See my above post. The ship had nothing whatsoever to do with the storytelling.
What if Voyager was a different class of ship?
- Thread starter DarthTimon
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See my above post. The ship had nothing whatsoever to do with the storytelling.
It SHOULD have, though.
Lots of things Voyager SHOULD have but every plot resolution with technobabble can and would have been applied to any other ship. Actually making it an unknown alien ship would have potentially made it easier to come up with miracle tech to solve problems. "Surprise, the ship can do this!"
Episode 25: "Delta Quadrant Miracle"
While exploring their new alien ship, Chakotay and the crew discover a device which allows them to replicate an unlimited number of shuttlecraft and photon torpedoes. Meanwhile, Janeway stumbles upon a room where alien technology allows for holograms which use virtually no power, which she immediately uses to bring characters from her favorite books to life. Then the Kazon show up and attack.
Not quite like that. Maybe the ship would be made of a metal with unusual chemical properties, or the doctor could have been an alien hologram rather than a Starfleet one. Perhaps the engine ran on an experimental alien principle they didn't fully understand.
Again, how does any of that affect the story? UPN wanted an episodic show where nothing changes. What kind of ship they had made no difference. Now if you want to head over to the "What would you have done differently in VOY" topic, that's different. But this thread is about if they had a different ship but still had the same things happen as what happened in the show.
Well, it means the fans wouldn't be complaining so much about certain things because the plot of it being an unknown alien ship would've at least given SOME explanation as to why they were able to do stuff like have their hologram become sentient or have the analog to the holodeck running.
This fan complained that the entire scenario was unbelievable because they never worried about running out of fuel, food, water and other creature comforts, never ran out of shuttles, torpedoes, and any other weapons, had unlimited resources to be able to do things like run holodecks constantly, and have the ship get attacked and blown to bits every episode only to have it pristine by the start of the next.
So you’re saying that having the ship be Moya would have made me feel better about all that? Yeah, no.
How can this one ship potentially survive combat with the Borg?
Simple: DON'T use the Borg. Yes, they come from the Delta Quadrant, but instead of them being around so much of it, have them be in only a small region. "UNITY" was a good one-off Borg story. Could have been the only one. (And they could still can get Seven, who was an excellent character. Maybe they could have found her like how the Enterprise found Hugh: lone survivor of a crashed Borg ship.)
Survive on its own without needing constant resupply?
Have less UPN suit interference. If VOY was left more alone, like DS9, it would have been a better show because we would be seeing consequences on a more regular basis.
Need episodes where they're trapped on the ship to save money?
Have some day in the life episodes, or the crew paired off in a disaster-like scenario (like "Disaster" or "STARSHIP DOWN"), or have a couple trapped in a shuttlecraft ("SHUTTLEPOD ONE").
There's lots of potential there.
Fans would just complain that's it's awfully convenient that they found the shuttle replicator in some unexplored part of the ship in the same episode they ran out of shuttles and "Oops, the opened this compartment and now we're in trouble" would have been Voyager's version of the holodeck malfunction.
I agree Voyager being a different ship class or even an alien ship wouldn't have changed anything. If Voyager was stronger the Kazon would have been stronger too for example so that they would still be a danger. We cannot change the ship and then act like the writers wouldn't have scaled the enemy capabilities accordingly.
In Farscape and Lexx, they never ran out of fuel, food, water and anything else. Moya always had transports and DRDs except for that one storyline where they needed a Doctor.
Have one big storyline where they run into El-Aurien survivors who summoned the 8472 aliens from their Universe to destroy the Borg, the Borg get destroyed enough that they can't be a threat for the rest of the series and Voyager can fly through their space unchallenged and the El-Auriens realize the 8472 aliens are uncontrollable and banish them back with no way to return.
Uh, the fans disliked Unity if you remembered. And Scorpion.
DON'T have them be on their own. Have at least half the cast actually be Delta Quadrant aliens on the ship who know allies who can help them in exchange for things. This drives the plotlines.
Yes, and if they'd combined that with an unknown alien ship where at least half the crew were natives of the Delta Quadrant then there's a better foundation to work with.
No more convenient than when NuBSG did similar stuff.
Never saw Lexx but watched the first couple of seasons of Farscape. Other than Cerighton, they weren't lost on the other side of space somewhere, just hunted by The Evil Empire or some such, right? (it's been awhile). Also...no network interference. Totally different series and premise. It was also more of a serial. Rules for Farscape (and I presume Lexx) were totally different. If you want to postulate Voyager as being creator controlled rather than network, then fine, different discussion. But we're just talking about Voyager being a different class of ships but in the same series. With everything else unchanged, the series would most likely be the same.
Did we? I liked Scorpion a lot. I don't remember any significant backlash. If there was a poor audience response, the Borg would have been left behind with the Kazon. But if you can put up a reference, I'll gladly concede.
The complaint was that an alien species immune to assimilation existed at all and that there should be no one capable of fighting the Borg in such ways and that the existence of such a species ruined the Borg.
FARSCAPE had multiple episodes where they were getting food and supplies. (Going to and from a Commerce planet has been mentioned and shown A LOT.) Starvation was even an actual full plot point at least once ("Home on the Remains"), as everyone hadn't actually eaten in days... Zhaan was even worse than the others because of it. (Crichton even tried to deep fry a dentic, which failed.) VOY never once faced starvation. Closest they got was the replicators were out and they went to field rations in "THE CLOUD", but that was never an issue again.
And FARSCAPE at least explains how they have multiple drds and transport pods... Moya and the drds build them as needed.
We never even got that from VOY.
And your El-Aurien idea... the result is the same as mine. Do not use the Borg. We just went about it differently.
I don't recall people hating "UNITY" or "SCORPION". There may have been some fans who didn't like them, but EVERY episode in the franchise has that. Even the most widely beloved ones. Not a single episode is universally loved or hated... you can get a majority of people thinking either, but never a 100% consensus. And for both "UNITY" and "SCORPION", I haven't seen a majority say they were bad episodes.
And have half the ship be aliens who can barter with other aliens? Only difference between what you suggest and FARSCAPE is that Crichton is the ONLY person there not from that region of the galaxy.
I notice you keep using FARSCAPE as an example to what VOY could have done and be better. (If I am interpreting what you're doing correctly. If so, we are at least in agreement on that... FARSCAPE was far superior to VOY. In my view, the best scifi series ever made.) Unfortunately, it's really comparing apples and oranges. Not only did VOY get MUCH more interference from network suits, but it existed as part of an already established franchise. FARSCAPE was literally building their universe from the ground up with every episode. Plus, there were more ongoing storylines and greater amount of consequences for each of the characters than VOY did. And FARSCAPE did it with fewer lead characters and fewer episodes each season. (FARSCAPE had 22 episodes each of its 4 seasons, plus THE PEACEKEEPER WARS miniseries to tie up the loose ends... VOY aired 26 episodes from seasons 2-7.)
What ruined the Borg was their overuse and Voyager constantly surviving them, not the existence of Species 8472.
Only once, as you stated. Starving was never a constant problem.
Being an unknown alien ship would mean the writers could fall back on that as an explanation instead of wasting their time having to constantly explain how VOY did maintenance.
That's like saying DS9 should've barely used the Dominion after "The Jem'Hadar".
I do.
I have.
You want to build up an immediate connection to the area of space VOY ends up in? Make more of the cast actually BE from that area to begin with.
Yes, it escaped a lot of the same complaints VOY got with little scrutiny.
It had more to work with than VOY did.
Yes, a smaller cast and fewer episodes makes it easier to manager the cast and the storylines and there's less room for padding.
Oh yes it did, the idea of the Borg losing to ANYONE enraged the audience.
If Q had shown up and destroyed 99% of the Borg, they'd complain the Borg should've survived that.
If Voyager had done the "Use a Wormhole as a giant energy cannon" to obliterate ONE Borg Cube, they'd complain that ruined the Borg.
I said FARSCAPE did starvation 'at least once', which is still once more than VOY ever did with twice as many episodes.
The Borg and the Dominion are wildly different. In the first place, the Dominion wasn't an insurmountable villain that you had no chance against. They were slightly more advanced than the Federation, technologically. (Extremely quick shipbuilding, easily breeding thousands of battle ready Jem'Hadar in days, etc.) But they were still beatable, especially considering it was a combined alliance with the Klingons and later the Romulans. The Dominion actually felt threatening.
The Borg? ONE CUBE destroyed 39 ships at Wolf 359, and the Enterprise won because it, frankly, got lucky. (Even with Data's help, it was still Picard who gave him the idea of 'sleep'.) And the second time a cube got Earth? Still took a fleet of ships to destroy it. Voyager, a lone, small ship, not only surviving the Borg but beating them again and again (like fighting against a TACTICAL CUBE) was just plain ridiculous and unbelieveable. The Borg lost all their threat, terror, and teeth. So yes, VOY should have left the Borg alone, or at least not use them nearly as much.
And I never asked for an immediate connection to that part of the galaxy. YOU are the one who keeps harping on that.
And I don't recall "UNITY" and "SCORPION" getting mostly negative views. Can you show me where you saw this?
And the Borg... it was NOT Species 8472 that ruined the Borg. It was their OVERUSE by VOY. (That has been said by numerous people just on this site alone.)
In the end, the type of ship wouldn't matter, because was interfered with by the suits too often. Basically nothing would have changed if it were a different class or type of ship.
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I do not understand the competition between fans of various science-fiction shows featuring starships "in the wild" as to which program is bleaker and/or rife with privation; it is as if they now regularly gravitate towards misery. Not every bit of televised futuristic events with lost ships has to emulate the atmosphere of Battlestar Galactica (2003); some adventures will be easier/more positive than others.
Never wanted VOY to be bleak, either. But at least don't insult the audience's intelligence by showing a lone Federation ship with no resources to fix major damage take MASSIVE damage and be pristine the very next episode.
It was still never a big issue in Farscape either. And those Commerce Worlds they talked about were often all off screen rather than shown every time.
They certainly were portrayed that way at first, with soldiers tougher than Klingsons and super transporters and ships that could see cloaked vessels. They were depowered later.
Not as threatening as they were originally.
And the second they saw an 8472 ship destroy a Cube, the audience was enraged.
They'd already lost their "Edge" by losing to the 8472.
It makes the setting and storytelling easier to have a real connection to the area, like Farscape did. You want to flesh out the Delta Quadrant, make the DQ aliens part of the main cast right from the start.
Anyone complaining about the Borg in VOY, those episodes are part of the umbrella of "VOY ruined the Borg".
Which began with the 8472 beating them. That was the instance that began their "ruination".
