crew as their guides through the Delta Quadrant.
The first few years of Voyager’s journey were dominated both by ongoing clashes with the Kazon and between the ship’s Starfleet and Maquis crew members, with one member of the Maquis – a Cardassian spy named Seska – even defecting to join the Kazon. In deference to the Prime Directive, Janeway was insistent that Starfleet technology should not be traded with the Kazon, resulting in continued tension with the species. In 2372, Janeway attempted to form an alliance with the Trabe in order to ease Voyager’s passage through Kazon space, but her efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful.
Matters reached a head later that year when Seska aided the Kazon in taking over Voyager, stranding the crew on the Class-M planet Hanon IV. The ship was soon recovered thanks to the efforts of the EMH and helmsman Tom Paris, with the assistance of the Talaxians, and in 2373 U.S.S. Voyager finally left Kazon space for good.
ENCOUNTERING THE COLLECTIVE
Later in 2373, Voyager had its first encounter with a threat already well known to the crew from the Alpha Quadrant – the Borg collective. Having already discovered the remains of a Borg drone, the ship entered Borg space only to discover the Collective were locked in a bitter war with an extra-dimensional race identified by the Borg as Species 8472. Janeway made an unprecedented alliancewith the Borg to combat Species 8472 in return for safe passage through Borg space. The Borg insisted that a representative of the Collective be assigned to Voyager, in the form of drone Seven of Nine. When Species 8472 were defeated, the Borg attempted to assimilate Voyager through Seven of Nine, but the crew were successful in disconnecting the drone from the Collective, confounding their plans. Seven subsequently join the crew, becoming a key contributor in Voyager’s ongoing mission to return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Despite the many trials and tribulations faced by the crew, there were happier events during the journey, such as the birth of Naomi Wildman on stardate 49548.7, and later Miral Paris, the daughter of Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres, who married in 2377.
SHORTCUTS
The U.S.S. Voyager benefited from several opportunities to substantially shorten its estimated 75-year journey time back to Earth. The first came three years into the voyage, in 2374, following the end of the conflict between the Borgand Species 8472. Kes, who was in the process of undergoing an advanced state of hyper-evolution, was able to transport Voyager 9,500 light years closer to home, slicing a decade from the crew’s journey. Later that same year Seven of Nine, the former Borg drone who had joined the crew, plotted a revised course that would save a further five years. A quantum slipstream drive was temporarily installed by chief engineer Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres that cut ten further years from the projected journey time, and the use of a stolen Borg transwarp coil in 2375 helped Voyager leap 20,000 light years towards its destination, reducing the journey time by an incredible 15 years.
Even an encounter with the seemingly omnipotent being known as Q on stardate 54704.5 proved to have its advantages, after he rewarded Janeway for helping tame his errant son by giving her route information that would remove a few more years from the trip.
