If some rumors are true, Voyager would’ve looked very different.
Star Trek: Voyager came around at Star Trek’s peak in popularity. The original crew had just bowed out a few years earlier with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the Next Generation crew had just replaced them in the movie theaters with Star Trek: Generations.
Deep Space Nine was entering its fourth season, it’s most pivotal for the series as it marked a change in direction for the show. Then of course there was Voyager, the third new show of the bunch, the first to land on a network and not in syndication and the first to be captained by a woman.
Action figure sales, video games, collectibles, they were all hitting at the right time. The franchise was seven years before Enterprise and the end of the run of Trek. Things were still going strong.
Voyager was about to debut on UPN, led by Kate Mulgrew and joined by an eclectic group of actors surrounding her. The show wasn’t meant to be a spinoff like Deep Space Nine was, but its own brand in the same shared timeline, just on the other side of the galaxy.
That’s why it’s a bit jarring to think about how the show would’ve looked if the franchise went with a few different characters instead. While some of this is verifiable, as we provide links and sources, some of it is speculative or flat-out rumors.