"...one crew, a Starfleet crew." Really...WHY?

[DonIago]

With more build-up time prior to the Caretaker incident (or possibly established early in first season) perhaps it could have been worked into Voyager's backstory that they had a history of DMZ patrols and had been a target of Maquis attacks in the past. This would have made Cavit and Voyager's original Doc seem a bit less blindly anti-Maquis as well...and now I'm remembering that it kind of annoyed me how, conveniently, the two people who most directly express antagonism towards the Maquis/Paris are summarily killed. Might have been nice to have some Starfleet officer with serious Maquis issues left around.

I briefly thought it could have been cool if Voyager had been the ship that Eddington attacked in 'For the Uniform' but that doesn't work timeline-wise unfortunately. While it might not have painted Voyager in the best light either, Sisko and Janeway interacting would have been kind of cool, and maybe the plot could have been tweaked to give Voyager more to do.

 

[Anwar]

An idea I toyed with was having the first episode of VOY be the 1st season finale, with the story in full motion and the characters already established in their characterization and relationships. The end of the episode would flashback 1 year earlier and we'd spend the first season in an extended flashback to explain the first episode.

That would give enough time to set up Caretaker as the 3rd or so episode and still draw viewers in with the fast-paced premiere.

 

[kimc]

Who the frak cares that she's the captain other than her crew?

You've completely missed my point. I'll try one more time and if you get it you get it. Otherwise, I'm done.

When someone is the captain of a vessel - ANY vessel - they are in charge of what happens on that vessel. This applies if the vessel belongs to Starfleet, the IRA or Humptey Dumptey.

'Nuff said.

 

[Sci]

Who the frak cares that she's the captain other than her crew?

You've completely missed my point. I'll try one more time and if you get it you get it. Otherwise, I'm done.

When someone is the captain of a vessel - ANY vessel - they are in charge of what happens on that vessel. This applies if the vessel belongs to Starfleet, the IRA or Humptey Dumptey.

'Nuff said.

No, not enough said. Frankly, why should Janeway be the captain? If Voyager needs a third of its crew replaced by non-Starfleet personnel, and they're out of range of Starfleet, then, frankly, why should Janeway just get to be captain? You're basically arguing with appeal to tradition, but that tradition doesn't apply in Voyager's situation.

If you had a crew of Royal Navy and IRA agents, I promise you that the IRA agents are not just going to accept the British captain. If you have a ship of Israeli Navy and Hamas members, I promise you that the Hamas members are not just going to accept the Israeli captain.

In real life, if Janeway had wanted the Maquis to serve on Voyager, she would have had to make many more concessions to them. Not the least of which would be not insisting that they become officers in the military of the state that betrayed them and sold them out to the Cardassians.

 

[kimc]

Frankly, why should Janeway be the captain? If Voyager needs a third of its crew replaced by non-Starfleet personnel, and they're out of range of Starfleet, then, frankly, why should Janeway just get to be captain? You're basically arguing with appeal to tradition, but that tradition doesn't apply in Voyager's situation.

I believe it does. How many captains have you heard of that just turned over their ship to a bunch of passengers they picked up? Actually, the Maquis weren't even passengers but technically prisoners. Can you name one precedent where the captain of a vessel (any vessel) willingly turned over control of the ship to a group they had originally set out to take prisoner?

 

[exodus]

The captain isn't supposed to leave the ship to go on life threatening away mission either but Janeway did several times. They aren't supposed to poison planets or cover up murders but Sisko did anyway. They aren't supposed to disobey direct orders from their superiors but Kirk, Picard & Sulu have all done it.

I think we've forgotten this is fiction, so what a captain would do in the real world doesn't have to be factual in the universe of Star Trek. Besides, this is a sci-fi message board and speculation is part of the fun here.

 

[Anwar]

But none of them ever turned over their commands to their own prisoners. Even the BSG folks never did that. It's utter stupidity.

 

[Sci]

Frankly, why should Janeway be the captain? If Voyager needs a third of its crew replaced by non-Starfleet personnel, and they're out of range of Starfleet, then, frankly, why should Janeway just get to be captain? You're basically arguing with appeal to tradition, but that tradition doesn't apply in Voyager's situation.

I believe it does. How many captains have you heard of that just turned over their ship to a bunch of passengers they picked up?

I'm not saying that she just hand over the ship to the Maquis, either. Actually, I can easily see the Maquis demanding that there be an election, with the person winning serving as commanding officer of Voyager for a fixed period of time. When you're talking about a ship that people are going to be living on and building their own mini-society on for over seventy years, that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than just demanding that people live under what is, in effect, a military dictatorship.

Actually, the Maquis weren't even passengers but technically prisoners.

Prisoners wouldn't get to wear Starfleet uniforms. They were given field commissions. They were not prisoners.

Mind you, I'm not saying they should have been given field commissions.

Further -- again, you are overlooking the fact that Voyager needed them to get home. Why should the Starfleet crew be able to take them prisoner or classify them as such when it needs them? How ethnocentric is that?

 

[Anwar]

And why should the Maquis be so arrogant to demand that the rightful leader of the Fleeters give up everything she has for them when they need the Fleeters to get home?

 

[kimc]

I'm not saying that she just hand over the ship to the Maquis, either. Actually, I can easily see the Maquis demanding that there be an election, with the person winning serving as commanding officer of Voyager for a fixed period of time.

Again, you're missing my point that vessels (any vessel not just Starfleet vessels) by their nature cannot be run by democratic rule. There are too many decisions that cannot wait for majority or even consensus. Democracies are great for civilian government but if I got onto a ship and the captain announced they were holding elections to decide whether or not he/she got to remain captain I'd turn around and walk off.

Back to Voyager there are so many different backgrounds among the crew that choosing a system of government (which it sounds like you're recommending) would take some time. Meanwhile, the Kazon would have them for breakfast...

When you're talking about a ship that people are going to be living on and building their own mini-society on for over seventy years, that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than just demanding that people live under what is, in effect, a military dictatorship.

Again, living by the rules of the captain/crew of a ship you choose to be on is not living in a military dictatorship (although that does sound fashionably politically charged). Again, if surviving fleeters had ended up on Chakotay's ship they would have had to live by HIS rules.

Actually, the Maquis weren't even passengers but technically prisoners.

Prisoners wouldn't get to wear Starfleet uniforms. They were given field commissions. They were not prisoners.

Only because Janeway decided to give them the field commissions. Again, her ship her call.

Further -- again, you are overlooking the fact that Voyager needed them to get home. Why should the Starfleet crew be able to take them prisoner or classify them as such when it needs them? How ethnocentric is that?

I'm not convinced they did need them. Seven was able to run the ship all by herself after all. Also, they were technically running the ship from between the time they returned from the Caretaker's array until the time the Maquis crew were beamed over to Voyager.

Would it be easier with more crew in the long term? Of course it would which is why it made sense to have the field commissions.

 

[Brit]

You don't elect your bosses in the real world either, You have to deal with who ever is in charge and mostly you do have to do it their way.

Brit

 

[Sci]

I'm not saying that she just hand over the ship to the Maquis, either. Actually, I can easily see the Maquis demanding that there be an election, with the person winning serving as commanding officer of Voyager for a fixed period of time.

Again, you're missing my point that vessels (any vessel not just Starfleet vessels) by their nature cannot be run by democratic rule.

1. I am not missing your point. I understand it perfectly. It is not that I am missing your point, it is that you are wrong.

2. I didn't say it should be an absolute liberal democracy. In effect, I argued for an elected dictatorship -- you elect the captain, but during the term, the captain is the captain, and must be obeyed as would any commanding officer.

3. Some units in the continental militia during the American Revolution did elect their officers, so this concept is not without historical precedent.

Back to Voyager there are so many different backgrounds among the crew that choosing a system of government (which it sounds like you're recommending) would take some time.

You may have mis-read what I wrote. What I suggested was that the captain should be elected to serve as commanding officer for a set term. (And, really, so too should the first officer, preferably on a joint ticket.)

In other words, it would still be a military system. There would still be a chain of command. It's just that the people aboard Voyager would have a say in who commands the ship and would have a procedure for replacing him or her if he or she showed poor judgment. After all, why should someone spend seventy-five years under one captain's rule, especially if the crew comes to believe that his or her judgment is wrong and that someone else should take over?

We're not just talking about a ship after all. Voyager was no longer just a Starfleet vessel on a tour of duty. We are talking about a self-sustaining society that would have to last for the better part of a century.

When you're talking about a ship that people are going to be living on and building their own mini-society on for over seventy years, that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than just demanding that people live under what is, in effect, a military dictatorship.

Again, living by the rules of the captain/crew of a ship you choose to be on

It's not a bloody choice. They all have to live on Voyager in order to get home. It's not like they could just hire a civilian transport to Earth. To say, "You choose to live here" is a completely false premise.

is not living in a military dictatorship (although that does sound fashionably politically charged). Again, if surviving fleeters had ended up on Chakotay's ship they would have had to live by HIS rules.

And it would have been just as wrong for him to do so.

Prisoners wouldn't get to wear Starfleet uniforms. They were given field commissions. They were not prisoners.

Only because Janeway decided to give them the field commissions.

Which doesn't change the fact that they were not technically prisoners. And technically, Janeway was disobeying orders from Starfleet Command by not taking the Maquis into custody.

Tell me, why is okay for Janeway to disregard the chain of command, but not for anyone below her?

Further -- again, you are overlooking the fact that Voyager needed them to get home. Why should the Starfleet crew be able to take them prisoner or classify them as such when it needs them? How ethnocentric is that?

I'm not convinced they did need them. Seven was able to run the ship all by herself after all.

She was barely able to do it, she did it for one month, while in a nebula that was protecting them from hostile vessels, and towards the end the ship was falling apart. The Starfleet crew needed the Maquis to survive and to get home just as much as the Maquis needed the Starfleet crew to survive and get home. Both sides needed each other equally.

Also, they were technically running the ship from between the time they returned from the Caretaker's array until the time the Maquis crew were beamed over to Voyager.

Yeah, while holding still most of the time barely doing anything, and then while in combat with a technologically inferior species. Hardly evidence that the ship was able to function at constant high warp speeds or in combat with an advanced hostile without the Maquis' aide.

ETA:

You don't elect your bosses in the real world either, You have to deal with who ever is in charge and mostly you do have to do it their way.

Brit

In the real world, you can quit your job and go home to find another job. It's not the same situation at all.

 

[JustKate]

Sci, I think what you're describing here would make for a very interesting show. But I also think the story of a captain trying to make a single crew out of Starfleet and Maquis personnel is an interesting concept for a show as well. So my only real problem with Voyager, as I and others have mentioned before, is that this came about too easily. I personally wouldn't have wanted to see this particular conflict drag on and on and on forever, but having it take much or all of the first season would have been very interesting and would have made Voyager a better show.

Although perhaps not a more popular show, but that's another matter.

 

[exodus]

Sci, I think what you're describing here would make for a very interesting show. But I also think the story of a captain trying to make a single crew out of Starfleet and Maquis personnel is an interesting concept for a show as well. So my only real problem with Voyager, as I and others have mentioned before, is that this came about too easily. I personally wouldn't have wanted to see this particular conflict drag on and on and on forever, but having it take much or all of the first season would have been very interesting and would have made Voyager a better show.

Although perhaps not a more popular show, but that's another matter.

What I think Sci trying to explain is a scenario similar to that of "Crimson Tide".

Yes the ship can't run with a democratic leadership but we also can't "realistically" expect the Maquis, many of whom are criminals and the rest left Starfleet because they felt betrayed by them, to fall into line just because Janeway or Chakotay said so. Sci is talking about the crew conflict many expected to see on Voyager at the start. These people are criminals because they couldn't respect the chain of command to begin with.

 

[JustKate]

Not all of them, surely. Some just didn't want to sacrifice their homes. I imagine that the Maquis would be like any other group of...

...What would be a neutral term? Not "freedom fighters" and not "terrorists." How about "combatants"? Or maybe "resistance"? Well, those are the best that I can come up with right now. So...

...I imagine that the Maquis would be like any other group of combatants, and there would be a mix of motives. Just as there was in the American Revolution or there is in the Weger region in China right now. And there would have to be some respect for some kind of chain of command or else how did Chakotay command his Maquis crew?

I agree that most wouldn't venerate Starfleet, and many would dislike it, but they wouldn't necessarily hate everything about it either, would they? Some would probably still have family who were Federation citizens, after all. Some were probably hoping sooner or later to rejoin the Federation.

 

[Sci]

Not all of them, surely. Some just didn't want to sacrifice their homes. I imagine that the Maquis would be like any other group of...

...What would be a neutral term? Not "freedom fighters" and not "terrorists." How about "combatants"? Or maybe "resistance"? Well, those are the best that I can come up with right now. So...

...I imagine that the Maquis would be like any other group of combatants, and there would be a mix of motives. Just as there was in the American Revolution or there is in the Weger region in China right now. And there would have to be some respect for some kind of chain of command or else how did Chakotay command his Maquis crew?

I agree that most wouldn't venerate Starfleet, and many would dislike it, but they wouldn't necessarily hate everything about it either, would they?

Oh, I dunno. For most of them, they're fighting because they want to keep their homes after the Federation handed their worlds over to the Cardassians. Most of them are going to end up feeling fundamentally betrayed by the Federation -- especially if Starfleet tried to engaged in forced relocations as it did on Dorvan IV before the Dorvan inhabitants agreed to live as Cardassian subjects.

Some would probably still have family who were Federation citizens, after all. Some were probably hoping sooner or later to rejoin the Federation.

I see no evidence for that at all. The Maquis' motivations were explained fairly explicitly by Eddington in DS9: They felt betrayed by the Federation and wished to establish their own independent state, part of neither the United Federation of Planets nor the Cardassian Union.

You can argue about whether they were right or wrong, but they felt they were right and the Federation wrong. The idea that they would just slap on the uniform of the government that they felt had betrayed them, and then follow its rules, its regulations, its chain of command, and generally submit to its authority? It's absurd.

ETA: I have no problem with the idea that part of the story is how Voyager's inhabitants went from being two crews to being one. My problem is the idea that it went from being a Starfleet crew and a Maquis crew to just being a Starfleet crew. That's unrealistic, and, frankly, more than a little ethnocentric. The Maquis felt that Starfleet and the Federation were in the wrong; they wouldn't willingly become a Starfleet crew. Nor would the Starfleeters, who no doubt felt the same way about the Maquis, willingly become a Maquis crew. If the show were being written honestly and realistically, they would have become their own unique crew that wouldn't have fit into either the Starfleet or Maquis boxes.

 

[JustKate]

Oh, I realize that they believed they were right - that ambiguity (at least it seems ambiguous to me, though I realize it doesn't to everybody) is one of the things that made the Maquis such an interesting Trek creation.

I just don't agree that the entire situation is absurd. And the reason is...you do what you gotta do. So I can imagine them, after time, coming to accept Janeway as their captain, particularly once their own leaders have done so.

What I really don't accept - though I ignored it for the sake of enjoying the show - is their accepting it so quickly. There should have been a lot more Seskas and Eddingtons and Ros, I think.

And Ro, by the way, is an example of a Maquis that didn't hate the Federation. At least not originally. No telling what happened to her in the end, of course.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, I can see the tension going on for the first season. But seriously, they can't have continued it past that because it just wouldn't make sense. If they couldn't learn to cooperate by then they'd NEVER get home.

At least we don't have any of the BSGers here going on about how "they should've all fallen to pieces, without exception, and spent the whole series as a bunch of amoral space pirates ravaging and stealing from everyone because it's more realistic."

 

[Sci]

Oh, I realize that they believed they were right - that ambiguity (at least it seems ambiguous to me, though I realize it doesn't to everybody) is one of the things that made the Maquis such an interesting Trek creation.

I just don't agree that the entire situation is absurd. And the reason is...you do what you gotta do.

But these are the same people who took up arms against the Federation instead of doing "what you gotta do." These are already not folks who are inclined to just submit. So the idea that Chakotay and the rest would willingly accept Starfleet field commissions and submit to a Starfleet-dominated hierarchy and Starfleet regulations is quite silly.

Realistically, the Maquis would negotiated and would demand concessions. They wouldn't be willing to accept Starfleet commissions. They'd probably accept Janeway as captain, at least at first, because the ship is still mostly Starfleet. But they'd want Maquis officers in more than just two senior positions, and they would probably demand that Starfleet regulations be mostly discarded in favor of regulations developed through Maquis and Starfleet leadership consensus. And, as I said before, I can't imagine that they wouldn't at some point want to subject command of Voyager to popular referendum -- nor even that the Starfleet crew wouldn't want that. Hell, if I were Janeway, I'd want that.

What I really don't accept - though I ignored it for the sake of enjoying the show - is their accepting it so quickly. There should have been a lot more Seskas and Eddingtons and Ros, I think.

You know, I don't even know that I think there should have been characters that flat-out rejected Starfleet and fought them. I just think that there should have been more negotiation and consensus, and that when the crew united, it should have been more of a Starfleet-Maquis hybrid than a Starfleet crew.

Yeah, I can see the tension going on for the first season. But seriously, they can't have continued it past that because it just wouldn't make sense. If they couldn't learn to cooperate by then they'd NEVER get home.

I completely agree. But part of cooperation is that both sides make concessions and compromises. What happened on VOY was, Starfleet made minimal concessions and the Maquis made major concessions. That's not cooperation -- that's domination.

 

[JustKate]

Well, but think about it. The treaty was indeed presented to them as something they just had to do...but were their only options going along or out-and-out revolt?

Because I think there was a third option - I think some of them figured the Federation would evntually come around and help them out. And who knows - maybe even they thought they could eventually win, on at least some worlds, or the Cardassians would give up.

In contrast, for the Voyager Maquis, the Federation was their only option if they wanted to get back to the AQ. There was just...nothing else, unless they took over Cullah's ship or something. So maybe this was something that you just gotta do...at least for a while.

I think more compromise would have been good, actually - at least on some protocol things that are there simply because of tradition rather than because they are actually necessary for ship's discipline. (Like a Bajoran earring, for example.) And maybe some bigger stuff, too - particularly if it would have give us viewers more of a feel for how different life was for Voyager than for a regular Starfleet vessel. It would have been more realistic, and probably more fair, too. And quite possibly more interesting as well.

But really I would have been fine even if in the end it was almost 100 percent Starfleet...so long as we got to see something of how this came about.