Was Lt. Carey screwed over in Voyager?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by The Overlord, Feb 23, 2012.

  1. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But.. when did this happen? I didn't get that newsletter.
     
  2. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I thought it was a fair shame that for awhile Voyager had a rapport going between several lower-decks types in Engineering, and then it systematically dismantled that. Not that Seska being a Cardie wasn't great and all, but to kill or disappear everyone related to that event seemed like an unfortunate move, especially when nothing replaced it.
     
  3. You_Will_Fail

    You_Will_Fail Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    You're right, I really liked the chemistry among the Engineering team, "Prime Factors" was a great example of it.
     
  4. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But that was completely dysfunction even if the writers didn't know that Seska was Cardassian.

    Seska was manipulating B'Elanna, and B'Elanna didn't notice that she was being peer presured into a life of crime... it was like Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were sharing coffee in Engineering.

    Rotten apple.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2012
  5. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I think allowing us to have more insight into how secondary characters felt regarding developments aboard the ship might have done a lot to address concerns that tensions between Starfleet and the Maquis died off too quickly.

    By no means am I endorsing the idea of more Starfleet defiance a la "Prime Factors", but just to see that everyone wasn't in agreement all of the time, even (or perhaps especially) if that never reached the command level, would have made me appreciate the show a bit more.

    Oooh, look at me and my long sentences.
     
  6. tighr

    tighr Commodore Commodore

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    In TNG's Arsenal of Freedom, Chief Engineer Logan had to take orders from Lt jg La Forge when the latter was acting captain of the good ship Lollypop. He wasn't happy about it, but that's the way its done. This in and of itself didn't make much sense to me, though, because Logan was only a Lieutenant. On a ship the size of the Enterprise, there MUST have been a bevy of Lt. Commanders in charge of the various other departments who would all outrank Logan, too.

    I also thought it was silly how many chief engineers the Enterprise had in season 1, and then La Forge gets promoted in season 2 and keeps the job for the next 15 years.
     
  7. TotesMagotes

    TotesMagotes Ensign Newbie

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    I never really cared about Carey. What bugged me was that blonde science officer. You never saw her face in focus, and she never said a single line... but she was a bridge officer!

    Fun fact about the "night shift" or whatever... in the navies (all of the NATO ones AFAIK), they call them "watches" instead of shifts, and they have them set up so that you're always moving up one watch every time. Even though there's no night on a starship, it makes sense that they'd do that, so that you wouldn't always getting the 12-4 AM watch. This brings me to another thing that bugged me about Voyager: whenever something unexpected happened it was always the same group of people on the bridge. What, do they drop out of warp when they're sleeping? Once in a while, I would have liked to see Janeway have to get out of bed for the latest anomaly or attack.
     
  8. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    submarines simulate night and day to a degree to keep the circadian rhythms tickityboo, and the same would probably be true for long term space missions.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2012
  9. The_Baron

    The_Baron Captain Captain

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    The thing that always got me about the 'night shift' was the notion that nothing important ever happened during them.

    As though the entirety of the Delta Quadrant all adopted Voyagers time-zone....

    Sure, it might be 0300 on Voyager, but it could be 09:00 for the nearby alien who's just downed his morning coffee and is now up for a fight...
     
  10. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Star system, void, star system.

    Warp 8 is 1024 C, while warp 7 is 656 times the speed of light.

    warp 7 is almost 1/2 as slow as warp 8.

    It's true that they might be trying to get to where ever they're going quickly, but it's also true that they can plan their journeys to only arrive in really troublesome points like the borders to empires, starbases and the rims of solar systems when Janeway is awake and MOST of the "good" crew is awake and the "losers" are asleep, just by pushing the engines sometimes and giving them a break others.
     
  11. tighr

    tighr Commodore Commodore

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    There were at least a few episodes that showed things happening at night. Warhead had Acting Captain Kim changing course to a planet before calling his boss, Chakotay, and informing him of the change. Chakotay called Janeway, who was sleeping.

    I think the general idea was that things can happen on all three shifts, but if something important happens or if their heading dictates that they will arrive at a certain planet at a certain time, then the senior officers would adjust their schedules so that they were awake for that event. In the interests of expediency (and because the show is technically about our heroes and not the backshift folk) they just show our heroes as the ones awake all the time. I can grant latitude for not having to show this sequence of events all that frequently.

    TNG's Data's Day also showed this to be the case. Data had command of the night watch, Riker had command of the day watch, and Worf had command of the evening watch. Picard, even though he's the Captain, would simply be on the bridge whenever he was needed to be, be it day, night, whenever.

    A final example is Star Trek VI, when Christian Slater wakes up Sulu in his quarters to inform him of the transmission from Starfleet.
     
  12. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, the whole "exciting things only happen during Alpha shift" phenomenon is hardly unique to Voyager.

    I just had a "great" idea for a tongue-in-cheek novel tidbit where a scientist is researching why major incidents that impact starships tend to occur during Alpha shift.
     
  13. Enterprise is Great

    Enterprise is Great Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Someone, I think it may have been Gene Roddenberry, had the "brilliant" idea that by the 24th century starships didn't have chief engineers. Just engineers and the ship mostly fixed itself. After the first season they dropped that idea.
     
  14. tighr

    tighr Commodore Commodore

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    Just on the Enterprise-D, we saw Lt. Cmdr Argyle, Lt. Cmdr Leland T. Lynch, and Lt. Cmdr McDougal all in the first season. Even if they weren't "Chief Engineers", they were at least officers on board who were Lt. Cmdrs.

    Strangely, Riker, Crusher, Pulaski, (and Shelby for a brief time), then later Troi, were the only Commanders ever seen on screen. On a real ship, Data would probably have been a Commander (Operations Chief), and so would whoever was Chief Engineer (La Forge). All other department heads should have been Lt. Cmdrs and report directly to Riker.
     
  15. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Well, Lt Cmdrs actually are a high enough Rank to command their own vessels (small ones, obviously). Makes sense most of them would rather do that than stay as a department head on another ship.
     
  16. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The difiant was a support vessel to ds9. Like a rowboat tied to the side of a battleship.

    Although, Sisko being given DS9 in the beginning?

    If the Prophets hadn't promoted him to Emissary, it's likely he would have been promoted or given a superior somewhat soon after the first episode.
     
  17. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    The Defiant is more like a Pocket Battleship assigned to a Port than a rowboat to a Battleship.
     
  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Sisko's command wasn't DS9.

    Sisko was facilitating the assimilation of Bajor into the federation.

    DS9 is just where he put his feet up.

    It was DS9 which was the rowboat and the defiant was perhaps a paddle.
     
  19. Kinggodzillak

    Kinggodzillak Captain Captain

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    Of course Carey got screwed over. He got confined to quarters and nobody thought to let him out until six years later.
     
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  20. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well, he did get to hit on 7 of 9 in "Relativity"... but since that was in the past, I guess it doesn't negate the "confined to quarters" argument. ;)