USS Voyager, NCC-74656

USS Voyager, NCC-74656
Class	Intrepid-class
Registry	NCC-74656
Affiliation	Federation/Star Fleet
Status	Missing (2378)

The USS Voyager (NCC-74656) was an Intrepid-class Federation starship. It was launched in 2371 and was under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway. The ship's maximum warp was 9.975, with warp nacelles that pivot upwards while in flight. Voyager featured improved computer systems using both traditional isolinear circuitry and new bio-neural circuitry to improve performance. Voyager also had the capability of landing on the surface of a planet with landing struts.

Command Crew

Commanding Officer (CO) - Captain Kathryn Janeway

"There are three things to remember about being a starship captain: keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and never abandon a member of your crew."

- Captain Kathryn Janeway, 2375

Kathryn Janeway was a 24th century Star Fleet officer, most noted for her service as Captain of the starship USS Voyager. She became the first Federation captain to successfully travel to the Delta Quadrant, encountering dozens of new planets and civilizations. While there, she and her crew also survived numerous encounters with the Borg.

Janeway was well-known for her addiction to coffee. She refused to go a day without a cup of coffee and preferred it completely black, without milk or sugar. Janeway once tried to give up coffee, unsuccessfully. Once, Neelix tried to get her to use Voyager's food reserves instead of her replicator rations by giving her his "Even better than coffee substitute". Grudgingly, Janeway agreed to try it, but was relieved when the bridge called her just before Neelix was finished pouring it. In an alternate timeline, Janeway gave up coffee in favor of tea later in life.

From 2365 onward, Janeway and Tuvok became close friends, and Janeway found she could always "rely on his insightful and unfailingly logical advice". Tuvok was one of her most trusted friends and advisers, and she discussed all command decisions with him. When Voyager was first stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway met with Maquis cell leader Chakotay. After the Maquis ship was destroyed, Chakotay and Janeway became reluctant allies in the attempt to find missing crewmembers and return to the Alpha Quadrant. Their complicated relationship began first as enemies, then as reluctant ship mates, forming into possible romantic interests, and settling with best friends. Chakotay became Voyager's First Officer, and Janeway relied on Chakotay's innovative tactics in battles, integrating many Maquis techniques.

Executive Officer (XO) - Commander Chakotay

In 2371, while Star Fleet was trying to capture him in the Badlands, he and his Maquis crew were pulled into the Delta Quadrant and forced to merge with the crew of the Voyager during its journey towards home. Before serving as Voyager's first officer, he had resigned Star Fleet after years of service in order to join the Maquis to defend his home colony.

Being of Mayan and Native American descent, Chakotay's tribe - mainly because of the intrusion of more technological societies - left Earth hundreds of years ago to find their own home on another planet near the Cardassian border. His father tried to impart his values on Chakotay in many ways, such as taking him to hikes to nearby forested worlds of their ancestors. When his father died, he resigned from Star Fleet to join the Maquis and defend his home colony, continuing the fight in his father's name. He also took the mark, his face tattoo, in order to honor the memory of his father and to signify his Native American heritage.

One of the many reasons he joined Star Fleet was to pursue his interests in anthropology and paleontology. He was fascinated by 20th century Earth, and the early history of space exploration. Since his time at Star Fleet Academy, Chakotay was a fan of boxing. While there, the legendary Boothby helped him train. He occasionally ran a program on the holodeck where he would box a Terrellian with Boothby's assistance. He also said that "boxing helped him relax."

Aboard the Maquis ship Val Jean, Chakotay was close with many of his crew. B'Elanna Torres was Chakotay's engineer and unofficial first officer, and he endorsed her becoming Voyager's Chief Engineer. They had a close, almost sibling-like relationship, though she did not chose him to be her child's godfather because she believed he didn't really know about raising children. (She and Tom chose The Doctor instead.)

Chief Tactical Officer / Chief of Security - Lieutenant Commander Tuvok

As a teenager, Tuvok rebelled against the Vulcan ideal of logic and reasoning when he fell in love with a Terrellian girl named Jara, the daughter of an ambassador. When she did not return his desperate feelings, Tuvok chose spend several months in isolation studying with a Vulcan master, where he learned to subdue his emotions. Tuvok entered Star Fleet Academy at the age of 25, but found it difficult to fit in. He found the egocentric nature of humans difficult to deal with, but endured it because it was the wish of his parents to enter Star Fleet, and he felt obligated to fulfill their expectations.

In 2371, he infiltrated the crew of the Maquis raider commanded by a former Star Fleet officer, Chakotay. While hiding from a Cardassian ship in the Badlands, the raider was hit by an energy wave which transported both the Maquis ship and Voyager into the Delta quadrant. Tuvok's status of a spy was revealed when he and Captain Janeway welcomed him back onto the ship.

Tuvok was a devoted parent and husband. Tuvok married T'Pel in 2304, and later had four children, three sons and a daughter. In 2374, he learned that his eldest son Sek had a child, named T'Meni after his mother, making him a grandfather. Tuvok was a prize-winning orchid breeder, and used grafting techniques on flowers from both Earth and Vulcan. Tuvok's main pastime was the Vulcan game kal-toh, which he frequently played with Ensign Harry Kim. He also spent his spare time meditating, and instructed various members of the crew in this pursuit over the years.

His closest friend aboard Voyager was Captain Janeway herself, who trusted him completely, and whom he considered the closest thing to family aboard Voyager. Previous to his assignment to Voyager, Tuvok was an instructor at Star Fleet Academy for a period of sixteen years.

Officers

Chief Engineer - Lieutenant Junior Grade B'Elanna Torres

With mother being Klingon and her father being human, B'Elanna was quick to anger and hard to get through to. Though she adored her father as a child, he left B'elanna and her mother, severing any contact. Blaming herself for his leaving, combined with being made fun of for her Klingon head ridges, the young girl began to resent her Klingon heritage. She attended Star Fleet Academy, but felt she did not fit in, continuously getting in fights with teachers and other students. Within two years, she was suspended once and had four disciplinary hearings against her, and she eventually dropped out in 2368. She met Chakotay and joined the Maquis, finding that fighting Cardassians was the perfect outlet for her anger issues. Being a brilliant Engineer, she was an asset to the Maquis, and even managed to re-program a Cardassian missile for their own use.

Once on Voyager, B'Elanna found more people to fight with, usually the next in line for Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Carey. Once she proved her skills to Captain Janeway and earned her respect, Janeway then made her Chief Engineer over Carey. Often captured by Delta Quadrant species due to her genetic diversity, she continued to feel conflicted about it herself. After marrying Tom Paris and conceiving a child, B'Elanna even went so far as to try and genetically modify her child, to ensure it would not look Klingon, and face the same hardships she did as a child.

B'Elanna was, in part, responsible for Seven of Nine being abandoned by the Borg. During Voyager's first encounter with the Borg, she helped to engineer nanoprobes to use as a weapon against Species 8472, who had become a threat to both Voyager and the Borg. When Seven, on board Voyager, attempted to assimilate the Star Fleet ship after the Species 8472 threat had been eliminated, B'Elanna created a power surge through Seven that disabled her. This severed Seven's link to the Collective, and the collective left without coming back for the drone.

Pilot - Lieutenant Junior Grade Tom Paris

Tom had a love of the ocean and sailing: he planned to join the Federation Naval Patrol until his father pressured him into joining Star Fleet. At the age of eight, his father took him for a trip in an S-class shuttlecraft, and Tom discovered that he loved piloting. He was dismissed from Star Fleet when he tried to cover up a piloting error on his behalf which led to the deaths of three fellow officers. After being expelled from Star Fleet, he joined the Maquis, but was captured on his first mission. Paris was serving time in a Federation Penal Settlement in New Zealand when he received a visit from Captain Janeway. She gave him the opportunity to redeem himself, by participating on a mission to track down the Maquis who were hiding in the Badlands.

On board Voyager, he quickly befriended Harry Kim, and began dalliances with any woman that could stand him for the night. A few serious relationships included Kes, on-and-off with the Delaney sisters, and his eventual wife, B'Elanna. Hobbies included creating and playing in Holodeck programs, playing practical jokes on friends and colleagues, and enjoying old Earth movies, specifically of the science fiction and horror genre.

Paris was the first Star Fleet officer to reach warp 10. While experimenting with ways for Voyager to quicken her journey, he realized that in simulations, the shuttle was being ripped from the nacelles, not the the other way around. With a minor adjustment, the transwarp threshold could be crossed safely. Despite success in the simulations, the real flight experience caused him to begin to mutate. A disoriented Tom then kidnapped Captain Janeway and took her on a Warp Ten journey, which caused her to mutate as well. When Voyager found them, they had evolved into amphibians. They produced three offspring which the crew left on the planet. Once back on Voyager, The Doctor was able to "de-evolve" them back to their Human forms. Trans-warp travel was then deemed too dangerous and the idea was abandoned.

Operations Manager - Ensign Harry Kim

Fresh out of the Academy, being stranded in the Delta Quadrant hit Harry pretty hard. With Voyager being his first field assignment, the Ensign wasn't even sure how to address his Captain. He was quickly befriended by Tom Paris, who, combined with his own rebellious nature, helped Harry instill some confidence in himself over the years. Though he always seemed unlucky in love, Tom continued to set up double-dates between the two men and two female officers known as the Delaney sisters.

Harry's green nature may have labeled him an "easy mark" - he was abducted from The Caretaker, the Vhnori, the Akritirians, and held captive on-board Voyager by the Hirogen. What he lacked in experience, however, he made up for in ingenuity. He and friend Tom Paris built the Delta Flyer, a technologically-advanced shuttle, and its successor, the Delta Flyer Mark 2, which became an asset to the USS Voyager.

In addition to tagging along on Tom's holodeck programs, Harry enjoyed a variety of his own hobbies. He played music on both the clarinet and saxophone, and enjoyed sports such as volleyball, Parrises squares, and tennis. Perhaps processing an eidetic memory, Harry claims to remember what it was like inside his mother's womb.

Enlisted Crew Members

Head of Astrometrics - Seven of Nine

Formerly known as Annika Hansen, the Borg drone known as "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01" was stranded on Voyager while the two fought against beings only identified as Species 8472. Having been assimilated at six years old, the Borg Collective was all that she knew. Her parents were exobiologists investigating the existence of the Borg, and in 2356, all three were assimilated. Naturally, being ripped away from the Borg was traumatic for the person the Voyager crew would come to affectionally call "Seven," which took her some time to come to terms with.

Assisted by Harry Kim, Seven of Nine designed and constructed the ship's astrometrics lab, which used Borg technology to plot routes that trimmed several years off of Voyager's journey towards the Alpha Quadrant. She would go on to assist Harry and Tom in building the Delta Flyer shuttlecrafts. When Neelix's knowledge of the Delta Quadrant waned, Seven was there to step in and inform the Captain what the Borg knew about the species or sector in question. Though not one to usually get along with the crew, Seven did not seem to mind being an outsider, though her lack of empathy did make interpersonal relationships problematic.

Ironically enough, one of Seven's first friends was that of a crewmember's child - Naomi Wildman. The young girl, like Seven, also felt out of place on Voyager, since there was no else like her on board. Naomi, who wanted the made-up job of 'Captain's Assistant,' secretly studied Seven, deciding that the Borg pursuit of perfection would help her achieve her goal of working on the bridge. When Seven discovered Naomi spying on her, she befriended her, admiring her ambition. This may have started Seven's knack for babysitting; in 2376, Voyager rescued four "immature" Borg drones: children who had been assimilated. Seven became their den mother of sorts, creating a strict timetable for them, and strived to help them assimilate back into a more normal way of life. Three of the four children were either returned or adopted, with the oldest choosing to remain on Voyager.

Chief Medical Officer (CMO) - "The Doctor"

Intended for short-term use only, the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) Mark 1 was designed with the attributes of its creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. Programmed with all known medical knowledge, this holographic doctor became much more to the Voyager crew as the years wore on. With limited sentience (holograms cannot feel pain), the EMH experienced prejudice from the Voyager crewmembers, since he was not a "real" Doctor, in the sense that he was not "real." This began to lessen over time, as the Voyager crew, without a medical staff, could not find a replacement doctor, and the EMH was forced into the position of Chief Medical Officer.

Though the Doctor could not feel pain, what he did have was an ego. Most of the crew considered him a computer program, and treated him as such. In turn, he chose to be curt and rude to them, unhappy that he was being used to perform menial medical tasks. Captain Janeway made Tom Paris his nurse, since he had taken a couple courses at the Academy. Once Kes volunteered to replace Tom, relations between the Doctor and the crew improved, with Kes acting as a go-between. During encounters with hostile aliens, the Doctor also proved his worth as a crewmember, and he began to grow as a "person" once allowed to install subroutines. He developed a love of opera, writing, and photography, and became somewhat of a "shutterbug" once he received his mobile emitter, which allowed him to walk freely outside of Sickbay.

Easily his first friend, Kes helped the Doctor come out of his shell, and helped the crew to accept him as a physician and a non-human person. The Doctor became Kes' mentor, as she had developed a great passion for medicine. After being taught social competency by Kes, he tried to teach what he had learned to Seven of Nine, who, like the Doctor, did not exactly fit in with the Voyager crew. He began to develop romantic feelings for Seven, and was crushed when it was clear those feelings would never be returned. Eventually, the crew as a whole were able to overlook his holographic roots, and regarded the Doctor as much as they would any other different species.

Ambassador to the Delta Quadrant - Neelix

Self-appointed ambassador to the Delta Quadrant for Voyager, the short and spotted male Talaxian certainly stood out on Voyager. Coming aboard shortly after the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Neelix brought along his girlfriend Kes, and convinced Captain Janeway to keep them on board. Neelix's knowledge of the Delta Quadrant and its politics helped Janeway navigate her way through the unknown space, and the longer they stayed on the Federation ship, the more labels Neelix began to give himself. Afraid that his waning knowledge would cause Janeway to abandon him, Neelix appointed himself Head Chef, Chief Morale Officer and Chief Negotiator. He encouraged Kes to make herself as useful as she could be, as well, and she took up residence in a Cargo Bay, creating a hydroponics lab.

Making friends on Voyager was an easy task for Neelix, even at a few crewmember's chagrin. (He insisted on calling Tuvok "Mr. Vulcan," a name that became a term of endearment between the two.) Though his cooking was not exactly to the crew's liking, he continued to experiment and trying to merge Alpha Quadrant recipes with Delta Quadrant ingredients. He also made a great effort to learn the various cultures of the Voyager crew, helping with birthdays, child-rearing, and Klingon high holidays. He was even appointed godfather to the daughter of Samantha Wildman, a role while he took very seriously.

Coming from an independent merchant background, Neelix was also versed in basic engineering, as well as trading. He shadowed Engineering Chief B'Elanna Torres for a time, trying to learn more complex engineering skills. Commander Chakotay once told Neelix he was "the most versatile member of [the] crew," due to his eagerness to learn new skills. Even Lieutenant Command Tuvok, his reluctant friend, complimented Neelix by saying, "You are perhaps the most resourceful individual I have ever known."

Eventually leaving Voyager, joining a small Talaxian colony taking refuge on an asteroid, Neelix continued his work as a Delta Quadrant Ambassador.

Nurse / Assistant to The Doctor - Kes

Coming aboard Voyager with her boyfriend Neelix, Kes was one of the first Delta Quadrant species the crew came in contact with. Quickly known for their short life spans, helping the Ocampan people also unfortunately caused Voyager its ticket home. Growing up underground, Kes' curiosity got her captured by the Kazon, and Neelix rescued her with the help of Captain Janeway and her ship. The rescue of Kes and the Voyager / Maquis crew ended with Voyager destroying the Caretaker in order to protect Kes' people from the ones that were capturing Ocampans and torturing them for information.

In addition to truncated life spans, Kes was born with latent psionic abilities, able to sense the presence of others, and could move things with her mind. When she began to lose control of these powers, she received training from her Vulcan friend Tuvok, who taught her to meditate and concentrate. She also looked to the Doctor for training, as her propensity towards gardening had led her to a curiosity towards medicine. She began to split her time between the hydroponics bay and Sickbay, volunteering to become the Doctor's nurse and replace Tom Paris, who resented the job. She also became a go-between for the Doctor and the rest of the crew, who did not treat each other with respect. After helping relations between the Doctor and the Voyager crew, Kes began to branch out and extend her friendship to others.

When Neelix began to show jealousy over her close friendship with Tom Paris, Kes became frustrated, and broke up with him. Confessing to Neelix that she felt they had been growing apart anyway, the two surprisingly stayed close friends. Though the two still cared for each other greatly, they never got back together. Another close friend was Tuvok, whom Kes looked to as a mentor. Though he disapproved of her giggling during meditation sessions, the Vulcan respected her greatly. Captain Janeway also showed a high level of respect towards Kes, despite her youth and inexperience.

After an encounter with Species 8472, Kes' psionic abilities skyrocketed, and she was desperately unable to control them. Rapidly destabilizing at the subatomic level, her condition caused massive damage to Voyager. Fearing for her found-family's lives, she took a shuttle and left the ship. She was able to explore her new state of being, and left the corporeal world behind. As she parted from Voyager, she pushed the ship out of Borg space: 9,500 light years closer to Earth, to thank them for all they had given her.

History

The USS Voyager was constructed at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards orbiting Mars and was launched from Earth Station McKinley on stardate 48038.5 in 2371. Voyager was the first ship equipped with a Class-9 warp drive. The ship later docked at Deep Space 9 to begin its first mission: to track down the Maquis ship Val Jean, in the Badlands. The mission was only estimated to last a few weeks.

Once in the Badlands, both the Maquis ship and Voyager were hit by a displacement wave created by the Caretaker entity, by which both ships were thrown 70,000 light years from their original location to the outer edge of the Delta Quadrant.

The Search for Voyager

Voyager officially lost contact with Star Fleet on stardate 48307.5, due to being too great a distance away from the Alpha Quadrant.

Star Fleet presumed the Voyager to be destroyed in the Badlands until 2374, when the ship's EMH was transmitted to the Federation starship USS Prometheus using a Hirogen owned relay station. The ship, at the time, had been taken over by Romulans. The Doctor, with assistance by an EMH Mark II, returned the ship to Star Fleet, and spoke directly to Star Fleet Headquarters to set the record straight.

After the EMH Mark II reported Voyager's situation, Star Fleet's Communications Research Center set up the Pathfinder Project to find a way to bring back or maintain constant contact with the ship. This project was personally supervised by Admiral Owen Paris, Tom Paris' father, and Kathryn Janeway's old Captain.

In early 2376, first contact between Star Fleet Command and the Voyager was finally established over the MIDAS array using an artificial micro-wormhole. Although the periods of data transfer were very limited, not only was Star Fleet able to transmit tactical updates to the Voyager crew, but private conversations between Voyager crew members and their relatives in the Alpha Quadrant were also possible.