Commander Chakotay’s homeworld was always a Star Trek: Voyager mystery, but a planet from Star Trek: TNG could hold the key to solving it.
Summary
- Chakotay’s homeworld was never clarified in Star Trek: Voyager, but it was originally intended to be Dorvan V, a planet featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- The tribe on Dorvan V refused to leave the planet because they considered it their home, which parallels Chakotay’s desire to preserve his heritage.
- Inconsistencies between Chakotay’s backstory and the tribe on Dorvan V made it impossible to confirm if Chakotay was from that planet, creating plot holes in his character’s origin story.
Star Trek: Voyager never clarified what Commander Chakotay’s (Robert Beltran) homeworld was, but an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation might hold the answer. Chakotay was the USS Voyager’s former Maquis First Officer, and also the first Native character to be part of the main cast of any show on the Star Trek timeline. Despite issues with the depiction of his heritage, Chakotay’s ancestry was a big part of his character, especially in Voyager‘s early seasons, and was explored in multiple episodes as a way to establish his background and motivations.
While Chakotay may have been the first Indigenous main character in the pantheon of Star Trek TV shows, the franchise had depicted Native characters before him. In particular, Star Trek: TNG season 7, episode 20, “Journey’s End” saw the USS Enterprise-D crew meet with a group of Native Americans who had settled on a planet called Dorvan V in the Demilitarized Zone between Federation and Cardassian space. Dorvan V was returning to Cardassian control and Starfleet wanted the colony evacuated, but the tribe refused to leave since they had searched for the planet for years and felt at home there.
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Dorvan V Was Originally Supposed To Be Chakotay’s Homeworld
Interestingly, Voyager‘s creative team originally intended to make Dorvan V Chakotay’s homeworld. Although Chakotay’s planet was never named during Voyager‘s run, there are multiple similarities between it and Dorvan V. These include the fact that Dorvan V is in the Demilitarized Zone and that the tribe that settled there left Earth because they were looking to preserve their customs from a world that was moving away from the past. Star Trek projects often reference each other in various ways, so bringing back a planet from TNG as Chakotay’s homeworld would have been a great Easter egg for Voyager to include.
Why Star Trek: Voyager Never Clarified If Chakotay Was From Dorvan V
However, Voyager never clarified if Chakotay was from Dorvan V. His home planet went unnamed throughout the show’s run, and a few inconsistencies between Chakotay’s backstory and the tribe that lived on Dorvan V made confirmation of them as Chakotay’s people impossible. Chakotay once stated that his people had lived on their planet for generations, but the tribe on Dorvan V in TNG had only inhabited the planet for about 20 years. The difference between generations and decades is a big enough change that Dorvan V couldn’t have been Chakotay’s homeworld.
Another inconsistency comes from a comment made by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in “Journey’s End.” During the episode, Picard asked if Dorvan V was the place where “the group of North American Indians” had settled, implying that the planet was unique because of the tribe. If Dorvan V is not Chakotay’s homeworld, however, Picard’s implication was false, because there was clearly another planet in the Demilitarized Zone where an Indigenous Earth tribe lived. Unfortunately, Star Trek: Voyager changing some of the details of Chakotay’s backstory created just enough plot holes to make his homeworld impossible to confirm.
