8.04.00 Ken Biller Chats About Season  Seven                   

Special to STARTREK.COM by Deborah Fisher                    

With production of Star Trek: Voyager in full swing on the Paramount lot, fans are  starting to get a sense of how the show's seventh -- and final -- season is shaping up. As Executive Producer Brannon Braga begins to shift more of his time to                    developing the next Star Trek television series with Executive Producer Rick  Berman, Ken Biller has now taken the reins of Voyager firmly in hand. On staff  with him are veteran writers Bryan Fuller, Robert Doherty and Michael Taylor. Raf                    Green and James Kahn joined the Voyager writing crew at sixth season's end.  Biller took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about where the writing  staff plans to take Voyager. The conclusion to "Unimatrix Zero" will premiere on  October 4th, obviously wrapping up the cliffhanger that closed on a Borgified Captain Janeway. Biller hopes to have part two do some double duty.                   

"I thought part one was a great science fiction concept, but we didn't do a good enough job selling the rules of that world. One example is how a bat'leth got there. We knew what the rules were but didn't explain it enough to the audience.   Part two will explain some of it more plus have more twists and turns and surprises. [Borg Queen] Susanna Thompson was tantalizing and I hope part two  will be satisfying."The Borg presented a lot of story opportunities in season six that Biller says the  staff hadn't deliberately mapped out ahead of time. "There wasn't a plan at the beginning of the season but it became clear that the Borg were our nemesis because they live in the Delta Quadrant. Seven has been prominent so that   e went." One of the Borg story lines that will be dispatched early in season seven will be the Borg children. "Imperfection" will follow the season premiere, bidding farewell  to the young Borg while debuting a new Delta Flyer to replace the one destroyed   in "Unimatrix Zero, Part I."                

  "We won't see a lot of Borg stories in season seven," says Biller, "but getting   Voyager home will involve, among other things, getting past the Borg. The Borg  will present at least one more great, big obstacle." Having debuted the new Delta Flyer in "Imperfection," Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres will get to team-race it against other ships in "Drive." The episode will also                    give fans a chance to glimpse where one of the big seventh season story lines is going -- the Paris/Torres romance. "We hope to have some interesting developments in their relationship over several episodes," says Biller.                     "In general, as we come into the last season, without wrapping things up too  neatly in a bow, we'll be looking at each character's arc and thinking about how  to finish it up. For example, Harry Kim started out as a young greenhorn. Now, in  season seven, how do we resolve how he has grown?" 

Among the planned spotlights for the Voyager crew, Biller hints at a "very  interesting Tuvok show" he describes as a mystery/thriller which will revisit the old Maquis story line in "a very unexpected way." A Doctor-kidnapped episode,                    "Critical Care," is already in the can. Seven's continuing struggle to become more  human is in the mix and Biller says, "Barclay will be continuing his Pathfinder  efforts from the Alpha Quadrant side." Fans will see a reprise of Reginald Barclay                    and Deanna Troi at least once, maybe twice.  "We're also planning a two-hour Voyager movie for November sweeps," says             Biller. "It will be a big, epic show that will have a very interesting and unexpected  group of adversaries, a collection of aliens at once familiar and different than anything we've seen before." The driving force of the season will be Captain Janeway. "Certainly for her," continues Biller, "the overriding arc has been her single-minded quest to get her crew home." man who, against her better judgment, has fallen in love with eight people who are dear to her.  "I'm so genuinely fond of all these people. You don't share this kind of secret  world, the walking in at 5 a.m. and leaving at 1 a.m., without understanding a   kind of intimacy that's rare in this business. For all my talk of getting on this  year, it will be hard not to crack at the end when we say good-bye."                     The big question, of course, is whether Voyager will come home or not. "I'll never tell," jokes Biller. "It would be naive to assume it's not a regular topic of  discussion around here. I know what the answer is but I won't tell you. I think the                    audience can expect some surprises." The challenge for Star Trek as it approaches its 35th anniversary and now                    exceeds well over 500 hours of episodic television is story. "It's amazing we  haven't run out of stories," says Biller, "but in fact, we have an embarrassment of  riches as we head into season seven. There are a lot of stories we've hung onto  because we couldn't tell them until the end. We'll be working very hard to do some things the viewers don't expect."