Star Trek: 10 Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive

Years before Enterprise struggled to adhere to its own premise, Star Trek: Voyager was having its cake and eating it too – the crew of the USS Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant but the show still found ways to play with the Romulans, Ferengi, Klingons, and Deanna Troi.

For a show about a crew trying desperately to find their way home, Star Trek: Voyager spent an inordinate amount of time telling stories that tried to skirt that predicament so the series could still use some famous Trek elements. Rather than fleshing out the new, uncharted world of the Delta Quadrant, Voyager time and time again fell back on tried and true Trek adversaries, finding ways to run into classic Alpha Quadrant aliens, even other Starfleet vessels, despite the ship's supposed distance from them.

The worst example of Voyager's muddled relationship with its own premise comes in the form of the titular ship's nearly annual trips to planet Earth in some form or another. Whether it's Harry Kim's visit to an alternate San Francisco in "Non Sequitur", or the crew's jaunt back to 1996 Santa Monica in "Future's End", or virtual Starfleet Headquarters in "In the Flesh", or even the constant Earth-based holoprograms, Star Trek: Voyager took every chance it could to undercut the drive to get home by showing the crew comfortably back at Earth.

Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine writer – and creator of Battlestar Galactica – Ronald D. Moore put it best when the show was still on the air:

Voyager won’t accept itself. It won’t believe it’s really in this situation in this area of the galaxy and that these are really the prospects in front of them. They just won’t embrace it. They fight against it. There have been more episodes that have taken place on Earth, or alternate Earth, or past Earth than I think the original series did in its whole run, and the original series was set over in the Alpha Quadrant... Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy, and they have already run into some alien race recreating Starfleet Academy. They’ve run into Ferengi, the Romulans. It doesn’t feel like they are that far away from home. It just doesn’t feel like they are in that much trouble out there... Essentially what was the point of this entire series? It’s a wasted opportunity. That’s what pisses me off.