What Were The Reasons For Making Voyager Smaller/Smaller Crewed?

I remember that when Voyager came out, it was specifically mentioned that the producers wanted the ship only about half the size of the Galaxy class and a much smaller crew.

What was the reasoning for this? While I figure they wouldn't featuring something the size of a Galaxy class ship, to me the show would be more believable if the ship was larger and with a larger crew (5-600) than was featured on Voyager.

 

I don't see how the size of the ship has anything to do with believability.

 

Larger ship, larger crew, greater resources. Just look at the differences it made for the U.S.S. Equinox.

With greater resources and crew, the ship being actually isolated across the galaxy would've been a more workable premise.

If you have a ship with similar capabilities like the Galaxy class with 250 torpedoes then you don't have people complaining about Voyagers near endless supply.

 

Before Voyager started, they had a lot of ambitions. The smaller ship aspect was important because it would have less resources and we would get to know more of the crew better. But none of that even mattered eventually.

 

I read in Sci Fi Universe, that the Voyager producers. That is Berman, Braga, and Taylor (I think Piller was starting to decline at that point) really wanted Voyager to be more like Star Trek: The Next Generation or at least how they thought ST:TNG should've been like.

So why they insisted on the smaller ship is beyond me.

Another thing is the Maquis angle. The Voyager producers themselves said in one of the science fiction magazines that they never intended to pursue the possible tension between the Maquis crew and the Voyager crew.

So why bother at all?

 

Executive meddling. Early plans for more ongoing story arcs were nixed by the network, who wanted standalone, TNG style stories.

As for the smaller ship, it's not as if you can tell by watching the show. The sets were the same size as Next Gen. Perhaps they more believably fit a ship Voyager's size than the gigantic Enterprise-D. The only times Trek ships have been able to depict huge interiors were in the big-budget movies - the first one and the latest one.

 

It wasn't just the execs who didn't want to do story arcs either.

 

I suppose the aim was to make it more personal and more like a family as opposed to thousands of faceless people running around like on the Enterprise-D.

 

It's so that the ship couldn't muscle it's way out of situations.

They had to be sneaky and diplomatic.

Could you imagine Janeway saying "General Order Twenty Four."

Ironically, general order 24, was not the 24th general order to be drafted, general order 24 was named in strict deference to Kim Bauer.

 

They pretty much did that anyway. Sure they talked but the Voyager crew was even more prone to opening fire than the Enterprise-D crew was.

 

Voyager quickly abandoned almost everything from it's "premise".

Tom Paris in the first bible was "the leading man" who was supposed to knock Janeway's socks off.

 

They needed better casting if they wanted him to knock Janeway's socks off. Chakotay is far better looking for leading man and sock knocking IMO. Paris just too boyish.

 

They changed their mind.

Cold feet.

Wussies.

 

They changed their mind before casting Paris?

 

After.

The official line is that if there hadn't been such a backlash from Threshold, that they would have been a regular thing.

But that story always felt odd, that they waited a year and a half to set up Kathryn and Tommy, it's like they had this awesome will power to be patient and not blow their load in the stating blocks, which there was no evidence ever that existed anywhere else in the construction of the series.

 

It just doesn't work. I think she works better with Harry of all people than with Paris.

 

That's because we know who she is, but when they were making these choices, they didn't.

 

I thought you said they were still going to do it right up to Threshold?

 

That's something that always bothered me. TPTB seemed to go to so much trouble in the beginning to set up a situation that would feed stories - across the galaxy, criminals now part of the crew, no support network, limited photon torpedoes, needing to mine for minerals, etc., and then they did almost nothing with it. I never understood why all the Maquis were in uniform by the end of the pilot. They could have easily gotten half a season's worth of tension just out of that alone.

Fear, I'm guessing. That, and putting VOY on a network instead of running it straight into syndication pretty much doomed it from the start.

 

I did.

Threshold was their big move.