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Everything We Know About Voyagers, The Carl Sagan Movie Starring Andrew Garfield

Carl Sagan, for those who may not know, was an astronomer and charismatic cosmologist who came into the public eye in 1980 with the broadcast of his PBS series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." That show, in addition to Sagan's many novels, books, and lectures, helped popularize astral science, bringing casual conversations about space to new heights.

Sagan's popularity is understandable. He was affable and well-spoken, and he talked about fun scientific concepts like the existence of UFOs, and the actual, mathematical odds that an alien civilization might someday visit Earth; given the size of the universe, Sagan calculated that there are at least a million Earth-like civilizations out there somewhere. The film "Contact" is based on his novel. Sagan was also a major advocate for marijuana use, and was rather spiritual, despite often speaking out against religion or the existence of an intelligent God. He was a fascinating dude.

Sagan passed away in 1996. The only mystery is why it's taken Hollywood so long to make a biopic of his life. That will change with the upcoming "Voyagers." As announced by Variety on May 5, 2023 , Andrew Garfield will star in the film as Sagan, with Daisy Edgar-Jones playing author/SETI scientist Ann Druyan, Sagan's third wife, to whom he was married to from 1981 until his death. It was Druyan's photos of Earth that largely inspired Sagan to write his book "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space."

Here's everything we know about the movie so far.

What is Voyagers about?

Per Variety, "Voyagers" will be set in 1977, when Carl Sagan first met Ann Druyan, and while he was still married to his second wife Lynn Salzman. Salzman was one of the authors of the Voyager Golden Record, an audio disc, actually made of gold, that was sent into space on a SETI mission. The disc contained music, language samples, and a lot of general information about humanity that, the authors felt, would be useful to any extraterrestrials that might find it. Druyan, at the same time, was head of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project, and also helped produce the records. Sagan selected the contents of the record. The film will be presented as a love story.

Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, who is directing "Voyagers," was one of the many kids who saw "Cosmos" when it was initially broadcast, and he found it to be a salve from the rigors of Augusto Pinochet's regime at the time. In Variety, he was quoted as saying:

"As a nine-year-old boy growing up during Chile's dictatorship, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's TV series 'Cosmos' had a profound impact on me, igniting my fascination with life's biggest questions and mysteries. [...] It is a dream to make a movie about the Golden Record and, within it, the inspiring love story between Carl and Ann. I'm thrilled that Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones will be at the center of this epic romance set against the infinite backdrop of space and time."

The Voyagers creative team

In addition to directing, Sebastián Lelio wrote the screenplay for "Voyagers" with Jessica Goldberg, based on interviews held with Ann Druyan. Lelio's previous directorial credits include "The Wonder," "A Fantastic Woman," and "Disobedience," as well as both "Gloria" and its English-language remake "Gloria Bell." He tends to make films about powerful individuals whose own character is pitted against a world that would leave them feeling oppressed. This was surely the case with "A Fantastic Woman," "Disobedience," and "Gloria."

Druyan herself is quoted by Variety as saying that she was waiting for the right creative team to tell her and Carl Sagan's stories:

"Imagine falling madly, truly in love with one of the greatest humans who ever lived, while creating a complex message about what it is to be alive, a golden record affixed to the first interstellar spacecraft launched by our species, bound to sail the Milky Way galaxy long after Earth ceases to exist. [...] It takes a movie to bring that mythic experience, that cosmic love story to vivid life. After years of searching, I feel that we have found exactly the right colleagues and artists to capture the magic of it."

The Voyagers cast

Daisy Edgar-Jones starred in the films "Fresh" and "Where the Crawdads Sing," in addition to the series "Normal People." She previously appeared opposite Andrew Garfield in the true crime drama series "Under the Banner of Heaven."

"Voyagers" will be yet another film in Garfield's filmography wherein he plays a character who wrestles with larger notions of faith and God. In 2016, Garfield starred in Martin Scorsese's "Silence," in which he played a 17th-century Jesuit monk who begins to have second thoughts about the presence of God in the world. That same year, Garfield starred in Mel Gibson's "Hacksaw Ridge," a film about a doctor who wanted to help treats soldiers during World War II, but whose Christianity prevented him from touching a weapon. Much of that film is about the pacifist underpinnings of most faiths.

Garfield also played the horrendous televangelist Jim Bakker in Michael Showalter's "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a film largely about the hypocrisy of Bakker's "prosperity gospel" philosophies. When it comes to characters that foreground their faith, Garfield seems attracted.

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Rent Voyagers on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

It has a game cast and a premise ripe with potential, but Voyagers drifts in familiar orbit rather than fully exploring its intriguing themes.

It has a decent cast and some interesting twists on its Lord of the Flies -inspired story, but Voyagers is slow to get going and sputters out in the end.

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Voyagers Is Just Lord of the Flies in Space

The characters in Voyagers are the middle children of an 86-year colonization mission — born on Earth but never really of it, and also unlikely to survive long enough to see the new planet they’re traveling toward. Their lives are slated to unfold almost entirely onboard the spaceship Humanitas , on which they’re both the crew and the future parents and grandparents of the eventual settlers. In an effort to make this regimented existence more tolerable, the planners behind the mission gestated their intergalactic travelers in a lab and raised them in a sealed facility so they wouldn’t get attached to family or to the dying Earth they’d soon leave behind. The crew is also drugged with a substance they call “blue” that dulls their senses, makes them more biddable, and dampens their sex drives, which becomes relevant as the kids grow up into a bunch of dewy-skinned teenagers living in close quarters with no clue that their state of chaste docility is chemically enforced. Then two of their number, Christopher (Tye Sheridan) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead), figure it out and stop taking their daily doses, setting off a chain of events that throws the careful order of life onboard into chaos.

On one hand, the premise of Voyagers is a heady one, asking what gives a life meaning when its course is already set, and that same life has been surrendered in service of a future that won’t be experienced. On the other, it offers all sorts of potential for soapy sci-fi shenanigans when the 30 crew members, a diverse group united in looking like they could at any moment star in a Gap ad, go cold turkey and are all plunged into hyperadolescence at the same time. But the film, which was written and directed by Neil Burger (of The Illusionist , Limitless , and more recently, The Upside ), walks a fine line between the philosophical and the frothy, managing with impressive precision to avoid being smart or fun. There is, at least, a short, giddy window in which Christopher and Zac find themselves awakening to emotional and physical sensation, racing down the hallways, zapping their fingers with electricity, and noticing the same nubile colleague, Sela (Lily-Rose Depp). But Zac acts on his newfound attraction by groping Sela against her will, and then challenges Richard Alling (Colin Farrell), the ship’s lone adult, about why he can’t just do whatever he pleases. “We’re just going to die in the end, so why can’t we do what we want? What’s the difference whether we’re good or not?”

There’s a sinking feeling accompanying the realization that, as Christopher and Zac start vying for leadership, Voyagers is becoming Lord of the Flies in space. It’s not just that divisions form in predictable and dramatically inert ways, the performances universally flat and unengaging as one side rebels against the group’s elected leader, giving into paranoia and opting for violence. It’s also that, as the film goes on, there’s a niggling sense that this futuristic retread of a familiar story is meant to say something about our moment — about, say, tribalism and strongman leadership. After a mysterious accident leads to the death of a crew member, Zac goes from “guy who just never thought about consent before” to full-on villain, leveraging fears that there’s an alien in the group’s midst to position himself as a protector and to label anyone who speaks up against him a possible carrier. His turn toward the manipulative and brutal is written as taking place so abruptly that it’s impossible to grasp him as a character or to understand how he’s able to take control so quickly. Rather than show the potential for both brutality and order in the human psyche, even in characters who’ve essentially started as blank slates, Voyagers ends up presenting Zac as an aberration leading the crew into a bout of hysterical overreaction. As allegories for the last few years go, it’s not one that offers much by way of compelling insight.

There have been a few noteworthy movies grappling with the idea of long-term space travel out in the past few years. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar pitted a father’s conflicted desires against the nightmarish stresses of time dilation, his children getting older and older every minute he’s away from Earth, decades slipping away. There was the dismal Passengers , the movie Voyagers most seems to want to echo, a movie about how the vastness of possible years in isolation makes the most inconceivable crimes forgivable. There was Claire Denis’s High Life , equal parts sexy and repulsive, with its coerced crew of criminals hurtling resentfully toward a black hole. But the best recent film to pit the human lifetime against the impossible hugeness of space is the Swedish Aniara from 2018, which is about a luxury liner that’s sent permanently off course on a routine trip taking passengers from Earth to Mars — a kind of serious take on a scenario shared by Armando Iannucci’s Avenue 5 . As the years roll on in the film, the passengers embrace bursts of hedonism and develop new forms of spirituality and contend with all-consuming depression.

It’s a film that might come to mind when watching Voyagers , not just because it actually digs into the possibilities of its premise, but because it really engages with the idea of a life lived in transit without a destination, and with the idea of how different that really is from the lives we’re living now. Voyagers , in keeping its focus where it does, feels like a waste not just because of how predictable its beats are, but because it ends just when it feels like it’s getting interesting.

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‘Voyagers’ Review: Colin Farrell Chaperones a YA Thriller That Re-Stages ‘Lord of the Flies’ in Space

David ehrlich.

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Neil Burger only directed the first installment of the ill-fated “Divergent” series before moving on to more lucrative problems (“Billions,” “The Upside”), but his latest film — a self-generated story that re-stages “Lord of the Flies” on a cramped spaceship full of horny teens — suggests an enduring fascination with the same kind of YA futurism that was all the rage back when Lionsgate was hoping to make Beatrice Prior into the next Katniss Everdeen. Between its dystopian overtures, antiseptic white sets, and diverse-ish cast of talented young actors forced to subsume their colorful screen personas into embryonic characters whose dialogue is limited to lines like “what does it feel like to feel something?,” “ Voyagers ” may chart an 86-year course across the galaxy but it certainly doesn’t take viewers anywhere they haven’t already been.

For better or worse, Burger knows it doesn’t have to. The middling but enjoyable “Voyagers” is meant to be a timeless parable about the primitive essence of human nature; if its space-age shenanigans are broadly identical to the beats of a book William Golding wrote about a group of preadolescent boys who crash on a deserted island during World War II, that’s more of a feature than it is a bug. It doesn’t excuse the script for being a universe wide and an inch deep, or let Burger off the hook for telling a story about chaos that follows the cleanest possible route to its predetermined destination, but it does make it easier to appreciate “Voyagers” for the bolder choices that it makes along the way.

Choices like assigning its young space cadets a chaperone played by Colin Farrell. The year is 2063, and — surprise, surprise — Earth isn’t doing so great. It turns out that denying the reality of climate change didn’t make the problem go away, and now humanity has to find a new rock to call home. The good news is that we’ve found one; the bad news is that it will take almost a full century for our scouting vessel to reach the distant planet and determine its viability. The solution: we’ll create a genetically engineered fleet of gifted children (the offspring of MIT scientists and Nobel laureates) whose sole purpose in life will be to repopulate aboard the Humanitas so that their grandkids will one day be alive to touch down in the new world.

“Voyagers” is never more engaging than when it confronts the underlying truth of this grim mission: We all inherited the same one. We’re all hurtling through space and wrestling with our directives as we chart a course towards a future we’ll never live to see, the only difference is that we have the luxury of being distracted from the task at hand.

Farrell plays Richard, a scientist and sad-eyed father figure whose job is to make sure that these star children keep their eyes on the prize. Implausibly (yet now undeniably) one of the best actors in the Milky Way, Farrell has been known to show off his soft underbelly when the mood strikes, but he’s never been quite as sweet or tender as he is here in the role of a man who volunteers to lead all 30 of his step-kids into the void. All parents ask themselves why they brought their children into this world; the pained wrinkle Richard wears on his face is that of someone who’s cursed to know the answer. Also maybe that of someone who’s cursed to single-handedly supervise 30 pre-adolescents at an intergalactic daycare until he dies.

Fortunately for Richard — and unfortunately for the dramatic intrigue of the film around him — everyone aboard the Humanitas is made docile by the blue space drink they take every day. They just don’t know that yet. The ultra-obedient kids mature into ultra-obedient young adults who are happy enough to live like lab rats, wear sexless blue uniforms, and keep their minds on the mission and off of each other… even though Burger’s photogenic cast seems less like the progeny of scientists and Nobel laureates and more like the progeny of hot actors and even hotter actors. Alas, shit goes sideways in a hurry once the blandly virtuous Christopher ( Tye Sheridan , his face morphing into Sidney Crosby) and the blandly malevolent Zac (“Dunkirk” lead Fionn Whitehead , here given actual dialogue) discover what’s in the water and decide to rebel. Sorry for wanting to keep a bunch of hormonal teenagers from getting handsy and overpopulating the ship that’s entrusted with saving the human race, you guys.

You know what happens from there. One minute the boys are looking at the comely Sela (a stoic Lily-Rose Depp ) as if they’ve never seen her before, and the next they’re screaming the deep space equivalent of “kill the pig!” as they hunt each other to death through the ship’s corridors. Burger assembles a smart and eclectic group of super promising young actors — the supporting cast includes “Blinded by the Light” breakout Viveik Kalra, “Game of Thrones” survivor Isaac Hempstead Wright, “Roxanne Roxanne” star Chanté Adams, and Disney Channel graduate Madison Hu — but none of them are given much to do beyond picking sides and providing a fragile sense of community.

Whitehead sharpens Zac into a dangerous shiv of unchecked id, but “Voyagers” is often rendered inert by the same tabula rasa tenor that inspired this project. For all of the patience and fatalistic grace that Burger mines from the initial half of the film, there’s something inherently dull about watching grown-ish people cycle through our most primitive emotions for the first time, and Burger veers off course by positioning the blunt forces of lust and rage as spectacles unto themselves rather than as means to an end. (At one point, the characters watch a montage of animalistic behavior that peaks with a clip from “The Cabin in the Woods.”)

The script is peppered with all of the expected lip-service about reason and compromise — about the tenuous balance between identity and groupthink in a moral vacuum where everyone dies at the end of the day — but “Voyagers” is far more interested in the first stirrings of feeling than it is exploring how civilization depends on taming our true nature. The predictability inherent to any honest “Lord of the Flies” riff becomes a problem in a movie that’s literally on auto-pilot, if only because “Voyagers” is as enamored by its discoveries as the characters are themselves, and races through their consequences with all the nuance of a story that needs to clean up the entire mess of human nature in the span of a single action sequence.

And yet any old story being retold by virtue of a new setting is going to live or die on the strength of that setting, and that’s where “Voyagers” delivers the goods. Production designer Scott Chambliss hasn’t taken a radical approach to the look of the Humanitas — it’s the kind of spaceship Jony Ive might create, all clean lines and smooth plastics — but the utopian vibe offers an effective counterpoint to the anarchy that soon floods the hallways. Cinematographer Enrique Chediak shoots the action with an inventive streak that plays up the “mouse in a maze” of it all, as his camera rig speeds along the ceiling in pursuit of characters who are suddenly realizing how little space they have to live. If only the rest of this destination-oriented thriller were as thoughtful about the journey required to get there.

Lionsgate will release “Voyagers” in theaters on Friday, April 9.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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Set in the near future, the film chronicles the odyssey of 30 young men and women who are sent deep into space on a multi-generational mission in search of a new home. The mission descends into madness, as the crew reverts to its most primal state, not knowing if the real threat they face is what's outside the ship or who they're becoming inside it.

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Product Description

With the future of the human race in danger, a group of young men and women, bred for enhanced intelligence and to suppress emotional impulses, embark on an expedition to colonize a distant planet. But when they uncover disturbing secrets about the mission, they defy their training and begin to explore their most primitive natures. As life on the ship descends into chaos, they're consumed by fear, lust, and the hunger for power. VOYAGERS is a euphoric thriller about the explosive awakening of our most primal desires.

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MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.53 x 5.32 x 0.55 inches; 1.76 ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Neil Burger
Media Format ‏ : ‎ NTSC, Subtitled
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 48 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ June 15, 2021
Actors ‏ : ‎ Colin Farrell, Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, Viveik Kalra
Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ Spanish
Producers ‏ : ‎ Neil Burger, Greg Shapiro, Basil Iwanyk, Stuart Ford, Brendon Boyea
Studio ‏ : ‎ Lionsgate Home Entertainment
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0914VR3TS
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
#35,021 in DVD

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Voyagers review: Lord of the Flies in space is full of mystery

By Gregory Wakeman

29 June 2021

Lily-Rose Depp stars as Sela

Courtesy of Lionsgate

Voyagers opens in the year 2063 with Earth on the brink of destruction due to climate change . After discovering a new planet 86 years away, scientists have genetically engineered children , raised them in isolation and sent them to this distant world so that their offspring will ultimately colonise it and save humanity.

Ten years into their journey, the children start to question their lives onboard the spaceship Humanitas when Christopher (Tye Sheridan) discovers that they are being drugged to suppress their personalities. Mission commander Richard (Colin Farrell) originally tries to squash their concerns, but the teenagers on board begin to reject their docile existence.

During this period, Voyagers showcases plenty of potential. Writer and director Neil Burger, who showed he is a dab hand at overseeing young adult stories and sci-fi films with Divergent , doesn’t get bogged down in the detail of why they are leaving Earth. Instead, he sets this up in a succinct and expert fashion, as well as teasing the psychological struggles that the teenagers will go on to confront.

Voyagers has an impressive young cast that is able to realistically depict these issues, too. Sheridan, Fionn Whitehead and Lily-Rose Depp become more and more convincing as their characters turn from passive passengers to increasingly intrigued individuals.

Throughout, Burger adds to the sci-fi thriller’s sense of foreboding and mystery. Cinematographer Enrique Chediak’s eerie visuals and production designer Scott Chambliss’s sleek but claustrophobic set also enhance this ambience, while Burger incorporates moments of cinematic flair that suggest Voyagers might actually build to something that is both epic and resonant.

It doesn’t take long for the film to falter, though. All of the thematic possibilities that Voyagers flirted with exploring dissipate away, replaced by a predictable plot that is reminiscent of dozens of stories told before it. In fact, as it progresses, the film begins to play out like a carbon copy of William Golding’s seminal 1954 novel Lord of the Flies . Minus the gravity.

Even though it continues to look pretty, there is a complete lack of depth, tension and surprise. Voyagers merely plods along exactly as you expected, while its haunting aesthetic and premise vanish from the film like air leaving a deflating balloon.

At least the performances remain strong, as the actors gallantly try their best to inject some much needed energy and heart into the proceedings. But the the dearth of characterisation leaves Voyagers feeling hollow.

Its final act in particular is especially gruelling to watch. Burger tries to ramp up the action and spectacle, but by this point you will have long given up caring for any of the characters involved, let alone whether they will be able to save humanity from extinction.

Voyagers is released in the UK on 2 July.

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Voyagers Ending, Explained: What Happens to Sela and Christopher?

Neil Burger’s hefty portfolio of features might include the likes of a few you’ve seen or perhaps heard of. However, each feature is as memorable as it gets. From 2002’s ‘Interview With The Assassin’, to his ever popular ‘ Divergent ’, Burger has paved the way for like-minded filmmakers to explore nuances that drift away from the typical.

One such sci-fi feature is 2021’s Voyagers ,’ a film that tells the tale of Earth’s inevitable demise and the journey of a future generation to a planet that will serve as its successor. The journey is stricken with mishaps and challenges as the crew navigates not only the vastness of space but also the complexity of human nature. What happens when they have to experience all that in the close quarters of the ship? SPOILERS AHEAD

Voyagers Plot Synopsis

The Earth is ravaged by heat and drought. Humanity’s only hope is to find Earth’s successor, a planet that could be colonized by the future generations of the planet. Scientists find this planet in the year 2063. The journey to the planet will take 86 years, and hence, only the first crew’s grandchildren will be able to set foot on the planet. Richard Alling, played by Colin Farrell, is the lead scientist on the mission. The crew is trained in isolation to survive the confines of the ship.

The crew is bred through IVF and, at a young age, are launched within a ship to their destined planet. After a decade of being onboard crew members, Christopher and Zac discover that “the blue” they’ve been consuming is actually a drug that suppresses their pleasure response and sex drive, keeping them docile and manageable.

Both Christopher and Zac stop taking the chemical. The duo begins feeling a resurgence of adolescent hormones. Their pleasure response has also seemingly been reactivated. Soon, others also stop consuming the blue chemical. Raging hormones aboard the confines of the ship spell a recipe for disaster as the young men and women give into their most primal urges. The film explores many themes, such as adolescence, hierarchy, a lust for power, and the importance of human communication.

Voyagers Ending: Does the Alien Really Exist?

While the existence of the alien could have been an intriguing turn of events in the film, the alien does not exist. Here’s what we know about the alien. Over the course of time, the crewmates begin to hear strange noises on the ship. Nothing peculiar comes up when they check the surveillance systems onboard. Upon asking Richard about these noises and what they could be, he explains that it’s just the ship contracting due to negative temperatures. The crewmates, particularly Zac and Christopher, already know that they’re being drugged by consuming the Blue. Hence, they do not trust Richard’s explanation even in the slightest.

Curious to know what’s really happening, they begin hypothesizing possibilities. After hearing the noises again, Christopher and Zac go to the main surveillance room. Edward is stationed there and is also curious to know where these noises are coming from. While Christopher believes there’s a logical reason for it, Zac thinks there might be an external force at hand. Edward additionally hypothesizes that if the planet they’re going to has life, then there is a possibility of it existing out in space where the ship is.

This essentially plants a seed in Zac’s mind. He begins to believe that it could very well be alien life that’s making sounds somewhere within the ship. As the movie progresses, a malfunction in the communication systems outside the ship prompts Richard, accompanied by Christopher, to conduct a check-up. During the checkup, a bizarre energy is seen attacking Richard, which results in his death. At this time, the surveillance systems picked up something strange before corrupting its files. The only person to witness these events is Edward. He describes it as an entity or force that consumed Richard until he was unresponsive.

While others might have taken this information with a grain of salt, Zac had no trouble accepting it. As the story progresses, Christopher is elected as Chief Officer and is tasked with overseeing all the operations on the ship. This doesn’t sit well with Zac, as he believes he is a better fit. After convincing others to stop taking the Blue liquid, Zac forms his own group, rebelling against Christopher.

Zac has now fully embraced the idea that the alien exists and that it killed Richard. Christopher and Sela, on the other hand, do not believe in it. They set out in search of any missing surveillance footage of the incident, believed to be lost. Christopher, Sela, and others stumble upon footage of Kai in a control room operating an external instrument that he was assigned. With him is Zac, enraged by Richard’s decision to opt for Christopher instead of him.

Kai suggests to “Give him a little zap for his trouble…” indicating that the external equipment they’re handling could be manipulated to cause injuries. Within the footage, the same noises can be heard, but Zac dismisses it, saying it’s just noises from the ship. With this, Sela, Christopher, and others realize that Zac has been faking it all along. He sold this idea to the rest of the crew, claiming he could protect them from this alien.

As the footage plays out, Zac is seen manipulating the electricity surge to the external equipment, gradually increasing it. He does this until the surge is at its maximum, electrocuting Richard. The Surge also damages many other systems aboard the ship. Christopher, Sela, and the others now have firm proof that Zac was the one who killed Richard and doesn’t believe in the alien. They back the footage up in a memory drive and hide it so no one tampers with it.

They use the opportunity to play the footage on a display in the dining room, where everyone meets for meals. Christopher plays the footage and explains to the rest of the crew that Zac is the origin of all the issues. Even after the footage is shown, Zac seemingly convinces his group that the alien could be anywhere, and he wants to protect them from it. To prove his point, he randomly selects crewmate Peter and begins interrogating him on the spot. He says that Peter has the alien in him and that he should be killed.

Zac’s group needs little to no convincing of this. They chase him down and brutally beat Peter to death. Christopher, trying to stop them, also gets hurt in the process. The group realizes what they have done, but Kai persuades them they did the right thing. Directly from the story, we get a clear image of how power-hungry Zac really is. He is equipped and ready to fabricate any story that will keep him on top. He even goes to the extent of killing Richard.

The alien is nothing but a mere made-up story driven by its mysterious setting and unsettled listeners. It all began when Edward initiated the possibility of it being an external influence to Zac, using the story for his power-hungry needs. He actually didn’t even need to convince the rest of the crew; the noises helped him without trying. It just goes to show how gullible people can be within a herd mentality. In this setting, the alien is really Zac’s lust for power; although intangible, it can become a reality if the need for it is larger than life.

What Was in the Secret Compartment of the Ship?

When Christopher figures out the real composition of the Blue, he also stumbles upon another secret that the mission withheld from the crew. Within the bounds of the ship is a secret compartment, Pod-23 , that contains something mysterious. Christopher found the compartment in the ship’s plans. Curious about this, he discloses this information to Zac and some others.

Later on in the film, Christopher and Sela recognize that the compartment actually contains weapons. Sela mentions to Christopher that Richard had provided this information earlier. Hiding from the rest of Zac’s followers, Christopher ventures out searching for this compartment, but to the dismay of his stealth skills, is unable to and leads Zac and his followers straight to it. The weapon’s cache is now in the hands of Zac and his peers, adding even more chaos.

The reason behind the weapons cache existing on the ship is clearly mentioned in the film. The mission integrated the weapons into the ship, only to be used by the generation that reached the planet. They would use these weapons for self-defense if they encountered any threat on the planet. After all, it is imperative for the crew of the ship to survive on the planet if they are meant to colonize it. Therefore, having weapons is a must.

The secret compartment helps us understand how intelligent the crew members really are. Anything that is kept secret will eventually be unearthed, especially when confined to a particular space, which in this case is the ship. It paints a picture of adolescent curiosity, something that can uncover several mysteries if it wants to. Human ingenuity knows no bounds, and considering the crew members are genetically enhanced for their intellect, it would be concerning if they didn’t find the cache.

Purely from a narrative perspective, the weapons play a vital role in storytelling. Without the guns, the intensity and thrill displayed towards the end of the film would not exist. In the hands of these young adults, the weapons are a symbol of power. Others would fear them because they possess it. This is precisely what Zac wanted: power, and he got even more of it with the weapons. Zac tells his peers that he’ll protect them from the alien, and with the acquisition of the weapons, Zac can carry out his claims.

The secret compartment of weapons isn’t just there to add a feature to the narrative. It has systematically been placed by the writers to help its viewers understand the scenario onboard the ship. It is a symbol of intelligence, power, fear, and hatred, traits that readily appear in the film.

Are Sela and Christopher Alive at the End?

Details about Sela and Christopher dwindle towards the end of the film after the birth of their children. While it is unknown whether they survived the journey in its entirety, from a purely cinematic perspective, this could be plausible. The odds aren’t necessarily in their favor. To understand if they survived, we must know how old they could be at the end of the film.

Using the information provided at the beginning of the film, it is assumed that the children were conceived right after the exoplanet was found. We can confirm from the movie itself that it is an exoplanet, as displayed during the initial presentation by the mission director at the start of the film. The chart indicates that the spacecraft will be traveling to Alpha Centauri, which in reality is the nearest solar system from ours, about four light-years away.

Using the information provided in the film, the children were conceived right after the exoplanet was found. This means the children are born approximately one year after the planet was found in 2063. If the children were born in 2064, they were launched within Humanitas (the spacecraft) only during their pre-teen years, ages 9 to 12. If the average age of the children is nine years, they were launched into space in 2073.

After the 10-year jump, Sela and Christopher are 19 years old. While most of the film is accompanied by suitable answers, time-frames have fallen short. Information about the time frame between Richard’s death and Sela becoming Chief Officer is quite foggy. However, if the time frame lies between a few months to a year, Sela and Christopher could have given birth to their child at the age of 21.

If they stuck to the designated age provided by the rules of the mission of 24 years, it would alter the trajectory of their ages. Sela would have ample time to re-adjust the state of affairs onboard the ship and bring consensus and peace among the crew after the events that took place when they were 19. Sticking to this route, Sela would give birth to her child at the age of 24, 15 years after the launch of the mission.

If the crew sticks to the same pattern, then Sela’s children will also give birth at the age of 24. Sela would be 48 years old during the birth of her grandchildren, 39 years into their journey. Gen 1 would give birth to Gen 2 at the age of 24; Gen 2 would give birth to Gen 3 when Gen 1 is 48 years. Sela and Christopher would need to survive another 47 years before landing on the exoplanet at the age of 95.

The average life expectancy worldwide is around 73.4 years, which means Sela and Christopher would be in a minimal percentage of people who live to the age of 95. According to other academic records, the centenarian (people who are 100 years old and above) percentage around the world is around 0.017%. This could indicate that Sela and Christopher have a very minute chance of living that long, irrespective of other conditions.

Voyagers Review: Lord Of The Flies In Space Never Leaves Its Orbit

The Commercial Space Age is seemingly before us, as we’re slowly seeing an exploration of exciting journeys out of Earth’s atmosphere. Neil Burger ’s Voyagers challenges the freedom that Star Trek or Star Wars often depict when traveling among the stars. This science fiction thriller imagines the long jaunt of a group of children raised in space – doomed to spend their whole lives on their way to a destination on another world. Although it serves as an interesting thought experiment, the movie's most burning question in its space expedition is simply a sullen, “Are we there yet?”

Voyagers establishes a world where a hospitable planet away from Earth has been discovered, but it takes 86 years for its crew to arrive. In order to start a colony of humans on this new world, a crew of 30 children are placed aboard a mission to grow up together and procreate in hopes that their children will eventually arrive safely and settle. The movie follows the crew as young adults when one discovers that they’ve been given a drug that suppresses their ability to truly feel human their whole lives, and a Lord of the Flies scenario ensues.

Voyagers has a solid, immersive concept... until it cuts the cord.

Neil Burger is a solid filmmaker to bring a science-fiction concept such as Voyagers to life. The writer/director memorably made 2011’s Limitless , which conversely explores a drug that opens up an expansive world to Bradley Cooper ’s leading character. Burger also successfully played around with YA dystopia with 2014’s Divergent . Voyagers feels like a bit of a remix of these two films, but unfortunately does not take its concept across that line that previous sci-fi films of its kind have dared to go.

The first half of Voyagers is well executed. The cinematography is stylistic and successfully envelopes the audience in the spaceship these 30 kids grew up on. The heart of the film feels carried in Colin Farrell ’s character, who is the only human on the crew who was not born on the ship. It’s interesting to understand the mission through his eyes, as Farrell bonds with the rest of the crew as he explains to them about how their existence will usher in generations of life, even though their own lives must be suppressed to living on a ship with the same routine day-to-day.

Voyagers is less of a science fiction action-adventure, and more so a claustrophobic thriller and introspective piece on how a group of young adults may react to its premise. The two concepts that end up being discussed here are whether one should suffer today to benefit future generations, or go prioritize self-focused autonomy – which some members of the crew start to adopt as they challenge both their upbringings and mission. But when Voyagers enters its second half it becomes more of a tired arguing match than an intriguing commentary.

The talented Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp are not given enough to work with.

The two actors that seek to anchor Voyagers are Tye Sheridan ( Ready Player One, X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Lily-Rose Depp ( The King , Yoga Hosers ). They each offer solid performances on their own, along with Fionn Whitehead ( Dunkirk , Black Mirror: Bandersnatch ). The chemistry is overall thin and it feels as though they were restrained by the content of the script. Voyagers is basically about a group of young people who lack personality because they have been shielded from culture and pleasure and with that it becomes difficult to empathize with them.

There absolutely could have been a version of Voyagers that explored its concept and allowed room to show off complex and interesting characters, but the movie is so focused on being plot driven that it doesn't have that capacity.

Voyagers is a sci-fi film that is much too safe and confining to satisfy.

Voyagers also misses the mark on exploring the euphoria of these young people learning about their sexual desires for the first time. The movie’s use of sexuality ends up being disappointing because it's more so explored in a predatory, empty kind of way. Overall, the movie glosses over one of the most intriguing aspects sparked throughout the film, and when the crew has the chance to dive deeper into its characters it stays on the surface.

Despite its character flaws, the movie does manage to be entertaining to some degree. It takes an old school science fiction approach that calls for performance over big effects or expertly-choreographed action sequences. A studio film going for a more intimate, dramatic approach for this genre of film is rare, but there’s just not enough appeal on an intellectual or thematic level to engage the viewer with this approach. Voyagers is overall disappointing, but is not without some heart and allure.

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.

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Voyagers (2021)

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A crew of astronauts on a multi-generational mission descend into paranoia and madness, not knowing what is real or not. Starring Colin Farrell and Tye Sheriden.

Voyagers Review: A Gen Z Lord of the Flies in Space

A young crew breaks down into factions on a journey to a distant planet in Voyagers, starring Lily-Rose Depp, Tye Sheridan and Colin Farrell.

Voyagers Trailer Embarks on a Chaotic Space Mission with Lily-Rose Depp & Colin Farrell

Voyagers follows a multi-generational space mission gone anarchic, as the men and women aboard the odyssey begin to fall prey to their primal instincts.

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Formulaic, soapy teen space drama has lust, sex, violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Promotes teamwork, courage, perseverance. Story re

Richard cares about the kids and the mission. He w

At least five characters die in various ways. Thre

Discussion of how a drug suppresses sexual desire

"Liar," "have you all gone crazy?," "fat pus-fille

The teens take a vitamin supplement that's actuall

Positive Messages

Promotes teamwork, courage, perseverance. Story reveals importance of impulse control, collaboration, and honesty.

Positive Role Models

Richard cares about the kids and the mission. He willingly leaves Earth to accompany them on their mission, even though he knows he'll die on it. Sela is intelligent and kind. Christopher is brave, wants everyone to work together. Zac acts like a hedonist and sociopath who believes everyone should do whatever they want. Although supporting cast is diverse, main characters are White and heterosexual. The only prescient voice of reason is a young Black woman who's repeatedly told to shut up (and called fat because she's 10 pounds heavier than all of the other supermodel-thin young women).

Violence & Scariness

At least five characters die in various ways. Three are killed by weapons or by being brutally beaten (a bloody, dead body is visible). One is kicked out of the ship after a prolonged fight. A few frenzied chases by armed characters looking for unarmed characters. In a flashback, a character's death is revealed not to be accidental. A young man sexually assaults (gropes above her clothes) a young woman.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Discussion of how a drug suppresses sexual desire and pleasure. When young adults stop taking their hormone suppressants, they start having bolts of lust and desire, depicted by quick images of women and men touching and kissing. Two young men look at the same young woman longingly, with one staring at her neck, her face, etc. Once others stop taking the drug, there's lots of flirting, touching, sex. One quick glimpse shows a couple having sex standing up in a semi-public place; in other scenes, there's implied sex (a couple makes out in bed and next morning is shown wearing just underwear; a bunch of semi-clothed people are shown on a bed together, touching; a few different couples kiss passionately). Some characters hang out shirtless (males) or in bras.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Liar," "have you all gone crazy?," "fat pus-filled face," "genetic defect," "shut up."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The teens take a vitamin supplement that's actually a drug that suppresses hormones and stabilizes mood/behavior. The medical officer injects someone to incapacitate them.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Voyagers is a sci-fi thriller about a group of 30 children-turned-teens who are on a one-way space mission to find a potentially habitable planet for humans to colonize. The movie, which has been compared to everything from Lord of the Flies to The 100 , stars Colin Farrell as the one adult aboard the spaceship; the rest of the starring cast is young-adult actors like Tye Sheridan , Fionn Whitehead , and Lily-Rose Depp . There's a fair bit of non-graphic sex and romance involved, as well as violence after the teens stop taking hormone-suppressing, mood-stabilizing drugs disguised as vitamin supplements. Some scenes get quite dark, with moments ranging from a woman's body being groped to the disturbing deaths of at least four young people at others' hands. Language is very mild ("shut up," "liar," "shut your fat face"), and there's no iffy substance use. While the supporting cast is diverse, the main characters are White, and a young Black woman who's the only voice of reason is repeatedly told to shut up. Families with teens can discuss the concept of nature vs. nurture, as well as the movie's messages about the importance of impulse control, collaboration, and honesty. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Lord of the Flies is much better, spend your time reading that instead - meh, movie is a solid meh

What's the story.

VOYAGERS is writer-director Neil Burger's sci-fi space opera about a near future in which Earth has become increasingly uninhabitable. The world's scientists find a possible solution: a planet that could be habitable by humans. It will take 86 years -- three generations -- to arrive there, so a group of specifically bred babies is brought up indoors to make up the crew of 30 students who will begin the mission. Scientist Richard ( Colin Farrell ) offers to accompany the children, who are 8 when they take off. Ten years later, Christopher ( Tye Sheridan ), one of the brilliant now-18-year-olds, discovers that a daily "vitamin supplement" they've all been ingesting is actually a hormone suppressant and mood stabilizer. Christopher and his best friend, Zac ( Fionn Whitehead ), decide to stop taking the daily supplement and have a nearly instantaneous awakening to feelings of lust, jealousy, competition, and aggression. The sudden influx of hormones coupled with a tragedy creates a toxic, divisive environment for the newly "liberated" teens onboard.

Is It Any Good?

Neil Burger's sci-fi thriller would have been a better series than this slick but underwhelming (and predictable) teen flick. Like Lord of the Flies meets The 100 in space, Voyagers ' plot starts off promisingly, even though audiences will have questions after it's revealed that the children were initially expected to be on the ship by themselves, without an adult present. From there, viewers may wonder how the brightest minds in the world ever thought that filling a ship with unsupervised tweens and teens would lead to anything but mayhem. Plot roadblocks aside, however, Sheridan does a good job as an older teen who starts to question what mission control -- and, by extension, Richard -- has told them all about the drug that's being forced upon them. Farrell does his best to be a father figure and leader, but never underestimate the power of the teen libido, Burger seems to say. What's slightly laughable is that on a ship full of attractive, diverse young people, both Christopher and Zac (who are both White) must of course fall for the same White girl -- in this case, medical officer Sela ( Lily-Rose Depp , who doesn't demonstrate much acting range in the role).

The only prescient voice of reason is Phoebe (Chanté Adams), a Black mission specialist who's repeatedly told to shut up (and, ludicrously, is called fat because she's 10 pounds heavier than all of the other supermodel-thin young women). It doesn't take psychic powers to determine early on that she's the Piggy of this group. The movie's cinematography and editing are well executed, and the actors don't have to do much more than act some combination of compliant, scared, aroused -- or, in the case of a couple of the baddies, psychopathic. Whitehead, with his Tom Hiddleston -like cheekbones and narrowed eyes, is well cast as the beautiful but bad villain. If audiences want to see a cast of attractive early 20-something actors in life-threatening and sexy situations, there are far better films than this eye-rollingly formulaic movie.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Voyagers. Is it necessary to the story? Why, or why not?

What do you think the movie's message is about "nature vs. nurture"? Is there any reason to expect that the "gifted" and "brilliant" biological children of world-class scientists, artists, engineers, and so forth are "above" baser behaviors?

How would you characterize the diversity and representation (or lack thereof) in this film? Why is the other characters' treatment of Phoebe especially problematic?

Did you notice the characters demonstrating teamwork , courage , and perseverance ? Why are those important character strengths ?

Discuss the use of a "love triangle" in the movie. Is it effective? Does it make sense? Why do you think so many teen-focused stories feature a love triangle?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 9, 2021
On DVD or streaming : April 30, 2021
Cast : Tye Sheridan , Lily-Rose Depp , Fionn Whitehead
Director : Neil Burger
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Lionsgate
Genre : Science Fiction
Run time : 108 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence, some strong sexuality, bloody images, a sexual assault, and brief strong language
Last updated : March 2, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Voyagers Review: An Imbalanced Morality Tale, In Space

Science fiction, as a genre, has the potential to highlight something indomitable and uplifting in its depiction of the human condition. By telling stories unbound to the weighty tethers of reality, it becomes possible to explore human beings against a broad backdrop, the vast canvas of endless possibility, and in that nebulous realm, reinforce the inherent goodness at the heart of all people. Sure, in film, sci-fi is generally split between blockbuster IP exploitation and the po-faced navel-gazing that comes from learning all the wrong lessons from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey . But that aspirational core is always there.

In a film like Neil Burger's Voyagers , pitched as a sort of Lord of the Flies in space, the director's ultimately inspiring message is sabotaged by his unfortunate, uncanny ability to capture the worst of humanity, even as his entire narrative apparatus is trying to remind the viewer of the opposite. It is a movie with a profound optimism baked into its premise that happens to do a little too good a job of building and presenting obstacles standing in the way of our evolution. So much so, in fact, that by the time the credits roll on its stirring and hopeful finale, it still pales in comparison to the unsettling baseness that comes before it.

Voyagers , like many similar works, is principally concerned with humans' exploration of the stars. Specifically, its launching point is a massive experiment to send a settlement of colonizers to an uninhabited planet to secure a future for our species beyond this dying planet we've already plundered to oblivion. But the journey is so long that the children being sent on the expedition won't ever reach their destination. It's a mission, ultimately, for their grandchildren.

But sending a giant spaceship full of pre-teens into the beyond is risky business. So Richard (Colin Farrell), the scientist and counselor in charge of training and raising these kids, offers a great sacrifice. He chooses to leave his life on Earth behind and follow his students into the stars, allowing the mission to begin a few years early and help guide them through this journey.

One actual adult on a spaceship full of teenagers who've never known life outside a hermetically sealed social experiment. What could possibly go wrong?

In space, no one can hear you go to horny jail...

Once some years have passed and the mission has begun in earnest, one would be forgiven for expecting Voyagers to contort itself to the accepted strictures of the young adult novel adaptation formula. Yes, the film is based on an original screenplay from Burger, but these days if a studio greenlights a movie with a bunch of pretty young people and a high concept, it's expected that film will fall into certain recognizable patterns.

But Voyagers leverages those expectations for its central conflict, presenting the petty dramas that make up most human interpersonal interactions as the primary hurdle halting progress.

For the most part, the crew works together seamlessly, like a military unit full of scientists, engineers and technicians, all answering to Richard, who is there for moral support and guidance as well as being the ship's chief officer. But Richard has taught his students a little too well, allowing them to perceive the outer edges of their world's walls. Namely, mysterious hidden compartments in the ship's blueprints purposely hidden from its current inhabitants (saved, specifically, for the third generation to come) and the haunting revelation that the blue drink that comes standard with their meals is drugging them and keeping them docile.

The three leading figures of the crew form a tortured kind of love triangle at the film's core, central to these discoveries. There's Sela (Lily-Rose Depp), the sensible and reserved medical officer Richard confides in as the only one of the kids he deems emotionally mature enough to treat as a friend. But on either side of her, there's Chris (Tye Sheridan) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead), two close friends whose dueling reactions to the news they're being quietly controlled by the program sets the film's primary conflict into motion.

The truth forces a schism between Chris and Richard, as the once loyal and unquestioning student begins to question the mission and his place within it. But Zac is the one more affected, on a disturbing and primal level. The drug in the blue drink suppresses revolutionary thought, muting the kids' ability to question authority, but it also works as chemical castration. In keeping a ship full of teenagers' respective libidos in check, it becomes considerably easier to keep them focused on the task at hand rather than the soap opera havoc their raging hormones might wreak on a less ponderous YA story's narrative.

So when Chris, Zac, and others start refusing to drink the blue, years of repressed emotions and urges come to the fore, fomenting conflict where there once was none. What starts as the kids electroshocking one another for a cheap rush quickly devolves into wonton lust seeping into every corridor of the ship. Before long, an untimely tragedy creates a power vacuum among the crew, just as conjecture about an alien presence on the ship thrusts the delicate experiment into catastrophic upheaval.

A little too convincing

The many references to William Golding's Lord of the Flies in the film's promotional material prove more than apt. In interviews explaining the inspiration behind the film, writer/director Burger has said that the image that bore this particular fruit in his mind was the idea of a rabid pack of youth hunting one of their own through the halls of a ship. True to form, as the shaky social bonds within the mission's structure begin to fracture, that haunting image comes to life.

But while that spark of imagination may suggest Voyagers is a stark and fatalist exercise, it's quite the opposite. Burger positions the main thrust of the story, the chaotic reign that arises out of the turmoil and division from the second act's startling revelations, as merely the temptation blocking humanity from prosperity, an irascible weakness we have always been strong enough to overcome, no matter the circumstances.

The problem is that Burger's execution of portraying humanity's weakness far exceeds his attempts at lionizing its strength.

The diverse cast of youths, featuring the aforementioned stars as well as figures like Chanté Adams, Quintessa Swindell, and Isaac Hempstead Wright, provide a ton of strong work, but none of the performances possess the raw energy of Whitehead's Zac, the film's lecherous antagonist. Whitehead, who many viewers may know from Dunkirk or the "Bandersnatch" episode of Black Mirror , delivers such a disturbing portrait of man's destructive id run amok that he singularly sells the idea that society is ultimately doomed to fail, regardless of circumstance or setting.

In Zac, Burger presents a haunting demagogue who transforms his own hubris and bitterness at being rejected by Sela into the kind of toxic charisma that turns cowards into surprisingly effective supervillains. As his "candy for breakfast" style platform, supplemented by Red Scare tactics and fear-mongering, give him control of the ship, none of the other cast members on the side of the angels provide a sufficiently compelling counterpoint to his madness.

But with Chris, Sheridan doubles down on the clean-cut boyishness that made him such a good Scott Summers in X-Men: Apocalypse , only with the added benefit of more experience and a better screenplay to work from. But he never once feels like a believable counterpoint to his former friends' antics. In fact, the best thing about his performance is the way he telegraphs the knowledge that deep down, he knows he's only nominally more honorable than Zac.

That leads Depp's Sela to pull up the rear, which she attempts to do with aplomb, but the character remains an underwritten and simplified figure in a story rife with complexity and nuance. Really, it's Farrell's work, turning in the softest, most sincere work of his career, that should set the balance. Amid the din of horned-up youngsters letting their loins make all the decisions, his reassuring father figure provides a great deal of needed gravitas to the proceedings.

But even once the allegorical conflict has been resolved and Burger rockets the timeline far enough in the future to offer a calming response to the film's many depressing questions, it feels too much like a saccharine and unearned conclusion. By the time that heartwarming closing note plays, the audience has been listening to a dark tune far too catchy to drown out with a ballad's half-time chorus.

Voyagers wants the viewer to believe humans will find a way off this planet and make right with a civilization do-over, despite all the evidence of reality — and the bulk of the film itself — to the contrary.

NASA’s Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problem

DALLAS (AP) — NASA’s Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is sending science data again.

Voyager 1’s four instruments are back in business after a computer problem in November, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this week. The team first received meaningful information again from Voyager 1 in April, and recently commanded it to start studying its environment again.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is drifting through interstellar space, or the space between star systems. Before reaching this region, the spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are designed to collect information about plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles.

Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 kilometers) miles away.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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1 voyager episode hilariously poked fun at star trek’s holodeck problem.

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

1 of star trek: voyager’s best episodes was saved by rick berman, ncis' new spinoff can finally return this 1 character to the franchise after 19 years.

Voyager season 3 mocked Star Trek's repetitive holodeck programs.
The season 3 episode "Worst Case Scenario" made fun of typical holodeck tropes while also subverting them.
Despite "Worst Case Scenario," Voyager continued using uninspired holodeck plots throughout its run.

Star Trek: Voyager season 3 cleverly made fun of a systemic problem the franchise has with holodeck episodes. Like some other Star Trek TV shows , Voyager season 3 was in many ways the beginning of a turning point for the show , where better quality episodes began to appear with more frequency than seasons 1 and 2. Especially toward the end of season 3, when Voyager was moving towards some big shifts at the start of season 4, the season picked up momentum, delivering several great episodes in a row.

One of these episodes, Voyager season 3, episode 25, "Worst Case Scenario," included a holodeck-centric storyline. The episode's plot revolved around a holonovel about a mutiny by Voyager 's Maquis crew members written by Tuvok (Tim Russ) as a training exercise. When it was revealed that the program was unfinished, Tuvok and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) took it upon themselves to continue it at the crew's request. At the end of the episode, however, Voyager 's cast of characters began suggesting ideas for other holonovels Tuvok and Tom could work on, such as “ a Western ” or “ a detective story. ”

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

Voyager’s “Worst Case Scenario” Made Fun Of How Repetitive Star Trek’s Holodeck Programs Are

Voyager pointed out that star trek doesn't get creative enough with its holodeck programs.

With these two innocuous lines, Voyager cleverly made fun of the limitations that constrain even Star Trek 's best holodeck episodes. Mentioning Western and Detective fiction seems to be an allusion to both the Dixon Hill program and the Western holonovel in “A Fistful Of Datas” from Star Trek: TNG . Including subtle references like this made it seem like Voyager was pointing out the irony that Starfleet officers can program anything they want on the holodeck, but instead often choose from a very limited range of ideas for their entertainment.

Instead of branching out, the franchise chose to stick with exactly what was familiar for the rest of TNG and into DS9 and Voyager.

The scope of what the holodeck can create is supposedly limitless, but characters always choose from very basic tropes , or often a literary take-off like Sherlock Holmes or Jane Eyre . This was started in TNG with the introduction of the holodeck and Star Trek 's first holodeck-centric episode, "The Big Goodbye." However, instead of branching out, the franchise chose to stick with exactly what was familiar for the rest of TNG and into DS9 and Voyager . Although DS9 occasionally used their holosuites a little differently, Voyager certainly continued the trend in many of its episodes.

How Voyager Subverted Star Trek's Usual Holodeck Tropes In “Worst Case Scenario”

"worst case scenario" was a different kind of holodeck episode.

Interestingly, however, "Worst Case Scenario" is a subversion of the usual holodeck tropes. A holonovel about Voyager 's crew is already different from the norm, as other shows generally used the holodeck to put characters in fantastical settings. Likewise, a program that directly pits the show's characters against each other was an even more unique idea . It was also realistically something only Voyager could do given that half the crew was former Maquis. Other Starfleet officers would have no reason to mutiny against each other, but Voyager 's tenuous Maquis-Starfleet relations were a hallmark of the show's early seasons.

Unfortunately, "Worst Case Scenario" proved to be the exception rather than the rule, and Star Trek: Voyager continued to use its holodeck in the same, uninspired vein for the rest of its run. Additionally, since the series ended in the early 2000s, there have been hardly any holodeck-related episodes in other franchise projects, providing Star Trek with no chance to break the mold . Hopefully, future projects, especially ones set in the far future established by Star Trek: Discovery , can provide opportunities to switch up the usual holodeck formula.

Star Trek: Voyager

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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.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation is the third installment in the sci-fi franchise and follows the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew members of the USS Enterprise. Set around one hundred years after the original series, Picard and his crew travel through the galaxy in largely self-contained episodes exploring the crew dynamics and their own political discourse. The series also had several overarching plots that would develop over the course of the isolated episodes, with four films released in tandem with the series to further some of these story elements.

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Wreckage of Shackleton’s Last Ship Is Found Off Coast of Canada

Ernest Shackleton was sailing for Antarctica on the ship, called the Quest, when he died in 1922. Researchers exulted over the discovery of its wreckage, 62 years after it sank in the Labrador Sea.

A grainy black-and-white photo showing a boat as it sinks. The front of the white, wood boat remains momentarily afloat while the back of the boat is submerged.

By Hank Sanders

Endurance, the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated attempt to cross Antarctica in 1915, spawned one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration and now holds a revered place in polar history.

The discovery of its wreckage at the bottom of the Weddell Sea in 2022 put Shackleton back in the spotlight and rekindled interest in finding a lesser-known vessel, the Quest, which was carrying him back to Antarctica when he had a heart attack and died in 1922. The Quest sailed on for another 40 years until it sank on a seal-hunting voyage off Canada’s Atlantic coast in 1962.

On June 9, John Geiger, the leader of an expedition to find the Quest, saw an unusual shape pop up on his boat’s sonar detection screen as his research vessel floated off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. He knew almost immediately that a final discovery in the life of one of history’s most revered explorers had been made.

“This is the last big Shackleton event,” Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaughter, said in an interview, referring to the discovery of the Quest. “There won’t be anything else as important as this.”

The expedition to find the Quest was led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, an educational charity of which Mr. Geiger is the chief executive, and cost 500,000 Canadian dollars, or about $365,000, according to a spokeswoman for the society. The Quest was the last missing artifact from the “heroic age of Arctic exploration,” said Martin Brooks, a Shackleton expert and the chief executive of Shackleton, an outdoor apparel company that offers trips that follow the explorer’s journeys.

But the Quest’s discovery didn’t come easily for the 23 voyagers who took part in the expedition to find it. The crew battled treacherous conditions, including dense fog and malfunctioning equipment, after they left the port of St. John’s on June 5. They scanned the ocean floor with their sonar systems for 17 grueling hours before finding the ship.

“I turned to Shackleton for guidance,” Mr. Geiger said. “One of his defining traits was patience. Being patient and resolute.”

Shackleton is best remembered for what he did to save his crew after Endurance was crushed in pack ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915, causing it to sink and stranding the voyagers on ice plains.

“What followed was a yearlong, almost impossible-to-believe ordeal during which Shackleton displayed the skills that have earned him a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest leaders of all time,” Nathaniel Philbrick wrote in his introduction to “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing.

The sinking of the Endurance, months after the ship became trapped in ice, stranded Shackleton and 27 crew members on ice floes and dashed their hopes of becoming the first to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton led some of his men on a small-boat voyage to the island of South Georgia, where he organized the successful rescue of his remaining crew members.

Two years had passed since Endurance first set sail from England. Although the men were exhausted and dehydrated, Shackleton wrote to his wife , Emily, “Not a life lost, and we have been through hell.”

Mr. Geiger’s patience was eventually rewarded. At around 7 p.m. on June 9, as he watched the sonar monitor in the boat’s research laboratory, Mr. Geiger suddenly saw an odd shape.

“Very quickly you could see it was Quest,” he said in an interview. “The vessel is intact. It’s sitting on its keel, the mast is down, and you can see it on the seafloor.”

Mr. Geiger immediately called all of the crew members into the ship’s laboratory, including David Mearns, a veteran shipwreck hunter, who helped plan the journey.

“They are jumping up and down, they are slapping each other on the back,” Mr. Mearns said in an interview, recalling the crew during the moment of discovery. “They are, like, having this moment of ecstasy.”

When the crew refocused, they spent the next five hours towing their boat’s sonar back and forth over the wreckage, gathering more angles and pictures of it at the bottom of the Labrador Sea. Eventually, the experts aboard were able to definitively declare they had found the Quest.

There are already plans to return to the Labrador Sea later this year to take more images and video footage of the wreck, Mr. Mearns said.

Shackleton was planning to use the Quest to explore a portion of the Antarctic when he died in his cabin on Jan. 5, 1922. The Quest was anchored at the time near South Georgia, the island where he plotted the rescue of Endurance’s crew. For the next four decades, it was used in rescue operations and for exploration, as well as for seal-hunting trips, according to Canadian Geographic . It was on one of those trips on May 5, 1962, when it met a similar fate as the Endurance; it was damaged by ice and sank off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society said. The Quest’s crew members survived.

More than a century after his death aboard the Quest, Shackleton’s journeys continue to enthrall historians and members of the public through popular books, a Harvard Business School course on “resilient leadership” and an upcoming biopic starring Tom Hardy.

Aboard the normally alcohol-free research ship, Mr. Geiger got permission to bring along a few bottles of champagne in case they found the Quest. He kept the bottles a secret from the crew so as not to jinx the journey.

Luckily, Mr. Geiger did not have to keep the secret for long.

“I’ve got to admit,” he said, “that was the sweetest glass of champagne I’ve ever had.”

An earlier version of this article misstated Ernest Shackleton’s destination when he died aboard the Quest. It was the Antarctic, not the Arctic.

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When it comes to kooky, creative thrillers, Shyamalan is practically a brand. Though M. Night is the present precedent for this surname, his daughter Ishana hopes to carry the torch into the next generation, making a name for herself in a similar genre. Based on the book by A.M. Shine, “The Watchers” is Ishana Night Shyamalan ’s directorial debut, a fabled narrative that seesaws between fantastical whimsy and proposed horrific terror with lots of ambition but little finesse.

Mina ( Dakota Fanning ) is a lost soul. A twentysomething American living in Galway, she spends her days working at a pet shop and her nights cosplaying at bars as anyone but herself. When her car breaks down in the middle of a dense, directionless wood, Mina is forced to search for help. As the sun sets and every bird occupying the forest springs into a shrill, hurried flight, she’s left as (seemingly) the only living thing around. The woods become taunting: dark, growling, and with something giving chase. With her car nowhere in sight, Mina begins to run, encountering a small bunker with a woman at the door, Madeleine (Olwen Fouere), who ushers her inside.

Also in this bunker, which they refer to as “The Coop,” resides Ciara ( Georgina Campbell ) and Daniel ( Oliver Finnegan ). The coop consists of three walls and a large one-way window, which serves as a mirror for them and a display for the forest creatures, the titular watchers. Every night, the group must greet them at the window, standing in line like shop window mannequins, and allow themselves to be observed. Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel have been trapped for months in the forest, whose labyrinthine layout and immeasurable density make it near-impossible to find a way out before dark. Their survival, and now Mina’s, hinges on a simple set of rules, the most important of which are to be in the coop before nightfall and be on time to greet the watchers when they arrive. The day is safe. but the night is not, and failure to abide by the rules is communicated to be a brutal, violent death.

Shyamalan bites off much more than she can chew with “The Watchers.” The architecture of the source material provides much to play with in terms of worldbuilding, set pieces, and character development, but Shyamalan’s limited toolbox is brutally on display. “The Watchers” lacks creative vision and guts, with only a clumsy script to fall back on. Riddled with vapid dialogue and wish-washy commitment to the genre, it struggles to establish its identity and maturity level. Madeleine's character cyclically warns against the vociferous violence of the watchers, but the film is scant to make you believe in it. It lacks teeth. The stylistic choices resemble the hopscotch cartoony, kid-friendly horror found in films like “ The Haunted Mansion ” and a few sequences that aim to draw blood, more in the styles of a James Wan classic like “ Insidious .” Shyamalan is best when leaning mystic rather than macabre, but her execution feels like blindfolded cherry picking, and “The Watchers” becomes flimsy by consequence.

The actual design of the forest creatures is quite compelling in the dark. Nighttime sequences of silhouettes and fractional details inspire tension and buy us into the scare factor, but Shyamalan makes the classic mistake, thrusting them into the light and replacing monstrosity with the familiarity of an overused design. The exception here is when the watchers are closer to their final form, approaching an uncanny valley territory that’s imperfect but sufficient.

“The Watchers” concerns itself thematically with the idea of duplication and voyeurism. From Mina’s peripherally mentioned twin sister, to the mimicking parrot from the pet shop she totes throughout the film, and the lore of the watchers, Shyamalan juggles ideas of individuality with Darwinian survival. The coop functions as a sort of stage, and the one DVD the group has for entertainment is a single season of “The Lair of Love,” a clear parody of “Love Island.” This parallel of an isolated group housed together to be watched for the entertainment of others is apparent, but the thesis is not. It could be that Shyamalan is taking a meta stab at the act of performance itself via the coop, an argument towards the behaviors and quotables we mimic from the world of reality TV, or perhaps how we model ourselves on the basis of celebrity, but the thinness of her pen leaves this as a hypothesis rather than a complete thought.

Performances suffer in “The Watchers,” falling victim to an unrefined script and a plethora of confounding line deliveries. As we take mental notes on the origin of the watchers, even the characters seem confused by their own words. This exposition-heavy dialogue combats characters speaking exactly their thoughts, leaving little nuance for the actors to craft. Fanning plays Mina’s hollowness well, her stoicism and seriousness shielding trauma, but she falls flat in moments that require elevation and desperation. Campbell, who’s finding her own corner in the horror sphere (“ Barbarian ,” “Black Mirror,” “ Bird Box ”), is the most interesting to watch, and the fact that she has the least dialogue is a likely testament as to why.

“The Watchers” doesn’t leave room to breathe between crash courses in lore, heavy dialogue, and a bloated narrative. Shyamalan falters in picking between a fairytale and a horror story, and the film's potential gets lost in her indecision. Though ideas and attempts at depth are present, they’re thin, and the film fails to stand its ground. “The Watchers” prompts curiosity that’s never entirely fulfilled, displaying a director who is ambitious but still very much at the foundational levels of her artistry.

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL.

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Film Credits

The Watchers (2024)

Rated PG-13

102 minutes

Dakota Fanning as Mina

Georgina Campbell as Ciara

Olwen Fouéré as Madeline

Siobhan Hewlett as Mina's Mother

Alistair Brammer as John

Ishana Night Shyamalan

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Two exhibitions at Amon Carter Museum show how artists have used technology

Complementary shows feature film pioneer karl struss and transdisciplinary texas artist dario robleto..

In Karl Struss' "Brooklyn Bridge, Nocturne," glowing lights trace an elegant path along the...

By Benjamin Lima

6:00 AM on Jun 13, 2024 CDT

FORT WORTH — In an era dominated by wave after wave of new technology, two complementary shows at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art offer a look back at media technologies from previous generations.

The first surveys the work of Karl Struss, who established himself as a still photographer in the pictorialist style in the 1910s and 1920s, before becoming an Oscar-winning Hollywood cinematographer. The second centers on a new film installation by the San Antonio-born, Houston-based artist Dario Robleto. The film explores the Golden Record, which is being carried beyond the Solar System by the Voyager spacecraft, intended as a document of human life on Earth for any extraterrestrial beings who might someday find it.

In both exhibitions, the steady advance of technological progress provides essential context for the work on display. For Struss, who was born in 1886, still photography was on the rise as a new art form during his early years, and his career peaked as movies evolved from a new invention to well-established mainstream entertainment.

But both his still photography and his cinematography for the great directors Cecil B. DeMille and F.W. Murnau drew on venerable references from art history. Struss’ pre-World War I photographs of New York City omit any hint of smoke, noise, dirt or urban chaos, instead lifting modern monuments such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the old Penn Station into a realm of tranquility and order.

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In Brooklyn Bridge, Nocturne , glowing lights trace an elegant path along the edge of the bridge’s span, and the urban agglomeration in the background is reduced to a single skyline, suggesting an impressionist painting. Pennsylvania Station shows the colossal waiting room, pierced by shafts of light, to be as grand as the monumental Roman baths that inspired it. The businessmen walking under the lofty lampposts seem to be as still as statues.

Karl Struss captured striking imagery of actress Gloria Swanson with a live lion in...

Struss’ film stills for Male and Female , DeMille’s 1919 desert-island adventure, depict Bebe Daniels and Gloria Swanson in ancient Babylonian costume, with the latter sprawled out beneath the paws of a live lion. Murnau’s 1927 film Sunrise , for which Struss’ cinematography won an Oscar, goes still further back than Babylon, to a fairy-tale world in which nameless characters — “The Man,” “The Wife” and “The [Other] Woman” — re-enact the eternal human story of love and tragedy.

While Struss proved adept at telling old stories in new media, Robleto’s work addresses scales of time and distance that dwarf human history. The two Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, are already billions of miles from the sun, but thousands more years will pass until either one approaches another star. Wouldn’t human culture seem infinitesimally small and insignificant against this backdrop, and not worth trying to document?

Rejecting any such reasoning, NASA turned to a committee that included astronomer Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, his future wife, to produce a record that might give future extraterrestrials a glimpse of life on Earth. On a 12-inch gold-plated disk, they recorded greetings in 55 languages, musical selections and other sounds, and encoded 116 images of life on Earth.

Dario Robleto's new film, "Ancient Beacons Long for Notice," was inspired by the Golden...

Robleto’s new film, Ancient Beacons Long for Notice , is inspired by one of these “life signs” — a recording of Druyan’s heartbeat and brainwaves, during which she thought about the pain that humans can inflict on each other — as well as by the first audio recording of warfare, from 1918, which was ultimately left off the Voyager record. Weaving together montages of historical images, narration and musical accompaniment, Robleto’s film reflects on which face of humanity we should present to the broader cosmos: the noble, or the brutish?

Along with the film, a gallery of thematically related works gives further insight into Robleto’s broader preoccupations with natural history and the scientific measurement of human experience. These works include Unknown and Solitary Seas (Dreams and Emotions of the 19th Century) , which renders early sound recordings of human blood flow in lacquer, brass and gold leaf; and American Seabed , which combines fossilized whale ear bones, butterfly specimens and tape recordings of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”

Robleto’s work has been featured across the country, and he has collaborated with a wide range of fellow artists. This show is his first in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In a tech-heavy time and place, his work is a model for artists engaging with science: neither simply with rejection nor celebration, but with thoughtful sensitivity.

“Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood” is on view through Aug. 25, and “Dario Robleto: The Signal” is on view through Oct. 27 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth. Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (open till 8 p.m. on Thursdays) and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. cartermuseum.org , 817-738-1933.

Dario Robleto's work has been featured across the country, and he has collaborated with a...

Benjamin Lima , Special Contributor . Benjamin Lima is a Dallas-based art historian and the editor of Athenaeum Review, the University of Texas at Dallas journal of arts and ideas.

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Voyagers, the latest science fiction film starring Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp is, in a way, a sort of Lord of the Flies set on a starship far from the reaches of Earth and human civilization ...
Voyagers (2021)
Movie and TV Reviews. A young crew breaks down into factions on a journey to a distant planet in Voyagers, starring Lily-Rose Depp, Tye Sheridan and Colin Farrell. By Julian Roman.
Voyagers
An edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller, Voyagers follows a crew of young astronauts on a decades-long mission to populate a new planet. As disturbing secrets are uncovered, the crew descends into chaos fueled by paranoia, lust, and the hunger for power. Tye Sheridan (X-Men franchise), Lily-Rose Depp (The King), Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk), and Colin Farrell (The Gentlemen) star in this gripping ...
Voyagers Movie Review
Parents need to know that Voyagers is a sci-fi thriller about a group of 30 children-turned-teens who are on a one-way space mission to find a potentially habitable planet for humans to colonize. The movie, which has been compared to everything from Lord of the Flies to The 100, stars Colin….
Voyagers Review: An Imbalanced Morality Tale, In Space
Yes, the film is based on an original screenplay from Burger, but these days if a studio greenlights a movie with a bunch of pretty young people and a high concept, it's expected that film will ...
NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing
Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 kilometers) miles away.
1 Voyager Episode Hilariously Poked Fun At Star Trek's Holodeck Problem
Star Trek: Voyager season 3 cleverly made fun of a systemic problem the franchise has with holodeck episodes. Like some other Star Trek TV shows, Voyager season 3 was in many ways the beginning of a turning point for the show, where better quality episodes began to appear with more frequency than seasons 1 and 2.Especially toward the end of season 3, when Voyager was moving towards some big ...
Wreckage of Shackleton's Last Ship Is Found Off Coast of Canada
Ernest Shackleton was sailing for Antarctica on the ship, called the Quest, when he died in 1922. Researchers exulted over the discovery of its wreckage, 62 years after it sank in the Labrador Sea.
The Watchers movie review & film summary (2024)
Shyamalan bites off much more than she can chew with "The Watchers.". The architecture of the source material provides much to play with in terms of worldbuilding, set pieces, and character development, but Shyamalan's limited toolbox is brutally on display. "The Watchers" lacks creative vision and guts, with only a clumsy script to ...
Two exhibitions at Amon Carter Museum show how artists have used technology
6:00 AM on Jun 13, 2024 CDT. FORT WORTH — In an era dominated by wave after wave of new technology, two complementary shows at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art offer a look back at media ...

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‘Voyagers’ Review: Colin Farrell Chaperones a YA Thriller That Re-Stages ‘Lord of the Flies’ in Space

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Voyagers Review: Lord Of The Flies In Space Never Leaves Its Orbit

Voyagers has a solid, immersive concept... until it cuts the cord.

The talented Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp are not given enough to work with.

Voyagers is a sci-fi film that is much too safe and confining to satisfy.

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Voyagers (2021)

Voyagers Review: A Gen Z Lord of the Flies in Space

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