Star Trek: 10 Things You Never Knew About Chakotay
7. He Was Introduced In Star Trek: The Next Generation
By the seventh season of The Next Generation, plans were already well underway to bring Star Trek: Voyager to the screen. The biggest plot element was the Maquis, who had also been introduced in Deep Space Nine to create a sense of continuity. While, ironically, the Maquis would ultimately and arguably end up playing a bigger role in that iteration, the former colonists were depicted via Ro Laren in the episode Preemptive Strike (having been introduced in Journey's End).
In Laren's episode, she mentions a former instructor of hers from Starfleet Academy who had resigned his commission to fight for the Maquis. This was intended to be revealed as Chakotay down the line, which would have brought his story entwined with hers. However, along the way, this plot element was dropped.
In the fifth season episode of Voyager, In The Flesh, he was later revealed to have resigned in 2368. Laren's official biography via startrek.com states that in 2369, she was on leave from her advanced tactical training under Lt. Cmdr. Chakotay. According to that site, however, he resigned in 2370 - which would also mean that Laren couldn't have had knowledge of this in advance.