I'm not convinced it really matters. Nemesis was a bad movie (IMO - no offense to those who like it) but I think the realities of the Trek franchise at that time would have made the success of any movie - TNG, DS9 or Voyager-based - difficult. More or less, any TNG-era story could be made, with a few tweaks, using the cast of any of those shows. It's simply a matter of writing the script in the voices (and respecting the backstory) of the relevant characters with some changing the window dressing (what ship they're on, the enemy's backstory, etc.). The broader point is that Trek as a franchise was going through an expected contraction of influence and relevance when you have the same basic creative team on board for 15 years. We can point to the overlapping shows and call it over-saturation. That's certainly a part of the problem, but at it's root Trek needed a revolution, not a continuation. Rick Berman needed to go and the house cleaned - not because he or they were bad at their jobs, but because it was just time for someone else if Trek was going to survive. The diminishing ratings of the successive shows is an indicator of it, but as often happens in Hollywood, everyone seems to want to hold on until the bitter end, until the studio finally takes a loss on a product. I have no problem with the concept them doing a Voyager or DS9 movie per se. I do find it very difficult to believe that it would have been any more successful than what we got. In that event, if that Voyager movie had been made, instead of a post saying "why not Voyager?" there'd have been a post saying "why not more TNG?" or even more likely "Thanks, DS9/Voyager - it's bad enough you couldn't hold onto the TNG audience, you killed the MOVIE franchise!" Of course, maybe I'm completely wrong and it's just my glass is half-empty outlook on the subject.
Endgame was a slap in the face? It's not the greatest episode ever made but it's not bad by any means. I would have enjoyed a DS9/Voyager movie but it wouldn't have had much of an audience so it would have had to be direct to TV. I would have been in favor if they decided to have a series of one-off TV specials involving cherry-picked cast from all Treks. They could have even done a temporal cold war story and involve Enterprise.
According to Brent Spiner, the original plan for a Nemesis follow up was a "Justice League of Trek" pitting all the crews (or at least anyone willing to return) against a similar group of united baddies. Time travel would have brought Data and probably others back from the dead. They struggled to find things for the crew to do in the Next Gen movies. Imagine if they tried to write something for the TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT (and probably some ancient TOS) crews combined
Endgame feels like a movie, to Voyager, the way that the TNG movies feel in relation to the TNG show. When I watch it, I get a similar vibe to seeing a TNG movie.
I wasn't suggesting trying to combine every single cast member of every Trek, just cherry-pick the ones you need for the story you're going to tell. Like, Worf, Seven, O'Brien and Bashir are picked for a special mission where they get thrown back in time to TOS time where they meet Sulu and Chekov, and T'Pol as an elderly woman waiting there, knowing for years it was going to happen. Don't try to fit the entire crew into a new story. Come up with a story and pick whichever individual characters you need for that story.
Yes, Voyager would have deserved a movie. What they should have dome was a movie with main characters from TNG, DS9 and Voyager instead of the movie "Nemesis". That would have been great
I keep coming back to that Netflix survey that had Endgame as their most re-watched of ALL Trek. Would've been kind of cool having a mixed cast, I always liked those episodes when they happened on Voyager. Q, Riker, Troi, Reg.