How Deep Space 9 helped shape Voyager

The unique thing about Deep Space 9 was that because it took place on a specific location as opposed to a ship that kept moving, it allowed us to create dozens of secondary characters. By the time we finished that series and we needed to tie up the loose threads, we realised that there were forty odd characters that the audience had come to know on the show. It was very different and unique, but it had to be because its first two years coincided with The Next Generation.

Then, a couple of years into the show when The Next Generation was going off the air, Paramount came to me again and said, 'We'd like another show, and we'd like that show to start when The Next Generation ends.' We realised that we could create a starship again, because we wouldn't be competing with ourselves, in terms of Next Generation, but we really insisted on making it different, both for ourselves and for the fans.

So we came up with the show that was to become Voyager, which had three unique elements to it. One was that the ship, in the pilot episode, is tossed into the Delta Quadrant. It is so far away that it would take seventy-five years to get back to Earth, unless they could find some special way of doing it.

Secondly, we had a group called the Maquis who were a freedom fighter band; outlaws, in a way. In the pilot episode, a Maquis ship is destroyed, and all the Maquis are brought aboard Voyager, becoming temporary Star Fleet officers. So now we have conflict now between the Maquis and the regular Star Fleet crew.

Thirdly, we had a woman as the Captain, which was quite a dramatic difference.