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Now, Voyager

• A frumpy spinster blossoms under therapy and becomes an elegant, independent woman.
• Boston spinster Charlotte has had her life controlled entirely by her wealthy mother, Mrs. Henry Vale. Feeling despondent, she's convinced to spend time in a sanitarium. Soon she is transformed into a sophisticated, confident woman. On a cruise to South America, Charlotte meets and begins an affair with Jerry Durrance, a married architect. Six months later, she returns home and confronts her mother with her independence. One day, after a brief argument, her mother has a heart attack and dies. Charlotte inherits the Vale fortune but feels guilty of her mother's death. She returns to the sanitarium, where she befriends a depressed young adolescent, Tina. The young girl's depression was brought on by being rejected by her mother--Charlotte's former lover Jerry's wife. Charlotte takes Tina home to Boston with her. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Charlotte Vale has never been out from under the domination of her matronly mother until she enters a sanitarium. Transformed into an elegant, independent woman, Charlotte begins to blossom as an individual. On a cruise to South America, she meets and falls in love for the first time with a man named Jerry--who turns out to be married. Upon her return, Charlotte confronts her mother, who dies of a heart attack. Guilt-ridden and despondent, Charlotte returns to the sanitarium, where she meets Tina. a depressed young woman who begins to find happiness with her new friend Charlotte. The connection they share is more than friendship: Tina is Jerry's daughter. Through her friendship with Charlotte, Tina finds happiness, and the pair go back to Charlotte's home in Boston. When Jerry sees how happy his daughter is, he leaves her with Charlotte. What about marriage for Charlotte and Jerry? "Don't ask for the moon when we have the stars." — Ed Stephan <[email protected]>
• The love story of middle-aged spinster Charlotte Vale, who suffers a nervous breakdown because of her domineering mother and is finally freed after a brief love affair with Jerry, a man she meets while on a cruise after spending time in a sanitarium. They never marry, but through a miracle of chance she ends up looking after his daughter for a time. — Michael Stutz <[email protected]>
• Charlotte Vale is a dumpy, overweight spinster, never out of the sight of her domineering mother, the widowed matriarch of a wealthy Boston family. Charlotte has four older brothers and is always described by Mrs. Vale as an ugly duckling. Charlotte is high-strung and deeply depressed, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, due to the constant squashing of her thoughts by her mother. There is a little spark of independence, though--she secretly smokes and expresses some creativity by carving ivory boxes. Then a psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith, is invited to tea by her sister-in-law Lisa Vale. He tells Charlotte that he can help her, that he can show her which path to take at the fork in the road. After an ugly scene with her niece June Vale, who is Lisa's daughter but displays Mrs. Vale's cruelty, Charlotte finally accepts Dr. Jaquith's offer and goes to the mountain retreat where he works. The hospital offers the attention and crucial building up of her self-esteem. She changes from a mouse to an attractive figure of social grace and appeal. On a holiday cruise, Charlotte tries out her new persona, the test run that Dr. Jaquith encouraged to evaluate her level of recovery. She grows comfortable with her new image, no longer awkward in company but aloof enough to be interesting. A French gentleman, Jerry Durance, becomes fascinated with her and soon is so in love with her that he can barely think of being without her. Charlotte loves him too, but knows that their affair must never be known, for Jerry is married, but unhappily tied to a wife who is cold, selfish and a hypochondriac. Yet he loves his children and his emotionally troubled youngest daughter, Tina. They part ways, at last, much to the agony of Jerry and the silent desperation of Charlotte. She returns to her home in Boston, and becomes involved with Elliot Livingston. But she doesn't love him and soon the engagement is over. Even worse, after an argument with Charlotte, Mrs. Vale has another heart attack and dies. Charlotte returns to the clinic for a break, emotionally overwrought. She meets a young girl who is very shy and not overtly pretty. Soon she discovers it is Tina, the daughter of Jerry. Charlotte takes Tina under her wing, believing in the ugly duckling and knowing that she can become a swan. After all, Tina is exactly how Charlotte was. How can she cope with seeing Jerry again, though? And know that Tina will never truly be her daughter, her flesh and blood. Charlotte develops a maternal bond with Tina and hopes only for Jerry's love. Even though he can never leave his wife. But to Charlotte, Tina is a piece of him; together they can love her. And she believes that they have the stars together now, they mustn't ask for the moon.

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Cast & crew, irving rapper, bette davis, paul henreid, claude rains, gladys cooper, bonita granville, photos & videos, technical specs.

Dowdy, thirtyish Charlotte Vale lives with her dictatorial, aristocratic mother in a Boston mansion. Fearing that Charlotte is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her sister-in-law Lisa brings psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith to the Vale home to examine her unobtrusively. Jaquith's observations and conversation with Charlotte convince him that she is, in fact, very ill, and he recommends that she visit his sanitarium, Cascade. Away from her domineering mother, Charlotte recovers quickly, but does not feel ready to return home and accepts Lisa's proposal of a long cruise as an alternative. On board the ship, a newly chic Charlotte is introduced to Jerry Durrance, who is also traveling alone. The two spend a day sight-seeing together, during which time the married Jerry asks Charlotte to help him choose gifts for his two daughters. Charlotte is touched when Jerry thanks her with a small bottle of perfume. Subsequently, Charlotte tells Jerry about her family and her breakdown and learns from his good friends, Deb and Frank McIntyre, that Jerry is unhappily married but will never leave his family. After the ship docks in Rio de Janeiro, Jerry and Charlotte become stranded on Sugarloaf Mountain and spend the night together. Having missed her boat, Charlotte stays with Jerry in Rio for five days before flying to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although they have fallen in love, they promise not to see each other again. Back in Boston, Charlotte's family is stunned by her transformation. Her mother, however, is determined to regain control over her daughter. Charlotte's resolve to remain independent is strengthened by the timely arrival of some camellias. Although there is no card, Charlotte knows the flowers are from Jerry because he had called her by the nickname "Camille," and, reminded of his love, she is able to forge a new relationship with her mother. Charlotte eventually becomes engaged to eligible widower Elliot Livingston. One night, at a party, Charlotte encounters Jerry, who is now working as an architect, a profession he had renounced years before in deference to his wife's wishes. His youngest daughter Tina is now seeing Dr. Jaquith for her own emotional problems. Charlotte asks Jerry not to blame himself for their affair as she gained much from knowing that he loved her. This chance encounter forces Charlotte to realize that she does not love Elliot passionately, and they break their engagement, so angering Mrs. Vale that during an argument with Charlotte, she has a heart attack and dies. Guilty and distraught, Charlotte returns to Cascade, where she meets Tina. Seeing herself in the girl, Charlotte takes charge of her, with Jaquith's tentative approval. When Tina improves enough, Charlotte takes her home to Boston. Later, Jerry and Jaquith visit the Vale home, and Jerry is delighted by the change in Tina. Charlotte warns him, however, that she is only able to keep Tina with her on condition that she and Jerry end their affair. Jerry believes that he is responsible for her decision not to marry Elliot, but Charlotte reassures him otherwise, saying that Tina is his gift to her and her way of being close to him. Jerry then asks if Charlotte is happy and she responds, "Well, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars."

Lee Patrick

Franklin Pangborn

Katherine Alexander

James Rennie

Mary Wickes

Michael ames.

Charles Drake

David clyde.

Frank Puglia

Janis wilson, claire du brey.

Don Douglas

Charlotte wynters, lester matthews, sheila hayward, bill edwards, isabel withers, yola d'avril, georges renavent, bill kennedy, reed hadley, elspeth dudgeon, george lessey.

Constance Purdy

Corbet morris, hilda plowright, tempe pigott, dorothy vaughan, martha acker, al alleborn, eddie allen, george becker, edward blatt, meta carpenter, phyllis clark, joseph cramer, emmett emerson, frank evans, leo f. forbstein, hugh friedhofer, robert haas, robert b. lee, rydo loshak, fred m. maclean, scotty more, harold noyes, charles o'bannon, casey robinson, marguerite royce, sherry shourds, gilbert souto, max steiner, willard van enger, perc westmore, photo collections.

Hosted Intro

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Best actress, best supporting actress, the essentials - now, voyager.

Pop Culture 101 - Now, Voyager

Trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, the big idea - now, voyager, behind the camera - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager.

No member of the Vale family has ever had a nervous breakdown. - Mrs. Henry Windle Vale

Well there's one having one now. - Dr. Jasquith

Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars. - Charlotte Vale

Remember what it says in the Bible, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." - Dr. Jasquith

How does it feel to be the Lord? - Charlotte Vale

Not so very wonderful, since the Free Will Bill was passed. Too little power. - Dr. Jasquith

I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, mother. I'm not afraid. - Charlotte Vale

A maiden aunt is an ideal person to select presents for young girls. - Charlotte

Producer Hal B. Wallis originally wanted Irene Dunne for the lead role, but Bette Davis convinced him otherwise.

The Walt Whitman poem Bette Davis reads (just before leaving Cascades) is "The Untold Want" from Songs of Parting (just 2 lines): "The untold want by life and land ne'er granted / Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Bette Davis complained about 'Max Steiner' 's Academy Award-winning musical score, saying that it was too intrusive on her performance.

The film is remembered for the scene in which Paul Henreid places two cigarettes in his mouth, lights them, and then passes one to Bette Davis, but it wasn't an original idea - a similar exchange occurred ten years earlier between Davis and 'George Brent' in _Rich Are Always With Us, The (1932)_ .

The title of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel was taken from Walt Whitman's poem "The Untold Want." In a letter to literary agent Harold Ober included in the Warner Bros. Collection at the USC Cinema-Television Library, Prouty made the following suggestions about the novel's adaptation: "...In my novel I tell my story by the method of frequent flashbacks....It has occurred to me, however, that by employing the silent picture for the flashbacks, in combination with the talking picture, similar results can be accomplished, and with much interest to an audience because of the novelty of the technique....I am one of those who believe the silent picture had artistic potentialities which the talking picture lacks. The acting, facial expressions, every move and gesture is more significant....Of course the silent picture has 'gone out' now, but I believe it has a place, for depicting what goes on in the mind of a character...."        Various contemporary sources add the following information about the production: Mary Astor was first signed as the second female lead and Norma Shearer and Irene Dunne were approached to play the role of "Charlotte." Producer Hal Wallis sent Ginger Rogers a copy of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, hoping to interest her in the film. Juanita Quigley tested for the role of "Tina." Director Edmund Goulding wrote a treatment for the film and, at that time, was scheduled to direct; later Michael Curtiz was assigned to direct the film. Some scenes were filmed on location in Laguna Beach, CA and the Cascade scenes were filmed at Lake Arrowhead, CA. Although Frank Puglia's character is called "Giovanni" in the film, contemporary reviews, the screenplay and the CBCS list it as "Manoel."        According to modern sources, Prouty had written an elaborate cigarette-lighting ceremony for her characters, which proved too awkward to complete on film. In its place, Henreid invented a romantic gesture which has since become famous. He lit two cigarettes at the same time and handed one of the cigarettes to "Charlotte." Modern feminist critics have described Now Voyager as an "initiation" or "coming of age" film in which a psychologically immature woman becomes a self-determining adult and comment favorably on the accurate depiction of the mother-daughter relationship. Although contemporary critics derided the film as contrived and melodramatic, it was Warner Bros. fourth-highest grossing film in 1942 and has enjoyed an enduring popularity. Max Steiner won an Oscar for Best Score, and both Gladys Cooper and Bette Davis were nominated for Academy Awards. The film was adapted for radio and, starring Bette Davis and Gregory Peck, was broadcast on The Lux Radio Theatre on February 11, 1946 and May 24, 1955.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1942

Released in United States on Video April 5, 1988

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75 Years Later, Now, Voyager Remains a Poignant Depiction of Mental Illness

About 23 minutes into Now, Voyager comes one of the most resplendent transformations in all of cinema.

Charlotte Vale (played with trademark intensity and brutal grace by Bette Davis) begins the film as an archetypal spinster figure. Her eyebrows are unruly, clothes dowdy, and a definitive air of anxiety cloaks her. She comes across as an exposed nerve. But at that 23-minute mark, Charlotte is transformed. When the camera tilts upward to her luminescent face, half-shrouded by her hat, she’s glamorous and beautiful in ways she hadn’t been before. The change isn’t just cosmetic. It’s a reflection of an interior transformation that’s still in progress — thanks to an extended stay in a sanitarium — from a mentally strained spinster to a woman charting her own path.

In the years since its release, the film has garnered a reputation as Davis’s best performance and a quintessential example of the women’s picture , a proto-feminist subgenre that took shape in 1930s Hollywood that made the interior lives of complex women its terrain. When I watched the 1942 film — which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year — for the first time as a teenager, it wasn’t the glamour or even the stirring romance that captured my imagination. It was the knotted story about Charlotte’s struggle with mental illness that I was drawn to because it offered something I hadn’t seen before or since in cinematic madwomen: hope.

Today, Now, Voyager remains a timeless portrait of a woman who pulls herself back from the edge of madness to create a life she’s proud to live, with the help of both psychiatry and her own willpower. The film is buttressed by sleek, highly efficient Hollywood production and the moving performances of the cast, notably Davis and Claude Rains as Dr. Jaquith, who helps usher Charlotte into this next phase of her life. Most poignantly, Now, Voyager is a curious outlier in the pantheon of American cinema that concerns itself with women living with mental illness. Few films offer the kind of blistering hope and empathy that has made Now, Voyager endure.

Films featuring mentally ill characters — consider Glenn Close’s maniacal portrayal in Fatal Attraction, Angelina Jolie’s charismatic turn in Girl, Interrupted , and the hothouse women of Tennessee Williams adaptations — often treat these women with emotional distance. Their contorting faces and bodies are a spectacle, while the particulars of their mind remain opaque. It would be difficult to cover all the permutations of madwomen, but they often fall into a few categories: cautionary true-life tales ( Sylvia; The Three Faces of Eve ), deliriously fun vixens who give way to toxicity and violence ( Girl, Interrupted; The Craft; Fatal Attraction ), vehicles for brutalization ( A Streetcar Named Desire ), and women in horror films ( Black Swan being a notable recent addition to the canon). Others slink through noir, like the overheated Technicolor Leave Her to Heaven and sharp The Dark Mirror . This is a pantheon of women whose aches and ailments, desires and downfalls I have been studying for years — partially out of need. Through most of my life grappling with mental illness, I have had no friends or family who, at least openly, dealt with similar issues. So I turned to the screen to find communion. While I personally love many of these films, and the performances that anchor them, I am acutely aware that in almost all of these cases, female madness is a tool, an archetype, a symbol. To be branded mad as a woman can sometimes feel like a black mark you can’t escape from that allows people to disregard your voice and personhood. This is a culture that film often perpetuates through its bloodthirsty femme fatales and treacly biopics offering saccharine endings in which madness is swept away by the love of a good man. Rarely are these women seen as people with interior lives.

Based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager centers on Charlotte Vale (Davis), a repressed spinster and only daughter of a prominent Boston family, whose life is brutally controlled by her aristocratic mother, Mrs. Windie Vale (Gladys Cooper). Mrs. Vale heaps emotional abuse upon her daughter to such a degree, Charlotte is perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her sister-in-law, Lisa (Ilka Chase), intervenes by introducing Charlotte to Dr. Jaquith (Rains), a wryly humorous and caring psychiatrist whose sanitarium becomes a haven for the young woman. The film’s legacy is often tied to its tender romanticism: the moving yet doomed relationship between Charlotte and the married Jeremiah “Jerry” Durrance (Paul Henreid). But what truly makes Now, Voyager memorable is how it centers on Charlotte’s interior life, including her mental illness, above all else, and how Davis capably brings this to life.

Davis’s reputation as an actress is that of unmatched intensity. She consistently played women who make shirking societal rules into an art form — martyrs, bold Southern belles, villainesses, city dwellers fueled by blinding anger. Charlotte Vale proves how deftly subtle and quiet Davis could be, despite her reputation for histrionics. Now, Voyager came relatively early in Davis’s five-decade-long career, but by this point, Davis already had a total of five Academy Award nominations and one win. Now, Voyager would be her sixth. She had also earned a reputation among directors, reportedly including Irving Rapper, who directed Now, Voyager , as being difficult, exerting her own vision to shape the films she worked on. These same traits that directors and studio heads despised in Davis — a dedication to her characters, an auteur-tinged streak, an interest in emotional and physical authenticity when bringing characters to life, no matter how repellent that may be — are the very reasons that her performance as Charlotte Vale remains so potent. What’s extraordinary about watching Davis in this role is her deft communication of Charlotte’s interior life through her physicality — the rigidity of her back as she walks, nervous hand-wringing, her wet saucer eyes darting across the room as if looking for an exit, and the startling grace and directness that comes after her transformation. She begins the film as taut as piano wire, ready to snap; by the end, she’s softened into a languid repose. There are still flashes of that intensity — like in the moving final scene — but now her energy is channeled gracefully and toward better targets. The rich emotional life Davis weaves for Charlotte, bringing nuance to even the smallest moments, is just one reason Now, Voyager is such a powerful narrative about mental illness. Ultimately, the empathy is woven into the story itself.

Now, Voyager was adapted for the screen by Casey Robinson and had a lot of material to work with, thanks to the original novel. Prouty was a pioneer for how she considered psychotherapy in her own work, eschewing the typical imagery of controlling, even malevolent doctors eager to perform lobotomies or circumscribe the lives of the women in their care, a trope that gets particular use in horror. What’s fascinating is how Dr. Jaquith forgoes the usual Freudian touches that defined cinematic representations of such doctors at the time, focusing instead on ideas of self-acceptance .

Prouty’s careful consideration of mental health and psychiatry, and the film’s portrayal of it, would feel stirring even if released today. But in the early 1940s, it was radical. As mental-health activist Darby Penney and psychiatrist Peter Stastny write about one victim of trauma in the 2009 book The Lives They Left Behind , which explores the stories of people institutionalized in the Willard Psychiatric Center during the 20th century: “Throughout history, violence and loss have sometimes driven women mad. Psychiatry has been generally complicit in this process. Today, a woman like Ethel Small who enters the system at least has a chance that she might be asked ‘What happened to you?’ rather than ‘What’s wrong with you?’ In certain places, she might even be referred to a specialist who has experience working with trauma survivors. But in the 1930s, a woman beaten by her husband and mourning her children would not have been considered a trauma survivor.” In real life and its cinematic reflections, women struggling with trauma and mental-health concerns were rarely granted the interiority and care they deserved. Now, Voyager is unique in that it understands the links between Charlotte’s mental duress and her mother’s abuse above all else; furthermore, it shows the possibility of overcoming traumas, not being consumed by them.

Charlotte may have a level of privilege and access that makes getting care for her illness easier. But how she navigates that care is strikingly familiar. In watching the film, I’m reminded of something a psychiatrist told me the second time I was institutionalized at 17: “For you, medication will only do 10 percent. The rest, the hard work, is up to you.” I didn’t truly understand what he meant at the time. But as I grew older and was forced to navigate tragedies without a support system, I came to understand how precarious mental health can be. Now, Voyager forces Charlotte to consistently reconsider how she wants to live, whether she’s navigating her mother’s attempts to manipulate her life or Dr. Jaquith’s tender probing into the sides of herself she keeps hidden. At every point, it’s Charlotte’s understanding of herself that informs its visual landscape, mood, and approach to mental illness. What Now, Voyager ultimately demonstrates is that mental-illness narratives need not be unerringly realistic but resolutely human to work.

Charlotte Vale and I are separated by race and class, culture and access. But in my late teens, shuffling between mental hospitals and new medications, Now, Voyager gave me what I couldn’t find in reality — the reality of chilly mental-hospital halls, the shameful gaze of my mother, the tender embrace of my brother trying to calm me down when I sought new ways to hurt myself: the ability to be seen and even understood.

Mental illness is complex. Hope is often withheld. Empathetic treatment can sometimes feel like a fantasy. For me, Now, Voyager offered a spark of motivation and hope, the ability to imagine a future for myself when I was too poor to get therapy and too depressed to leave my bed. It was a small joy I held on to in dark times, a salve, a form of self-care. This is how a film can save your life.

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“Now, Voyager”: Why the 1942 screen classic with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid will never age

“Box office dynamite—that’s ‘Now, Voyager’.” Those are the first words of Naka ‘s “Now Voyager” Variety film review, as published August 19, 1942. Continuing in the very same review: ‘Here is drama heavily steeped in the emotional tide that has swept its star, Bette Davis, to her present crest, and it’s the kind of drama that maintains Warners’ pattern for box office success. (…) It affords Miss Davis one of her superlative acting roles, that of a neurotic spinster fighting to free herself from the shackles of a tyrannical mother. (…)  For Henreid, perhaps, this is his top role in American pictures; he neatly dovetails and makes believable the sometimes underplayed character of the man who finds love too late.’

The film tells the story of Boston heiress Charlotte Vale (in the beginning unglamorously portrayed by Bette Davis), a sheltered, frumpy, and middle-aged neurotic who is driven to a nervous breakdown by her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), but with the help of a soft-spoken idealized therapist (Claude Rains), she is transformed into a modern, secure and attractive young woman. During an ocean voyage to South America, she meets a suave man, Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), and blooms as a woman. Durrance, unhappily married to a woman he dares not to hurt, has a young daughter Tina (played by the then twelve-year-old promising juvenile actress Janis Wilson in an uncredited role). She is an emotionally depressed child victimized by the insecurity of their unsettled home. Ultimately, Charlotte Vale and Jerry Durrance end up in a platonic relationship in which she keeps Tina, who in the meantime, is in the process of recovering, while Henreid stays with his unwanted wife.

“Now, Voyager” is an unabashed first-rate soap opera—or a woman’s picture, if you wish—and as such, it’s one of the very best of its kind, thanks to Warner Bros. expertise. At the same time, the powerful drama is backed by Max Steiner’s lush and Academy Award-winning musical score which is almost as much a part of the film as the actors. Bette Davis, one of Hollywood’s queens in the 1940s, made the film’s heroine a touching, dignified, and truly believable woman.

Miss Davis was not the first choice to play the role of Charlotte Vale, though. Irene Dunne, along with Charles Boyer, her co-star in “Love Affair” (1939), were considered to be perfect for the leading roles. Producer Hal B. Wallis also offered the female lead to Norma Shearer, and although she was fond of it, she had already made up her mind to retire from the screen after George Cukor’s “Her Cardboard Lover” (1942), due to her eye problems. When Irene Dunne heard that the script had also been discussed with Norma Shearer, she declined as well, fearing that both actresses were played against each other. Then Ginger Rogers was offered the part. She liked it, but weeks passed by for her to reply, and even after Wallis sent her a wire while she was on her ranch on the Rogue River, she did not respond, so finally the part went to Bette Davis, who was eager to play it.

One of the most famous and landmark scenes of the film is when Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes simultaneously and gallantly hands one of the cigarettes to Bette Davis, thereby starting a new custom (in an era when people obviously weren’t aware of the danger of smoking). The film became highly successful: “Now, Voyager” was Warner Bros.’s fourth biggest grossing film of 1942.

Compared to the then-established two-time Academy Award-winner Bette Davis, Mr. Henreid only had a few years of experience in Hollywood. After leaving Austria in the mid-1930s, he first settled in London and then moved on to the West Coast. So, although pretty much a newcomer in Hollywood when “Now, Voyager” was made, his performance was well-received. The New York Herald Tribune wrote, ‘Paul Henreid achieves his full stature as a romantic star’ while Time praised him as ‘Hollywood’s likeliest leading man who acts like a kind and morally responsible human being.’

In his autobiography “Ladies Man” (1984), Paul Henreid remembers Bette Davis as ‘a solid master of her craft’: “I found her a delight to work with, and we got along famously. In fact, a very close friendship started between us, and she remained a dear, close friend—and always a very decent human being.” The atmosphere on the set was amiable and supportive, although Miss Davis did have problems with her co-star Bonita Granville (who played the part of Charlotte’s young niece June Vale). “She was bitchy in the film and off. I don’t remember the details, but she struck me as flighty and gossipy,” she told Boze Hadleigh in his interview book “Bette Davis Speaks” (1996).

Principal photography of “Now, Voyager” began on the Warner lot on April 7, 1942, and ended on June 23, with retakes on July 3. The film was released in the U.S. on October 31, 1942. “Casablanca,” another Hal B. Wallis production, also starring Paul Henreid and Claude Rains (a frequent performer in Wallis’ pictures), was released a few months later on January 23, 1943, and was almost shot simultaneously at Warner Bros., from May 25 until August 3. Over the years, “Casablanca” gained a more popular following than “Now, Voyager” did; in 1998, a novel entitled “As Times Goes By,” written by Michael Walsh for Warner Books, follows the characters of Rick, Ilsa, Victor (Paul Henreid), Sam, and Louis (Claude Rains) after they left Casablanca.

When originally scheduled to direct “Now, Voyager,” filmmaker Edmund Goulding wrote a treatment for the film, but he fell ill and was unable to direct the film. Michael Curtiz then was assigned as director, as soon as he had finished shooting another Wallis production called “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942) with James Cagney. Still, from the very start, it became clear that Curtiz and Bette Davis couldn’t get along. Finally, producer Hal B. Wallis decided to go with a new director, London-born Irving Rapper. “He was a pleasant, amusing Englishman. He liked Bette, and she liked him,” Wallis recalled in “Starmaker,” his 1989 mémoires . Irving Rapper was a vocal coach, dialogue director, and assistant director in the 1930s who, prior to “Now, Voyager,” had directed only three features, including “One Foot in Heaven” (1941) starring Fredric March and Martha Scott, and “The Gay Sisters” (1942) with Barbara Stanwyck. In the end, just like Bette Davis, he was not the first choice by all means, but he turned out to be the right one.

Four years later, Irving Rapper and his three leading actors from “Now, Voyager”—Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains (Davis’ favorite co-star)—were reunited with the drama “Deception,” also made at Warner Bros. (this one without Hal B. Wallis). In 1964, Paul Henreid directed Bette Davis (playing twin sisters) in the crime drama “Dead Ringer,” with his daughter Monika Henreid playing a supporting role.

Irving Rapper and Bette Davis later worked together again in “The Corn Is Green” and “Another Man’s Posion’ (1951). “Irving has directed some of my best pictures,” she said in later interviews.

Author Olive Higgins Prouty wrote four novels about the wealthy Vale family in Boston (“Now, Voyager” being the third). She sold the “Voyager” rights to Wallis for $35,000 in October 1941, and made several suggestions. She preferred Technicolor to be used, with the flashbacks shown in subdued colors as if seen through a veil, and she had laid down a scheme for particular sequences. Wallis decided to go ahead and ignore them completely, but after she had seen the film in her New England home with twenty-five friends, ‘all of them applauded,’ Wallis wrote in his autobiography. She wrote him a letter, saying that ‘the plot follows very closely that of my book and the personalities of the various characters have been carefully observed and preserved.’

Finally, film director Irving Rapper, born in 1898 in London, passed away at age 101 in 1999 in Woodland Hills, California, of natural causes. Never really in the spotlights, there’s not too much written about him. Authors Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg did include him in their interview book “The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak” (1969), a collection of fifteen interviews with film directors who spent most of their careers working in Hollywood. In their introduction of the Irving Rapper interview, they describe his whereabouts at the time of the interview: ‘Irving Rapper’s apartment is set high in a glistening white building in the very heart of Hollywood. Only a stone’s throw from Hollywood Boulevard, with its seedy spangle of light-signs,  its driven restless sixties people, and its ever-skulking hustlers, Rapper inhabits a seemingly sealed-off forties world. As so often in Hollywood, fantasy and reality seem one, so that as you enter the hall, where a super-efficient blonde announces your arrival directly from the reception desk to the host’s telephone, you could easily be in a scene from a vintage Bette Davis picture, and you half expect to see her charge stormily at any moment through the glass window doors, ready for an argument with David Brian or Bruce Bennett—those lost figures of Hollywood’s past. Chez Rapper, the atmosphere of that past exists. Comfortably plump and relaxed, with an elegant and cultivated personality, he is utterly unlike the brisk new generation of grey-suited, fiercely efficient Hollywood men. (…) Like so many Hollywood talents, he has been put firmly—and one hopes only temporarily—on the shelf by the newest generation, but looking round his apartment, you see the compensations: Chinese lampstands ‘fit for a museum,” magnificent paintings crowded tightly up of a wall, a louvered cocktail recess, an atmosphere of spacious, glossy luxury. And beyond the great windows and the penthouse balcony, the whispering traffic, the horn-bleeps and the diamond shine of an ocean of lights: Los Angeles.’

Just for the record, even though “Now, Voyager” isn’t mentioned in AFI’s list of 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, the film ranks at #23 in AFI’s 100 Greatest Love Stories of All Time, while Bette Davis’ closing line, ‘Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon… we have the stars!’ is at #46 in AFI’s Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time. In 2007, “Now, Voyager” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’

“Now, Voyager” (1942, trailer)

NOW, VOYAGER (1942) DIR Irving Rapper PROD Hal B. Wallis SCR Casey Robinson (novel ‘Now, Voyager’ [1941] by Olive Higgins Prouty) CAM Sol Polito MUS Max Steiner ED Warren Low CAST Bette Davis ( Charlotte Vale ), Paul Henreid ( Jerry Durrance ), Claude Rains ( Doctor Jaquith ), Gladys Cooper ( Mrs. Vale ), Bonita Granville ( June Vale ), John Loder ( Elliott Livingston ), Ilka Chase ( Lisa Vale ), Mary Wickes ( Dora Pickford ), Janis Wilson ( Tina Durrance )

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Now, Voyager

Now, Voyager is a 1942 American drama film starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, and directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Casey Robinson is based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Olive Higgins Prouty.

Prouty borrowed her title from the Walt Whitman poem "The Untold Want", which reads in its entirety,

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

In 2007, Now, Voyager was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film ranks number 23 on AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Passions , a list of the top love stories in American cinema. Film critic Steven Jay Schneider suggests the film continues to be remembered for not only its star power, but also the "emotional crescendos" engendered in the storyline.

• 3 Production
• 4 Box office
• 5 Critical reception
• 6 Source material
• 7 Transcript
• 9 External links

Drab Charlotte Vale is an unattractive, repressed spinster whose life is brutally dominated by her tyrannical mother, an aristocratic Boston dowager whose verbal and emotional abuse of her daughter has contributed to the woman's complete lack of self-confidence. Mrs. Vale had already brought up three sons, and Charlotte was an unwanted child born to her late in life. Fearing that Charlotte is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her sister-in-law Lisa introduces her to psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith, who recommends that she spend time in his sanitarium.

Away from her mother's control, Charlotte blossoms, and at Lisa's urging, the transformed woman opts to take a lengthy cruise instead of going home immediately. On the ship, she meets Jeremiah Duvaux Durrance, a married man traveling with his friends Deb and Frank McIntyre. From them, Charlotte learns of how Jerry's devotion to his young daughter Christine ("Tina") keeps him from divorcing his wife, a manipulative, jealous woman who does not love Tina and keeps Jerry from engaging in his chosen career of architecture, despite the fulfillment he gets from it.

Charlotte and Jerry become friendly, and in Rio de Janeiro, the two are stranded on Sugarloaf Mountain when their car crashes. They miss the ship and spend five days together before Charlotte flies to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although they have fallen in love, they decide it would be best not to see each other again.

Charlotte's family is stunned by the dramatic changes in her appearance and demeanor when she arrives home. Her mother is determined to destroy her daughter once again, but Charlotte is resolved to remain independent. The memory of Jerry's love and devotion helps give her the strength she needs to remain resolute.

Charlotte becomes engaged to wealthy, well-connected widower Elliot Livingston, but after a chance meeting with Jerry, she breaks off the engagement, about which she quarrels with her mother. During the argument, Charlotte says she did not ask to be born, that her mother never wanted her, and it has "been a calamity on both sides." Mrs. Vale is so shocked that her once-weak daughter has found the courage to talk back to her; she has a heart attack and dies. Guilty and distraught, Charlotte returns to the sanitarium.

When she arrives at the sanitarium, she is immediately diverted from her own problems when she meets Jerry's lonely, unhappy 12-year-old daughter Tina, who has been sent to Dr. Jaquith. Tina greatly reminds Charlotte of herself; both were unwanted and unloved by their mothers. Shaken from her depression, Charlotte becomes overly interested in Tina's welfare, and with Dr. Jaquith's permission, she takes her under her wing. When the girl improves, Charlotte takes her home to Boston.

Jerry and Dr. Jaquith visit the Vale home, where Jerry is delighted to see his daughter's changes. While he initially pities Charlotte, believing her to be settling in her life, he is taken aback by her contempt for his initial condescension. Dr. Jaquith has allowed Charlotte to keep Tina there to understand that her relationship with Jerry will remain platonic. She tells Jerry that she sees Tina as his gift to her and her way of being close to him. When Jerry asks her if she is happy, Charlotte finds much to value in her life, even if she does not have everything she wants: "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."

• Bette Davis as Charlotte Vale
• Paul Henreid as Jeremiah "Jerry" Duvaux Durrance
• Claude Rains as Dr. Jaquith
• Gladys Cooper as Mrs. Windle Vale
• Bonita Granville as June Vale
• John Loder as Elliot Livingston
• Ilka Chase as Lisa Vale
• Lee Patrick as "Deb" McIntyre
• Franklin Pangborn as Mr. Thompson
• Katharine Alexander as Miss Trask (as Katherine Alexander)
• James Rennie as Frank McIntyre
• Mary Wickes as Nurse Dora Pickford
• Janis Wilson (child actress) as Tina Durrance (uncredited)

Production [ ]

Filming ran from April 7 to June 23 of 1942 as producer Hal B. Wallis made Now, Voyager his first independent production at Warner Bros. under a new arrangement with the studio. He took an active role in the production, including casting decisions. [1] The initial choices for Charlotte were Irene Dunne, Norma Shearer, and Ginger Rogers. [2] When Bette Davis learned about the project, she campaigned for and won the role. More than any other of her previous films, Davis became absorbed in the role, not only reading the original novel, but also becoming involved in details such as choosing her wardrobe personally. Consulting with designer Orry-Kelly, she suggested a drab outfit, including an ugly foulard dress for Charlotte initially, to contrast with the stylish, "timeless" creations that mark her later appearance on the cruise ship. [2]

The choice of Davis's leading men became important, as well. Davis was aghast at the initial costume and makeup tests of Austrian actor Paul Henreid ; she thought the "slicked back" gigolo-like appearance [3] made him look "just like Rudolph Valentino." Henreid was similarly uncomfortable with the brilliantine image, and when Davis insisted on another screen test with a more natural hairstyle, he was finally accepted as the choice for her screen lover. [4] In her 1987 memoir, This 'N That , Davis revealed that co-star Claude Rains (with whom she also shared the screen in Juarez , Mr. Skeffington , and Deception ) was her favorite co-star. [5]

Initial production of the Prouty novel had to take into account that European locales would not be possible in the midst of World War II, despite the novelist's insistence on using Italy as the main setting. Prouty's quirky demands for vibrant colors and flashbacks shot in black and white with subtitles were similarly disregarded. [2] Principal photography was shifted to Warner's sound stage 18 and various locations around California, including the San Bernardino National Forest, while European scenes were replaced by stock footage of Brazil. [4] One of the primary reasons for Davis being interested in the original project was that photography would also take place in her hometown of Boston. [2] Other locations of filming include Harvard Medical School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Laguna Beach, Whitley Avenue, and other streets around Boston. [2]

The film highlighted Davis's ability to shape her future artistic ventures, as not only did she have a significant role in influencing the decisions over her co-stars, but also the choice of director was predicated on a need to have a compliant individual at the helm. [1] Davis previously had worked with Irving Rapper on films where he served as a dialogue director, but his gratitude for her support turned into a grudging realization that Davis could control the film. [1] Although his approach was conciliatory, the to-and-fro with Davis slowed production and "he would go home evenings angry and exhausted". [4] The dailies, however, showed a "surprisingly effective" Davis at the top of her form. [2]

For years, Davis and co-star Paul Henreid claimed the moment in which Jerry puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both, then passes one to Charlotte, was developed by them during rehearsals, inspired by a habit Henreid shared with his wife, but drafts of Casey Robinson's script on file at the University of Southern California indicate it was included by the screenwriter in his original script. [6] The scene remained an indelible trademark that Davis would later exploit as "hers". [7]

Box office [ ]

According to Warner Bros. records, the film earned $2,130,000 domestically and $2,047,000 foreign. [8]

Critical reception [ ]

Theodore Strauss, a critic for The New York Times , observed:

Casey Robinson has created a deliberate and workmanlike script, which more than once reaches into troubled emotions. Director Irving Rapper has screened it with frequent effectiveness. But either because of the Hays office or its own spurious logic, [the film] endlessly complicates an essentially simple theme. For all its emotional hair-splitting, it fails to resolve its problems as truthfully as it pretends. In fact, a little more truth would have made the film a good deal shorter ... Although Now, Voyager starts out bravely, it ends exactly where it started – and after two lachrymose hours. [9]

David Lardner of The New Yorker offered a similar opinion, writing that for most of the film, Davis "just plods along with the plot, which is longish and a little out of proportion to its intellectual content." [10] Variety , however, wrote a more positive review, calling it

"the kind of drama that maintains Warner's pattern for box-office success ... Hal Wallis hasn't spared the purse-strings on this production. It has all the earmarks of money spent wisely. Irving Rapper's direction has made the picture move along briskly, and the cast, down to the most remote performer, has contributed grade A portrayals." [11]

Harrison's Reports called the film "intelligently directed" and praised Davis' performance as "outstanding", but warned that the film's "slow-paced action and its none-too-cheerful atmosphere make it hardly suitable entertainment for the masses." [12]

Leslie Halliwell wrote in Halliwell's Film Guide : "A basically soggy script gets by, and how, through the romantic magic of its stars, who were all at their best; and suffering in mink went over very big in wartime." [13]

Source material [ ]

Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, written in 1941, served as the basis for the film, and other than certain limitations imposed by World War II on the locations for filming, the movie remains fairly true to the novel.

The novel is considered to be one of the first, if not the first, fictional depictions of psychotherapy, which is depicted fairly realistically for the time, as Prouty herself spent time in a sanitarium following a mental breakdown in 1925. This was caused by the death of one of her daughters and proved to be a defining period in her professional life as a writer, as the experience she gained from this episode helped her write not only Now, Voyager , but also her 1927 novel Conflict , both of which have similar themes of recovery following a breakdown. Prouty also used this experience to help others in her life who were experiencing mental health issues, including her close friend Sylvia Plath, who was supported both financially and emotionally by Prouty following a failed suicide attempt in 1953. [14]

The novel is the third in a pentalogy centered around the fictional Vale family and by far the most popular. The other titles include The White Fawn (1931), Lisa Vale (1938), Home Port (1947), and Fabia (1951). Other novels in the series do not feature mental health as centrally as Now, Voyager , but themes and certain elements appear throughout, as well as many characters appearing in multiple novels.

Transcript [ ]

Gallery [ ]

External links [ ]

• Now, Voyager at AllMovie
• {{ TCMDb title }} template missing ID and not present in Wikidata.
• Now, Voyager at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Now, Voyager at Rotten Tomatoes
• Now, Voyager at Metacritic
• Now, Voyager at Box Office Mojo
• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Leaming 1992, pp. 204–205.
• ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Higham 1981, pp. 159–167.
• ↑ Quirk 1990, p. 248.
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Spada 1993, pp. 189–190.
• ↑ Davis and Herskowitz 1987, p. 26.
• ↑ "Article: Now, Voyager." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: August 19, 2012.
• ↑ Moseley 1990, p. 70.
• ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named warners
• ↑ Strauss, Theodore (as T.S). Now Voyager (1942): Now Voyager , with Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, at the Hollywood The New York Times , November 23, 1942.
• ↑ Lardner, David (October 24, 1942). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker . New York: F-R Publishing Corp.: 68. <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ "Film Reviews". Variety . New York: Variety, Inc.: 8 August 19, 1942. <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ " ' Now, Voyager' with Bette Davis". Harrison's Reports : 134. August 22, 1942. <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ Halliwell's Film Guide, 1992, p. 818
• ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Now, Voyager
• 1 Tooned Out
• 2 Missy Cooper

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Now, voyager.

Directed by Irving Rapper

It happens in the best of families. But you'd never think it could happen to her!

A woman suffers a nervous breakdown and an oppressive mother before being freed by the love of a man she meets on a cruise.

Bette Davis Paul Henreid Claude Rains Gladys Cooper Bonita Granville John Loder Ilka Chase Lee Patrick Franklin Pangborn Katharine Alexander James Rennie Mary Wickes Tod Andrews Brooks Benedict Yola d'Avril Charles Drake Claire Du Brey Elspeth Dudgeon Bill Edwards Mary Field Bess Flowers George Lessey Tempe Pigott Frank Puglia Constance Purdy Janis Wilson Ian Wolfe

Director Director

Irving Rapper

Producer Producer

Hal B. Wallis

Writer Writer

Casey Robinson

Original Writer Original Writer

Olive Higgins Prouty

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography, art direction art direction.

Robert M. Haas

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Fred M. MacLean

Special Effects Special Effects

Willard Van Enger

Composer Composer

Max Steiner

Sound Sound

Robert B. Lee

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Perc Westmore

Warner Bros. Pictures

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English Portuguese

Releases by Date

Theatrical limited, 22 oct 1942, 31 oct 1942, 05 nov 1943, 02 mar 1950, releases by country.

• Theatrical U
• Theatrical limited NR New York City, New York
• Theatrical NR

117 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Connie ★★★★½ 4

PAUL HENREID LIGHTING UP TWO CIGARETTES IN HIS MOUTH AT THE SAME TIME; LIKE IF YOU AGREE.

Review by Alex Kittle ★★★★ 3

Very interested in Claude Rains's magic psychiatry that cures nervous women of their bad eyesight so they don't have to wear glasses anymore.

Review by Toni ★★★★★ 2

They really made a movie about abused girls healing, setting boundaries, and finding love and community in 1942. How bout that.

Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★★

"I'll look for you around every corner"

I'm literally about to fucking explode I haven't cried this much in months... ladies we will overcome the damage our parents did to us we will learn to love, be loved, and even be happy

Review by Toni ★★★★ 2

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

i’m sorry i laughed when Bette Davis’s mom fell down the stairs loll bitch deserved it

Review by phoebe 💫 ★★★★ 1

I don’t smoke but if someone ever lit two cigarettes in their mouth and handed one to me I would accept it as the most intimate act of unspoken love and probably marry them right then and there and THAT’S Now Voyager ’s influence

Review by Sara Clements ★★★★½

i want charlotte vale to adopt me

Review by Timcop ★★★★

::phone rings::

"Hello? Yes, this is the character portrayed by Paul Henreid in NOW, VOYAGER. What's that? Oh, yes, you're the doctor from the sanitarium where my young daughter is a patient. What's that, doctor? You've fired the nurse looking after my daughter? And…you're going to let the patient next door to my daughter be in charge of my daughter's care? Uh-huh. I see. And then you're going to let my daughter move in with them at the beginning of the fall. Right. Also, you've arranged to have my daughter's braces removed by an orthodontist in Boston whom I have not met. Uh-huh. Interesting. Well, I see nothing wrong here, go right ahead. Pleasure talking to you, good day."

::hangs up phone::

Review by sarah ★★★★ 2

"...all people are alone in some ways and some people are alone in all ways..."

I had trouble with this film two years ago. It was hard for me to reconcile the depiction of old maids and “ugly ducklings” with the idea that adhering to a patriarchal sense of beauty brings one freedom— it all felt so contradictory. But I think this rewatch has mended my line of thinking somewhat, because even though there is definitely a conversation to be had about Classic Hollywood’s view of spinsters and unconventional beauty standards, this film is very much about independence. Bette Davis, in her best performance, can only achieve this by completely releasing herself from her mother’s solid grip, and, even then,…

Review by Kayla ★★★★

what if we were on a cruise and there was only one cabin left 😳🙈 and we’re both traveling alone and my hot ass happens to be paul henreid 😳😳

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 1

When you get right down to it, all I need to say about Now, Voyager is that it stars Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, that sentence alone should have you running to rent or buy this, but there's a great deal to admire about the film beyond the strong casting of such a melodramatic trio. For one, it's a 40s romantic drama that is less about a woman's desire to be loved and accepted by men than it is a journey of her own self-acceptance. The main tension is not necessarily found with Charlotte's love interests but with her domineering, abusive mother, and how their relationship has fundamentally destroyed her sense of self-worth. Any developments of melodrama…

Review by ben empey ★★★★½ 1

Somehow both high melodrama and incredibly subtle and mature. It moves me

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Now, Voyager

Now, Voyager is a 1942 film about a Boston spinster who blossoms under therapy and finds impossible romance.

• 1 Charlotte Vale
• 2 Mrs. Henry Windle Vale
• 6 External links

Charlotte Vale

• My mother didn't think that Leslie was suitable for a Vale of Boston. What man is suitable, Doctor? She's never found one. What man would ever look at me and say, "I want you"? I'm fat. My mother doesn't approve of dieting. Look at my shoes. My mother approves of sensible shoes. Look at the books on my shelves. My mother approves of good, solid books. I'm my mother's well-loved daughter. I'm her companion. I'm my mother's servant. My mother says. My mother! My mother! My mother!

Mrs. Henry Windle Vale

• Charlotte was a late child. There were three boys, then after a long time, this girl. "A child of my old age," I've always called her. I was well into my forties, and her father passed on soon after she was born. My ugly duckling. Of course it's true that all late children are marked. Often such children aren't wanted. That can mark them. I've kept her close by me always. When she was young, foolish, I made decisions for her. Always the right decisions.
• Could we try to remember that we're hardly commercial travelers? It's bad enough to have to associate with these tourists on board without having to go ashore with them.
• Note: bolded line is ranked #46 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema .
• IN THE Arms OF ANOTHER WOMAN'S MAN...SHE FINDS Her MAN!
• Today Her Greatest! For a woman there's always an excuse . . .
• I'm the maiden aunt. Every family has one you know.
• Bette Davis - Charlotte Vale
• Claude Rains - Dr. Jaquith
• Paul Henreid - Jeremiah 'Jerry' Duvaux Durrance
• Gladys Cooper - Mrs. Windle Vale
• Ilka Chase - Lisa Vale
• Bonita Granville - June Vale
• John Loder - Elliot Livingston
• Lee Patrick - Deb McIntyre
• James Rennie - Frank McIntyre
• Mary Wickes - Nurse Dora Pickford
• Franklin Pangborn - Mr. Thompson

External links

• Now, Voyager quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Now, Voyager at Filmsite.org

• American films
• Films based on novels
• Romantic drama films
• United States National Film Registry films

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Now, Voyager

When you have a force like Bette Davis at the center of your film, the movie itself doesn’t have to try so hard. She’ll more than carry the dramatic weight.

Now, Voyager , directed by Irving Rapper from a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, could stand to back off a bit. The movie centers on Charlotte Vale (Davis), a dowdy, single, Boston society woman who lives under the oppressive thumb of her repressed mother (Gladys Cooper). After a psychologist (Claude Rains) suggests Charlotte spend time in a Vermont sanatorium and then take a voyage to South America, she blossoms into a glamorous, independent woman.

It’s the sort of part that’s just right for Davis, which makes it odd that the movie feels the need to double down on every gesture and do so much of the work for her. Charlotte isn’t just demure at the start; Davis is given a wiry wig and caterpillar eyebrows that render her almost unrecognizable. Throughout, screenwriter Casey Robinson relies on talky exposition to describe characters and speechifying declaratives to let us know how they feel. Meanwhile Rapper, who directed Davis a handful of times, favors close-ups of wringing hands and camera pushes to emphasize dramatic moments.  

Davis never needed a camera push. Her face delivered all the drama necessary. Similarly, the more obvious the dialogue got in her films—as in a climactic speech she delivers about “independence”—the more likely she would drift into the arena of camp. But when given something shaded to say and the cinematic space to say it, her fierceness felt in perfect balance. That happens in some of her more conflicted scenes with Paul Henreid ( Casablanca ) as Jerry, an architect Charlotte meets on the cruise who encourages her self-determination. The possibility of romance is ripe, but Jerry has his own domineering wife at home; his and Charlotte’s unrequited relationship provides a more nuanced frisson to the second half of the film. 

As a narrative, Now, Voyager jarringly jumps from one dramatic stage in Charlotte’s life to the next. Far more sophisticated is the way the movie traces her transformations through costume design, overseen by Orry-Kelly. When we first meet her—described by another character as a “fat lady with the brows and all the hair”—she’s wearing a matronly print dress chosen by her mother. On the cruise, Charlotte’s cabin has been given to her by a woman we never meet, Renee. Renee has also left her wardrobe for Charlotte to wear. This consists of flashy, ostentatious gowns that are a far cry from her matronly look, but have still been chosen by someone else. (At one point Jerry notices a note from Renee still pinned to Charlotte’s shoulder.)

It isn’t until Charlotte returns to her mother that she finds her own style. Announcing, to the older woman’s horror, “You must give me complete freedom,” Charlotte enters the room in a new black dress she has purchased on her own. A plunging V-neck runs down the front, punctuated by a burst of camellias—sent to her, discreetly, by Jerry.

It’s Davis who ultimately makes the costume changes work, of course; she knows how to move a bit differently in each one to communicate a nuance of character. (She glides with a sense of absolute power in that black dress.) Now, Voyager may not have the fine balance of some of Davis’ best films— Jezebel is probably the place to go for that—but it’s still, in its stronger moments, a fine showcase for an iconic actress.

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Vintage Review: Now, Voyager: A Bette Davis Classic

Now, voyager review.

“Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”

Now, Voyager is a psychological drama and romantic film made in 1942 and is one of Bette Davis’ best performances. The film is rather unique for the time period. As was remarked by someone I watched it with for the first time, it has a very unusual story line (especially for an old film) and discusses subjects which might have been considered taboo, some of which still are. You are also never quite sure where the plot is going.

RELATED  Vintage Review: All This And Heaven Too – A Heartbreaking Romance

As for the title, it is taken from a Walt Whitman poem that appears briefly in the film, a film about breaking free of constrictions and forging your own path.

Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, first introduced as a woman half driven to a nervous breakdown by a horribly controlling mother. Well into her thirties, she is still treated as if she were an irresponsible teenager, perceived as incapable of making the ‘right’ decisions on her own. After a kindly psychiatrist (hired by her sister-in-law) sends her on a cruise during her recovery at a sanatorium, she meets Jerry, a charming and kind Frenchman with whom she forms a bond. Played by Paul Henreid ( Casablanca ), he is a kind and understanding presence as she grows used to the person she has become.

He helps her to come out of her shell a little and over the course of the voyage, they begin to fall in love. There’s a particularly sweet romantic scene where they are stuck in a church outside Rio for the night after a sightseeing expedition goes awry. The two have to bundle together to keep warm, and perhaps because of the chaste nature of the scene, sparks fly.

Unfortunately Jerry is married, although unhappily to a woman who uses his honour against him. The two part at the end of their time together with the intention of never meeting again lest they do something they regret. However, chance has other ideas and intervenes in the form of Tina, Jerry’s daughter who has a similar home situation to Charlotte, a situation in which Charlotte must help.

Now, Voyager  is not just a story of romance, however, but also one of personal growth. Before she can move forward in her life, Charlotte must return to face her mother as a very different person.

The performances of the two leads are sympathetic. Charlotte and Jerry are two very likeable characters caught in a bad situation that neither deserves. Their love story is very warm and understandable given the circumstances. Claude Rains is also warm and enigmatic as Dr Jaquith who provides much of the film’s humour. He would go on to play opposite Paul Henreid in Casablanca in the same year. The supporting cast are all well-developed and bursting with character.

The dialogue is extremely well written, with good pacing and chemistry between the two leads. It’s a very enjoyable film to watch. The script is endlessly quotable, including that iconic scene in which Jerry puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both of them, and gives one to Charlotte.

It is all accompanied by a very dramatic and passionate soundtrack. While at times, the score can lean towards the melodramatic, this in no way lessens the overall quality of this film. The cinematography is also very good.

Interestingly enough, the subject of mental illness is dealt with in quite a modern and empathetic way. This is even a case of sympathetic adultery in cinema that is surprisingly early (it certainly does not endorse it). Though it is never specified whether their feelings are confined to a ‘noble,’ unconsummated love affair. Nevertheless, the message of the film is to fight for what you want but not to break your heart striving for an impossible goal.

Truly a classic, Now, Voyager  is a must see for romantics everywhere.

Photo credits: Warner Brothers

OVERALL RATING

“The stuff that dreams are made of.”

ROMANCE RATING

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My

feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me

to tell you I ardently I admire and love you.”

ARE YOU A ROMANCE FAN? FOLLOW THE SILVER PETTICOAT REVIEW:

Elinor is a writer and semi-recent graduate of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. She has been writing ever since she could hold a pen but her love affair with fiction started when the entirety of David Eddings’ 'The Belgariad' was read to her at age four. She currently has a couple of books and half a dozen short stories on the go. She spends her free time writing, analysing media and knitting very colourful scarves.

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How NASA Fixed Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

N ASA engineers say they've fixed a problem that had temporarily halted all but basic communications with Voyager 1, the longest-operating spacecraft in history. As a result of their efforts and ingenuity, the probe has returned to transmitting science and engineering data back to Earth.

The successful fix caps a half-year effort that began in November 2023, when the probe stopped returning readable data. The NASA engineering team responsible for the fix ultimately focused their efforts on one of three computers aboard the unmanned spacecraft.  That problem computer, known as the flight data system (FDS), wasn't correctly communicating with another part of the probe responsible for sending data through the spacecraft's radio transmitter. 

Fixing the issue wasn't as simple as uploading a software update for a smartphone app. The Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, and now the engineers had to work with its half-century old technology.

The team's success extended humanity's furthest mission into space. The Voyager 1 was designed to study magnetic fields and weather as it conducted flybys of Jupiter and Saturn before exiting the heliosphere -- a pocket of space created by the Sun containing its magnetic fields and solar winds -- in 2012. Voyager 1 is currently over 15 billion miles away from home, with a transmission delay of 22.5 hours each way.

NASA teams had to comb through the Voyager 1 systems documentation to develop a patch, while ensuring they didn't cause any further issues. Here's how they did it.

Read more: The 10 Most Iconic Airplanes In Aviation History, Ranked

Identifying The Problem

The journey from identification of the problem to a complete fix took nearly eight months, as per NASA press releases. The Voyager probes send data to Earth via a radio signal containing a single data package that has both the information gathered by the onboard science instruments and the engineering information about the status of the spacecraft. On November 14, 2023, NASA realized that the data sent from Voyager 1 was unreadable. In December 2023, the team tried restarting some of the probe's systems, but that did not solve the problem.

After months of working on a fix, NASA in March 2024 announced its team had made progress with understanding the issue with Voyager 1. On March 1, the team sent a "poke" command to the probe, making its software attempt a variety of sequences that could work around problems they'd identified with its computer. NASA received a response from Voyager on March 3, and after some difficulty decoding it, the teams realized it was a readout of the system's memory. The team was able to devise a solution by analyzing the differences between earlier and current readouts.

In April 2024, NASA said it had found the cause – 3% of the flight data system's memory had been corrupted, causing the abnormal behavior. NASA engineers suspected a single chip holding a part of the computer code had stopped working. Fortunately, they figured out a solution.

Devising And Implementing A Solution

The NASA team was able to move various pieces of code to another location in the memory of the probe's computers. On April 18, the NASA team tested the solution by sending only a part of the fix -- the corrected code responsible for packaging the engineering data -- to its new location in probe computer's memory. When NASA received the probe's response on April 20, engineers learned the fix had worked as intended. Now, the Voyager 1 was correctly transmitting its health and status data. The team then began working on fixes to enable the probe to send back data collected from the science instruments too.

On May 17, a fix for sending science data from two of the four instruments (plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer) was transmitted to the probe, and it was a success. In June, NASA announced that the team had managed to fix the issue with the other two instruments (cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument) in the interim. Additional fixes for problems with the timekeeping software and digital tape recorder were being planned, NASA said. 

Brief History Of The Voyager Spacecraft

This isn't the first issue onboard the Voyager that NASA's team has faced during the probe's  over 40 years in space . For example, last year,  NASA briefly lost contact with Voyager 2  -- Voyager 1's sister probe launched on a different trajectory. NASA's even faced other  data issues with Voyager 1 . Still, both of their missions continue.

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are identical spacecraft, with 10 science instruments onboard, six of which on Voyager 1 either stopped working or were deactivated after it flew past Saturn. The two Voyager probes are both now beyond the heliosphere, and are the first spacecraft to get a taste of interstellar space. Voyager 1 left the heliosphere in 2012, while Voyager 2 left in 2018.

Both probes have seen some awesome sights. Both Voyager spacecraft flew past Jupiter and Saturn, showcasing the Great Red Spot on the former and the hexagonal polar vortices of the latter. The two probes also captured data of some of the gas giants' moons (including Ganymede, Io, Europa, Enceladus, Titan, Iapetus, and Tethys), while Voyager 2 flew past Uranus and Neptune. Apart from discoveries about the planets and moons we already knew about, the two probes were also responsible for discovering new moons on each of the planets.

Read the original article on SlashGear .

Den of Geek

The Star Trek: Voyager Sequel You’ve Always Wanted Already Exists

The story of Star Trek: Voyager continues in Prodigy, the animated series that is as much for fans of '90s Trek as it is for a new generation of fans.

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Star Trek is an ever-growing franchise, with 11 television series, plus two series of shorts and two separate film series. But despite all these spinoffs and spinoffs of spinoffs, only a couple of branches of the franchise have been given sequels. The Original Series has The Animated Series as a continuation, then its run of six sequel movies (seven, if you include Generations ), plus a prequel series ( Strange New Worlds ); and The Next Generation has four films and a sequel series ( Picard ), plus a spiritual sequel in Lower Decks . But Deep Space Nine has had to make do with a single episode of Lower Decks and Enterprise gets nothing but the occasional mention as easter eggs.

Voyager , however, has been more fortunate. The inclusion of Seven of Nine as a main character in Picard has already given at least one Voyager character the full sequel treatment, but some fans might not realize that there is another series that functions as a Voyager sequel in more ways than one— Star Trek: Prodigy .

Prodigy’s Two Audiences

One of Prodigy ’s biggest challenges has been to capture the interest of two separate target audiences. The series was produced with and also aired on the children’s channel Nickelodeon, and is aimed at children and teenagers. This also means it is aimed at new viewers, as no one assumes that children watching it will have seen any Star Trek before. The series introduces core concepts like what Starfleet is and how starships function in the Trek universe to brand new fans, and it does so very well.

However, it is also aimed at existing Star Trek fans of all ages. Season 1 of the show includes many callbacks and references to earlier Star Trek series that fans of those shows can appreciate. The episode “Crossroads,” for example, is a sequel to The Next Generation’ s “The Outrageous Okona”; “All the World’s a Stage” is a sequel to the Original Series ’ “Obsession” and the whole episode is basically an Original Series homage; and “Kobayashi” hasn’t just taken its name from the most overly referenced Star Trek story of all time ( The Wrath of Khan ), it actually features guest appearances from several past Star Trek stars who are no longer with us in the form of original audio clips (Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and Rene Auberjonois) and a guest appearance from Gates McFadden as The Next Generation ’s Doctor Crusher in newly recorded dialogue.

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Prodigy Features Several Main Characters From Voyager

Most fans will be aware that one of its main characters is a hologram of Voyager ’s Captain and main character, Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Janeway primarily appears in the form of a hologram of Captain Janeway at around the age she was when Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant (based on her rank, as she was promoted to Admiral not long after they got back, and on her hairstyle, which matches Janeway’s famous “bun of steel” from Seasons 1-3 of Voyager ). This hologram is programmed with all of Janeway’s memories (including post- Voyager , as it would hardly make sense for her to exist like a time traveler who doesn’t know what’s going on) and with her personality, making Kathryn Janeway an integral part of Prodigy from the start.

What viewers who have not watched the series might not know, though, is that hologram Janeway is not the only character from Voyager who appears in Prodigy . As the season goes on, we also get to meet Admiral Janeway—the flesh and blood Janeway we followed for seven years on her journey through the Delta Quadrant, as she is at the time Prodigy is set, which is in the year 2383. (This is just after the setting of Lower Decks , which is set in 2380-2381, and a couple of decades before Picard , which is set primarily in 2399-2401). As the storyline develops, we get to meet another main character from Voyager as well, and a third, Robert Picardo’s Doctor, is lined up to appear in season 2.

One thing grown up fans might not realize is that Prodigy is aimed at middle grade and teenage children. It’s not like some other animated spin-offs of major franchises, like Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures or Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends , which are aimed at pre-schoolers and which, although fun, don’t have all that much appeal to an adult audience. Prodigy may be animated, but it is much more similar to something like The Whoniverse’s The Sarah Jane Adventures ; the lead characters are children and teenagers, but the plot, tone, and themes are all sophisticated enough to be enjoyed by grown ups as well—in fact, Prodigy probably skews slightly older even than The Sarah Jane Adventures .

This means, among other things, that the adult and mentor characters—primarily Janeway—in Prodigy get as much attention and character development as the young leads. The Captain Janeway hologram has a lovely little story arc that builds to an emotional climax across the whole of season 1. But even more importantly for Voyager fans, Admiral Janeway has her own story arc going on as well. Over the course of the season, we see her reacting to a deeply personal loss, and we see some of her most notorious character traits playing out in a new setting—this Janeway may be older and rank higher, but she still leads with her heart, and she still makes mistakes sometimes when she trusts the wrong person, or jumps to conclusions. This is recognizably the character we know and love from Voyager !

Towards the end of the season and in the cliffhanger going into season 2, Prodigy also picks up on one of Voyager ’s best character relationships, which was notoriously neglected in the original show’s series finale—Janeway’s relationship with her First Officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran). These two were one of the show’s most popular couples to “ship” romantically and the show itself dedicated at least two episodes to that idea (season 2’s “Resolutions” and Season 7’s “Shattered”) though in both cases they decided to stay just friends. Chakotay was paired with Seven of Nine towards the end of season 7, but that pairing was so unpopular with both fans and even the actors that it has never been mentioned again, and a suggested appearance from an alternate timeline version of Chakotay in Picard season 2 was turned down by Beltran .

Chakotay has made several guest appearances in Prodigy , though, including a flashback sequence that shows him and Admiral Janeway hugging, and there is a moment towards the end of the season in which Janeway is seen reaching out towards his image while he is missing in action. Since Prodigy is aimed at teenagers, not young children, it’s free to explore romantic storylines in a family-friendly way, and one of its recurring threads is the somewhat romantic tension between its main character Dal R’El (Brett Gray) and Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), so there is hope for Janeway/Chakotay shippers yet.

Whether or not the show intends to develop Janeway and Chakotay’s relationship romantically, it is certainly bringing their friendship to the front and center of its storyline—he cliffhanger which ended season 1 is built entirely around Admiral Janeway’s determination to find and rescue Chakotay. In other words, all of the tension around the end of the first season of Prodigy is about this central Voyager relationship and is carrying on a Voyager plot thread. Thank goodness Netflix has picked up season 2 after it was dropped by Paramount+, as having that particular carrot dangled in front of Voyager fans only to have it taken away again was just too cruel!

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Prodigy Is Also a Sequel to Voyager’s Plot and Story Arcs

Prodigy also functions as a continuation of Voyager ’s central concept and is able to pick up on other aspects of its story. In Voyager ’s pilot episode, the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, a distant part of the galaxy more than 70,000 light years from Earth, a distance it would take “more than 75 years” to cover, even going at top speed all the time. The series followed the ship’s journey back home, combining Trek’ s traditional theme of exploration with episodes centered around trying to find a quicker way to get back. It featured a crew that had absorbed a non-Starfleet Maquis ship (a resistance group fighting the Cardassians) alongside the Starfleet crew.

The show became notorious for using an episodic style similar to The Original Series and The Next Generation rather than leaning more on its story arcs like Deep Space Nine as many fans would have preferred, and the concept of two conflicting crews working together was largely ignored after a handful of episodes in season 1. However, the ideas were still there, driving the show. There were occasional stories looking at the conflicts between crewmembers in later seasons, like season 7’s “Repression,” and although the format was primarily Space Anomaly of the Week, the journey home was a story that developed across all seven seasons, with multiple episodes focused on attempts to get home more quickly.

The Delta Quadrant setting also allowed Voyager to put a lot of focus on exploration and Original Series -style Planets of the Week, introducing viewers to lots of new alien species that the show added to the Star Trek universe. The Talaxians, the Kazon, the Hirogen, the Vidiians, and the Malon are probably the most memorable, but there were many others, as well as many interactions with Delta Quadrant-based Next Generation baddies the Borg .

The core concept of Prodigy follows on directly from Voyager ’s. In the pilot episode, we meet our motley crew of young aliens in the Tars Lamora prison colony in the Delta Quadrant. They are all of different races and one of them, Gwyndala, is initially an antagonist to the others, just like Voyager ’s two opposing crews.

By the end of the initial two-parter, our heroes have got their hands on the USS Protostar , a prototype for a small Starfleet ship that can travel much, much faster than any others we have seen. The ship was sent out to return to the Delta Quadrant, captained by Chakotay and accompanied by the Captain Janeway hologram, because they are the experts in that part of the galaxy and already have some contacts there, but it was attacked and lost before being found by Dal R’El and the others.

The Show Is Full of Voyager References and Easter Eggs

The action kicks off in the Delta Quadrant, picking up the pieces from a mission that was specifically designed to follow up on Voyager ’s journey. Over the course of season 1, we have seen appearances from the Kazon, the Borg, and the Brenari (a telepathic species whose refugees were helped by Voyager ’s crew in season 5’s “Counterpoint”), and we have heard references to the Talaxians as well as a more obscure Voyager species, such as the Sakari (the species living underground in season 3’s “Blood Fever”). Janeway has even mentioned the events of Voyager ’s most infamous episode, one so unpopular on its initial release that fans thought it had been written out of the continuity, but which is actually really rather fun and entertaining and is now probably one of its best known hours—she mentions that she was “once turned into a salamander,” a reference to her and Lt. Paris’s (Robert Duncan McNeil) transformation into lizards before abandoning their lizard babies in season 2’s “Threshold.”

The writers have even given the Protostar a new feature to fix one of Voyager ’s most notorious plot holes. The USS Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant with minimal resources, and several episodes revolved around the search for deuterium fuel. And yet somehow, despite numerous shuttlecraft crashes, many of which were specifically described as having destroyed the shuttlecraft, the ship never seemed to run out of shuttles.

Starfleet ships of this era are generally equipped with two shuttlecraft, as was Voyager , plus they had Neelix’s (Ethan Phillips) ship, which they hardly ever used. In season 5, they built their own shuttle, the Delta Flyer, which they proceeded to crash just as often as the other shuttles, if not more so. And yet they never ever ran out. Entire websites were devoted to counting how many shuttlecraft Voyager had lost and apparently replaced with identical shuttles. Were the crewmembers Janeway didn’t like trapped in the bowels of the ship somewhere, building and re-building shuttles? Why did they build them exactly the same every time, and keep giving them the same names? How were they constantly running out of fuel, having to ration replicator food, forcing everyone to eat Neelix’s hair pasta and leola root stew because they didn’t have energy to spare, but they were able to keep up a constant stream of replicated shuttles? This mystery has never been solved, but the writers of Prodigy thought ahead—the Protostar has a replicator specifically designed to replicate shuttlecraft-sized vehicles.

Voyager is not the only Star Trek series referenced in Prodigy . The show is absolutely bursting with references, easter Eggs, and follow-ups to stories, species, and tech from all of the pre-2017 Star Trek series. But its plot, setup, and story and character development make it not just a “spiritual sequel” to Star Trek: Voyager —it is literally a sequel series to Voyager , continuing Voyager ’s plot threads and further developing its setting. If you’re a Star Trek: Voyager fan and you haven’t yet watched Prodigy , you’re missing out.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 3 hits Netflix on July 1.

Juliette Harrisson | @ClassicalJG

Juliette Harrisson is a writer and historian, and a lifelong Trekkie whose childhood heroes were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. She runs a YouTube channel called…

Star Trek: Prodigy Has Doubled Down On Being The Voyager Sequel You've Always Wanted

The first season of "Star Trek: Prodigy" was tantalizing for fans of "Star Trek: Voyager." The central cast of teen characters — led by the plucky and overconfident Dal R'El (Brett Gray) — discovered a lost and abandoned Starfleet vessel called the U.S.S. Protostar, a ship that was equipped with a holographic version of the Voyager's Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). It would be up to Janeway and the teens to return the Protostar to Federation space.

"Prodigy" marked Mulgrew's first return to canonical "Star Trek" in 19 years, her last appearance being a cameo in 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis." Later in "Prodigy," Mulgrew would also appear as the real-life Admiral Janeway, letting the actress pull double duty.

Hologram Janeway was quite a bit different from the flesh-and-blood version, however. The artificial Janeway was a gentle, teacher-like figure who came to embrace the younger characters in a near-matronly way. Admiral Janeway was bitter and curmudgeonly, angry that she was medically forced to switch from her beloved coffee to tea. The Admiral was on a quest to rescue the Protostar from its very distant location, knowing that her old colleague, Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran) was on board when it disappeared. 

This wasn't quite the grand "Voyager" reunion that many Trekkies might have wanted, but "Voyager" was clearly the most immediate predecessor to "Prodigy." In both cases, Janeway served as a central authority figure, serving with what she considered to be an ersatz family. 

But "Voyager" fans might want to note that they're closer than ever to a follow-up series. The second and final season of "Prodigy" dropped on Netflix on July 1, 2024, and the new season not only incorporates two additional "Voyager" characters into the mix, but also the new-and-improved Voyager-A as one of the show's central starships. 

The Voyager-A

At the end of the first season of "Prodigy," Dal and his friends managed to return to Federation space, and meet the real Admiral Janeway face-to-face. This was after a time-travel-based crisis had been averted, a battle was fought, and the Protostar destroyed. Janeway, however, was impressed that a ragtag group of teenagers, instructed only by a hologram, could not only learn to fly the ship, but operate it with responsibility. They were offered a chance to join Starfleet Academy, and Janeway was gearing up to take command of a brand new ship, the Voyager-A. 

The Voyager-A will serve as a central setting in the second season of "Prodigy." Indeed, although Janeway is an admiral, she's still permitted to take command and lead the new ship on its first mission. She quips, "I promised Admiral Picard I wouldn't get this one lost in the Delta Quadrant."

The Voyager-A is a science vessel just like its original namesake, has a cetacean ops department, as well as two full-functional schools. It's a much larger ship than the original "Voyager" as well, sporting 29 decks (the original only had 15) and a crew complement of over 800 (the Voyager only had 141), and can travel much faster. We also see that there are many Starfleet cadets on board — including the notorious Nova Squadron — implying that the Voyager-A is meant to be an educational vessel. 

This is the kind of legacy stuff that Trekkies love. We're not back on board the old-fashioned U.S.S. Voyager, but the next step in its evolution. As explained in both "Star Trek: Lower Decks" and "Star Trek: Picard," the original Voyager is mothballed in a museum. The adventures of a new Voyager is exciting to ponder. This is progress, and not (wholly) nostalgia.

(A brief aside: the idea of a high-tech school in space is a cooler "Star Trek" premise than both the pitches for "Star Trek: Legacy" and "Starfleet Academy" shows)

Not only are Trekkies treated to a U.S.S. Voyager with Janeway in the captain's chair, but her chief medical officer appears to be the Doctor (Robert Picardo) , the emergency medical hologram that served as the head doctor on board the original Voyager. Because he is a hologram, the Doctor has not aged (even though Picardo, now 70, does sound older than he did in 1995). His uniform has been updated, but he's the same Doctor. He even still wears the same mobile holographic emitter on his arm, allowing him, as a hologram, to go anywhere he pleases. The Doctor will be the one to show Dal and his friends around the Voyager-A. Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) was excited to work in cetacean ops (whales and dolphins are intelligent members of the crew, and live in the underwater cetacean tanks). Zero (Angus Imrie) will work in the medical department. Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas) will be an engineer. Dal will merely study. 

The Doctor will also be on the bridge of the Voyager-A often, giving Admiral Janeway advice. The current mission of the Voyager-A is to locate Chakotay. It seems that Chakotay, while testing out the Protostar last season, accidentally flew into a wormhole that threw him 52 years into the future. Janeway has located the hole, and is secretly planning a mission through it using a specialized time-proof runabout called the Infinity. 

We have the ship and three crew members already. We're well on our way to a proper "Voyager" reunion.

Where are the other Voyager crew members?

"Star Trek: Prodigy" takes place before the events of "Star Trek: Picard," and we learned from the latter show that Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) was still working as a violent bounty hunter. She would later rejoin Starfleet (at Janeway's encouragement), and even become the captain of the Titan-A, rechristened the Enterprise-G, but at this point, she was still murdering people for money. It's possible, however, that Janeway and Seven were still in contact at this time. 

Janeway would certainly be in touch with Tuvok (Tim Russ), her old Vulcan security officer. In "Picard," we learned that Tuvok had attained a high position at Starfleet Command. 

Kes (Jennifer Lien) would sadly have died of old age by the events of "Prodigy" (her species only lives nine years), and no one has bothered to catch up with the Tallaxian Neelix (Ethan Phillips). Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and his wife B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) had just had a daughter named Miral at the end of "Voyager," but we never learned their fates. Give Tom's gadabout nature, it's unlikely he stayed in Starfleet. Their daughter would be grown by now. 

Given that poor Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) was never given a promotion on the U.S.S. Voyager, it would be edifying to see him as a Fleet Admiral, or even the Commander in Chief of Starfleet Command. That would make him Janeway's boss, which is wholly possible. 

The second season of "Prodigy" is embroiled in a time travel plot more closely related to its own main characters of course, but there's no reason the new series couldn't have reached out to a few old friends. As it stands, it's as close to a "Voyager" sequel as we may ever see. 

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact

On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health.

NASA's interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn't sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems. 

Thirty-five years after its launch in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space . It was followed out of our cosmic quarters by its space-faring sibling, Voyager 2 , six years later in 2018. Voyager 2, thankfully, is still operational and communicating well with Earth. 

The two spacecraft remain the only human-made objects exploring space beyond the influence of the sun. However, on Nov. 14, 2023, after 11 years of exploring interstellar space and while sitting a staggering 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 1's binary code — computer language composed of 0s and 1s that it uses to communicate with its flight team at NASA — stopped making sense.

Related: We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped communicating — scientists are working on a fix

In March, NASA's Voyager 1 operating team sent a digital "poke" to the spacecraft, prompting its flight data subsystem (FDS) to send a full memory readout back home.

This memory dump revealed to scientists and engineers that the "glitch" is the result of a corrupted code contained on a single chip representing around 3% of the FDS memory. The loss of this code rendered Voyager 1's science and engineering data unusable.

The NASA team can't physically repair or replace this chip, of course, but what they can do is remotely place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. Though no single section of the memory is large enough to hold this code entirely, the team can slice it into sections and store these chunks separately. To do this, they will also have to adjust the relevant storage sections to ensure the addition of this corrupted code won't cause those areas to stop operating individually, or working together as a whole. In addition to this, NASA staff will also have to ensure any references to the corrupted code's location are updated.

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On April 18, 2024, the team began sending the code to its new location in the FDS memory. This was a painstaking process, as a radio signal takes 22.5 hours to traverse the distance between Earth and Voyager 1, and it then takes another 22.5 hours to get a signal back from the craft. 

By Saturday (April 20), however, the team confirmed their modification had worked. For the first time in five months, the scientists were able to communicate with Voyager 1 and check its health. Over the next few weeks, the team will work on adjusting the rest of the FDS software and aim to recover the regions of the system that are responsible for packaging and returning vital science data from beyond the limits of the solar system.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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• Robb62 'V'ger must contact the creator. Reply
• Holy HannaH! Couldn't help but think that "repair" sounded extremely similar to the mechanics of DNA and the evolution of life. Reply
• Torbjorn Larsson *Applause* indeed, thanks to the Voyager teams for the hard work! Reply
• SpaceSpinner I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured! Reply

Admin said: On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health. The interstellar explorer is back in touch after five months of sending back nonsense data. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact : Read more

evw said: I'm incredibly grateful for the persistence and dedication of the Voyagers' teams and for the amazing accomplishments that have kept these two spacecrafts operational so many years beyond their expected lifetimes. V-1 was launched when I was 25 years young; I was nearly delirious with joy. Exploring the physical universe captivated my attention while I was in elementary school and has kept me mesmerized since. I'm very emotional writing this note, thinking about what amounts to a miracle of technology and longevity in my eyes. BRAVO!!! THANK YOU EVERYONE PAST & PRESENT!!!

• EBairead I presume it's Fortran. Well done all. Reply

SpaceSpinner said: I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured!

EBairead said: I presume it's Fortran. Well done all.

• View All 13 Comments

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Voyager 1 is back to life in interstellar space, but for how long?

NASA engineers have succeeded in breathing new life into Voyager 1 after the spacecraft, launched in 1977, went silent seven months ago.

NASA engineers have succeeded in breathing new life into Voyager 1 , the spacecraft launched in 1977 and once again communicating after it went silent seven months ago. But now comes another challenge: Keeping Voyager 1 scientifically useful for as long as possible as it probes a realm where no spacecraft has gone before .

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2 , are treasured at NASA not only because they have sent home astonishing images of the outer planets, but also because in their dotage, they are still doing science that can’t be readily duplicated.

They are now in interstellar space, far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth and Voyager 2 nearly 13 billion miles. Both have passed the heliopause , where the “solar wind” of particles streaming from the sun terminates.

“They’re going someplace where we have nothing, we have no information,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said. “We don’t know anything about the interstellar medium. Is it a highly charged environment? Are there a lot of dust particles out there?”

Even as the Voyagers continue their journeys, engineers and scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. are mourning the loss of Ed Stone, the scientist who guided the mission from 1972 until his retirement in 2022. Stone, a former director of JPL, died June 9 at the age of 88.

“It’s great. This is exploration. This is wonderful,” Stone told The Washington Post in 2013 when he and his colleagues determined that Voyager 1 had reached interstellar space.

Voyager 1 has four scientific instruments still operational in this extended phase of its mission, but it suddenly ceased sending intelligible data on Nov. 14. A “tiger team” of engineers at JPL spent the ensuing months identifying the problem — a malfunctioning computer chip — and restoring communication.

That laborious process is nearly complete. Data is coming from all four instruments, project scientist Linda Spilker said, though engineers are still checking to see whether data from two of the instruments is fully usable.

What no one can change, though, is the mortality of a spacecraft with a limited power supply. Voyager 1 is running on fumes, or, more precisely, on the dwindling power from the radioactive decay of plutonium.

The Voyagers have traveled so far from the sun they can’t rely on solar power and instead use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. But an RTG doesn’t last forever. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will eventually go silent as they continue to cruise the galaxy. NASA scientists and engineers are hoping Voyager 1 can keep sending data until at least Sept. 5, 2027, the 50th anniversary of its launch.

“At some point, we’ll have to start turning off the science instruments one by one,” Spilker said. “Once we’re out of power, then we can no longer keep the spacecraft pointed at the Earth. And so [the Voyagers] will then continue on as what I like to think of as our silent ambassadors.”

In a sense, this is all a bonus because the primary mission for the two Voyagers was the exploration of the outer planets. Both visited Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 went on to Uranus and Neptune in what was known as the “Grand Tour” of the outer solar system, enabled by a rare orbital arrangement of the planets. The Voyagers delivered spectacular close-up images of the outer planets, and the mission ranks among NASA’s greatest achievements.

The gravitational slingshot from the planetary encounters sent Voyager 1 out of the elliptical plane of the solar system and did the same to Voyager 2 in a different direction.

About four years ago, Voyager 1 encountered something unexpected — a phenomenon scientists have dubbed a pressure front. Jamie Rankin, deputy project scientist, said the instruments on the spacecraft picked up a sudden change in the magnetic field of the interstellar environment, as well as a sudden increase in the density of particles.

What exactly caused this change remains unknown. But NASA scientists are eager to get all the data flowing normally again to see whether the pressure front is still detectable.

“Is the pressure front still there; what is happening with it?” Melroy said.

Voyager 1 is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus, according to NASA, and in about 38,000 years, it will come within 1.7 light-years of an unremarkable star near the Little Dipper. But although it will have long gone silent, it does carry the equivalent of a message in a bottle: the “Golden Record.”

The record was curated by a committee led by astronomer Carl Sagan and includes greetings in 55 languages, sounds of surf, wind and thunderstorms, a whale song and music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry to a Navajo chant. The Golden Record is accompanied by instructions for playing it, should the spacecraft someday come into the hands of an intelligent species interested in finding out about life on Earth.

“The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space,” Sagan said.

But that advanced spacefaring civilization might not be an alien one, NASA scientists point out. It’s conceivable that the cosmic message in a bottle could be picked up someday by a human deep-space mission eager to examine a vintage spaceship.