More like too little too late.
They ignore all the crisis moments created in the pilot and move on.
Could Equinox have turned Voyager around?
- Thread starter Riley
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They ignore all the crisis moments created in the pilot and move on.
I'm not sure I remember anything raised in the pilot that isn't subsequently revisited. The Maquis, Kazon (lol), Caretaker, and obviously being trapped in the DQ are all followed up on.
Torpedoes, shuttles, Tom and Chakotay's animosity.
Again, it comes down to presentation. Things sound important and then they just are dropped. Information is gained and promptly forgotten next episode.
It's frustrating because there is a lot of potential but lacks follow through. Most Maquis fall in line without a problem. Power is a problem but not for the holodeck.
You're right that it is episodic, week to week, and adventures and that's fine if that's what I expected.
I didn't expect that based on the pilot or magazines I read.
Personally I expected the show to properly reflect the premise stated by TPTB at the time... Clearly I should have anticipated more laziness and stupidity from the network and He Who Shall Not Be Named. 
Also a quick reminder for anyone hazy on these details, the problems with usage of replicators in VOY were severalfold:
1) The ship's replicators were not Industrial Replicators, the likes of which a drydock would have.
2) Like it or not, in the Trekverse there remain some materials (eg Latinum) that molecular replicators cannot reproduce. There are sometimes critical starship components manufactured using such materials.
3) The replicators require energy, ie antimatter (even moreso if replicating torpedoes, shuttles, etc). Starships do not have the facility to generate large quantities of anti-deuterium so you'd have to sacrifice other systems to support increased replicator usage (Do not get me started on the Holodecks).
These issues presented a largely missed opportunity for the writers to depict the crew using their ingenuity to permanently solve their problems* ("Hey, could we build our own industrial replicator by converting a cargo transporter?"), and I imagine that had VOY actually shown this happening, we might have had them strive to effect similar upgrades aboard Equinox.
*Instead, the ship got handed a limitless supply of Handwavium... Which is fine if your audience is all of 7yrs old or has the attention span of a UPN executive.
Also a quick reminder for anyone hazy on these details, the problems with usage of replicators in VOY were severalfold:
1) The ship's replicators were not Industrial Replicators, the likes of which a drydock would have.
2) Like it or not, in the Trekverse there remain some materials (eg Latinum) that molecular replicators cannot reproduce. There are sometimes critical starship components manufactured using such materials.
3) The replicators require energy, ie antimatter (even moreso if replicating torpedoes, shuttles, etc). Starships do not have the facility to generate large quantities of anti-deuterium so you'd have to sacrifice other systems to support increased replicator usage (Do not get me started on the Holodecks).
These issues presented a largely missed opportunity for the writers to depict the crew using their ingenuity to permanently solve their problems* ("Hey, could we build our own industrial replicator by converting a cargo transporter?"), and I imagine that had VOY actually shown this happening, we might have had them strive to effect similar upgrades aboard Equinox.
*Instead, the ship got handed a limitless supply of Handwavium... Which is fine if your audience is all of 7yrs old or has the attention span of a UPN executive.
Which is it would have worked better for Voyager to be an alien ship instead of a Federation one and for most of the crew to be DQ Natives with only some of the Main Characters being from the Alpha Quadrant at all.
Sorry, I'm not following your logic there. How does needing a sense of consequence translate into it having to be an alien ship?
I'm saying, make it less about a stranded ship and more about a few stranded people who aren't even on a ship they're familiar with in the first place. That way we wouldn't need to worry so much about the "Will the ship make it back home?" plot, and more about "Will these people be able to retain their sense of self and identity or will they end up going native and become part of the Delta Quadrant" instead.
Taking away even a Federation Starship would just add to that challenge.
Something else needed was a hook for an external plot. Like, I dunno, the Caretaker had been holding off the Borg from that area of space for thousands of years and now that he's dead they're going to come looking at what he was hiding. So the crew have to figure out whether they should make a run for it because they can't win, or try to get the various groups in that area of space to work together to find a way of reactivating whatever it was the Caretaker used to keep the Borg out.
I love that Borg idea, that could have made a lot of sense and certainly having the shadow of the Collective looming (albeit not necessarily having the Borg literally appearing) would have been a better source of tension than the "threat" of the bargain bin Klingons
As far as the first part is concerned, as I said before there's really no need to have it be an alien ship - you may as well make a series that isn't Trek at all (and we already had that in Farscape). Besides which, the fact that they want to get home is the central "hook" for a lot of the audience. Even I can remember all the fans eager to find out whether part of the series would take place back home, with many hoping to see the crew dealing with the (there's that word again!) consequences of their time in the DQ.
Yep. If they had decided to just bring Voyager home halfway through the series, it would have made more sense. Literally 90% of the episodes could have taken place in the Alpha Quadrant and nobody would have been the wiser. Every time Janeway introduced herself to some aliens-of-the-week by saying "I'm Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager," and those aliens acting like they totally knew what she was talking about, always made me cringe. Because UPN simply failed to live up to the show's premise in their effort to make it episodic.
The show's premise was botched right from the start, IMO. There were conceptual flaws in it that they never ironed out before the show came to air. Probably because the show was rushed into production in the first place.
The Fleeter/Maquis thing? You can't get extended conflict from that, it's just not viable.
Lack of connection to the DQ? May as well just have then be a few years away from the AQ rather than 75 if you hadn't put any thought into how the DQ operates and works differently from the AQ.
No idea what to do with a larger ensemble cast? Then don't make it a large ensemble cast, make the main cast smaller. Hercules and Xena were two of the biggest 90s hits and they only had 2 leads each.
I disagree strongly with this assertion. A stronger writing staff and less meddling from the UPN halfwits would have allowed for it to happen, and for it to organically develop into grudging respect and eventual cameraderie - as it should have (see DS9 for an example of how a capable writing staff achieves this). Again, this is one of those elements of the original premise undermined from the outset.
They essentially did do that. "Uninteresting" main characters got
Back to the thread topic:
Do we know if Equinox had any shuttles left?
Even DS9 couldn't keep it going, Sisko's conflicts with Odo and Kira were done within 1 Season and they worked with him A-Okay after that.
Yes, which is why a smaller cast to begin with would have been more workable. IMO
That's another one of the issues arising from the episodic format - even things like the presence of Neelix's ship are forgotten/ignored.
That's something of an oversimplification, and tbh it sounds a bit like you're dismissing options to fix the existing premise so you can push for a completely different show which bears no resemblance to VOY. Maybe it'd be better to start a separate thread.
I adore Picardo and Ryan, but no, thanks. Focusing on two characters like can get tedious, and imho the results on VOY back that up.
That's my last word on your alternative premise in this thread; I don't think there's anything to be gained here by us repeatedly going over it... Let's please respect the OP and other thread users, and not derail things further.
Well, yes, but only because of two factors:
1. The writing staff did not know what to do with the concept, and
2. They were hamstrung by UPN's wants as the show went on.
But here's the thing: This is little different than almost every other Star Trek series barring TOS. They usually didn't find their footing or figure out what their show is supposed to be about until at least two seasons in. What made VOY different? It wasn't syndicated. The only problematic person for those other shows was Rick Berman. Whereas there was an entire network of assholes who, after the first few seasons of VOY, decided that they just wanted an episodic show where nothing changes, just like TNG. So the premise wasn't flawed. The execution was flawed.
Yeah, but I doubt it was meant to last long. It was just the jumping off point from DS9, and possibly just a foreshadowing of what was in store for them in the DQ (had the original premise been followed.)
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This isn't the thread for rehashing general VOY complaints and what utter dinkwits the UPN heads were? Huh...Back to the thread topic:
Do we know if Equinox had any shuttles left?
Threads are like water, they always end up following the path of least resistance... But you can't say I'm not trying to put it back on course, even if I'm doomed to fail!This isn't the thread for rehashing general VOY complaints and what utter dinkwits the UPN heads were? Huh...
Wouldn't have mattered. On VOY, shuttlecraft magically regenerate.Do we know if Equinox had any shuttles left?
Also, if the two ships were together, if plot contrivance required a shuttle, they just use one of Voyager's.
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