"Hogan was a fine officer and a good man."

Hogan was a Maquis fighter who served on the raider Val Jean under Chakotay until 2371. In 2371, the Val Jean and the USS Voyager were both stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's array. The Val Jean was destroyed by ramming a Kazon warship while fighting the Kazon-Ogla, and as a result the crew of the Val Jean, Jor included, joined the crew of the Voyager as Starfleet personnel and traveled on Voyager on its historic trek home from the Delta Quadrant. He was assigned to engineering with the provisional rank of ensign. (VOY: "Caretaker", "Alliances")

Hogan was a close friend of ex-Maquis Michael Jonas and Kurt Bendera. However, like many of the Maquis, Hogan was at first unsparing in his criticism of Captain Kathryn Janeway, Voyager's commanding officer.

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History

After Bendera's funeral in 2372, Hogan suggested handing over transporter and replicator technology to the Kazon in violation of the Prime Directive. He believed doing so would give Voyager better security as it made passage back to the Alpha Quadrant. Following the collapse of peace overtures with the Kazon-Nistrim, Hogan tried to convince B'Elanna Torres, Voyager's chief engineer, to discreetly contact Seska, a former member of Voyager's crew who had since allied herself with the Kazon, but Torres was loyal to Captain Janeway and distrustful of Seska. Hogan was unknowingly responsible for giving Jonas the idea of becoming a spy for Seska. (VOY: "Alliances")

When Voyager's warp drive became dysfunctional shortly thereafter, Hogan was part of an engineering team which tried to determine what the problem with it was. He reported directly to Torres that their efforts to restart the warp drive hadn't yet been successful but that the cause had been narrowed down to some kind of issue with a specific EPS conduit aboard the vessel. He also relayed to Torres that Ensign Lon Suder had reported no evidence of the problem during the previous day. The malfunction turned out to be one of the first signs that Suder had murdered Crewman Frank Darwin. (VOY: "Meld")

Hogan was later ordered by Torres to help Neelix investigate deletions from the ship's subspace logs, as Neelix suspected that whomever had erased the missing log entries had been spying on Voyager for the Kazon. (VOY: "Investigations") Ironically, despite having inadvertently given Jonas the idea to do exactly that, Hogan assisted Neelix with the investigation. (VOY: "Alliances", "Investigations") He made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the logs, though he did manage to determine how the messages had been secretly sent, and indirectly led Neelix to discover the messages were part of an effort by the spy to falsely implicate Tom Paris in collaboration with the Kazon. Privately, Commander Chakotay wondered if the spy might really be Hogan, though Neelix was doubtful of this, given that Hogan had simply been walking by when Torres had asked him to assist.

While subsequently helping prepare for the engineering staff to rebuild the warp coils, Hogan learned from Neelix, much to Hogan's surprise, that Paris was innocent of having sent the messages but, because Hogan and his co-workers were very busy, he was reluctant to lend Neelix further assistance. He left Engineering in compliance with an instruction from Jonas to take some engineering data to Torres. His departure allowed Jonas, who was finally identified as the spy, to confine and then attack Neelix, though Jonas himself died soon afterwards. (VOY: "Investigations")

Hogan was severely injured while repairing damage on Deck 15, shortly after Voyager was duplicated by a spatial scission. When Kes arrived with a medkit, Hogan and Torres saw her be suddenly transported to the duplicate Voyager. Hogan was then helped to safety by Torres. A duplicate of Hogan was aboard the other Voyager, who likewise assisted a duplicate of Torres in their Engineering department. (VOY: "Deadlock")

Hogan was manning the transporter console on Voyager when the crew encountered some trouble with the ship's transporter. He was made responsible for beaming Tuvok and Neelix back aboard the ship, an operation that was somewhat delayed due to the technological problem. Though Hogan expected he had managed to fix it, he detected an issue during transport that resulted in the creation of Tuvix who, as Hogan pointed out, was basically a merging of the two transport subjects. A type of orchid, which used symbiogenesis for procreation, had also become caught up in the beaming and was actually responsible for having caused the transporter accident.

A short time later, Hogan was one of several officers who frantically struggled to make dinner for themselves in the kitchen area of the ship's mess hall, since Neelix was absent. As such, Hogan was tasked by Ensign Swinn with flipping some eggs she was cooking, because they were burning, but Tuvix soon arrived and resolved the chaotic situation by taking control and moving everyone else out of the kitchen. Tuvix was later divided into his separate components. (VOY: "Tuvix")

When Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay were infected by a virus which confined them to a planet dubbed "New Earth," Hogan heard news that Ensign Harry Kim had desperately tried, on the bridge, to convince Tuvok to seek medical aid from the Vidiians, which would violate orders from Janeway, but that Kim had consequently been relieved of duty. Together with Swinn, Hogan confronted Kim in the mess hall and supported his idea, also saying there were many who agreed with them. Hogan later stood among a group of such officers on the bridge when Tuvok voiced a speech in which he declared he would indeed contact the Vidiians, although following this course of action brought Voyager into combat with a fleet of Vidiian ships. As the battle raged, Hogan was again in engineering. The crew ultimately procured an antiviral serum from Danara Pel, a Vidiian ally of theirs, who was aboard one of the Vidiian ships, before Voyager managed to escape and then rescue Janeway and Chakotay. (VOY: "Resolutions")

Hogan's career on Voyager came to an end when the majority of the crew were marooned on Hanon IV by the Kazon-Nistrim. (VOY: "Basics, Part I", "Basics, Part II") He showed Neelix a system of caves on the planet, remarking that they seemed as if they had been constructed, and theorized that a native population on the planet may have created it. When Neelix suggested to Hogan that he gather some humanoid-looking bones near the mouth of the cave network, Hogan was momentarily hesitant but then decided to start collecting all the bones. Moments later, he was, however, suddenly attacked, dragged into the caves and killed, screaming, by an Hanonian land eel, leaving merely scraps of his uniform behind. Neelix felt guilty for the loss of Hogan, though Janeway immediately dismissed this sentiment. She called Hogan "a fine officer and a good man," and vowed that his death would be the last on that planet for at least a long while. The cloth remnants of Hogan's uniform were used by Chakotay to make solar stills. (VOY: "Basics, Part II")

The following year, Hogan's remains were excavated by a Voth scientist called Forra Gegen. Gegen found significant genetic similarities between Hogan and the Voth and believed that this was evidence to support a hypothesis called Distant Origin Theory. The remains were taken to the Voth city ship. (VOY: "Distant Origin")

Appendices

Appearances

Background information

Hogan was played by Simon Billig. He was initially called with an invitation to try out for the part a week after unsuccessfully auditioning for a Klingon role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Since he had already auditioned for the casting director of DS9, Billig was called directly in to meet the producers of Star Trek: Voyager. "My audition [for Hogan] was actually the two scenes from the first episode that I was in," Billig stated. However, the pair of scenes included a lot of technobabble. "So, I came across a couple of those words and sort of faltered at them the first time I read the scenes," the actor continued. "I told the producers that maybe the second time I read I'd remember transducers or something and I got a laugh out of that. I did the scenes and after talking a bit they said, 'Well, can you do them again and make this sort of slight adjustment?' which I did. It was the kind of audition that made me feel everything sort of clicked and came together in a very positive way. I felt really good about it when I left and then I wound up getting a call from them that same day offering me the part." (TV Zone, Issue 93, p. 30) Concerning Billig's casting as Hogan, Executive Producer Jeri Taylor recalled, "We needed someone to do a small part in "Alliances", and so we hired this young man." (Star Trek Monthly issue 15, p. 12)

Simon Billig regarded Hogan as somewhat of a devil's advocate and someone unafraid to express his own opinion, especially when he thought it would benefit Voyager and its crew. "He might seem to be a bit of an upstart," Billig observed, "but he genuinely believes that when he does something it's not just for his good but for the good of everyone else, too. Most of the significant scenes I had revolved around my trying to do something that I feel is right and vital to Voyager even though it might clash with what the captain or any of her officers think. So, I guess Hogan's a bit of a crapstirrer," the actor chuckled, "but with good intentions." (TV Zone, Issue 93, p. 30)

The reaction of Star Trek: Voyager's producers to Simon Billig resulted in the recurring nature of Hogan's appearances. Jeri Taylor offered, "Well, this is one of those lucky breaks that happens for an actor [....] [Billig] really turned out to be a very nice actor. So we just kept using him as a convenience; it's always nice to have somebody else to talk to in Engineering besides B'Elanna. And he's turned out to do a nice job, and so he's lucked into a great deal of work that way. I can't say that he's going to be a regular or anything like that [....] He just turns out to be sort of a convenience for us." Another factor in making Hogan a recurring character was that it helped to illustrate how limited the Voyager crew was. (Star Trek Monthly issue 15, p. 12)

Following his work on "Meld", Simon Billig was notified by the VOY producers that Hogan was going to be a recurring character in the series. The actor enjoyed playing Hogan in such episodes as "Alliances", "Investigations", and "Deadlock". He cited Hogan as one of the most challenging and rewarding characters he ever portrayed, though also believed the task became gradually easier. "As I've done more and more episodes I've become much more relaxed and confident about what I'm doing," he explained. Billig made a point of watching the installments that included his performances as Hogan, when they first aired. "It's also a thrill for me to sit and watch an episode of Voyager and go, 'Yes! That's what I wanted. I got exactly what I wanted to out of that scene,'" he related. (TV Zone, Issue 93, p. 32)

The producers' realization that Hogan was a convenient character for them to utilize led them to create the character of Ensign Swinn, who was initially intended to be a similar recurring character, although this did not come to pass. (Star Trek Monthly issue 15, p. 12)

Hogan's rank was unclear; it appeared to be that of crewman, as he was referenced in "Alliances" and "Resolutions", but he was called "ensign" in "Meld" and "lieutenant" in "Deadlock". However, the fragments of uniform found with his remains in "Distant Origin" clearly show the rank insignia of a provisional ensign.

See also