Star Trek: 10 Behind The Scenes Secrets From Caretaker

Star Trek's fourth live-action series, Voyager, premiered in 1994. It followed the end of The Next Generation, airing concurrently with Deep Space Nine, and helped to launch the UPN network as their flagship show. For a series that garnered a lot of interest and hope, there was an interesting amount of stress going on behind the scenes.

Their lead actor walked off the set. There were characters inspired by the same Street Gangs that were terrorizing L.A. and Southern California. Paramount forced producers to include a get out of jail free card. Nobody cared about Neelix.

There were certainly issues facing the series as it went to air. However, despite hair and make-up barely leaving Kate Mulgrew alone for the time needed to actually record, Caretaker emerged as one of the stronger Star Trek pilots to that time. That is not to say that it was perfect, yet there was a heart and optimism that had somewhat left the franchise as Deep Space Nine entered its Junior year. The Cage, Encounter at Farpoint, and Emissary this was not.

Here was something both entirely new, yet pure Trek.

It is by now a well-known fact that Genevieve Bujold was originally cast as Captain Janeway. Before Caretaker made it past the initial days of filming, she abruptly quit the part, which led to a scramble to replace her. Thankfully, Kate Mulgrew stepped into the part, and the Janeway that the audience grew to love was born.

However, to go back to Bujold, the reason why she quit is quite a sour one. Garrett Wang, who along with Robert Duncan McNeill was one of the few Voyager stars to share scenes with her, explained that he approached her about her brusque demeanor. As he described it, she would arrive, she would film, and she would leave immediately afterward.

According to Wang, Bujold was incredibly annoyed that the producers had lied to her. She had been led to believe that she would be playing a captain first, and a woman second. However, as soon as she arrived, the hair and make-up team descended. This, in her opinion, created delays in the filming process, which in turn kept her away from her small children.

She quickly decided that the role wasn't for her, and that was that. Her claims were certainly not baseless - Mulgrew would later recount that she grew weary of the amount of messing with her style on Voyager's early seasons.