Key takeaways:
- Star Trek: Voyager had a backup plan involving a character named Suspiria to reset the show’s premise if fans rejected it.
- The producers of Voyager were concerned that fans would dislike the isolated premise of the show and potentially abandon the franchise.
- Suspiria, the Caretaker’s mate, was created as a contingency to send Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant and transform the show into something more akin to The Next Generation if needed.
One aspect of Star Trek: Voyager that everyone loves is the sheer audacity of its premise. Even those who criticize the quality of the show often praise the courage it took to create a Trek show where the crew is completely isolated on the other side of the galaxy. It was, simply put, the purest embodiment of The Original Series, as Captain Janeway and her crew encountered new life, new civilizations, and strange new worlds practically everywhere they went. At the time, this seemed like an insanely brave move on the part of Paramount. But what most fans don’t realize is that the network had a special backup plan to completely undo this premise if the fans hated it!
Here’s a quick refresher, ensign: in the Voyager premiere episode “Caretaker,” the alien of the same name is responsible for bringing everyone to the Delta Quadrant. Many years earlier, he accidentally screwed up the atmosphere of the Ocampa’s homeworld; out of sheer guilt, he then stuck around to provide these naive aliens with all of the energy they needed. When he’s close to death, he starts yoinking other ships from across the galaxy to his location, hoping to find someone who can take care of the Ocampa. Janeway eventually convinces him that he’s stunted their growth and that these aliens need to finally grow up.
Meet Plan B
The Caretaker agrees, giving the Ocampa the knowledge they need to finally survive on their own. Speaking of which, after he kicks the bucket, Chakotay’s Maquis crew merges with the Voyager crew in order to survive the Delta Quadrant, and the rest is Star Trek history. However, the producers of Voyager worried that fans would reject the show’s premise and possibly abandon the franchise altogether. That’s why they gave the Caretaker a mate named Suspiria. Originally, she was created for exactly one reason: allowing everyone to hit the reset button on the show if fans ended up hating Voyager.
Back during Season 1, Rick Berman revealed (as quoted in A Vision of the Future – Star Trek: Voyager) some shocking facts. “The studio was very concerned when they first heard the pitch…We convinced them that it didn’t have to be bleak…And frankly we made a concession to finally finish the sales job.” Basically, Paramount worried that Voyager would be grim and gritty, like the later Battlestar Galactica reboot, and Berman had to convince them otherwise.
The Advent Of Janeway Supremacy
He also created a contingency: “We put the one-armed man out there–which is the other entity that we met in the pilot. It’s out there somewhere. We will try to find that entity more than once during the next several years because we know that the entity has the ability to send us back home.” If you’re too young to remember, the one-armed man was the villain of The Fugitive TV show, one who gave our hero a special reason to wander from town to town in search of him. Likewise, Voyager would constantly look for Suspiria in order to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, something that would effectively reset the entire show.
This allowed Rick Berman and his producers to have it both ways. If audiences dug Voyager‘s premise, then Suspiria could just lurk in the background of the narrative, giving our characters ongoing hope for an easy way home. If audiences hated the premise, however, the writers could use Suspiria to zap Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant and turn the show into something more akin to The Next Generation. Fortunately, audiences liked Voyager’s core concept: Suspiria only appeared once (in the Season 2 episode “Cold Fire”) and didn’t send the crew back home. That’s because the network was now confident that Star Trek fans were going to support this show for the long haul.
That support is proof that Voyager took a big swing, and it ended up connecting with audiences. It remains the boldest idea for a new series in all of Star Trek history. Publicly, Paramount soaked up all the praise for its premise and for boldly taking Voyager where it never went before. Privately, however, they had a secret plan to turn the show into The Next Generation 2.0 if that’s what it took to win over the fans. Ironically, decades later, NuTrek died because it tried to give fans everything but what they wanted, leading to one premature cancellation after another.
Chris Snellgrove