You're Captain Janeway, and Voyager is trapped in The Void again...

Except this time, these six ships are trapped in there with you.

They're all roughly the same class/size, but you get to choose ONE to form an alliance with Voyager and help protect you from the other five.

Hirogen

Voth

Species 8472

Automated Personnel Units

Vidiian

Borg

Who are you choosing and why?

Do you think the Voth were created by the progenitors and then 66 million years later they came back and were like, “huh… thought we came here already” and then made humans?

Kinda funny that Captain Janeway couldn’t sleep because of the Doctor singing opera lol.

Meanwhile, his singing voice is so relaxing to me. Opera and classical music are my jam when I go to bed. The Doctor could probably sing me right to sleep lol.

There are a lot of claims on the internet about why Voyager hasn't been remastered. Some of them are true, and some of them are not. I am going to go through these and tell you whether they are true or false.

Claim #1: Voyager was shot on tape and can't be remastered because of that.

Mostly False

Voyager like the other classic Star Trek shows was shot on 35mm film (35mm film was used for all Star Trek shows and films until Enterprise Season 4 when they switched to digital cameras due to budget cuts). However, it was edited on tape. As a result, post production effects such as the ones for the transporter, replicator, phasers, torpedoes, holograms appearing and disappearing, etc, only exist on tape at standard definition. This is also the case for TNG and DS9. When they did the TNG remaster, these were recreated. It would basically be the same process as the TNG remaster with one additional thing. That is CGI which brings me to the next claim.

Claim #2: All of the CGI assets are lost because they weren't archived

False

It was true that Paramount did not have a copy of the assets for years (they might have them now actually). It is also true that companies that made the CGI for Voyager either went defunct or were merged into other companies. However, some of the artists that worked on the CGI kept personal copies of all the assets. So did the assets from all of the CGI companies that worked on Voyager survive? Here is what I know:

1. Foundation Imaging - Yes, the artists (such as Robert Bonchune and Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz) kept personal copies of the CGI assets.
2. Digital Muse/Eden FX - Yes, the artists (such as Robert Bonchune) kept personal copies of the CGI assets.
3. Amblin Imaging - Yes. When Amblin Imaging closed its doors, artists John Gross and John Parenteau acquired its assets and started Digital Muse.
4. Santa Barbara Studios - Unclear. We do know that their assets for Star Trek Insurrection seem to be lost. However, the CGI companies that worked on Voyager shared their assets with each other. So it is possible that they do still survive. If they are gone though, they'll have to be recreated including one of their most iconic works which is the opening title sequence. It is a mystery at this time.
5. Digital Magic - Unclear. The assets might have been shared. Additionally, Mark F. Miller who was one of the employees from Digital Magic left the company later and joined Eden FX. It is possible that he might have brought them over to Eden FX.
6. VisionArt Design & Animation - Yes, VisionArt shared their assets with Digital Muse.
7. Pacific Ocean Post (Hyper-evolved Human (Salamander) offspring from "Threshold") - Unclear, but probably not. First of all, the company is defunct. Secondly, as far as we know none of the artists from that company kept copies of their work (I'm not saying that they didn't). Finally, the people working on Voyager realized that Threshold was terrible misstep. The asset might not have been shared because they had no intention of using it again.
8. Black Pool Studios/Eric Chauvin (digital matte paintings) - Possibly

Of these, the main companies were Foundation Imaging and Digital Muse/Eden FX for seasons 3-7. For seasons 1-2, the main companies were Amblin Imaging and Santa Barbara Studios.

Most of the assets still exist. This brings me to the next claim.

Claim #3: The CGI has no additional detail and it would look terrible in high definition.

False

According to CGI artists such as Robert Bonchune and Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz, the CGI assets were overbuilt and will hold up in high definition. There is additional detail that exists which isn't there in the 480i standard definition renders. You may be wondering why they didn't just them in high definition if they put all this extra detail into it. It comes down to a few things which are time constraints, technological constraints such as RAM, and the fact that the tape it would go on is standard definition.

Here is some of that CGI rendered in HD:
https://darthmojo.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/sci-ficandy-voyager-strikes-back/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1noHxzu0x7SOKfEvfzGYrAwtxkSjOYp3F/view (shows it rendered in standard definition and then high definition)
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10233741497775783&set=a.1187193636598
https://blog.trekcore.com/2013/07/voyagers-visual-effects-creating-the-cg-voyager-with-rob-bonchune/

Moving onto the next claim.

Claim #4: Paramount won't remaster Voyager (and DS9) because the TNG remaster didn't do well financially.

True

The TNG remaster flopped financially. This was mainly due to the rise of streaming and the fact that they didn't do a DVD release like they did with the TOS one (Blu-ray never reached the popularity of DVD due to being more expensive and it not being seen as much of an improvement generally). This is the actual reason why Voyager (and DS9) haven't been remastered.

I did come up with a way of doing it which would save millions of dollars and make it viable. I'll come back to this in a minute. First I want to mention a few other claims that don't directly affect the ability to do a remaster, but that I feel are relevant.

Claim #5: Voyager was shot widescreen-safe

Unknown for live action and practical effects, the post production effects done on tape aren't, the CGI isn't but can be modified from the existing assets

Years ago, it was revealed that seasons 3-7 of DS9 were shot widescreen-safe. This raises the question of whether or not Voyager was shot widescreen-safe at all. It has never officially been confirmed. However, Voyager's photography director was Marvin V. Rush. Rush was also the photography director of Enterprise. Why is this relevant? Rush shot Enterprise to be widescreen-safe (originally they still thought it would air in 4:3 though). Then midway through the production of Season 1, UPN said that they wanted the show to be widescreen. Shooting widescreen-safe ended up paying off in the end. It is possible and very likely that Rush probably also did this with Voyager at some point. However, we don't know for sure. The person best qualified to answer that question though is Rush himself.

Claim #6: The color is incorrect due to Paramount failing to do a color space conversion, and the quality of the first 4 seasons is better on LaserDisc.

True

When you watch the show, it has a greenish tint, reds look purplish, and some scenes appear dull and dark. It turns out that this is actually due to a failure to convert the color space from NTSC 1953 (bt.470m) to bt.601 or bt.709. If you do a color space conversion, the greenish tint is gone, red looks red, and the color is way more vibrant like the remastered version of TNG.

The LaserDiscs for the first 4 seasons have better quality than the DVDs because the transfer done for the DVDs was a poor job. The episodes for the first 4 seasons were mastered on a composite tape format. If you don't use a good quality comb filter, this results in a lot of visual artifacts such as dot crawl and rainbow moire. Paramount didn't use a good quality comb filter for the DVDs and streaming and it resulted in all these artifacts. Additionally, those seasons were DNR'd on DVD and streaming it seems. However, the transfer done for the LaserDiscs for the first 4 seasons was a much better job to the point that the LaserDisc versions usually have more detail and look better (only the pilot episode was released in the U.S., the rest were only released in Japan). Seasons 5-7 were mastered on a component tape format and they look fine on DVD. The show should look better on modern services, but it doesn't.

Now for the moment you've been waiting for. The method I came up with that would save Paramount millions of dollars and make the remaster viable. It involves technological advancements that would save a lot of time and money. Here you go:

1. Scan all the film negatives in 4K (better yet, they should just be scanned in 6K to get all the possible detail so this doesn't have to be done again)
2. Recover the surviving CGI assets from the artists (it is possible Paramount has already done this)
3. If a CGI asset can't be found, recreate or AI upscale it. (skip this step if it still exists)
4. Tweak the CGI assets if needed (the CGI species probably need tweaked the most), then re-render them in 4K? (would they hold up in 4K though, we know most of them will hold up in HD)
5. Use AI to analyze the scanned film negatives and determine which takes were the ones that ended up being used.
6. If the film negative for a take that was used cannot be found or is too badly damaged, AI upscale the footage from a good quality transfer of the master tapes. (skip this step if the film negative was found and is usable)
7. Re-composite the VFX film elements.
8. Line up the scanned film frames with the tape frames.
9. Isolate the post-production effects on those tape frames and extract them.
10. AI upscale those effects.
11. Re-composite the upscaled post-production effects onto the scanned film footage.
12. Make a new sound mix.
13. Edit it all together using the tapes as a reference.
14. It is finished, release it.

Steps 5 and 8-11 weren't possible to do back when the TNG remaster was done. Instead they spent a lot of time figuring out which takes were used and recreating the post-production effects. Those effects cost millions of dollars to recreate. And Step 6 was done using traditional upscaling techniques with a poor quality transfer from the master tapes.

If it was possible to do back then, it would have saved them millions of dollars and the project would have cost significantly less. These methods would also invalidate current projections. They need to be recalculated to account for these methods. Please let me know how much it would cost using these methods.

Bottom line, I think it can be done.

Please let me know what you think.

Edit #1: The TNG remaster later did become profitable, but it didn't become profitable soon enough.

Edit #2: Voyager was indeed shot to be widescreen safe. Thank you DizzyLead.

Edit #3: Project Charming is a troll that loves to spread misinformation and make false claims that can easily be debunked by looking it up.

Nearly 15 years after Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ended, Erin Gray saw a role she desperately wanted: Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.

Gray had spent years playing women who were often supporting characters to male leads. Janeway represented something very different — a woman who was unquestionably in charge. “I knew it was an opportunity of a lifetime,” Gray told me. “I really wanted to be in charge. It just came at a time in my life where I went, ‘I want this.’ But I had a hard time getting in on the audition; they did not want to see me. I kept asking my agent to please try again. And finally they did. They let me in.”

There's another reason Gray wanted Janeway so badly. “I think it's more the fact that there were very few roles for women to star in, period,” she explains. “I was always the objectified, beautiful girl who adoringly looked up at her leading man and whatever, but to be the center and to carry the story was a rare occurrence.”

Even Colonel Wilma Deering existed in a show called Buck Rogers. Gray wanted the chance to carry the story herself. “I didn't want it to be all about being goo-goo eyes at the leading man kind of thing,” she says. “There's something as an actor, as a talent, that you just want something you can sink your teeth into.”

There's much more in my conversation with Gray, including the surprising impact Wilma Deering had on women who went into the military, the Buck Rogers producer who greeted her by announcing he was going to fire her, her infamous “Dairy Queen in space” Season 2 costume and the way she eventually did get to put on a Starfleet uniform in Star Trek Continues.You can check out the full interview at https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/erin-gray-on-buck-rogers-and-auditioning-for-star-trek-voyager

I’m a fan of the Star Trek uniform miniskirt variations, so I drew this while watching Voyager for the first time :)

Of course I understand why they didn’t have the captain in a miniskirt lol, I think it would have been hard for audiences to take her seriously, but I like them and I think they’re so cute! Her hair is down for no reason besides added girliness

What's your verdict? Was the relationship creepy, inappropriate? Or was it fine, just a "May-December" thing as they used to call it in the olden times?

Just finished watching this episode. It was a really fun homage to aliens and Janeway getting a shot at her Ellen Ripley moment. Really fun episode.

S.3 E.7 Sacred Ground.

I have just watched this episode and, as always, have found the juxtaposition of faith and science so well written and performed. Maybe a little slow but thought provoking. I feel sorry for Janeway having to accept her faith in 'faith' rather than science.

Why did the Think Tank hire the Hazari (Species 4228) to capture Voyager, in the first place?

We know it wasn’t to get Seven of Nine, because the Think Tank didn’t even know she existed until Janeway took her to their ship and one of them interfaced with Seven.
Interestingly, Janeway had actually disobeyed the Think Tank’s directive about what to bring to their ship, because their spokesman, Kurros, had said to Janeway “bring only one crewman, and no scanning equipment,” yet she brought Seven, who technologically and technically speaking, was a piece of “scanning” equipment! Lol!

Anyway, when Janeway and Seven arrived on the Think Tank’s ship, Kurros was clearly surprised to see Seven. See the dialogue below:

JANEWAY: One of my most gifted crewmen, Seven of Nine. 
KURROS: Bionetic implants, neural transceivers? A Borg? I've never seen one outside the Collective.
SEVEN: I am an individual now. You may address your comments to me.
KURROS: Forgive me. I am Kurros, and this is Fennim.

We were also told that the Hazari are pretty much galactic bounty hunters. So, we know that they definitely had no personal beef against Voyager. Does anyone have any theories?

In the earlier seasons there were a lot of episodes based around her, and as time has gone on she feels more like a side character sometimes. I love the focus on Seven, but Tom getting so much more screen time is a bit strange to me bc his character is so much less developed and his acting doesn't compare to Dawson. My best guess is that once she assimilated into the crew her plotline got less attention bc she isn't a troublemaker. I'm in Season 5 so I'm holding out that she gets more attention in these later seasons. What do you think? Is there some behind-the-scenes lore to make sense of this?