Voyager's Crew Complement

by Jan Herfort and Bernd Schneider

Casualty ListCrew Count Development Number of People and NamesRelated Issues

 

The original crew complement of Voyager is 141, as stated by Lieutenant Stadi. Several of the crew die when the ship is pulled into the Delta Quadrant in the pilot episode "Caretaker", and an unknown number of Maquis join the ship on its long journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. Several more members of the combined crew die, especially in the first three seasons, whereas no one joins the crew during this time.

In some later episodes we are given explicit figures for the current crew count, but these don't seem to correspond with the death toll among the crew. In a few cases the stated crew complement even goes up although it should be down by at least the number of deaths that we could witness on screen or that were mentioned.

In the following we will investigate the question how many people died during Voyager's seven-year journey, we will outline the development of the crew count over time and we will try to find out whether the number of seen crew members is sufficiently low and whether it matches the number of known names. We will also have a look at some related, more specific questions.

 

Casualty List

In order to assess the development of Voyager's crew complement it is important to compile a list of casualties among Voyager's crew. A complete list of casualties or an exact figure is not available though. But based on the deaths that were seen or mentioned on screen and on an excerpt from a list of casualties that Seven views in "Imperfection" we can nail down a lower limit for the casualties.

Assumptions

• Not included are guests that stay aboard for a short time - up to a few months in the case of Marika Wilkarah ("Survival Instinct").
• Not included are crew members who die and are revived in the same episode.
• Not included are any parallel reality, fake, illusory or other alternate versions of crew members.
• Seska is not included because she dies after her defection.

List of crew members that die on screen or are mentioned to have died

Observations in the list of seen or mentioned deaths

• The above list gives us a lower limit of 40 crew members that are killed in action. It is possible that in "Caretaker", perhaps in "Basics I" and "Equinox" and most likely in "The Killing Game" more of the crew die than the ones seen or mentioned. This could serve to increase the death toll where necessary for adjustment of the figures.
• Decreasing the number of casualties is harder because all deaths are quite definite. However, it may be possible to discount the three of the engineering crew killed in "Living Witness", because it is only a historical reconstruction. We will need to do that in our crew chronology to adjust the figures.
• The death rate in seasons 1-3 is about three times as high as in seasons 4-7.
• With the notable exception of "Caretaker", almost all deaths are violent. Otherwise, only shuttle pilot Bennet dies in an accident. No one we know of dies of an illness.
• A clear majority of dead crew members belongs to the operations division (yellow), but mostly engineers and shuttle pilots are killed, rather than security officers.
• Four ex-Maquis that we know of are killed (plus Seska, who dies after leaving the ship).

Casualty list in "Imperfection"

Seven of Nine views a list of casualties in "Imperfection". We don't see the whole list but we can make out the following names (in this order):

• Ensign Marie Kaplan
• Ensign Lyndsay Ballard
• Technician Timothy Lang
• Commander J. Bartlett
• Lieutenant Commander L. McGarry

• Lieutenant Commander T. Ziegler
• Lieutenant J. Lyman
• Lieutenant S. Seaborn
• Ensign Claudia J. Craig
• Ensign Charles Young

Observations in the casualty list

• Lang was last seen alive in "Equinox II", and his death is first mentioned on the casualty list. So his name needs to be added to the 40 definite deaths.
• With the exception of Lang, Kaplan ("Unity") and Ballard ("Ashes to Ashes"), the casualty list only contains new names. J. Bartlett, L. McGarry, T. Ziegler, J. Lyman, S. Seaborn, Claudia J. Craig and Charles Young are in-jokes, all referring to "West Wing" characters, and were quite obviously made up for only this one episode. A poor choice considering the importance of the list that ought to have included a few additional familiar names, but not detrimental to the series' continuity.
• Since 23 casualties were shown or mentioned on screen but not identified, those 8 new names could easily belong to some of the 23 unidentified casualties. McGarry or T. Ziegler may be the name of the chief medical officer, a lieutenant commander, who died in "Caretaker".
• It is also interesting that a commander is among the casualties. He would be the highest-ranking crew member besides Janeway. It would be extremely odd if he never showed up in some fashion even if making him the XO would not have been an option. So it is almost safe to conclude that the man named Bartlett dies as soon as in "Caretaker".
• The order of the names on Seven's list is a mess. At least it is ordered by a criterion that is not obvious, perhaps by the serial numbers.

 

Crew Count Development

We now attempt to outline a development of the crew complement over time that takes into account as much evidence as possible: the known deaths and departures, the new arrivals, crew sizes mentioned on screen and other facts.

Assumptions

• Scans of the ship (such as by the Voth or the Borg) are rated as reliable evidence.
• Statements such as "There are 150 people on this ship" are likely rounded.
• Crew numbers do not include the Doctor. While the EMH may qualify as a lifeform, the holographic image will not register as one on scans of the ship.
• Crew numbers include all known children, civilians and permanent guests on the ship at any time.
• Not included are guests that stay aboard for a short time - up to a few months in the case of Marika Wilkarah ("Survival Instinct").
• Not included are crew members who die and are revived in the same episode.
• Not included are any parallel reality, fake, illusory or other alternate versions of crew members.

List of crew members over time

Annotations

• According to our reconstruction of events, no deaths or departures occured in addition to those that were seen or mentioned, with the exception of "Caretaker" where "we lost over a dozen" leaves some leeway. We use that leeway to assume as many as 18 casualties on Voyager in "Caretaker", in order to allow to allow as many as 36 Maquis to join the ship, as required by the statements in "Repression".
• It is well possible and would seem realistic that there were more deadly attacks or accidents than those that happened during the episodes or were mentioned (like the two more in "Alliances"). However, if more people died, especially in the seasons 2 through 7, this would throw off the mentioned crew numbers.
• It is still possible that Voyager started off with 153 people as mentioned in "Shattered" (and had a combined crew of 173 or probably even more at the end of "Caretaker"), but that would mean that as many as 10 more died or left off-screen, and only in the first season. This figure would rise to 19, if we decided to believe in Janeway's number of 152 crew members in "The 37's". Also, considering that at the time of "Alliances" no more than three crew members were lost to the Kazon, it wouldn't be plausible if there were many more unseen casualties that are not related to the Kazon in the first season.
• Janeway's number of 152 crew members in "The 37's" has to be an error for another important reason, because it can't be explained why still some 150 are left in later seasons, after several more deaths. The same applies to Tuvok's mention of 152 crew members in "Gravity" for the opposite reason, because it is simply too high. While the first becomes wrong only retroactively (the writers did not account for all of the many casualties in seasons 2 and 3), the latter is just a stupid mistake.
• We surmise that the death of three crew members in "Living Witness" may be an error. Either the historical reconstruction is not correct in this regard, or Tuvok's report about the three deaths was premature. With three more deaths along the way, the subsequent figures would be off.
• The "Silver Blood" copy of Ensign Harper gives birth to a baby just before the episode "Course: Oblivion" (stardate 52586.3). The creation of the "Silver Blood" copies in "Demon" dates back to some time between stardates 51813.4 and 51929.3. This gives us a time of 7.88 to 9.27 months until "Course: Oblivion". So the real Ensign Harper could have been pregnant herself when she was duplicated. We don't count her baby but it would be absolutely possible.

 

Number of People and Names

Another possible problem of the series is that either too many different actors and extras may have appeared as crew members, or that too many names of crew members may have been mentioned.

Total number of crew members that were seen or mentioned by name

Annotations and analysis

• The above data is based on the list of USS Voyager Personnel at Memory Alpha, give or take a few people that we may have missed or falsely classified. It can't be verified whether the list is complete in the first place. Regarding "unnamed and seen", more background extras than listed there may have appeared in the series.
• If we don't count in the later additions to the crew, more than 142 different crew members appear on screen (74 named + 8 named but barely seen + 60 unnamed listed at Memory Alpha + x seen but unaccounted for). This means we can see every member of the crew at some point in the series. This may not yet include all people in Starfleet uniform that may have appeared in situations where they were not recognizable at all. It wouldn't be necessary but might be possible not to take into account eight crew members of whom we could get only a glimpse and who could be someone more familiar, either named or unnamed. So unless many more (x) actually appeared than listed at Memory Alpha, there is no issue that we may have seen more crew members than the ship actually had.
• We can show that the number of seen unnamed crew members (>60) roughly matches the one of mentioned unseen people (around 60). This may be a very good match, considering that on many occasions crew members were called out only as "Ensign Lastname", often not giving away their sex or division color.
• The situation would be complicated a lot, once we decided to include the various duty rosters that appeared in the series, consisting of dozens up to over 100 names that are usually barely legible. These lists customarily consist of very few names or "real" characters and are supplemented with the names of the production staff, such as Rick Berman, Arlene Fukai, Dennis McCarthy, Michael Piller or David Stipes, to mention only very few examples. It is obvious that once we decided to include all these names, Voyager would have a crew of 300 or more. It would also cause a problem to justify why "real" characters are largely absent from these lists. Just like the plethora of in-jokes on displays in Star Trek: The Next Generation, we should ignore the exact composition of the crew manifest(s) in Voyager.

 

Related Issues

Number of Maquis crew members

As already mentioned, the assumption that "almost a quarter of the crew is Maquis" would require 30+ Maquis at the very least among a crew of overall 146, and 35+ at the time of "Caretaker", if we account for the five Maquis who left or died until the fourth season. The more precise reference to 31 Maquis mutineers in "Repression" requires an original figure of at least 36, but only under the assumption that no Maquis died in addition to those explicitly shown or mentioned. Therefore we assume 36 Maquis at the end of "Caretaker" in our reconstructed crew development. We have no clue how many crew members died when the Maquis ship was pulled into the Delta Quadrant (Voyager lost over a dozen after all, 18 in our reconstruction), so in the absolutely best case all of them survived. So an original crew of 37 (36 +Tuvok) on Chakotay's ship seems to be the lower limit. On the other hand, Chakotay's ship is at most 60m long, with perhaps 3 decks, which appears too small for a permanent crew of 37. Perhaps they had additional personnel aboard because they were going to hijack a Cardassian freighter?

Number of Vulcan crew members

The number of Vulcan crew members on Voyager is subject to vary, and this becomes a problem in a couple of episodes where this number would matter. In "Caretaker" we can see a Vulcan nurse in sickbay, but as already mentioned she is obviously killed when Voyager is pulled into the Delta Quadrant. We have Tuvok, of course, and Ensign Vorik as another series regular, who appears in eight episodes and survives until the end of season 7. So far, so good.

In "Flashback" Tuvok refers to "the other Vulcans on the ship", which implies that there must be at least one more Vulcan in addition to Vorik. But in "Blood Fever", when Vorik enters pon farr, it appears that the two are alone. At least, if a female Vulcan had been among the crew, it may have been considered at one point that she may "help" Vorik. In "Counterpoint" all telepaths have to hide from the Devore, and this concerns Vorik and Tuvok as the only ones of their race. However, in "Repression" there is suddenly a female Vulcan crew member in a red uniform that possibly can't have existed in the two previously mentioned episodes. It remains a mystery where she comes from. There is no good reason why she shouln't have been on board in "Counterpoint". Perhaps she isn't telepathic, perhaps she is actually Romulan, as unlikely as it seems?

Lack of medical staff

It is obvious that the complete medical personnel of Voyager must have died when the ship was pulled into the Delta Quadrant in "Caretaker". Just after the first activation of the EMH, Paris mentions that the chief medical officer and the nurse were killed. In the following, Lieutenant Paris is assigned to assist the EMH because he studied biochemistry for two semesters ("Parallax"). It appears that no one among the crew is more qualified for the job, although biochemistry is not exactly the same as medicine. Perhaps the medical staff or the staff with medical training consisted of more than the CMO and one nurse, and they were all killed? Janeway speaks of "the entire medical staff" in "Parallax", which sounds like it could be more than two people. It is also clear that if the Maquis ship had a medic, he or she must have died before the end of "Caretaker".

 

See Also

Voyager Episodes index

Voyager Inconsistencies - including the famous shuttlecraft list

Redshirt Deaths in TOS - thorough chronological list of casualties, including "shirt color statistics"

 

Credits

Thanks to Robert Sharpe for compiling a chronology of Voyager's crew complement. Thanks to TrekCore for most of the screen caps and to Memory Alpha for crew information. Special thanks to Jörg Hillebrand for the caps of the Voyager crew manifests.

 

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