Star Trek: Voyager is the fourth live-action Star Trek series. It was created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor, and ran on UPN (as UPN's first ever series) for seven seasons in the USA, from 1995 to 2001. In some areas without local access to UPN, it was offered to independent stations through Paramount Pictures (for its first six seasons). The series is best known for its familial crew, science fiction based plots, engaging action sequences and light humor. The writers often noted that many episodes had underlying themes and messages or were metaphors for current social issues. This is the first Star Trek series to feature a female captain in the main cast. Voyager follows the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation and ran alongside Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during its first five seasons.
Launched in the year 2371, the Intrepid-class Federation starship USS Voyager was a ship built to return to Starfleet's founding principle of scientific exploration. It was fitting that the ship's captain, Kathryn Janeway, rose up through the science ranks rather than command. On the ship's first mission, which required it to find and capture a Maquis vessel that disappeared into the treacherous Badlands, the starship was swept clear across the galaxy deep into the Delta Quadrant, by a being known as the Caretaker. This was a 70,000 light year transit that cost the lives of over a dozen crew members. When Captain Janeway was forced to destroy the massive alien array that housed the Caretaker, she saved an alien race, but stranded Voyager there.
Despite this significant setback, Voyager ultimately fulfilled its original mission, by Janeway's steadfast determination to bring her crew home to the Alpha Quadrant, a journey of at least 70 years. ("Caretaker") Incorporating the surviving Maquis rebels with her Starfleet-trained crew, Voyager spent seven long and treacherous years traversing entirely unknown territory. The crew made first contact with over 400 completely new species in the Delta Quadrant, discovered links to Earth's early space exploration history, as well as advancing the frontiers of stellar exploration. ("Distant Origin") The crew encountered such memorable species as the violent and ruthless Kazon, the Phage-afflicted Vidiians, the colorful Talaxians and the ephemeral Ocampa. Janeway also negotiated a temporary peace with one of the Federation's most feared enemies, the Borg, when the crew entered a vast Borg-dominated region of the Delta Quadrant. ("Scorpion") The crew was spared years in dangerous Borg space thanks to Kes, an Ocampan passenger who telepathically thrust the ship nearly 10,000 light years towards the Alpha Quadrant. The crew later made contact with the temporally-sophisticated Krenim, the predatory Hirogen, and the toxic Malon, and later still encountered the Hierarchy. The entire Federation celebrated when Voyager made a triumphant return to the Alpha Quadrant by utilizing and then destroying a Borg transwarp conduit to hurl them back to Earth in 2378. ("Endgame")
