Why Do We Demand Internal Consistency & Continuity in Star Trek?

Even built by hand requires the parts and materials come from somewhere

 

After we saw 78 decks aboard the Enterprise-A in TFF we should have just given up on expecting the kind of consistency we want from this franchise.

 

Not that I recall. Difficult to say, I wasn’t enjoying the film very much, and had gone into it knowing about data’s death. I do remember noticing it looked like some of the Borg texture panels still present, but couldn’t decide if that was just how the e panels look in places, a budget exercise, or an accidental hint that the ship still had bits left after all those years.

 

Yup, but It’s not like they shimmered it out of an industrial replicator.

 

What was the official explanation for where the materials for the Delta Flyer originated? With replicator rationing in effect aboard Voyager during her time in the Delta Quadrant wouldn't all the components have to be cannibalized from existing shuttlecraft and things kept in storage in the cargo bays? It's something that got handwaved away I'm sure since the logistics behind Tom Paris building a megashuttle from scrap components aboard a starship that has to monitor its energy supplies and has to fabricate even the smallest replacement parts would probably be ridiculous to comprehend unless an alien visitor helped him build it and provided a lot of the parts, which we know didn't happen.

 

The official explanation is "Viewers are morons", after we can't be expected to remember a line from S1 where we are told they have no way of replacing their torpedoes (which after all is basically a warp capable ship with a warhead instead of a passenger and life support) and lets face it they built not 1 but 2 delta flyers and they burned through about a dozen shuttlecrafts as well. It doesn't make logical sense based on what we have been told.

Now for example they could have built an industrial replicator at the expense of the others because they had to cannibalise the parts needed to make it.

 

They say in the episode...

JANEWAY: I'm impressed, but how quickly can it be built?
PARIS: We could replicate the alloys and the new design components, use spare parts from storage. If we worked around the clock we could have it up and running inside a week.

 

The official explination as stated in dialoge in the episode is that they replicated certain parts and used some parts from storage. It's really not that much of a stretch of the imagination.

 

or, being a resourceful crew they figured out a way to do these things.

 

Well I guess they could mine materials, build a refinery to refine them and build a factory to manufacture them or the parts they couldn't replicate. But really all the writers had to do was a line drop at the end of a Captain's log something along the lines of "Engineering reports they have found away to replace our torpedoes" the exact means isn't important but rather the writers are saying we know what we said earlier but now it no longer applies. It treats the audience with some degree of respect.

 

I agree completely, however since we see them doing these kinds of things later I always just assumed they figured out a way. They also met with aliens regularly and may have traded for supplies.


based on the below dialoge I figured they came up with ways

JANEWAY: Assuming we do find dilithium on this planetoid, we're going to need a refining facility on the ship to process it.
CHAKOTAY: Lieutenant Torres has already asked permission to start modifications to the auxiliary impulse reactor. It could be converted into a crude dilithium refinery.
JANEWAY: The impulse reactor? Sometimes I think B'Elanna goes out of her way to find solutions that ignore Starfleet procedures

 

Borg nanoprobes? That's basically the handwave excuse for the origin of a lot of things on Voyager.

 

It always amuses me how it is assumed that Voyager wasn't supposed to be given credit for a whole fricken Quadrant to source materials from, lol. Like were they supposed to limp along with no trade and scavenging? They had Neelix on board who spent years being involved in that lifestyle after he lost his entire family and homeworld. They (Voyager) er... like er... shock horror gasp, encountered some sophisticated species along the way, popped down to the occasional planet and yes, got supplies. It's not like the Delta Quadrant was some backward outpost. Voyager itself was not exactly a bucket of bolts that didn't have facilities either. It wasn't that long ago I saw the episode where the Delta Flyer was built - no sweat

 

The problem is they basically destroyed the two most useful elements of the setting for dramatic tension - the Federation/Maquis crew conflict and the lack of resupply - quite early on. As a result, there were only really two things which distinguished the show structurally from TNG:

1. That the crew wanted to get home, and many plots dealt with the hopes of getting there. However, without heavy suspension of disbelief, we knew there was no way they were getting home except in the final episode, which meant this was "fake drama" much like the firefight which takes place in half of the episodes which is resolved 5 minutes prior to the end.

2. That the Delta Quadrant allowed them to tell new stories about new species. I'd say the legacy here is mixed. "Aliens of the week" could have been done just as easily on an Alpha Quadrant show. The few recurring alien species (like the Kazon and Hirogen) came up too frequently considering how rapidly Voyager was supposed to be traveling through space. Though nothing was worse than Neelix running into Talaxians near the end of the last season. And Voyager of course still found ways to do Ferengi episodes, Bajoran episodes, Cardassian episodes, Romulan episodes, Klingon episodes, etc. Honestly I think the DS9 model of deepening the races which already existed worked better than Voyager's general model.

 

It would be nice to see those stories, rather than just assume they found a way to replicate difficult parts (bio-neural gel packs? torpedoes?). I'm not saying the Voyager crew isn't resourceful. Tom Paris pretty much epitomizes a Macgyver-esque jack of all trades style survivalist.

But, that said, it would have been nice to see them find these solutions rather than just assume it happened. .

 

What perhaps didn't help is that VOY was the third more episodic series so to fans who grew up with the previous 2, TOS and TNG it might seem somewhat repetitive, re-treading old ground. Whilst to fans brought into ST by VOY it might seem new. Of course that is overly simplistic and it can vary from person to person.

Exactly, I don't feel as if they utilised the setting as well as they could have and fell back and the tried and tested to varying degrees of success. Did it have to be as dark as nuBSG or SG:U no.

 

That's the thing. Personally I'm fine with them digging around for plants or repairing damage feom a battle off screen. I can make that assumption on my own. Just like i make the assumption that they poop even though they never show it. There's only 40 minutes of story time. I'd rather rhat be filled with things other than picking fruit on a planet

 

I want to see the whole process, from harvesting the fruit, preparing and eating it and you can have the special poop episode all to yourself....