A Star Trek Voyager Movie Made No Sense (But It Needs A Picard-Like Series)

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Star Trek: Voyager never made sense as a film franchise, but a television sequel like Star Trek: Picard could be a great way to explore what happened to Captain Janeway and her crew once they got home. Airing from 1995-2001, Star Trek: Voyager chronicled the adventures of the titular Starfleet vessel as it became marooned in the Delta Quadrant, 75 years away from Earth.

Despite its intriguing premise, Voyager was largely defined by its characters and the relationships between them, such as the integration of former Maquis officers like Chakotay and B'Elanna Torres as trusted members of the crew, the redemption of formerly disgraced officer Tom Paris, and perhaps most famously, the dual paths of the ships' holographic Doctor and the former Borg drone Seven of Nine as they attempted to discover their inherent humanity.

Voyager ended in the only way it really could - with the ship and its crew victoriously returning to Earth - which didn't really leave room for a film continuation at the time. But that hasn't been the end of the story for all of the ship's crew: newly promoted Admiral Janeway had a cameo in Star Trek: Nemesis, the final film to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Seven of Nine was a major player in the first season of Star Trek: Picard, set two decades after Voyager returned home. The latter series, in particular, has stoked hopes that other Voyager cast members could appear in Picard or another CBS All Access series, but there's more than enough potential storytelling gold to justify bringing back a significant chunk of the Voyager cast for their own followup series.

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There are plenty of unanswered questions that linger past the events of Voyager's somewhat abrupt finale. What became of the Doctor, who was pretty well established as a sentient life form by the end of Voyager? Did Janeway and Chakotay ever act on their undeniable chemistry? Did Harry Kim ever get to be a lieutenant? These characters may not be quite as iconic as Picard and their TNG counterparts, but they deserve an epilogue that establishes how they readjusted to life after their days on Voyager.

Star Trek: Voyager's legacy lives on. Seven of Nine will still be around in Star Trek: Picard's second season - with an intriguing new love interest in Raffi Musiker - and Kathryn Janeway herself will take part in the still-mysterious animated series Star Trek: Prodigy. The ship itself even got a nod in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. But that legacy deserves to be fleshed out further, and with CBS All Access looking to mine the Star Trek mythos for all it's worth, a return visit to Voyager's crew would be a welcome diversion for a generation of fans.