Why Star Trek: Voyager's Ending Felt Abrupt To Fans (& Why It Could Never Get A Reboot)
Reboots, revisions, and new adaptations are all the rage these days when it comes to entertainment, though one "Star Trek" property might be resistant to such efforts. "Star Trek: Voyager" focuses on the titular ship as it is cast far away from anything any of the crew might recognize, and even traveling at speeds far greater than even light itself, it would have normally taken the crew decades to get home. Sent far away to the Delta Quadrant, the crewmembers of Voyager are essentially on their own as they try to survive.
However, due to the nature of "Star Trek: Voyager," which eventually sees the crew make it home to the Alpha Quadrant, it would be almost impossible to create a continuation of the story because the major focus of the show has already been completed. In addition, many fans felt like the show came to a jarring conclusion, and even though "Voyager" occupies a special place in "Star Trek" lore, it is unlikely the ending to "Star Trek: Voyager" will ever change or be envisioned through the lens of a reboot.
Over on Reddit, a conversation was started by u/TEmpTom when they asked why the ending for "Star Trek: Voyager" felt so abrupt. They specifically mentioned that "Star Trek: Voyager" wasn't canceled, and that the writers of the show knew when they had to wrap everything up. This question caused many Trekkies to respond in turn, like one Reddit user who wrote, "Because of Voyager's episodic nature. They wanted to stick to the TNG-style arcless storytelling rather than the sweeping DS9 plot." They added, "As such, no matter how Voyager was resolved, it was going to be abrupt."
Some fans were more concerned with the journey of Star Trek: Voyager and not the destination
Others also had their own thoughts as to the rapid conclusion of "Star Trek: Voyager," which sees the Voyager starship quickly return home after a double cross and some time-travel shenanigans. u/marcuzt believed that "Star Trek: Voyager" should have ended with the USS Voyager still stuck far out in space. They added that the true ending for "Star Trek: Voyager" could then be told with a movie instead of the hasty conclusion fans received instead. u/Coolsbreeze really enjoyed "Star Trek: Voyager" before the final episode, and they wrote, "I always thought Voyager was well written but the last episode was way too rushed."
u/NoisyPiper27 envisioned a completely different ending that would have required a serious rework of the entire show. They elaborated, "I think it would have been neat, if instead of Scorpion (or in addition to it), we got a time jump partway through the show, with aged original crewmembers and the children/new additions over the years picking up where they left off." The user further suggested that the show should do a time skip of 20 to 30 years to avoid having to use the time travel trope and to underscore that it was a tough journey home. With these comments in mind, it definitely seems like many fans wanted "Star Trek: Voyager" to truly take its time returning back to Earth, with some fans even okay with an ending that would have still seen the Voyager long from home. At least then a continuation may have been possible!
The writers of Star Trek: Voyager struggled with coming up with the show's conclusion
In the 2020 book "Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration" (via the Hollywood Reporter), Ken Biller, who wrote for the show, explained that he and his fellow writer Brannon Braga had some issues with crafting the ending. Biller explained, "We were really struggling with it. Is the end of the show just that they get home? That's a bit of an anticlimax. Did we want some people to die?" Considering that the entire fulcrum of "Star Trek: Voyager" hinged on the crew doing their very best to make it home, one might have assumed that doing so would be the nice way to end up the series, but doing so rapidly certainly seemed to be a little jarring to fans.
In other words, a continuation of "Star Trek: Voyager" would be a hard sell since the final episode sees the spaceship utilize a Borg Transwarp Hub to quickly arrive back home, while also at the same time dealing a fatal blow to the Borg Collective. Even a reboot wouldn't really do "Star Trek: Voyager" any justice since stranding another Federation ship deep into the Delta Quadrant would just be retreading beloved story beats. Still, for the final episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" to contain both time-travel and a technological MacGuffin that reduced the decades-long trip into a simple subspace jump might have been a little too abrupt for some fans, and it is unlikely that "Star Trek: Voyager" will ever continue or be rebooted.