What did Voyager do with the bodies of dead crewmembers?

[Dantheman]

I know this may seem morbid, but I don't ever remember them addressing this on the show, if at all. Did they vacuum-freeze them in storage, to be buried when they get back to the Alpha Quadrant? Bury them on the nearest world? Burial in space, a la Spock in Wrath of Khan? Or most morbidly, use them as the base matter for the replicators to replicate from?

[Finn]

They shot them into space, as implied in that hack episode where Harry's apparently ex- serious girlfriend comes back from the dead.

[Dream]

The bodies were used as mystery meat for Neelix's meat pies.

[Guy Gardener]

Finn wrote:

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They shot them into space, as implied in that hack episode where Harry's apparently ex- serious girlfriend comes back from the dead.

That's a prime directive violation.

Random cultures coming across sophisticated torpedo technology not to mention what they can figure out from examining an alien being, be it new medical advances or bio weapons. It's really not cool.

Those torpedoes are supposed to be shot into suns or planets so that they burn up and don't leave evidence behind.

In a shoddy episode of Enterprise before there was a prime directive, Archer said that after they died on a prewarp world, which is where they were being jailed at the time, that T'Pol would in secret systematically remove all proof that aliens had ever been on that world up to and including exhuming their corpses after they're dead and buried.

Kes was kept in a foot locker.

Caretaker was kept in a draw.

Hogan was turned into Scat and then picked over by Dinosaurs.

The Klingon Half of B'Elanna was picked over to graft DNA onto mostly human B'Elanna, but it's doubtful the mostly Klingon corpse was still in a draw somewhere since B'Elanna later agreed to have a bit of her brain cut out to give to the Doctor's sickly Vidiian Girlfriend, when they could have been a mostly completely intact fully Klingon B'Elanna in a draw somewhere.

They just powered on when Harry's corpse was dumped outside (in deadlock).

They lost a couple during the Killing Game and those crewmen would have certainly be taken away as trophies... It's surprising that Kathryn didn't ask for the polished skulls of her friends back when she was cementing her peace with the Hirogen.

Bad Kathy!

[teacake]

They should have stuck the bodies in the traditional torpedos, then beamed the bodies into space, then vaporized them. Kept the torpedos.

[Guy Gardener]

But they only had 37 torpedoes!!!

Imagine, they're in a fight for their life... They run out of torpedoes and Janeway begins to regret all the stupid funerals she had that wasted the weapons she needed right then to save the ship.

[R. Star]

I actually liked it when they used photons sparingly the first few seasons before they just said "f it, we can replicate them" or whatever.

[Nerys Myk]

Use them to build shuttles.

[Guy Gardener]

If according to Enterprise that poop gets turned into boots, despite that being a completely different technology, then recycling the replicator biomatter reserve totally makes wasting a valuable resource like corpse meat should be criminal.

Gosh they should even be expected to put their hair and nail clippings back into the replicator biomatter reserve when they're still alive, which is just little dead bits of their person, which is hardly any different than putting larger dead bits of themselves back into the replicator biomatter reserve.

So yes, the new shuttles are probably made out of lots of stuff that used to be people.

[DeepSpaceWine]

They're not torpedoes, they're torpedo casings. I'm sure the vitals were the parts that couldn't be replicated, not the casing and such vitals are removed to make room for the body (thus all a civilization might find is the casing). Making casings can probably be done easily. For all we know, people on Earth could be buried in "photon torpedo casings". They could be shooting coffins in battle! They just happened to load them with bomb components.

[teacake]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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But they only had 37 torpedoes!!!

Imagine, they're in a fight for their life... They run out of torpedoes and Janeway begins to regret all the stupid funerals she had that wasted the weapons she needed right then to save the ship.

That's why I said you use one torpedo as a coffin and you beam the body out of it, before you launch it, and into space. This way the traditionalists still get their torpedo for the tin whistle bits but it stays on the ship.

[Guy Gardener]

DeepSpaceWine wrote:

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They're not torpedoes, they're torpedo casings. I'm sure the vitals were the parts that couldn't be replicated, not the casing and such vitals are removed to make room for the body (thus all a civilization might find is the casing). Making casings can probably be done easily. For all we know, people on Earth could be buried in "photon torpedo casings". They could be shooting coffins in battle! They just happened to load them with bomb components.

This is what I imagine to be in a torpedo casing normally.

1. Explosives.
2. A Warp drive.
3. An Impulse Drive
4, Fuel for the Engine.
5. A navigation system.
6. Remote Subspace failsafes.
7. Navigation shields.

What do you believe that they should extract to fit the corpse and the torpedo will still be space worthy?

[R. Star]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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This is what I imagine to be in a torpedo casing normally.

1. Explosives.
2. A Warp drive.
3. An Impulse Drive
4, Fuel for the Engine.
5. A navigation system.
6. Remote Subspace failsafes.
7. Navigation shields.

What do you believe that they should extract to fit the corpse and the torpedo will still be space worthy?

Firing torpedoes at warp always made me scratch my head.... if they're moving faster than light and fire a projectile weapon... shouldn't they fly into their own torpedo... reverse firing would work, but not forward firing.

[The Mirrorball Man]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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Use them to build shuttles.

It's people! Shuttles are made OUT OF PEOPLE!

[Guy Gardener]

R. Star wrote:

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Firing torpedoes at warp always made me scratch my head.... if they're moving faster than light and fire a projectile weapon... shouldn't they fly into their own torpedo... reverse firing would work, but not forward firing.

You're on the roof of a train moving east, and there's another train on the opposing track moving west towards you, you have a mortar and you have to fire a grenade at a teacup in the dining cart of the approaching train.

That may seem difficult but now imagine that both trains were switching velocities between full impulse (1/4 the speed of light) to any warp speed ranging from dozens of times the speed of light to thousands of times the speed of light... And they're now separated by a distance of 40 thousand kilometres.

Torpedoes are not cannon balls.

They have engines.

Warp drive and impulse drive.

It's how they can hit a moving target 40 thousand kilometres away with incredible accuracy.