Why do you think it took a while for Voyager to take off?

Well, Voyager started great, the pilot got gigantic ratings, gigantic. And I think the reason that it tapered off was there was, in my opinion, too much Star Trek.

You had Deep Space 9 and Voyager on at the same time, you had two of the same show, and it's like ER and ERII. You're going to split your audience.

I also think that maybe Voyager took a while to find its voice. It promised new, exciting aliens, but, I'll take as much blame for this as anyone, I think we weren't creating aliens that were good enough, we weren't creating situations that were fresh enough, it kind of felt like New Generation.

We hadn't found a way to give Voyager a stamp that said, 'This is different.' Yes, it's a female captain, which I think was a great thing to do, but, in the end, they've got to have really cool stories. And whether she's a man or woman or a chimpanzee, doesn't really matter.

In my opinion, Voyager didn't really ignite till we put the Borg in it, and then that's really when, I think, that people said, 'OK, here's a big, fat exciting action show with the Borg in it, now I see what Voyager can do.' But that's just my opinion.