Abandoned ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Finale Ideas Could Have Given the Sendoff It Deserved

[Danny99]

Half the episodes in Season 7 could have been lobbed off for some kind of arc finale like DS9. Episodes like Repression, Inside Man, Body & Soul, Nightingale, Prophecy, both parts of Workforce, Q2, Natural Law & Renaissance Man didn't add anything to overall storyline, especially this late in the series. The Voyager writers seemed content to be a bad copy of TNG than going for it like DS9.

My personal finale would've not had the Borg or time travel. The crew finds some kind of long abandoned alien station where they find some kind of "bridge" that can transport them back to the Alpha Quadrant. The crux of the story becomes it will only have enough power to send a certain amount of people, whatever the number they used in The 37's of the bare minimum to run Voyager. Mulgrew gets her "sacrifice" because Janeway obviously stays behind and then it becomes who is going to go. If I've changed it into an arc, the Tuvok storyline has been laid out and he can't rectify leaving the ship for a selfish reason in his eyes. Harry has always wanted to go home, but is he going to be selfish and abandon his friends. If we need to include Barclay in a sizeable role, have him and the Pathfinder team trying to develop a plan to expand the power to get everyone home. They can be at this station for a couple episodes to play this all out. In the first half of the finale, they begin sending people home and either everyone goes or we're left with a small crew on Voyager, looking for another way home.

It's a quiet finale that focuses more on character, so it would've never seen the light of day on Voyager.

 

[Oddish]

I might have said this before, but I'd have focused on the quantum slipstream drive, just sliding bits of it into the last few episodes. It is finally ready to come online in the second to last episode, which ends with Voyager returning home. The last episode features the cast reacting to finally being home.

 

[dupersuper]

"All Good Things" was something old and something completely new.
"What you Leave Behind" was the culmination and completion of a massive series of story arcs.
"Endgame" was more of something that had been done better before: the television equivalent of lukewarm leftovers.

What were Turnabout Intruder and The Counter Clock Incident?

 

[Oddish]

Turnabout Intruder was not meant as a final episode. And I haven't gotten around to watching TAS.

 

[Summer Solstice]

It didn't bother me that AGT doesn't tell us what happened to the characters in the future because the TNG movies told us. I wanted to know what happened to the Maquis and the Equinox Five at the end of Voyager. This could have been resolved by having 2 or 3 episodes where they used Pathfinder to have a trial and some flashbacks to when they were in the Maquis (would be cool to see Seska again), but those episodes could be anywhere in Season 7, they wouldn't need to be at the end.

My personal finale would've not had the Borg or time travel. The crew finds some kind of long abandoned alien station where they find some kind of "bridge" that can transport them back to the Alpha Quadrant. The crux of the story becomes it will only have enough power to send a certain amount of people, whatever the number they used in The 37's of the bare minimum to run Voyager. Mulgrew gets her "sacrifice" because Janeway obviously stays behind and then it becomes who is going to go. If I've changed it into an arc, the Tuvok storyline has been laid out and he can't rectify leaving the ship for a selfish reason in his eyes. Harry has always wanted to go home, but is he going to be selfish and abandon his friends. If we need to include Barclay in a sizeable role, have him and the Pathfinder team trying to develop a plan to expand the power to get everyone home. They can be at this station for a couple episodes to play this all out. In the first half of the finale, they begin sending people home and either everyone goes or we're left with a small crew on Voyager, looking for another way home.

I love this idea. Janeway would be able to explore the Delta Quadrant without worrying about the Voyager crew not wanting to be in the DQ.

Or re-write Endgame. I thought it wasn't "epic" enough and the Klingon story in the first half feels like filler that's there so the first half ends with the Borg Queen looking at Voyager. Begin with present-day Voyager discovering the transwarp hub (Seven immediately knows what it is), Janeway decides they have to destroy it rather than use it, the senior staff work together to make a plan which succeeds. Then jump five years into the future and Voyager has reached the edge of Romulan space. The Romulans tell them that the Borg have wiped out the Federation because they were too much of the threat to the Borg because Voyager destroyed the transwarp hub. Voyager and the Romulans work together to send a message back to present-day Voyager to tell them what happened. Present-day Voyager goes through the transwarp hub to the AQ. Then jump forward 25 years to a Voyager reunion and we find out what happened to the characters.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I always thought Voyager should have gotten home a couple episodes before the ending, we should have seen the stories of adjusting to being back home then had some kind of full circle thing in the finale involving another Caretaker.

Endgame wasn't nearly as good as AGT or WWLB, but for an obsessively episodic Star Trek, it was perfectly fine.

 

[Jonesy]

My issues with the Voyager finale center around the whole notion of Future Janeway being the character that brings them home. I understand the sentiment of a character realizing they made mistakes, and wishing to correct those mistakes, but I ultimately feel that it should have been the crew who ultimately put into motion the solution to getting home - Borg or no Borg. The abandoned idea in the article centers around that.