To The Journey: A Star Trek Voyager Podcast

Bryan Fuller. When the news broke that Bryan Fuller was named the showrunner for the new Star Trek series set to debut in 2017, fan reaction was highly positive. Not only do Trek fans know of Fuller as someone who broke into Hollywood with a spec script for Deep Space Nine, but he wrote several episodes of Voyager and worked his way up to becoming a co-producer by the seventh season. Since then, F...

"Endgame" Commentary. After 172 episodes over the course of seven years, Voyager finished its journey and made it home. For To The Journey, it's been three and a half years and also 172 episodes. To commemorate this milestone, Char and Tristan deemed an "Endgame" commentary as an appropriate celebration. They start out drinking tea, but promptly switch to coffee when they realize how wrong it was...

Episodes that Exceeded Their Potential. Have you ever cringed at those one-sentence episode summaries on Memory Alpha or Netflix? You are not alone. Sometimes they break down the plot so simplistically that the summary makes the episode sound boring, cliche, or downright bad. Sometimes they barely describe the plot at all. The lesson to be learned here is that one should not judge an episode based...

Voyager Mirror Universe Story. Gather around everyone, it is time for another round of Voyager story time. In this episode of To the Journey, Char and Tristan return to the Voyager Mirror Universe they created. It is a crazy world where Ensign Kim feels entitled to power as a descendant of Empress Sato, and Captain Janeway shamelessly plays with the emotions of her first officer in the name of rea...

Interview with Garrett Wang. When Voyager first began, Ensign Harry Kim was a fresh Starfleet Academy graduate with a promising future. Young and gullible, he was often labeled the "green ensign" by fans. The actor behind the character, Garrett Wang, was also young when he landed the role in his mid-twenties. Beyond that similarity, however, Harry Kim is a far cry from the man who played him. Wang...

Episode Comparison. It has been awhile since Char and Tristan have compared an episode of Voyager to another episode of a Trek series. In this episode of To The Journey, they are doing it in full force. Not only do they compare plot points of Voyager's "Coda" to The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect," but they throw TNG's "The Next Phase" into the mix as well. It is a three-for-two bargain that...

Voyager's Impact and Legacy. As The Next Generation ended its TV run and set sail for the silver screen in 1994, The Powers That Be™ Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor announced that a new incarnation of the Star Trek franchise would debut early in the following year. The show would take place in uncharted space and feature a starship NOT named Enterprise. And, most notably, the ship wou...

Season Seven Essential Voyager. It's been a long road getting from there to- Wait, wrong show. These *were* the- No. Let's skip the frills and just say it: This is the last edition of Essential Voyager. Sob! Char and Tristan have had a blast evaluating Voyager episode by episode, season by season. Now it all comes full circle in this last installment, where they slash Voyager's final season down t...

Top five Janeway/Seven Moments. One of the most complicated relationships on Voyager was the constant struggle between Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine. Janeway, always in need of a reform project, almost bit off more than she could chew with the former Borg drone who struggled with her separation from the collective and forming an individual identity. The process put the two constantly at odds a...

Rewriting DS9's "Fascination" into Voyager. Tristan and Char have been on a creative streak lately. Two episodes ago, they conducted a session in the writer's room and improvised an episode live during the recording. Then, they explored what Voyager might look like in the JJ-verse. For this episode, they are still feeling the creative vibes, so Char and Tristan are back in the writer's room for a...

Voyager in the JJ-Verse. Star Trek loves playing with timelines. We have seen every incarnation of the franchise play with possibilities outside of what we consider "our" timeline, from Edith Keeler in the 1930s to Captain Janeway on in the 29th century. Aside from the "prime" universe and the Mirror Universe, we now have the Abramsverse. In this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan envisio...

Episode On the Fly. Char and Tristan have been recording To The Journey every week for the last 3+ years. One of the things they have learned in that time is that they make a crackerjack writing team. They have also learned that they have fun thinking on their feet. In this episode of To The Journey, they do both and write an episode of Voyager on the fly. That's right — with no preparation before...

"Tsunkatse" Commentary. Get ready for the ultimate fight, ALL THE SMACKDOWN, and a finish...to the death! This special commentary event is brought to you by your To The Journey hosts, Char and Tristan, and broadcast exclusively by Trek.fm. If we get anything less than three billion viewers in the live Neilsen ratings, Space Pay-Per-View might pull our distribution, so please tune in for ALL the Se...

Season Six Essential Voyager. Popular opinion among Voyager fans states that the show hit its peak in seasons four and five. If that is true, then where do the last two seasons stand in comparison to Voyager's heyday? In an effort to answer that question in this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan return to their Essential Voyager series. They examine each episode for its importance to the...

TTJ AMA 2. Char and Tristan know that listeners love it when they get a little personal. Some of the most popular episodes of To The Journey do just that, and it's the same reason why they did a Reddit-style "Ask Me Anything" in TTJ 137. That episode received so much of a response that Char and Tristan decided to open the floodgates once again and solicit questions from Twitter, The Babel Conferen...

Five-episode Janeway Marathon. Longtime To The Journey listeners know that Char and Tristan love marathoning Voyager on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They have created marathons for all seven seasons in episodes past. Now they are tackling character-centric marathons. In this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan each make a list of five episodes they would marathon about Voyager's fearless leade...

Voyager Rewrite of TNG's "Captain's Holiday." What do you do when your captain refuses to take a much-needed vacation? As a crew member, you conspire with your peers and *make* it happen. That's what the crew of the Enterprise-D did to Captain Picard, and in this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan do the same to Captain Janeway. With no prior preparation, Char and Tristan craft a rewrite...

Voyager in the Dominion War. Char and Tristan love playing "what if" and this week they have a humdinger. In this episode of To The Journey, Char, Tristan and special guest Matt Rushing ponder just what might have happened if Voyager had made it home during the Dominion War, an important storyline in Deep Space Nine. They explore the possibilities of when and how Voyager made it home, as well as h...

Top Five Tom/Harry Moments. Bromance is a beautiful thing. The Original Series had Kirk and Spock. TNG had Data and Geordi. On Deep Space Nine, it was all about Miles and Julian. On Voyager, Tom and Harry had the ultimate friendship. In this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan reveal their top five moments between these two friends. Did your favorite Tom and Harry moments make their lists?...

"Twisted" Commentary. Bottle shows aren't often highly regarded among the fans as standouts since the lack of budget is often apparent in the final cut. However, the Season Two episode "Twisted" sits among Tristan's favorites. It's a bottle show, yes, but it still has enjoyable character moments. Watch along and listen as Char and Tristan lose themselves in their commentary for "Twisted," where Ch...

"Infinite Regress" Rewrite. One of Char and Tristan's favorite things to do on To The Journey is rewrite an episode of Voyager that could have used some extra love. On the block this go around is "Infinite Regress", an episode that is dynamic but lacks the long-term impact of a synthetic pathogenic virus. Grab your Kadis-kot board, listen in and find out how Char and Tristan would give "Infinite R...

Essential Voyager, Season Five. It's time once again for Essential Voyager! In this round, Char and Tristan take on Season Five. For a season with several standouts and solid quality overall, it might have been easier to say "just watch them all" and leave it at that, but that doesn't make for good podcasting. Instead, Char and Tristan did their homework and examined each episode for essential-wor...

The Small Things. Char and Tristan love Voyager, no doubt about it. But it is not just the epic two-parters and the hope of getting home that make the show tick — it is the smaller details that make it endearing as well. In this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan discuss the finer elements of Voyager that they find captivating. Some things became a part of the show seemingly by accident,...

Vaughn Armstrong. He's a man who has played several roles in Trek, from a Klingon in TNG to a semi-regular character on Enterprise, and several other roles in between. You could say he is everywhere in Trek. No, we're not talking about Jeffrey Combs, but we are talking about a man who belongs to an elite club of actors that have played seven or more different characters throughout the Star Trek fr...

Prixin 2015. First Ancestor's Eve...and now Prixin? How the time does fly! The holiday season is upon us and Char and Tristan have been busy setting up for Voyager's celebration of Prixin. This year's festivities are happening in Engineering, and that's not boding well for Tristan, who's having some...er, difficulty, with his supervisor. Meanwhile, Char is not fond of Neelix's "better than eggnog...