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Endgame (episode)

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Years after Voyager 's return to the Alpha Quadrant, Admiral Kathryn Janeway resolves to alter the past in order to help her crew get home sooner. ( Series finale )

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 1.7 Act Six
• 1.8 Act Seven
• 1.9 Act Eight
• 1.10 Act Nine
• 1.11 Act Ten
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Production timeline
• 3.2 Story and script
• 3.3 Cast and characters
• 3.4 Production
• 3.5 Visual effects
• 3.6 Editing
• 3.7.1 References to previous episodes
• 3.8 Reception
• 3.9 Video and DVD releases
• 4.1 Starring
• 4.2 Also starring
• 4.3 Special guest star
• 4.4 Guest stars
• 4.5 Special guest appearance by
• 4.6 Co-stars
• 4.7.1 Unconfirmed
• 4.8 Stand-ins
• 4.9.1 Starship references
• 4.9.2 USS Voyager flight path references
• 4.10 External links

Summary [ ]

Voyager 's momentous return

Fireworks light up the San Francisco night. The long-lost Federation starship USS Voyager , now returned from its twenty-three years of travel in the Delta Quadrant , buzzes the Golden Gate Bridge spanning San Francisco Bay, then climbs and twirls like a dancer among the fireworks. Huge, watching crowds cheer.

But the whole thing is revealed to be recorded footage in a news transmission celebrating the tenth anniversary of Voyager 's return. In her apartment, with lights off, Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway looks at the transmission. She has the computer end the transmission, and looks sadly out of her window, a dented coffee cup from Voyager sitting on a nearby table serving as a reminder of what happened during their long journey home.

Act One [ ]

Vice Admiral Janeway

A reunion of Voyager 's crew takes place at Admiral Janeway's apartment. Present are several of her former senior officers , such as a graying Harry Kim , Voyager 's former operations officer , now a captain . As Kim mingles, he encounters Sabrina , the daughter of Naomi Wildman , and greets her warmly.

Janeway comes to him with two glasses of champagne . They go off together and begin talking. Kim asks Janeway about Tuvok , and is told he isn't well. Kim mentions that he plans to see Tuvok the next day. He apologizes for missing a funeral, but Janeway reassures him those who did attend understood as Kim was on a mission.

Tom Paris, holo-novel author

The Doctor enters, with a blonde on his arm, to be greeted by Tom Paris , now a full-time holographic novel writer. The Doctor introduces the woman, a living Human, as his wife – Lana . And, he reveals, he has finally taken a name after thirty-three years: Joe , Lana's grandfather's name.

B'Elanna Torres, Federation liaison to Qo'noS

B'Elanna Torres , now Federation liaison to Qo'noS , speaks with Janeway and asks her about assistance she has requested of her for a certain Klingon , one Korath , to try to get him a seat on the Klingon High Council . Torres asks her if her efforts to have this done have anything to do with the mission Janeway sent Torres' daughter, Ensign Miral Paris , on. Janeway avoids the question knowing that what she needs is a Chrono-deflector that is illegal.

The guests are called to attention by Commander Reginald Barclay , one of the engineers who had been responsible for the Pathfinder Project , which succeeded in returning Voyager to Earth . They all raise their glasses and drink a toast to the success of the journey. Admiral Janeway includes another part to the toast: to those of the Voyager "family" not there to celebrate with them.

Days later, Barclay is conducting a lecture on the Borg to a class of cadets at Starfleet Communications . He introduces Janeway as the guest lecturer. As the one Starfleet officer in the entire service who has had so much experience with the Borg, she is the natural choice for such a lecture. The class goes well, until a cadet asks Janeway about Seven of Nine 's involvement in the Unimatrix Zero Borg Resistance Movement with Admiral Janeway. Janeway quietly responds that she would prefer not to discuss Seven of Nine. A message then comes in for Janeway; she has an incoming communication from Miral Paris. Janeway leaves to answer it.

She takes the communication in her office. Miral informs her that she has seen "the thing" Janeway wants to acquire, and it does indeed work. Korath, she continues, is ready to hand it over, but wants to give it to Janeway personally. Janeway agrees and ends the communication, a somber look on her face.

Admiral Janeway saying goodbye to Tuvok

A dark room. Lit candles. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok is here, kneeling on the floor amid a sea of sheets of paper, uncrumpling and then writing on one furiously. Janeway enters. She greets him quietly. But he asserts that she cannot be who she claims to be: the day of her visit is wrong. Janeway informs him that she is going away and may not return. She gazes at him sadly, but also with a glint of determination. She leaves a picture of the senior staff while still on Voyager .

Sometime later, Janeway is at home. The Doctor – Joe – visits her. He examines her, and pronounces her as healthy as she was when he examined her for the first time, thirty-three years before. He is curious as to why, after giving him so much difficulty every time she was due for a physical for thirty-three years, she asks for one ahead of schedule. She responds that she is leaving, and wanted to get the appointment over with before doing so.

She invites the hologram to sit and chat, which he does, and she then proceeds to ask him about a certain drug: chronexaline . Joe tells her that it is being tested at Starfleet Medical to determine if it can protect biomatter from tachyon radiation and that the results so far have been promising. Janeway asks him to get 2,000 mg for her by the following afternoon. Shocked, Joe asks Janeway why she needs the chronexaline, but Janeway tells him that that information is classified . Joe's faith in his former captain leads him to acquiesce to her request.

Janeway then meets Barclay at Starfleet Communications . He informs her that a shuttle is waiting for her, and gives her a PADD with certain downloaded information she has requested. He wishes to go with her, but she gently declines. She thanks him and leaves.

Chakotay's grave

In an outdoor area, Janeway speaks down to something on the ground. She kneels and rests her hands down on a gravestone : CHAKOTAY 2329 – 2394 . " I know it wasn't easy living all these years without her, Chakotay, " she says. " But when I'm through, things might be better for all of us. Trust me. " She rises and leaves.

Act Two [ ]

Lieutenant Tom Paris is awakened by the urgent, insistent voice of his very pregnant wife, Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres, telling him " It's time. " They are in their quarters aboard Voyager . He is at first reluctant to rise, but then realizes what she means: she is in labor . Immediately he is out of bed, fully awake, and contacts The Doctor. In his haste, he does not bother to dress, dashing hurriedly into a robe and accompanying his wife out the door and on the way to sickbay .

But it is in vain. The Doctor informs them that the labor is false. They are extremely chagrined; this has happened several times before. The Doctor explains that false labor is common in Klingon pregnancies. Paris asks about inducing labor; these false ones are robbing them of their sleep. The Doctor responds that this is unwise. Frustrated, Torres' Klingon temper flares; she shouts at him that she wants the baby out " NOW! ". The Doctor merely lists her misdirected rage as another feature of Klingon pregnancies.

In her ready room , Captain Kathryn Janeway listens to First Officer Chakotay's report on ship's status. He reports Paris' and Torres' latest false labor and a request by Crewman Chell to take over the running of the mess hall , a position vacant since the departure of Neelix . They laugh about his proposed menu choices, such as " Plasma Leek Soup ", " Chicken Warp Core-don Bleu ", and " Red Alert Chili ". She asks Chakotay to have lunch with her, but he responds that he already has plans.

Seven awaits Chakotay for a surprise picnic

He goes to Cargo Bay 2, quarters of the former Borg drone Seven of Nine. The two have begun a romantic relationship. She has laid out a picnic on the floor. He joins her with pleasure.

In the mess hall, Icheb is playing the Vulcan game of kal-toh with Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, while Harry Kim looks on. He tries to give surreptitious hints to Icheb, but Tuvok, aware of this, informs Icheb that Kim has never beaten him. He makes a move that half-wins the game, and then starts explaining the very patient nature of the game to Icheb. But then, to his great chagrin, Icheb makes a move and wins. Icheb humbly calls it beginners' luck. Kim is shocked and delighted. Icheb then leaves, as he is due in astrometrics. Kim then sits down at the table feeling lucky. Tuvok, unsettled by his loss, excuses himself. Kim is annoyed, thinking Tuvok is just being a bad loser, and says that it's just a game.

Tuvok goes to sickbay where The Doctor examines him. The Doctor explains that Icheb is exceptionally bright and that he just may be a better player. But Tuvok attributes his loss to Icheb as a sign that a chronic Vulcan disease he has contracted has begun to affect his concentration. The Doctor concernedly confirms that the disease has begun to progress, and prescribes increased levels of medication that he has been administering to him. He suggests that Tuvok inform Captain Janeway, but Tuvok insists that he will do so only if and when his performance at his duties starts being affected.

Seven stays in touch with Neelix

In the astrometrics lab, Seven of Nine is playing kadis-kot with Neelix over a subspace communication signal. The Talaxian informs her that Brax is well, modestly commenting he knows he can't replace his father . He informs Seven he plans to ask Dexa to marry him, which pleases Seven. Neelix asks her how her own relationship with Chakotay is going. When Seven evades the question, Neelix reminds her it was he who suggested the picnic as a date idea. She tells him it went well, that they both enjoyed it and thanks Neelix for the idea.

Astrometric senors detect signs of a wormhole

But then her console starts to beep insistently. She informs him that long-range astrometric sensors have detected high neutrino emissions and intermittent graviton flux consistent with wormholes . Realizing the importance of this, Neelix offers to continue the game with her the next day. She agrees.

Seven presents her findings to the senior staff

After completing her analyses, Seven requests a meeting of the senior staff to deliver the results. All the readings are coming from the center of a nebula in Grid 986 , with hundreds of distinct sources. Kim enthuses that this may equate to hundreds of possible wormholes. If confirmed to be wormholes, they've found the most densely concentrated source of them. Kim continues that one of these may lead to the Alpha Quadrant . Janeway orders Paris to take Voyager to the nebula.

Act Three [ ]

"Dr. Joe" tries to treat a senile Tuvok

In Tuvok's patient room at Starfleet Medical 's hospital, The Doctor (Joe) arrives, summoned by an attending physician. Tuvok appears to be delusional. He is throwing his papers all over, pacing rapidly, sweating, and mumbling something repeatedly. Joe and the physician listen to him: " 5331… 7153… 5331… Her disappearance remains a mystery! "

Joe realizes Tuvok is speaking about the occasion when Admiral Janeway was abducted by the Kellidians on stardate 53317.1, while in the Delta Quadrant. But she was retrieved, and Tuvok had led the rescue effort. The physician suggests that having Janeway visit him and show him that she is fine and safe would help, but Joe informs him of her recent departure. It is unknown when she will return. Tuvok firmly grabs his shoulders and rasps that she is not going to return. He lets go and continues pacing and muttering.

Joe goes to Starfleet Communications and finds Reginald Barclay in a lecture theater. Barclay greets him happily, but when Joe informs him that he needs to contact Admiral Janeway, Barclay begins to act nervous and evades the question. Joe presses him, informing him of Janeway's request to him for chronexaline two days ago. She had claimed the reason she needed it was classified, but he asked the Director of Starfleet Intelligence , and learned that she is not involved in any classified work. Barclay becomes even more nervous.

Joe notes to him the strangeness of Janeway's sudden departure without telling Barclay where she was going, after repeatedly saying how much she was looking forward to teaching at the Academy . At this, Barclay becomes so nervous, he begins to stammer, something which he has not done in years. This indicates to Joe that Barclay knows much more than he is letting on; he indeed knows where she has gone and what she is doing. Joe sternly presses him for the information. Barclay, completely broken down, tells him everything.

Admiral Janeway arrives at the House of Korath

A shuttlecraft, designated SC-4 , is seen orbiting a barren, rocky world . Admiral Janeway beams into a cave on this world. She is met by Ensign Miral Paris and a group of Klingon men. The men act hostilely to her, but Miral angrily tells them off. They become subdued and retreat. Miral informs her that Korath awaits her. She believes she is going to accompany Janeway to see him but, to her disappointed surprise, Janeway tells her no. She tries to argue, but Janeway brooks no argument. Miral acknowledges sadly. Janeway goes alone deeper into the cave.

Korath scanning the technology aboard the admiral's shuttle

She finds Korath tinkering with a Cardassian disruptor rifle. She asks him for what she came for; what he owes her, in return for getting him a seat on the Klingon High Council, according to the agreement they made. But he reneges, demanding also the shield generator on her shuttle as part of the deal. She sternly insists he honor the original deal, but he orders the Klingon men to escort her out. She leaves, stiff with anger.

On Voyager 's bridge , Captain Janeway stands over Lt. Paris' shoulder as he flies the ship through the nebula. The gas clouds fill the viewscreen. The ship shakes a bit. Janeway orders a deflector shield status report. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, at the tactical station, reports the shields are holding. She hails Seven of Nine in astrometrics for a status report on the source of the neutrino emissions, but Seven reports that she still cannot pin them down. Janeway orders Paris to continue toward the nebula's center.

Then, however, the ship shakes again, more violently. Tuvok reports detection of a tritanium signature and gives its bearing. It may be a ship, but they cannot see it, and sensors cannot identify it. But it is far too close to them. Paris does his best to guess where it is to avoid running into it, but this is difficult, given that they do not know how big the object is.

Borg in the nebula

Then the ship shakes a third time, vigorously. Ensign Kim reports with alarm the extreme proximity of yet another tritanium signature. This time, however, the object emerges out of the nebula gas clouds enshrouding it and is seen on the viewscreen. The officers watch in shock as the enormous, black, foreboding form of a Borg cube appears before them. Paris' piloting skill barely prevents a collision. Janeway immediately orders Paris to remove Voyager from the nebula. Paris obeys at once.

The drones aboard the cube voice their decision through the Borg Collective to pursue and assimilate Voyager and her crew. But, in the Borg Unicomplex , the Borg Queen is watching. She instructs them to leave Voyager alone, as the ship has not penetrated their security. But, she decides, she will keep an eye on it.

Act Four [ ]

Voyager 's senior staff meets in the briefing room and discuss the encounter with the cube. Tuvok reports that it apparently did not detect them and is now three light years away. Paris is astonished, as they came within a mere ten meters of the vessel. Tuvok surmises that the nebula interfered with the sensors of the cube, as it did with Voyager 's.

Ensign Kim insists that they should therefore return to the nebula; the wormholes that may lie within it, and the possible way home they could provide, cannot be passed up, and from what Tuvok says, they could avoid being detected by the Borg. But Seven of Nine advises against it, reporting that her analysis of the tritanium signatures indicates at least 47 cubes in the nebula.

Captain Janeway makes the decision not to reenter the nebula. They escaped this time, but they all are fully aware of the Borg ability to adapt; the Collective may well be able to alter its ships' sensory capabilities so that the nebula no longer hinders them. Kim tries to argue, but Janeway firmly tells him the matter is closed.

" Don't you want to find a way home? " " I am home, Harry. "

Paris is on his way to a turbolift when Kim joins him. Kim shows him a PADD with a plan to use the Delta Flyer , one of Voyager 's shuttles, to get Voyager past the Borg and find the wormholes. He tries to persuade Paris to support it and go to the captain with him, increasing the chances of her approving it.

He is surprised that Paris wants nothing to do with it. Kim tries to change Paris' mind, asking if he wants to get home. Paris simply tells him he is home, on Voyager . Kim says Captain Proton would not walk away from such a mission. Unmoved, Paris points out that unlike Proton, he has a wife and child to consider.

Chakotay goes to astrometrics, where Seven of Nine is working, and asks her to dinner. Smiling coquettishly, she accepts, joking that such an activity would be more suitable for a fifth date than a fourth. But they agree to skip ahead.

Before the date, however, Seven of Nine goes to sickbay. She speaks to The Doctor about the time three months before when her cortical node shut down and almost killed her when she began experiencing strong emotions. The Doctor had told her he could remove the fail-safe. She had refused, but now she wants to go through with it. She does not tell him the reason: so that her attraction to Chakotay, which is growing as their relationship progresses, will not kill her.

The Doctor agrees to do the procedure. Previously he thought it would take several surgeries, but in anticipation of her eventual change of mind, he has gotten the procedure down to one surgery that he could do anytime she wishes. They arrange a time: that evening, 1800 hours.

The Doctor however, hints that with the fail-safe removed, if she wants to begin exploring "more… intimate relationships," he is at her disposal. She thanks him but declines as she is already getting help in that regard. He guesses it may be from the Chakotay hologram he discovered she had been exploring relationships with. She says that it is not, but she does not tell him it is the real Chakotay.

Janeway steals the chrono deflector

Admiral Janeway returns to Korath's cave. She tells him she has reconsidered his offer, but she wants to see the device he is supposed to give her first. He angrily shows outrage over her questioning of his honor, but she, completely unintimidated, comes up to his face and coldly responds that were he really honorable, he would not have changed the terms of their deal. He backs down and shows her the device. She inspects it, approves it with a smile… then slaps a transporter relay on it and taps a controller she has in her hand. She and the device disappear in a transporter beam, back to her orbiting shuttle. Furious, Korath orders his subordinates to stop her. They open fire, but hit only the cave walls.

SC-4 deploys its ablative armor

Janeway dismisses Korath's threats and escapes

As soon as she is aboard, she instructs the computer to " Deploy armor. " Armor plates emerge from the ablative generator and immediately encase the entire shuttle. She then orders the computer to take the shuttle to a set of coordinates that she supplies. Korath hails her and swears a blood debt on her. She brushes him off dismissively, cuts the communication and instructs the computer to engage warp six . Two Negh'Var warship s attack, but do no damage whatsoever to the ablative armor . The shuttle races away at warp speed .

The Rhode Island intercepts SC-4

It arrives at the coordinates Janeway gave the computer, but the computer alerts her to an approaching ship at vector 121 mark 6. It is a Nova -class starship , the USS Rhode Island . The ship hails . Captain Harry Kim appears in the viewscreen and respectfully but firmly instructs her to lower her shields and prepare for transport. He is arresting her.

Act Five [ ]

Admiral Janeway sternly tries to assert her superior rank, but to no avail; Captain Kim tells her that Barclay informed Joe of what she is up to, and Joe told him. He repeats the order. She agrees, on the condition that he let her explain why she is trying to do what she is.

She beams over to the Rhode Island, where she and Kim talk in Kim's ready room . Kim insists that she " has no idea what the consequences will be " if she succeeds. She asserts that it is the only way to prevent what will happen if nothing is done. Kim tells her he has not informed Starfleet of her action, but warns her of the consequences should Starfleet find out. Janeway reminds him of the time that he, still an ensign on Voyager , wanted to enter the Borg-infested nebula because of its promise of a way home. He reminds her that she stopped him. But she says that if she had known then what would happen, she would have indeed taken the risk. This leaves Kim torn between his loyalty to those he had served with and his duty as a Starfleet captain.

Seven and Chakotay's romance

Seven of Nine beams with a floral bouquet into Chakotay's quarters. He is expecting her. She explains that she did not think it would be discreet to be seen carrying flowers to the first officer's quarters. Her smile at him, sensuous and romantic, a demeanor she has never shown, shows clearly that The Doctor's surgery was successful. She is now enjoying the full emotional pleasure of their relationship. She grabs and kisses him. He, of course, returns it. They separate briefly, joke about the apprehension that usually accompanies a first kiss, and then kiss again. Then a hail comes from Captain Janeway, ordering all senior staff to the bridge. They obey, joking about deactivating the com system next time.

A mysterious temporal rift suddenly appears on the viewscreen

They arrive on the bridge. A strange, swirling anomaly is on the viewscreen. Janeway informs them of the anomaly's nature: a temporal rift , given the tachyon levels it is emitting. Chakotay takes his first officer's seat and Seven goes to the auxiliary tactical console. The officers set about trying to determine the rift's source.

Admiral Janeway hugs Captain Kim for the final time

Admiral Janeway and Captain Kim have beamed over to Janeway's shuttle. Kim remarks that he will be demoted back to ensign if it is discovered that he helped her. He helps her install the device taken from Korath and reminds her that she will not be able to return once she "goes through". She is well aware of this, and it does not alter her determination in the slightest. She embraces Kim in a motherly fashion, and he then beams back to the Rhode Island . The starship departs.

Janeway sits at the conn, ready to go. She has the computer activate the device she obtained from Korath: a chrono deflector . A beacon-like projection atop the shuttle begins to glow green. But two Klingon ships come out of warp speed and begin firing on her. She tries to deploy the ablative shell, but it has been knocked off-line. She urgently hails the Rhode Island , informing Kim of her situation.

On Voyager 's bridge, Tuvok reports detection of nadion discharges from weapons fire on the other side of the temporal rift. Janeway orders it shown on the viewscreen. The signatures appear Klingon. Janeway orders red alert .

The Rhode Island defends Janeway from Korath's attacks

The Rhode Island returns. Kim advises Janeway to beam over, but she sternly tells him no; she merely wants him to keep the Klingons off her. He complies, and the Rhode Island 's fire causes them to back off. Janeway instructs the computer to "activate the tachyon pulse" and direct it to a set of spatial and temporal coordinates she supplies. A green beam is emitted from a beacon-like device atop the shuttle, opening up a temporal rift,which looks much like the one Voyager 's bridge crew observed in 2378. The shuttle enters the rift.

Admiral Janeway opens a temporal rift

Admiral Janeway emerges from the rift

Tuvok reports a Federation vessel coming through the rift. The shuttle emerges from the rift and comes toward Voyager . A hail from it comes through and Janeway orders it answered. She and the other duty officers look in shock at the white-haired woman on the screen, who resembles Janeway but much older, in a Starfleet uniform that looks strange, but recognizable.

Admiral Janeway immediately orders Captain Janeway to have Voyager 's navigational deflector emit an anti-tachyon pulse to close the rift. Captain Janeway, although shocked, responds that it is usually considered polite for a person to introduce themselves before issuing orders. Tuvok then reports two Klingon ships coming through the portal. Admiral Janeway calmly but firmly points out that she outranks her younger self and sternly repeats her order. Captain Janeway warily complies with the Admiral’s instructions and orders it done. The rift is sealed. Captain Janeway glares at Admiral Janeway and demands to know "what the hell is going on." Admiral Janeway calmly responds that she is there to bring Voyager home.

But Voyager 's bridge officers are not the only ones to witness her arrival. In the Borg Unicomplex , the Borg Queen sees it as well. She says nothing. She merely smiles slightly.

Act Six [ ]

Admiral Janeway's rendezvous with Voyager

Admiral Janeway beams aboard Voyager . Captain Janeway, Tuvok, and Chakotay are in the transporter room to meet her. Janeway greets her warily.

The two Janeways go to Captain Janeway's ready room. Captain Janeway offers Admiral Janeway coffee , but she declines, having given it up long ago. She stands at the window and starts commenting on some of the things that have happened in the years between Voyager 's encounter with the Borg-infested nebula and her decision to alter history to get the ship home sooner, such as her favorite coffee cup getting dented. The fact that they do return home someday is of great comfort to Janeway. Voyager even becomes a museum , from which the sun can be clearly seen in San Francisco. Captain Janeway is uncomfortable hearing details of the future, but her future self simply advises her it would be easier to ignore the Temporal Prime Directive . This attitude only prompts Captain Janeway to respond that she wants no more talk of the future.

Admiral Janeway deftly turns her attention to the nebula they entered three days ago. She confirms that their suspicions were correct and that it does indeed hold a way home. They must return and use it. Captain Janeway is shocked at this, reminding the Admiral that the nebula was crawling with Borg. Admiral Janeway informs her that her shuttle has technology that will allow Voyager to get past them.

Captain Janeway is extremely skeptical. From what she has been told it sounds as if the future will be bright: they will indeed return to Earth , she will even be promoted, and successful defenses against the Borg will be developed. Admiral Janeway anticipates that the captain is wondering why she is therefore trying to change things. She hesitates to give her younger self details of future events she’d be unwilling to know, but does tell her that if she doesn’t follow her instructions, it will take another sixteen years to return to Earth, during which there will be a number of casualties. To reassure the captain that she is not a member of Species 8472 attempting to deceive her, the Admiral offers SC-4 for examination to prove that it is indeed a future Starfleet vessel, with Borg-defeating technology. She also offers to submit to a medical examination to confirm her identity.

Admiral Janeway's synaptic transceiver

In sickbay, Captain Janeway and The Doctor discuss the scan results, as Admiral Janeway sits on a biobed. The Doctor shows Captain Janeway a piece of microtechnology in the Admiral's cerebral cortex that is not alien but bears a Starfleet signature. Admiral Janeway, overhearing the conversation despite the distance between her and them, informs The Doctor that he invented it, or will invent it, in 2382 . She explains it is a synaptic transceiver which allows her to pilot a vessel equipped with a neural interface. The Doctor eagerly asks her what other inventions he will come up with, but is ordered by Captain Janeway to stop asking. He acquiesces and informs her that his scans indicate that the Admiral is indeed Kathryn Janeway, approximately 26 years older than her current self.

Seven of Nine then enters. Admiral Janeway immediately reacts with happiness and grief. She greets Seven but her demeanor makes Seven uncomfortable. She reports to Captain Janeway on the inspection of the shuttle's technology, calling it impressive, primarily designed to defend against the Borg. Captain Janeway asks if any of it can be used on Voyager . Seven points out that the stealth technology is incompatible, but she believes the ablative armor and weapons can be adapted. Janeway considers this for a moment then orders Seven to begin the modifications.

With the work being carried out, Seven retires to her alcove to regenerate . She steps in, turns around, installs herself, and her eyes close.

But then she hears a voice, calling her by her former full Borg designation: Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One. She opens her eyes to see the interior of the Queen's chamber in the Borg Unicomplex. The Queen smiles and approaches her. Seven instantly realizes the Borg Queen is contacting her via her neural transceiver and angrily demands to know what she wants. The Queen informs her she is aware of the future Janeway's arrival and asks Seven the reason for it. Seven responds that it is none of her business. The Queen smiles in response and mentally brings up an image of Voyager on her viewscreen. She tells Seven she knows where they are going, and "suggests" they change course. Seven demands to know why. At this, the Queen comes up to her and caresses her face. She responds that she will assimilate Voyager and all aboard if they do not change course.

" If you try to enter my nebula again… I'll destroy you. "

Seven angrily insists that Voyager is no threat; " We simply want to return to the Alpha Quadrant! " The Queen responds that she has no problem with that intention. She simply tells Seven that she will destroy Voyager should it return to the nebula. She then ends the communication but just before doing so sends an EM surge through the signal into Seven's cortical node. Seven wakes up, in her alcove aboard Voyager , badly shaken and in great pain, then collapses, unconscious.

Act Seven [ ]

Seven is in sickbay, sitting on a biobed. The two Janeways are present as The Doctor treats her. She has regained consciousness and informs them of the Borg Queen's warning. Captain Janeway asks what is so special about this nebula that the Borg would protect it so. Admiral Janeway confidently assures her the Queen will not be able to make good on the threat. Captain Janeway is far from convinced, but her future self explains that the technologies and weapons on the shuttle were developed by her from the greater experience she had with the Borg before returning to Earth. They work. Janeway, though uneasy, decides to continue going along. She orders the course maintained, but at constant red alert, and orders nonstop scans for Borg activity.

Seven scans for Borg activity

Chakotay enters astrometrics and requests a status report from Seven of Nine. She responds that no Borg vessels have been detected for a radius of ten light years. Chakotay voices his confidence in the combined talents of the two Janeways against the Collective. The conversation then turns to what each will do when they get back to Earth. Each is unsure, but they are sure that whatever it is, they will be happy if it keeps them near each other.

Torres barks orders in Engineering; the engines must be running flawlessly if Voyager is going to enter this Borg-infested nebula again. Paris enters and, as the flight controller, dependent on the engines to execute commands he inputs at the helm, asks her for a systems report. She provides it and voices excitement at finally returning home after all the failed opportunities they have had. Like Chakotay and Seven, they also speak of what they will do when they return. And, like them, they agree that whatever it is, they will be fine as long as they are together.

The cubes fail to destroy Voyager

The cubes attempt to tractor Voyager , but to no avail

Voyager approaches the nebula once again. All senior officers are at their posts on the bridge, while Torres is at hers in Engineering. Captain Janeway orders the newly-installed ablative armor deployed, and it encases the ship. Janeway orders Paris to maintain course, and Voyager enters the nebula. Admiral Janeway stands looking on. In her chamber in the Borg Unicomplex, the Borg Queen watches Voyager enter the nebula. Her eyes narrow as she inclines her head, mentally ordering all cubes in the nebula to intercept the starship.

A cube closes on Voyager and begins firing, but its weapons have little effect, reducing the ablative armor only to 97%. Another cube joins in, then a third. With their combined weapons, the armor integrity holds at 90%. Captain Janeway orders the course maintained. The cubes try to adapt to the armor, firing disruptor beams and torpedoes and locking onto it with tractor beams .

Tuvok reports port armor integrity has dropped to 40%. Janeway orders him to target the lead cube and fire transphasic torpedoes . Two torpedoes streak out and instantly destroy the cube. Janeway orders the same thing done to another cube. Tuvok obeys, with the same result.

The Borg Queen watches with shock. She sharply turns her head, as if issuing an order mentally, and the remaining cubes immediately withdraw.

Janeway orders Paris to continue toward the center of the nebula. They arrive at the center. The clouds suddenly clear away to reveal a dying star, orbiting which is an enormous dark, web-like construct. A few cubes flit around it. Captain Janeway asks her future self what it is. She does not respond, and instead orders Paris to head straight for it.

The Borg transwarp hub hidden in the nebula

Captain Janeway belays the order, and demands that Admiral Janeway tell her what the structure is. Admiral Janeway merely responds that it is "the road home." Seven of Nine explains it is a Borg transwarp hub . Captain Janeway remembers that Seven once told her that there were only six of them in the entire galaxy. She angrily asks her future self why she did not tell her this was here, and orders Paris to take them out of the nebula immediately. Admiral Janeway tries to use her greater rank, sternly repeating her order to him. But Captain Janeway rises and walks over to the admiral and angrily tells the admiral that she is on her bridge, and she will have her removed if necessary. She repeats her order to Paris to take Voyager out of the nebula. Paris does so, leaving Admiral Janeway shaking her head in frustration.

Act Eight [ ]

A map of the Borg transwarp network

The senior staff is gathered in astrometrics. Admiral Janeway is also present. Seven of Nine has a graphic of the transwarp hub up on the astrometrics lab's viewscreen. She explains that the hub links with thousands of transwarp conduits whose exit points are all over the galaxy, in every quadrant, allowing the Borg to reach anywhere in the galaxy in minutes. Tuvok comments that this is the single most significant tactical advantage the Borg have. Chakotay comments it is no wonder the Borg Queen wants to keep them out.

Captain Janeway then asks for recommendations on how to destroy it. Seven proposes disabling the interspatial manifolds shielding each aperture, destroying the structure from the other side after they reach the Alpha Quadrant. Admiral Janeway, who has listened to the discussion, finally loses her patience and angrily tells them the idea will not work because the Borg Queen herself controls the manifolds, and would adapt almost instantly against any attack.

Chakotay suggests destroying the hub once they reach the Alpha Quadrant, but Admiral Janeway asserts there are only exit apertures in the Alpha Quadrant. She criticizes them for wasting time while the Collective is undoubtedly studying their ablative armor and transphasic torpedoes, working on how to adapt to them. She urges her past self to return now and use the hub to get home, before it is too late.

Janeway orders the officers to find a viable way to destroy the hub, then takes her future self out into the corridor. Outside, she demands of her why she did not tell her about the hub. Admiral Janeway responds that she remembers how stubborn and self-righteous she used to be, and feared her younger self would do something stupid. Captain Janeway asserts that by destroying the hub, they would severely cripple the Borg, saving millions of lives. Admiral Janeway responds that she did not spend the last ten years looking for a way to get Voyager home sooner so her past self could " throw it all away on some intergalactic goodwill mission! " Captain Janeway retorts that she cannot believe she will become so cynical, and the Admiral reminds her younger self she put strangers ahead of her crew's welfare by destroying the Caretaker's array to protect the Ocampa , stranding them in the Delta Quadrant seven years ago. She did not tell her about the hub because she knew she would do so again.

The two Janeways lock horns over the Borg transwarp hub

Captain Janeway resolutely states that if her future self got Voyager home, then she will too even if it takes a bit longer. Admiral Janeway suddenly interrupts her with the shocking revelation that Seven of Nine is going to die. She goes on to explain that Seven will be mortally wounded on an away mission three years later from the Captain's perspective. Seven will manage to return to Voyager , where she will die in the arms of her husband, Chakotay. The admiral continues that he was a changed man after Seven's death, never getting over the loss. Captain Janeway reasons that she now she knows about this she can prevent it, but the Admiral follows through by revealing that 22 crewmembers will be lost between the present and the eventual return to Earth, before moving on to Tuvok. Captain Janeway insists on learning what will happen to him. Admiral Janeway unsubtly reminds her of the Temporal Prime Directive but the Captain demands to know. Admiral Janeway reveals he has a degenerative neurological disorder he has not told her about. There is a cure in the Alpha Quadrant, but by the time they get there, the disease will have progressed so far that it will have become incurable. The Admiral then pointedly asks her if she is willing to pass up the chance of preventing these tragedies from happening.

Captain Janeway sits with Tuvok in her ready room and discusses his disease. She asks him about the cure and he explains that it is called fal-tor-voh , which requires a mind meld with a family member; no other Vulcan is compatible. Confused, she then asks why did he not object when she ordered him to find a way to destroy the hub. Tuvok responds that they have the chance to save millions of lives. Asked about his own life, Tuvok quotes Ambassador Spock : " The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. "

Admiral Janeway tries to get Seven to voice objection to the hub's destruction

In Cargo Bay 2, Admiral Janeway tries to encourage Seven of Nine to raise objections to Captain Janeway about trying to destroy the hub. She has told her of her future fate and how it will affect Chakotay. Seven is very shaken, but considers her death to be a small price to pay for the destruction of the transwarp network. Admiral Janeway questions this, asking if she is in fact seeking atonement for the atrocities she took part in while a drone. Seven responds that her future is insignificant compared with the lives that would be saved. Admiral Janeway challenges her to think of the effect of her death upon those who love her rather than individuals in a hypothetical scenario. But Seven merely asks to be excused so she can return to her work, leaving Admiral Janeway frustrated.

The crew's plan

The senior staff is again gathered in the briefing room, along with Admiral Janeway. Tuvok and Seven propose using transphasic torpedoes, fired from inside one of the conduits, programmed to detonate all at once. This should cause a cascading collapse of all the conduits, destroying the hub. The Queen would not be able to stop it. However, to avoid the massive shock wave from the explosion, Voyager would have to get out of the hub in ten seconds.

The danger of escape

The officers silently consider the idea. Then all eyes turn to Captain Janeway, who reminds them that she chose to strand Voyager in the Delta Quadrant in order to protect the Ocampa. She states that she does not regret that decision, but continues that back then, Voyager was only a starship. Now, the ship and crew have become her home and family.

And now, once again they have a golden opportunity to get home, and also have the chance to save countless lives if they sacrifice it. This time she is not making the call on her own. Each of them, she tells them, has a right to a voice in this, and can speak for the crewmen and junior officers under them. She invites any of them who oppose the idea to speak up, telling them they will not proceed unless everyone is in agreement. Kim speaks up, admitting that he has probably been obsessed about getting home more than anyone else. He speaks of all they have been through together, musing that perhaps it is not the destination that matters but rather the journey itself. He considers that it is worth that journey taking longer if they can do something that they all believe in. All the officers nod in agreement. Paris proposes a toast, “To the journey,” and all raise their coffee mugs, including the captain. Admiral Janeway watches the solidarity in wonder and, despite her disagreement, approval.

Act Nine [ ]

Voyager awaiting Captain Janeway's final decision

The two Janeways share coffee in the mess hall. Admiral Janeway had forgotten how much the crew enjoyed being together and how loyal they were to her. She admits to her younger self that she was wrong to lie to her. Captain Janeway responds that the Admiral was only doing what she thought was right for the crew. Having regained her former idealism, Admiral Janeway has decided to help them destroy the hub. Captain Janeway asks if there is a way to do so and still use it to return Voyager home. Admiral Janeway insists they can’t do both, but when pressed admits it may be possible; she had thought of a way once, but rejected it as too risky. Now, however, she considers it worth the risk.

Sometime later, she is in SC-4's cockpit, finishing preparations. Captain Janeway arrives with a hypospray . Admiral Janeway jokes " it's about time you showed up; I'm not getting any younger. " Captain Janeway smiles and sits with her. She soberly asks her, "Y ou're sure you want to do this? " Admiral Janeway responds wryly, " No ", but reminds her it is the only way and that "Voyager isn't big enough for both of us. " Captain Janeway administers the contents of the hypospray to her and wishes her luck. Her future self reciprocates the wish, telling her, " I'm glad I got to know you again. " This elicits a full smile from Captain Janeway. She leaves.

Admiral Janeway departs Voyager

SC-4 leaves Voyager 's shuttlebay. It heads into the nebula and approaches the transwarp hub. It goes into one of the transwarp apertures and vanishes.

Chakotay enters astrometrics and finds Seven of Nine there as usual, but her greeting to him is decidedly frosty. He asks her about SC-4, and she informs him of its departure into one of the conduits. He notes with amusement her refusal to look at him and her formal manner with him. He thinks it is a joke; they are accustomed to such playacting with each other. But he realizes she is not joking. He concernedly asks her what is wrong. She turns away and goes to another console, still not looking at him, but he follows her and asks again. She responds that she is "just busy", but he pushes for an explanation. She still refuses to look at him and informs him that she has decided to "alter the parameters" of their relationship. She moves back to the first console, but he doggedly follows, demanding why. She explains that given the dangerous nature of their work, it is possible one of them could be killed. This would cause pain to the other, and so it is best to cut the emotional attachments, based on Admiral Janeway's words about their future marriage, her death, and his broken heart.

Unaware of this, Chakotay angrily responds that he cannot shut off his feelings with some switch as she apparently can. This makes her face him. She struggles to hold back tears as, without being specific, she tells him what Admiral Janeway told her: his feelings for her are fated to cause him great pain. Her voice breaking, she tells him she cannot let this happen to him, and tries to leave, all but running away.

Chakotay recommits to Seven, whatever lies ahead

However, he grabs her and turns her to face him again. Looking directly at her, he tells her that no one has absolutely certain knowledge of what will happen in the future. What is certain is what they have with each other here and now. He will not let her end it because of "what might happen in the future". He caresses her face as he tells her this. She reaches up and takes his hand. Holding it against her chest, she sighs with relief. They stand together, foreheads touching, eyes closed in intimate silence.

In sickbay, Torres has again gone into labor, this time for real. She bears down, growling in pain, teeth gritted, Klingon temper flaring. The Doctor tells her to try to relax, but she angrily has none of it. Paris, agitated, paces about. Then Captain Janeway hails him from the bridge, ordering him to report to the conn station as they are ready to get underway. He begins to tell her what is happening and that he cannot come, but Torres insists he go; his skills will be needed if they are to survive and succeed. Paris hesitates, but knowing she is right, acknowledges Janeway, kisses Torres, touches her pregnant belly and rushes out.

In her chamber in the Borg Unicomplex, the Borg Queen listens with her eyes closed as the Collective informs her of Voyager 's course. But then a voice not of the Collective, coming from in front of her, makes her open her eyes. Standing in front of her is Admiral Janeway. She flippantly asks the Queen how she deals with "all those voices talking at once" in her head without getting terrible headaches. The Queen's head immediately tilts to one side, looking as if she is communicating with her drones. Admiral Janeway tells her not to bother calling drones to assimilate her.

Admiral Janeway taunts the Borg Queen

The Queen walks toward her. With a malevolent smile, she responds that she does not need drones to assimilate her. She raises her fist to the future Janeway's neck and extends assimilation tubules into it, but nothing happens. In a taunting voice, Admiral Janeway tells her she is not physically there with her, but is in her mind, using a synaptic interface. She is seen in SC-4, a device before her forehead. She advises her not to bother tracing the signal; it is beyond her abilities for the moment. The Queen steps away from her and asks her what she wants. Admiral Janeway responds she has come to make a deal. She informs the Queen with disdain of her younger self’s plan to attempt to destroy the transwarp hub. The Queen knows about the plan and confidently tells the Admiral that it will fail. Admiral Janeway tells her about the transphasic torpedoes, to which the Queen retorts the Borg will adapt. Admiral Janeway points out they will suffer heavy casualties before that, but that she is willing to tell her how to adapt to the shields and weapons immediately. In return, she asks the Queen to have a cube tractor Voyager and drag it back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Act Ten [ ]

The Queen confronts Admiral Janeway's proposal

The Queen scoffs at the idea that the " incorruptible Kathryn Janeway would betray her own crew. " Admiral Janeway corrects her: she is not betraying them, but saving them from themselves. Captain Janeway's arrogant, self-righteous attitude and the crew's blind loyalty to her, she asserts, are keeping them from taking a golden opportunity to get home just to deal a crippling blow to the Borg. " But you'd never try to harm us, " the Queen responds sarcastically. Admiral Janeway responds that she is being pragmatic and simply wants to return the crew home to their families.

The Queen understands that in Borg terms, Admiral Janeway is seeking to ensure the welfare of her collective, a position she can appreciate. She offers to help, but her price is more than the Admiral is offering: she wants SC-4 and its database. Admiral Janeway responds that giving the Borg advanced technology would change the future to an unknown degree, which she is not willing to risk. The Queen retorts that she is already willing to do so by helping Voyager return to Earth earlier. Admiral Janeway finally agrees to the Queen’s demands, but insists that she will get the shuttle only after Voyager is returned to the Alpha Quadrant.

The Queen smugly tells the Admiral that she has underestimated her. While they've been talking, her drones have succeeded in tracing her synaptic signal. Aboard SC-4, Admiral Janeway immediately orders the computer to shut down the interface and deploy the ablative armor, but it is too late. A tractor beam lances out from a part of the Unicomplex and seizes SC-4, bringing it out of the stealth mode it was in, right in the midst of the complex. Admiral Janeway is alarmed to find herself beamed into the Queen's chamber, this time for real.

The Queen captures and assimilates Admiral Janeway

The Queen smiles and compliments her on her cleverness, hiding "right on her doorstep". She asks her what her plan of attack was. When Admiral Janeway does not respond, she strides up to her and violently plunges her assimilation tubules into her throat. Admiral Janeway sinks to the floor as the millions of Borg nanoprobes injected into her system begin their work. The Queen watches triumphantly.

Voyager , having reentered the nebula, races toward the transwarp hub. Captain Janeway orders Paris to take them to the aperture her future self had specified the first time, and enter it. He obeys.

In the Queen's chamber, the Queen strolls around Admiral Janeway's collapsed form, smiling as she is assimilated. She hears the Collective inform her of Voyager 's entry into a transwarp hub which leads to the Alpha Quadrant. She prepares to send a fleet of cubes in after it to assimilate it and the crew.

" You infected us… with a neurolytic pathogen! "

" Just enough to bring chaos to order… "

Suddenly she staggers violently as the sound of the Collective's voice is momentarily replaced by a horrid screeching. She struggles to regain her feet, a blank look of uncomprehending shock on her face. It happens again and then again. The third time, sparks and explosions fly in the chamber. Admiral Janeway, her face marred with emerging Borg implants, looks up at her weakly and sneers: " Must be something you assimilated. " More explosions occur. The Queen, wracked with pain, asks her what she's done, before realizing the Borg have been infected with a neurolytic pathogen the Admiral carried in her bloodstream. Janeway had done it in order to break the Queen's control over the manifold shielding around the transwarp conduits. Now Voyager , with its transphasic torpedoes, can tear it apart. The Queen looks at Admiral Janeway in shocked horror. Now it is Admiral Janeway's turn to smile triumphantly.

Voyager races along the transwarp conduit. Seven, at auxiliary tactical, reports that Admiral Janeway succeeded; the conduit's shields are weakening. Janeway orders Tuvok to fire the torpedoes. He does; three of them streak out from the aft launcher, back along the conduit. They hit the aperture and destroy it, beginning the cascading destruction of the entire hub.

" It's you who underestimated us! "

The Queen watches on the viewer, stumbling with the pain of the pathogen. She says that Voyager will not survive the shock wave, but Admiral Janeway replies that they will; she and her past self have made sure of that. " It's you who underestimated us" she says, pulling herself to her feet.

The Queen rips off her dysfunctional arm

The Queen is wracked with another spasm, as bigger explosions and showers of sparks fly in the chamber all around. The entire chamber vibrates. She is now cut off from the Collective. Suddenly she feels something wrong in her arm. She looks at it. It sparks and begins to separate from her body. She fearfully tears it off and throws it away.

The Queen in her final moments

Then she realizes that the drones aboard one sphere 634 can still hear her. She instructs them to alter course into Voyager 's conduit and destroy Voyager at all costs. The sphere detours from the conduit it was in into the one Voyager is traversing. The Queen smiles desperately, for the Collective had assimilated the armor technology and the pathogen; but then one of her legs stops working and falls off. She collapses, never to rise again. As Admiral Janeway watches her, the dying Queen looks up at her and tells her, and also herself, that Captain Janeway is about to die; if she has no future, Admiral Janeway will never have existed, and everything that she has done today will never happen. She then dies, her mechanical body separating from its cybernetic torso in death.

The entire chamber explodes, incinerating Admiral Janeway. The explosion cascades throughout the entire complex, killing the trillions of drones there, shattering the already broken hive mind.

A transwarp aperture opens in the Sol system

At Starfleet Communications on Earth, senior Starfleet official Admiral Owen Paris watches a transwarp conduit opening on a viewscreen in alarm, along with Lieutenant Barclay and other Starfleet officers. The opening is less than a light year from Earth. Admiral Paris tensely orders every Federation starship scrambled to the opening to combat whatever Borg vessels emerge from it.

As the transwarp hub is destroyed, the single Borg sphere catches up with Voyager in the conduit and fires on it repeatedly. On Voyager 's bridge, Tuvok reports the aft ablative armor is down to 6%. The sphere opens a huge hatch to engulf them. Kim reports hull breaches on Decks 6 through 12. Chakotay asks how long until they come to the nearest conduit exit. Seven tells him it is thirty seconds away, but it leads back to the Delta Quadrant. Janeway orders Paris to prepare to adjust his heading.

The assembled fleet awaits the Borg attack

In the Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet vessels of all classes converge on the conduit opening. At Starfleet Communications, an admiral informs Admiral Paris of the fleet strength: eighteen ships in all, with nine more en route. The ships seen just prior to this include a Galaxy -class , an Akira -class , a Defiant -class , a Nebula -class , an Excelsior -class , a Miranda -class , a Saber -class , and a Prometheus -class . Admiral Paris has a channel opened to the fleet and orders it to use all necessary force against any Borg vessels that emerge.

A transphasic torpedo makes its way through the sphere chasing Voyager

The sphere that was chasing Voyager emerges from the collapsing transwarp conduit in front of the fleet, which now comprises twenty-seven ships. Immediately the ships open fire but cause no significant damage. On Voyager 's bridge, the officers are quiet and expectant. Janeway asks Paris where they are. His answer: " Right where we expected to be. " Seven of Nine then confirms that the transwarp network has been destroyed. Captain Janeway instructs Tuvok to enact a previously given order she issued to him. He obeys.

Voyager 's triumphant return

Within the sphere, Voyager fires a single transphasic torpedo. It streaks out and hits the sphere's interior, causing it to explode from within. The fleet and, at Starfleet Communications, the gathered officers, watch dumbfounded as the sphere suddenly explodes, seemingly for no reason.

Voyager 's welcome home

But from the explosion Voyager emerges amid the debris, safely back in the Alpha Quadrant.

On Voyager 's bridge, Captain Janeway and the bridge officers watch the fleet before them, stunned and speechless. After seven years, they are finally home. Janeway mutters a quiet thank you to her future self.

Harry Kim, emotional after returning home

A hail comes in. Janeway orders it answered on-screen. The wondering and joyous faces of Admiral Paris and Lieutenant Barclay appear. Other officers stand behind them, beaming. Janeway quietly apologizes for the surprise. Admiral Paris welcomes them back. He begins to ask about what happened with the sphere, but Janeway respectfully interrupts, telling him it will all be in her report. He responds that he is looking forward to reading it, and ends the communication.

B'Elanna Torres' newborn baby

The Doctor hails the bridge from sickbay. The cooing of a baby is heard.

Tom Paris turns around in surprised joy

Paris turns around in surprised joy; he had completely forgotten. In sickbay, The Doctor hands the newborn, Paris' new daughter , to her mother, and grins as he tells Paris that, " there is someone here who would like to say hello. "

Janeway also beams as she gives Paris leave to go and join them. He rushes off. She quietly invites Chakotay to replace him at the helm, which he does with pleasure.

She walks to her seat , sits slowly down and gives the order she has waited seven long years to give, using the very same words she used to give that order to Paris at the start of their journey:

" Set a course… for home. "

The fleet is seen in formation around Voyager , escorting her, slowly, toward Earth.

Memorable quotes [ ]

" It's you who underestimated us. "

" My invitation must have gotten lost in subspace. "

" You wish to ensure the well-being of your collective. I can appreciate that. "

" Nobody can guarantee what's going to happen tomorrow, not even an admiral from the future! "

" I haven't told anyone, but I'm thinking of asking Dexa to marry me. " " She'd be wise to accept. "

"You're sure I can't talk you out of this?" (Admiral Janeway looks at him) "Right, stupid question."

" Doc! " " Mr. Paris. Voyager 's pilot, medic, and occasional thorn in my side… "

" You can't blame a hologram for being curious."

" Can she stand? " " Affirmative. " " Then I suggest you report to sickbay. " " What about B'Elanna? " " Her too. "

" I want this thing out of me, now !"

" That baby's as stubborn as her mother. " " Harry's starting a pool to see who can guess the actual date and time of birth. " " Tell him to put me down for next Friday, 2300 hours. "

" Try to relax, Lieutenant. " " Oh, if you tell me to relax one more time I'm going to rip your holographic head off! " " I hope you don't intend to kiss your baby with that mouth. "

" I might actually win. " " What? " " The baby pool. Today, 1500 hours. " " I'm so glad I could accommodate you. "

" Don't celebrate yet. Klingon labor sometimes lasts several days. " (Torres screams and seizes him by jacket collar) " Of course, I'm sure that won't be the case here. "

" Let's get this show on the road. "

" Joe? " " I decided I couldn't get married without a name. " " It took you thirty-three years to come up with Joe ?! "

" Don't you want to get home? " " I am home, Harry. " " Captain Proton would never walk away from a mission like this. " " Captain Proton doesn't have a wife, and a baby on the way. "

" I think it's safe to say no one on this crew has been more… obsessed with getting home than I have. But when I think about everything we've been through together, maybe it's not the destination that matters. Maybe it's the journey, and if that journey takes a little longer, so we can do something we all believe in, I can't think of any place I'd rather be, or any people I'd rather be with. "

" You're an impostor! " " No, Tuvok. It's me. " " Admiral Janeway visits on Sunday. Today is Thursday. Logic dictates that you are not who you claim to be. "

" I told them I had to bring you back to Starfleet Medical for treatment of a rare disease. " " I hope it isn't terminal. " " No, but it has been known to affect judgment! "

" Three days ago, you detected elevated neutrino emissions in a nebula in grid 986. You thought it might be a way home. You were right. I've come to tell you to take Voyager back to that nebula. " " It was crawling with Borg! " " I've brought technology that'll get us past them. " (Captain Janeway looks very skeptical) " Oh, I don't blame you for being skeptical… (smiles) but if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? "

" And of course there's Tuvok. " " What about him? " " You're forgetting the Temporal Prime Directive, Captain. " " The hell with it. "

" To quote Ambassador Spock ; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. "

" Must be something you assimilated. "

" You've infected us… with a neurolytic pathogen! " " Just enough to bring chaos to order. "

" I would prefer it if you not speak to me as though we are on intimate terms. " " We are on intimate terms! "

" What was that about? " " He said your demeanor was disrespectful. " " I hope you told him I didn't mean to be rude. " " I told him that if he didn't show you more respect, I would break his arm. " (smiles and laughs) " You are your mother's daughter. "

" You know what, I shouldn't be listening to details about the future. " " Oh, the almighty Temporal Prime Directive – take my advice, it's less of a headache if you just ignore it. "

" What do you want? " " Do I need a reason to visit a friend? " " We're not friends. " " No… we're more than that. We're family. "

" Wherever I end up… I'm going to make sure it's within transporter range of you. "

" I don't know how you do it. All those voices talking at once. You must get terrible headaches. "

" What the hell is it?! " " It's a transwarp aperture, it's less than a light year from Earth. " " How many Borg ships? " " We can't get a clear reading, but the graviton emissions are off the scale. " " I want every ship within range to converge on those coordinates, now ! "

" Mr. Paris, what's our position? " " Right where we expected to be. " " The transwarp network has been obliterated, captain. " " We'll celebrate later. Mr. Tuvok? " (Tuvok fires a torpedo inside the Borg sphere, and it starts to explode) " Cease fire! " (The sphere explodes and Voyager bursts out of the wreckage triumphantly)

" We did it. "

" Thanks for your help, Admiral Janeway. "

" Sorry to surprise you; next time, we'll call ahead. "

" Sickbay to the bridge. Doctor to Lieutenant Paris. There's someone here who'd like to say "Hello".

Background information [ ]

Production timeline [ ].

• 26 March 2001 – Last day of shooting in the mess hall ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 4 , p. 69)
• 28 March 2001 – Filming in Rhode Island ready room (redressed Janeway's Quarters) ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 4 , p. 69)
• 9 April 2001 – Last day of shooting. Final scenes on the bridge (97C). ( Coming Home: The Final Episode , VOY Season 7 DVD special features)

Story and script [ ]

• In the years prior to the writing of this episode, an ultimately undeveloped two-parter was to have seen Voyager apparently return to Earth with a fireworks display, as happens in the first few moments of this installment. It was Brannon Braga who thought up that idea. As the story proceeded, the vessel was to have been revealed as a biomimetic duplicate of the actual Voyager . ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 49) One reason this story concept was abandoned was that the writing staff thought it would undermine the actual return of the real Voyager to Earth, which the creative team, even then, intended to eventually have happen. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 6)
• Another early-proposed element of this outing was the birth of a baby parented by B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris. Even before production on season 7 of Star Trek: Voyager commenced, the series' writing staff knew they wanted to feature this event prior to the series ending its run. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 68)
• To prepare for the conclusion of Star Trek: Voyager , Executive Producers Rick Berman and Kenneth Biller started thinking about the finale right from the seventh season's beginning, as they knew it would be the series' last season. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 27) The episode was " based on a story that Rick Berman and I and our old pal Brannon Braga cooked up. Rick and I have been talking about the finale through the whole season, and we brought Brannon in to consult and he was extremely helpful. The three of us cooked up this story in meetings. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 17) After seven long years, this episode represented, finally, an opportunity to establish whether Captain Janeway and her crew would return home after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 77) Berman later stated, " There was a lot of thought that went into, 'Are we going to bring these people home or not?' and 'Who is going to live and who is going to die?' " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 27) There was never any doubt of whether they'd return to the Alpha Quadrant by the end of the show's run; still to be considered was how and when they would make the return trip, as opposed to if they would manage it. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 164 , p. 72) From the very start of the season, the writing staff and everyone else involved with the series hence contemplated how and when the ship might ultimately reach home. As regards this dilemma, the writing staffers wondered how to both satisfy and excite the audience while also surprising the viewers. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 33, No. 5, p. 38)
• As had been the case with the previous two Star Trek series – Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – the Star Trek: Voyager creative team had the luxury of cancelling the show themselves. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 77) As had been the case with TNG, the decision was taken with Star Trek: Voyager to conclude the series with one final episode. Whereas DS9 had been granted the luxury of a multi-part ending, Voyager fans would have to be content, for better or worse, with this two-hour series finale. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 89 , p. 57) Unlike the previous two series finales, however, this episode was written as a two-parter rather than a single episode. Like its pair of predecessors, though, this series finale was given a single production number and was assigned one director for the entire project.
• One of the primary goals in crafting this episode's plot was to create a story which would be "epic" in scope. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 77) In fact, the installment's writers wanted it to at least match, if not exceed, the quality of previous Star Trek series enders. " I think we had some big shoes to fill, " related Rick Berman. " If you look at the final episodes of ST:TNG and ST:DS9, they have a certain sweeping heroic quality to them. I think they focused not only on our characters, but also on an action/adventure story on the grander Human scale. We wanted the same thing to be true of the last episode of Voyager . " The writers not only attempted to make this a very ambitious, epic adventure but also a summation of the series at large. Brannon Braga offered, " What we've tried to do is create an episode that taps into the core emotions that have been at play since the first episode, in terms of the crew getting home and what it means to them, how they might do it or not. We knew that we wanted a really great villain involved. We had to make sure it had scope. We've worked on a couple of these series finales now, so we kind of know the ingredients we want to put in there. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 4, 40 & 78) Despite that, Ken Biller conceded, " No matter what story we chose, it would be hard [to avoid it resonating with the events of the series' pilot episode, ' Caretaker ']. We always knew there were different directions to take. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , pp. 19 & 21)
• One direction that the writers never seriously considered was revealing that the events of the series had actually been merely a dream. " Although we certainly joked about that: 'It's all a dream – they never left!' " remembered Ken Biller, laughing. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 21)
• For the antagonist in this episode, the writers definitely had one particular group in mind. " We always knew that the Borg would have something to do with it, " Ken Biller recalled, " because they've been Voyager 's nemesis throughout the series and we figured they should figure a role in the finale. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 18)
• It was Rick Berman who suggested this episode involve time travel, which invited analogies between "Endgame" and the final episode of TNG, " All Good Things... ". The writers were mindful of the fact such comparisons would inevitably be made. Recalled Ken Biller, " I said, 'We don't have to shy away from that. It's a different set of characters, and a different show, and ultimately it is a different story. The only thing that it has in common is that they do involve time travel.' " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 40) The decision to use time travel as an essential aspect of this episode's plot was made very quickly. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 77)
• Work proceeded on determining the destinies of Star Trek: Voyager 's main characters. " We always knew we were going to resolve the Tom and B'Elanna pregnancy. We started to come up with storylines for the different people, " Ken Biller remembered. " We decided that a big epic show could use some romance. " The writer-producers realized this episode could be influenced, if they chose, by previous hints of a romance between Chakotay and Seven of Nine, earlier in the series run of Voyager . " Why not just go for it? That's what we did, " Biller offered. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 40) The writers reused another character, Korath , from Star Trek: The Experience . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 10)
• Robert Picardo had a hand in indirectly influencing how this episode depicted his own character of The Doctor. He explained, " The finale […] was really plotted out by Rick Berman and Ken Biller. But I think what happens specifically to The Doctor is a reflection of themes that I've been part of helping to suggest and establish [during the series]. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 61)
• Kate Mulgrew was involved in selecting the story choices used in this episode. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 20; [1] ) At a point when she was unaware what Janeway's fate would be, Mulgrew expressed her hopes for the series finale. " I think Rick Berman and Brannon Braga know where I stand, but ideally I'd like to see a very poignant ending, " she explained. " I don't think this one should have a red ribbon on it. I think it should be unprecedented and bold, and rather stunning. What that means I do not know, but I don't think it should have a fluid ending. " Mulgrew was specifically pleased to learn there was strong fan support for the possibility that Janeway would go down with her ship. " That's the truest to the entire story, and that's the way it should be, " she opined. " I hope that we don't wuss out. It should have a very strong, stunning ending. The viewers have invested in the characters, and it's payoff time. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 74 , pp. 21-22) Mulgrew voiced at least some of these wishes to the show's creative personnel. " I said, 'I think Janeway has to go down with the ship, but not at the full cost of her being,' " Mulgrew recalled. " We had to figure out how to do that. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 20)
• The way in which the writing staff tried to work Kate Mulgrew's sacrificial notion into the episode was originally somewhat different from how it turned out, involving a concept that went on to be cannibalized for the two-parter " Unimatrix Zero " and " Unimatrix Zero, Part II ". ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 171 , p. 52) This idea had Janeway boldly surrendering to the Borg, allowing them to assimilate a battle-damaged Voyager and its crew. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 171 , p. 52; Star Trek Magazine  issue 114 , p. 38) The Doctor would then activate a reverse assimilation virus. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 114 , p. 38) Bryan Fuller continued, " As we were assimilating the Borg ship from the inside, and re-assimilating ourselves, we would use a Borg trans-warp conduit to get back home. The idea was this great final image of the Borg armada approaching Earth, and then out of the belly of the beast of the lead ship came Voyager , destroying all of the other Borg in its trail. It felt like an epic conclusion to Janeway's journey with the Borg, and freeing Seven of Nine. That got abandoned somewhere along the road. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 171 , p. 52)
• A complex quandary was whether to return Voyager and crew to their original setting. Brannon Braga remembered, " The biggest decision, of course, was whether or not we actually wanted them to get home. That was a decision that really came down to the wire. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 78) The writers made a determination pertaining to this issue, which was quickly reversed once the story developed. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 77) Only at the end of the writing process did the writer-producers realize the audience needed to see Voyager 's return to the Alpha Quadrant, in a turn of events which wiped out the alternate timeline while also returning Captain Janeway and her crew home. " I think that was a clear, thematic decision, " Ken Biller reflected. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 40) Kate Mulgrew's idea that Janeway make a partial sacrifice, to save Voyager , in this installment led to the concept of Admiral Janeway making such a sacrifice whereas the usual version of the character persisted. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 20)
• All things considered, working out this series finale's story took a huge amount of time. Shortly after the episode was written, Rick Berman recalled, " Ken Biller, Rob Doherty , Brannon [Braga] and myself have worked for weeks on a very complex storyline. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 4) Biller, speaking in March 2001, stated that the meetings to devise the narrative had taken place "over the course of the last several months." He proceeded to comment, " The actual specifics of the story for the finale were still in play and in flux, I would say, up until (early February). And then we pretty much locked down what we wanted to do. But we bandied it about throughout the year […] We've gone back and forth about certain things, how we are going to solve them. " Indeed, the entire episode was still able to be radically altered right up until the end of the scripting process. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , pp. 17 & 18)
• Rob Dougherty, a story editor on the series, was brought into the process by Ken Biller, because he "wanted a collaborator to write the teleplay with," in Biller's words. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 17) This episode marked the final Star Trek contributions from not only Biller and Doherty, but also from fellow writer-producer Michael Taylor .
• The details of this episode's story were kept under tight wraps. Eager to retain the episode's multiple surprise aspects, the creative staff didn't want any of the big events depicted to be publicly revealed too quickly. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 39) " They [the producers] wanted to keep the storyline a secret, so it was all done on a need-to-know basis, " Richard Herd analyzed. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 49) Ken Biller admitted, " I'm sure there are images in the promos that will tantalize people, but I'd like to keep as much of it secret as long as I can. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 17) One plot point the episode's writers wanted to keep secret, if possible, is that Voyager returns home. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 78)
• On Tuesday 13 March 2001 , Ken Biller was still working on the script (the episode was intended to enter production on the following Monday) and was interviewed by Larry Nemecek for Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 17. " Actually, the only reason [the script]'s not finished yet, " Biller explained, " is it's a two-hour script and we're trying to prep (design and plan) both hours at the same time […] Since we have the same director for the entire finale – Allan Kroeker – once he starts shooting he has no more prep time! " On the other hand, the remaining scenes were not massive, and the various departments had been given enough time to prepare for the start of production to go ahead as per scheduled.
• When Director Allan Kroeker arrived to commence his pre-production work on this installment, he was surprised no script was yet available, even though Ken Biller usually paid a lot of attention to delivering scripts on time. " This one was delayed because it had to be decided how the series would end, " explained Kroeker. During lunch, Biller relayed the episode's story to Kroeker and the First Assistant Director, Jerry Fleck . " When the script arrived, we were duly impressed, " Kroeker pronounced, " because the script followed – down to a tee – every beat Ken had described to us [during the episode's production meeting]. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 78)

Cast and characters [ ]

• Though the entire cast and crew usually received a copy of each Star Trek: Voyager script before the making of its related episode, the drastic security measures to maintain the secrecy of the events meant only the cast of "Endgame" had its script. Secrecy was so tight, in fact, that even the actors didn't receive full copies of this episode's teleplay. " We were getting pages sent out piece by piece in top-secret envelopes, " divulged Tom Paris actor Robert Duncan McNeill . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 22)
• Mere weeks before participating in the making of this series finale, Kate Mulgrew was still uncertain if Voyager would finally reach Earth. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 30) She was happy with this episode while acting in it. During a break in the filming, Mulgrew stated she expected viewers to be "unsettled by what the writers have come up with," but characterized the series' outcome as "profoundly clever and very moving." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 4) In this episode, she loved playing both Captain Janeway and Admiral Janeway. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 94 , p. 41) Mulgrew enjoyed this episode in general. She said, " The sharp edges of loneliness, I think, were very much in play for Janeway [generally]. And that made the ultimate sacrifice that much more delicious. The admiral sacrificed her life so that the captain could persevere. That's who I really was as Janeway […] I was very proud of 'Endgame', partly because I had a hand in the choices, the story. I loved it. There's no way you're going to satisfy everyone after a seven-year investment […] It's heartbreaking, an ending of any kind. But I thought our finale was a pretty good way to say goodbye. " [2] Of how Janeway's sacrifice was finally executed in the script, Mulgrew also noted, " I thought it was splendid. " Mulgrew's most lasting memories from the final days of filming were "mostly how hard it was to say goodbye." Towards the end of the shooting period, she recalled some very memorable advice which Patrick Stewart had given her in the first week of production on Voyager 's first season . " He said, 'If you do this well and approach it with vigor and discipline, this will be the work that will make you the proudest of any work you will do.' And that's exactly how I felt the last days, with tears running down my cheeks […] I remember thinking how foolish Human beings are. We think it's long, but it's nothing. It's a moment. I was very proud. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 20) In retrospect, Mulgrew enthused about the finale, " Every aspect of it pleased me. It's beautiful […] I just loved the story, and was really determined to do it well. I feel certain that we did. I would be so disappointed if it were less than great. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 29) Mulgrew cited this episode as the one which "most exemplified Janeway as a captain." ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 128 , p. 27) She concluded, " I think in the end it was just about as excellent as it could have been under those extraordinary circumstances. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 85 , p. 23)
• Whereas Susanna Thompson had previously portrayed the Borg Queen on Voyager , this episode features a return of Alice Krige to the role, she having originally established the part in the film Star Trek: First Contact . " When they asked me to do the finale, " Krige explained, " I believe it was because Susanna was doing something else. I was very happy to go back and join everyone. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 52) Though she chose not to be influenced by Thompson's portrayal of the role (none of which she watched), Krige did take some inspiration from the Voyager scripts which the Borg Queen had been written into, including the new teleplay for "Endgame". [3]
• With numerous years having passed between the production of First Contact and her work on this episode, Alice Krige found that appearing in this installment differed vastly from her previous Star Trek appearance. The amount of difference actually led Krige to unexpectedly become panic stricken, very shortly before reprising the role of the Borg Queen. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 52) " It was very different in that this time (on Voyager ) I was actually working with two women (Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan), " she said. " There's a very different energy to that; delightful and just as interesting and just as challenging, but quite different. " [4] Krige also stated, " I was thinking, 'Oh goodness. That kind of sexual tension that existed between Data and the Borg Queen, and indeed Picard and the Borg Queen, I am now doing it with two women!' I called one of the producers and said, 'Now what?' And the producer, with good insight, said, 'Don't worry. Just think of the Borg Queen as omni-sexual.' Well, it just became very interesting. The thing about the Borg Queen, Data, and Picard is it's all about power. There really was no reason why she wouldn't use the same energy on Seven of Nine, to manipulate her. With Janeway, it was two fairly formidable opponents coming up against each other. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 52)
• Richard Herd, who portrayed Admiral Paris, was delighted to have been written into this series finale. " I had always hoped to be in the final episode, " he said, " but I didn't know anything for sure until just before we shot it [owing to the project's secrecy] […] I feel very fortunate to have been a part of it, especially if you think about how many other guest stars have been in the show before […] And now, thanks to 'Endgame', I'm a part of Star Trek: Voyager history. " Herd expected this outing would "gratify and satisfy" long-time viewers. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 49) He admitted that his "only frustration with Voyager " was with the episode's conclusion. The actor went on to explain, " I was hoping […] when I finally had a chance to see my son, that we'd have had a few sentences. I was hoping to say, 'It's been so long' or 'Welcome home, son.' But we never had that opportunity to talk, just to stare at each other. " [5] However, regarding the fatherly bond, Herd concluded, " You'll find other things in the finale that offer a wonderful resolution. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 49)
• Robert Beltran speculated that he may have inspired the romantic storyline between his character of Chakotay and Seven of Nine. " Because Jeri Ryan and Brannon Braga were going out together, and the fact that Chakotay never really had a romantic interest, I challenged Brannon through Jeri to get our characters together. I said, 'Jeri, I know there's no way that we'll ever get a scene together where we kiss, because Brannon would never allow that.' She laughed and said, 'I'm gonna tell him you said that,' and I said, 'Yeah, you do that.' So I think that was his way of saying, 'You think I'm jealous?' you know. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 98 , p. 40) A noted critic of the writing and characterizations on the show, Beltran had several gripes about the final episode. He complained that the episode was written with a lack of care, too quickly wrapping up some well-established story arcs. Additionally, Beltran theorized that the episode was written out of frustration over Voyager 's audience ratings, stating about the writers, " They took it out on us by saying, 'This show's no good. Let's get it over with as quickly as possible so we can fix it for the next one.' " [6] Beltran also rhetorically asked about the installment, " This is what we're going out with? " and claimed the episode made him feel vindicated about his belief that the writers were "idiots," saying it was unfortunate that the fans were "going to have to sit through it." [7] On the other hand, Beltran also cited this episode as a highlight for showing some personal aspects of Chakotay's life, particularly the relationship with Seven of Nine. Moreover, the actor remarked about this romance, " I'm glad they've done it […] What you get in the finale is pretty sudden, but it's good stuff. I just wish they'd done it earlier, so we could have had more time to explore the relationship between them. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 20) Beltran also considered it "just unfortunate" that the romance wasn't gradually developed and critiqued, " It's just too bad they [the producers] just sort of threw it together at the end. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 98 , p. 40)
• Garrett Wang had mixed feelings about this feature-length episode. " I think the first hour of the finale was fantastic, very exciting, well written, good pacing, " he commented. " Everything was great about the first hour, but then the second hour it just seemed like it tied up all of the loose ends very quickly. So, the second half of the finale I was not happy about, and I especially didn't like the fact that we ended the series in Earth's orbit. We don't even step foot on Earth. Hello! After seven years, I think the fans wanted to see us actually step foot on terra firma. " Wang went on to say that, if he had been running Star Trek: Voyager , he would have kept the series finale's first half exactly as it is but ended the series with a caption reading, " To be continued at a theater near you, " an advertisement for a two-hour Voyager movie that he would then have done. [8] In addition, Wang once joked that the series finale of Voyager should have included his character of Ensign Kim having a passionate affair with Captain Janeway. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 175 , p. 65)
• Roughly six months after appearing herein, Roxann Dawson expressed satisfaction with how this episode wrapped up the series. " My only criticism, if I have one, is that I wish we had started to deal with the ending a little bit earlier, instead of just in that last two-hour episode, " she commented. " I thought that would have been nice, but I think the producers dealt with it very well. I liked the ending. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 87 , p. 23) In a 2015 interview, Dawson commented that – even though she could see merit in the idea of at least part of an episode dealing with the Voyager crew being home again – she considered the absence of such footage as "not really a regret." ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 180 , p. 26)
• While working on this installment, Robert Picardo was pleased to discuss and promote the series finale. He specified this was "because I want a lot of people to see it and I want it to be a gratifying conclusion to something I've enjoyed a great deal." Picardo felt that thinking about the possibility of him later appearing in the Star Trek franchise helped him to prepare himself for his final day before the cameras. He reckoned, " I think the fans of The Doctor in particular will smile. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 59 & 61) As well as appreciating this episode, Picardo observed that Admiral Janeway's alteration of the timeline left uncertainties about what eventually happens to The Doctor, such as the potentialities of his relationship with Lana and other characters. " Whether or not The Doctor really gets that particular blonde babe remains unclear, " Picardo pointed out. " Who knows, maybe in the new possible future he'll wind up with Seven of Nine. " Thinking further about the fact the timeline was altered, the actor remarked, " That was OK. This is science fiction. " Picardo, who had experience of interacting with himself by playing The Doctor and Dr. Lewis Zimmerman , went on to enthuse, " I really liked the finale. Kate just did a superb job talking to herself […] I thought Kate was absolutely seamless. You really bought the different versions of her. I thought the two hours were very exciting […] The moment of emotional payoff was a little truncated. Other than that, the finale was a nice pay-off to the series. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 90 , p. 22)
• Tuvok actor Tim Russ regarded the end of Voyager with calm calculation, doing his utmost not to let any emotion or sentiment cloud his judgment. " I feel it's time to wrap the show, " he said, during a break from filming "Endgame". " Better to go out while you're still strong […] It feels like the end of a long journey, not unlike the show's concept. " He thought this series ender was indeed strong. " I think it's going to be a great final two-part show, " Russ commented. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 71) Even though some of his fellow cast members were somewhat dissatisfied with the focus of "Endgame", Russ didn't share their feelings, instead retaining his optimism about the episode. " I thought [it] […] was brilliantly done, " he remarked, " because the writers did it in a non-linear fashion. It wasn't what people expected in terms of a plot sequence. They did it in reverse, basically. " Because it was told in a way he believed to have been unexpected, Russ considered this episode's plot as being "consistent with the way the writing is on Star Trek ." The actor was not overly concerned that the series finale didn't especially concentrate on the ensemble, focusing more on the two Janeways. Russ treasured the unusual way in which the Tuvok of the future was depicted and the fact that the Vulcan's mental downfall was a motivating factor for Admiral Janeway's attempt to return Voyager earlier than in the two characters' own timeline. " That was a great twist. It was something totally unexpected, and I thought it was really brilliantly done. " Russ was also of the opinion that, due to the admiral's actions, Tuvok's fate was likely changed. " So again, true to form, everything comes out positive in the end. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 85 , p. 32)
• By the time of filming, Jeri Ryan understood the requirement of and reasoning for the secrecy which surrounded the making of this installment. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 39) Ryan took a long time to watch "Endgame". She considered the episode "bittersweet." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 85 , p. 19) The actress found the romance between her Seven of Nine character and Chakotay "frustrating." Ryan stated, " I don't think it was a bad idea. Just the way they did it came out of left field. I think Robert [Beltran] and I had kind of a hard time with that. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 143 , p. 51)
• Robert Duncan McNeill changed his opinion of the intense secrecy. " At first, I was annoyed, " McNeill professed, " but then I realised as I was getting the [script] pages that I was more excited about getting this script than any other script I've had in a while. I thought, 'If I'm getting so excited reading it, it's going to work with the audience.' " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 22) As it turned out, McNeill deemed this installment a fitting end to the series. " I think the last episode is very bittersweet, " he proclaimed. " It's got a lot of action and a lot of surprises, but I also think it honours every character in the show in their own special way and gives us a chance to kind of peek into the future and see what kind of directions they will be heading in their lives. It kinda bookends our journey in many ways. And I think it resolves the show for everybody in a really heartfelt way. Also, it's a sci-fi show, so there are a lot of surprises and a lot of action and a lot of twists and turns. It's not all tears and goodbyes and end of show. There's a lot of heart, but there's also a lot of surprises and a lot of action. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 67-68)
• During filming of this episode, the cast members frantically sought each other's autographs. They did this so they could later auction signed items for charities. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 61)
• There were mixed emotions among the cast members during the making of "Endgame". " There was a sense of sadness that something very good was ending, " observed Richard Herd. " I think the actors also felt very fortunate to have been a part of a series that lasted seven years, and were pleased with the growth of their characters over that time. But there was also a feeling that it was time to move on and pick up their lives. So I don't think people were too upset, but at the same time, they certainly weren't jumping for joy. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 49)

Kate Mulgrew and Jessie during production on this series finale

• One performer in this series finale, Jessie , was suffering from cystic fibrosis when he featured in this installment. He was provided the opportunity to appear as a "wish" from the charity Make-A-Wish Foundation. ( info from Lisa Vanasco )

Production [ ]

• Even before production on this episode began, Kate Mulgrew predicted the timing of the filming's conclusion. She reckoned, " I think we'll finish in April [2001] […] We'll have lots of stuff to do to really wrap it all up. We're going to have to do all the second unit work and all the post-production, so I can't see it being completed until the middle or the end of April. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 74 , p. 21)
• As well as directing this series finale, Allan Kroeker also directed the series finales of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise . This was also the final Star Trek episode that Production Designer Richard James worked on.
• Depicting the future alternate timeline of this series finale presented tasks for creative personnel such as Set Designer Tim Earls . " The challenge with 'Endgame' was trying to project the design and technological advances of Star Trek Voyager 's time period a few years into the future, " Earls related. " Projecting advances by a few centuries is a little easier because almost anything is possible. Future Janeway's apartment [including a small wall console], her desktop monitor and Starfleet shuttle were three of the elements I worked on for that episode. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 83) Set Decorator James Mees stated, " 'Endgame' was huge. There was a lot of emotional stuff going on; people wanted to make everything perfect because it was the last [one]. I think our sets turned out quite well. " ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 3, Issue 3 , p. 85)
• The making of this series finale was so shrouded in secrecy that few managed to gain access to the Paramount sound stages used and even fewer saw a complete script for the installment. Even members of the production crew receiving script alterations were granted only the necessary pages, in envelopes marked personal and confidential. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 39)
• This episode was filmed over a time span of about two-and-a-half weeks. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 4) The duration of the shoot was exactly fifteen days. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79) The episode's shooting schedule included sixteen days, though.
• Production on this episode was scheduled to begin on Monday 19 March 2001 . The first scene shot was the one in which Chakotay and Seven of Nine share their first couple of kisses in Chakotay's quarters but are then called to the bridge. That scene was filmed on Paramount Stage 8 and required a permit for candles to be involved in the scene. Filmed next was the conversation between Janeway and Chakotay in which, in the captain's ready room (on Stage 8), they talk about the false alarms in B'Elanna Torres' pregnancy and discuss Chell's cooking. ( Information from shooting schedule )
• While production on this installment was under way, Kate Mulgrew and Allan Kroeker labored over long hours. Mulgrew recollected, " We worked so hard […] because we were alone for most of it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 29)
• The first scene scheduled to be shot with Kate Mulgrew portraying Admiral Janeway was planned to be filmed on 22 March 2001 . ( Information from shooting schedule )
• Kate Mulgrew's dialogue for this episode was intense and usually any time she had away from the set, she was in the make-up trailer, her hair being coiffed for her next shot. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 42) Despite finding it easy to adopt the persona of Admiral Janeway, Mulgrew found it difficult to portray the two versions of Janeway interacting with each other. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 94 , p. 41) She was tasked with memorizing the timings and dialogue for both sides of these scenes, for which extensive motion-control technology was used. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , pp. 79 & 80) Mulgrew noted, " [It was] very difficult, a lot of […] split-screen, highly technical stuff, which is often threatening to the creative process. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 29) The actress elaborated, " They were technically the most challenging scenes of my life. And that too was interesting to me. I was playing to nothing […] I had to really believe that she is there while I was looking at a dot or maybe there's a stand-in or something. But that's the work of the imagination, which is exactly what we're paid to do, right? " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 94 , p. 41) Filming the two Janeways involved a complicated shooting schedule. Mulgrew stated, " I didn't have the luxury of shooting Admiral Janeway completely, and then Captain Janeway completely, because we were working together in so many scenes. But I embraced the challenge. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 85 , p. 23) The production of these scenes proved time-consuming and technically difficult. Explained Allan Kroeker, " The process of filming her interacting with 'herself' was feasible, firstly because of Kate's discipline and precision as an actress, and also thanks to our […] Visual-Effects Team, namely [Visual Effects Producer] Dan Curry and [Visual Effects Supervisor] Ron Moore […] When I was planning my shots, Dan Curry urged me to stage the choreography of the two Janeways as if there were two actresses in the scene. He said, 'Just think of how you would want to shoot it, how you would want to tell the story.' Dan and Ron would then figure out how to transpose my choreography into motional control. I was able to have the actors move around the set, cross each other, even touch each other. This would require a lot of meticulous frame-by-frame rotoscoping, because we didn't have the time to shoot it on a green-screen stage, adding motion control plates of the set afterwards: It all had to be accomplished on a set with no green screen. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79–80)
• The scene in which Captain Janeway and Admiral Janeway have a talk in the captain's ready room, shortly after the latter's arrival aboard Voyager , was shot on 28 March 2001 and was the first scene to be filmed on that day. ( Information from shooting schedule ) Kate Mulgrew came up with the idea of Admiral Janeway passing a coffee cup to Captain Janeway, an in-joke to acknowledge the long-running significance of the coffee cup in Janeway's ready room. " As we were blocking the scene, she suggested she do this, " Kroeker recalled. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 80)
• The scene in which Admiral Janeway gives a Borg-related lecture to a class of cadets, including Jessie's character, was filmed on 30 March 2001 . (photo gallery, VOY Season 7 DVD )
• Conversely to the increased secrecy, this episode's production schedule allowed for more reportage than was usual for the series. " The daily routine is a little busier because of [additional] press [reporting], " stated Tim Russ, midway through production, " and there is more secrecy surrounding the shooting days. " At one stage during a break from the installment's filming, Jeri Ryan gave an interview to journalist Ian Spelling while sitting in her trailer on the Paramount lot, dressed in a bathrobe which covered her Seven of Nine catsuit. After a while, there was a knock on her trailer door; a production assistant had come, bearing a large stack of photographs and other Voyager memorabilia for the actress to sign. Other interviews during production on this episode involved David Bassom talking to both Robert Duncan McNeill and Tim Russ, individually, for Star Trek Magazine . Both McNeill and Robert Beltran were interviewed only a few days away from the end of this installment's filming, Beltran by Ian Spelling for Star Trek Magazine . In common with Ryan, Beltran's interview was cut short by the arrival of a first assistant director, though in Beltran's case, this was because he was needed back on set for a scene rehearsal. Abbie Bernstein interviewed Robert Picardo for the same publication, on the episode's third-to-last shooting day. It was, by Picardo's estimate, his twenty-fifth interview within the past month pertaining to the imminent conclusion of Star Trek: Voyager . " I identify with the sets that are about to be torn down, " Picardo laughed, detailing the mood during production. " There's a tremendous flurry at all nine of us [the regular cast]: 'We're losing you as a group, we want to chip off one little piece to hold onto.' There are a lot of serious conversations about how people are going to miss each other and how odd it's going to be after seven years to say goodbye to this extended family, not only within the cast but well beyond, to the people behind the camera. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 34–36, 59, 67, & 70-71; Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , pp. 18 & 20) Allan Kroeker was likewise conscious of there being an emotionally charged atmosphere on the set, even for those individuals who seemed otherwise detached from the filming, with everyone well aware that the final moments were ticking down. " There's a powerful melancholy in the air, " the director remarked, " it pervades the entire shoot, as we progressively 'wrap' sets, even props, and finally retire characters who will never be seen again. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79) TV Guide , while on set, interviewed Beltran and Picardo. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 78)
• The scene in which, following Seven of Nine's collapse, she and a protective-feeling Chakotay have a discussion, in astrometrics, about how they won't allow their romantic feelings for each other to affect their professional relationship was filmed on 2 April 2001 , the same day as Robert Beltran was interviewed for Star Trek Magazine . ( Information from shooting schedule ; Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 20) Whereas his interview was in the afternoon, efforts to film the scene had been made by that time. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , pp. 20-21)
• The next sequence to be filmed on that day was the one involving both Janeways, Chakotay, Seven of Nine, and Tuvok in astrometrics. ( Information from shooting schedule ) It was regarded to be of major importance and the shooting company devoted much time to it. The required footage was being filmed while Ian Spelling was still on a set visit for Star Trek Magazine . Saying a quick hello to Spelling as she headed to the set, Jeri Ryan stressed to him the need for secrecy. Meanwhile, on Stage 16 's astrometrics set, Allan Kroeker prepared to film scene 44D, a close-up of Chakotay from the aforementioned sequence. The crew first filmed a master shot with all the actors in it, then concentrated on shooting isolated close-ups. Beltran knew his lines verbatim, so he coolly mumbled them and employed plays on words while camera move rehearsals were taking place. During actual filming, however, Beltran took the scene seriously and had no problems with it. After just a few takes, Kroeker voiced his approval and the film crew moved in to prepare the next shot, Scene 44E – a close-up of Tim Russ. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 39)
• Having traveled in a golf cart from his office to the set, Ken Biller sat on a bench just outside Stage 16, where he chatted with Ian Spelling. Back on the set, Tim Russ went before the camera. Following each take, he sprawled out on the floor, relaxing and conserving his energy. Allan Kroeker didn't take long to capture the shot the way he wanted it. Russ took the bench outside, where Biller had been sitting, and was interviewed by Spelling. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 39–40 & 42)
• Garrett Wang had arrived at the set earlier, to have make-up applied. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 41) This was for his only scheduled performance of the day: the scene in which Captain Kim bids Admiral Janeway farewell and beams from her shuttle to the Rhode Island . ( Information from shooting schedule ) With that done, he was now in his trailer. There, he awaited his call to the set, killing time by studying his lines and autographing photos, scripts and other Voyager memorabilia for co-stars, friends and fans. He, too, chatted to Ian Spelling, for Star Trek Magazine . The writer next paid a short visit to Stages 8 and 9 . On the way, Spelling passed other stages, where sets for the forthcoming series Enterprise were under construction. As part of this endeavor, various pieces of futuristic-looking sets were piled in nearby alleys. Several of the sets on Stages 8 and 9 had been struck, but the Voyager bridge set remained intact, though unlit at that time. In one corner, a second-unit crew filmed pick-up shots for the earlier seventh season installment " Natural Law ". ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 41–42)
• In the astrometrics set on Stage 16, Kate Mulgrew apologized for struggling with some particularly intense lines of dialogue she had to deliver, right then, as Admiral Janeway. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 42; Information from shooting schedule ) At one point, Mulgrew uttered the words "in the plexus." She did this repeatedly, over several takes. Eventually, a script supervisor advised Mulgrew the term was "nexus" rather than "plexus." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 42) The line, as scripted (and eventually included in the episode) was, " The shielding for those manifolds is regulated from the central nexus, by the Queen herself. " Replying to the script supervisor, Mulgrew attested that she thought she had used the correct noun. While the actress raced back into the make-up trailer so her hair could be sorted, Kroeker conferred with the script supervisor, also listening to a playback of the scene to double-check Mulgrew had indeed said "plexus." The director decided the issue was trivial, because the film crew had recorded the line multiple times while covering the scene from other angles. Moments later, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, and Jeri Ryan (the latter wearing a white robe over her Seven of Nine costume) were outside, gathered on the same golf cart Ken Biller had used and making small talk among themselves. A group of about fifteen tourists, most of whom were Japanese, suddenly noticed the trio. They excitedly congregated with the actors, but the fun was interrupted by an assistant director, who declared that Russ and Ryan were needed back on the set. Departing with words of good humor, they left Beltran surrounded by the enthusiastic fans, though he also returned to the set in a few moments. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 42) Once the group discussion in astrometrics was filmed, the scene involving Captain Kim's return to the Rhode Island was shot straight afterwards. ( Information from shooting schedule )
• On 4 April 2001 , Star Trek: Voyager 's final briefing room scene was shot. ( Information from shooting schedule ) The filming of the scene was an example of what Robert Picardo described as "goofiness," which he theorized was "because people are simply letting off steam." On the occasion of filming the last briefing room scene, there was much levity. " Robbie McNeill was being particularly funny, doing comic business. The prop man handed him a cup of coffee before the coffee was actually put in it, and he was pantomiming. He did every piece of schtick you can do with a coffee cup, including [miming] spilling the hot coffee all over Captain Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] in the middle of a very emotional speech. He did 25 pieces of business with the coffee cup […] He was not exactly helping Kate rehearse her work properly, " Picardo chuckled, " but by allowing us all to laugh and have release, he was giving voice in a way to all of the strange, complex feelings that everyone was experiencing. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 59-60)
• Though the hijinks ensued anyway, the content of the briefing room scene was felt to be particularly poignant, as it included Harry Kim's speech to the senior staff in which he expresses how much he values them and their surroundings. Acknowledged Robert Picardo, " [It] applied to us as actors as well as the characters […] Of course, giving it when we're all about to say goodbye to each other, it had a particular resonance. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 60)
• Alice Krige was scheduled to start her work on this episode on 5 April 2001 . ( Information from shooting schedule ) It was the night before she began to be involved in the installment's production, as she was preparing for her scenes, when she suddenly became worried about the differences between the Borg Queen's pair of adversarial relationships in First Contact compared to those in this episode. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 52)
• The scenes in which officers at Starfleet Communications , such as Admiral Paris, witness Voyager 's return to the Alpha Quadrant were shot on Stage 16, on 5 April 2001. ( Information from shooting schedule ) Stated Richard Herd, " When I was looking at him [Tom Paris], all I was doing was looking at a piece of masking tape on the wall that they could match with Robbie's eyeline. But it worked. " [9]
• Alice Krige found that her part in this episode's filming schedule was "very intense," later reporting, " We filmed my work on Voyager on two very, very long days, because I had to fly to England to start another project. We did two 20-hour days. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 52) Krige was delighted that this episode, however, reunited her with several Star Trek production staffers. " What was lovely was there were members of the First Contact crew, " she reminisced, " who were either on the lot, working on other things, or who were on Voyager , and everyone came in to say hello. That was lovely. " [10]
• Alice Krige's final day of working on this episode ( 6 April 2001, according to the shooting schedule) coincided with long-time Star Trek makeup artist Scott Wheeler 's last day of doing makeup on Star Trek . Krige reflected, " He said to me, 'This is the best I've ever done the Borg Queen make-up. I finally got it just how I want it.' " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 94 , p. 24)
• The sequence in which the Borg Queen faces destruction was, originally, storyboarded by Allan Kroeker and Dan Curry. They felt it important for the scene not to be too effects-driven, wanting to ensure the characters were the focus of attention. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 16) Members of the visual effects team at Foundation Imaging were on-hand to personally witness the action on the set, while the sequence was in production. Robert Bonchune believed this arrangement was a good idea, especially for John Teska and Sherry Hitch , who were to work on the visual effects for the sequence. " I had no doubts about what material we would receive from Paramount, " Teska clarified, " but because we were so close to the ending and so anxious to make sure that everything came out correctly, it was just good to have multiple eyes there [on the set] to look over each other's shoulders. And for me, it was even a bit of nostalgia, because it was really going to be my last chance to go to the set and see the actors working. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 19)
• Just as Kate Mulgrew had predicted, this episode's production period ended in April 2001. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 74 , p. 21; " Broken Bow " text commentary , ENT Season 1 DVD ) Principal photography of the installment officially wrapped on Monday 9 April . The schedule left only two days of second unit filming and a few weeks of post-production work. Tuesday 10 April and Thursday 12 April were scheduled for the second-unit work. Of all these days, Robert Picardo was due to work only on Monday and Tuesday. Expecting the second unit to shoot some scenes that had been pushed from the first-unit schedule owing to the busy shoot, Picardo clarified that the second-unit days weren't for capturing the usual establishing shots normally covered by this term, saying, " They're first-unit [main cast] scenes, but it's a very complicated finale and we're a little behind. " Regarding the latter of his two working days, Picardo remarked, " That's the last time I'll be putting on a Star Trek costume and standing with my shoulders forced back and my hands searching desperately for pockets that don't exist. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 4, 59 & 61) Similarly, it was after Allan Kroeker called cut for the final time on "Endgame" that Robert Beltran would remove his own costume and wash off his facial tattoo for the last time. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 18)
• While speaking with Scott Bakula during a panel at DragonCon 2010, Garrett Wang recalled that – during production of the final scene of "Endgame" (and of the series) – Kate Mulgrew was in a bad mood, which set the tone for all the actors on the set and made the entire cast's energy level go down. Also, during the filming of reaction shots on the bridge when Voyager arrived at Earth, Wang made the choice to cry as an expression of Harry Kim's joy at returning home. [11]
• Robert Duncan McNeill regretted that some of the main cast were absent for the end of production. He remembered, " The last day of shooting on that episode was very bittersweet because our entire cast wasn't there […] So on that final day of Voyager there were only a few of us left because the rest of the cast had already shot their final scenes. I wish we had had the chance on that last day, or even with the last scene, to have scheduled it in such a way so that all the actors could have been there. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 157 , p. 28–29)
• It was on the very last day of production when Kate Mulgrew remembered the advice Patrick Stewart had given her. Completing her work on this final installment of Voyager was exceptionally difficult for the actress. " It was almost impossible to do that last scene with Picardo, " admitted Mulgrew. " It was very difficult to do that Alzheimer's scene. But they kept me alone for about a week to do a lot of pick-ups on my Captain's chair and on the Bridge. It was 'Cut. Print. Thank you very much, Captain.' " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 169 , p. 20) Mulgrew elaborated, " It ended so abruptly, and with so little ceremony, and with no ritual. I was just standing there on the bridge all by myself, shrugged my shoulders and said, 'Well, my heavens, I guess that's it,' and walked off. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 29)
• Voyager was coming to an end just as filming of Enterprise was being readied. Allan Kroeker recalled, " There was a big push for me to finish the scenes quickly so they could start tearing down the sets. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79) Shortly after the filming of this episode, the standing sets for the interiors of the starship Voyager were disassembled. Michael and Denise Okuda witnessed the engineering set stripped to its skeletal frame, which had been standing ever since Star Trek: Phase II . ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture BD and DVD audio commentary ) The dismantling of the sets was not easy for the actors. " Imagine trying to rehearse a scene amidst the sounds of de-construction, " Kroeker mused, " watching walls of your home being carried off the stage as you are trying to find your lines. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79)
• The production of this episode included testing a pre-echo effect for the temporal chamber aboard a Suliban helix for ENT : " Broken Bow ". The effect was tested on the set for Voyager 's bridge. ("Broken Bow" text commentary , ENT Season 1 DVD )

Visual effects [ ]

• A lot of work was done to conjure up the epic aspects of the production. Visual effects was one example. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79) Effects-wise, "Endgame" was a particularly demanding episode, requiring the tireless efforts of the producers, all the visual effects artists at VFX house Foundation Imaging , as well as other effects houses. " The team effort here was beyond belief, " remarked Rob Bonchune. " So much good work was done by a lot of different people, and without the help of [visual effects producer] Dan Curry, or [visual effects supervisor] Mitch Suskin , or [supervising producer] Peter Lauritson , none of it could have happened. " "Endgame" demanded Foundation produce significantly more high-quality effects shots on an unusually restrictive budget. Although the duration that the company was normally allotted for an hour segment containing twelve to eighteen effects shots was three weeks, Foundation had less than a month to complete its work on the double-length "Endgame", each hour of which included at least double the usual quantity of effects shots. " I think there were 72 effects shots that involved us, " estimated Bonchune, " including all the Borg assimilation tubes and everything that John Teska and [compositors] Sherry Hitch and Pam Vick did for the Borg Queen sequences. Most of the crew worked 12- to 16-hour days for almost four weeks […] Considering the number of shots and the time [constraints], Peter [Lauritson], Dan [Curry] and Mitch [Suskin] were really accommodating; they gave us leeway to work things out, and without that leeway it would have been a much tougher process. This could not have been done if not for everybody agreeing on the look of everything quickly. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 16)
• The interior of the wormhole-filled nebula featured in this installment proved extremely challenging for Foundation Imaging to depict. Mitch Suskin contributed some suggestions as to what he thought it should look like, though it was Foundation animator Bob Quinn who eventually devised the nebula's appearance, using a nebula background Foundation had taken from a real NASA image. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 18)
• The ablative armor used by shuttlecraft SC-4 and, later, by Voyager was a relatively straight-forward effect, devised by Foundation Imaging's Russ Isler . Rob Bonchune initially chose orange for the coloration shown when the armor is being engaged, though this changed to blue on Mitch Suskin's request. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 18)
• As only a practical model of the Negh'Var warship was available, Foundation Imaging suspected Paramount would opt for the Vor'cha -class to be used here instead, since Foundation already had a CG model of it. However, Foundation was mistaken; Paramount fully intended this episode to debut a new CGI version of the Negh'Var warship, so paid Foundation to build such a model, which Foundation's Trevor Pierce then did. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 18–19) As it happened, this is the only production to feature the CG Negh'Var warship.
• This episode contained so many effects shots that there wasn't enough money in the budget to cover the price of creating a brand-new starship for Harry Kim to command in the alternate timeline. Although illustrator Tim Earls created a concept sketch for a possible design of starship for Captain Kim, it was rejected due to there being insufficent funds available, so Rob Bonchune volunteered to create a modified version of the USS Equinox , from the two-parter " Equinox " and " Equinox, Part II ", to be used as Kim's ship instead. Explaining why he took it upon himself to make the modifications, Earls noted, " It was already overwhelming with everything we had to get done for the final episode, but I felt that they could not turn it down if I volunteered to do it in my free time. " Earls proceeded to do so, ultimately creating the USS Rhode Island . ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , issue 98, pp. 10 & 11)
• In common with the ablative armor, the Borg transwarp hub – designed by Foundation Imaging's Jarrod Davis – turned out to be considerably easy to do. Though it was one of multiple effects which Rob Bonchune was at first nervous about, Paramount once again requested merely a coloration change, this time even more minor than that made to the armor. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 18)
• The dismemberment of the Borg Queen, similar to the Negh-Var warship, was a redone effect; even though Borg Queen destruction effects had been created for earlier productions, the Borg Queen's destruction in "Endgame" was an entirely new effects sequence. As with the nebula, the Queen's destruction was difficult to portray. John Teska and Sherry Hitch were instrumental in devising the sequence. " It was definitely a challenge, " reported Teska, " because this time I couldn't just dust off the stuff we had done before […] So we slaved on that for quite a little while, getting everything to track in exactly right. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , pp. 16, 18-19)

Editing [ ]

• A scene deleted from this episode depicted Chakotay having dinner with both the captain and admiral versions of Janeway. They spoke about their adventures and, when Captain Janeway was out of earshot, Admiral Janeway leaned over to ask Chakotay about his personal life. Chakotay acted surprised, though the admiral assured him, " There's no need to be coy with me, Chakotay. I know exactly what's going on. " Chakotay was clearly reluctant to discuss his personal life while his captain was nearby. Scripted stage directions indicated that he glanced towards Captain Janeway, who was standing at a replicator. " Don't worry. She doesn't know yet, " the admiral stated. " So… how are things with Seven? " Chakotay smiled and replied, " Great. " The script revealed that the admiral was "warmed to see Chakotay at such a happy time in his life." This scene was filmed, though edited from the final version of the episode. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 78)
• Also during editing, the reaction shot of Garrett Wang crying tears of joy was moved to the announcement of Miral Paris ' birth. This was an editing arrangement that displeased Wang. [12]

Continuity and trivia [ ]

• This is the only Star Trek: Voyager installment for which Alice Krige portrayed the Borg Queen, as previous Voyager episodes in which the character appears featured Susanna Thompson in the role.
• Although dealt a crippling blow, it is unclear if the Borg have been defeated once and for all, as the pathogen may not have had enough time to spread. ( Michael Okuda claims, in the Star Trek: First Contact Special Edition DVD , that they weren't obliterated.) Larry Nemecek once speculated the producers of VOY may have fully intended this uncertainty, keeping open the options for bringing back the Borg in the future. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 98 , p. 37) PIC : " The Star Gazer ", set in 2401 , suggests that the Borg were decimated as a result of the events of "Endgame", and " The Last Generation " confirms that the Collective has been rendered all but extinct.
• Chronologically, this episode marks the last appearance of active Borg connected to the Collective until the third season of Star Trek: Picard , set in 2401. The Borg would make an appearance on Star Trek: Enterprise in the episode " Regeneration ", set in the 22nd century , and inactive Borg feature heavily in the first season of Star Trek: Picard , set in 2399 .
• Robert Picardo ( The Doctor ), Ethan Phillips ( Neelix ), Dwight Schultz (Lt. Reginald Barclay ), and Alice Krige (the Borg Queen) all previously appeared in Star Trek: First Contact . Phillips played a different character, an unnamed waiter, while Picardo played the USS Enterprise -E 's Emergency Medical Hologram , a separate program from Voyager 's EMH.
• Tarik Ergin ( Ayala ) is the only actor besides the regulars to appear in both this episode and the pilot " Caretaker ".
• Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway ), Robert Beltran (Commander Chakotay ), Tim Russ (Lt. Commander Tuvok ), and Robert Duncan McNeill (Lt. Tom Paris ) are the only actors to appear in every episode of the series.
• In common with this episode, "All Good Things…" also depicts a future timeline in which the series' main characters are shown in unusual circumstances. In both installments, the respective series' captain acts as the catalyst for events. Whereas Picard was an unwilling culprit in "All Good Things…", however, the future Janeway in "Endgame" chooses to violate the Temporal Prime Directive in a deliberate attempt to tamper with time. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 89 , p. 57)
• The unauthorized reference book Beyond the Final Frontier (p. 354) points out that Admiral Janeway's purposeful effort to improve history by altering an entire timeline is precisely the crime Annorax is guilty of in " Year of Hell " and " Year of Hell, Part II ". The book goes on to refer to this series finale as "a mish-mash" consisting of the "Year of Hell" story, "All Good Things…" and VOY : " Timeless ".
• The Starfleet uniforms seen in this episode's altered future timeline were also seen in the future timeline of "All Good Things…", and in DS9 : " The Visitor ". The future combadge was seen not only on those occasions but also in "Timeless".
• The registry number of the USS Rhode Island , NCC-72701, was a deliberate homage to the registry number of the USS Enterprise , NCC-1701, and the person who picked it, Matt Jefferies . ( Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection , issue 98, p. 11)
• Kim actor Garrett Wang , who usually wore a gold uniform (and had previously worn a blue uniform in " Author, Author "), donned the red command division uniform, becoming the third of three Voyager cast members to wear all three department colors on his uniform; the others were Robert Picardo (EMH, ECH, and Lewis Zimmerman) and Robert Duncan McNeill .
• The phasers used in the future timeline appeared later as the standard sidearm (though painted somewhat differently) aboard the USS Enterprise -E in Star Trek Nemesis .
• This episode introduced a seemingly out-of-place romantic relationship between Chakotay and Seven of Nine and ended with little closure. This may have something to do with the fact that both the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise and the film Star Trek Nemesis were in preproduction at the time. Also, writer Ken Biller admitted to waiting until "the last minute" before starting the final episode. ( citation needed • edit ) The genesis of the idea of a romantic involvement between Chakotay and Seven is suggested in the episodes " Human Error " and " Natural Law ", produced before "Endgame" was filmed. In fact, Voyager 's writing staff did not decide on Seven and Chakotay becoming a couple in this outing until after "Natural Law" had been written, though Star Trek Magazine writer Nick Jones once suggested this choice may have been inspired by the final scene in that earlier installment. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 13)
• This episode marks at least the third destruction of a Borg Queen. The first occurred in TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds ", according to a line made by Captain Picard in Star Trek: First Contact . The second was in the aforementioned film, in which Data destroyed the Borg Queen by releasing warp core plasma coolant . It has been suggested the Borg Queen was also destroyed in VOY : " Dark Frontier ", when the Borg ship chasing the Delta Flyer appears from the trans-warp conduit in pieces. The Borg Queen was present at the Unicomplex when Janeway and Seven of Nine made their escape, but there is no firm evidence either way as to whether she was on board the ship which pursued them, and (as established in PIC : " The Impossible Box ") some Borg ships are equipped with extremely long-range transporters specifically for the purpose of evacuating the Queen in a crisis.
• Several notable photos appear in the future scenes of this episode. In Admiral Janeway's apartment, there is an image of Harry Kim and Tom Paris in black and white as their Captain Proton counterparts, and in Captain Kim's ready room is the same picture B'Elanna Torres looks at of her and Paris on their honeymoon ( the image was seen in " Workforce, Part II "). Also, the photograph Janeway leaves Tuvok is actually a publicity image for Season 6 .
• When the Queen interrupts Seven's regeneration, the computer voice says, " Warning, regeneration cycle incomplete. " In previous episodes, it says simply, " Regeneration cycle incomplete. " ( VOY : " The Haunting of Deck Twelve ", " Infinite Regress ")
• This episode features the last of nine times that Kathryn Janeway 's death is depicted over the course of the series. Previous episodes that depict this include " Time and Again ", " Deadlock ", " Before and After ", " Worst Case Scenario ", " Year of Hell, Part II ", " Timeless ", " Course: Oblivion ", and " Relativity ". On this occasion, the version of Janeway that succumbs to death is that of an alternate timeline that ultimately doesn't come to pass, and the cause of death is the destruction of the Borg Unicomplex while she is aboard it.
• The events of this episode also represent the tenth time (aside from the series premiere) that the Voyager crew has a possibility of returning home but is the only attempt that proves successful.
• This is the only instance, so far, of the Borg Queen assimilating someone directly.
• Whereas this episode features Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway from an alternate timeline, Kathryn Janeway from the prime timeline appears with the rank of vice admiral in Star Trek Nemesis and Star Trek: Prodigy , and is mentioned as such in Star Trek: Picard .
• This episode featured the last on-screen Star Trek credits for Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor . Also, during the episode's end credits, the word captain is misspelled as "captian", in the credit for Transportation Captain Stu Satterfield .
• This episode also marked the final appearances of the Original DS9 Starfleet uniforms used throughout the series and early DS9 as well as Star Trek Generations , which were first seen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiere episode, " Emissary ".
• Janeway's line to the Borg Queen " Just enough to bring chaos to order " references and reverses the Borg Queen's dialogue in Star Trek: First Contact in which Data asks if she is the Borg's leader and she replies " I bring order to chaos. "
• Voyager uses seven photon torpedoes (adapted to be transphasic) in this episode, three having previously been used in " Human Error ". This brings the total number of torpedoes confirmed to have been used by Voyager over the course of the series to 81, a total which exceeds the irreplaceable complement of 38 that had been established by Chakotay in the first-season episode " The Cloud ".
• The letter dictated by Tom Paris in 2375 in the episode " Thirty Days " would have been automatically transmitted from his personal database to Owen Paris when Voyager emerged from the Borg Sphere, as he had set it to be sent once the ship was within range of Earth.

References to previous episodes [ ]

• In the alternate timeline, Paris asks The Doctor "it took you thirty-three years to come up with 'Joe'?", referencing The Doctor's long-standing quest to adopt a name, which began in the first-season episode " Eye of the Needle ".
• In the alternate timeline, Paris tells The Doctor he'll "make sure to get your input before I send it off to my publisher," referring to a new holonovel. This is a reference to The Doctor's penchant for writing holonovels, established in the earlier episode " Author, Author ".
• In the alternate timeline, a cadet mentions to Janeway that she "aided the Borg resistance movement known as Unimatrix Zero," referring to the events of the sixth-season finale " Unimatrix Zero ".
• In the alternate timeline, The Doctor, responding to Tuvok's muttering of numbers, identifies stardate 53317 as being "the day Captain Janeway was abducted by the Kellidians." The stardate places this event shortly before the events of " The Voyager Conspiracy " but is not depicted in any episode. Similarly, the Kellidians are not depicted or mentioned in any other episode.
• In the alternate timeline, Barclay asks The Doctor "I've forgotten about our golf game again, haven't I?" The Doctor's interest in golf was first established in the seventh-season episode " Drive ", and Barclay's interest is established a few episodes later in " Inside Man ".
• Neelix's departure in " Homestead " is referenced when Janeway discusses his replacement in the mess hall, saying "Neelix left some pretty big pots and pans to fill." Neelix is later seen on the Astrometrics screen conversing remotely with Seven. Brax and Dexa , Talaxians featured in "Homestead", are mentioned in the conversation.
• Seven asks The Doctor "do you remember three months ago, when my cortical node shut down?" referring to the events of the earlier episode " Human Error ". Their conversation also mentions the fail-safe device discussed in that episode, as well as the Chakotay hologram that Seven uses for romantic simulation.
• Admiral Janeway tells Captain Janeway "for all you know, I could be a member of Species 8472 in disguise," referencing the events of the fifth-season episode " In the Flesh ".
• After they arrive in the Alpha Quadrant and Tom Paris is called to sickbay to meet his daughter, Janeway says "Mr Chakotay the helm." She does not address him by his rank of "Commander" as his provisional rank was only active and valid while in the Delta Quadrant . After arriving in the Alpha Quadrant his rank no longer applies and he is a civilian again.

Reception [ ]

• Prior to this episode's first broadcast, rumors circulated that Star Trek: Voyager would end with a ten-episode arc depicting the Voyager crew undergoing extreme hardship before finally returning home (à la " Year of Hell " and " Year of Hell, Part II "). It was also rumored that the crew would settle on a planet or that they'd be destroyed. ( Beyond the Final Frontier , p. 354)
• In April 2001, Entertainment Tonight featured a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of this episode. The report gave US television viewers their first glimpse of the series finale. Also, Kate Mulgrew's sentiments, speculating that the installment would likely unsettle viewers, were filmed for the program. A subsequent report by UPN 9 News revealed that the makers of Star Trek: Voyager were taking drastic measures to ensure the events of this outing were kept secret, prior to its initial broadcast. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 4)
• A few days after Kate Mulgrew and Robert Duncan McNeill filmed the last scene of Voyager to incorporate both their characters, most of the series' principal cast (except for Ethan Phillips and Jeri Ryan) took time away from production on "Endgame" to journey on a three-hour morning charity cruise. The trip was on board a three-deck harbor cruiser in Marina del Ray and was the second annual Random Flight Champagne Brunch Cruise, which included 150 Voyager fans aboard the ship. The most pricey item sold in a charity auction held as part of the cruise was a tour for four visitors to the otherwise closed set of this episode. The same Voyager cast members who went on the cruise guested, that afternoon, at the Grand Slam Convention finale, which Robert Picardo noted would be their final public appearance while the series was in production. Also during the convention appearance, Mulgrew made it clear she was sworn to secrecy on the subject of Voyager 's finale. She clarified that, if she discussed any aspect of the finale, " Rick Berman will have my head. A headless Janeway would be very unattractive. " However, Mulgrew did promise, " Everyone in this room will be satisfied and moved. " While the actors were accepting questions from audience members at the convention, someone asked whether B'Elanna Torres would give birth in the course of the series finale. The performers replied with some lighthearted banter, which involved McNeill claiming Tom Paris would actually give birth during the episode and Picardo rhetorically asking, " Let's put it this way – would you make a major character pregnant and leave her pregnant at the end of the series? " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 21–25)
• After the completion of this episode's principal photography, many cast and crew members were invited to celebrate the end of the series at the " Star Trek: Voyager Series Finale Wrap Party". The gala event was held on Wednesday 11 April 2001 , at W Hotel in Westwood, California, and was attended by five hundred guests. These included Voyager 's main cast, Brent Spiner , Armin Shimerman , Rene Auberjonois , Ira Steven Behr , John Logan , John de Lancie , and Majel Barrett . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , pp. 4 & 59) Even though the cast and stage crew of Star Trek: Voyager held the party on 11 April, all the Voyager post-production crews proceeded with their work on this episode well into May, which included editing, scoring, dubbing, and visual effects. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 15)
• Ken Biller was very pleased with this episode, thinking he and the other creative staff had succeeded in making it "epic in scope." Before production on the outing wrapped, Biller stated, " It is a slam-bang adventure full of emotion and resonance for the series as a whole […] There is something wonderful for everyone in the cast. Every member of the cast will be prominently and integrally featured in the finale […] I think the finale will move and surprise people. And I hope to God I'm right. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 39–40) One regret Biller had, though, was there hadn't been time to feature a Maquis trial at the end of the series. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 23)
• Rick Berman similarly had high hopes for this episode, commenting, " I think the final episode, which we just finished editing, is going to be really wonderful. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 133 , p. 10) He also remarked, " I'm very excited [about it] and I think the story we finally came up with is a great way to send the crew off. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 4) His happiness with this outing remained. Years later, he reminisced, " I was pleased with how the series ended […] It's always sad to end a show, but I felt good about how we did it. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 27)
• Brannon Braga was ultimately dissatisfied with this installment, complaining, " I don't remember the finale well enough… I think I have a story credit on it, so you'd think I'd remember it. I don't know that the Borg were super impactful there. I think Seven of Nine should have bit the dust. I think there had to be a real sacrifice for this crew getting home; a real blood sacrifice […] She dies getting her family home. I think, then, you have a finale. " [13]
• Although Bryan Fuller thought this episode "turned out really satisfying," he also deemed it as seeming somewhat unoriginal, remarking, " For me, it felt a little too reminiscent of 'All Good Things…' […] It felt like our finale was trying to do 'All Good Things…' again. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 171 , p. 52) He clarified, " There were some new twists, but that show had been done on Voyager and on Next Generation . It was 'Timeless' and 'All Good Things'… it was an amalgam of things that had been done before. It goes back to that Star Trek reliance of telling the same story […] But the finale did everything it set out to accomplish. My big complaint was that it was derivative. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 114 , p. 38) Fuller also felt that the story originally considered for the series finale would have worked better and was "a little bit cooler." He went on to opine, " It felt like a much more personal, specific story for Voyager than the finale we had […] The other story would have been a little more original to us. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 171 , p. 52)
• Allan Kroeker was overjoyed by this episode's teleplay. He raved, " I was glad for the direction the script of the finale took. It finally took our characters home, but also provided a glimpse of our heroes in the future, even if that future never happened – it was like an alternate history – and that the finale didn't waste any time having the characters say goodbye to each other after seven years. I thought Ken wrapped it up pretty well. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 79)
• Michael Piller stated about this installment, " I loved the finale. I thought it was full of the kinds of story that I love to tell. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 104 , p. 41)
• Tim Earls cited this as one of "the most satisfying episodes on which to work." ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 81)
• Foundation Imaging's VFX artists who worked on this episode were happy with the illusions they devised. Rob Bonchune commented, " If you look at the quality of that final episode, it looked as good as any other episode we did. " John Teska implied that the Borg Queen dismemberment effects fortunately didn't draw too much attention to themselves, stating, " When I was watching the show, I was more interested in the dramatic theme that was playing out than the fact that her lips were falling off. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 16)
• In the lead-up to the initial US broadcast of this episode by UPN , Mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan announced that Wednesday 23 May 2001 – when the installment would first air – would officially mark " Star Trek: Voyager Day." Riordan publicly endorsed the premiere screening of the series finale in recognition of the show's "message of universal harmony among diversity." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 9)
• On 23 May 2001, three Star Trek: Voyager actors celebrated the US premiere of "Endgame" by visiting Star Trek: The Experience attraction in Las Vegas, the same resort which featured the character of Korath. Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, and Garrett Wang were there to sign autographs and answer questions about the finale. The episode itself was screened in various areas of Star Trek: The Experience , including in Quark's Bar . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 10)
• "Endgame" was watched by 8.8 million viewers and caught a strong 13% share. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 121 , p. 28) The installment achieved a Nielsen rating of 5.5 million homes and a 9% share. These figures represented Voyager 's largest audience since " Scorpion, Part II " and made "Endgame" the seventh highest-rated broadcast in UPN's history. The installment's ratings success enabled UPN to finish third among the US television networks in the 8-10 pm time slot, ahead of ABC, CBS, and WB. This episode also won, outright, the time slot in the key demographic categories "Men Aged 18-49" and "Men Aged 25-54", and came second in the "Adults Aged 18-49" and "Adults Aged 25-54" demographics. The executives at UPN were thrilled with these statistics. Referring to "Endgame" as "the right kind of Star Trek programming", UPN President Tom Nunan publicly declared, " The Voyager finale bodes extremely well for Enterprise 's premiere next fall. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 8)
• One person who viewed this episode's first broadcast was Kate Mulgrew. " I watched it on television with my husband and my stepdaughters the night it aired, " she said. " I was very moved and I understood that night that I was having a cathartic moment. I had tears and all that because I realized that I was saying goodbye for the first time in a genuine and emotional way. So my viewing of the finale was colored by that every time somebody came on the screen. I was experiencing the realization that I wouldn't see Tim [Russ – Tuvok] and Robbie [McNeill] and Bob [Picardo – The Doctor] again for a while and possibly forever […] At the same time I liked 'Endgame' and was very proud of it […] The special effects made it work. You really thought Captain Janeway was there with Admiral Janeway. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 83 , p. 24)
• One particular grievance which Trekkies voiced about this episode pertained to its conclusion. Addressing this issue, Robert Picardo stated, " The only complaint I heard from some of the fans, which did have a certain validity, was that the emotional climax of us coming home was dealt with so precipitously at the end that you kind of felt like you almost missed it. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 90 , p. 22)
• This episode won two Emmy Awards . Only four other episodes of Star Trek have won this many. It won for Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Dramatic Underscore) ( Jay Chattaway ) and Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, both times beating VOY : " Workforce ", which was also nominated in those categories. Coincidentally, it was Scott Bakula who handed out the music award and James Cromwell who presented the award for visual effects. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 86 , p. 8) "Endgame" was also nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series.
• To mark the world première of this series finale, TV Guide published a special commemorative issue. As sold by newsstand vendors, the magazine was printed with three different covers, featuring Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway, Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, and Alice Krige as the Borg Queen respectively. A fourth edition was available exclusively online and had a wrap-around cover, picturing Captain Janeway alongside Chakotay, Neelix, Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres, and Tuvok. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 9)
• This episode aired to generally positive reviews. Entertainment Weekly rated it "B+" and speculated that Robert Picardo's "wittily prissy" characterization of The Doctor, the "satisfying payoff" to B'Elanna Torres' pregnancy, and Janeway's final stand would appeal "to fan and casual viewer alike." The Birmingham News similarly urged viewers not to miss the series finale, noting the installment "will end with you wanting more." The Kansas City Star meanwhile stated that " Voyager goes out the same way it came in, and in much the same manner it existed for seven years: it was pretty good science fiction TV." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 8)
• Shortly after this episode received its first US airing but before it was broadcast in the UK, Star Trek Magazine described it as "a memorable climax" and "a moving, exciting and surprising conclusion." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 12) Furthermore, Star Trek Magazine writer Nick Jones believed the events of "Endgame" lent "extra weight and poignancy" to various other episodes within the series and regarded the romance between Seven of Nine and Chakotay as "one of the nicest surprises of ST:VOY's finale." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 13) When this episode was released on VHS in the UK and Australasia, the same publication rated it five out of five Starfleet arrowheads, a score defined as "top notch." The magazine critiqued, " One thing 'Endgame' doesn't scrimp on is space-bound excitement […] The action barely lets up. The only complaint you could level at it would be that it ends rather abruptly, but seeing as we experience what life might be like for ST:VOY 's characters in the future at the beginning of the episode, it seems churlish to gripe about that. 'Endgame' is a slam-bang finale in the grand Star Trek tradition, and a fitting end to a high quality show. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 89 , p. 57) Also in the pages of Star Trek Magazine , Larry Nemecek commented, " Dramatically, it made a fitting addition to the USS Voyager 's triumphant return home to do in the Borg Collective in the process. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 98 , p. 37)
• Star Trek Magazine 's "Ultimate Guide" included reviewer John S. Hall complaining, " [The romance between Seven] and Chakotay, of all people […] came across as stilted and out of character for both parties involved. While Robert Beltran and Jeri Ryan appeared to be doing everything in their power to make the pairing credible, it just didn't work in the amount of screen time that it received. Indeed, the abrupt resolution of Voyager , within the closing moments of 'Endgame', is likely the weakest aspect of season seven. While brimming with spectacle and many fan-pleasing moments, the series finale left far too many unresolved questions and plot strands […] In the end, viewers were left with the impression that just getting Voyager back to Earth was good enough, thank you very much […] One suspects that the writers' hearts just weren't in it anymore […] so perhaps not as much time and attention was spent on Voyager 's finale as could have been. If indeed this was the case, then Voyager 's cast and fans were dealt a disservice […] By focusing on style and substance, the producers cheated everyone of the coda that the show deserved […] Voyager just… ended. With quite a bang, yes, but it should have been so much more. " However, the same issue of the same magazine contrastingly cited this episode as the best installment of the seventh season and remarked, " Time travel, alternate future timelines, and the Borg – what's not to love about 'Endgame'? Well, there is the blossoming romance between Chakotay and Seven, but never mind! Bravura performances by Kate Mulgrew, the return of Alice Krige's sublime Borg Queen and a fast-moving script combine to give Voyager a spectacular finale. " The magazine also referred to Krige as the "Best Guest Star" of the season and commented about Mulgrew's performances, " 'Endgame' wouldn't be half the story it is without her cynical, driven, tea-drinking Admiral Janeway. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 164 , pp. 72, 73 & 75)
• Star Trek author Kirsten Beyer gave the installment a mixed review in Star Trek Magazine  issue 166 , p. 80. She reported, " 'Endgame' gives us everything that was best and worst about Voyager . In the 'best' category, we have the glimpses of our crew many years later, stunning and brilliant effects sequences (see: extremely cool ablative armor), the return of Alice Krige as the Borg Queen, and some truly stunning character work by the entire cast, but most notably Mulgrew portraying both the captain we all know and the 27 year older Admiral Janeway who is, in some ways, unrecognizable. As for the 'bad', the absolute out-of-the-blue romance between Seven and Chakotay is near impossible to swallow. " Beyer thought a "much worse" issue was that the Voyager crew dismisses their Starfleet principles – which they maintained over the stretch of the series – when presented with the opportunity to return home in this episode. " It's too sad to think of Kathryn Janeway as a leader who not only dedicated herself to getting her people home, but once she had done it, spent the next 10 years figuring out how to do it better, " Beyer continued. " The episode attempts to justify it, particularly in the heartbreaking case of Tuvok, but even that doesn't mitigate the extremes to which Admiral Janeway went here, or the lines she finally crossed. But perhaps the worst of the bad here is that, once again, we beat the Borg. " Beyer thought it "amazing" the Borg Queen doesn't defeat Voyager immediately upon being given the chance and thought the Borg were consequently difficult to take seriously. She concluded, " In the end, we got the moment we had been wanting for seven years and on a purely emotional level, it delivered. But in the final analysis, 'Endgame' didn't really earn that moment. It's almost worth it for that final shot of Voyager approaching Earth. Almost. " Beyer later concluded, " It was such a troubling episode on so many levels. " [14]
• Similarly, author David A. McIntee made comments about this episode in Star Trek Magazine  issue 143 , p. 79. He thought the ending of the installment (and of the series) was impacted on by the fact that, in the series in general, Voyager 's final destination had been somewhat unclear, whether it specifically be the Alpha Quadrant, Federation space, or Earth. He wrote, " Given this rather uncertainly-placed set of goalposts, it's perhaps no real wonder that there's little of a triumphant or even really climatic build-up to the end of the journey; essentially […] [the conclusion] somewhat undermines the magnitude of the distance that had separated the ship from home. Since they had been drawn to the Delta Quadrant in one leap, it probably isn't too surprising that they got home in a similar fashion […] The familial tug-of-love between Janeway and the Borg Queen over Seven – and, by extension, the integration of Seven into Humanity, and Janeway's vendetta with the Borg – was rounded off in spectacular fashion in 'Endgame'. "
• Star Trek Magazine additionally highlighted a couple of scenes from this episode. It included the kissing scene between Chakotay and Seven in a list of " Star Trek 's sexiest scenes." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 82 , p. 47) The magazine cited the meeting of the two Janeways, via viewscreen, as Star Trek 's thirtieth greatest Star Trek moment of all time. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 83 , p. 29) The same publication also approved of the line wherein Captain Janeway, skeptical she will ever turn out as cynical as Admiral Janeway, suggests the admiral's identity be reconfirmed, the magazine citing this dialogue as "the Number One Janeway Reprimand". ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 94 , p. 64)
• The book Star Trek 101 (p. 177), by Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block , lists this episode as one of the "Ten Essential Episodes" from Star Trek: Voyager .
• The unauthorized reference book Beyond the Final Frontier (p. 354) states, " So it ends, not with a bang but with a temporal anomaly. Janeway's actions seem selfish […] and [the installment] seems determined to be as undramatic as possible. It would be quite clever to start with Voyager getting home… as long as the rest of the episode wasn't trying to generate tension from whether they will. It looks lovely, but feels like a rehash of better episodes. It's full of technobabble, it throws character developments around at random… as such, it's the perfect send-off for a series that promised so much, but delivered so little. We could have at least seen them set foot on Earth. "
• Cinefantastique (Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 40) rated this episode 3 and a half out of 4 stars.
• Following the making of this episode, most of the remaining behind-the-scenes crew continued their roles for the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise .
• Robert Picardo pointed out that the individual fates of the main characters in this series finale affected whether any of them could subsequently appear in the Star Trek films . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 80 , p. 61) Robert Beltran had a hunch, while working on this episode, that it would be the last time he would play Chakotay. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 81 , p. 20) However, over twenty years later, Beltran indeed returned to play Chakotay, albeit in voice only, in episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy . Kate Mulgrew of course went on to reappear as Kathryn Janeway, as an admiral from the prime timeline, both in Star Trek Nemesis and Prodigy . Additionally, Mulgrew, Picardo, and Alice Krige reprised their respective roles in the attraction Borg Invasion 4D , set in 2379 . Jeri Ryan returned to play Seven of Nine nineteen years after "Endgame" in Star Trek: Picard , Tim Russ would return to play Tuvok in Season 3 of Picard , and Robert Duncan McNeill returned to voice Tom Paris in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode " We'll Always Have Tom Paris ".
• This episode does not address all the continuity issues important to the series of Voyager . In Star Trek Magazine 's "Ultimate Guide", writer John S. Hall listed several of these. He asked, " What would become of The Doctor, as a sentient hologram with a mobile emitter in the Alpha Quadrant? Likewise, how would Seven of Nine be received by Starfleet – as a valued commodity, or a subject for dissection? Would her relationship with Chakotay go anywhere? And what would be the fates of Voyager 's Maquis crewmembers? Would they receive amnesty for their crimes against Starfleet, or be locked up for them? Also, after seven years of self-sufficiency in the Delta Quadrant, would the Voyager crew reintegrate effectively with Starfleet, or would there have been difficulties? " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 164 , p. 72–73)
• On 27 April 2019, Kate Mulgrew posted on her Twitter account for the opening weekend of the Marvel Studios film Avengers: Endgame saying: "I hear there's an Endgame happening soon... the Voyager crew did that 18 years ago with a little help from Future Me. The Borg Queen didn't stand a chance! Perhaps the Avengers will study my tactics? Good luck team, I know you will prevail." [15] She later tweeted to actor Chris Evans who played Steve Rogers/Captain America in the film to personally offer him some tips saying: "Captain to captain, let me know if you need any galaxy-saving tips!" [16]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment ): Volume 7.13, catalog number VHR 5183, 25 February 2002
• As part of the VOY Season 7 DVD collection
• As part of the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg and Star Trek: Fan Collective - Time Travel collections

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Chakotay
• Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor
• Tim Russ as Tuvok
• Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
• Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Special guest star [ ]

• Dwight Schultz as " Barclay "

Guest stars [ ]

• Richard Herd as Owen Paris
• Vaughn Armstrong as Korath
• Manu Intiraymi as Icheb
• Lisa Locicero as Miral Paris
• Miguel Perez as a Starfleet Physician
• Grant Garrison as a Male Cadet

Special guest appearance by [ ]

• Alice Krige as Borg Queen

Co-stars [ ]

• Amy Lindsay as Lana
• Matthew James Williamson as a Klingon
• Joey Sakata as Engineering N.D.
• Richard Sarstedt as a Star Fleet Admiral
• Iris Bahr as a Female Cadet
• Ashley Sierra Hughes as Sabrina
• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• David Keith Anderson as Ashmore
• Michael Bailous as operations officer
• Adam Bargar as Human male cadet
• Ivory Broome as operations officer
• Yvette Callum as Starfleet officer at party
• Paul Chen as Hospital ND
• Griffen Christopher as 25th century Starfleet cadet
• Kele Coloma as Dorado
• Carolyn Corley as Miral Paris (infant)
• Mathew Corley as Miral Paris (infant)
• James Dao as Pathfinder officer
• Julie David as command officer
• Irina Davidoff as Pathfinder Admiral
• Mike Davis as 25th century Starfleet cadet
• Andrew English as operations officer
• Tarik Ergin as Ayala
• Susan Foley as Human spectator
• Angela Giampietro as 25th century Starfleet cadet
• Devin Green as 25th century Starfleet cadet
• 25th century Starfleet ensign
• Vulcan command officer
• Ben Hisoler as Human spectator
• Jessie as Human male cadet
• Jessica Kanan as 25th century Starfleet cadet
• Trey King as Bolian waiter
• Joyce Lasley as Lydia Anderson
• Alicia Lewis as sciences officer
• Johnny Linares as 25th century command ensign
• Tiffani LoBue as Pathfinder officer
• Dino Maye as Human male cadet
• Carter Mitchell as Pathfinder Admiral
• Darius Montgomery as Pathfinder officer
• Tang Nguyen as Human male cadet
• Holographic Borg
• Peter Osinoff as Starfleet officer at party
• Jim Portnoy as civilian party guest
• Lucy Rizo as Pathfinder officer
• Richard Rosenburg as Hospital ND
• Linnea Soohoo as sciences officer
• Noriko Suzuki as operations officer
• Deborah Thomas as Hospital ND
• Bolian cadet
• May Wang as Human female cadet
• Barri Whitaker as Human female cadet
• Breece Wilson as Vulcan female cadet
• Curtis Wong as operations officer
• Fifteen Human party guests
• Human spectators
• Klingon guard 2
• Male Vulcan Starfleet cadet
• News speaker (voice)
• Three male and female 25th century Starfleet cadets
• Two Borg drones
• Two Rhode Island Starfleet officers
• Starfleet command officer
• Two Starfleet sciences officers at party
• Voice of the Borg

Unconfirmed [ ]

• Craig Appel as a Borg drone
• Brenda Kaye as Human sciences officer or Vulcan sciences officer

Stand-ins [ ]

• David Keith Anderson – stand-in for Tim Russ
• Amy Kate Connolly – stand-in for Kate Mulgrew
• Stacey Elder – stand-in for Roxann Dawson
• Sue Henley – stand-in for Kate Mulgrew
• Dieter Hornemann – utility stand-in
• Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan
• Louis Ortiz – stand-in for Richard Herd
• Lemuel Perry – stand-in for Tim Russ
• Erin Price – photo double for Kate Mulgrew
• J.R. Quinonez – stand-in for Robert Picardo
• Keith Rayve – stand-in for Robert Duncan McNeill, Robert Picardo, Dwight Schultz, Miguel Perez, and Manu Intiraymi
• Rose – additional stand-in for Kate Mulgrew
• Joey Sakata – stand-in for Ethan Phillips and utility stand-in
• Richard Sarstedt – stand-in for Robert Beltran and Robert Picardo
• Curtis Wong – utility stand-in
• Stuart Wong – stand-in for Richard Sarstedt and Garrett Wang

References [ ]

2329 ; 2378 ; 2394 ; 2400 ; 2404 ; abduction ; ability ; ablative generator ; Alcatraz ; alternate timeline ; Alpha Quadrant ; anticipation ; anti-tachyon pulse ; assimilation ; bearing ; " beginner's luck "; belly laugh ; biobed ; biomatter ; biradial clamp ; Borg ; Borg Collective ; Borg drone ; Borg Queen ; Borg transwarp network ; Brax ; Captain Proton ; career ; Caretaker's array ; Cardassian disruptor ; central nexus ; cerebral cortex ; certainty ; Chell ; Chicken Warp Core-don Bleu ; chronexaline ; chrono deflector ; corruption ; cortical node ; course ; cripple ; cup ; curator ; debriefing ; degenerative ; déjà vu ; Delta Flyer ; Delta Quadrant ; demotion ; Dexa ; diaper ; director ; doorstep ; elopement ; Embarcadero Center ; emotion ; fail-safe ; fal-tor-voh ; false labor ; Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Building ; Federation ; Fen Domar ; Ferengi ; Ferengi charged with corruption ; flattery ; fly boy ; four-year mission ; Gateway, The ; gesture ; golf ; graviton flux ; green ; Grid 362 ; Grid 641 ; Grid 986 ; Grid 986 nebula ; guest lecturer ; heart ; here and now ; holo-emitter pedestal ; homecoming ; House of Korath ; illumination ; inflammation ; interspatial manifold ; Joe ; kadis-kot ; kal-toh ; Kellidians ; kilometer ; Kim, John ; Kim, Mary ; kiss ; Klingons ; Klingon Empire ; Klingon High Council ; liaison ; living room ; logic ; luck ; lunch ; mess hall ; meter ; microcircuitry ; Milky Way Galaxy ; milligram ; mixed marriage ; museum ( museum ship ); nadion pulse ; nanotechnology ; nebula soup ; neural interface ; neurological condition ; neurolytic pathogen ; neuropeptide ; neutrino ; Oakland Shipyard ; Okaro ; party ; Pathfinder ; phaser, type 2 ; planetary catalog database ; Plasma Leek Soup ; pool ; pot ( coffee pot ); pragmatist ; Presidio ; psychology ; pun ; red ; red alert ; Red Alert Chili ; regeneration cycle ; San Francisco ; semester ; senior officer ; shield generator ; sickbay ; Species 8472 ; Spock ; stammer ; Starfleet Academy ; Starfleet Command ; Starfleet Intelligence ; Starfleet Medical ; stealth technology ; steam ; Sunday ; synaptic interface ; synaptic transceiver ; tachyon radiation ; tachyokinetic energy ; Temporal Mechanics Department ; Temporal Prime Directive ; temporal rift ; Thursday ; toast ; transphasic torpedo ; transwarp ; transwarp aperture ; transwarp hub ; transwarp network ; tricorder ; tritanium ; unicomplex ; Unimatrix 01 ; Voyager technicians in EV suits ; Wildman, Naomi ; Vulcans ; Wednesday ; wormhole ; year

Starship references [ ]

Akira -class ( unnamed ); Bonchune , USS ; Borg cube ( unnamed 1 and 2 ); Borg sphere ; Challenger , USS ; Defiant -class ( unnamed ); Excelsior -class ( unnamed ); Galaxy -class ( unnamed ); Miranda -class ( unnamed ); Nebula -class ; Negh'Var warship ( unnamed ); Nova -class ; Prometheus -class ; Prometheus , USS ; Rhode Island , USS ; Saber -class ( unnamed ); SC-4 ; Sphere 634 ; Steamrunner -class ( unnamed )

USS Voyager flight path references [ ]

3 kpc Arm ; Bajoran Wormhole ; Beta Quadrant ; Carina Arm ; Crux Arm ; Gamma Quadrant ; M14 ; M80 ; M92 ; NGC 5139 ; Norma Arm ; Orion Arm ; Perseus Arm ; Sagittarius Arm

External links [ ]

• "Endgame, Part I" at StarTrek.com
• "Endgame, Part II" at StarTrek.com
• " Endgame " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Endgame " at Wikipedia
• 1 Abdullah bin al-Hussein

Remembering ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ 20 Years After the Series Ended

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Star Trek: Voyager ended 20 years ago, which made it the franchise’s third consecutive series to run for seven seasons, following The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine . When the show came to a close, it marked the beginning of the end for a special era in Gene Roddenberry’s universe, which had flourished with the one-hour sci-fi dramas led by Captain Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) and Captain Sisko ( Avery Brooks) . Upon its debut in 1995 , Voyager ’s mission was to continue this success by introducing Captain Kathyrn Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ), Star Trek ’s first series with a female lead actor.  

When ET chatted with the cast of Voyager on set in 2001 amid filming the series finale, ‘Endgame,’ the ensemble revealed they were experiencing many of the same feelings behind the scenes as their counterparts on board the show’s Intrepid class starship. “We've had a couple days that were a little bittersweet,” Jeri Ryan , who stepped into the role of Seven of Nine at the start of Voyager ’s fourth season, told ET. “I've been with these people for four years and they've been together for seven. And you really do become like a family, because you see them more than your family.”

After having been stranded thousands of lightyears away from the Alpha quadrant, the ship’s crew of Starfleet officers and Maquis rebels had successfully banded together while they endured a bombardment of deadly obstacles throughout the journey home. And now, the time had come for actors and characters alike to bid farewell.

CHAOS ON THE BRIDGE

For seven years, the Voyager cast enjoyed a prime spot within an iconic pop culture franchise, one that also boasted an unprecedented fan movement that stretched across the globe. As they taped the show’s final moments, there was plenty of uncertainty at what the next chapter of their lives would look like in and outside of the Star Trek phenomenon. Ryan described the mood on set as “uncontrolled chaos.” For Voyager ’s lead star, it was a fascinating experience to witness first-hand. 

“It's intriguing to me to watch this process,” Mulgrew told ET on set. She believed the entire cast was exhibiting the first of many emotional stages in a collective grieving process that would unfold over the coming weeks. “The first will be levity. Almost revelry.” “Acting out” and “lunacy” were some of her other predictions. “Because we do everything to avoid the sadness. We do everything in nature to argue against that.”

“It's like we've been out of show business [for seven years,]” Robert Duncan McNeill, who played cocky pilot Tom Paris, told ET. In the heyday of network television’s enormous episode orders (by today’s standards), he noted that Voyager ’s intense shooting schedule had left them without a standard hiatus break year after year. Filming between 24 to 26 full-hours of TV across each of its seven seasons meant they had practically been living on the Paramount Studios lot, with the occasional short drive to Griffith Park for location shoots . “And now we're coming back to the real world.”

“I'm not gonna miss this uniform,” Robert Beltran, who played Maquis rebel leader Chakotay, told ET. He followed this up by lifting his arms and demonstrating the costume’s limited range of motion. McNeill echoed Beltran’s comments. He said while the clothes are “plain and nondescript” and look “harmless,” audiences might not realize they’re also fitted to the actor, preventing even the most basic of bodily positions. “Crossing your legs is not that easy in these suits.”

“I won't miss the corset,” Ryan said with a laugh, referencing Seven’s trademark skintight clothes. When she reprised the role for Star Trek: Picard , the character’s look received a rugged style fashion upgrade. When speaking with ET in the lead up to Picard’s debut, Ryan referred to Seven’s former wardrobe as “the cat suit,” a nod to Michelle Pfeiffer ’s costume in Batman Returns. 

Yet, amid these admissions of what they won’t miss about the job, a sense of melancholy couldn’t be avoided. It was not business as usual on set.

“The fact that they're knocking the sets down as we're finishing with them is giving us the idea that this is the last episode,” Robert Picardo told ET. (Yes, there were three ‘Robert's in this cast.) Before playing The Doctor, the ship’s medical hologram, Picardo was also a doctor across all three seasons of China Beach . The veteran actor gestured to a section of the set that had already been removed. He admitted, “It's kinda sad to see it all falling away around you.” 

THE VOYAGE HOME

“Oh, the almighty Temporal Prime Directive. Take my advice: it's less of a headache if you just ignore it.” - Admiral Kathryn Janeway. Star Trek: Voyager, ‘Endgame.’

Voyager began with a promise. Despite all the odds stacked against them, Captain Janeway would, eventually, bring everyone home. With this objective hanging over every storyline and each season-long story arc, any creative direction for the show’s end ran the risk of coming off as anticlimactic. But Mulgrew was confident in how they would be saying goodbye.

“I feel pretty good about [the series finale.] I just finished reading part two,” said Mulgrew. “I think they did a wonderful job tying it up. Very unexpected. Very unpredictable.” The contents of Voyager ’s two-hour send off received additional security measures on set, which were already considerable throughout the show’s run. 

“I don't know how it's gonna end,” said Ryan. “They're sending home scripts under armed guard practically.” Among the many benefits of being captain, apparently, was having access to the entire top secret script. As they were already in the midst of filming part one of the two-hour episode when chatting with ET, the cast still had a pretty good idea how the journey would end, even if they didn’t have the whole map just yet. Picardo joked, “I'm looking around under coats and hats around set trying to find someone with the second half.”

According to Ryan, these precautions extended to everyone behind the camera. She said, “[The crew] had no idea what was going on in the scenes that we were shooting [this morning.] They were shocked.”

“I think the audience will tune in thinking, ‘I've got this pretty well figured out.’ It'll be a game for most of them. They've calculated the odds against this. ‘What's going to happen to so and so?’ And I think they will find themselves unsettled by what, in fact, the writers have come up with,” said Mulgrew. “Which is profoundly clever and very moving.”

The first half of "Endgame" tracked two versions of the Voyager crew, one in the show's current time and the other 26 years in the future. In the latter, we learn our main characters have long since returned from their journey. But not everyone came back alive or without residual scars. Seven was killed in battle. Chakotay later died, which was hinted at being as a result of grief from her death. And Tuvok's ( Tim Russ ) illness, which required treatment starting years before Voyager eventually returned, had taken a heavy toll. Janeway, now a Starfleet admiral, decided to ignore Temporal Prime Directive guidelines and travel back in time to help her crew fast track their return to the Alpha quadrant. 

To accomplish this, Admiral Janeway traveled back in time to find Voyager and teamed up with her past self. But the Janeways are faced with two (seemingly) mutually exclusive objectives: sneaking Voyager into a transwarp corridor that would drop them on Earth’s doorstep, or destroying the central hub of the Borg empire. In a display of her trademark determination, Captain Janeway posits: “There's got to be a way to have our cake and eat it, too.” Voyager ’s producers seemed to be after the same goal with ‘Endgame.’ While our central timeline ends and fades to black just as Voyager reaches Earth, and the show’s ultimate promise fulfilled, fans were still provided a glimpse of seeing what the characters’ future might  resemble. Following The Next Generation ’s finale, which similarly showed trajectories for their core characters decades into the future, it was a tried and true storytelling approach in the franchise. Voyager ’s finale got to live in the moment and offer potential hints at what the future could bring for these characters. 

“The end of the show is very much what I, personally, wanted the show to be at the end,” said McNeill. He praised the finale’s absence of “reunion” and full circle moments with their characters back on Earth. “It's really about our cast and our crew. And their relationships. And what they've brought back from the seven years journey. The connections that they have. The lessons that they learned that they'll never forget.”

Having read ahead of the class, Mulgrew told ET that the script had left her dreading shooting the final scene. “That will be a diabolical day for me. If I get through that, then I'm stronger than I think I am.”

THE NEXT GENERATIONS

“I think it'll truly hit me on the day that the new show premieres,” Garrett Wang told ET on set of the finale, who played Ensign Harry Kim, in reference to Star Trek: Enterprise ’s impending debut that fall. “Because then we are no longer the new kids on the block.” In a sense, the end of Voyager wrapped up a section of the Star Trek timeline that had become beloved by new generations of fans. Enterprise would take Trek back to the 22nd century, leaving few ties to the characters and events from this era. 

At Voyager ’s finale party in April 2001, Mulgrew reflected on the impact Janeway had following her introduction six years and 70,000 lightyears ago. “I think it was bold,” Mulgrew told ET. “And I think that they made a timely and rather political move. A gesture that certainly I will never forget and I think [will culturally] serve as a great motivator for women.”

While the legacy of Captain Janeway has endured for two decades now, her journey continues. Mulgrew reprised the role for Star Trek: Prodigy , debuting on Paramount+ later this year. Taking place after the events of Voyager , the animated series follows a group of lawless teens who discover a derelict Starfleet ship, with Janeway appearing as the starship's built-in emergency training hologram. 

"Captain Janeway was held to a different standard than her predecessors. She was asked to embody an inhuman level of perfection in order to be accepted as ‘good enough’ by the doubters, but showed them all what it means to be truly outstanding. We can think of no better captain to inspire the next generation of dreamers on Nickelodeon, than she," Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman said when the series was announced in October.

“I have invested every scintilla of my being in Captain Janeway, and I can’t wait to endow her with nuance that I never did before in Star Trek: Prodigy ," Mulgrew said in a statement. "How thrilling to be able to introduce to these young minds an idea that has elevated the world for decades. To be at the helm again is going to be deeply gratifying in a new way for me.” 

All 7 seasons of Star Trek: Voyager , as well as the first season of  Star Trek: Picard , are streaming on Paramount+. 

ET and Paramount+ are both subsidiaries of ViacomCBS.

Watch ET's first visit to the set of Star Trek: Voyager below. 

• Kate Mulgrew

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30 Best Episodes Of Star Trek: Voyager According To IMDb

The third spin-off for the franchise, "Star Trek: Voyager" launched not long after "The Next Generation" left the airwaves. Set aboard the U.S.S. Voyager, its first mission saw Captain Kathryn Janeway in pursuit of a group of renegade Maquis. But when both ships were hurled into the far off Delta Quadrant by a mysterious alien entity, the two crews were forced to join together as they embarked on their long journey back to Earth.

Airing for seven seasons on UPN, "Star Trek: Voyager" may not have been the ratings hit that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was, but thanks to years of reruns and streaming, its popularity has grown in the years since its conclusion, with many episodes ranking among the franchise's most watched, according to StarTrek.com . During its time on Netflix, in fact, episodes centered on the Borg, and fan-favorite character Seven of Nine proved especially popular — so much so that Paramount+ made sure to include both in the revival series "Star Trek: Picard."

But which "Voyager" episodes rank the best among its entire 172-episode run? According to IMDb, the 30 we've collected here are the ones that top the charts.

30. Scientific Method (Season 4, Episode 7)

Janeway is pushed to the brink and Seven is left to save the day in the Season 4 episode  "Scientific Method." As the episode begins, the newest addition to the Voyager crew — ex-Borg Seven of Nine — is still learning to adjust to life aboard a Federation starship, unused to the hierarchy of command and the little social niceties of life in a human social structure. 

But while Voyager explores an unusual binary pulsar, a race of cloaked aliens have infiltrated the ship without anyone even realizing it. These aliens aren't looking to conquer however, and instead have been secretly experimenting on members of the crew — including the captain — as a gruesome form of medical testing without their knowledge. With only The Doctor and Seven of Nine able to detect them, it's up to a hologram and an uncertain former Borg to expose the alien threat and save the ship. 

29. Worst Case Scenario (Season 3, Episode 25)

In  "Worst Case Scenario"  B'Ellana discovers an apparent holo-novel that reanacts a disturbing takeover of the ship by its Maquis crewmembers, led by first officer Chakotay. More intrigued than disturbed, she shares it with Paris, then Kim, and before long the narrative becomes the center of ship-wide gossip as officers rush to play the interactive program for themselves. But it's soon revealed that the story was crafted by Tuvok as a training exercise and was abandoned when the Maquis became valued members of the crew.

Sent back in to finish the story for their own amusement, Paris and Tuvok discover that the program was co-opted by former Maquis crew member Seska and turned into a deadly form of payback. Suddenly the pair find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game with Seska's elaborate scenario that's been designed to torture them, while Janeway attempts to help them outside the confines of the holodeck. Racing against time, they'll have to play by Seska's rules if they want to stay alive.

28. Hope And Fear (Season 4, Episode 26)

In the fourth season finale  "Hope And Fear,"  Seven of Nine is forced to confront her humanity when it looks like Voyager has found a way home. It starts with the arrival of a man named Arturis who helps them finally repair and descramble the damaged message they received from Starfleet in "Hunters." In the message, Admiral Hayes claims they've sent an experimental new starship out to meet them just light years away, with a new slipstream engine capable of getting them home in a matter of months.

As Seven of Nine weighs staying behind — unsure if she'll fit in back on Earth — the crew discovers that the ship, the U.S.S. Dauntless , may not be what it appears. Now, the captain must balance her desire to get her crew back to Earth with her feeling that their ticket home may be a little too convenient.

27. Life Line (Season 6, Episode 24)

We're seeing double in  "Life Line"  when The Doctor comes face-to-face with his creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. After his appearance in the "Deep Space Nine" episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume," the famed scientist is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Voyager selflessly sends their holographic Doctor back to Earth via the Hirogen communication array to make a house call. But meeting his proverbial father isn't the jubilant family reunion that he'd expected as Zimmerman wants nothing to do with his own creation.

As The Doctor works to push past his creator's stubborn streak, Reg Barclay calls on the services of Counselor Deanna Troi to help the two work through their issues. But a problem in The Doctor's matrix forces Zimmerman to step in to save him, and The Doctor finally learns the basis for his father's ill feelings. A memorable episode that featured two long time cast members from "The Next Generation," it was ultimately a tale of an estranged father and son struggling to find common ground.

26. One (Season 4, Episode 25)

In "One," Seven of Nine is attempting to learn social skills with the help of The Doctor — and struggling with it — when the ship encounters an unusual nebula too vast to go around. But the nebula is found to contain a kind of subnucleonic radiation that proves deadly to the crew, save Seven of Nine and The Doctor. The only solution appears to be to put the entire crew, including the captain, into stasis pods for the duration of the journey, while Seven and The Doctor guide the ship.

Left alone, Seven at first enjoys the solitude, but the isolation soon begins to wear on her. Just as she needs companionship the most, The Doctor's program goes offline, and Seven is left to fend for herself as her mind begins to slowly erode. As hallucinations start to confuse her, she'll have to make a fateful choice if she wants to keep the crew alive.

25. Someone To Watch Over Me (Season 5, Episode 21)

"Someone To Watch Over Me"  sees The Doctor once again trying to help Seven of Nine improve her social skills, this time teaching her the art of dating. When Paris finds out, he makes a wager with The Doctor on whether Seven will be able to successfully find a date for an upcoming diplomatic reception. But as The Doctor spends more time with Seven of Nine, he finds himself developing romantic feelings for her himself.

Ultimately The Doctor asks Seven to the event, and when it comes out that he had made a bet with Paris over her love life, things go predictably wrong. Meanwhile, Neelix is tasked with entertaining Tomin, a Kadi diplomat, and struggles to stop the conservative, monk-like visitor from dangerously overindulging in the ship's leisure facilities. A more light-hearted affair, the episode is another key step in the development of both Seven of Nine and The Doctor and their common goal to learn to become more human.

24. Deadlock (Season 2, Episode 21)

It's double trouble in Season 2's  "Deadlock"  after Voyager encounters subspace turbulence that seems to be the cause of problems throughout the ship, as the warp core is rapidly being drained. But when B'Ellanna uses a series of proton bursts to restart the anti-matter reaction, it makes things worse, and Ensign Wildman's impending childbirth in sickbay is endangered. After a catastrophic hull break kills Ensign Kim, B'Ellana discovers that the subspace field they passed through has actually created a quantum duplicate of the ship and its crew, and there are now two U.S.S. Voyagers, slightly out of phase but sharing the same anti-matter reserves. 

Unfortunately, just as they think they have figured a way out of the situation they come under attack from the organ-stealing Vidiians. Thanks to the discovery of a small rift that allows passage between the two Voyagers, the duplicate crews find a new way to work together to fend off the alien attack while severing the link between their two ships. But for one of them to survive, the other may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. 

23. Equinox, Part II (Season 6, Episode 1)

It's an all-out war with Captain Ransom in the sixth season premiere,  "Equinox, Part II."  After the renegade Starfleet commander reprograms The Doctor and takes Seven of Nine hostage, he sets off to parts unknown to continue his torture of the alien creatures he needs to power his ship. Back on Voyager, Janeway is determined to get back her crewmen — and to do it she threatens to cross the line between justice and revenge. 

With members of the Equinox left aboard the ship, the captain will do whatever it takes to get them to tell her Ransom's plans. While Ransom's EMH secretly attempts to sabotage Voyager, an unexpected ally surfaces and could be key to stopping the Equinox. But as Janeway's methods continue to become more vicious, first officer Chakotay becomes increasingly uneasy, leading to a confrontation that could change the nature of their relationship forever. 

22. Eye Of The Needle (Season 1, Episode 7)

Early in "Star Trek: Voyager" the crew was still hopeful of finding a shortcut back to Earth, and they almost find one in the first season installment,  "Eye of the Needle."  Encountering a micro wormhole, they realize they can't get the ship through, but may be able to transmit a message, and potentially use their transporters to send the crew back to the Alpha Quadrant. Unfortunately, the ship they find on the other side of the galactic gateway isn't a friendly Federation starship but a secretive Romulan cargo ship.

Attempting to convince the Romulan captain that they aren't some kind of Starfleet deception is the first hurdle they encounter, as the adversaries have little reason to trust one another. But once they finally earn the captain's confidence they discover that the wormhole isn't all that it seems to be. With hopes diminishing, they realize that getting home may be more complicated than activating their transporters.

21. Future's End (Season 3, Episode 8)

Season 3's  "Future's End"  is another classic "Star Trek" time travel adventure that sees the crew of the starship Voyager hurled back in time to the then-present day of 1996. It all happens when the Timeship Aeon emerges from the 29th century and its captain, a man called Braxton, claims that Voyager is responsible for a disaster in his time that will annihilate Earth's solar system. His attempts to destroy Voyager fail, and the two ships are instead sent through a spatial rift, nearly 400 years into the past. 

Arriving in 1990s Los Angeles, Janeway is disturbed to discover that Braxton has been trapped there for 30 years already, and the technology aboard his ship has fallen into the hands of a Steve Jobs-like industrialist named Henry Starling (Ed Begley, Jr.) who is using it to amass his fortune. Realizing that it was future technology that was responsible for the '90s tech-boom, Janeway must find a way to retrieve Braxton's ship and get back to the 24th century, all while Starling hopes to collect Voyager's technology for himself.

20. Future's End: Part II (Season 3, Episode 9)

Still trapped in 1996,  "Future's End: Part 2" sees tech mogul Henry Starling finally getting Braxton's ship operational. Janeway realizes that it's Starling's use of the Aeon that will destroy the solar system, and must find a way to stop him. But Starling manages to steal The Doctor's program, and using 29th century tech taken from Braxton outfits him with an autonomous holo-emitter, allowing him the freedom to walk about unfettered for the first time.  

To get The Doctor back, Paris and Tuvok find a friend in a young astronomer named Rain Robinson (guest star Sarah Silverman), while Janeway makes contact with Captain Braxton himself, now a vagrant living in the city's underbelly. Chakotay and B'Elanna try to locate Braxton's ship, but become prisoner's of right-wing militants. To save Earth and return to the 24th century, Voyager's crew may have to risk exposing themselves to the people of the past.

19. Shattered (Season 7, Episode 10)

Another sci-fi time-bender, the Season 7 episode  "Shattered"  sees the ship pass through a temporal distortion field that fractures the ship into different time periods. Awakening in sickbay more than four years in the past, Chakotay is given a newly developed chroniton serum by The Doctor that allows him to pass through the various time shifts aboard the ship. To bring Voyager back into temporal sync he'll need to spread the serum throughout the ship's own circuitry, but he can't do it alone.

Traveling to the bridge, he finds a version of Captain Janeway from before they met, and he must somehow gain her trust to recruit her to execute his plan. But it's easier said than done with they discover the villainous Seska and her Kazon allies are in control of engineering, during the events of the Season 2 episode "Basics." A nostalgic look back at Voyager's seven-season run, "Shattered" sees the return of several former heroes and villains from past episodes.

18. Death Wish (Season 2, Episode 18)

The immortal all-powerful trickster Q finds a new ship to annoy in the Season 3 episode  "Death Wish."  Coming upon a rogue comet, Voyager discovers that it's actually home to a member of the Q Continuum, a being who has grown bored with his endless life and wishes to commit suicide. Dubbed "Quinn," he seeks asylum aboard Voyager when Q arrives to put him back in his cosmic prison cell. Though Janeway doesn't want to get involved in their god-like squabbles, she feels ethically obligated to consider Quinn's request, and grants them a hearing aboard the ship.

While Q summons the likes of Commander Riker, Isaac Newton, and a hippie from Woodstock to give statements, Tuvok defends Q's right to not exist, should he so choose. Disturbed by the fact that granting asylum would mean Quinn's suicide, Janeway attempts to convince Quinn that life is worth living. Undergoing his own crisis of faith, Q is forced to acknowledge the problems his people face, and makes a decision that will change the Q Continuum forever.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

17. Latent Image (Season 5, Episode 11)

  "Latent Image"  begins with The Doctor finding evidence of a surgical procedure on Ensign Kim that seems to have no explanation. What starts out as an investigation into a minor mystery leads to the disturbing realization that it was he who performed the surgery, but he has no recollection of it. Soon he learns that someone has been tampering with his program, erasing his memory — and perhaps the memories of the entire crew. But with the help of Seven of Nine, he discovers that the problem is even bigger than he feared, and everyone on the ship may be lying to him.

An episode that explores the problems that come with the holographic Doctor's existence as a growing sentient being, the story shows the crew slowly discovering that he has become more than just a program. It's also an intriguing allegory for how society often treats mental illness, and gives actor Robert Picardo some of his best work in his role as the ship's resident artificial surgeon.

16. Equinox (Season 5, Episode 25)

Janeway and Voyager are shocked to encounter another Federation vessel in the Delta Quadrant in  "Equinox,"  the dramatic fifth season finale. Commanded by the revered Captain Ransom (guest star John Savage), the U.S.S. Equinox is a science vessel that was catapulted to the region by the same entity that sent Voyager there. Ill-equipped for deep space assignments, Ransom and his crew have barely been able to survive on their slow journey home, and both crews seem buoyed and hopeful by the chance meeting. 

But the happy reunion is cut short when Seven of Nine uncovers evidence of corruption aboard Equinox, and the discovery that Ransom has been capturing and killing alien creatures and using their corpses to fuel their warp drive. Furious at the violation of Federation ideals, Janeway attempts to take control of his ship. But unwilling to go quietly, Ransom kidnaps Seven of Nine, and along with The Doctor's program, escapes aboard the Equinox. 

15. Pathfinder (Season 6, Episode 10)

In a surprising episode set almost entirely off of Voyager,  "Pathfinder"  follows "TNG" standout Reginald Barclay as he seeks help from his old friend, Counselor Troi. Now working at Starfleet HQ, he's part of the Pathfinder Project, which hopes to find a way to communicate with Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. Certain that he can use an itinerant pulsar to open a fissure that would allow two-way communication, he uses holodeck simulations to test his theories. But Barclay hit a wall when his superiors didn't believe in the potential of his ideas. 

After his boss, Commander Harkins, discovered that Barclay was living inside a simulation of Voyager and grows concerned for his mental stability, he was kicked off the project. Barclay approached Admiral Paris — who was running the project — about a second chance, but didn't get the response he was looking for. After speaking to Troi, Barclay breaks into the lab to put his plan into action before the pulsar moves out of range.

14. Dark Frontier (Season 5, Episode 15)

Janeway comes up with a bold scheme to attack a Borg ship in the double length episode  "Dark Frontier,"  that saw the Borg Queen's debut on the series. The plan is to steal a Borg ship's transwarp technology, capable of getting them back to Earth much faster than their conventional engines, and Janeway will stop at nothing to succeed. But the presence of Seven of Nine on the mission causes her some concern. 

Because Seven of Nine is still adjusting to being fully human Janeway fears the experience of returning to the Borg could be traumatic for her. Unbeknownst to Voyager, though, the Borg Queen has already learned of their daring plan, and finds a way of secretly communicating with Seven of Nine. The Queen offers her former drone a tempting deal: She will allow Voyager to succeed, effectively handing them an easy way home, in exchange for Seven of Nine rejoining the Borg. 

13. Endgame (Season 7, Episode 24)

The epic feature length series finale  "Endgame"  opens in the future on Earth, with an older Admiral Janeway unhappy with how history has turned out. She did get Voyager home, but it took more than 20 years and cost them the lives of several crewmen, including Seven of Nine. But when she finds a way to travel back in time to visit her past self, she devises a plan to change history and get Voyager home much sooner.

Visited by the older, more cynical Admiral Janeway, Voyager's Captain Janeway finds her future self's story hard to believe, but the plan she proposes makes sense: sneak into the heart of a Borg Uni-complex and use one of their transwarp hubs to travel back to Earth in an instant. The plan hits a snag, however, when the younger Janeway instead wants to use the opportunity to deal the Borg a crippling blow. Now the two Janeways find themselves at odds over the choice between defeating a mortal enemy or getting Voyager home.

12. Distant Origin (Season 3, Episode 23)

A story that explores the battle between religious dogma and scientific discovery,  "Distant Origin"  is told from the surprising perspective of an alien culture. We first meet a pair of Voth scientists named Gegen and Veer, who discover the remnants of one of Voyager's earlier ill-fated away missions. Studying the remains of a human crew member, they match its genetic structure to their own, providing evidence for a theory that their people originally evolved on Earth millions of years ago.

The two scientists show their evidence to their leaders, but are ostracized for challenging long-held doctrine that the Voth are a supreme form of life. Now facing persecution for their scientific discovery, they finally track Voyager itself, and capture Chakotay. With his help they hope to convince their people that they are actually descended from intelligent dinosaurs that roamed the Earth before the first ice age.

11. Drone (Season 5, Episode 2)

A transporter accident fuses Borg nano-probes from Seven of Nine with the 29th century technology of The Doctor's mobile emitter in the fifth season episode  "Drone."   Using the emitter, the nanoprobes steal genetic material from a passing crew member to create an advanced, 29th century Borg drone unlike anything that had been seen before. Unconnected from the Borg hive mind, the newly born Borg — who takes the name One — is a blank slate, and Janeway wants Seven of Nine to be his teacher and guide to humanity.

But when the Borg Collective discovers his existence they come to assimilate him, putting the ship, crew, and entire galaxy in jeopardy as they fear the Borg getting access to even more advanced technology. As the drone begins to question her about the Borg, Janeway fears he may want to join them, forcing Seven of Nine to finally answer the question of where she belongs.

10. Relativity (Season 5, Episode 23)

A mind-bending time travel adventure,  "Relativity"  opens aboard Voyager before its first mission when Captain Janeway is touring the ship in spacedock. But somehow Seven of Nine is present, and is secretly searching for a dangerous weapon at the direction of Captain Braxton. But before she can locate it she's discovered, and Braxton pulls her out of time, killing her. Flashing back to the present, a series of space-time fractures are causing temporal paradoxes all over Voyager when they discover a highly volatile temporal disrupter hidden in a bulkhead.

Just before it destroys the ship, Braxton's men abduct Seven again and send her back to find the disrupter in the past, figure out who planted it, and why. But if she's going to save the ship, Seven may have to do the one thing she's been ordered not to: tell Captain Janeway in the past about their future and recruit her to help complete Braxton's mission. 

9. Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy (Season 6, Episode 4)

When The Doctor starts experimenting with a daydreaming program in  "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy"  things go wrong, and he finds himself unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But when a low-ranking alien agent unwittingly taps into his daydreams, he believes The Doctor is actually the captain of the ship, and devises a plan to invade and conquer Voyager. 

After the bumbling alien spy realizes that he's gotten things wrong, he tries to call off the attack but it's too late to convince his superiors. As The Doctor's fantasy's are spinning out of control, the alien makes contact in the hopes of averting an embarrassing incident. To avoid confrontation, The Doctor must convince Janeway to let him take command. A more playful episode, it successfully mixes the kind of light-hearted comedy that works well with The Doctor, with the best adventure elements the show has to offer. 

8. Year Of Hell, Part II (Season 4, Episode 9)

"Year Of Hell, Part II"  picks up two months after the events of Part I. Voyager is in ruins and manned by a skeleton crew, while Janeway herself is in rough shape, barely able to survive repeated assaults from the Krenim. Tuvok has lost his sight, and requires Seven as his guide, while much of the ship itself is falling apart. Aboard Annorax's temporal warship, Chakotay and Paris are at odds, with Paris wanting to attempt escape while Chakotay wants to help find a way to use the ship's history-altering power to save Voyager.

Janeway meanwhile is attempting to assemble a loose alliance of friendly ships in the hopes of mounting an attack on Annorax. Seven of Nine successfully develops a new kind of temporal shield that they believe will be able to protect them against the Krenim's weapons. But if their plan doesn't work, it could mean Voyager never existed.

7. Living Witness (Season 4, Episode 23)

In the closest thing "Voyager" got to a Mirror Universe episode, the fifth season episode  "Living Witness"  saw The Doctor's program activated by an alien civilization some 700 years in the future. There, two neighboring species have been arguing over who started their centuries-old war, and believe that Voyager may have played a part in sparking it. Now with The Doctor active, one historian believes that he could hold the key to discovering just what happened.

Through the use of a holodeck of sorts we view the historical account of how they believed the crew of Voyager started the war. In the recreation, a tyrannical Captain Janeway brutally attacks the Kyrian people with biogenic weapons developed by The Doctor, wiping out entire populations. Now it's up to The Doctor to set the record straight, and if he can't convince them of what really happened, he may be put on trial for the crimes that Voyager is thought to have committed against their people. 

6. Message In A Bottle (Season 4, Episode 14)

Controversial comedian Andy Dick makes an unexpected appearance in the Season 4 episode  "Message In A Bottle"  that also marks Voyager's first communication with Starfleet. Upon discovering a Federation starship on the edges of hailing range of a deep space alien communication array, they fail to make contact, so instead send The Doctor's holographic program. Aboard the experimental U.S.S. Prometheus, The Doctor also finds that the ship has been taken over by Romulans, and its entire crew killed.

But with the help of that ship's own EMH, a dismissive and snarky Mark II, it's up to The Doctor to fight back and retake the ship. Once successful, he manages to get in touch with Starfleet and finally let them know that Voyager is alive and well in the Delta Quadrant. An offbeat episode that once again mixes humor and adventure, the highlight is the impeccable comedic chemistry between the two EMH's played by Robert Picardo and guest star Andy Dick.

5. Timeless (Season 5, Episode 6)

Opening on the stunning visual of the starship Voyager buried beneath the surface of a mysterious ice planet in  "Timeless,"  we meet a small group of explorers trying to excavate it. Breaking into the ship we learn that the space-bound archeologists are none other than Chakotay and Harry Kim, 15 years into the future. Finding The Doctor's mobile emitter, they've come back to the site of a disaster that destroyed the ship, with the hopes of changing history.

Flashing back to the "present" we see that Ensign Kim has spearheaded a project to retrofit Voyager with the same slipstream technology they were introduced to in "Hope And Fear." To use it, Chakotay and Kim man a shuttle ahead of the ship, to guide Voyager through the slipstream. But a miscalculation sends Voyager off-course and while the shuttle made it safely to Earth, Voyager was doomed. With the help of Borg technology from Seven of Nine's corpse, an older and remorseful Kim must evade Captain Geordi La Forge and the U.S.S. Challenger if he hopes to succeed in his quest for redemption.

4. Scorpion, Part II (Season 4, Episode 1)

After successfully negotiating an alliance with the Borg in the Season 3 finale, "Scorpion, Part II" kicks off the fourth season with the Borg agreeing to give Voyager safe passage through their vast territory in exchange for their help in defeating an emerging new threat: Species 8472. Chakotay firmly opposes the collaboration, especially when the collective sends a Borg aboard to act as a liaison, a female drone named Seven of Nine. Despite their agreement, Janeway's first officer doesn't believe they can trust their new allies.

But thanks to the neural link that Chakotay has retained from the events of "Unity," he proves to be the key to a plan to stop the Borg should they betray them. And once Species 8472 is dealt with that's exactly what they do, with Seven of Nine attempting to assimilate the ship. Remembered for the introduction of Seven of Nine , the character helped reinvigorate the series, and would go on to become one of the franchise's most beloved characters, returning in 2020 in the spin-off "Star Trek: Picard."

3. Year Of Hell (Season 4, Episode 8)

In "Year Of Hell" Voyager encounters the Krenim Imperium, a powerful empire that rules a region of space they are attempting to pass through. But little do they know that the key to the Krenim's power is a man named Annorax (guest star Kurtwood Smith), a scientist who has developed a devastating weapon capable of altering history. Annorax has been using the weapon to alter the past in the hopes of restoring his people's empire to their former glory and resurrect his long-dead wife.

While Janeway and the crew are helpless against the Krenim's weapons, they go on the run, mercilessly attacked by the Imperium wherever they try to hide. But when Annorax continues annihilating entire planets in his quest, his calculations are thrown off by Voyager's anomalous presence and they suddenly find themselves his newest target. With the ship falling apart, and time running out, Janeway may have to abandon Voyager if they are to survive. 

2. Scorpion (Season 3, Episode 26)

In the third season finale  "Scorpion"  comes face-to-face with the Borg Collective for the first time after they discover that their territory is too big to go around on their journey home. But when they discover a corridor devoid of Borg ships they at first think it's good news. Until they discover an even bigger threat: a new race of inter-dimensional beings known as Species 8472, who are destroying the Borg, and threaten Voyager as well. 

But when The Doctor develops a biological weapon capable of defeating 8472, Janeway hatches a plan to exploit the conflict between the two warring species. Though the crew is conflicted, Janeway hopes to form an alliance with the Borg, and give them the weapon that could defeat 8472. But will Janeway really help the Federation's greatest enemy defeat the only ones who have ever been able to stop them?

1. Blink Of An Eye (Season 6, Episode 12)

In Season 6's "Blink Of An Eye"  Voyager encounters a strange planet where time passes at an increased rate where one second for Voyager is nearly a day on the planet. Approaching to take a closer look, Voyager is pulled into its orbit and trapped there, disrupting the planet's natural energy field, and causing frequent seismic disruptions on the surface. Below, the people who live on the planet are in awe at the shining new star in their night's sky, not realizing that it's Voyager. 

Over the next thousand years, the planet's civilization evolves, while just days pass aboard the ship, and Voyager — which they called "the sky ship" slowly becomes part of their society's mythology. But when a brave astronaut from the planet comes to visit (guest star Daniel Dae Kim), he's suddenly confronted with the reality that his childhood heroes aren't at all what he imagined.

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Abandoned ‘star trek: voyager’ finale ideas could have given the sendoff it deserved.

The final moments of the two-parter, which turns 20 this week, ends the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anti-climactic notes.

By Phil Pirrello

Phil Pirrello

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“The biggest decision was whether or not we actually wanted them to get home. That was a decision that really came down to the wire.”

That was the creative challenge facing Star Trek : Voyager ’s series finale, according to former Voyager showrunner Brannon Braga in a 2001 interview from Star Trek Monthly . Whether or not “Endgame, Parts 1 and 2” was entirely successful in meeting that challenge is a debate fans have had since the feature-length final episode aired 20 years ago on May 23, 2001.

“Endgame” centers on a future Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) altering the past to ensure that every member of her crew gets back to Earth after spending seven years stranded in a distant corner of the Final Frontier known as the Delta Quadrant. One would think our intrepid heroes would be given more than a scene or two depicting their dream coming true, of seeing their home planet again, but that’s all “Endgame” gives them. The episode’s abrupt final moments (less than three minutes of screentime!) end the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anti-climatic notes. As beloved as Voyager is among fans, even they struggle to overlook how “Endgame” falls short of giving this iconic series and crew the ending they deserved.

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Like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine before it, Voyager ’s creative staff was afforded the rare gift of essentially being able to “cancel” themselves after the series’ seven-season run. That bittersweet privilege came with a figurative kitchen crowded with cooks who had a deserved say in how the show wrapped. That included Mulgrew and executive producers Braga, Rick Berman and “Endgame” co-writer Kenneth Biller — with the latter taking over showrunner duties from Braga during the series’ final season. (Biller brought on then- Voyager staff writer Robert Doherty to help with scripting duties.) The creative input from stakeholders ultimately resulted in a “dish” that incorporated Biller and Berman’s suggestion of time travel, along with Mulgrew’s request that Janeway had to go down with the ship, “but not at the full cost of her being.”

The end result opened 10 years after Voyager’s journey ends, with what’s left of the main crew gathering to celebrate their homecoming’s 10th anniversary. A silver-haired Admiral Janeway reviews old footage of Voyager doing a flyby over and around the Golden Gate Bridge outside Starfleet Command. (This choice works in a “cool teaser” way to hook in audiences, but ultimately is less effective in the context of the overall episode; we are shown a version of Voyager’s homecoming in a way that somewhat undercuts the actual event the characters fans have invested in for seven years will experience.)

Admiral Janeway is haunted by the fact that she was unable to get all of her crew home; she lost Seven of Nine in this timeline’s attempt to get Voyager back. So, with the help of time travel — and one last explosive, big screen-worthy battle with the Borg and the Borg Queen (played by Star Trek: First Contact ’s Alice Krige) — Janeway succeeds in saving her crew and bringing all of them to Earth.

Voyager zooms toward Earth under starship escort before the end credits roll. And that’s it. After spending seven years with these characters, approximately three minutes of screentime is all that’s spent on the realization of their dream to get home. There’s no real exploration of the emotional impact this endpoint would have on the crew.

“We were really struggling with it,” writer Ken Biller recalls in Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration , Hero Collector’s 2020 book about the series. “Is the end of the show just that they get home? That’s a bit of an anticlimax. Did we want some people to die?”

Braga certainly did. Even though he no longer oversaw the day-to-day needs of the show, Biller and Berman sought Braga’s input on how to end the series, and one of his wishes was to kill off a beloved character.

“I think Seven of Nine should have bit the dust,” Braga told TrekCore.com in 2013. “I think there had to be a real sacrifice for this crew getting home; a real blood sacrifice. Seven of Nine was, for me, designed to be a character that was gonna die tragically. I planned that.” Braga was overruled by Berman at the time, and that’s a good thing; otherwise Star Trek: Picard would have been denied one of its masterstrokes of adding Seven to its cast.

But her death, or a story choice similar to it, would have helped distinguish “Endgame” from previous Trek finales, especially TNG ’s landmark “All Good Things …”, which Braga co-wrote with Ron Moore. Voyager ’s finale echoes many structural elements and narrative touchstones of that classic episode, including: time travel, a temporal anomaly requiring closure using a beam from the main deflector, and a ship being rescued mid-battle with the Klingons by an advanced Starship. “Endgame” being caught in the shadow of “All Good Things …” — or feeling like a cover of Voyager ’s 100th episode, the exceptional “Timeless” —  was not lost on Voyager ’s writers, as Biller told Cinefantastique magazine that the creatives made a conscious decision not to “shy away from that. It’s a different set of characters, and a different show, and ultimately it is a different story.”

What would have made it truly stand out would have been if Biller and company pursued some of their original ideas. In the development of the episode, one story that was floated was a mini-arc about the crew getting home before the finale — an option that castmember Roxanna Dawson was in favor of.

“My only criticism,” Dawson told Star Trek Monthly at the time, “is that I wish we had started to deal with the ending a little bit earlier, instead of just in that last two-hour episode.”

Another plot considered involved Janeway’s sacrifice and the Borg, which stemmed from discussions around a previous Voyager two-parter: “Unimatrix Zero.” While a version of this story appears in “Endgame,” the original iteration would have been nothing short of epic.

The idea was that Janeway would surrender Voyager to the Borg, and the battle-damaged starship would be assimilated by a Borg cube. But this was all a ruse by Janeway; once in the Borg’s clutches, the Doctor (Robert Picardo) would activate a reverse assimilation virus.

Then- Voyager writer Bryan Fuller pitched to Star Trek Magazine this idea’s major beats: “As we were assimilating the Borg ship from the inside, and re-assimilating ourselves, we would use a Borg transwarp conduit to get back home. The idea was this great final image of the Borg armada approaching Earth, and then out of the belly of the beast of the lead ship came Voyager, destroying all of the other Borg in its trail. It felt like an epic conclusion to Janeway’s journey with the Borg, and freeing Seven of Nine. That got abandoned somewhere along the road.”

Admiral Janeway does a smaller version of this reverse assimilation in her final scene with the Borg Queen, which allowed the writers to honor Mulgrew’s request for her character’s sacrificial play without having to truly “kill” the iconic heroine.

The episode’s needs to deliver an action-packed finale doesn’t quite shake hands with the audience’s expectations to have that action supported by emotionally honest character beats that honor what it would feel like for a crew who often thought they may never get home finally getting there. In Admiral Janeway’s timeline, her first officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is dead. One would expect the Admiral to have mixed feelings when she sees her lost friend alive and well on Captain Janeway’s bridge again; instead, the episode doesn’t even acknowledge this. We just get a montage paired with a Captain’s Log entry showing the Admiral working with Chakatoy on the bridge. And one of the show’s fan-favorite characters, the exiled Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) is reunited with his estranged father, a Starfleet admiral — but only via the viewscreen. And even then, the two characters do not exchange a line or even a look, which is a glaring missed opportunity.

Despite the uneven, half-baked storyline that its own cast bumped into — “We don’t even step foot on Earth!” Garret Wang, who played Ensign Kim, told StarTrek.com — what “Endgame” gets right really works. Janeway squaring off with her future self, at odds over changing history to save the lives of a select few, is a very Trek ian moral and ethical quandary. (These scenes also allow Mulgrew to deliver a tour de force performance, with her character’s unrelenting drive to make good on her promise to return her crew to Earth providing the actor with some of her best emotional moments in the role.) We also get to see Voyager in action one last time, with advanced armor plating and weapons against the Borg in a climactic battle that rivals what most of Trek ’s feature films have pulled off.

The last shot of “Endgame” plays in a way that viewers at home feel like maybe they missed something, as this crew’s seven-year odyssey back to the Alpha Quadrant concludes with less fanfare than that which starts the episode. And while the finale as a whole falls short in terms of the sum of its parts, it does, in its own weird and charming-ish way, reflect the equally bumpy nature and spirit of Voyager as a series. For as Ensign Kim monologues during a memorable “Endgame” scene, maybe it’s not the act of crossing the finish line that matters. Rather, “maybe it’s the journey.”

In that respect, the journey audiences shared with Star Trek: Voyager was one that was definitely worth the trip.

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Voyager's end: Every Star Trek series finale, ranked

Credit: Paramount/CBS

For over 50 years, Star Trek has served as one of pop culture’s biggest load-bearing columns. Hundreds of hours of television and 13 feature films later, Trek is more popular now than ever — as proven by Star Trek: Discovery , Lower Decks , Star Trek: Picard , and more Trek shows on the air or in the works than ever before. Of course, each of these journeys has to end, and some are better than others.

As Star Trek ’s future boldly goes forward, fans can’t help but get nostalgic for its past by revisiting previous shows via streaming — especially Star Trek: Voyager . The adventures of the instantly iconic Captain Janeway and her crew, stranded in a faraway corner of the galaxy, have become increasingly popular thanks to new fans discovering Voyager on Netflix and spending time with one of the ‘90s best and most inclusive series. As Voyager ’s series finale — the somewhat divisive “Endgame” — turns 20 this year, SYFY WIRE figured it was a good time to beam on down for our definitive ranking of every Star Trek series finale ever. 

Credit: CBS/Paramount

06 . Star Trek: The Original Series - “Turnabout Intruder” (1969)

“Turnabout Intruder” was never intended to be the series finale of the classic Star Trek series. This infamous Season 3 episode, which features a cheesy body swap premise with an even cheesier execution, became the last hour of the  Original Series  to ever air due to declining ratings and budget concerns. NBC decided to put the Enterprise in mothballs and go out on an installment that featured Captain Kirk (William Shatner) trading bodies with a former love and current mad scientist, Dr. Janice Lester (Sandra Smith). Why? So Dr. Lester could satisfy her lifelong (but, as scripted, unearned) dream of commanding a starship. 

Fans consider “Intruder” to be one of the worst Star Trek episodes or the worst one ever, with the slog of a story working overtime to make a strong case for either. Based on a story by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, “Intruder” struggles to find anything interesting for Kirk to do and makes the baffling choice to have its guest star character, Lester, drive most of the story. Audiences are more likely to believe that alien body swap tech exists before they would ever believe that Kirk’s best friends and shipmates would never notice that their captain has traded places with a mentally unwell baddie. Eventually, Spock discovers who his captain really is, but not before getting caught trying to help him (er, her) and getting court-martialled. The back half of the episode is a talky affair that strains one’s suspension of disbelief to the point of completely letting go of any interest to see how the matter resolves itself. 

After watching this "Intruder," it’s amazing that Star Tre k ever got a second chance to become what it is today. 

05 . Star Trek Enterprise: “These Are the Voyages…” (2005)

“It was a kind of a slap in the face to the Enterprise actors. I regret it.”

Co-writer and former Star Trek: Enterprise  showrunner Brannon Braga didn’t sugar coat his feelings about Enterprise ’s infamous 2005 series finale, “These Are the Voyages…”, in this 2017 interview addressing the problematic episode he developed and co-wrote with executive producer Rick Berman. While Braga and Berman thought framing the Enterprise finale as a “lost episode” of Star Trek: The Next Generation was a great idea while writing it, Braga soon realized after watching it that “great” was far from an apt description. 

“Voyages” centers on Commander Riker, played once again by Jonathan Frakes, and the events surrounding TNG ’s Season 7 episode “The Pegasus." Here, the Enterprise-D’s first officer uses the holodeck to help him solve his problems by revisiting the final mission of Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and the crew of the first Enterprise, the NX-01. That means that all the 22nd Century scenes featuring Archer and his crew are all holodeck simulations. Yup. For the first-time ever in Trek history, a series ends with holographic versions of the real characters that fans spent years following. It’s shocking how much wrong they managed to pack into one normal-sized episode of television — the first Trek finale since The Animated Series not to be feature-length.  

Setting aside the fact that Riker never once mentioned an affinity for Archer, his ship, or his crew throughout his entire TNG tenure, making a 24th century character the focus of a series finale that takes place in the 23rd century denies agency to the Enterprise ensemble that deserves the spotlight — not have it stolen by characters who already had their fair share of it. (Having Marina Sirtis cameo as Counselor Troi adds even more distracting fan service.) Even Bakula was incensed with the story, with Braga recalling that this episode was the first time Enterprise ’s lead actor ever got confrontational with the writer-producer. After watching the final product, we can see why. 

04 . Star Trek: The Animated Series - “The Counter-Clock Incident” (1974)

“The Counter-Clock Incident” allows Star Trek to combine two tropes it loves — morality plays and stories that deal with the effects of aging backwards. In doing so, fans are treated to an episode that works far better than it has any right to, largely due to its timeless themes and the earnest way the episode dramatizes them. 

The sixth episode of The Animated Series ’ second season, and final episode of the series, finds the Enterprise and her crew pulled into a “negative universe” where time moves backwards and causes Kirk and his officers to grow younger. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation would tackle similar “de-aging” sci-fi in the high-concept episode “Rascals.”) But what’s unique about this episode is that, as Kirk reverts back to being a child, the first Captain of the Enterprise ever — Robert April — gets a second chance to relieve his prime years. April goes from being a senior citizen on the eve of retirement to his good ol’ days as a dashing senior officer, wrapping up his tenure in Starfleet with one hell of a final mission.

While the low-budget limitations of Filmation’s 2D animation haven’t (ironically) aged well, they don’t distract from “Counter-Clock” tackling ageism in a respectful way that reminds viewers of all ages to respect their elders and the value their experience and knowledge can bring. 

03 . Star Trek: Voyager - “Endgame, Parts 1 & 2” (2001)

Star Trek: Voyager ’s “Endgame” has plenty of feature-level action to satisfy fans, but at the cost of giving them and the show’s crew the homecoming they deserve. 

Lost for seven seasons in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway and her dogged crew aboard Voyager struggled across unexplored space to find their way back to Earth. One would think they would be given more than two scenes depicting their dream coming true, of seeing their home planet again, but that’s all “Endgame” gives them. The episode’s abrupt final moments conclude the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anticlimactic notes. 

“Endgame” opens with Voyager ’s crew already back on Earth, having lost their Borg attache, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), in the process. This loss haunts Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), who, now an Admiral, pines for a second chance to make good on her promise to bring every member of her crew back home. With the help of time travel, Janeway finally gets an opportunity to re-do her voyage home — which leads to one final confrontation with the Borg Queen ( Star Trek: First Contact ’s Alice Krieg). In the process, Janeway seemingly wipes out the Borg (or, at least, defeats them — how they survived this fate is left unclear when they reappear in Star Trek Picard ). That’s a seismic event in the Trek Universe, and the finale has barely time to pay it lip service because the two-parter has to rush to the last scene: Where Voyager is joined by a few starships and ushered back to Earth before the credits roll.

Seven seasons spent with this crew, rooting for them to get home, and the show can’t be bothered to spend any significant time exploring how reaching Earth feels for those who doubted they would ever see it again. It’s a baffling, rushed choice that leaves fans wishing the series went with its original finale plans: Dedicate a mini-arc of episodes in the final season to show  Voyager ’s return to Earth and how the crew re-enters their lives. The dramatic potential there alone is more satisfying than most of “Endgame.”

02 . Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - “What You Leave Behind” (2000)

After devoting its last two seasons to a largely serialized arc concerning the Federation’s war with the evil Dominion, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine wrapped up its seven-year run with a near-Biblical finale full of action, heart, and loss. 

Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) began the show as a brooding commander who couldn’t wait to leave his new post — a former Cardassian space station in orbit of the Bajoran homeworld. But by the end of “What You Leave Behind,” he literally gives his life to save both DS9 and the Bajoran people that view him as an emissary for their gods, the Prophets. Sisko’s sacrifice calls back to the show’s first episode, and his dealings with the Prophets — a race of non-linear beings worshiped by the Bajorans. His corporeal life is just the beginning, as Sisko’s death seemingly features him transcending into a higher plane of existence, one that, at first, he wanted nothing to do with. 

Sisko’s story coming full circle is just one of the many satisfying and poetic beats found in “What You Leave Behind.” The episode finds a wildly entertaining, if at times uneven, balance between epic space action and dramatic scenes wrapping up seven years of some of the best serialized storytelling the genre has ever done. (The less said about the so-so blue screen effects depicting Sisko’s weird, ethereal battle with his nemesis, the evil Gul Dukat, the better.) 

But the show is more interested in its character moments, however, giving its exceptional ensemble cast some truly moving moments to shine in the finale’s back half. And while the final scene in the holosuite, at the crew’s favorite Rat Pack-inspired night club, feels a little too long and self-indulgent, it’s the perfect ending for this crew and their journey. At the start of their mission, they couldn’t have been any more discordant. They shouldn’t have been in the same room, let alone on the same team. But, as “What You Leave Behind” movingly proves, that’s the definition of family. And that’s exactly what this crew became to each other and for their fans. 

01 . Star Trek: The Next Generation - “All Good Things…” (1994)

“All Good Things…” is the best Star Trek series finale ever. It’s the one that all Trek finales are measured against. 27 years after it originally aired, none have come remotely close to matching it. 

Written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, “All Good Things” proved to be a better cinematic-worthy adventure than The Next Generation crew’s first movie, Star Trek: Generations . The briskly plotted, feature-length episode, and its compelling storyline involving paradoxes and second chances, features Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) moving back and forth through time. He slips in and out of three key time periods: The past, just before the launch of Enterprise-D’s first mission; the present, and the future. Here, Picard is a very retired — and very old — man who runs his family vineyard. He also struggles with a debilitating neurological syndrome that makes it hard for his former shipmates to believe him when he says he’s playing Sliders across multiple timelines. Picard’s mission requires that all three versions of his crew work together, under the manipulative watch of the omnipotent Q, to stop an anomaly from unraveling existence as we know it. 

The tension and stakes couldn’t be higher, as TNG gives the cast and their characters a perfect final episode that brings them together as a family in ways the series left surprisingly unexplored for most of its run. Watching a futuristic Enterprise, blasting newly-mounted phaser cannons, fly vertically for the first time in Trek history proves to be as entertaining as the smaller, quieter beats between characters are. Especially the scenes where Picard has to convince his untested crew in the past to follow him and their counterparts on a mission that will cost them their lives. 

But the episode’s beating heart lies in its final moments, where Picard finally joins his crew for their regular poker game. The first time Picard ever sits down with his crew at their poker resonates with his officers as deeply as it does with fans, which is a testament to the finale’s commitment to giving Next Generation the action-packed, emotionally earned send-off it deserves. 

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Star Trek: Voyager

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Star Trek History: Endgame

On this day in 2001, this classic Star Trek: Voyager episode premiered.

On this day in 2001, the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Endgame" premiered.

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Star Trek: Voyager – Endgame (Review)

Appropriately enough, Star Trek: Voyager ends with a betrayal of itself.

Endgame even frames that betrayal in terms of its own internal logic. The first scene after the teaser finds what remains of the crew attending a tenth anniversary reunion following the successful completion of their mission and their return to Earth. Reginald Barclay, “adopted” member of the family and veteran of Star Trek: The Next Generation , offers a toast. “Twenty three years together made you a family, one I’m proud to have been adopted by. Let’s raise our glasses to the journey.” The room toasts, “To the journey.”

Toast of the town…

This is first point of betrayal. Her glass raised, Admiral Janeway suggests a modification of the toast. “And to those who aren’t here to celebrate it with us.” It is a fair toast given how many crew members Janeway had lost over the course of the journey. However, it also suggests the central thesis of Endgame , which is itself the central thesis of Voyager . It was never really about the journey, despite what any of the crew might say at any given point in the show’s run. It was never about the time spent together, or the family forged. It was never even about the people.

It was about getting home. It was about completing the journey. It was about reaching the end point at the designated time. The journey, the adventure, the exploration; these were never the focus. All that potential, all that possibility, was squandered. Endgame is the story of how Admiral Janeway erases sixteen years of exploration, sixteen years of growth, sixteen years of character development. Admiral Janeway does that so that Voyager can complete its journey after the designated seven years, the expected one-hundred-and-seventy-eight episodes.

Living with herself…

But if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

The cast of Voyager were very rearely well-served by the material afforded to them, especially in comparison to the primary casts of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It makes sense that this should carry over to Endgame . To be fair, the episode generally works hard to find something for most of the cast to do, but very little of it feels essential. Tuvok’s disease doesn’t even get a name. Although he is a large motivator for Admiral Janeway’s actions, Chakotay has no agency in the plot.

Kim gets the big motivational speech when Janeway asks the crew to decide on a course of action, a creative choice that doesn’t play to Garret Wang’s strengths as a performer. It feels like a grim joke that Kim makes a big speech about how “it’s not the destination that matters” within an episode that exist solely to get the crew home. Still, there is some nice self-aware humour when future! Kim complains about what will happen if Starfleet discovers he helped Admiral Janeway. “If Starfleet Command finds out I had anything to do with this, they’ll demote me back to Ensign.”

Janeway or the highway…

Robert Beltran did not pull any punches in offering his assessment of the episode and the season around it :

“This is what we’re going out with?” he said. “I was right, [the writers] are idiots. So I feel vindicated but unfortunately, you’re going to have to sit through it'” He felt that there should have been much more of an emotional build-up to the finale, instead of more “[Episodes where the Doctor] got laryngitis and was depressed because he couldn’t sing anymore and then we had a Seven of Nine [episode] where she had laryngitis and Seven of Nine can’t save the day, what are we going to do?”

Beltran may be confrontational, but he has a point. Voyager has never served its ensemble particularly well.

Unable to shrug it off…

However, Endgame does make one very smart decision with its cast. The story is structured to put a heavy emphasis on Kate Mulgrew. In fact, Mulgrew is essentially asked to play the two largest roles within the story. While this arguably means squeezing out narrative real estate that could have been better distributed among the supporting cast, it certainly feels earned. Mulgrew has a tumultuous relationship with Voyager , and Voyager has had an awkward relationship with Kathryn Janeway. Still, Mulgrew was always a strength of the series.

It is worth acknowledging that Mulgrew as not always easy to work with. She made life incredibly unpleasant for Jeri Ryan . She apparently threatened to quit the series during the fifth season, only to sheepishly walk back the threat . More than that, Kathryn Janeway was perhaps the least clearly defined lead character in the franchise, with her personality varying greatly depending on who was writing her at a given moment. However, Mulgrew was always a delight to watch, in episodes as distinct as Concerning Flight , Prey ,  Night , Counterpoint and Bride of Chaotica!

‘Soup Janeway?

So it feels oddly appropriate that Endgame is largely given over to Mulgrew as a performer, who has spoken fondly of the finale :

The sharp edges of loneliness, I think, were very much in play for Janeway. And that made the ultimate sacrifice that much more delicious. The admiral sacrificed her life so that the captain could persevere. That’s who I really was as Janeway, and I tried, always, to show that conflict. What better thing can I do as an actress, but to bring my own experience to something? But I think what happened to Janeway absolutely reflected what would happen to a woman in her situation. I was very proud of Endgame, partly because I had a hand in the choices, the story. I loved it. There’s no way you’re going to satisfy everyone after a seven-year investment. How can you? There’s no way. You can’t do it. It’s heartbreaking, an ending of any kind. But I thought our finale was a pretty good way to say goodbye.

Mulgrew has always worked best with a scene partner, as demonstrated by her long-lasting dynamics with Chakotay and later Seven of Nine. It is no surprise that pairing Mulgrew off with herself results in an interesting dynamic.

Admiral-able traits…

The scenes between Admiral Janeway and Captain Janeway are largely narratively empty, anchored in a false moral dilemma that will be solved by plot contrivance. However, Mulgrew manages to forge an interesting dynamic between the two. Janeway is a character who by this point in the series has come to be defined by the force of her personality, so having two versions of that same personality at odds with one another makes for a compelling dramatic hook.

Mulgrew also subtly modifies her performance as Admiral Janeway, extrapolating a version of the character who is as far from the version presented in Endgame as the version presented in Endgame is from the version introduced in Caretaker . Admiral Janeway is presented as a little more ruthless than her younger self, a little more reckless, and a little less inhibited in how she accomplishes her goals. Endgame doesn’t necessarily exploit the potential of this character in the most interesting ways, but it does give Mulgrew one last dramatic showcase.

This is your ship, your crew. Not mine.

Admiral Janeway spends most of Endgame engaged in the art of self-deception. She lies to her past self. She betrays her own ideals. Even at the climax, as she is assimilated into the collective, Admiral Janeway betrays the collective consciousness into which she has been absorbed. This is not the fragile and scattered mental state that Captain Picard experienced in All Good Things… , this is something more meticulous and more calculated. Admiral Janeway knows exactly what she is doing it, even as she manipulates the people she claims to care about into helping her.

This art of self-betrayal is arguably the core of Voyager . No other Star Trek series so blatantly and so fundamental betrayed its core premise; and this is saying something considering the fact that it took Star Trek: Enterprise roughly two full seasons before it even attempted to grapple with its place in the larger tapestry of the franchise. Voyager squandered one of the most interesting and compelling premises in the history of franchise by the end of its pilot episode.

Not-so-L’il Kim.

Caretaker promised an epic story about two rival crews stranded together at the opposite end of the galaxy, with no support structure and no supplies to assist them. However, Voyager never quite managed to live up to that potential. There were a handful of episodes that hinged on the basic premise of the series, like  Scorpion, Part I and  Scorpion, Part II , Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II , Counterpoint , Equinox, Part I and Equinox, Part II . Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of episodes could easily have been written for any other Star Trek series.

Outside of episodes like Learning Curve , Worst Case Scenario or Repression , the tension between Starfleet and the Maquis evaporated almost immediately. Outside of episodes where it was plot convenient, like Phage or Demon , the idea of a lone ship trapped outside of established support frameworks was largely ignored in favour of business as usual. Outside of spectacular misfires like Alliances , the question of what it actually meant to be the only Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant was largely ignored.

Kessed wishes…

Any damage to the ship was inevitable repaired between one episode and the next, if not by a convenient reset at the end of the episode in question. Voyager didn’t just ignore larger shifts in contemporary television, it seemed openly scornful of them. The Voyager Conspiracy mocked the idea of long-form serialisation, while Pathfinder played with the basic premise of  The Sopranos . For a series that was nominally supposed to be about the journey, there was never a sense of forward progression.

There was, however, a pull backwards. This makes sense, given that the series was always supposed to be a trip back to the familiar and the safe. Following a turbulent and traumatic first two seasons, Voyager settled into pale imitation of The Next Generation . The series became something of a flatter and generic extension of the beloved science-fiction television show from its late second season; making Q a recurring character from Death Wish onwards, bringing the Borg back in Unity , and even writing an episode featuring the Ferengi in False Profits .

A Galaxy-class far, far away…

So it makes sense that Voyager should finish with an extended homage to The Next Generation , which cast a long shadow over the spin-offs that followed. ( Enterprise would go further in These Are The Voyages… , folding its wrap-up into the Next Generation episode The Pegasus .) That shadow hangs of Voyager , the closing shot of the series even featuring the familiar shape of the Galaxy-class starship in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Even before that, Endgame confirms that Voyager has “adopted” the secondary character Barclay from The Next Generation .

In its final two hours, Voyager completely betrays any sense of itself. It goes for broke as a nostalgic tribute to The Next Generation . Specifically, a tribute to that series finale All Good Things… This is obvious in a number of ways, most obviously in the familiar  Star Trek plot device of time travel and the use of that device to depict a future where the crew have gone their separate ways. Voyager refuses to end on its own terms, instead choosing to end on the terms of The Next Generation .

“We’re in the Endgame now…”

Producer Kenneth Biller acknowledged this in contemporaneous discussions with Cinefantastique , conceding that the basic premise of Endgame owed a sizable debt to All Good Things… :

We were mindful of the fact that there would inevitably be comparisons to All Good Things…, which was a time travel episode. That was a wonderful episode of Star Trek. I think one of the best, and so I said, ‘We don’t have to shy away from that. It’s a different set of characters, and a different show, and ultimately it is a different story. The only thing that it has in common is that they do involve time travel.’

Biller is being just a little bit disingenuous here. It isn’t just the use of time travel. It is the exact future, down to the uniforms. It is the washed-up series lead embarking on one last mission.

Shades of grey…

To be fair to the production team working on Voyager , there had been more than five hundred episodes of Star Trek produced to that point. It can be difficult to continuous generate original story material. This is true even within the seventh season of Voyager ; the penultimate episode of the season, Renaissance Man , often felt like a hybrid of two earlier episodes of the very same season , Inside Man and Body and Soul . More than that, some ideas are worth revisiting, and it is possible to revisit old concepts from new angles.

However, it is rarely a good idea to invite comparison to a universally-beloved cultural phenomenon, and to engage in a halfhearted attempt to rip off that universally-beloved cultural phenomenon. All Good Things… was a success by any measure, watched by over thirty million people . By Biller’s own estimation, it was “a wonderful episode.” Even assuming that Endgame turned out perfectly, any comparison between Endgame and All Good Things… was highly unlike to favour Endgame .

Novel approaches.

Voyager did not have to end this way. The final season of The Next Generation had been written in a blind panic, with the commitment to Star Trek: Generations leaving Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga rushing on All Good Things… There was no sense of similiar pressure at work on Voyager . The production team had a number of ideas for the finale. This was a source of minor frustration for staff writer Bryan Fuller, as he admits in The Fifty-Year Mission :

We had talked about so many different things to end the series. One of them we sort of used earlier in the season, the idea being Janeway, to get everyone home, allows the crew to be assimilated knowing that the Doctor can activate and disassimilate the way he did Seven of Nine and that Voyager was going to cross the finish line in the belly of a Borg cube and then, as it explodes, some bursting out of the debris with everyone safe in this bold gambit that only Janeway could have pulled off. But what we got was sort of a Voyager version of All Good Things. It was a good episode and a satisfying one and there was certainly some nice emotion to it, but it just felt like had told that story before.

Oh, the almighty Temporal Prime Directive. Take my advice. It’s less of a headache if you just ignore it.

Biller correctly points to time travel as a narrative thread that links Endgame to All Good Things… However, the use of time travel in Endgame feels especially clumsy, even by the standards of Voyager . To be fair, this was perhaps inevitable. Endgame is an episode that affords a story credit to former showrunner Brannon Braga, who was busy working on Enterprise at this point. However, the script is trying to employ many of Braga’s trademark narrative tics, in a manner that often feels like pale imitation.

Although Braga had (not entirely undeservedly) turned himself into a figure of fan hate by this point, he was still a writer who had a pretty sold grasp on the conceptual logic of time travel. More than that, Braga had a rare gift for making these more abstract ideas accessible to a broader audience in episodes like Cause and Effect or Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II . Braga certainly doesn’t deserve praise for scientific accuracy, given his involvement in episodes like  Genesis or Threshold . However, he was generally competent at keeping the mechanics transparent.

No time to think about it.

After all, All Good Things… is skillfully and carefully written to avoid too many concerns about temporal mechanics. The involvement of Q helps in this respect, the omnipotent trickster serving as a deus ex machina . Picard is able to establish relatively early in All Good Things… that his past, present and future exist independently of one another. This saves the already crowded script a great deal of time and effort, freeing it to focus on character development and its own storytelling instead of meditating upon the possible impact of cause and effect within the story.

Endgame lacks that sort of clarity. Throughout the episode, it is left ambiguous as to the impact that Admiral Janeway will have upon the future that she abandons. Her plan is to fundamentally alter history, to bring her crew home more than a decade and a half early. This will have profound implications on the timeline; not just for crew members like Seven of Nine or Tuvok or Chakotay, but for everybody who might have been changed in any way by what happened in those intervening years.

Nothing gets past her.

To pick two small examples from within the episode, the childhoods of Miral Paris and Naomi Wildman would be drastically different. Ignoring questions about nature and nurture, it seems fair to suggest that raising a child on a ship with less than two-hundred people would be a radically different experience than raising a child on a densely populated planet inhabited by friends and relatives. These differences are not minor. They make a huge difference in the development of a child’s personality. Miral Paris and Naomi Wildman would be very different people.

This is without considering the butterfly effect. In the seven years that Voyager has been in the Delta Quadrant, it has had a profound impact on various civilisations – for better and for worse. To pick a few direct examples, the crew effectively saved what was left of a planetary population in Friendship One and inspired another race to reach for the stars in Blink of an Eye . They changed the way that the Voth understood the universe in Distant Origin and preserved the memory of genocide in Memorial .

Putting her neck on the line…

They fundamentally altered Hirogen society in The Killing Game, Part I and The Killing Game, Part II , and then confronted the consequences of that intervention in Flesh and Blood, Part I and Flesh and Blood, Part II . They saved an indigenous species from the Malon in Night . They repelled an invasion by Species 8472 in Scorpion, Part I and Scorpion, Part II . These are only some of the more direct influences that Voyager had on the Delta Quadrant.

As Hope and Fear argued, the decisions that Janeway made often trickled down to greater effect, impacting civilisations that she never directly encounters. The ship and crew were folded into local mythology in episodes like False Profits , Live Fast and Prosper and Muse . The opening scenes of Endgame suggest that the ship will spend another sixteen years in the Delta Quadrant, which means that it might (mathematically) triple the impact that the crew has had on the civilisations that they have encounter. Admiral Janeway even names one, “the Fen Domar.”

Reaching Future’s End …

Logically, all of that will be erased when Admiral Janeway cuts the journey short. However, while Endgame alludes vaguely to these consequences, it never acknowledges them head-on. In the first half of the episode, future! Kim is shocked to realise that Admiral Janeway intends for her mission to be a one-way trip. “This device of Korath’s, it produces too much tachyo-kinetic energy. It could burn itself out by the time you get where you’re going. You wouldn’t be able to get back,” he protests. Admiral Janeway responds, “I always assumed it was a one way trip.”

This ignores the more uncomfortable question: what would Admiral Janeway be coming back to? If she brings Voyager home early, she rewrites the future. To pick a small example, future! Kim encounters Sabrina at the party, the daughter of Naomi Wildman. Assuming a sixteen-year shift in Naomi’s personal timeline, particularly an early arrival back in the Alpha Quadrant, it seems statistically improbable that Naomi would still encounter Sabrina’s father at just the right moment in her life to conceive Sabrina. It seems more likely that Sabrina would never have existed at all.

His Koloth.

Nevertheless, characters in Endgame speak as if Admiral Janeway isn’t wiping out an entire future in order to assuage her guilt. Most of the arguments between the two versions of Janeway are abstract, involving the “temporal prime directive.” Once that is cleared, the plot pivots to the morality of using the “transwarp hub” to get home instead of destroying it, replaying the moral decision at the end of Caretaker . It is never acknowledged that Admiral Janeway is making a decision that affects millions of lives, including the implied erasure of the future in the episode’s first half.

Despite this implied disconnect between Captain Janeway’s present and Admiral Janeway’s future, Endgame does make it clear that the two still share a causal link. Falling apart inside her chamber, the Borg Queen seizes on one last desperate plan to save her life. “Captain Janeway is about to die,” she gloats. “If she has no future, you will never exist, and nothing that you’ve done here today will happen.” This makes a certain amount of sense. If Captain Janeway dies, she cannot become Admiral Janeway. If Admiral Janeway does not exist, she cannot travel back in time.

No time like the present.

Of course, as with all time travel stories, it is possible to follow this idea well past the point of no return. After all, if Admiral Janeway does not travel back in time, Captain Janeway would never have attacked the transwarp hub. If Captain Janeway never attacked the transwarp hub, the Borg Queen would never have killed her. If Captain Janeway doesn’t die, she can become Admiral Janeway. If Admiral Janeway exists, she can travel back in time. And that resets everything back to starting positions. This creates a conceptual paradox, a story that loops like a Möbius strip.

However, without getting too fixated on the logical paradoxes, the Borg Queen’s threat implies that what happens in the past can affect Admiral Janeway’s future. This creates a very interesting implication. Perhaps Admiral Janeway is correct. Perhaps her future – or something so close as to be indistinguishable from her future – will survive all of this meddling. Perhaps Kim will still become a captain. Perhaps Paris will still write holonovels. Perhaps the EMH will still get married. Perhaps Torres will still serve as “Federation liaison” to the Klingon Empire.

Holo promises.

This is very much in keeping with how Voyager views the arc (or the straight line) of history. Reflecting its status as a nineties television show, Voyager believes that the future is immutable. Voyager introduced the idea that Starfleet would be a dominant force into the twenty-ninth century in Future’s End, Part I , Future’s End, Part II and Relativity . A product of the prosperous Clinton era, Voyager extrapolated the American century into the American millennium . Endgame aired in May 2001, four months before America’s view of the future would change dramatically .

Admiral Janeway seems incapable of imagining that anything could seriously alter the future or change the course of history. This is marked contrast to the political volatility suggested by Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges and implied volatility of the Temporal Cold War in Enterprise . Even after Endgame , it is notable that both Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek suggested a more precarious political and social galactic status quo , depicting events that radically altered the established framework of the Star Trek universe.

Talax over telex.

As such, Endgame represents the last gasp of a certain cultural complacency, the sense that the future was set and secure. Admiral Janeway may not believe that she will get to come home at the end of the story, but she doesn’t seem to doubt that home will still exist in a recognisable form. Tuvok should be better and Seven should still be alive, but otherwise everything will be stable. It is notable that the future in  Endgame suggests a more stable relationship between the Klingons and the Federation than  All Good Things… did.

More than that, though, Admiral Janeway’s indifference to the long-term consequence of her actions suggests a more unsettling underlying possibility: none of this matters . After all, Voyager ends once the credits roll on Endgame , so why worry about what follows? This is the end of the line for this cast and crew, and the future belongs to Enterprise , so who cares about the future? Star Trek fans will be able to tune back into UPN in four months to receive their weekly dose of Star Trek , produced by many of the same people. Admiral Janeway is right; the future is stable.

It’s no picnic.

Endgame feels like a pro forma obligation. Actor Robert Beltran clearly felt this anxiety :

“Frankly, I don’t think [the writers] really cared what happened at the end. Voyager has been the ugly step-child of the Star Trek family, and that’s the way we’ve been treated,” he told Starburst Magazine (via the Great Link). “We’re also the only show that’s had to carry a whole network [UPN]” “[…]The ratings are down because it’s not being seen by as many people in the world who could see ER. Then they took it out on us by saying ‘This show’s no good. Let’s get it over with as quickly as possible so we can fix it for the next one.'”

Endgame is not happening because it is a good idea. Endgame is happening because the decks have to be cleared.

The plotting for the first season of Enterprise is going exactly to plan.

Outside of Nemesis and (arguably) These Are the Voyages… , Endgame marks the end of the twenty-fourth century Star Trek universe as overseen by Rick Berman. This should be a big deal. Twenty-one televised seasons of Star Trek were set against this backdrop, including more than five hundred and twenty episodes. This is the end of a continuous thread of televised Star Trek dating back to Encounter at Farpoint almost fifteen years earlier. This should be a big deal.

Despite spending between a third and a quarter of its time in a hypothetical future – slightly more than half of the first part of the two-parter – Endgame is incapable of looking beyond its own present. There is a sense of obligation and fatigue to all of this, as if  that all the production team wants to do is to meet the obligations that have been imposed on them. The episode focuses on paying off the two set-ups that it has been handed; getting the crew home as promised in Caretaker and wrapping up Torres’ pregnancy as announced in Lineage .

Chakotay may see her in… Seventh Heaven.

It is revealing that Endgame does both of these in its final minutes, understanding that there might otherwise be an obligation to do something with these elements. There is no sense of a future beyond those closing scenes, beyond the arrival of Miral Paris and the shot of Earth on the viewscreen. Actor Richard Herd confessed :

My only frustration with Voyager is I was hoping, at the end, in the very last episode, when I finally had a chance to see my son, that we’d have had a few sentences. I was hoping to say, “It’s been so long” or “Welcome home, son.” But we never had that opportunity to talk, just to stare at each other. When I was looking at him, all I was doing was looking at a piece of masking tape on the wall that they could match with Robbie’s eyeline.

This makes sense. Paris’ troubled relationship with his father has been a defining attribute of his character since Caretaker . He was haunted by visions of his father in Persistence of Vision and wrote a letter to him in Thirty Days . Admiral Owen Paris has been recurring across the final two seasons since Pathfinder . There should be more pay-off.

Giving continuity a wide birth…

There is no sense of what awaits these characters on their return to Earth following their seven-year absence, what it must be like to set foot on familiar soil and to breathe familiar air. There are no tearful reunions with loving family members, no question of how best to reintegrate this crew into Starfleet, no debate about all the decisions that Janeway made in order to bring her crew to this point. All that matters is that the crew got “home” in a literal sense, without any thought as to what “home” might mean.

Voyager has always treated “home” as an abstract idea rather than as anything concrete. However, episodes like Message in a Bottle and Extreme Risk allowed more concrete ideas to seep in around the edge of that abstraction. Endgame argues that Reginald Barclay is an adopted member of the crew, and he has been based on Earth for the final two seasons. As much as Voyager might want it to be, “home” is not a simple abstraction to these characters and this crew.

Regular ol’ Reg.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had navigated these challenges much more gracefully with its own finale, What You Leave Behind . The production team had the foresight to plan an impressive ten-episode closing arc for the series. That arc didn’t always work, but it did allow the production team to deal with most of the dangling plot threads. Key character and dramatic beats could be resolved in individual segments of the epic finale; Bashir and O’Brien got to hang out one last time in Extreme Measures , while Quark’s story wrapped up in The Dogs of War .

Even within the finale itself, the production team made a point to wrap up the biggest plot element around the midpoint. The Dominion War came to its conclusion with about half-an-hour to spare. This allowed the writers the opportunity to write meaningful farewells to the various characters; Odo returning to his people, O’Brien returning to Earth, Worf serving as ambassador to the Federation. What You Leave Behind knew better than to position the Dominion surrender as the last shot of the last episode.

Drinking it all in.

In contrast, Voyager leaves these threads dangling. John S. Hall articulated just a handful of these questions in Star Trek Magazine :

What would become of The Doctor, as a sentient hologram with a mobile emitter in the Alpha Quadrant? Likewise, how would Seven of Nine be received by Starfleet – as a valued commodity, or a subject for dissection? Would her relationship with Chakotay go anywhere? And what would be the fates of Voyager’s Maquis crewmembers? Would they receive amnesty for their crimes against Starfleet, or be locked up for them? Also, after seven years of self-sufficiency in the Delta Quadrant, would the Voyager crew reintegrate effectively with Starfleet, or would there have been difficulties?

None of this actually matters to Endgame or to Voyager . After all, the larger Star Trek franchise was about to turn its gaze towards its own past in Enterprise .

The Voyager home…

There had been a time when Voyager represented the bold new future of Star Trek . It had helped to launch the United Paramount Network, and had served as its flagship. It received attention and praise, succeeding The Next Generation as the Star Trek show about exploring “strange new worlds.” It was on the air during the franchise’s celebratory thirtieth anniversary year, marking the occasion with the episode Flashback . There was a time when the television series Voyager looked as shiny and novel as the eponymous ship, but its glow had faded over the years.

The Voyager sets always remained pristine. Outside of episodes like Deadlock , the ship never accrued any damage from the seven-year journey through uncharted space. Even that damage was quickly repaired and restored. The ship was in near-mint condition, give or take Seven of Nine’s amendments to the cargo bay, when it returned home in Endgame . Janeway’s Ready Room looked pretty much exactly as it had during Caretaker . There was no sense that had accrued seven years of living.

The audience figures for the series finales were quite impressive.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the show itself. During its seven years on the air, Voyager had weathered its blows both internally and externally. By the time it wrapped up, Voyager was an uncomfortable fit at the network that it had launched, a network now focused on African American comedies and professional wrestling . Even internally, Voyager had largely been abandoned and forsaken. Michael Piller had quit the show half-way through the first season, before returning at the start of the second only to be ousted at the end of a turbulent year.

Jeri Taylor them steadied the ship for the following two seasons, before quietly stepping away at the end of the fourth season. Brannon Braga stepped into the gap for the following two seasons, but had taken a breather from the series in its final season, nominally to invest his energy in the launch of Enterprise , but also perhaps nursing burnout and needing time following the dissolution of his friendship with Ronald D. Moore. Voyager lacked the same security and stability that had guided its sister series like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine through their runs.

The cast had to remain tight-lipped about the finale…

The seventh season of Voyager had been driven by Kenneth Biller. Biller had worked on Voyager since its first season, even if he had never been a breakout writer. Biller had even briefly departed the series at the start of the sixth season, when he was denied a pay rise and when Ronald D. Moore had been brought in above him. After Moore’s spectacular departure, Biller had been very quickly rehired to step into the breach. When Braga decided to focus his energies elsewhere, Biller was promoted to showrunner for the final season.

Biller was a journeyman, not a visionary. He did not have a strong vision of what Voyager could be. The best thing that could be said about Biller was that he kept the show on schedule and recognisable. Biller’s work on the seventh season is largely about evoking a generic and archetypal sense of “Star-Trek-ness” , without anything of substance to underpin the aesthetic of episodes like  Critical Care or Repentance . Biller could passably emulate what Voyager and Star Trek were, providing a vision of the show that hit all the necessary marks.

Facing herself.

However, Biller lacked any vision to see what Voyager or Star Trek could be. He never wanted to push Voyager beyond the boundaries that the show had established for itself over the previous six years. It is possible for a television series to find new energy and new direction in its final season, as Enterprise did. However, Biller is not interested in pushing Voyager forward. He is primarily motivated by a desire to glide it safely into dock, to let it coast gracefully towards its predetermined end point.

Of course there is no sense of any future existing beyond that closing shot. Voyager was never really a show about the future or a show about potential or a show about possibilities. Voyager had always been a show about retreating to the comforts of the familiar, on delivering the bare minimum of what was required, packaged in such a way that it (mostly) fit with what had come before. Enterprise might have been the show that took the Star Trek franchise into its own past, but Voyager was the show that killed the Star Trek franchise’s future.

I know, you don’t want to hear too much about the future, but let’s just say I ran into the Borg a few more times before I made it home. If I hadn’t developed technology and tactics that could defeat them, I wouldn’t be standing here today.

Endgame invites comparisons to All Good Things… through its use of time travel, but this was very much in keeping with Voyager ‘s broader approach towards appropriating as much of The Next Generation as possible. Voyager has often felt like a child desperately raiding its elder sibling’s closet for hand-me-downs, happy to settle for clothes that looked great in their heyday, but have long faded in the wash and fallen out of fashion. Riker appears in Death Wish , LaForge stops by in Timeless . Troi pops up in Pathfinder and Inside Man .

The Borg were one of those hand-me-downs. With no disrespect to the Ferengi, the Borg were the breakout new aliens of The Next Generation , among the series’ most significant contributions to the larger Star Trek mythology. They are the most enduring legacy of this particular iteration of the franchise, with possible exception of characters like Picard and Data or ship designs like the Enterprise-D. After all, the Borg are one of the handful of Star Trek aliens that are instantly recognisable to even the most casual of television viewers.

It’s good to be the queen.

The Next Generation used the Borg sparingly, understanding that their power could be diluted through repetition. Over the seven years of The Next Generation , the Borg only appeared in a handful episodes; Q Who? , The Best of Both Worlds, Part I , The Best of Both Worlds, Part II , I, Borg , Descent, Part I and Descent, Part II . That neatly added up to roughly one appearance in each of the show’s final six seasons. They even haunted The Neutral Zone at the end of the first year. Star Trek: First Contact cemented the Borg as one of the defining features of the Berman era.

Voyager made a point to heavily feature the Borg from the mid-third season onwards. they appear quite a bit in that stretch of the late third season; a corpse in Blood Fever , a damaged community in Unity , an epic war in Scorpion, Part I and Scorpion, Part II . Seven of Nine was introduced in the fourth season as a former Borg drone, and brought a renewed focus on the Borg Collective. Whether through that connection or just in general, the Borg turned up with incredible frequency on  Voyager .

Coming out in hives…

The Borg played a major role in episodes like The Gift , Hope and Fear , Drone ,  Infinite Regress , Dark Frontier, Part I and Dark Frontier, Part II ,  Collective ,  Child’s Play , Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II and Imperfection . It reached the point where the appearance of a Borg ship was not a cause for dread or anxiety, but instead just another facet of life in the Delta Quadrant. The Borg appeared far more frequently than they had on The Next Generation ., becoming business as usual for Janeway and her crew.

In Endgame , there is a conscious effort to recapture some of the spirit of The Next Generation . The seventh season of Voyager has been very engaged with the franchise’s history; the lost probe in Friendship One , the “First Contact Day” celebrations in Homestead , Icheb’s project on James Kirk in Q2 . There are shades of this to the involvement of Deanna Troi in the plot of Inside Man or the statement that Barclay is an “adopted” member of the Voyager cast within Endgame . Endgame finds Alice Krige reprising the role of the Borg Queen for the first time since First Contact .

Admiral nanos best.

Krige is reclaiming the role for actor Susanna Thompson, who had played the part in Dark Frontier, Part I , Dark Frontier, Part II , Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II . Talking about her process, Krige seemed to suggest that she saw no continuity between her portrayal and that of Thompson :

I chose not to watch Susanna. I generally don’t like watching myself. In retrospect, it’s OK to watch rushes or to watch the replays on the monitor in the flow of making it, but I find it very painful to watch myself afterward. And I decided that I would not watch Susanna. It had absolutely nothing to do with Susanna. Whoever had played the role, I would have made the same decision. But I did ask to receive all the scripts. And I read them. I read all of the Voyager episodes that the Borg Queen was in, but I didn’t watch them. I didn’t want something in my head, in my imagination. I needed my performance to happen in the moment, and I didn’t even watch First Contact again. So not only did I not watch Susanna, I didn’t watch First Contact. I just focused on the stories I’d been sent, that had been filmed, and on the new script for Endgame.

This is a perfectly reasonable approach to a role like this, but it speaks to the extent to which Endgame sees the Borg Queen as a character belonging to First Contact , rather than a character that Voyager helped to define. (To be fair, Thompson was busy working on Once and Again , and so was unavailable for the finale .)

In a league of her drone.

Notably, outside of some light joking dialogue in the future! classroom, Endgame completely ignores the events of Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II . There is no sense that the Borg Queen is dealing with an ongoing “Borg resistance movement” ; nor is there any sense that she has recently vanquished such a insurgency. This would seem to be an important point to note in a story that hinges on dealing “a crippling blow to the Borg” by destroying a vital part of their infrastructure. It is as though nothing of note has happened to the Borg Queen since First Contact .

Similarly, the Borg Queen’s single scene with Seven of Nine in Endgame is more heavily sexualised than any of the sequences the pair share in earlier episodes. Krige’s performance is more tactile and more aggressive than Thompson’s; the Borg Queen intrudes into Seven’s personal space, the two so close that the camera hovers between them. Krige understands where to pause in her line readings. When Seven asserts that they are not friends, she replies, “We’re more than that.” There’s a long pause before she clarifies, “We’re family.”

Don’t press it…

Endgame hinges on a crippling and humiliating defeat of the Borg. When the crew detect signals suggesting a wormhole that could possibly take them back to the Alpha Quadrant, they stumble upon one of the six transwarp hubs that the Borg have established in the Milky Way. This is a huge tactically resource for the Borg Collective, allowing them to deploy their ships and drones across the universe with ease. It is established as a cornerstone of the Borg Collective’s political and logistical power both within the Delta Quadrant and beyond.

The particulars of the hub are vague. Do the transwarp corridors only work in one direction, meaning a ship can only enter transwarp at the hub? Why haven’t the Borg incorporated the more efficient technology employed in Descent, Part I and Descent, Part II ? If one corridor leads to Sol, why didn’t the Borg employ it in The Best of Both Worlds, Part I , The Best of Both Worlds, Part II or First Contact ? Did the Borg build the hub, or merely assimilate it? Can they rebuild it after it is destroyed? How does one quantify destroying seventeen percent of the Borg’s infrastructure?

The Borg have been well and truly disarmed.

To be fair, none of these questions really matter in the context of Endgame . The transwarp hub is important because the characters state that it is important. It also serves as an effective opportunity for Endgame to offer the crew an easy victor. It allows Janeway and her crew to triumph over an iconic foe. In doing so, it serves as validation for the characters and the larger series. Jean-Luc Picard may have killed a Borg Queen in First Contact , but he never destroyed one sixth of the Borg’s infrastructure.

Of course, this only matters if the audience assumes that victory means anything. Picard never destroyed a transwarp hub, but he never had to. The Next Generation so effectively established the Borg as a credible threat that the mere act of surviving a conflict with them was a victory of itself. The Borg have been so consistently out-manoeuvred and outwitted by Janeway and her crew that this doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like an inevitability. The Borg have reached a point where they have no more credibility than any other antagonist, from the Malon to the Kazon.

The Borg no longer exist at pole position in the Star Trek villain hierarchy.

In fact, Endgame starts from the premise of the Borg as joke. It is revealed that Admiral Janeway “literally wrote the book on the Borg” and is guest-lecturing a course on the Borg at Starfleet Academy. Had that course existed during the run of The Next Generation , it would have been a very solemn and very dignified course. After all, the Borg completely challenged the way that Starfleet and the Federation operated. Picard considered genocide in I, Borg , and The Search, Part I and The Search, Part II revealed that Starfleet had been motivated to start designing warships.

In contrast, this future lecture on the Borg Collective treats them as a joke. During her introduction to the class, one boisterous student inquires, “When you informed the Queen that you were going to liberate thousands of her drones, could you describe the look on her face?” Janeway doesn’t correct the student or call him out. Instead, it seems to be accepted that the Borg can be treated as comedy antagonists, dismissed and mocked in the same way as the Ferengi.

To keep track of all these queens, we’re going to need a Borg Chart…

Writer Brannon Braga acknowledges this in discussing the finale, arguing that he wanted a sacrifice in order to lend dramatic weight to the victory :

There were a couple Borg episodes I don’t think were quite as successful. I don’t remember the finale well enough… I think I have a story credit on it, so you’d think I’d remember it. I don’t know that the Borg were super impactful there. I think Seven of Nine should have bit the dust. I think there had to be a real sacrifice for this crew getting home; a real blood sacrifice. Seven of Nine was, for me, designed to be a character that was gonna die tragically. I planned that. A Spock moment. Somebody who’s not human, becomes human by making the ultimate sacrifice. Right. There’s an episode called Human Error that I wrote in the final season, where she experiments on the holodeck – it’s actually quite an interesting episode – she tries to feel emotions. She actually succeeds, and she almost dies. She learns there’s a Borg implant, that if she becomes too human, it will kill her. It was that moment in my mind that would set up the finale, where she realized she can’t live here, can’t live there… She dies getting her family home. I think, then, you have a finale.

Of course, it is debatable whether killing off characters is just a cheap way to establish dramatic stakes . Even if it is, it would add a sense of danger and risk that had been absent from  Voyager since  Caretaker .

A long time ago, I made a decision that stranded this crew in the Delta Quadrant. I don’t regret that decision. But I didn’t know all of you then, and Voyager was just a starship. It’s much more than that now.

Endgame does bookend Voyager in an interesting way, bringing back the central dramatic hook of Caretaker . This is not a bad idea when writing a series finale. There is a certain poetic or lyrical quality in looking back to the start of the journey, providing both a sense of structural symmetry and demonstrating how far the characters have come in the time that the audience has spent with them. Frankly, given how rigidly episodic Voyager quickly became, it is a pleasant surprise that the series even vaguely remembers Endgame .

To be fair, this is standard practice with Star Trek spin-offs. All Good Things… unfolded across three different timelines, and one of those timelines happened to take place during the events of Encounter at Farpoint . While What You Leave Behind did not end with Bajor’s admittance into the Federation, it did make a point to end with Sisko fulfilling the role of Emissary to the Prophets that had been bestowed upon him in Emissary . Whether or not it resolved that story thread in a satisfying manner is a debate for another time.

Hunter and (hypo)spray…

Endgame essentially confronts Captain Janeway with the same dilemma that she faced in Caretaker . The ship has discovered a highly advanced piece of technology that can be used to send the crew home. The transwarp hub is a handy stand-in for the Caretaker’s Array. However, there is a moral dilemma at play. That technology could easily be usurped and exploited by ominous forces, which would lead to the suffering of countless innocent lives. Once again, Captain Janeway is placed in the uncomfortable position of having to decide between her crew and strangers.

Of course, this dilemma is imperfect. To be fair, most moral dilemmas on Star Trek tend to be rather broad, and don’t necessarily hold up to scrutiny. More than that, the edges of the two dilemmas do not overlap perfectly. At the end of  Caretaker , Janeway was trying to stop the Kazon from seizing control of the Caretaker’s Array. In contrast, the Borg already have control of the transwarp hub in  Endgame , and Captain Janeway would have happily continued on her way if not for the arrival of Admiral Janeway.

“Still no word on whether Bajor joined the Federation…”

As with a lot of Star Trek moral dilemmas, the internal constraints of the choice that Janeway faced in Caretaker were left deliberately fuzzy. The choice was made in the heat of battle, rather than around a conference table, so there wasn’t time to fully unpack it. While there are undoubtedly any number of “cheats” that would have allowed Janeway to get around the moral dilemma – whether placing a timer on a torpedo to detonate after the ship was sent home, or remaining behind herself in a shuttle craft – the basic concept was sound.

At its core, that choice in Caretaker represented the utopian humanism at the heart of the vision that Gene Roddenberry had outlined for Star Trek beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Janeway was presented with a choice: she could help herself at the expense of others, or help others at the expense of herself. Janeway chose selflessly. Of course, the outcome of that choice was all but predetermined by the nature of the show around Janeway. Had Janeway chosen selfishly, there would be no Voyager to watch for the following seven years.

Not quite her cup of coffee…

Still, as contrived as that choice might have been, it was idealistic and optimistic. Ignoring sizable issues with execution, Janeway’s decision spoke to the finer ideals associated with the larger Star Trek franchise. It makes sense to revisit that dilemma for the series finale. It would neatly bookend the series. Much like All Good Things… demonstrated how far the cast of The Next Generation had come and much like What You Leave Behind had Sisko accept the responsibilities of being the Emissary, Endgame asks if Janeway would make the same choice again.

The results are somewhat disheartening, if entirely predictable. On a moral level, Endgame argues that Janeway essentially made the wrong choice seven seasons ago. This is arguably the pay-off to a thread building through the larger seventh season, a weariness and anxiety about the idea of exploration. It is perhaps most obvious at the end of Friendship One , when Janeway reflects on the loss of Joseph Carey during a mission that ultimately saved an entire alien civilisation.

Taking care.

“The urge to explore is pretty powerful,” Chakotay reflected as Janeway sorted through the engineer’s things. Janeway simply responded, “But it can’t justify the loss of lives, whether it’s millions or just one.” There was a real sense that exploration was a mistake, a firm rejection of the utopian idealism of the Star Trek franchise that drove the crew “to seek out new life forms and new civilisations.” Considering the risk involved in such exploration, Friendship One seemed to argue that exploration was just not worth the cost.

Endgame plays out this moral thesis to its logical conclusion with Admiral Janeway. Admiral Janeway is committed to the idea that the lives of her crew are the most important thing in the universe; more important than the stability of the future, more important than any of the civilisations encountered by the ship, more important than those lives that will suffer as a result of the Borg’s use of the transwarp hub. No price is too high for the safe return of Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant, as long as some other people are paying it.

Worrisome across the board…

In fact, Admiral Janeway even argued for her plan as an extension and extrapolation of the sort of isolationism suggested in the closing moments of Friendship One . After all, Admiral Janeway contends, changing the timeline is really just a form of more thorough and retroactive isolationism. It is erasure. “Even if you alter Voyager’s route, limit your contact with alien species, you’re going to lose people,” Admiral Janeway warns her younger self. “But I’m offering you a chance to get all of them home safe and sound today. Are you really going to walk away from that?”

When Captain Janeway proposes destroying the transwarp hub instead of using it, Admiral Janeway is horrified. She appeals to Seven of Nine, whose death is assured by this decision. “My future is insignificant compared to the lives of the people we’d be saving,” Seven states, a strong moral principle. Admiral Janeway will not accept that. “You’re being selfish,” she replies. “Selfish?” Seven counters. “I’m talking about helping others.” Admiral Janeway dismisses that. “Strangers in a hypothetical scenario. I’m talking about real life. Your colleagues, your friends, people who love you.”

Looking back, it is all a bit strange.

The plan to destroy the transwarp hub is repeatedly framed as selfless. When Captain Janeway invites Tuvok to discuss his “degenerative neurological condition”, she asks, “If you knew that returning to the Alpha Quadrant was your only chance for recovery, why didn’t you object when I asked you to help find a way to destroy the hub?” Tuvok replies, “My sense of logic isn’t impaired yet. If we succeed, millions of lives will be saved.” Janeway inquires, “What about your life?” Tuvok replies, “To quote Ambassador Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Admiral Janeway is arguing that needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, so long as that few happen to be the people closest to her. This is an incredibly morally suspect position. It is revealing that Janeway didn’t travel back in time to before Basics, Part I and Basics, Part II to save the lives of Crewman Hogan or Ensign Suder. It is an extremely selfish and self-centred view of the universe. It is completely understandable from an emotional perspective, but is not heroic in the way that Star Trek has traditionally understood heroism.

It all comes together.

This tribalism makes sense. It is a fundamental part of the Voyager ‘s identity. The show has always been suspicious and wary of aliens. After all, this was a  Star Trek series that was fundamentally build around retreating inwards instead of pushing outwards, and which embraced a very rigid-but-generic vision of what  Star Trek could be. This attitude occasionally led to some uncomfortable places, as in episodes like Displaced or Day of Honour , but it also simmered through the series. It makes sense that Endgame should bring it to the fore.

Of course, Endgame is not so cynical as to entirely embrace Admiral Janeway’s philosophy. However, it also refuses to reject it. The crew’s willingness to sacrifice themselves is heroic, but also naive. In contrast, Admiral Janeway’s self-sacrifice is presented as virtuous. She gives up everything to get her crew home. Occasionally grouchiness aside, Admiral Janeway is never presented as a morally ambiguous figure. Even during the episode’s first half, she does not betray Korath until he betrays her.

Janeway needs to screen her calls better.

When Admiral Janeway makes a deal with the Borg Queen at the climax, the episode is careful to avoid any suggestion that she is betraying Captain Janeway. There is a scene between the two versions of Janeway on a shuttle craft, in which they confirm that what is to follow has been mutually agreed. “You’re sure you want to do this?” Captain Janeway asks. Admiral Janeway responds, “No, but Voyager isn’t big enough for both of us.” Admiral Janeway surrenders her life to help get the crew home. This is not a condemnation of her perspective.

To be fair, Endgame works hard to avoid picking a side in the moral debate that it has set for itself. Instead, the episode is true to another Voyager cliché. Ultimately, both Admiral Janeway and Captain Janeway are satisfied by how events play out. The crew can get home without having to make any moral choice whatsoever. The crew doesn’t have to make that choice, and can instead have the best of both worlds. They can use the transwarp hub to get home and prevent it from being used to harm other civilisations.

Klingon to the classics…

The most charitable reading of this would be to suggest that it is yet another expression of nineties optimism, the belief that there is no need to make any sacrifices because anything is possible. However, it also speaks to the ease with which Voyager tends to weasel out of these sorts of dilemmas. Seventh season episodes like Critical Care and Repentance raise weighty themes, only to deliberately obscure the details to avoid offering a strong statement one way or the other.

As a result Endgame replays the central moral dilemma of Caretaker in a completely vacuous manner. As ever, techno-babble provides an easy out for the crew. “Once inside, we’d fire a spread of transphasic torpedoes,” Tuvok explains. “If the torpedoes penetrate the shielding, the conduits should begin to collapse in a cascade reaction. In order to avoid the shock wave, we’d have less than ten seconds to exit the hub.” This is the sort of belaboured copout that Caretaker avoided, the equivalent of rigging the device with a time bomb. It is a simple plot contrivance.

This approach robs the moral debate of any weight, as the audience knows that the plan must work. This is the last episode of Voyager . If the crew is takes a risky course of action that might get them home, it is as certain to succeed here as it would have been to fail in any prior episode. Maybe this isn’t a betrayal of the moral logic at play in Caretaker , but simply an extension of it. Janeway’s course of action in Caretaker was dictated by the fact that it was the pilot of Voyager , just as her course of action in Endgame is determined by the fact that it is the series finale.

This is perhaps the ultimate expression of how Endgame sees itself. This is not so much an extension or extrapolation or reexamination of Caretaker . It is instead a negation. This is the end of the line for Voyager , the last episode. Janeway’s choices are not longer shaped and defined by the narrative necessity to keep the ship in the Delta Quadrant. Instead, they are determined by the opposite need. The choices that Janeway makes here and the way in which the plot flows are all determined by nothing more than than the need to draw the shutters down.

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: borg , caretaker , conclusion , deta quadrant , Earth , endgame , home , janeway , kathryn janeway , star trek , star trek: voyager , voyager |

19 Responses

(Initiating Stan Lee style narration)

And while I am now committing the cardinal sin of posting a comment before reading the review, let it be known that I salute your resilience in finishing your Voyager reviews despite the noticeable drain it had on your energy and interest levels. You have completed the task you set out to do on September 17th, 2014, which is over five years ago.

I have been anticipating this review for sometime and feel it is appropriate that you have reached the current chronological endpoint of Star Trek prior to the release of Picard.

(End Stan Lee style Narration)

Also in all seriousness I have missed these episode by episode reviews but I understand that they are a huge time commitment for you. Thank you for sticking with it.

Hey, I am – as ever – sorry that it took so long. It will be a while before I take on my next project, but it will likely be something smaller. I am not jumping into something like, say, TNG right after this. I might do TAS, or finish The X-Files . But it’ll be January before anything happens, I suspect.

Thank you for being so patient and sticking with this.

3 years I did a trek marathon were I watched to whole franchise in order. An I mean everything TOS,TAS,TNG,DS9,VOY,ENT, and all the movies and it took about 3 months of bing watching.

I have to say of the entire franchise there were two great slogs. The first was the first season of Next Generation, truly one the worst seasons of television I’ve ever seen.

Seriously, any trekkie who thinks Discovery season 1 is the worst thing ever needs to be strapped to a chair and forced to watch Next gen season 1 on a continous loop. I actually think your reviews of season 1 are little too kind, there are for me only two kinds of season 1 episodes, unwatchable and barely tolerable.

The second big slog was pretty much all of Voyager. Now yes there are some good episodes and overall it wasn’t as bad as TNG season 1, but the mind numbing sameness just got to me after a while.

The thing is that Voyage was so bland that it possible made me like enterprise more than I should have. Everyone always talks about how awful the first two seasons of enterprise were, but honestly I kinda liked them when I saw them. A part of me wonders if I was just so desperate to be done with Voyager that it made Enterpise seem better than it was.

It was easy to give Enterprise rope at the outset because – even though underneath it was the same ol’, same ol’ – it had the sheen of being a different take on Star Trek, what with the very name of the franchise being absent from the title!

The crew of Voyager had been so very jaded about exploration in the years prior to Enterprise, that I think simply seeing Archer’s crew becoming giddy about doing standard Trek stuff like use transporters, visit planets and investigate comets gave it a bit of punch. The sheen degraded really quickly, but there was a brief moment where I thought Berman’s Trek had finally achieved escape velocity from 1987.

That’s fair. I do think the third and fourth seasons of Enterprise were distinct from the nine years of generic mush leading into them. But I accept that’s not a majority opinion by any account.

I can see that. I actually like Voyager a great deal more than people think I do. I suspect that’s because its highs are fleeting and often seem to be a result of random happenstance rather than grueling work, and its flaws are so systemic as to be part of the show’s DNA.

But man, that seventh season was a slog. Even the godawful second season was at least interesting in how bad it was. The seventh is just a grey/beige haze.

Congratulations on completing your Voyager reviews! I look forward to one day seeing the completion of your Next Generation reviews as well.

My biggest problem with “Endgame” is that it’s a story Voyager had already told – “Night” had already placed the crew into another Caretaker-esque moral dilemma but concluded with them finding a way to have their eat and eat it too. The moment Janeway used that phrase in “Endgame” – “Have our cake and eat it too” – I sighed. As if the crew of Voyager weren’t constantly having their cake and eating it too! Finding a means to sidestep moral dilemmas was Voyager’s de rigueur.

All that cake, Michael. Somebody has to eat it!

Congratulations on finishing Voyager Darren! You made it!

And with the season-long review and the series-long overview complete, I am done.

It’s a little odd that they brought back Alice Krige for the finale. She died once already. Why does there have to be only one model of Borg Queen?

I daresay it was a snub against Susanna Thompson, who shepherded the character to the best of her ability.

I think that once Thompson was unavailable, the reflexive position was to get an actor associated with TNG for their TNG homage.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Endgame was the finale that Voyager deserved, but I think it’s probably the kind of finale that could be expected. In the end it’s an above average episode of Voyager. But since the average episode of Voyager isn’t very good, it’s nothing special when compared to better Star Trek or even better non-Trek television. Kate Mulgrew does some good work, but no one else has an essential or even interesting role in the proceedings.

What I find interesting are the parallels between Avengers: Endgame and Voyager Endgame. I don’t think it’s an overreaction to claim that Avengers: Endgame is basically a copy of the plot of the Voyager finale. The essential difference is how much more effective Avengers is and how it has some poignancy and emotional impact. The 20+ Marvel movies leading to Avengers: Endgame total less than half the screen time that Voyager had in its 7 years, but Avengers actually used that time to develop its characters in a way that the audience might care what happens to them. Voyager squandered its opportunity to do anything meaningful with its characters. Avengers: Endgame actually spends some time with the heroes after the mission to show what they had gained and lost. Voyager ends the moment Earth is in sight and gives no clue how the seven year odyssey might have affected the crew, but the show was never interested in exploring that story anyway.

I’m so happy to have finished my watch-through of Voyager. I doubt I’ll ever watch through it again. I think it may be my least favourite Trek series…maybe tied with Enterprise. There are a few scattered gems in the series, but it’s difficult to muster through all the gruel to find the rare desserts. The seventh season takes this to new heights.

One note: The veneration of coffee here seems weirdly some repudiation of Picard’s enjoyment of Ear Grey tea, or some American sentiment Janeway’s ‘alpha’ or mid-western identity. It’s also a final rejection of the Taylor-version of Janeway.

The Doctor’s marriage and sudden adoption of the name “Joe” is deeply weird and flat. Maybe it’s one way they let us know that it’s good for Janeway to obliterate such a future, lol.

What sane person would make Janeway an admiral? It seems like a recipe for disaster.

The first few minutes of the finale remove all the stakes. We are shown the ending, in a sense, and it is fronted by a minor sub-character from TNG. Like many Voyager episodes, we are now left to sit through drama that we know really has little point. Not only do we know the ending, we also know the problems faced by the characters are but ephemera and have no real consequence. There is no mystery, no story, just exposition.

The Borg queen is now fully established as the dictator of a ‘collective’ of slaves. One of her cubes/sectors tells her they will assimilate Voyager. She literally argues with her own collective, saying “No”, and then also says “I’ll keep an eye on them.” She is clearly defined as an individual with a different will than the collective. The Queen is no longer a representative or avatar of the collective. She is a literal queen, over a society of zombie-serfs. She later switches back to pure Batman-villain dialogue, stopping short of maniacal cackles as she interacts with Seven, both of them giving line upon line of straight exposition. “All we want is to return to the Alpha Quadrant”. Oh thanks, the audience had no idea!

Also, why doesn’t Seven immediately know what is in the mysterious nebula of wormholes. We find out later she knows about the transwarp hubs, and even knows how many there are and where they are. Yet she doesn’t immediately inform Janeway of what they’ve encountered. This is a huge internal logic failing even within the same episode.

It’s interesting that one of the scenes between Seven and Chakotay have her bring him flowers, and then she physically yanks him to her. This was a rare role reversal for Voyager and done fairly subtly. I wonder if this was Braga’s BDSM-fan side coming out or a genuine decision by the actors/writers.

It’s also interesting that Seven’s deaths are what drive both Janeways to action. Future Janeway speaks with horror at it, and present Janeway is shaken to the core. Then Janeway casually throws out the stat that 22 other crew will die. They remain nameless. Present Janeway doesn’t even ask their names. It’s only Seven that matters. This seems rather symbolic.

We also see Janeway casually destroy cubes with tens of thousands of drones on them, despite objecting to the slaughter of drones in previous episodes. No breath of objection is made here.

I note the later dramatic scenes between Chakotay and Seven (which have little impact due to the suddenness of their relationship) are highly stilted, based on infantile understandings of risk of emotional hurt, and are accompanied by music pulled from daytime soaps. I have nothing against romance in Star Trek, but this is the most hackneyed stuff I’ve seen in a long time.

It seems fitting that Tuvok’s final episode is structured around a sense that he faces a looming madness/psychosis. This is his perennial trait in Voyager. Tuvok must be made crazy or bedridden. The writers simply cannot write an episode or plot around Tuvok without making him lose his mental faculties in some way.

And then of course it means we never see Tuvok re-unite with his large family. No shot of him landing on Vulcan. Not stories of anyone doing anything. Just Voyager and earth. No pay-off.

I am reliving the hollow feeling I had when this episode first aired, a bitter taste in my mouth…the taste of the rot.

If anything could be taken from this finale, it’s that time-travel should be severely limited as a plot contrivance. Of course in Enterprise the writers double down on it.

I’m going to need a break from Trek for a good while now.

At least it’s finally done. Hooray!

I’ve never much cared for time travel plots, despite how much they get over-used in science fiction. Time travel is very hard to do well, and typically ends up as a crutch for writers to move past walls they’ve written themselves into. Star Trek has used this trick quite often all throughout its history. Even the 2009 Star Trek movie heavily relied on it. Outside of Star Trek, the MCU used time travel to undo the damage from Infinity War, which was expected but still disappointing. Once time travel is introduced, it’s harder to build stakes and consequences mean less, since there’s the chance any action with poor consequences can be redone.

This episode’s idea also reused the plot from Timeless, though in that one the whole ship had crashed due to Kim’s overconfidence, so Kim and Chakotay’s motivation for meddling with time was more compelling. If they had to go with this plot, they could’ve had Admiral Janeway as the villain, having continued down the cynical path the seventh season in particular had been pushing. This would’ve given a chance for Captain Janeway to exorcise that particular demon and reaffirm the optimism of the franchise.

Thanks for your work here – it became a big part of the fun of watching the whole thing. I don’t always agree but you write so well that it doesn’t matter.

We’ve watched DS9 and Voyager in the space of a few months, and the difference between them is quite shocking. With DS9, we started getting a painful sense of loss well before the finale, and found we couldn’t let go at the end.

We reached the end of Voyager last night with a general sense of disbelief at the terrible clumsiness of it all. It started badly with a penultimate episode “Renaissance Man” that made no sense and did nothing at all to move us nearer home. How were they going to get home? We still didn’t know and there’s only one left!

Endgame is a terribly disappointing finale for all the reasons you say above, but I would add its narrative structure – it’s about half an hour before we understand what is going on, why we’ve jumped forward to an OK but somewhat sad future. An hour left, and we STILL don’t know how they’re going to get home, so by the time they bump into the Borg conduit, there’s no time. So then it’s lots of busy action and nothing else.

Fond farewells are sometimes a bit clunky – the Grey Havens, even DS9’s montage – but you do need some. Neelix got a whole episode, but no-one else did. Was Janeway’s dog still alive? Is Seven’s cortical thingy really fixable in such a throwaway evening appointment? Did humanity accept a Borg among them? Did Tom’s dad ever tell him he was proud of him? Did Tuvok see his kids again? Couldn’t we have seen Harry’s proud mum? There’s just nothing at all. It all just stops.

You’re quite kind in your review about Janeway. She’s an actor with an ability to express a wide range of very subtle shades of emotion. But as a character and as a captain, she’s a big step backwards in management style – impulsive, random and uninspiring. Picard understands his weaknesses and consciously leans on his team to compensate for them, while always accepting that accountability remains with him. Janeway doesn’t – she just wings it, and it’s all about her. I never really bought the idea that her crew were happy to put their lives in her hands because she never developed a plan, an approach, a style, or principles, she never really built a team, and by the end doesn’t give a stuff about Federation ideals either. For me, Endgame was a very painful process of chucking out all the rest of the cast and making it all about her, and I didn’t buy it at all.

Watch the DS9 fan documentary “What We Left Behind” and try and imagine the same thing about Voyager. What would it be? Just a bunch of disgruntled actors and producers, but nothing more, and perhaps at best a bit of polite reconciliation between Mulgrew and the others, and perhaps some speculation about how much more they could have said about the final frontier.

Thanks Peter, glad you enjoyed!

And, based on the success of the recent fundraiser, we’ll find out what that Voyager documentary will look like soon enough. (There’s a lot of Voayger nostalgia out there.)

I have many good years of Science Fiction under me…but must say I always avoided Voyager. Oddly, I came to the show in 2021 as we eased out of the pandemic…only having seeing the final season; so I come to it from a unique perspective. I…find all the naval gazing in this piece about Endgame difficult to swallow. It was quite good and fortunately avoided a lot of what you suggest would have made it someone ‘better’. As the final season moved along, I became attached to it. To keep this short….it was a very good finale – far better than all the hand wringing that went into this review. Relax…enjoy. I am now looking forward to watching the whole series from ep 1.

Eh, mileage varies.

I think it’s great you enjoyed it. I also think that it’s perfectly reasonable to take a thorough and in-depth look at the art we consume and how we consume it. (And, as I’ve noted throughout these reviews, it’s interesting to see the fandom’s reassessment of Voyager in the years since it ended.)

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• Broken Base : It certainly isn't outright hated like the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise would prove to be, but it's a very divisive ending to the series. Many fans complained about the apparent final defeat of the Borg being much too easy, the seeming contrivances in the time-travel plot, and the episode ending abruptly and inconclusively almost as soon as Voyager gets back to Earth. For other fans, however, Voyager essentially going into God Mode before going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Borg and blowing them up left right and center before dealing a crippling blow to the Collective just falls too much under Rule of Cool for them to dislike the episode, even if they'll generally admit it doesn't quite measure up to TNG's or DS9's finales.
• Fanfic Fuel : Given fan dissatisfaction with Endshame , an obvious subject for a Fix Fic .
• If you remember the lore on alternate universes , it's probable that Janeway's trip into past put her into a parallel universe, much like the Kelvin Timeline . This would be a way for viewers who didn't like the risky use of time travel to feel assured that Janeway didn't undo the original timeline.
• Janeway apparently didn't care much for her First Officer, Chief Engineer, the Conn Officer, Transporter Chief, and literally the entire medical staff, because she never bothers to even consider going back to before the ship went on its doomed mission into the Badlands. That said, she probably took into account the fact that if she did that, Chakotay and the other marquis may more than likely try to perform ' Suicide by Cop ' to avoid capture and Seven of Nine would have still been in the Borg collective.
• Janeway also clearly didn't have a lot of love for Joseph Carey, who died only five episodes away from the finale. All she had to do to save him was go back just a few weeks further and use her knowledge to defuse the Friendship One situation. It really helps further cement Carey's Butt-Monkey status, and make her grief over his death at the end of "Friendship One" sound pretty hollow.
• Alternatively, some fans have speculated that Janeway was trying to go back far enough to rescue Carey, but she couldn't set the temporal device quite that accurately; understandable, given that she was under attack when she opened the portal and didn't have time to properly study its operations.
• The future seen in this episode doesn't tally with the present-day setting of Star Trek: Picard in a lot of ways, leading to the awful implication that in saving the lives of Chakotay, Seven, Tuvok, and a few Red Shirts , Admiral Janeway unwittingly doomed the Federation to a worse future.
• Admiral Janeway also indirectly caused Icheb dying prematurely , considering that the future Icheb seen in VOY: "Shattered" (wherein we see a timeline in which Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant many years later) seems to be older than the one seen in PIC: "Stardust City Rag" .
• Timey-Wimey Ball notwithstanding, the only way to make the events of the episode stick is to establish a Stable Time Loop . Meaning that sometime in the "new" future, Janeway still has to go back to the past and make her Heroic Sacrifice .
• Harsher in Hindsight : Team Janeway crippling the Borg on their way out of the Delta Quadrant. While it's a triumphant note to end the show upon, it'll backfire in the long run and come back to bite the entire Federation in the ass over 20 years later — though, on a brighter note, that will allow Team Picard to defeat the Borg once and for all .
• Hilarious in Hindsight : Though criticized in-universe and out for it, Admiral Janeway's motivation is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong . The star of the next show certainly has a lot of experience in that regard.
• The Borg Queen purring to Seven: "You've always been my favourite, Seven."
• Janeway only seems to give a shit about going along with Future Janeway's time travelled shenanigans once she realises that Seven didn't make it.
• Strangled by the Red String : Because there was no follow-up to Seven's attraction to Holo-Chakotay in "Human Error", her Relationship Upgrade with the real Chakotay also comes out of nowhere.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic : Admiral Janeway comes off as this since she's trying to undo a future that isn't all that terrible. Sure, Tuvok suffers from Vulcan Alzheimer's and both Chakotay and Seven are dead, but everyone else has happily moved on, they have kids and successful careers. Janeway however, doesn't think it's good enough, so she wants to erase a future where a large majority of her crew are happy.
• As mentioned above, one major issue people have with the finale is the time travel plot, particularly since the future isn't bad enough to warrant a risky and unpredictable change to the timeline. Chakotay and Seven are dead, and Tuvok is suffering from Vulcan Alzheimer's, but everyone else seems to have settled down and has kids.
• The other biggest complaint is that the show ends very abruptly. Voyager makes it back to Earth and is greeted by a small fleet, and then the credits roll. No denouement, no tearful reunions. It just ends.
• The brief mention of Unimatrix Zero and the rebellious drones in the future segment is a reminder that unleashing a pathogen with the potential to destroy the entire Borg Collective would mean killing an untold number of drones who could potentially have somehow, someday broken free of the Borg's influence (to say nothing of those unlucky enough to have been assimilated in the preceding few days). There was a legitimate debate to be had over whether the Voyager crew's actions were effectively genocide, or if they were taking an unfortunate but necessary action to remove a threat to all life in the galaxy, while Mercy Killing all Borg drones in the process. Instead, it's just treated as a minor detail in a plan to get Voyager home quicker.

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Screen Rant

Star trek already did avengers: endgame (18 years ago).

The series finale of Star Trek: Voyager was called "Endgame" - and the similarities with Avengers: Endgame go a lot deeper than just the title.

Avengers: Endgame  was the culmination of 22 films over 11 years, but did Star Trek: Voyager beat them to the punch 18 years ago with its series finale? The parallels are pretty surprising.

Endgame concluded the story started in Infinity War by jumping forward in time five years to the aftermath of Thanos' win and subsequent death to reveal a much-changed team of superheroes all trying to cope with their loss. Some, like Tony Stark, have bounced back as well as can be expected, but others, not so much. Steve Rogers chairs survivor's guilt support groups, Nat and Thor are in the throes of serious depression and the Clint Barton is a mercenary mass-murderer. So, when Scott Lang shows up with a way to travel back in time , grab the Infinity Stones and undo the Snap, it's no surprise the remaining team jumps at the chance. They succeed, with relatively few casualties, and by the end of the movie, things are (largely) set right. Fans of the Star Trek: Voyager series finale - also titled "Endgame" - might have found the story very, very familiar.

Read More: How Captain America Is Able To Lift Mjolnir in Avengers: Endgame

As pointed out by Mike Stoklasa on a recent episode of  Red Letter Media's " Half in the Bag ", there are weirdly numerous similarities between the MCU film and the Star Trek episode from 2001. In "Endgame," Captain Kathryn Janeway finally gets her crew home from the Delta Quadrant 23 years after the Caretaker pulled them 75,000 lightyears away from home. But the journey was costly and when we catch up with the now Admiral Janeway 10 years after her triumphant return, we learn that she's extremely dissatisfied with the outcome of her journey. So, Janeway takes a bat'leth to the Temporal Prime directive  and steals a Klingon timeship and heads three decades back in time to get her crew home a little faster via some Borg wormholes. This results in the elder Janeway sacrificing herself to the Borg Queen, but Voyager gets home faster and all is (basically) well. She even inoculates herself with chronexaline - the Star Trek equivalent of Pym Particles - to guard against tachyon radiation associated with time travel.

Whether the two stories share the same time travel logic will depend on your perspective, but they operate under similar, anti- Back to the Future rules. When Janeway goes back in time in Star Trek: Voyager , she induces her past self to make a different decision which seems to result in a new timeline for the Voyager crew, but doesn't make Admiral Janeway disappear start a time loop. It's not quite as neat and tidy as what Banner and the Ancient One chat about regarding separate realities, but its's pretty clear Janeway and the Voyager crew created an entirely new timeline rather than erasing an old one.

In a less direct correlation, it's worth pointing out that as villains, Thanos and the Borg Queen have a decent amount in common when it comes to family values. They both desire universal dominance at the expense of free will and they both have "adopted" cybernetic daughters who find it extremely difficult to escape their abusive backgrounds. Seven of Nine and Nebula both exhibit the same kind of Stockholm Syndrome toward the Borg Queen and Thanos respectively, and their fight for hard-won independence is a key element in both of their journeys.

In all seriousness, the Tale of Two Endgames isn't anymore more than a series of fun coincidences between two properties that are pretty genre adjacent. But that doesn't mean it's for nothing. After all, many fans are still holding out for the MCU to adapt that X-Men/Star Trek: The Next Generation comic series one of these days.

More: Discovery Hit the Reset Button on a Major Star Trek Trope

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