According to a report that will be appearing today at Fandom's Daily Buzz, this weekend Voyager actor Ethan Phillips (Neelix) revealed some major news to fans attending the United Fan Con in New England. Here's a summary:

• Apparently, Phillips provided fans with info on the fifth Star Trek series, currently scheduled to launch in Fall 2001. Phillips said that the series would be set about 100 years before the time of Captain Kirk, seemingly confirming the 'Birth of the Federation' reports that first appeared about a year ago. Phillips didn't say anything about whether the new series would feature time villains from the future, something which the original reports also suggested, meaning that Paramount may have dropped this aspect of the series during the development process - not necessarily a bad thing. Again according to Phillips, the cast would contain of five regular characters, a change from the current Trek series - three men and two women.

  Of course, please be aware that this does not necessarily mean Series V will in fact be a 'Birth of the Federation'-like series. As mentioned above, these rumours have been going around for over a year now, and it could very well be Phillips was simply repeating these rumours. On the other hand, this isn't the first time Phillips has been reported to have said such a thing at a convention, so maybe he did actually share some real inside information on the new show. Series V is currently expected to begin shooting in early 2001, with a premiere date of Fall 2001.

• In addition, Phillips talked a bit about the upcoming show 'Prophecy', in which a group of Klingons aboard a long-distance ship come to believe that the child of Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres will "fulfill an ancient prophecy about the closest thing the Klingons have to messiah". As reported before, once Janeway manages to convince the Klingons that the Federation is no longer at war with them, they come onboard Voyager to escape a disaster on their own ship. This will lead to Neelix and Tuvok having to share quarters, which should guarantee some interesting scenes.

• Finally, Phillips talked about the final seven Voyager episodes, which will apparently be written by Kenneth Biller, Brannon Braga and Rick Berman. Phillips didn't know yet how the series would end, but he did mention that all but perhaps two of the final episodes had now been assigned scriptwriters.

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