My favourite thing about the podcast that Robbie McNeil and Garrett Wang run now, where they rewatch episodes of voyager and reminisce, is that every so often one of them will be like “man we should have played it MORE homoerotic” and the other one will agree.
This is the 3rd post in my star trek ao3 analysis series: ds9 is here and Enterprise is here (Enterprise post contains info about how I calculated stuff like ship ratings and explanations of r-values if that's of interest!). I'll be looking at fic data on ships, categories and ratings over time since 1999, the first with more than 50 fics backdated to it in the Voyager fandom tag.
(thank you to @bloodredfountainpen for suggesting doing this one next, i hope you find it interesting :))
1. Number of fics over time
The upward trend of fics posted per year since 2008 is notable, with the biggest single increase between 2019-2020; however, it seems to have flattened off and even dropped a bit in recent years
The big spike in 2003 is due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive, which was overwhelmingly backdated to that year (more effects of this to come later!)
(on a side note of data presentation i am aggrieved that the labelled years are so close together but thought this was better than having no line on the graph on the right hand side which was frankly upsetting to look at)
2. Popularity of ships over time
Had to remove a non-top ship for the first time to make the second graph here -- despite being no. 4 overall the Chakotay/Tom spike is huge!
Apart from a few rogue years in the early-mid 2000s, Janeway/Chakotay has been a very consistent top ship, seeming slightly less popular in recent years than its mid-late 2010s peak but still very dominant
I was surprised at how relatively low J7 was for much of the graph, as before I watched any Voyager/got into the fandom they were the ship I'd heard most about in passing (including having heard about them being popular back when Voyager was airing). It's really grown in recent years though and has held a steady second top ship status since 2020!
In terms of other F/F ships (there's more than one for once!!), Janeway/B'Elanna was most popular in the early-mid 2010s and B'Elanna/Seven in the early-mid 2020s
Chakotay/Tom is a ship whose trajectory I expected as it's one of the top Voyager ships on AO3 but I've very rarely seen it discussed. Their big spike in the mid 2000s is mostly due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive being largely backdated to those years
It seems like Janeway/Tom had a moment in 2008, but this was an outlier year for the 2000s with only 43 fics so the spike in fact only corresponds to 5 fics that year, all written by the same person. I'd say their most significant moment was being 4th top ship last year -- a lower percentage but the highest number of fics for them in a year at 94.
Award for the fandom's specialest most-shipped character goes jointly to Janeway and Tom for both having 4 ships in the top 10!
correlation stuff:
Janeway/Chakotay and Chakotay/Tom have a fairly significant negative correlation of r=-0.7, the strongest correlation between any two Voyager ships for this data
Janeway/Chakotay also had a medium positive correlation of r=0.5 with Chakotay/Seven, interestingly -- looking at the C7 tag 67% of fics also have J/C tagged which would explain this
B'Elanna/Seven and Janeway/Seven also had a positive correlation of r=0.6, despite the fact that there are very few fics tagged with both ships. In fact, none of the F/F ships had a negative correlation with each other!
3. Average ship ratings (all time)
Chakotay/Tom are the highest rated ship I've come across so far, with a rating of 69% (obligatory NICE). As with a lot of things about this ship I definitely wasn't expecting to find this!
The only two couples in the top 10 to be in a relationship in canon (Tom/B'Elanna and Chakotay/Seven) are the lowest rated of them all, at 33% and 35% respectively
Congratulations go to Tom Paris for both fucking and not fucking. Schrodinger's sexyman
Congrats to J7 for being the horniest F/F ship I've come across so far at 46% 🎉
4. Fic ratings over time
Bucking the trend of DS9 and Enterprise, Voyager's average rating has been on a general decreasing trend (r=-0.6).
Again, the high spike in 2003 is due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive and sheer amount of Chakotay/Tom (always at the scene of the crime)
An unusual increase in unrated fic in the last two years, even being more prominent than explicit & mature rated fics
5. Fic category composition over time
2023 was the Voyager Year of Yuri and 2003 was the Year of Yaoi
Not much competition for the top space here: there's only been 4 years in which F/M wasn't the top category
The F/M graph shape is of course very similar to the J/C graph, save for 2010 which is a big drop in the J/C graph but not here. I'd probably pin this on Tom/B'Elanna being the second top ship that year and making up the numbers
M/M has a negative correlation of r=-0.7 with both F/M and Gen
6. Misc notes
several parts of the category composition graph look like cat ears (yes this is vital information to impart)
janeway/crusher were the 11th top ship just behind T'Pel/Tuvok -- extra surprising considering they're a cross-series ship who've never interacted in canon (at least until an episode in prodigy S2, so some googling tells me)! I did a bit more research because such a comparatively popular cross-series ship intrigued me, and found that just under half were written by the same two people — impressive dedication
Neelix did not appear once during all my searches from 1999 onwards. Only one ship for the doctor appeared in the top 10 at any point (Doctor/7)
complete side note — i’ve always found it super interesting that the voyager fandom still mainly uses what i understand to be the older ship naming conventions (J/C, P/K etc) rather than portmanteau ship names like the other trek fandoms, even for shows that aired around the same time (e.g. modern DS9 fandom using garashir instead of G/B)
"... What do you mean you've never had kali-fal? You're a Romulan."
Raffi's tone was light, jesting. But he knew that she knew. He answered anyway. "I grew up in a convent. The sisters--" He stopped. She had a tiny smirk on her face. Yes, she knew. He switched tactics. "I was not welcome at the Social Club. And... I don't like alcohol."
Seven had a smirk, too, but hers was much less guarded. She motioned to the bar, then got up to grab him a drink. "We can fix this. Wait here."
As Seven did her thing, Elnor squinted more at Raffi, asking the question why with his eyes. Her nose and the corners of her eyes wrinkled with mischief and joy. It was so, so preferable to seeing her watch him with grief of shame. He felt the annoyance in his heart dissipate and sighed, nodding quietly as he celebrated her rare joy.
Seven dropped a glass of something blue and stinky in front of him. It smelled like food, in a glass. Also, lucernae-fruit. Great. Because drinking something people burned in oil lamps was a good idea. But Raffi was happy, and happy was good. He picked it up with a smile.
A moment later, he was coughing. The texture was gritty. All Romulan ale was gritty, but this was spiced and it was worse. He took a breath and discovered that his nose was burning. The taste was... indescribable. "Akh! What is that?" He took a few more breathes. Breathing was good. It still felt novel that he was breathing. "Is it is supposed to burn like that?"
The pair collapsed into giggling laughter. It made his heart warm. He smiled at their joy--that they had joy after all they had been through--and forced himself to keep drinking. He hated it even more on the second sip, but this was... good. Things were almost as they were supposed to be. As they had been before.
He glanced at the picture of Rios, hanging behind the bar, accompanied by a woman he had never met--would never meet--in a time that was now centuries ago.
you need to understand that i have two sets of headcanons. there's the set of realistic headcanons based on my genuine reading of the show, and then there's me playing pretend with my dolls.
Star Trek Femslash Week 2026 Prompt Voting Now Open
We got some awesome prompt suggestions this year and we can't wait to see what will make the cut! If you submitted a prompt and don't see it here, it may have been one that we've used previously. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good prompt - we just want to give some other ideas a chance to get used by everyone.
Voting will be open until 11:59pm on 16.03.2026 AEDT.
'being single sucks because youll be lonely' lame and untrue. 'being single sucks because a lot of groceries are portioned to make food for more than one person and you cant really take advantage of buying in bulk because it'll go bad before you use it all' this i cannot deny.
WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.
Big random list of things that NEARLY happened in Star Trek with no context or citation...
Harry Kim was to appear in Picard season 3 as a Captain (possibly of the Voyager-B)
Sarek was to use the Guardian of Forever to go back in time to become Surak of Vulcan, in a Next Gen episode
An episode was pitched where an NX-01 med tech played by Alice Krige was captured and assimilated by the Borg, becoming their queen
A Star Trek movie was almost made about undoing the Kelvin Universe, and would have had Shatner and Nimoy appear
They considered having Will Riker die, Data become first officer and Thomas Riker the Ops officer in TNG's "Second Chances"
JJ Abrams wanted Nichelle Nichols to cameo as the mother of Zoe Saldana's Uhura
The first season of Enterprise was to be set on Earth, culminating with the launch of NX-01 at the end of the season
They considered a shock reveal in ENT season 4 that it was actually the Vulcans who split off from the Romulans, and Romulus was their original homeworld
William Shatner wanted to return as Kirk from the Mirror Universe, in an Enterprise episode that involved time travel and creating the mirror universe with the transporter
Elnor was going to "explore his sexuality" in early Picard season 2 plans, before a change of showrunner and his character mostly vanishing
The ENT writers wanted Shatner to play Chef, a Kirk look-a-like hired by Daniels and trained to act Kirk-like to give an important speech at some point in history the real Kirk is mysteriously absent from
Data was originally created by mysterious aliens, and was to have a twin sister
Prodigy season 2 writers discussed having Chris Pine's Kirk from the Kelvin universe join the crew for a few episodes
In the originally filmed cut of Star Trek: Generations, Kirk is shot in the back and dies
Very early discussions for what eventually became Star Trek: Picard considered an adaptation of the Star Trek: Destiny novel trilogy
These discussions span off from a Short Treks pitch where a young cadet Jean-Luc Picard met Nichelle Nichols' Uhura
Early plans for the 2009 movie had wholesale destruction of the Prime universe, including the destruction of Earth. Thank Perpetual Entertainment for getting the destruction scaled back to Romulus so Star Trek Online had a Federation left to feature
There's was a story treatment written for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock where Spock stays dead
This one might be a little sus, but Christopher Pike in Discovery season 2 was planned to be very religious and fall to his knees at one point before the Red Angel, and clash with Michael over science vs faith
Early ideas for Star Trek Into Darkness had Benedict Cumberbatch as Robert April, former Enterprise captain turned rogue
Seven of Nine was going to sacrifice herself in order for Voyager to get home
A time travel Justice League of Trek movie by Brent Spiner, bringing together all eras of goodies vs all eras of villains, was considered
Spock shot JFK to fix the timeline in a proposed sequel to The Motion Picture
Ripper/Ephraim was originally going to be a regular, if giant tardigrade, crewmember on Discovery
Prior to Leonard Nimoy's involvement in what would become the 2009 Star Trek movie, a story outline was written about prime-universe cadets Kirk and Spock, in a story inspired by TNG's "The First Duty"
The Enterprise crew went through a black hole, back in time and introduced primative man to fire in another 70's movie script
A TNG movie was written where Picard summons a hologram of James T. Kirk for advice
George Kirk was to be found in the pattern buffer of the wrecked U.S.S. Kelvin 30 years later and resurrected
Voyager's EMH was originally to take on the name of his creator early on in the show, and the first Voyager novels call him "Doc Zimmerman" assuming it would have happened by publishing time
There's concept art where the U.S.S. Cerritos is a Galaxy-class starship
Riker was planned to dislike Data, and treat him poorly because he was an android
They considered making Troi's loss of powers in "The Loss" a permanent thing, because of how much hassle they caused the writing staff
Harry Kim wasn't originally planned to survive Species 8472
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