How would you change the show?
- Thread starter Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
- Start date
And? What are you arguing against? Nowhere have I said "7 years of Maquis/Starfleet conflict. " so I'm not sure what's being argued here.
I'm just asking when is enough enough? DS9 resolved it's major internal conflicts in 1 season, so how long was VOY supposed to run on Fleeter vs Maquis? Just how many seasons were we expected to see them butting heads before it became annoying and outstayed its welcome?
Look at "The 100", that Post Apocalyptic show on the CW from a few years ago. The internal conflicts there went on for years and years and never seemed to get resolved. It wasn't "good writing", it just got annoying.
What will it take?
One.
One season would have been sufficient for me with the butting of heads from time to time between the Maquis and Starfleet crews. One episode really wasn't enough. I don't think we needed a mutiny or anything but you'd think that the two crews would have been a bit more at odds since the Maquis were branded "terrorists." UPN didn't want that kind of strife though. Their tag line was "One Ship. One Crew." if I recall correctly in many of the promos they ran for the show.
Okay, so for example. If the Fleeter/Maquis tensions lasted until "Basics" where they all get abandoned on that planet because the Kazon took advantage of their infighting and they have to learn how to survive on that planet until they get the ship back...
...Would it be acceptable THEN that they finally decide to start working together as a functional group?
Or would we need something more conclusive, like the biggest troublemakers all getting slaughtered by the Kazon and the Planet's predators to remove them from the equation entirely?
Yes.
The crew didn't need to literally have knives at each other's throats. But a difference of opinion or differing strategies to the issues they faced, forcing both crew's to learn from and trust each other over the course of that first season, wouldn't have been out of line.
Basically, the Maquis consisted of...
* A first officer who was actually a better Starfleet officer than the captain.
* A chief engineer who had some serious behavior issues.... and basically resolved them in one episode. The rest of her arc was more angst than simmering anger.
* A person who had the sort of ruthlessness you'd expect a Maquis to have... but was a Cardassian agent.
* A hardened killer (they couldn't check references after all), conveniently gone by Season 2.
* A single person who sided with the Cardassian agent in question, also quickly eliminated.
* A bunch of cookie cutter Starfleet clones: neat, short-haired, clean shaven men, women with hair in bobs or buns, the only difference between them and the Starfleet crew being their rank insignia. And all of whom followed Janeway like koolaid guzzling cult members.
* A first officer who was actually a better Starfleet officer than the captain.
* A chief engineer who had some serious behavior issues.... and basically resolved them in one episode. The rest of her arc was more angst than simmering anger.
* A person who had the sort of ruthlessness you'd expect a Maquis to have... but was a Cardassian agent.
* A hardened killer (they couldn't check references after all), conveniently gone by Season 2.
* A single person who sided with the Cardassian agent in question, also quickly eliminated.
* A bunch of cookie cutter Starfleet clones: neat, short-haired, clean shaven men, women with hair in bobs or buns, the only difference between them and the Starfleet crew being their rank insignia. And all of whom followed Janeway like koolaid guzzling cult members.
Maquis are still (24th century 'evolved') humans and other (ex-)Federation citizens. I don't necessarily expect them to like the lifestyle they had to adopt to defend their homes and become as ruthless as (say) a Cardassian operative would be. Neither would I expect them all to be Eddington clones, for example.
Imagine if they'd done "Worst Case Scenario" but for real and in the first season, maybe as the finale? The thing is, how do you come back from that? Or could Chakotay do it in a way that's against Janeway but not against the ship itself? But could she ever forgive him? I've often thought that would have been an obvious story to do before they all became chums but now I think it's much harder to than it looks and was better they didn't.
Anyway they could have had a bit more angst and resolved it and then have conflict with other strays they bring aboard. The Equinox dopes could have been another faction or some other randos (Gul Evek!). What happens when the Equinox slaves stop building torpedoes and shuttles down in the mines on Deck 10?
The Maquis uniforms are stupid as hell even as space clothes.
Anyway they could have had a bit more angst and resolved it and then have conflict with other strays they bring aboard. The Equinox dopes could have been another faction or some other randos (Gul Evek!). What happens when the Equinox slaves stop building torpedoes and shuttles down in the mines on Deck 10?
The Maquis uniforms are stupid as hell even as space clothes.
That was a complete missed opportunity... the 5 Equinox crew that survived and stayed on Voyager.
Three of them we never got to know, but Gilmore and Lessing got some dialogue and we got to know them a bit.
How would other crew work with them? Would the Maquis crew have an easier time working with them than Starfleet crew? Or the reverse?
I have also wondered how they fared when they got back home. Were they tried for what happened on the Equinox? Was Janeway a voice of leniency for them? I imagine they were likely kicked out of Starfleet, but you never know.
Three of them we never got to know, but Gilmore and Lessing got some dialogue and we got to know them a bit.
How would other crew work with them? Would the Maquis crew have an easier time working with them than Starfleet crew? Or the reverse?
I have also wondered how they fared when they got back home. Were they tried for what happened on the Equinox? Was Janeway a voice of leniency for them? I imagine they were likely kicked out of Starfleet, but you never know.
My theory is that they were taken into custody upon Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant and tried for several crimes, including mass murder and violation of the Prime Directive. They received a degree of clemency because of the extreme circumstances, but probably spent at least some time in the New Zealand penal colony.
The problem is that...well, you can't come back from that sort of thing. In Babylon 5, when Garibaldi betrayed Sheridan they had to have it be revealed he'd been brainwashed into doing that because the writers realized it would be the end of his character in the show if he did it honestly.
NuBSG, they killed off most of the conspirators who helped the Cylons and when one of the actually important characters did this they had to contrive him being a secret spy for the good side so they'd spare him.
With VOY there'd be no way to really justify the Fleeters not just getting rid of the Maquis if they pulled this. That's why Seska had to be revealed as a Cardassian Agent.
I agree. I'd started thinking that in a version of Voyager that had more continuity a coup arc like WCS would have been inevitable and dramatically interesting for writers but now I think it would have been a mistake. I think they might have gotten away with it if say Seska or even a new prominent Maquis character was still on the ship and had rebelled with a bunch of Maquis and a bunch of Starfleet. Maybe they do a version of "Prime Factors" that would get them home but kill a bunch of people in the long run. They know the coup won't last but it only needs to last until they get everyone back to the Alpha Quadrant. Then once it's foiled they could deal with the conspirators or maybe they go on the run and that's how you get Seska. Again I don't know if this works or would have been good.
I do like the idea that if you take a chunk of Voyager's crew away you're going to need to replace it and then I think it would be interesting if Voyager had started a recruitment drive or regularly picked up strays along the way to be civilian crew members. Once I started thinking about it made me wonder what Voyager would look like when it arrived in the Alpha Quadrant after seventy years and all the original crew had died from different horrible disasters and it's just Ensign Kim and a bunch of aliens.
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Yeah that was another thing, not one writer was ever considering the "They'll need 75 years to get home" thing. They were always going to use some plot contrivance to get them home within the 7 years.
I mean heck, Kirk and Picard both had the same "Trapped far away" plot happen to them and they always resolved it within 1 episode.
Yes, why didn't Janeway use that knowledge?
Gilligan plot, they had to stay trapped out there so they couldn't use any of the prior stuff Kirk and Picard did to get home faster.
Like say, that episode with the Ferengi who had an unstable wormhole. The Wormhole collapses...just do what Kirk did and fly around the Sun to go back in time a little bit to when the Wormhole was still usable and fly through it then. Then put everyone to sleep for a few days so they're in sync with time when they wake up.
Why not? Because then the show would be over.
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