Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Finally Explains What Happened To The USS Voyager
This post contains spoilers for the season 4 premiere of "Star Trek: Lower Decks."
The final episode of "Star Trek: Voyager," called "Endgame" (May 23, 2001), took place on Stardate 54973.4. Trek's current dating system can be traced back to the first episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which took place on Stardate 41153.7. The second number in the Stardate, one might note, always corresponded to the show's season; all the first-season episode Stardates began with a "41," the second season with "42," etc. By that gauge, "Endgame" took place 13 years after the beginning of NextGen.
"Twovix," the fourth-season premiere episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," takes place on Stardate 58724.3, placing it about four years after the events of "Endgame." The U.S.S. Voyager itself, one might recall, eventually made its way back to Earth after seven years in deep space. In "Twovix," it is revealed that the Voyager was hastily preserved, repaired, and has now been converted into a museum. The Voyager is to be transported back to Earth, where it will land and be opened to the public. The ship will be stocked with historical exhibits commemorating the adventures of the Voyager crew, and staffed by mannequins wearing mission-worn uniforms. It will be up to the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos to oversee the transport.
Naturally, shenanigans ensue.
The events of "Star Trek: Voyager," it seems, are significant to Starfleet, and preserving the ship is important to the organization's history. Many Trekkies might assume, as I did, that decommissioned ships are regularly scrapped and recycled into new starships. It seems that the Voyager is more important for posterity than as a source of high-tech engine parts.
Thanks to the events of "Twovix," there is now a timeline that can be traced from the initial construction of the Voyager to its location in the early 25th century.
The timeline of the Voyager
In the pilot episode for "Star Trek: Voyager," called "Caretaker" (January 16, 1995), it was established that the U.S.S. Voyager was a brand new ship, decked out with biological computer components, high-tech holographic medical assistants, and the ability to travel faster than most starships that came before it. "Caretaker" takes place on Stardate 48315.6, while the Voyager itself was commissioned on Stardate 48038.5, only a few weeks earlier (a fact established by dialogue in the episode "Relativity" from 1999). The starship was almost immediately swept to the other side of the galaxy by a near-omnipotent space entity and left stranded 70 years from Earth. It only took the Voyager's crew — thanks to several high-tech and time-travel advantages — seven years to return home.
It seems after those harrowing seven years, the Voyager was allowed to rest. The ship was retired and the crew scattered and went their separate ways.
Trekkies would eventually learn from "Star Trek: Picard" — set about 20 years after "Lower Decks" — that Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) would begin a career as a violent vigilante (!), and that the Voyager itself would end up in a starship museum. There is an episode of "Picard" wherein Seven of Nine, now serving on board a ship called the Titan, visits the starship museum and ogles the Voyager wistfully. That leaves a 20-year gap where the Voyager was not accounted for. A gap that "Lower Decks" handily fills.
"Lower Decks" announces in dialogue that the Voyager will be a museum on Earth for five years, and will then be transported again to a space-bound starship museum as seen in "Picard." The ship's whereabouts have now been accounted for across its 30 years of life.
In Earth years...
To translate Stardates into recognizable Earth years, the Voyager was commissioned in 2371, got lost, and returned to Earth in 2378. It was decommissioned and converted, opening as a museum in about 2382. After five years on Earth — in about 2387 — the Voyager was transported to the starship museum as it appeared in the third season of "Picard." That show's third season took place sometime between 2402 and 2411 (the date is a little vague, other than to say it takes place in "the early 25th century"). On "Lower Decks," then, the Voyager is about 11 years old. On "Picard," it could conceivably be as old as 40.
Also, as established in "Picard," the older starships are (perhaps bafflingly) kept in perfect working order. The ships are powered up, their engines glow, and there are lights on in their windows. It seems that many of them also have working warp engines, keeping them all flight-ready. This seems handy in case the ships need to engage in air shows and fly-bys at anniversary events. In "Picard," it was also revealed, however, that the reconstructed Enterprise-D — partially salvaged from the events of "Star Trek: Generations" (1994) — was also armed with phasers and photon torpedoes. This seems like a dangerous choice to my eye. Wouldn't that be like mounting loaded machine guns onto a restored Sopwith Camel? One might assume that the Voyager was also stocked with weapons.
And if that's the case, surely the Voyager also has its databanks full, its navigational computer operative, and its medical bay fully stocked. Although the ship is decades old, it may very well be 100% mission-ready. It makes one wonder why one bothers to decommission ships at all.