I just discovered this surprising connection between Star Trek villain V’Ger and a real life space probe  

The mysterious V’Ger was introduced to the audience in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) when the USS Enterprise crew, led by Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner), encountered the alien entity.

The powerful cloud on the way to find its creator would be responsible for unwarranted destruction in the process. In the movie, V’Ger is a space probe that left Earth’s orbit centuries ago. The name V’Ger is derived from ‘Voyager’, which is inspired by the real-life NASA spacecrafts Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977.

As per NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Voyager project manager John Casani even loaned a Voyager model to Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek. While the movie’s Voyager was slightly altered, the vision for the idea stayed.

What is V’Ger in Star Trek?

V’Ger is a powerful alien entity with a vast cloud that easily destroys Klingon spaceships. It also annihilates Starfleet’s station after it detects a solid hostile object at the center of the cloud. The cloud has energy capable of obliterating planets.

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Admiral Kirk takes over the USS Enterprise from Commander Willard Decker (played by Stephen Collins) to stop the entity from destroying Earth as it enters the Solar System. The high-frequency communications from V’Ger appear inept. It suddenly attacks the Enterprise, leaving the crew perplexed.

V’Ger would send an energy beam to scan the Enterprise and capture Lieutenant Ilia (played by Persis Khambatta), a Deltan officer. It would duplicate Ilia to act as the entity’s link for communicating with the Enterprise. While Ilia’s memory remained, they were overpowered by the machine.

Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) would go to the heart of V’Ger alone and discover that it is a living machine. V’Ger, through Ilia, would demand to meet the creator. Captain Kirk and crew did not have the answer to it, as the information about the alien was limited. Kirk, Dr. Leonard McCoy (played by DeForest Kelley), Spock, Decker, and Ilia manage to enter the inner core of the machine.

In the core, Kirk finds a space probe with the letters 'V ger'. When he wipes the board, he finds the name ‘Voyager 6.’ In a surprising twist, it is revealed that the ship was originally NASA’s deep space probe shuttle from the 20th Century. For the audience, this was an interesting turn of events, as NASA had launched the Voyager 1 and 2 two years before the release of the movie.

In the movie, Voyager 6 got caught in a black hole and ended up on the farthest side of the galaxy. It was picked by a planet of living machines, and the probe was upgraded to incorporate more understanding of the universe. It was sent on its way to the creator to share the knowledge. As it traveled through the galaxy, it became self-aware. At the end, Decker and Ilia merge with the machine to evolve into a higher life-form.

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