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Time Capsule in the Stars: Exploring Voyager 1’s Golden Record

In September 2013, NASA announced that the Voyager 1 probe had successfully entered interstellar space; the first human-made object to do so. As the probe continues forth into the vast unknown, it carries with it a special collection of “welcome signs” for any life forms it may encounter. Known as the Voyager Golden Record, this 12” gold plated copper disc was designed to operate similarly to a phonograph record. The disc is filled with sounds and images from Earth. Carefully selected by a committee led by Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University, the Voyager Golden Record includes the following:

• Sounds from nature, including thunder and wind, and animals such as whales and birds
• 55 spoken greetings in various Earth dialects, both ancient and modern
• Printed messages from US President Jimmy Carter and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim
• A 90-minute collection of music from various cultures
• 115 images from Earth

Both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes carry a copy of the Voyager Golden Record. The record was designed to be played at a speed of 16 2/3 rotations per minute; half the speed of traditional vinyl records. Not to leave the greeting without an instruction manual, NASA meticulously crafted a cover for the record, using a collection of images and binary code to provide the proper setup needed to play the record that would transcend any language barrier. A stylus is included with the record to allow for it to be played.

The upper left portion of the record’s cover shows visual directions for how to properly play the record, including placement of the stylus to the record, playing from the outside of the record to the inside, and the speed at which to play the record. The lower left portion features a pulsar map, previously included on plaques for Voyager’s predecessors, the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes. The map shows the position of the sun in relation to 14 different pulsars. The upper right portion shows how to extrapolate the images from the disc, using the signal, which decodes to a series of 512 vertical lines. It also includes an image of a circle, the first image used to verify that the images have been decoded correctly. The time scale with which to use as reference is the final piece of the puzzle, showcased in the image on the bottom right. Instead of relying on seconds and minutes (derived from Earth’s rotation), the code on the Golden Record relies on the fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom (approximately 0,70 billionths of a second) as the preferred time scale.

While the likelihood of encountering intelligent life along Voyager 1’s current trajectory may be minimal (even equated by Dr. Sagan as tossing a “bottle into the cosmic ocean”), the Golden Record serves as a conscientious time capsule of tiny blue dot that is the planet Earth.

Voyager Fun Facts:

• Despite their numerical ordering, Voyager 1 was actually launched 16 days AFTER Voyager 2. Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 launching September 5. Voyager 1’s trajectory varied from Voyager 2, with Voyager 1 planned to reach Jupiter and Saturn first.
• While the Voyager program only consisted of two probes, the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture uses a fictionalized continuation of the program (a NASA probe designated Voyager 6) as a main plot point.
• Traveling at the speed of light, a signal sent from Earth takes approximately 17 hours to reach Voyager 1 and 14 hours to reach Voyager 2.
• Voyager 1’s power supply is very limited, and will have to shut down all instrument operation by the year 2025.

-B. P. Stoyle Scientifics Direct, Inc.

Source: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

• Posted by Scientifics Direct
• September 17 2013
• Tags: golden record nasa voyager voyager 1

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Voyager Golden Record: Through Struggle to the Stars

Voyager "Sounds Of Earth" Record Cover, 1977, National Air and Space Museum, Transferred from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

An intergalactic message in a bottle, the Voyager Golden Record was launched into space late in the summer of 1977. Conceived as a sort of advance promo disc advertising planet Earth and its inhabitants, it was affixed to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, spacecraft designed to fly to the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond, providing data and documentation of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And just in case an alien lifeform stumbled upon either of the spacecraft, the Golden Record would provide them with information about Earth and its inhabitants, alongside media meant to encourage curiosity and contact.

Listen to the music recorded on the Voyager album with this Spotify playlist from user Ulysses' Classical.

Recorded at 16 ⅔ RPM to maximize play time, each gold-plaited, copper disc was engraved with the same program of 31 musical tracks—ranging from an excerpt of Mozart’s Magic Flute to a field recording made by Alan Lomax of Solomon Island panpipe players—spoken greetings in 55 languages, a sonic collage of recorded natural sounds and human-made sounds (“The Sounds of Earth”), 115 analogue-encoded images including a pulsar map to help in finding one’s way to Earth, a recording of the creative director’s brainwaves, and a Morse-code rendering of the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra (“through struggle to the stars”). In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first Earth craft to burst the heliospheric bubble and cross over into interstellar space. And in 2018, Voyager 2 crossed the same threshold.

A tiny speck of a spacecraft cast into the endless sea of outer space, each Voyager craft was designed to drift forever with no set point of arrival. Likewise, the Golden Record was designed to be playable for up to a billion years, despite the long odds that anyone or anything would ever discover and “listen” to it. Much like the Voyager spacecraft themselves, the journey itself was in large part the point—except that instead of capturing scientific data along the way, the Golden Record instead revealed a great deal about its makers and their historico-cultural context.

In The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record (2019), a book published by Bloomsbury’s Sigma science imprint, author Jonathan Scott captures both the monumental scope of the Voyager mission, relentless as space itself, and the very human dimensions of the Gold Record discs: “When we are all dust, when the Sun dies, these two golden analogue discs, with their handy accompanying stylus and instructions, will still be speeding off further into the cosmos. And alongside their music, photographs and data, the discs will still have etched into their fabric the sound of one woman’s brainwaves—a recording made on 3 June 1977, just weeks before launch. The sound of a human being in love with another human being.”

From sci-fi literature to outer-space superhero fantasies, from Afrofuturism to cosmic jazz to space rock, space-themed artistic expressions often focus on deeply human narratives such as love stories or stories of war. There seems to be something about traveling into outer space, or merely imagining doing so, that bring out many people’s otherwise-obscured humanity—which may help explain all the deadly serious discussions over the most fantastical elements of Star Trek and Star Wars , or Sun Ra and Lady Gaga. In the musical realm, space-based music frequently aims for the most extreme states of human emotion whether body-based or mind-expanding, euphoric or despairing. In other words, these cosmic art forms are pretty much expected to test boundaries and cross thresholds, or at least to make the attempt. The Voyager Golden Record was no exception.

The “executive producer” behind the Golden Record was the world-famous astrophysicist, humanist, and champion of science for the everyman, Carl Sagan (1934–1996). Equally a pragmatist and a populist, he was the perfect individual to oversee the Golden Record with its dual utilitarian and utopian aims. In his 1973 book The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective , Sagan writes that humans have long “wondered whether they are in some sense connected with the awesome and immense cosmos in which the Earth is imbedded,” touching again on the meeting point between everyday mundane realities and “escapist” fantasies, a collision that animates a great deal of science fiction and cosmic-based music. In his personal notes from the time of The Cosmic Connection , Sagan makes reference to music as “a means of interstellar communication.” So how would he utilize music to create these moments of connection and convergence?

It’s little wonder that Sagan endorsed the inclusion of a record on spaceships, with music specially selected to call out to the outer reaches of space. Music was a “universal language” in his telling due to its “mathematical” form, decipherable to any species with a capacity for advanced memory retention and pattern recognition. But this universal quality didn’t stop it from expressing crucial aspects of what earthlings were and what makes us tick, or the many different types of individuals and cultures at work on the planet Earth. Moving beyond the strict utility of mathematics, he also believed that music could communicate the uniquely emotional dimensions of human existence. Whereas previous visual-based messages shot into space “might have encapsulated how we think, this would be the first to communicate something of how we feel” (Scott 2019).

Further refining this idea, Jon Lomberg, a Golden Record team member who illustrated a number of Carl Sagan’s books, argued for an emphasis on “ideal” types of music for the interstellar disc: “The [Golden] Record should be more than a random sampling of Earth’s Greatest Hits...We should choose those forms which are to some degree self-explanatory forms whose rules of structure are evident from even a single example of the form (like fugues and canons, rondos and rounds).”

Ethnomusicologists Alan Lomax and Robert E. Brown were brought in as collaborators, offering their expertise in the world’s music and knowledge of potential recordings to be used. The latter’s first musical recommendation to Sagan hewed to the stated ideal of music which establishes its own structural rules from the get-go—and by association, how these rules may be broken—all overlaid by the yearning of the singer’s voice and the longing expressed in the lyrics. As he described it in his program notes written for Sagan: ‘“Indian vocal music’ by Kesarbai Kerkar…three minutes and 25 seconds long…a solo voice with a seven-tone modal melody with auxiliary pitches [and] a cyclic meter of 14 beats, alongside drone, ‘ornamentation’ and drum accompaniment and some improvisation.” He also gives a partial translation to the words of the music: “Where are you going? Don’t go alone…”

Taken as a whole, the Voyager Golden Record is reminiscent of a mixtape made by an eccentric friend with an encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s music—leaping from track-to-track, across continents and historical periods, crossing heedlessly over the dividing lines drawn between art, folk, and popular musics, but with each track a work of self-contained precision and concision. The disc plays out as a precariously balanced suite of global musical miniatures, a mix where it’s perfectly plausible for Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” to end up sandwiched between a mariachi band and a field recording of Papua New Guinean music recorded by a medical doctor from Australia. Human diversity is the byword, diversity as a trait of humanity itself. The more the individual tracks stand in relief to one another the better.

Given all of this, one could make a plausible case that the Voyager Golden Record helped “invent” a new approach of world music, one where musical crosstalk isn’t subtle or peripheral, but where it’s more like the center pole of musical creation itself. While it’s hardly clear if Sagan or most of his other collaborators had this goal in mind, creative director Ann Druyan certainly did. Or at least she did when it came to her insistence on including Chuck Berry on the Golden Record. As she puts it in a 60 Minutes interview from 2018, “ Johnny B. Goode , rock and roll, was the music of motion, of moving, getting to someplace you've never been before, and the odds are against you, but you want to go. That was Voyager." And so rock ‘n’ roll is turned into true “world music.”

Whether by chance or by design, the Voyager Golden Record anticipated the shifting cultural and aesthetic contexts through which many listeners heard and understood “world music,” a shift that would become blatantly obvious in the decades to come. More than a culturally-sensitive replacement for labels like “exotic music” and “primitive music,” more than a grab bag of unclaimed non-Western musics and vernacular musics, the Golden Record anticipated a sensibility in which the “world” in world music was made more literal—both by fusion-minded musicians, and by music retailers who placed these fusions in newly-designated “world music” sections. (but one must acknowledge that these musical fusions were sometimes problematic in their own right, too often relying on power differentials between borrower and borrowed-from music and musicians)

In this respect, and in other respects beyond our scope here, "world music" embodied many of the contradictions inherent to the rise of globalization, postmodernism, hyperreality, neoliberalism, etc.—coinciding with the crossing of a threshold sometime in the 1970s or ‘80s according to most accounts—with the outcome being a world that’s ever more integrated (the global economy, the global media, global climate change) but also ever more polarized, each dynamic inextricably linked to its polar opposite—a sort of interstellar zone where the normal laws of physics no longer seem to apply.

By taking diversity and juxtaposition as aesthetic ideals rather than drawbacks, the creators of the Voyager Golden Record sketched a sonic portrait of the planet Earth and, at the same time, anticipating the art of the mixtape, yet another trend that would come to fruition in the 1980s. Not unlike a mixtape made for a new friend or a prospective love interest, the Golden Record was designed both to impress —an invitation for aliens to travel across the universe just to meet us—and to express who we are as a people and as a planet.

With the Golden Record as a mixtape-anticipating bid for cosmic connection, it’s fitting that its creative spark was lit in large part by the love affair that developed between Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan in the summer of 1977. To the self-professed surprise of both, they became engaged in the middle of an impulsive phone call and conversation, before they had even officially moved beyond friendship. They remained happily married until Carl Sagan passed away in 1996. On a National Public Radio segment broadcast in 2010, Ann Druyan described the moments leading up to that pivotal phone call and its lifelong aftermath—a relationship made official across space and over a wire—“It was this great eureka moment. It was like scientific discovery.” Several days later, Druyan’s brainwaves were recorded to be included on the Golden Record —her own idea—while she thought about their eternal love.

Given the sudden and unexpected manner in which they fell in love and into sync, it maybe didn’t seem too crazy to believe that infatuation could beset some lonely extraterrestrial who discovered their Golden Record too, especially if this unknown entity plugged into Druyan’s love waves. After all, the Voyager mission itself was planned around a cosmic convergence that only takes place once in the span of several lifetimes. Much like the star-crossed lovers, the stars had to literally align for the mission to be possible at all. The Voyager mission took advantage of a rare formation of the solar system’s most distant four planets that made the trip vastly faster and more feasible, using the gravitational pull of one planet as an “onboard propulsion system” to hurl itself toward the nest destination. With all the jigsaw puzzle pieces so perfectly aligned for the first part of the mission, it would be a shame if some mixtape-loving alien never came for a visit. The main question being if anyone will be here to meet them by the time they get here. As Jimmy Carter put it in his written message attached to the Golden Record:

This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.

Dallas Taylor, host of independent podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, explores the Voyager album track-by-track in episode 65: "Voyager Golden Record." Visit the podcast website to listen.

Written and compiled by Jason Lee Oakes, Editor, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM)

This post was produced through a partnership between Smithsonian Year of Music and RILM .

Bibliography

DiGenti, Brian. “Voyager Interstellar Record: 60 Trillion Feet High and Rising.” Wax Poetics 55 (Summer 2013): 96.   In the summer of 1977, just after Kraftwerk dropped Trans-Europe Express , Giorgio Moroder offered the world the perfect marriage of German techno with American disco in Donna Summer's "I feel love," the first dance hit produced wholly by synthesizer and the precursor to the underground dance movement. Meanwhile, there was another gold record in the works. The Voyager Interstellar Message Project, a NASA initiative led by astronomer Carl Sagan and creative director Ann Druyan, was a chance at communicating with any intelligent life in outer space. In an unintended centennial celebration of the phonograph, the team created a gold-plated record that would be attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 probes—the Voyager Golden Record—a time capsule to express the wonders of planet Earth in sound and vision. As they were tasked with choosing images and music for this 16-2/3 RPM "cultural Noah's Ark"—a little Mozart, some Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, and Blind Willie Johnson—the pair of geniuses fell madly for each other, vowing to marry within their first moments together. Their final touch was to embed Ann's EEG patterns into the record as an example of human brain waves on this thing called love. (author)  

Meredith, William. “The Cavatina in Space.” The Beethoven Newsletter 1, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 29–30.   When the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched its spacecraft Voyager I and II in 1977, each carried a gold-plated copper record intended to serve as a communication to "possible extraterrestrial civilizations.” Each record contains photographs of earth, "the world's greatest music," an introductory audio essay, and greetings to extraterrestrials in 60 languages. Two of the record's eight examples of art music are by Beethoven (the first movement of the symphony no. 5 and the cavatina of the string quartet in B-flat major, op. 130). The symphony no. 5 was selected because of its "compelling" and passionate nature, new physiognomy, innovations, symmetry, and brevity. The cavatina was chosen because of its ambiguous nature, mixing sadness, hope, and serenity. (author)  

Sagan, Carl. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record . New York: Random House, 1978.   On 20 August and 5 September 1977, two extraordinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars (Voyager 1 and Voyager 2). After what promises to be a detailed and thoroughly dramatic exploration of the outer solar system from Jupiter to Uranus between 1979 and 1986, these space vehicles will slowly leave the solar systems—emissaries of the Earth to the realm of the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft is a gold-coated copper phonograph record as a message to possible extra-terrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft in some distant space and time. Each record contains 118 photographs of our planet, ourselves, and our civilization; almost 90 minutes of the world's greatest music; an evolutionary audio essay on "The Sounds of Earth"; and greetings in almost 60 human languages (and one whale language), including salutations from the President Jimmy Carter and the Secretary General of the United Nations. This book is an account, written by those chiefly responsible for the contents of the Voyager Record, of why we did it, how we selected the repertoire, and precisely what the record contains.  

Scott, Jonathan. The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record . London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2019.   In 1977, a team led by the great Carl Sagan was put together to create a record that would travel to the stars on the back of NASA's Voyager probe. They were responsible for creating a playlist of music, sounds and pictures that would represent not just humanity, but would also paint a picture of Earth for any future alien races that may come into contact with the probe. The Vinyl Frontier tells the whole story of how the record was created, from when NASA first proposed the idea to Carl to when they were finally able watch the Golden Record rocket off into space on Voyager. The final playlist contains music written and performed by well-known names such as Bach, Beethoven, Glenn Gould, Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson, as well as music from China, India and more remote cultures such as a community in Small Malaita in the Solomon Islands. It also contained a message of peace from US president Jimmy Carter, a variety of scientific figures and dimensions, and instructions on how to use it for a variety of alien lifeforms. Each song, sound and picture that made the final cut onto the record has a story to tell. Through interviews with all of the key players involved with the record, this book pieces together the whole story of the Golden Record. It addresses the myth that the Beatles were left off of the record because of copyright reasons and will include new information about US president Jimmy Carter's role in the record, as well as many other fascinating insights that have never been reported before. It also tells the love story between Carl Sagan and the project's creative director Ann Druyan that flourishes as the record is being created. The Golden Record is more than just a time capsule. It is a unique combination of science and art, and a testament to the genius of its driving force, the great polymath Carl Sagan. (publisher)  

Smith, Brad. “Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground’.” The Bulletin of the Society for American Music 41, no. 2 (Spring 2015): [9].   Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 recording of “ Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground ” was included on the copper record that accompanied Voyager I and II into space, placed just before the cavatina of Beethoven's string quartet op. 130. The author searches for the reasons the NASA team considered it among the world's greatest music, relating Johnson's interpretation to the hymn text of the same title written by Thomas Haweis and published in 1792, and analyzing Johnson's slide guitar technique and vocal melismas. Johnson's rhythmic style, with its irregularities, is discussed with reference to Primitive Baptist singing style. (journal)

• The Contents
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golden record

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The Golden Record

Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

Star Trek Voyager [Original Television Soundtrack]

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Voyager 'Golden Records'

Voyager 'Golden Records', 1977

Would you want to live forever?  Lots of stories warn against the perils of immortality from the Greek myth of Tithonus who was given eternal life but not eternal youth, to innumerable vampire stories and even Doctor Who, and yet the idea still fascinates; what if we could somehow go on?  In a sense, we can.  In one of the oldest stories known, Gilgamesh tries in vain to become immortal only to discover the only way he can is through his works, and his name lives on thousands of years later.  So maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance for us all.

Would you want to live forever?  Lots of stories warn against the perils of immortality from the Greek myth of Tithonus who was given eternal life but not eternal youth, to innumerable vampire stories and even Doctor Who, and yet the idea still fascinates; what if we could somehow go on?  In a sense, we can.  In one of the oldest stories known, Gilgamesh tries in vain to become immortal only to discover the only way he can is through his works, and his name lives on thousands of years later.  So maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance for us all.

A document that changed the world: Long-playing discs containing recorded sounds and images, attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 Probes and launched into outer space, known as the “Golden Records,” 1977.

I’m Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School.  Gary Flandro is a graduate student working part time at the Jet Propulsion Lab in 1965, and runs across a curiosity:  for a few months in the late 1970s, the major planets would be aligned in such a way that a spacecraft could use their gravity one after the other to slingshot around the solar system much faster than would otherwise be possible.  He plots the course – with paper and pencil – and the Voyager missions are inadvertently born.  It takes a bit of subterfuge – JPL initially got Congressional approval for a mission just to Saturn, smiled pleasantly, and then went right on building something more ambitious, certain that nobody in Washington was smart enough to notice.  They were right.

The Voyager probes themselves, marvels of technology in their time, are quite modest.  Each is the size of a small car, five years and $200 million in the building, boasting onboard computers with an impressive 4K of memory using 8-track tapes.  They included instruments to measure mass, gravitation, magnetic fields, radiation and temperature as well as images, and discovered wonders not yet imagined, like volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and water ice on Europa.  They were launched within about 2 weeks of each other in the late summer of 1977, not long after the introduction of the Apple II and TRS-80 microcomputers, the New York City blackout, the first test flight of the space shuttle Enterprise , and mere days after Elvis Presley dies.  Or does he…?

They also carry a special cargo.  Attached to each probe is a 2-sided long-playing disc of gold-plated copper, 12” in diameter, with a stylus and directions on how to play the record, etched on an aluminum protective cover electroplated with uranium 238 to aid in dating them. These were the brainchild of the extraordinary physicist and public intellectual Carl Sagan, who led the group responsible for the construction and contents of a message from Earth to the universe.

OK great – now – what do you say?  And how?  It’s hard enough some days to tell your spouse or your kids what’s on your mind, let along beings who might have an entirely different sensorium.

Sagan recalled a childhood visit to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and the time capsule buried there to be opened in 5,000 years.  His group quickly decided the only guaranteed common means of communication with an alien species would be scientific, so the 116 images encoded start with scientific concepts and symbols to establish mathematical and physical bases, then the sun and solar system.  Chemistry, biology, human anatomy and, ahem, reproduction (the silhouette of a man and pregnant woman showing the fetus inside is just weird), pictures of Earth, nature, animals and plants.  Then, us: culture, dance, sport, school, farming and fishing, eating (including one poor guy munching on what appears to be a grilled cheese sandwich for all eternity), houses, transportation, ending with a sunset and a violin.  The first image, meant to help in the decoding process, is a circle, which I don’t think the designers ever fully appreciated for its beauty, simplicity, and unity.  Predictably, there was criticism, of the whole thing, of the fact that no negative images were included, even of the idea that we might give away our position completely missing the point that the most important, if not the only, audience is we ourselves.

Many people know the discs contain music – but which music to include?  Whole pieces?  Snippets?  Of what?  How do you pick, to represent an entire species and its entire musical history?  (Hint:  You can’t.)  They chose very fine grooves and a playing speed of 16 2/3 rpm rather than 33 1/3 to double the time available, none of which will make any sense to you if you’re under 40, sorry, so there’s about 90 minutes available for everything.  We start with a Bach Brandenberg concerto, then gamelan music, Senegalese percussion, a Pygmy girl’s initiation song, Australian Aboriginal songs, and so on.  Much attention was paid to the inclusion of “Johnny B. Goode” including a Saturday Night Live sketch predicting the answer we might someday get back would be “Send more Chuck Berry.”  The Beatles agreed to include “Here Comes the Sun” but their record company didn’t.  Anybody could quibble with their choices; I concede the appropriateness of the “Queen of the Night” aria from The Magic Flute , but seriously, why nothing from The Planets ?  Too on the nose?

The spoken greetings are less discussed.  An initial notion to record each head of delegation to the UN saying howdy failed for a variety of reasons, not least a desire to represent both male and female voices equally; instead people from the foreign language departments at Cornell recorded in 55 languages, allowed to say whatever they liked.  In Cantonese:  “How’s everyone?”, in Arabic, “Greetings to our friends in the stars”, in Latin, “Salvete quicumque estis = Greetings to you, whoever you are”.  We also have “Dear Turkish-speaking friends, may the honors of the morning be on your heads”, and in the Amoy dialect, “Friends of space, how are you all?  Have you eaten yet?  Come visit us if you have time.”  The UN attempt, however, triggered the political necessity to include a message from the Secretary-General, then Kurt Waldheim, who only a few years later was discovered to have had a Nazi past, which is not at all embarrassing in front of the entire cosmos.  That in turn meant that President Carter had to have his say, which along with the song of the humpback whale might make up for Waldheim.  They also squeezed in a few sounds, of weather, of footsteps, heartbeats and what one journalist believes is Sagan laughing.  An hour of his future wife Ann Druyan’s brainwaves.  And a kiss.

Naturally, Congress had to horn in with 2 very poor quality images of typewritten lists of space and science committee members, including Barry Goldwater and a bright 29-year-old Al Gore, and out of dozens of names precisely 2 women. 

This all illustrates the unavoidably political, fraught, incomplete choices that were made, by a relatively small group largely composed of well-intentioned, Western, Caucasian men, impatient with bureaucratic cupidity and small-mindedness, with limited time and resources, a grandiose vision and their own sets of preferences, lenses and blinders, which could be said of us all.  Were this project to be replicated today, no doubt the process and choices would be far different, though you have to give them credit for a sincere and earnest attempt to do the best they could. 

So, you might be asking, what kind of “document” is this?  Manifestly and literally, it’s a “record,” in both senses of the word.  Sagan was originally inspired by a time capsule, that’s another possibility, it’s also been referred to as a mixtape or a love letter, though to my mind it shares characteristics with lots of other documentary forms too: it’s a letter of introduction, it’s a scrapbook or family album, an invitation, a map, an instruction manual, a primer, a work of art, an intelligence test, both for “them” and for us I think.   It may also be the last surviving human artifact and thus perhaps an ark.  It’s all these things and more, though for me the best metaphor is a message in a bottle, likely the ultimate message in the ultimate bottle.

The Voyagers still go on, still sending back data that takes nearly 20 hours to reach Earth.  Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the outermost fringes of the solar system, in 2012, and is over 20 billion km from Earth, the furthest object of human construction, traveling nearly 40,000 miles per hour.  The first exoplanet wasn’t discovered until a decade later, so it’s not aimed in any particular direction, and in around 100 million years (assuming the first Star Trek movie is wrong), it will have traveled 5,000 light years, about 1/6 the distance to the center of the galaxy.

One day, by about 2025, the power sources will give out, the signals will stop, and the probes will go silent, likely without the chance for a final farewell or bon voyage.  However - barring an unlikely collision or even less likely interception, the discs will go on, more or less forever, bearing our messages, our songs, ourselves. I can’t imagine Sagan and his colleagues truly believed either of these would ever be found, let alone decoded and if so, we’ll never know it. But - bound up in the attempt is one of the most basic of human desires, to be remembered and understood.  We were here, we mattered, and we have stories to tell.

A message in a bottle is typically an act of desperation, the only way you can conceive of to get a message out.  Here, however, it’s an act of hope – and as we learned from another Greek myth, of Pandora, when all else is gone, hope remains.

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———. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record . New York: Ballantine Books, 1979.

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“The Mix Tape of the Gods - The New York Times.” Accessed August 20, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/opinion/05ferris.html.

“Voyager - Making of the Golden Record.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/golden-record/making-of-the-golden-record/.

“Voyager - The Golden Record.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/golden-record/.

“Voyager - The Interstellar Mission.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/.

“Voyager Golden Record - Wikipedia.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record.

“Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition by Ozma Records — Kickstarter.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ozmarecords/voyager-golden-record-40th-anniversary-edition.

“Who Is Laughing on the Golden Record? - The Atlantic.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/solving-the-mystery-of-whose-laughter-is-on-the-golden-record/532197/.

“Why NASA’s Interstellar Mission Almost Didn’t Happen.” Accessed August 20, 2017. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/08/explore-space-voyager-spacecraft-turns-40/.

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Published Jun 21, 2011

Straight Talk with Voyager’s Garrett Wang, Part I

Some things never change. Back in the day, during Star Trek: Voyager’s seven years on the air, Garrett Wang always told it like it was. If a storyline clicked, if he was having fun, if something struck his fancy, he’d say so, loud and clear. Likewise, if something frustrated him, say a lack of development for his character, Ensign Harry Kim , Wang spoke out. All these years later, it’s the same way. At conventions, fans love and appreciate Wang’s candor when he talks about his Trek experience and his energy when he emcees various events. And it was no different when StarTrek.com caught up with him for a comprehensive two-part interview in which he reflected upon his Voyager journeys. Below is part one of our conversation, and check back tomorrow for part two.

Does Voyager feel like it ended yesterday, 10 years ago, or both depending on the day?

Wang: There are definitely days where it is difficult to fathom how long it has been since the end of Voyager , but on other days I can remember being on the set as if it was yesterday. Whenever I stop and think about the 10 years that have gone by, I shake my head in disbelief. Oh where, oh where has the time gone? It has passed by at the speed of light. I mean, if you think of it, that's longer than the statute of limitations. Longer than the time span between Tuvok's ( Tim Russ ) Pon Farr episodes! Longer than it took for Voyager to return from the Delta quadrant !

When you look back on the experience, what stands out most and why?

Wang: When I look back upon the experience, what stands out most are the times we Voyager actors shared on the set when the camera wasn't rolling. I've always said that if we kept the cameras rolling between takes, and broadcast that footage as a half-hour reality show, it would be the highest rated show on television! Each and every Voyager principal actor had a unique sense of comedy, whether it was Bob Picardo's dry one-liners, Tim Russ's premeditated practical jokes, or Kate Mulgrew's random survey questions, the set of Voyager was definitely, at times, like being at a comedy club. In my opinion, to be funny, one must first be intelligent. Thus, I believe my fellow Voyager actors to be some of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with. Not trying to blow smoke up anybody's hoo-ha, just sticking to the truth.

Give us your take on Harry Kim. Who was he when we met him and who was he by the time the series ended?

Wang: When we first meet Harry Kim, he is an Ensign, the most junior officer, assigned to two jobs: operations and communications. My standard convention story about who Kim is goes something like this: in the original series the communications officer was Lt. Uhura , but there was no operations officer. In Next Generation , Commander Data served as the operations officer, but there was no communications officer. Therefore, Ensign Kim is the love child of Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols ) and Data ( Brent Spiner ). OK, back to the real story. He is fresh out of Starfleet, having graduated from Starfleet Academy with honors. Young, gullible, brimming with new knowledge and ready to serve Starfleet to the upmost of his ability, Harry was the Everyman of Voyager . Being new to Starfleet, he was instantly the most relatable character to the audience at the start of the series. By the end of the series we find a wiser and definitely more street-savvy Harry Kim. Despite his lack of promotion over seven years, Kim accumulated enough on-the-job experience to have been able to command his own starship.

What were the most surprising turns the character took, that you didn't see coming or that maybe you had a hand in helping make happen?

Wang: I don't feel as if my character took many surprising turns. I guess one surprising turn would be the fact that Kim sort of inadvertently took on Paris's ( Robert Duncan McNeill ) early persona of being the Casanova of the crew. Kim was different from early Paris in that he was always falling in love but tragically unable to sustain a relationship, whereas early Paris romanced the ladies in a no-strings-attached Captain Kirk kind of way. Another odd turn, in my opinion, was the non-promotion of Ensign Kim. I mean, come on people! Kim was probed, beaten, tortured and held the distinction of being the first Voyager crew member to die and come back to life. What more does a guy have to do to get promoted to Lieutenant for frak’s sake? To add further insult to injury, other crew members such as Tuvok (Russ) and Paris were being promoted, demoted and then re-promoted throughout the seven-year run of Voyager.

I'm not trying to be negative here; just saying it like it is. During the fourth season, I called writer/producer Brannon Braga and asked him why my character hadn't received a promotion yet. His response? “Well, somebody's gotta be the ensign.” Geez, thanks. Thanks for nothing. At some point, I even approached Kate Mulgrew and frustratedly asked her why I wasn't promoted yet. In hindsight, this action on my part was hilarious because Kate Mulgrew had no more influence in promoting my character than a random person on the street. I would like to take the time to say that I had no influence on these Kim developments.

OK, so what were the missed opportunities? What did we not learn about Harry that you as the actor portraying him felt should have been explored?

Wang: Where do I begin when it comes to answering what I thought were the missed opportunities on Voyager ? I think it would be best if we go back to the beginning. When casting ended on Voyager , all the actors were invited by executive producer Rick Berman to attend a congratulatory luncheon. It was during this lunch that Berman informed us that he expected all actors portraying human roles to follow his decree. He told us that we were to underplay our human characters. He wanted our line delivery to be as military -- and subsequently devoid of emotion -- as possible, since this, in his opinion, was the only way to make the aliens look real.

My first thought was, “That's not right! What the heck was Berman talking about? Was he pulling our legs? The human characters shouldn't be forced to muffle their emotions. We were human, not androids!” But, being the newbie in Hollywood, I did not make any objections... yet. During the entire first year filming Voyager , actors were required to re-shoot certain scenes because of excessive emotion. I personally had to re-shoot only a couple of scenes, since I learned my lesson early that crossing the writer/producers was an unwise decision. Kate Mulgrew held the record for the most re-shoots, numbering in the double digits. It is a little-known fact that during the first season, Mulgrew's Janeway had a teary eye on more than one occasion, only to be vetoed by the producers and covered up with a re-shoot. If you can allow Captain Picard to bawl his eyes out for 10 minutes over the death of his relatives in the opening of the film Generations, then how on earth can you not allow Captain Janeway the chance to show some genuine emotion?

The only possible reason for why Berman did this lies in the various death and bomb threats that were sent to the Voyager production offices at Paramount Studios over the decision to have a woman in command of a starship. Maybe he was afraid of the backlash of a male-dominated America and molded Janeway into a tough-as-nails Captain devoid of human emotions. Not only were there no tears for the human characters, there were no laughs, either. Only the holographic doctor (Picardo) and the alien Neelix ( Ethan Phillips ) were allowed to be funny. I seem to recall that some of the most endearing and memorable moments from the original series were the light joking banter between Kirk ( William Shatner ), Bones ( DeForest Kelley ) and Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ). Alas, if only the human characters were allowed to be funny. As I said in my response to an earlier question, all the actors were adept at comedy. It was a waste of talent to not allow the human characters to act human. This missed opportunity was indirectly related to another tragic missed opportunity.

Take us through that.

Wang: Years after the initial lunch meeting, I made a comment off record to a TV Guide reporter on how upset I was over (executive producer Rick) Berman's ridiculous mandate of less emotion for the human characters. My wording to him at the time was, "I think the producers of Voyager did not take the risks to make the show as good as it could be." Even though I wasn't really specific about what the issue was, that printed comment alone sealed the death of my ambitions to direct an episode of Star Trek. Robbie McNeill was the first to direct an episode during season two. After Robbie, there was a mad rush by Robert Picardo, Tim Russ and Roxann Dawson to be the next in line to direct for season four. I felt, “Let them go ahead of me.” I was in no rush. After they all had their chance to direct during season four, I asked to direct for season five, but unfortunately the TV Guide article had just gone to print and I was turned down.

I was the first actor in Star Trek history to be denied the chance to direct. The irony of the situation was that, unlike my predecessors, who only wanted to direct for the sake of directing and acquiring their DGA cards, I was the only one who wanted to direct Trek and make it the best it could be, drawing upon my knowledge and experiences as a lifelong fan of science fiction. I truly believe that if I was given the chance, it would have been the best freshman effort by a Trek actor because of my passion for sci-fi. This missed opportunity has haunted me ever since.

Check out the second half of our exclusive interview with Garrett Wang tomorrow on StarTrek.com. And for news and information about Wang, visit his official site at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Garrett-Wang-Fan-Page/162595097087050

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‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Documentary Gives Production Update; Releases Sneak Peek Video

| August 29, 2021 | By: Brian Drew 72 comments so far

The Star Trek: Voyager documentary To the Journey was featured on a panel at this month’s 55-Year Mission Las Vegas Star Trek convention that included details on where they are in production and what they have planned. They also showed  a sneak peek, which is now available online.

To the Journey production continues

After wrapping up a record-breaking $1.2 million crowd-funding campaign earlier this year, the documentary team set up a new studio to shoot more interviews in June . At the Las Vegas panel, producer/director Dave Zappone said the team was still “deep in production,” but had already completed a number of interviews. He mentioned a couple of standouts, including one with Star Trek: Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor (who was a surprise guest on the panel), thanking her and saying “She had us up to her home in northern California and our crew took over her house. It was a wonderful interview and you could not have been more gracious.” He also mentioned Robert Beltran’s interview, saying he sat down for them for two and half hours and it “really blew me away,” adding the actor “was just so open, he is just a wonderful, wonderful guy.”

A number of interviews with members of the cast were done in 2020 during a Voyager  reunion on Star Trek: The Cruise. This summer they have been bringing in more people who worked on the show, including guest stars and behind-the-scenes creatives. In Vegas, the team played the following video to the crowd that showcased some of the people who had dropped by the studio over the summer.

Behind the scenes, bloopers, HD, and more

Zappone assured the audience that the doc will not just be talking heads, mentioning that they are working their way through archives to find more footage shot contemporaneously with  Star Trek: Voyager in the ’90s. There is some particular material he was interested in, saying, “I am looking for the infamous blooper reel. We are looking everywhere for that.”

Voyager actor Garrett Wang has also been helping out with the doc and was part of the panel as well. He talked about how he and others are contributing their own footage:

I do have some footage from my own camera… So that’s the plan. It’s not just myself. There are other people that have documented their time on Voyager . That can definitely supplement this documentary.

The team is also planning on shooting footage on the Paramount lot with Garrett Wang giving a tour of where Voyager was shot and what it was like during that time. And with the team headed to the Destination Star Trek Germany convention to shoot more footage, including a Voyager reunion panel, Zappone revealed they are also going to take some time out to accept an invitation from the European Space Agency to visit their facilities and put Wang through some astronaut training.

One of the stretch goals for the crowd-funding was to help the team convert original Voyager footage into high-definition, and Zappone talked about how this was still a goal of the doc. “We are planning to upres—hopefully—the original 35 millimeter [film] like we did with What We Left Behind. ”

Garrett Wang, Jeri Taylor, Lolita Fatjo, and David Zappone at 55-Year Mission convention, Las Vegas, August 2021 (Photo: TrekMovie.com)

Why Voyager ?

To the Journey is the latest of a series of Star Trek documentaries produced by Zappone and his production company. He talked about how he has been surprised by the fan reaction so far:

Having done what we did with What We Left Behind and partnering with Ira [Steven Behr] who was an amazing collaborator, I knew the love for Deep Space Nine . I guess I didn’t realize it was just as great for Voyager . The fans are just as rabid, just as passionate. That is my pleasant surprise.

In 2020, right before the pandemic hit, the team was able to shoot footage of a  Voyager cast reunion on Star Trek: The Cruise, which Zappone said was crucial to the doc, adding, “If we didn’t have that, I honestly don’t think we would have a film.” He also talked about how they got a lot of great footage from fans on the cruise and promised that they will use as much as they can, saying, “the emotional reactions and the impact Voyager had [on the fans], it just blew me away.”

From To the Journey footage filmed on the 2020 Star Trek: The Cruise

When a fan asked what made  Voyager different, the answers revealed some variety in what the team was looking at in terms of some of the themes of the doc. Co-producers Lilita Fatjo (who also worked on Voyager) offered her personal take:

As the only female on stage, I honestly have to say it was because there was a female captain. I had the privilege of working with Michael [Piller], Jeri [Taylor], and Rick [Berman] for years. And being part of two shows that were created– Deep Space Nine and Voyager –and just watching them create these shows and characters was amazing, but I would have to say it was because of Captain Janeway.

Zappone added on to that:

It’s not just Captain Janeway, it’s the strong women in general. Roxann Dawson and of course Jeri Ryan, and Jennifer Lien was also strong. So not just the captain.

Garrett Wang said he felt the show stood out for having “amazing chemistry” amount the cast from the start, but he also talked about the diversity of the show being a key differentiator. He he took some pride in his own contribution, pointing out how after George Takei, there were no Asian-Americans on TNG or DS9 in the main cast:

One out of every five people in this world is Chinese—not Asian, Chinese—that’s a lot. There should be an Asian in every Star Trek. Voyager [had a] Native American first officer, Asian-American ops officer, African-American Vulcan.

Zappone noted something that came up in Garrett’s documentary interview which was how at the time of the show in the 1990s, he was the only Asian-American series regular on television. Wang also told a story of later meeting Lost star Daniel Dae Kim who thanked him, saying he’d “paved the way.”

Kate Mulgrew from To the Journey

Hoping for a theatrical event and streaming

It’s too early to talk about how the doc will be released, but Zappone did say that in addition to being distributed on Blu-ray he was hoping to follow the same route as What We Left Behind and do a short theatrical release with Fathom Events, which he noted had sold out 1,000 theaters. After that, he said he expected the doc to become available for streaming, but wasn’t sure which service might pick it up.

To keep updated on the project, visit voyagerdocumentary.com .

More from Vegas

We still have some more from the con, so stay tuned to TrekMovie for updates. And don’t forget to check out the coverage we’ve already posted .

Find more  news on Star Trek documentaries .

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That trailer was edited horribly. Why is it that these fan efforts always have such clunky production values?

I thought it was fine. It certainly wasn’t horrible.

It was definitely an awful trailer. Just a bunch of people sitting down.

Nothing about it made me want to watch the final doc. Where are the clips of the cast speaking? Where are the behind-the-scenes clips from the 90s they talk about? Where is the moment where someone teases something slightly intriguing, or dare I say– provocative? A funny moment from an interview, a dramatic moment where someone reveals tension on the set, an uplifting or emotionally inspirational moment; something, anything, to fascinate me and make me wonder what cool new things i’ll learn about the making of the show.

The trailer to “What We Left Behind” was way more intriguing, including ALL of the things I just mentioned; I suspect that’s because Ira Behr was involved. Go watch it. Teri Farrell is moved to tears, Marc Alaimo gets angry, Alex Siddig is inspirational, Avery Brooks speaks of what the role meant to him; Rene Auberjonois and Colm Meaney describe how hard they worked, DeBoer notes her awe at joining the show, and Michael Dorn mysteriously notes that “only those involved know the facts.” A bit melodramatic? Sure. But that’s what makes you want to see it. Great trailer to a great documentary.

After this trailer, I suspect the Voyager documentary will be a lot like the show: a watered down version of better docs that came before.

I don’t get the sense this was intended as an official trailer, just a casual sneak peek. Hence the title of the video.

Well then this is the worst sneak peek i’ve ever seen! Should at least had some cast members actually saying something– ANYTHING. This makes me LESS interested, not more.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

So excited for this doc! I was literally watching an episode of VOY when I saw this article. I’m really really hoping it gets a theatrical release like ‘WWLB’ did. And I really love the fact they brought in so many other actors from the other shows. WWLB was strictly a DS9 affair, which was understandable, but it is cool to hear from other Trek stars on their thoughts on the show.

This is probably the most attention VOY has had since it went off the air, especially with all the characters appearing (or starring) in the multiple new shows and now this doc. It’s great to see for both old and new fans of the show! And imagine how many plates they can sell when it arrives! ;)

But no Kes 🥺

There’s a non-zero chance she’s in a mental institution or under conservatorship.

Well, WWLB did not have Avery Brooks participating on camera, and they made do with archival footage and anecdotes from other people. It worked, though in there case he was offering notes behind the scenes.

I hope Lien is getting the help she needs, I’m sure the doc will be an honest and respectful take on her time with the show.

There’s plenty of archival footage of Lien if they can clear it – Studio/Network EPK material from her time on the series, Entertainment Tonight, There was an E! BTS special early in the shows run, might be some convention footage out there – so there’s material available – they sure have enough of a budget to get SOMETHING.

Given the state of her health, why is that a surprise? Other cast members wishing her well is more then sufficient participation for her in this endeavor.

They should produce a plate of Boimler holding the Tom Paris plate to mark the occasion!

LOL! What’s funny is I could see someone at least considering it.

Anyone think Chakotay would sign my bowl?

I only recognized 3 of the people in that video…I guess most were behind the scenes or buried in makeup/prosthetics on-screen? They could have flashed their names at least. I love voyager and am looking forward to the doc, but this wasn’t very inspiring.

I totally agree … to assume that after all these years, and with many wearing prosthetics that totally changed their ‘real’ identities was silly. Their character image and/or name would have been very helpful. I only recognized the main characters and not the rest. Too bad, they deserved to be called out – maybe the final cut will do that.

This is a “sneak peak,” and I’m hoping that means that even the part we saw isn’t finished yet. Putting the names and functions of the people on the bottom of the screen (e.g. “Jeri Taylor, Executive Producer, 1995 – 1998”) would help a lot.

It’s very clearly not finished. But as a marketing person myself, if you have nothing intriguing to show, don’t show anything. Clearly some of these interviews have happened already, so they couldn’t find one or two good lines from them to get people interested? Awful job here.

Umm…where are the VOY cast??

When all the DS9 people turned up, I starting hoping Marc Alaimo would randomly appear for no reason.

I loved Armin Shimmerman’s reaction. “Why am I here?”

I suspect a lot of the audience will be asking the same thing as they watch the documentary!

He probably said the same thing on Insurrection.

It’s not just Captain Janeway, it’s the strong women in general. Roxanne Dawson and of course Jeri Ryan, and Jennifer Lein was also strong. So not just the captain.

Mulgrew and Ryan were strong. Dawson was average. Lien was weak, as was Wang. (Plus: an “African-American Vulcan”? Really? The actor, sure. The *character* had no human ancestry.)

It’s this kind of commentary that makes me think less of VOY; I’m glad we had a female captain, but cast diversity is not enough to compensate for poor characterization and writing. It certainly doesn’t compensate for the “Hollywood Indian” trope.

I believe that you are being unnecessarily harsh and hyper critical. Sounds like you didn’t watch the series but are here to comment for no apparent reason at all. Its confusing, did you watch the series or not? Sounds like you couldn’t stand it, yet you are here.

It’s called “literary criticism” for a reason. Criticism is the point.

I loved Dawson and thought she was very strong. But yeah I loved them all. ;)

I loved her too. Very under rated as an actress. Her character kinda disappeared into the background when Jeri Ryan came on the scene – that happened to most of the cast though – not her fault at all, that was the writers.

Maybe I’m just biased but I always loved Dawson and how she portrayed B’Elanna. Even though Worf was the most popular Klingon character, I liked B’Elanna because she was anti-Work or even Anti-Spock and really tried to be closer to her human side even though her Klingon side was always just underneath the surface. She played between the line very well. But I always love when her temper comes out lol.

But it’s all just opinions. People will like or hate different characters so completely understandable not every character or actors on these shows are loved by everyone.

Yep, Dawson nailed it as B’Elanna. She almost gets zero credit. She is the forgotten Voyager character.

TNG had already featured a Black Romulan.

The lack of diversity we sometimes see in alien races in science fiction is the problem. If the human race is anything to go by, and since the humanoids in Star Trek are supposed to be all related (again going back to TNG) then we should see more variations of skin color, not fewer.

Sigh. I guess I didn’t make my point clearly enough. I don’t have a problem with darker-skinned Vulcans; it’s just that they’re not “African-American Vulcans.” Africa and the Americas are continents on *Earth*.

What did you expect? It was a TV series produced in Hollywood. More chances than not the Black actor cast was going to be African-American. You know, that Hollywood that is located in America on Earth.

Oh, I see what you mean now. You wanted at least one cast member to be non-American. Well, we almost had that with the original actor cast as Janeway (her name escapes me at the moment), so you can’t fault them for at least keeping that in mind. But Tim Russ had already been cast at that point, so why single him out?

I don’t think it makes much sense to think “less of VOY” because the cast, crew, and fans of the show highlight it’s diversity as a positive, memorable, defining element of the show. And no one is saying that it compensates for failures in other areas of the production. The question wasn’t, “what element of Voyager balances out all the other mistakes of the show?”

As for the “Hollywood Indian” trope, I don’t think that you can lay all the blame on the Voyager staff (maybe 10-25%). The did hire a “respected Native American consultant” for the show – it just happened that that consultant was a fake and was conning Hollywood at large.

The “respected consultant” may have contributed to the problem, but he didn’t create the character, and he didn’t cast a non-Native actor in the role.

So sorry you were triggered by the mention of diversity and that someone different then yourself enjoyed seeing themselves reflected on the screen. Find something from the 1950’s on youtube that only features straight white men and take long, deep breaths.

In point of fact, I support diversity on Star Trek. I submit to you that VOY was the *least* diverse cast, and that the focus on the captain (and her ethnically ambiguous first officer, portrayed in blackface by a non-Native actor) were a way to deflect attention from this shortcoming.

Every other iteration of Star Trek has had at least one non-American human character in the main cast:

TOS: Chekhov (Russia), Scott (UK), Sulu (Japanese/Filipino, until TVH unfortunately retconned his ancestry a bit). TNG/PIC: Picard (France), LaForge (likely West Africa, possibly Caribbean); Worf’s roots on Earth were in Belarus; Yar (Ukraine/Lithuania). It was also lightly implied that Troi’s human ancestry was Greek; Rios (Chile). DS9: Bashir (Sudan), Miles O’Brien (Ireland) and Keiko O’Brien (Japan) (both also on TNG), Worf ENT: Sato (Japanese, possibly Brazilian-Japanese), Reed (UK) DIS: Owosekun (Nigeria), Detmer (Germany), Georgiou (Malaysia), Landry (likely India), Rhys (likely Hong Kong, but who knows?), probably others that I’ve missed, since the line between lead and supporting characters has grown blurred.

VOY had…*maybe* Annika Hansen from one of the Scandinavian countries. And that’s it. (And even she didn’t come until the fourth season.)

Chakotay, who was so “diverse” that they couldn’t name his tribal affiliation, doesn’t count; he was a Hollywood composite from nowhere (and alternatively implied he was born in Central America and Arizona, so who knows). The “diverse” captain was from…Indiana. “Farm country,” as she told us. Right next door to Kirk’s old stomping grounds, and not that different from wine country; only agrarian types make good captains, I guess. B’Elanna Torres was implied to be Mexican-American, not Mexican. Kim, whose actor now lectures us “every Star Trek series must have a Chinese character,” was clearly Korean-American, not Korean.

(Oh: and why? In Wang’s book, it’s OK not to have had a single Turkish, Indonesian, Argentine, or Congolese character in all of Star Trek, but we *must* have a Chinese main character in *every* series? By his standards, even Georgiou doesn’t qualify; she’s Straits Chinese. This is selective outrage at its finest.)

Then there were the little details. I can’t think of any VOY recurring or minor human characters who were non-American. In the other series, we had Khan Singh; engineer Singh (both in TOS and TNG); Xu (implied to be Chinese); Anaya (implied to be Bolivian); Admiral Komack (implied Iranian); Admiral Nechayeva (possibly Serbian or Croat); Fleet Admiral Shanti (West Africa); Rostov (Russian); Benayoun (possibly French, possibly Israeli).

I’ll also note that in-universe, VOY didn’t feature a single crew member from an unfamiliar Federation species. TOS gave us Vulcans, TNG Klingons and Bajorans (Ro was the first), DS9 Trill, ENT Denobulans and Andorians. VOY served slopppy seconds, warmed-over Klingons and Vulcans we’d seen before: an utterly disappointing lack of vision and creativity. The buffoonish Neelix (“Jetrel” excepted) and bland Kes (the implications of her short lifespan never examined) hardly counteracted this.

In short, VOY was easily the least multinational crew, and cast, in the history of Star Trek. (And VOY and ENT were filmed at the apex of post-Cold War globalization in the real world; TOS might have had an excuse for this, but VOY has none.) Say what you will about Gene Roddenberry, but he had a global perspective, no doubt from his military and Pan Am days, that Jeri Taylor absolutely did not. The VOY writers’ room hastily cobbled together a milquetoast set of characters (there was too much Trek on at once, and the lack of focus showed) and delivered lackluster storytelling for its first three seasons. To this day, its writers hide behind the one solid casting choice, Mulgrew, to deflect attention away from this weakness.

*I’m* the one triggered by diversity because I’m not a VOY fan? I must have the name of your occulist.

Oh, and all the above is before we get to the fact there wasn’t a single gay character on VOY. On a series that wrapped in 2001, not in the 1960s.

I read all of that above and as a Turkish person I agree with you about the need of Star Trek to have a Turkish crew member. If my memory doesn’t play tricks on me I think there was at least one Starfleet starship named after a Turkish historical figure but I’ll have to check Memory Alpha for that.

The obvious choice would be Sabiha Gokcen.

(Dollars to donuts Mr. “1950s on Youtube” above has zero clue who she is, at least not without consulting the Google.)

Ignoring the bit about Wang, but in terms of playing women with fortitude and strength, all four actresses did that. Torres and Kes may have gotten shortchanged at times, but the characters were strong women, haphazardly written.

I thought Roxann was wonderful in the series and as a director too. She went on to direct ten episodes of Enterprise. She broke ground for female directors of Star Trek. There aren’t a whole lot of them. They should be celebrated.

Whatever the merits of her acting on VOY, I’ve enjoyed her directorial work on THE AMERICANS, and she’s clearly vastly expanded herself in her post-Star Trek director career.

I don’t understand why the new Trek shows aren’t using her as a director. She always does very solid work with her directing, elevating the written material visually.

I find that weird as well. Maybe she is too busy directing other shows? No idea. But I’d like to see her name appear again on a new Star Trek episode(s)

Are you both ignoring the red elephant in the room?

Which is???

That the Discovery Team fired a black writer who used the N-word only as a quote in a story. If they are so sensitive about such things, why should they hire an AllLivesMatter hashtagger?

And if Dawson thinks it is decent to twitter anti-BLM, she would think Discovery is a show to her taste?

Come on have we really come to that time where what people post on twitter became more important than their talents and skills? This is probably a rhetorical question as everyone probably knows the answer. You know Odradek, you may have a point, I feel like this over-sensitivity was why Nick Meyer refused or didn’t work in Discovery after the 1st season.

A discovery actor? a couple of Ds9 actors? TOS? in a voyager Doc I would rather hear from the crew and cast of voyager rather than listening to people who was not involved talk about what voyager meant to them.

George Takei actually had a Captain Sulu episode so it is germane to the topic.

Yeah Voyager was the last tine Takei officially played Sulu as well. Hard to believe that was nearly 25 years ago now.

Andrew Robinson actually directed two episodes on VOY, which I only found out after I asked myself what he was doing there, so at least he has a connection to the show.

My personal guess is they included him (I don´t know how many other directors will be in the documentary) because Garak is so well known an loved as a character.

I would Like to buy the ds9 doc in europe…. Gut where

Same here, buddy…

I thought we weren’t supposed to share the trailers as it was backers only? I don’t get how this is exclisive content when it is distributed a week later to everyone.

What’s the point in a trailer that’s for backers only? The backers are already probably planning to watch the thing. They need to build up hype for general audiences.

I like the fact that they’re not putting the main cast up front. They usually tend to tell their small stories in such interviews, but its the backstage people who can talk about the meat and bones of the show. Color me interested.

Obviously it’s not that way but watching this made me feel like “those DS9 actors are always up for an interview huh, no matter how small the link might be”

Hopefully this is better than the ds9 documentary, where 1. Way too much Behr, he is annoying especially his cheesy sunglasses, and facial hair 2. It was odd to see them criticizing certain aspects of the show, for instance one case was in the use of gay characters. When they say that I think should remember the context that there were only three or four gay characters on TV when ds9 started and about 6 or 7 when ds9 ended.

Context like that needs to be remembered when they make comments about things.

But for a series that is part of a forward-thinking franchise that celebrates diversity, it was a black mark. I’m glad they did Rejoined, and little things like the rest of the crew not batting an eye over the idea of two women dating was appreciated, but this has always been an area where the franchise actually fell behind the curve.

There’s also a moment a lot of people overlook, in the episode “Rules of Acquisition”: before anyone knows that Pel is actually a woman– when everyone believes Pel to be a man– Dax says “it’s obvious hw you feel about [Quark]” meaning Pel’s romantic interest. This says that Dax found nothing odd about a Ferengi man’s attraction to another Ferengi man.

It’s a nice moment BECAUSE it doesn’t get highlighted, if you ask me.

Now it’s possible Dax saw it as no big deal because she is, essentially, a transgender species that does not prescribe to strictly heteronormative relationships, but I choose to believe that outside of Ferenginar– within the Federation– LGBTQ people are not seen as abnormal (and are perhaps even the norm, considering how many different alien races are members) in the 24th century.

There was a scene in Captain’s Holiday that seemed to me more progressiv, when I first saw it, than it really was. I saw it in dubbed version. When the Risean woman hits on Picard, Picard says his Horg’ahn for is his friend Riker. Now the woman assumes that Picard and Riker were lovers and because of the way Picard addressed Riker ln my language she would indicate that Riker is a man and she had to assume they were both gay. I expected the typical nervous ” no, no not that king of friend…” routine from Picard and was pleasently surprised when he was all non chalant about it. I thought :” How cool in the future no one cares about it orfeels the need to set the record straight if you are gay or not. I was a little disappointed after I saw the original version with no indication she thought Picard was gay.

I think you might be mistaken, because Picard very much does respond with the nervous “no, not that kind of friend” an even if you read it otherwise, the intent of the scene is clearly to make the audience laugh at a gay panic joke.

Actually, the woman says, “someone you love”, and Picard says, “I wouldn’t go that far”.

…which to be fair, was the point of “Rules of Acquisition” but the reaction of Dax was not meant to be a joke.

Star Trek should always be ahead of the curve when it comes to diversity. It is a shame that in this instance they were not.

To be honest, I found his self-criticism quite impressive. Believe me, Behr knew the context.

And why does it matter HOW MANY gay characters there were on TV in 1993 or 1998? The fact is, there were openly gay characters on mainstream TV as early as the 60s and 70s, in shows that discussed the issues facing LGBTQ people in a frank and serious way. Why Trek felt– even well into the 1990s– that they couldn’t include an open character, or make an existing character (like Garak) gay, is to me, an embarrassment to the franchise. Clearly Behr agreed, and I think that’s a GOOD thing.

I also felt that not using the Trill as a trans allegory, despite the VERY obvious parallels, to be a huge oversight (and one they finally followed through on in DSC) .

By the way, I find it rather odd that in the same paragraph as you hit back against the criticism of not representing LGBTQ characters, you mock the “annoying” sunglasses and facial hair of Behr; you seem to have some kind of inherent bias against people who are different.

I plan to get this on dvd just like I did the DS9 documentary and I sure hope they will do one for Enterprise

Star Trek, Voyager: Mosaic (Adapted)

By: Jeri Taylor

• Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
• Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
• 4.4 out of 5 stars 4.4 (356 ratings)

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Star Trek, Voyager: Pathways (Adapted)

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• 3 out of 5 stars

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Here is the novelization of the premiere episode of Star Trek, Voyager , the unprecedented fourth television series based on Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. It is the story of the crew of the Starship Voyager , who are hurled far across the galaxy and must team up with their most dangerous adversaries to return home. Read by Robert Picardo, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

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3 times the charm, never tire of it : )

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So Happy To Have Kate Mulgrew Read “Her” Story

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I miss January LaVoy

• By Islandgirl on 10-20-20

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That was not the Dax I know . . . .

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From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So , a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.

Incredible! So much more than a memoir

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Ambassador Spock travels back in time to subtly warn Earth's inhabitants of impending doom while calling into question humanity's priorities. However, before the truth is told, the all-powerful being, Q, appears and reminds Spock that he is prohibited from interfering in Earth's history. Besides, Q doesn't see mankind as something worth saving.

Is a Star Trek Convention skit really a book?

• By William on 02-01-05

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Audie Award, Narration by Author, 2016. Raised by unconventional Irish Catholics who knew "how to drink, how to dance, how to talk, and how to stir up the devil", Kate Mulgrew grew up with poetry and drama in her bones. But in her mother, a would-be artist burdened by the endless arrival of new babies, young Kate saw the consequences of a dream deferred.

Beautiful Memoir

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A thrilling novel leading into the new CBS series, Una McCormack’s The Last Best Hope introduces you to brand-new characters featured in the life of beloved Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard—widely considered to be one of the most popular and recognizable characters in all of science fiction.

• 1 out of 5 stars

Star Trek by people who don't get Star Trek

• By Chidwick on 02-11-20

Star Trek, Deep Space Nine: The 34th Rule (Adapted)

• By: Armin Shimerman, David R. George lll
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• 4 out of 5 stars

Good Trek story!

• By James on 02-24-08

By: Armin Shimerman , and others

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One of the most gripping - and personal - Star Trek stories ever told, The Ashes of Eden provides a new understanding of one of science fiction's greatest heroes - as written and read by William Shatner!

An Interesting ST Story

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Not even Odo can save Warped

• By Joe S. on 03-28-05

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They say you can’t go home again. But when her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and her mother with atypical Alzheimer’s, New York-based actress Kate Mulgrew returns to her hometown in Iowa to spend time with her parents and care for them in the time they have left. The months Kate spends with her parents in Dubuque - by turns turbulent, tragic, and joyful - lead her to reflect on each of their lives and how they shaped her own.

Dr. Kate Mulgrew articulates end-of-life relationships fluently

• By Dr. Chris P. Hafner on 05-27-19

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When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunction—only to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters their party across the strangest new world they’ve ever encountered.

Just like watching an episode!

• By Matthew on 08-27-23

Enigma Tales

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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 449
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 415
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 415

Elim Garak has ascended to Castellan of the Cardassian Union...but despite his soaring popularity, the imminent publication of a report exposing his peoples' war crimes during the occupation on Bajor looks likely to set the military against him. Into this tense situation come Dr. Katherine Pulaski - visiting Cardassia Prime to accept an award on behalf of the team that solved the Andorian genetic crisis - and Dr. Peter Alden, formerly of Starfleet Intelligence.

More DS9 please!

• By Toffylights on 07-03-17

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Book 1

By: J.K. Rowling

• Narrated by: Jim Dale
• Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 193,042
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 169,396
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 168,883

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

A great reading of the wrong book

• By P on 11-24-15

Star Trek, Deep Space Nine: Emissary (Adapted)

By: J.M. Dillard

• Narrated by: Nana Visitor
• Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 88
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 62
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 62

Based on the blockbuster pilot episode for the Deep Space Nine television series, Emissary introduces listeners to the mysterious space station that hovers on the edge of a wormhole. Read by series star Nana Visitor, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score.

Redefining the future

• By Robert on 03-10-07

Publisher's summary

• Original Recording Audiobook
• Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy

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I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?

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Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼

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Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

• Danelle Anderson

I'm a big Star Trek fan, and Voyager has only added to it. Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway sealed the deal - and LOVED hearing her narrate this. Maybe I'm a bit of a baby, but there were several parts of this story that brought tears to my eyes. loved it! ❤❤❤

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• Story 4 out of 5 stars

Great character insight

If you're a Voyager fan I 100% recommend listening to this. You get insight into Janeway's history and also Kate Mulgrew reads very well.

Star Trek: Voyager

This was a dynamic story and of course Kate Mulgrew brought all of the parts alive. I could swear that all of the cast were there.

Perfect for Voyager fans. loved it!

you really should get into this. Kate does a wonderful job. Voyager has been the best forever

• Tanya P. Henauer

One of the best Star Trek audibles

While I would greatly prefer all audible recordings to be unabridged, this story and the performance by Kate Mulgrew make for a great evening listen. A nice introduction to the Star Trek Voyager Saga, with STVGR Pathways read by Robert Piccardo the logical next listen for the second night. (Mosaic is the superior of the two recordings)

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars

Relaxing and enjoyable

I love that Kate Mulgrew narrated this book. It adds so much depth to the reading. The story was enjoyable and I always wanted to hear more. I have to admit that Voyager wasn't my favorite Star Trek and Janeway wasn't even my favorite Captain. But maybe I've made a mistake. I found this story engaging and engrossing. I cared about all the characters and I dearly wish that it had been longer. I have no doubt I will re-listen to this book and I will buy more books narrated by Kate. She has a natural style that was very appealing. It's also obvious that she cares about the material in the loving way she gives passion to her reading. Bravo Kate, and thank you.

22 people found this helpful

• Overall 3 out of 5 stars

Good story but...

I gave this only three stars not because of the story but because of the abridgment. Story is great and you learn much about Janeway. I just really dislike abridgments, I wish all the Star Trek book were not like this.

10 people found this helpful

Kate Mulgrew shines

Kate Mulgrew’s narration is perfection. She IS Captain Janeway! The story is interesting. I love learning Capt Janeway’s back-story that we never learn in Voyager, but answers a lot of questions about where she came from and how she got there. The sound effects in the story are a bit corny and make the recording sound a bit dated...but to be fair it *is* dated since it was recorded back in 1996. Just know that it sounds like the 90’s. Other than that - it’s perfection.

1 person found this helpful

Shockingly Exceptional

To say that this Star Trek story was merely good would be an understatement. It is one of the best stories to be written by Jeri Taylor. This Novel provides a look into the soul of Captain Janeway. I for one found this book engaging and poignant. A good audio book if I ever heard one.

4 people found this helpful

Excellent Read

I loved the insight into Janeway's past, to show the person beyond the 'Starfleet Captain'. Janeway has always been my favourite character and I found after listening to this book that I loved her even more. It was particularly amazed that Kate Mulgrew herself narrated this book which is what held my fascination to the story, and I loved the subtle way she changed her tone of voice to change with the characters, it was well suited. I liked that it wasn't just a novel entirely about Janeway's past but floated back and forth between the action of the plot so it always had me wanting to know what was coming next. I would highly recommend this.

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Setting the record straight on Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager

By marc kick | nov 2, 2023.

Neelix started out quite the questionable character on Star Trek: Voyager.

When we first meet Neelix, he’s tending to his debris field where he seemingly would be selling off junked starship parts that he procured via numerous, possibly underhanded ways, and selling them off for profit in order to survive in the Delta Quadrant. The one commodity he seemingly could not obtain was something that Federation ships were able to synthesize in an instant: water. Upon realizing this, he decided to take advantage of the Voyager crew’s generosity and innocence to free his girlfriend from enslavement at the hands of the Kazon.

Neelix proved himself to be quite the conniving individual, always seemingly having friends of questionable morals in the right places throughout his region of the Delta Quadrant. The one being whose existence he held above all else was Kes, his 3-year-old Ocampan girlfriend. Since the Ocampans live abbreviated lives, with the eldest Ocampans typically living only eight or nine years, by comparison, that puts Kes to be about the equivalent of being in her mid-20s to early 30s, alternatively, it was always my understanding with all of Neelix’s life experiences, that he was fairly significantly older than Kes…not only in physical age but also in cognitive age as well, which kind of makes him a bit of a creeper. However, just as I wrote previously here , I always viewed Voyager as the story of the redemption of Nick Locarno/Tom Paris & I think the same can easily be said about Neelix as well!

Over the course of Voyager’s 7-year series run, Neelix became quite the upstanding citizen onboard.

Once we got past Neelix ‘s jealousy and over-protectiveness towards Kes, he became a solid, trusted source for Captain Janeway to rely upon for information when entering new regions of the Delta Quadrant. As Morale Officer (a position made up specifically for him), he made some great bonds with most of the crew. So much so, that when Ensign Samantha Wildman became pregnant with Naomi, she chose Neelix to be Naomi’s Godfather — a position he took VERY seriously! He read Naomi bedtime stories, checked her room for monsters, and even cared for her while Samantha fulfilled her Starfleet duties on away missions.

Also, while Seven of Nine became a motherly figure for the Borg kids, it was Neelix that she occasionally asked for parenting advice along with The Doctor. Of all of the Voyager crew, Neelix needed to work the hardest to earn the respect of, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok — who would often use a holographic version of Neelix to test his mental & emotional boundaries when he felt compromised. In fact, in one of the final conversations between the two, Tuvok told Neelix that he considered him the most resourceful individual he had ever met, which is extremely high praise coming from a Vulcan! In fact, just before leaving the ship as a Starfleet Ambassador, Tuvok even demonstrated a bit of a “dance” to appease him.

Truth is, the Neelix character grew by leaps and bounds throughout Voyager’s 7-year run, and aside from Tom Paris, I don’t believe that any other character experienced the kind of renaissance that Neelix did, and I think Ethan Phillips did an excellent job in portraying that character. His final walk from the turbo-lift, down the crew-lined corridor was one of the greatest send-offs any character in any Star Trek series ever received, it’s hard not to get teary-eyed while watching Neelix say goodbye to the family he had made for 7 years to rejoin and lead fellow members of his own race.

Next. 10 Things you might not know about Star Trek: Voyager. dark

Lewis Zimmerman

• View history

Doctor Lewis Zimmerman was a noted 24th century Human scientist and holo-engineer , responsible for the creation and development of the Emergency Medical Hologram , or "EMH", and considered to be the father of modern holography . He was also the model for the image of the EMH Mark I , a fact that he found to be a great source of embarrassment when wide scale use of the Mark I was discontinued and the holograms later re-utilized to perform menial tasks.

• 1.1 Long-Term Medical Hologram research
• 1.2 "Father/son" reunion
• 3.1 Appearances
• 3.2 Background information
• 3.3 Apocrypha
• 3.4 External link

Biography [ ]

Dr. Zimmerman's service record

He was born in Grover's Mill , New Jersey on Earth to Gregory Zimmerman and Sandra Fritz in the year 2320 . He graduated from Starfleet Academy in 2342 .

He was assigned to the Holo-Programming Center at Jupiter Station in 2361 and by 2373 , Dr. Zimmerman was Director of Holographic Imaging and Programming at Jupiter Station.

Long-Term Medical Hologram research [ ]

Working with Julian Bashir in 2373

In an attempt to further the capabilities of the EMH, Zimmerman sought to create a new Long-term Medical Holographic program , and selected Julian Bashir as the template. Zimmerman traveled to Deep Space 9 to begin his work. He interviewed many residents of the station, to get a complete picture of Bashir.

In Quark's , Bashir asked Zimmerman to not invite his parents to the station. Zimmerman did the opposite and asked Richard and Amsha Bashir to come to the station immediately. Zimmerman later stumbled across the fact that Bashir had been genetically-engineered as a child, and had to withdraw Bashir from consideration as a suitable template.

Zimmerman was briefly involved with Leeta when he asked her to work in the bar on Jupiter Station. They were on their way to a transport when Rom appeared and told Leeta he loved her. Zimmerman was initially disappointed until he met a female passenger . He asked her if she was familiar with the Earth text, the Kama Sutra . ( DS9 : " Doctor Bashir, I Presume ")

"Father/son" reunion [ ]

Zimmerman with Voyager 's EMH and Deanna Troi

Dr. Zimmerman lived and worked at Jupiter Station constantly, and rarely left. His only companions were holographic figures, including a fly named Roy , an iguana called Leonard , and his personal assistant Haley (who was the first sentient hologram Zimmerman programmed). He was especially close to Haley and considered her more than a hologram.

By early- 2377 , Dr. Zimmerman was terminally ill and only expected to live a few more months.

In preparation, he began dictating his last will and testament , leaving his entire collection of holographic art , including the 21st century masterpiece " Woman in Four Dimensions ", to Reginald Barclay , as well as his holographic research about miniature holograms for espionage purposes, on the grounds that Barclay was the only person who appreciated them. Barclay, himself, affectionately referred to Zimmerman as " Doctor Z ". ( VOY : " Life Line ")

In an attempt to find a cure, Barclay contacted the USS Voyager via the Pathfinder Project . Voyager carried a Mark I EMH, The Doctor , whose unique knowledge and abilities Barclay hoped would help. Analyzing Zimmerman's medical records, The Doctor noted some similarities between Zimmerman's condition and the Vidiian Phage , which he had been partially able to treat in the past and which gave him hope that he could do the same to Zimmerman. Reasoning that other doctors would not be experienced with the treatments, The Doctor requested that he be sent to the Alpha Quadrant to administer the treatment himself.

Zimmerman initially refused to be treated by The Doctor, whom he saw as inferior to the later Mark III and Mark IV EMHs, reprogramming The Doctor's equipment and transferring him to other parts of the station, forcing The Doctor to reconfigure his appearance to a Tarlac masseuse to even try and get close to Zimmerman to examine him. Lieutenant Barclay recruited Counselor Deanna Troi to mediate between the EMH and Dr. Zimmerman and try to resolve their differences, Troi reflecting that part of Zimmerman's problem was his anger over the final fate of the Mark Is given how much he had personally invested in them. The situation became so frustrating that Barclay, Troi, and Hayley created a fake glitch in The Doctor's program to encourage the two to work together, Zimmerman being forced to acknowledge that The Doctor was more than a Mark I when he was informed that Voyager wouldn't accept a Mark IV EMH in The Doctor's place as they would simply want their friend back, as he had believed that a Mark I was incapable of making that kind of impact on others.

Beginning his work on The Doctor, Zimmerman initially contemplated making various additions to the EMH's programming, but when The Doctor protested at Zimmerman's inability to accept him as he was, Zimmerman's anger and frustration at what had happened to the Mark Is came to the fore, ranting about the negative reaction of Starfleet to the other Mark I EMHs and his own grief at the garbage cleaners they had become. As Zimmerman sank into a chair in depression, The Doctor offered an awkward moment of comfort to him, reminding Zimmerman that he was still doing the job he was designed for and was actually rather good at it. This encounter marked the first steps in their near-father/son relationship, with The Doctor confessing that he'd hoped Zimmerman would be proud of his achievements if the two of them ever met, and Zimmerman admitting that, for all his anger about the fate of the other Mark Is, he was grateful that at least one of them was still doing what Zimmerman had designed them for. Before The Doctor departed, Zimmerman slightly grudgingly posed for a photograph with his "son", and said that The Doctor could drop them a communication the next time his ship got the chance to do so. ( VOY : " Life Line ")

The holonovel Photons Be Free was written with acknowledgment made to Dr. Zimmerman. During the subsequent court case to defend The Doctor's rights as a person, Barclay noted that The Doctor's attempt to save Zimmerman was reminiscent of a son seeking the father's approval. ( VOY : " Author, Author ")

Hologram [ ]

In addition to the use of his likeness as the Emergency Medical Hologram, Zimmerman himself was integrated into the Jupiter Station Diagnostic Program Alpha-11 . ( VOY : " The Swarm ")

In 2372 , The Doctor, while experiencing holo-transference dementia syndrome appeared as Zimmerman. ( VOY : " Projections ")

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

• DS9 : " Doctor Bashir, I Presume "
• " Projections " (hologram)
• " The Swarm " (hologram)
• " Life Line "

Background information [ ]

Lewis Zimmerman was played by actor Robert Picardo .

Executive Producers and Star Trek: Voyager co-creators Rick Berman , Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor spared a thought for the creator of the holographic doctor character while the series was in the early developmental stages. In a summary of notes Taylor wrote (dated 6 August 1993 ), she reported, " We spoke of a programmer who created the doctor but made him a bit bland. " However, Taylor and her executive producing partners initially intended Reginald Barclay to fulfil this "programmer" role, imagining that he had created the holographic doctor in his own image. ( A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager , p. 182)

In the pre-production of Voyager and the scripts which were written for VOY Season 1 , "Doc Zimmerman" was intended to be the name of The Doctor. An early, British ad promoting the series still referred to him by this name, as well as the TV Guide article promoting the new series. He was named for Herman Zimmerman , the production designer for first-season TNG as well as DS9, Enterprise, and the four TNG movies.

Zimmerman's first name was spelled "Louis" in the script for "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", though the spelling "Lewis" was seen on-screen in "Projections" and was also used in scripts for Star Trek: Voyager (at least in the case of "The Swarm").

Ronald D. Moore commented on Zimmerman's lack of rank insignia in "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", despite wearing a Starfleet uniform: " This is a mistake, but an understandable one. Dr. Zimmerman's appearance was guided by his appearance on the Voyager episode in which he was recreated on the holodeck. In that episode, he didn't wear a rank insignia either, and our costumers simply followed that choice in doing our episode. Why he didn't have one on Voyager is a good question. " ( AOL chat , 1997 )

Apocrypha [ ]

Zimmerman returns to DS9 in "So a Horse Walks into a Bar...".

His mirror universe counterpart ( β ) is depicted as a Terran scientist working for the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance to develop a telepath in the novella The Mirror-Scaled Serpent . The Ocampa Kes , who had become trapped in the Alpha Quadrant after a brief encounter with the Caretaker , was sent to him to be experimented upon.

Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway

Robert Beltran as Chakotay

Robert Picardo as The Doctor

Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres

Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris

Tim Russ as Tuvok

Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine

Ethan Phillips as Neelix

Jennifer Lien as Kes

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What would Star Trek be without its unique soundtrack? The timeless and spherical melodies allow us to dive into distant worlds and foreign civilizations. This vinyl box offers a great musical overview of the original series: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. This Star Trek Vinyl Box is a special highlight for all Star Trek and vinyl fans. As a bonus we also deliver a CD with fantastic Star Trek sound effects.

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• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.59 x 13.15 x 2.24 inches; 1.43 Pounds
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Zyx Music (Zyx)
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1999 Era Vhs Recording Of Voyager And Battlestar Galactica

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Star trek: voyager perfectly showed tom paris changed for the better.

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Every Voyager Character Who Has Returned In Star Trek (& How)

Star trek: voyager’s first borg episode set up species 8472, young sheldon’s george sr death leaves a major big bang theory plot hole unresolved.

• Tom Paris underwent significant character growth from a playboy to a loving partner over Star Trek: Voyager's seven seasons.
• The episode "Blood Fever" highlighted Tom's development and laid the foundation for his romance with B'Elanna Torres.
• Tom and B'Elanna's relationship brought out the best in each other and provided engaging ongoing storylines for both characters.

Star Trek: Voyager season 3 perfectly demonstrated how much Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) had changed since season 1. Tom was the ship's pilot and occasional medic, part of Voyager 's main cast of characters , and one of the characters with the biggest shift in personality throughout the show's seven seasons . Although he ended the series as a valued member of the crew and a loving husband and father, Tom's journey on Voyager started in a much different place.

When audiences first met Tom in Voyager 's pilot episode, he was an angry, jaded convicted felon who had pushed everyone in his life away , including his family. Not only that, but Tom was a notorious ladies' man and pursued women with a determination that often came off as unsettling or unpleasant. It's hard to believe that a character like Tom could change so much over Voyager 's seven seasons given where he started, but the progression of his transformation was demonstrated as early as season 3.

Star Trek: Voyager's beloved characters have returned in Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and especially Star Trek: Prodigy.

Star Trek: Voyager’s “Blood Fever” Showed How Much Tom Paris Had Changed Since Season 1

"blood fever" demonstrated that paris was a wholly different character.

Although his character change may have seemed gradual, Voyager season 3, episode 16, "Blood Fever" demonstrated what a different man Tom was from when he was first introduced . "Blood Fever" was the first episode to depict the start of the future relationship between Tom and B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Voyager 's most stable romance and one of the show's more interesting romantic subplots. During the episode, Tom and B'Elanna were forced to acknowledge their romantic feelings for each other while B'Elanna underwent a version of Pon Farr passed to her by Vulcan Ensign Vorik (Alexander Enberg) .

Tom's insistence on treating the situation carefully laid the groundwork for how strong and healthy his and B'Elanna's romance would become in later seasons.

Tom's refusal to " take advantage " of B'Elanna's altered mental state and give in to her advances made it clear how much he had changed. In season 1, Tom would likely not have hesitated to agree to B'Elanna's request, but "Blood Fever" showed that he had grown to respect B'Elanna and women in general on a different level . Rather than simply acquiescing to the situation, which could have caused problems in his relationship with B'Elanna going forward, Tom's insistence on treating the situation carefully laid the groundwork for how strong and healthy his and B'Elanna's romance would become in later seasons.

Why The Paris/Torres Relationship Was A Great Decision For Both Characters

Tom and b'elanna brought out the best in each other.

Thanks to its well-handled set-up in "Blood Fever," Voyager 's Paris/Torres relationship was a great decision for both characters. Putting Tom in a long-term romance with another member of the main cast helped cement his continued move away from the playboy archetype that wasn’t working for him in seasons 1 and 2 . Thanks to B'Elanna, Tom became a more well-rounded character and gained an ongoing storyline with endless possibilities that Voyager made work to the show's advantage.

Likewise, the romance allowed B’Elanna to show her softer side more often, especially when her struggles with her half-Klingon heritage became difficult. B'Elanna's relationship with Tom was also a good vehicle for exploring her past trauma, especially in later seasons when she dealt with things like finding out she was pregnant and grappling with the heritage of her and Tom's daughter in light of her childhood. Tom and B'Elanna truly brought out the best qualities in each other , and Star Trek: Voyager was smart to pair them together.

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+

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The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before. 

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried

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This artist's impression shows one of the Voyager spacecraft moving through the darkness of space. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

This artist's impression shows one of the Voyager spacecraft moving through the darkness of space.

The last time Stamatios "Tom" Krimigis saw the Voyager 1 space probe in person, it was the summer of 1977, just before it launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Now Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles away, beyond what many consider to be the edge of the solar system. Yet the on-board instrument Krimigis is in charge of is still going strong.

"I am the most surprised person in the world," says Krimigis — after all, the spacecraft's original mission to Jupiter and Saturn was only supposed to last about four years.

These days, though, he's also feeling another emotion when he thinks of Voyager 1.

"Frankly, I'm very worried," he says.

Ever since mid-November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending messages back to Earth that don't make any sense. It's as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that's interfering with its ability to speak.

"It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner," says Suzanne Dodd of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has been the project manager for the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010. "It's a serious problem."

Instead of sending messages home in binary code, Voyager 1 is now just sending back alternating 1s and 0s. Dodd's team has tried the usual tricks to reset things — with no luck.

It looks like there's a problem with the onboard computer that takes data and packages it up to send back home. All of this computer technology is primitive compared to, say, the key fob that unlocks your car, says Dodd.

"The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do," she says. "It's remarkable that they keep flying, and that they've flown for 46-plus years."

Each of the Voyager probes carries an American flag and a copy of a golden record that can play greetings in many languages. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Each of the Voyager probes carries an American flag and a copy of a golden record that can play greetings in many languages.

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have outlasted many of those who designed and built them. So to try to fix Voyager 1's current woes, the dozen or so people on Dodd's team have had to pore over yellowed documents and old mimeographs.

"They're doing a lot of work to try and get into the heads of the original developers and figure out why they designed something the way they did and what we could possibly try that might give us some answers to what's going wrong with the spacecraft," says Dodd.

She says that they do have a list of possible fixes. As time goes on, they'll likely start sending commands to Voyager 1 that are more bold and risky.

"The things that we will do going forward are probably more challenging in the sense that you can't tell exactly if it's going to execute correctly — or if you're going to maybe do something you didn't want to do, inadvertently," says Dodd.

Linda Spilker , who serves as the Voyager mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that when she comes to work she sees "all of these circuit diagrams up on the wall with sticky notes attached. And these people are just having a great time trying to troubleshoot, you know, the 60's and 70's technology."

"I'm cautiously optimistic," she says. "There's a lot of creativity there."

Still, this is a painstaking process that could take weeks, or even months. Voyager 1 is so distant, it takes almost a whole day for a signal to travel out there, and then a whole day for its response to return.

"We'll keep trying," says Dodd, "and it won't be quick."

In the meantime, Voyager's 1 discombobulation is a bummer for researchers like Stella Ocker , an astronomer with Caltech and the Carnegie Observatories

"We haven't been getting science data since this anomaly started," says Ocker, "and what that means is that we don't know what the environment that the spacecraft is traveling through looks like."

After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System

That interstellar environment isn't just empty darkness, she says. It contains stuff like gas, dust, and cosmic rays. Only the twin Voyager probes are far out enough to sample this cosmic stew.

"The science that I'm really interested in doing is actually only possible with Voyager 1," says Ocker, because Voyager 2 — despite being generally healthy for its advanced age — can't take the particular measurements she needs for her research.

Even if NASA's experts and consultants somehow come up with a miraculous plan that can get Voyager 1 back to normal, its time is running out.

The two Voyager probes are powered by plutonium, but that power system will eventually run out of juice. Mission managers have turned off heaters and taken other measures to conserve power and extend the Voyager probes' lifespan.

"My motto for a long time was 50 years or bust," says Krimigis with a laugh, "but we're sort of approaching that."

In a couple of years, the ebbing power supply will force managers to start turning off science instruments, one by one. The very last instrument might keep going until around 2030 or so.

When the power runs out and the probes are lifeless, Krimigis says both of these legendary space probes will basically become "space junk."

"It pains me to say that," he says. While Krimigis has participated in space missions to every planet, he says the Voyager program has a special place in his heart.

Spilker points out that each spacecraft will keep moving outward, carrying its copy of a golden record that has recorded greetings in many languages, along with the sounds of Earth.

"The science mission will end. But a part of Voyager and a part of us will continue on in the space between the stars," says Spilker, noting that the golden records "may even outlast humanity as we know it."

Krimigis, though, doubts that any alien will ever stumble across a Voyager probe and have a listen.

"Space is empty," he says, "and the probability of Voyager ever running into a planet is probably slim to none."

It will take about 40,000 years for Voyager 1 to approach another star; it will come within 1.7 light years of what NASA calls "an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor" — also known as the Little Dipper.

If NASA greenlights this interstellar mission, it could last 100 years

Knowing that the Voyager probes are running out of time, scientists have been drawing up plans for a new mission that, if funded and launched by NASA, would send another probe even farther out into the space between stars.

"If it happens, it would launch in the 2030s," says Ocker, "and it would reach twice as far as Voyager 1 in just 50 years."

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