Star Trek: Voyager tells the story of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her crew making the seven-year trip home from the Delta Quadrant, but the show neglects a major part of what the journey back to Earth would really be like. The Star Trek: Voyager cast experiences turbulent scenarios and deadly encounters as they try to reach Earth, and while that is to be expected for a lone Starfleet vessel stranded so far from familiar surroundings, the 90s Star Trek spinoff doesn't pay much attention to a particular aspect of its formula.
Voyager is something of an outlier among the Star Trek TV shows, as it's the only project to isolate its main ship and introduce so many new locations and alien races. The tough conditions changed the ship's crew throughout all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, understandably leading to character dynamics that also transformed during their tumultuous journey. While they had the advantage of one of the most advanced ships in Starfleet - at least, at the time of their departure - its fortitude was a little unrealistic, even by sci-fi standards.
The USS Voyager Was Never Believably Low On Resources, Despite Its Unplanned 7-Year Journey
Captain Janeway's ship had a bottomless supply of apparently coveted items
Janeway's ship made several enemies during its time in the Delta Quadrant. Between the Kazon, the Borg, the Hirogen, and all the USS Voyager's other adversaries, it seems like a miracle that Janeway's crew managed to lead such a cushy and relatively safe existence. Certain resources are mentioned quite often throughout Star Trek: Voyager that, once they're gone, they're pretty much gone for good. For instance, building more Photon Torpedoes is implied to be pretty much impossible, but the ship seems to have an endless supply.
Although Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) does build the Delta Flyer, it takes a great deal of time and manpower.
Another example is Voyager's complement of shuttles. The ship begins the show with a total of two shuttles, and yet far, far more are destroyed throughout the show. Although Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) does build the Delta Flyer, it takes a great deal of time and manpower. This is proof that building replacement shuttlecraft shouldn't be quick, easy, or gentle on a stranded starship's limited resources.
Although Star Trek: Voyager generally ignored its titular vessel's endless supply of almost everything, the show did make token efforts to prove the crew had to deal with certain hardships. For example, the strain on the ship's replicators was implied to be too great to sustain a whole crew for the entire journey, and so Neelix (Ethan Philips) became responsible for supplementing the crew's dietary requirements with his divisive cooking using fresh produce. That being said, no one ever seemed to be going without home comforts, like coffee - replicated or otherwise.
Star Trek: Voyager Showed The Length Of The Trip Home In Other Ways
The Astrometrics Lab being added to the ship is just one example of how Voyager changed
Star Trek: Voyager may have turned a blind eye to the self-replenishing torpedoes and shuttles, but the show didn't completely ignore how long the ship was taking to reach Earth. It took other steps to communicate to the audience that the crew was settling in for the long haul, and even preparing for the possibility that they wouldn't live long enough to complete the decades-long trip. The most prominent example of this is Voyager becoming a generational ship, with younger crew members like Scarlett Pomers' Naomi Wildman and Manu Intiraymi's Icheb starting to appear.
The grown-up versions of Naomi and Icheb can be glimpsed in an alternate future during Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episode 11, "Shattered," proving how important they would have been if the ship hadn't been granted a shortcut home in the show's final episode.
The grown-up versions of Naomi and Icheb can be glimpsed in an alternate future during Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episode 11, "Shattered," proving how important they would have been if the ship hadn't been granted a shortcut home in the show's final episode. Presumably, more younger crew members were born in this timeline to replace their descendants on Voyager. However, the show also allowed the ship to change more generally as Star Trek: Voyager continued. Upgrades like the Astrometrics Lab and integrating Borg tech show the crew's willingness to adapt to such a dire situation.
Star Trek: Voyager's "Year Of Hell" Two-Parter Was The Closest The Show Got To An Accurate Portrayal Of Such A Long Journey
The USS Voyager took a realistic beating
Star Trek: Voyager season 4's, "Year of Hell" episodes were a much more accurate way to show how the ship's journey back to Earth should have gone. As the story progresses, the crew and ship continue to take damage and don't have the resources to make repairs, or sometimes significantly feed the survivors. Although the year in question is ultimately wiped from the timeline at the end of "Year of Hell Part II," the arc still proves Star Trek: Voyager was capable of tracking what the ship would and wouldn't be capable of after such a sustained period of conflict.
While a season-long "Year of Hell" is enticing, it would have highlighted even how comfortably the crew lived in the other six seasons.
Interestingly, Star Trek: Voyager's "Year of Hell" storyline was originally intended to last for an entire season (via Trek Movie). Despite the writers' enthusiasm for Star Trek: Voyager season 4 to focus on the ship's battle with the Annorax, the idea was quickly nixed by producers, partially because of the franchise's mixed experiences with the serialized storytelling in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. While a season-long "Year of Hell" is enticing, it would have highlighted even how comfortably the crew lived in the other six seasons, so it's probably for the best that the plan fell through.
Why Star Trek: Voyager Generally Avoided An Accurate Long Journey Depiction
Star Trek: Voyager was a victim of the time it was made
Star Trek: Voyager aired in its entirety long before the advent of streaming services. As such, the show and its contemporaries tended to focus on episodic storytelling, with the characters' circumstances often being almost identical at the end of the installment as they were at the beginning. So, it was generally possible to miss an episode or two and still be able to follow the next one. If the damage to the ship and the use of its resources had been accurately tracked on an episode-by-episode basis, the show would have been more challenging to follow for casual viewers.
Star Trek: Voyager's predecessor and multi-year overlapper, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, had already been largely serialized, so keeping Voyager episodic also helped the two projects remain more separate. Plus, if Janeway's ship had sustained damage at the rate it did in "Year of Hell," the USS Voyager wouldn't have lasted anywhere near seven years, so it was a compromise that had to be made for the show's longevity. Plus, Star Trek: Voyager could explore deeper stories without having to audit the torpedo bay and the shuttle hangar before every single adventure.
