Star Trek: Voyager: Acts of Contrition by Kirsten Beyer

[Deks]

Greatest Voyager cover I've ever seen.

And since we know in-story that Voyager was refitted for slipstream, then maybe we could justify this cover by saying that the external modifications were only minor?

I don't think I ever read in any of the Voyager relaunch novels that Voyager's Slipstream upgrades involved heavy hull modifications or new nacelles (certainly nothing as shown in that picture which radically alters Voyager's design).

At best, what I do remember from when the fleet first went back into the DQ to look for remnants of the Borg, it was mentioned that Voyager's deflector harmonics (as well as software) had to have been reconfigured to allow for Slipstream travel - and they used the Version 2 Slipstream which needed Benemyte crystals.

Essentially, even when Voyager was testing that V2 Slipstream in Season 5 episode 'Timeless', the design of the ship itself was unaltered.
The Warp core was what only altered to the point where modifications were ADDED to it, but apart from that, no visual changes on the external ship design were made.
The only thing plaguing the crew at the time was the phase variance (and even still, the ship was able to travel through 10 000 Ly's in 1 minute)... V1 of Slipstream where the maximum speed allowed the ship to travel through 300 ly's in 1 hour (max time that Voyager could stay in) had a problem because the ship was subjected to quantum stresses (hence the invention of V2 in Timeless which needed Benemyte crystals and was faster by 33.333 times) - V2 incidentally did NOT cause quantum stresses on the hull... it just caused the phase variance which forced the ship out of Slipstream in the unaltered timeline when it wasn't properly addressed (of course, the only reason it failed the second time and Kim was forced to disperse it was because the writers wanted to keep the ship still in the DQ).

Sigh... they could have easily made 300 ly 'hops' once per week with V1 alone by making repairs to the hull itself.

 

[tomswift2002]

10,000 light years in 1 minute? At that speed Voyager would've been home in 5 minutes. I don't think V2 was that fast!

 

[Deks]

10,000 light years in 1 minute? At that speed Voyager would've been home in 5 minutes. I don't think V2 was that fast!

Actually it was.
The phase variance issues didn't begin until 17 seconds into the flight (per dialogue).
Extrapolating for real time events in the episode, Voyager spent roughly 1 minute inside the Slipstream and crossed 10 000 Ly's in the process - realistically, it couldn't have spent more than 1 minute in Slipstream because it would have caused instability in the quantum matrix which lead to Voyager's initial icy demise.

 

[Kirsten Beyer]

Also, isn't Shore Leave very soon? I seem to recall there was an excerpt from Protectors read there last year, any chance there'll be one from AoC this year?

Why, yes, there is. I will be reading an excerpt from Acts of Contrition this Saturday during my panel at Shoreleave. We don't have the final schedule yet, so I can't give anyone a time, but I'm bringing a few pages and hopefully will have time to get through them this year.

Best,
Kirsten Beyer

 

[Mage]

Greatest Voyager cover I've ever seen.

And since we know in-story that Voyager was refitted for slipstream, then maybe we could justify this cover by saying that the external modifications were only minor?

I don't think I ever read in any of the Voyager relaunch novels that Voyager's Slipstream upgrades involved heavy hull modifications or new nacelles (certainly nothing as shown in that picture which radically alters Voyager's design).

Considering the ship can actually saucer-seperate now..... yeah, the hull has been altered quite a lot. Mark Rademaker commented, that when he read The Eternal Tide and became aware of the seperation, he needed to completely rethink his redesign, since Voyager's original design makes it quite difficult.

 

[Deks]

Not necessarily.

If the existing design was kept as the books art suggest, a refit to the ship would probably involve a 'cut-off' section just above the deflector dish and ending somewhere in the lower region of the aft 'spine' below the aft torpedo launchers.

I would imagine the base design might have a few minor alterations... such as perhaps a forward torpedo launcher which activates during separation as well as added impulse engines on the aft sides of the saucer below the smaller phaser arrays.
The placement of the impulse engines on the redesign was ok... but the actual shape of them is extremely ugly and utterly ruins the 'flow' of the ship (not to mention the nacelle pylons that look utterly displeasing aesthetic-wise - at least the original had the impulse engines there and some sort of a flow to the overall design).
Also... why would the nacelles have to be altered?
It really doesn't make too much sense since the QS V2 needs an altered warp core, benemyte crystals and a deflector dish to operate.

The complete redesign of the secondary hull as well as the pylons and nacelles doesn't make too much sense (apart from larger shuttle-bay doors) to be able to separate the ship - let alone for rectifying phase variance issues in the V2 of Slipstream (considering that other ships in the exploration fleet didn't have such hull alterations).

 

[Mage]

Not necessarily.

If the existing design was kept as the books art suggest, a refit to the ship would probably involve a 'cut-off' section just above the deflector dish and ending somewhere in the lower region of the aft 'spine' below the aft torpedo launchers.

I would imagine the base design might have a few minor alterations... such as perhaps a forward torpedo launcher which activates during separation as well as added impulse engines on the aft sides of the saucer below the smaller phaser arrays.
The placement of the impulse engines on the redesign was ok... but the actual shape of them is extremely ugly and utterly ruins the 'flow' of the ship (not to mention the nacelle pylons that look utterly displeasing aesthetic-wise - at least the original had the impulse engines there and some sort of a flow to the overall design).
Also... why would the nacelles have to be altered?
It really doesn't make too much sense since the QS V2 needs an altered warp core, benemyte crystals and a deflector dish to operate.

The complete redesign of the secondary hull as well as the pylons and nacelles doesn't make too much sense (apart from larger shuttle-bay doors) to be able to separate the ship - let alone for rectifying phase variance issues in the V2 of Slipstream (considering that other ships in the exploration fleet didn't have such hull alterations).

But consider that when Voyager was constructed, it was given variabel nacelles-pylons because of all that mumbojumbo about warp damaging subspace, and these would prevent damage. Appereantly, new developments (as seen on newer ships like the Sovereign class) negated the need for variable pylons. If Voyager was damaged as much as it was in the Borg Invasion, why not install newer warpnacelles, that have more advanced coils, and in the mean time get rid of a system that now has moving parts that aren't nessecary anymore. I'm not an engineer, but as far as I know, if you can remove things you don't need, you're better off.

 

[Deks]

I do agree that its possible the design could receive upgrades which would negate the need for variable geometry nacelles... but in that case... why not simply move the nacelles into their upward position and lock them there permanently?
It seems like a much simpler option than to redesign the whole secondary hull.

Besides, the Intrepid class does achieve Warp 9.975 (even though the speed in question should be about 60 000 times the speed of light or more [seeing how Warp 9.2 of Enterprise-D was about 9000 times the speed of light] and was intentionally nerfed down in the show) and classifies that as a 'maximum cruising speed' (which implies the ship is able to hold it more or less indefinitely - even though it was not shown to be able to do that - but then again, the show nerfed down a lot of stuff and negated a lot of others).

At any rate... the design as it is already has very powerful Warp engines... and aside from a retrofit that would overhaul its systems and improve them over the baseline (which all Intrepid classes would receive and could easily be achieved 'under the skin' - keeping the changes internal), I don't think a major hull redesign would be necessary to achieve hull separation or to solve the phase variance issues... and again, unless I have managed to overlook something in the novels, Voyager was never mentioned it looked different design wise (apart from having hull separation capability).

 

[Markonian]

In that case, you can follow the VOY-R covers, which show an unchanged Voyager.

 

[roseake]

Also, isn't Shore Leave very soon? I seem to recall there was an excerpt from Protectors read there last year, any chance there'll be one from AoC this year?

Why, yes, there is. I will be reading an excerpt from Acts of Contrition this Saturday during my panel at Shoreleave. We don't have the final schedule yet, so I can't give anyone a time, but I'm bringing a few pages and hopefully will have time to get through them this year.

Best,
Kirsten Beyer

Yay!! I look forward to reading it, the excerpt from last year was fantastic!!!

 

[tomswift2002]

Greatest Voyager cover I've ever seen.

And since we know in-story that Voyager was refitted for slipstream, then maybe we could justify this cover by saying that the external modifications were only minor?

I don't think I ever read in any of the Voyager relaunch novels that Voyager's Slipstream upgrades involved heavy hull modifications or new nacelles (certainly nothing as shown in that picture which radically alters Voyager's design).

Considering the ship can actually saucer-seperate now..... yeah, the hull has been altered quite a lot. Mark Rademaker commented, that when he read The Eternal Tide and became aware of the seperation, he needed to completely rethink his redesign, since Voyager's original design makes it quite difficult.

As I recall from the books with the Aventine, for slipstream Starfleet had to redesign the main deflector dish as the current models in service were not adequate for slipstream velocity. So I would think part of Voyager's refit was an installation and retrofit of Voyager's deflector dish.

 

[roseake]

Bumping a little because I'm wondering if we got any news at Shore Leave?
And I believe an excerpt was released before Protectors in January, any ideas on that happening with Acts?

 

[Thrawn]

On her panel at Shore Leave, Kirsten read an excerpt of Acts (a really subtle, fascinating scene where Kim and a member of the Confederacy compare cultures) and told us that she just turned in the first draft of Atonement. She answered a bunch of questions about writing process, and told us how she ended up being the Voyager writer (long story short - pitched a bunch of script ideas to the Voyager show, none were ever bought, Heather Jarman introduced her to Marco, Marco read her scripts and liked them, the rest is history).

I got the feeling that previous years' panels were a little more divisive, what with all the Janeway dead and then alive stuff; she asked us a couple times if we had any problems or worries with Protectors, and we were all like "no we basically trust you at this point".

She said that she's going to start outlining the book after Atonement soon, and that she keeps playing around with the idea of jumping forwards in time a bit but it hasn't ever seemed like a good idea, but that Atonement feels a little bit like a finale to the "season" that started with Full Circle and so she might consider it again. But don't get too attached to the idea; she's just starting to think about it, and it could go a lot of different ways.

 

[Paris]

I totally trust Kirsten as well, and I will follow wherever she leads. That being said...a small time jump (a few months to a year or so) wouldn't be the worst thing. There'd be something to flash back to, and it could help propel her story further after the end of her 'season' in Atonement. I guess we'll see. I can't wait for September's Acts of Contrition

 

[roseake]

She said that she's going to start outlining the book after Atonement soon, and that she keeps playing around with the idea of jumping forwards in time a bit but it hasn't ever seemed like a good idea, but that Atonement feels a little bit like a finale to the "season" that started with Full Circle and so she might consider it again. But don't get too attached to the idea; she's just starting to think about it, and it could go a lot of different ways.

I'm so happy to hear that she's going to be doing another book after Atonement! And I 100% trust her ability to keep the Voyager line strong, we are in very capable hands.

But whether she decides to jump in time or not, I will definitely be on board!

 

[Man of Steel]

The question is how far of a jump should be made? But I have another question: Do you think we should bring VOY into the current Typhon pact/The Fall situation?

I do find it odd that they have yet to meet Titan/Enterprise when it's all in the same time frame.

 

[Enterpriserules]

Thanks for the update Thrawn!

 

[Paris]

The question is how far of a jump should be made? But I have another question: Do you think we should bring VOY into the current Typhon pact/The Fall situation?

I do find it odd that they have yet to meet Titan/Enterprise when it's all in the same time frame.

Voyager met up with the Enterprise when it came back to the AQ from the DQ and it also participated in Destiny and was in proximity to the Enterprise then as well. Also, they are several tens of thousands of light years away right now, so meeting up with Enterprise or Titan would be odd.

Voyager seems to be at its best when it is the center of attention while off doing their own thing. When the other big guys are around, Voyager tends to get lost in the shuffle.

I hope Voyager stays in the Delta quadrant for years to come. We have plenty of people we know and love in the AQ for the TP/Fall stuff

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I hope Voyager stays in the Delta quadrant for years to come.

The Light Fantastic had them over there past the initial three-year point, in late 2385. At least, The Doctor and Barclay were out there.

 

[Paris]

I hope Voyager stays in the Delta quadrant for years to come.

The Light Fantastic had them over there past the initial three-year point, in late 2385. At least, The Doctor and Barclay were out there.

I actually pointed that out in "The Voyager Novels" thread just a few minutes ago