12 Abandoned Star Trek Ideas That Would Have Been Incredible

Scuttlebutt would have us believe that the plans for Voyager's Year Of Hell were much more extensive than the two-part episode that we eventually received. While this two-parter was sufficiently brutal as we witness the degradation and crippling of our beloved Voyager over an extended period of time, it could have been more.

The plans for The Year Of Hell were for it to have spanned an entire season, with the Krenim Temporal Ship haunting them for more than twenty episodes. Voyager would have accumulated more and more damage as time went by as there would be nowhere for the ship to repair itself and they would slowly lose crew members.

The two-part episode did do an excellent job of conveying the damage that Voyager is continually subjected too, but picture that breakdown spread over a whole season. Picture the sense of loss and isolation that could have been worked into the very fabric of the show as it progressed, mirrored by the increased frustration of Annorax as he tries to shape an entire quadrant to his liking until it is unrecognisable. The ultimate conclusion of the season would still have been the same, with Janeway destroying both the crippled Voyager and the Krenim Timeship in a spectacular final space battle.

Eventually, the plans for the season-long arc were reduced to the two-part episode we watched. Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga felt that a season-long investment that would be reversed at its conclusion was too much for the audience to bear. Voyager, for all of the excellent solo episodes that are within it, overall lacked cohesion as a series and this missed opportunity could have paved the way for more overarching stories, the kind that Voyager's very premise demanded.

But it wasn't to be.