SACRED GROUND: [Star Trek Voyager]'s standing sets and 'closed set' operation

Of Paramount's thirty-two stages, Star Trek permanently takes up several of the largest feature film stages. [Star Trek Voyager] has the permanent use of Stages 8, 9 and 16 (the largest stage). Occasionally it uses two or three additional feature stages.

[Star Trek Voyager] interior standing sets on Stage 9, built after the series premise had been created

click to enlarge

See DESIGNING USS VOYAGER: exterior and interior: interior: Standing Sets
which includes a diagram of the standing sets on Stage 8

The system of 'closed sets' is in operation - i.e. the sets are closed. Access is automatically denied anyone without express per mission from the producers. Those who have a legitimate reason to visit the sets tend to show up only when they have time, which is not often. As is true in most businesses, at Paramount employees are always trying to get too much work done in too little available time. There is not much opportunity for curiosity-seeking on the sets. And for most of those who have worked in the business for a long time, there is no longer a sense of wonder about what goes on during filming, unless something extraordinary is occurring, in which case people show up in droves. The majority of the Company personnel have worked together for at least the last five years, a factor accounting for the sense of "family" that most experience. Many go back to the final three or four seasons of [TNG]. Some wre there when [TNG] started. Dick Brownfield, [Star Trek Voyager]'s special effects (mechanical effects), and Al Smutko, [Star Trek Voyager]'s head of construction, started with Star Trek as far back as [TOS]: Brownfield as an apprentice electrician and Smutko as a carpenter starting in the trade. Everyone knows everyone else very well.

Rick Berman: "One of the benefits of having a group that's stayed together for so long is that feeling of belonging to a family. Usually in this business you're dealing with people who are assembled for short periods of time. Here, most of the people I work with, I've worked with for three, four, five, some of them eight, nine years. And a lot of them are people we have promoted up through the ranks. You get a much greater sense of family when people feel they've got a job here for a while ... not just "let's see how many episodes we get to work on this season" which is the way episodic television usually is."

For everyone there is also enormous satisfaction and pride in the knowledge that no other television series in history has been as enduring, envied or as emulated as Star Trek.