Just after midnight last Monday morning, 455 Films launched a crowdfunding campaign for their untitled Star Trek: Voyager documentary with the goal of raising $150,000. In just a few hours they blew right past that milestone, and as the campaign marks its first week, they have raised over $625,000. This outpouring of support from the fans has expanded the scope and scale of the doc.
Fans ensure a bigger, longer Voyager doc
The rapid funding of the Voyager documentary has been outpacing the team’s campaign for their Deep Space Nine documentary What We Left Behind. In 2017 that doc raised $300,000 in its first week, which they considered a big success. In over a month the campaign passed all its stretch goals with a total of $630,000, something the new doc will do in about a week.
The success in fundraising has allowed the Voyager doc to meet a number of “stretch goals,” like increasing the planned runtime from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. The additional funds will also allow for the team to film at the cast reunion at Destination Star Trek London in October and conduct follow-up and more in-depth interviews. On the music side, they are now planning to have an original score composed, which means all backers will be getting a digital copy of the soundtrack. And meeting the latest stretch goal of $675,000 will allow them to license Jerry Goldsmith’s original Star Trek: Voyager title music as well.
Robert Duncan McNeill in the Star Trek: Voyager documentary
In an email to TrekMovie.com, producer David Zappone expressed the team’s feelings about the success so far:
“The entire Voyager Documentary team and cast of Star Trek: Voyager continues to be amazed and grateful to the fans of Star Trek for their overwhelming support of this documentary. We have many more surprises in store; some of which we are still waiting on CBS approval before we can announce them. Stay tuned to our social media accounts for more information.”
One goal that has yet to be officially announced is a plan to remaster footage from Star Trek: Voyager in HD, as they did for the DS9 documentary. That is likely what Zappone is referring to with his remark about awaiting CBS approval. Late last year Zappone told TrekMovie the team was hoping to give the Voyager doc the same HD treatment as What We Left Behind.
The Voyager doc shoot extensive footage during the 2020 Voyager reunion on Star Trek: The Cruise
25 days and plenty of perks left
There are still 25 days left in the fundraising campaign with lots of perks still available. If you want to secure a digital release you can pick up the Digital Bundle for $25, with a target release of September 2022. The Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack perk is $35 with a target date of October 2022, and if you bump that up to $50 you can get the “Bragging Rights” perk which adds some collectibles and your name in the end credits of the doc.
And as the team passes additional stretch goals they are adding more backer bonuses; the latest is a pair of Neelix-themed fridge magnets.
Your kitchen will be the talk of the town with these two Voyager Doc refrigerator magnets! These will be given FREE to all backers that donated for physical perks once we reach Stretch Goal #5!
This also unlocks in-depth follow up interviews for the film.https://t.co/a8Z6v0XCH1 pic.twitter.com/A38ULDqjFA— The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 6, 2021
Neelix actor Ethan Phillips also sent out a message to the fans when the doc passed the $500,000 mark.
Shout out from Neelix! Here's what Ethan Phillips thinks about surpassing $500k and unlocking Stretch Goal #4!
Follow along with us here: https://t.co/a8Z6v1fe5B pic.twitter.com/nyxbxr1NFU
— The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 3, 2021
To support the doc visit the Indigogo page.
Visit the official site at voyagerdocumentary.com, or follow the documentary on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Amazing! I just hope the Europe distribution will be better than the one from What we left behind! I think you still can’t buy it here.
You can buy it digitally on iTunes.
YEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!
Awesome news! Can’t wait to see the documentary!
Hyped!
It’s real shame there wasn’t a Voyager film after Nemesis, I think it would have been a success.
It was huge disappointment to me that they didn’t spend some time back on earth. That was a mistake.
Anyway, looks like we will be getting some Voyager in HD finally.
It would absolutely not have been a box office hit.
If a TNG film in 2002, featuring a cast from the most popular Trek show ever was a MASSIVE flop that didn’t even make back it’s paltry 60M budget, I can’t see a film spun off from a low-rated series (that only survived because it was on UPN) being a hit of any sort.
That said, 20 years later Voyager has amassed a serious cult following, and if they were still in their prime, a Voyager movie now would probably be a hit on streaming.
Nemesis was released at a poor time (we all know this without me spelling it out) and it wasn’t especially a great film (a fairly weak 2/3rds followed by a decent final act – and bookended as a funeral!).
Those two factors almost certainly contributed to its very poor box office.
They may have been contributing factors, but the film grossed $42M worldwide. That’s not a situation where releasing it in the summer, and improving the script would have made it a hit. Trek in the theater was dead in the early/mid 00’s because by then the audience for it had dwindled to just the hardcore fans like you and me.
Let’s not pretend like with a few tweaks Nemesis or a Voyager or Enterprise film would have reinvigorated the franchise.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone would have complained to have an epilogue episode. I just like to imagine our intrepid crew with their families – particularly Harry with his folks – for Chakotay, B’Lanna and the former Maquis meeting up with their few surviving comrades and founding a colony (maybe with Ro Laren and Tommy Riker) and of course, Seven starting her descent into the homicidal maniac depicted in Picard (joking on the last one!).
The ideal ending in my view would have been them getting home in the climax of the first half of the 2-part finale, then joining Starfleet forces to defeat the Borg at Earth. Then spend the last 20 minutes, kind of like WYLB, showing the crew going their separate ways: Janeway becomes an Admiral, the Maquis are pardoned and Chakotay is given command of Voyager; Paris’ sentence is commuted and he joins the civilian service as a flight instructor; Kim is promoted to Lt. Junior Grade, The Doctor becomes an AI researcher at the Daystrom Institute, etc. etc.
You could have even had cameos from other Trek alum: maybe Geordi becomes Voyager’s First Officer, Bashir their Chief Medical Officer, and they leave for their first deep space assignment– a 6 year mission to the edge of the Delta Quadrant.
You can only do so much in a 90 minute episode.
They could have produced a direct-to-video television movie that aired on the networks of the day that maybe launches about September or October of that year (2001) and shortened Enterprises First Season down to say 20 episodes and the budget from the 6 episodes of the season would have funded the TV movie.
Berman unfortunately didn’t seem to think outside the box and played it safe, though perhaps Paramount are as much to blame.
Sorry, DM, but you’re living in a fantasy world– they were never going to do a VOY movie, not in theaters and not direct to video. The ratings by Season 7 simply did not support it as they struggled to consistently reach 3M viewers, a number that even today wouldn’t be considered very good.
They could very easily have done a better story in 90 minutes, they just decided to go with an overly complicated and completely unnecessary time travel story.
Hope they include the writers with a Season 8 story, like in the DS9 documentary.
Does anyone know if reward tiers are cumulative or not? If, say, I go for the coffee mug perk at $50, am I foregoing the blu-ray at $35 or not?
Nice to see Voyager having this kind of moment in the sun, just like DS9 had. It’s richly deserved.
Was that Kate in the pink outfit?
This is great news indeed. My wife and I really enjoyed the DS9 Doc. This now adds to the on going Trek lore. I hope they can do something like this for ENT, TNG, TOS.
Yes, and even TAS, it would be fantastic to have a long form doc on it!
Fantastic stuff!
Does that mean the VOY title music will be on the soundtrack and will it be a re-recording?
Definitely looks like it’ll hit 700K sometime this week. Good job…
So, what’s the story with the banner image changing at the top of the page?
Wonder if Robert Beltran will join to talk about his unfortunate challenges, like Terry Farrell in the DS9 Documentary. Some people really dislike him and/or his character. Want to hear it all, from the whole crew.
Jennifer Lien may also be a touchy subject. This cast seemed to have a bit more drama behind the scenes, though it looks like most of them may have put it behind them.
Jenniffer had (is having?) such a rough life. Very unfortunate. I really liked her character when she started working closely with the Doctor.
Really hope she is doing better. Would like very much to see her on the documentary.
You’d have a better rate of return on GME, and a better chance of making it to the moon. VGR has been over-analyzed and too many cast members have done nothing since.
Wow, someone flung a chunk of money in this overnight.
Anyone curious how much they’d raise when they finally get around to doing the ST:ENT Documentary…I’d pay just to see them get former CBS Head Les Monvees on video admitting how much he hates Science Fiction and how he deliberately killed the franchise once everyone protecting it was out of the way at CBS and UPN!
So, you think they gonna get Jennifer Lien in the Documentary interviews or is she “too far gone” and we’ll be stuck with old convention footage?
The high road here would be for an honest discussion around the issues of mental health, and access to care.
$662,976 as of 6:15pm EST on 3/9/2021 – they could hit $700,000 before the end…22 Days left…It’s gonna hit at least $675,000 easily!
I think the success and quality of the DS9 Documentary is helping this A LOT – that was a great Documentary and once you’ve done one that hit it out of the park, I think fans want to see more done with the other series…
I’m guessing now this will end up around 750K. Good job, fans!!
The pace seems to be dropping off considerably now – maybe 725K, still very respectable.
750K in the next 48 hours or so. Good work – I wonder what the next goal will be?