A Star Trek: Voyager revival is more about want than need

A Star Trek: Voyager revival doesn’t have to be needed to be wanted.

Since the recent announcement of a potential revival of Star Trek: Voyager, there have been questions as to whether or not this series needs a revival, especially since several of the characters have already returned in some form or another on the new Trek shows.

This season of Star Trek: Picard brought back legacy characters for what has essentially been a Star Trek: The Next Generation season eight, and it has been massively successful. Did Picard need to end with the characters from the 1990s series? No, but it was something Terry Matalas, who is a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the showrunner for Picard, wanted to do for the fans. And judging by the fan reaction, it’s something that has been greatly appreciated and enjoyed.

Yes, Star Trek: Voyager had its run, but unlike my colleague, Chad Porto, who wrote that “They rely too heavily on nostalgia, and if Star Wars most recent trilogy taught us one thing, it’s that nostalgia-heavy properties quickly burn out,” I don’t agree that such series necessarily burn out quickly. Just because it happened to Star Wars doesn’t mean it would happen to Star Trek.

Star Trek: Voyager may not have been the most successful of the series, but it has a massive fan contingent.

The Voyager documentary, “To the Journey,” raised $1.2 million in a crowdfunding campaign, which was more than producers expected, in 2021. That documentary is now in produiction thanks to fans. This feat alone shows that there is there is still a very active force behind this series. Add to that the extra boost of success Star Trek: Prodigy has found with bringing back Kate Mulgrew as Admiral Janeway and now Robert Beltran as Captain Chakotay, there is little doubt a Voyager revival series would be successful.

Even if the revival is only a ten episode mini-series, the interest is there. We want to know where these characters are because, for a lot of us, they helped shape our young adult years. We want to know if Harry Kim ever got promoted, if Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres had any more children and where their careers took them, if the Doctor was transferred to another ship, and if Tuvok got his own ship. We have so many questions about these characters. We cared about them then, and we care about them now. So while a revival definitely isn’t a “need,” it’s most definitely something we want.