“Star Trek: Voyager,” it should be noted, began with a truncated season of only 15 episodes. Most pre-streaming “Star Trek” shows ran a whopping 26 episodes a season. It was considered very usual at the time (at least among Trekkies) to have so few Treks at once. “Voyager” was the flagship series for the UPN, a network that launched at the same time as the then-new “Star Trek” show, and it seemed that the network had a lot more control over how the series was exhibited. “Voyager” co-creator and writer Jeri Taylor recalled working on four additional episodes for the first season, only to learn that the UPN had decided to hold them back for season 2:
“It’s very important to note that we didn’t hold back any of the episodes, UPN did. […] It’s important that people start understanding that there is a significant difference at this point between the network and the studio. The studio produces the television series, and the network buys it and runs it as they would from any other studio. The network has control over when and how they schedule the episodes. We and Paramount and the studio were not in accord with that decision to hold back episodes, but it was UPN’s right to do so.”
UPN did have a reason for scheduling “Voyager” the way they did, but it didn’t make sense to Taylor. In fact, Taylor hated the decision to end season 1 with “Learning Curve.” Not because of the content of the episode, but because that would be four additional weeks the network would need to lean on reruns.
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