Character development you would have done as a writer

[MacLeod]

Where to begin.

Janeway, I would have made her XO initally newly promoted to that position. So she suddenly finds command thrust upon her after the CO is killed during the trip to the DQ.

Chakotay I would have him as a former Starfleet CO he had been disillusioned over the treaty with the Cardassians.

Might have made for a more interesting character dynamic between Janeway and Chakotay with the more experianced officer playing second fiddle to the less experianced officer.

You could have VOY's original CO as a former lover or even wife of Chakotay who whilst not liking the assignment does her duty.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Where to begin.

Janeway, I would have made her XO initally newly promoted to that position. So she suddenly finds command thrust upon her after the CO is killed during the trip to the DQ.

Chakotay I would have him as a former Starfleet CO he had been disillusioned over the treaty with the Cardassians.

Might have made for a more interesting character dynamic between Janeway and Chakotay with the more experianced officer playing second fiddle to the less experianced officer.

You could have VOY's original CO as a former lover or even wife of Chakotay who whilst not liking the assignment does her duty.

I like that idea a lot actually. However, I think they really wanted the first ongoing female character to be a strong, experienced commander to save face. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this was thought of at the time and then ruled out.

 

[MacLeod]

Where to begin.

Janeway, I would have made her XO initally newly promoted to that position. So she suddenly finds command thrust upon her after the CO is killed during the trip to the DQ.

Chakotay I would have him as a former Starfleet CO he had been disillusioned over the treaty with the Cardassians.

Might have made for a more interesting character dynamic between Janeway and Chakotay with the more experianced officer playing second fiddle to the less experianced officer.

You could have VOY's original CO as a former lover or even wife of Chakotay who whilst not liking the assignment does her duty.

I like that idea a lot actually. However, I think they really wanted the first ongoing female character to be a strong, experienced commander to save face. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this was thought of at the time and then ruled out.

Wasn't VOY, Janeway's first command? So she was new to being a CO. We don't know how long she spend as XO.

 

[hux]

Janeway, I would have made her XO initally newly promoted to that position. So she suddenly finds command thrust upon her after the CO is killed during the trip to the DQ.

Chakotay I would have him as a former Starfleet CO he had been disillusioned over the treaty with the Cardassians

Like this idea. Chakotay had some command experience I believe and Voyager was the first time Janeway was captain (newly appointed) but she was "slightly" more experienced. Would have been interesting if he was the more experienced officer.

I've often said they made her an inexperienced captain on purpose though. She's flawed and occasionally out of her depth far more than most captains we've seen but I think this was intentional.

Had Chakotay been significantly more experienced, it would have really emphasised the point and made for interesting drama but instead we got Chakotay the insipid. Too unsure of himself to really challenge her.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Wasn't VOY, Janeway's first command? So she was new to being a CO. We don't know how long she spend as XO.

I don't remember that ever being established, so I checked Memory Alpha. No mention of a previous command, but no statement of Voyager being her first.

However, Whilst not Canon, Memory Beta gives information of two previous commands mentioned in Voyager novels.

 

[Anwar]

I think I was the one who came up with the idea of Janeway being the XO but I refined my idea a bit.

Instead of the XO, I'd have made Janeway the Science Officer who has to take charge when the Captain and XO are both killed. The Captain dies on the trip to the DQ and the XO dies in battle with the Kazon in the Premiere leaving her as Ranking officer by default.

Chakotay would be a Flag Officer (maybe a 1-Star Admiral) that went rogue, so technically he's the ranking one. But he realizes that it's not in their best interests to be divided so he offers to work with Janeway as an equal to maintain order and serve as an Advisor. Tuvok is the new XO, and he and Chakotay clash over this.

Chak's closest people (Torres, other Senior Maquis) go with this, but the other Maquis are upset and see them as sell-outs. Some of the Fleeters are uncertain about the Science Officer being in charge.

So Janeway and Chakotay's conflict isn't with each other, it's them vs the more unruly Fleeters and Maquis.

 

[Lynx]

^^
I have my doubts about that. It would turn into the same endless, pointless bickering as in "Stargate Universe".

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Also, the secondary characters would have shown up more and had more development.

There's a big distance between no conflict at all and constant bickering.

 

[Anwar]

Well, ideally the Main characters would be Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris and the Doctor.

Kim, Kes, Neelix and Torres would be Secondaries.

It's easier to write smaller casts.

And the conflicts would die down after S1 anyways, after that it just gets silly.

 

[MacLeod]

DSN seemed to manage quite well with it's large cast and large cast of secondaries, yes some recieved more development than others. Perhaps the issue was not so much with the size of the cast but rather the characters themselves.

However going forward if a new series was to be made a smaller principal cast might be better consistsing of CO, XO, CMO, CEO and Tac/Sec Chief. And I'm not saying that from a writting point of view but simply from a cost point of view.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Neelix barged into the quarters with a female . They smashed the furniture.....

Fancy that. A Talaxian and a .

They should serve Ale to loosen things up.

Given how sexless he was with Kes, that whole Kilingon thing seemed entirely wrong to me. I often wonder why they did that (were they trying to suggest that he was very sexual and therefore must have also been sexual with Kes?.......or were they trying to suggest that he was very sexual but his relationship with Kes wasn't because "look at the difference")

Samantha Wildman? ;

*Shudder*

A little confused here... you don't like Samantha, or just the thought of her with Neelix?

 

[hux]

A little confused here... you don't like Samantha, or just the thought of her with Neelix?

The latter.

Especially since he's so entirely sexless at this point and playing the role of avuncular uncle Neelix to Samantha's daughter.

 

[Anwar]

DSN seemed to manage quite well with it's large cast and large cast of secondaries, yes some recieved more development than others. Perhaps the issue was not so much with the size of the cast but rather the characters themselves.

However going forward if a new series was to be made a smaller principal cast might be better consistsing of CO, XO, CMO, CEO and Tac/Sec Chief. And I'm not saying that from a writting point of view but simply from a cost point of view.

TOS got by with only 3 main characters, though.

And DS9 got their larger cast to work because they had the whole pre-existing Trekverse to play with and could have characters going off elsewhere to do their own thing instead of having everyone all be in one spot at one time.

VOY couldn't really do that, unless it also became Stationary for most of the series.

 

[Lynx]

Voyager worked fine wiyh nine main characters for three seasons until stupid policies changed it to 1 main character and two second characters.

In season 1-3 of Voyager all the main characters got their chance to shine under the great spotlight and no problem there.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

Less Borg.

Less focus on Seven of Nine and Doctor episodes. once or twice in a season is all right, but this in an ensemble cast and they deserve screen time to.
ample

More exploration and more mysteries.

Make Chakatoy less bland. Making him a Native American put more flavor into Voyager that you could know.

Either get rid of Neelix, especially his idiotic hyper jealousy syndrome, and have him become less annoying.

Develop Harry Kim into good leader with a different style than Janeway.

Not have a Chakotay and Seven of Nine romance out of the blue. Foreshadow it a tiny bit more.

Not have Janeway go off the deep end with Ransom.

A bit more time travel. Sorry people, but I love fish out of water time travel stories.

Maybe give Janeway an actual romance.

More medical personnel.

Maybe have a powerful intergalactic corporation.

VAMPIRES! (No, just joking on that one.)

More actual rock and roll, but uh, not copyrighted stuff.

Some actual science and history for a change.

 

[SPCTRE]

Kim: Any sort of development.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Well, ideally the Main characters would be Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris and the Doctor.

Kim, Kes, Neelix and Torres would be Secondaries.

It's easier to write smaller casts.

And the conflicts would die down after S1 anyways, after that it just gets silly.

Whenever this topic comes up you seem to make it into a conflict of extremes. Either there's no conflict at all, or there's constant obnoxious bickering all the time.

Nobody wants constant obnoxious bickering all the time or Maquis rebellions. I'd rather them have profound philosophical differences, which they learn to resolve amicably and through the command structure. Instead, the Maquis just became identical to the Starfleet officers.

 

[Lance]

Sometimes, I think 1995 was just too early for Voyager's cast dynamic.

If you launched the show today, something like having properly representative Latino or Native American characters wouldn't even be any big deal.

Back in '95 though, the showrunners were absolutely clueless about what to do with them. So much so they hired some guy as Native American advisor who it turned out was feeding them bullshit information. And they were none the wiser.

The television landscape has changed. Such characters are commonplace now, and a lot better written. Probably because there's now an acknowledgement that the demographic in real world America is not made up of a majority of white stock.

Heck, the best they could come up with for the Kazon was inspired by the aftermath of the LA Riots. Except they never really explored that, they just ripped the white guys headline out of the newspaper and just ran with "the Kazron are rival gang members, but in space". It's like they were utterly unable to understand the underlying reasons why the riots actually happened.

If the show had actually explored the tensions and conflicts that led to those riots, and placed that into the context of a space faring race, hey *then* we'd have a story.

Voyager's crew needed to be more diverse, and to embrace that diversity. Instead, like TNG before it, everybody just lined up to be bland little toy soldiers by episode three. Some characters hung onto their uniqueness a little longer than others, but there's so much more potential right there on the page in "Caretaker" than we ever saw for the remaining seven years.

 

[Anwar]

Whenever this topic comes up you seem to make it into a conflict of extremes. Either there's no conflict at all, or there's constant obnoxious bickering all the time.

Well, look at stuff like SGU or NuBSG. There was basically lots of constant obnoxious bickering all the time.

Nobody wants constant obnoxious bickering all the time or Maquis rebellions. I'd rather them have profound philosophical differences, which they learn to resolve amicably and through the command structure. Instead, the Maquis just became identical to the Starfleet officers.

I agree it happened too fast and the end result was too typical. But the core problem here...is that the Maquis didn't have enough differences from Starfleet to have this kind of philosophical clash.

If they'd used Romulans or something, then there'd be something there because they really would be archenemies with real differences that would lead to something new.

 

[MacLeod]

Sometimes, I think 1994 was just too early for Voyager's cast dynamic.

If you launched the show today, something like having properly representative Latino or Native American characters wouldn't even be any big deal.

Back in '94 though, the showrunners were absolutely clueless about what to do with them. So much so they hired some guy as Native American advisor who it turned out was feeding them bullshit information. And they were none the wiser.

The television landscape has changed. Such characters are commonplace now, and a lot better written. Probably because there's now an acknowledgement that the demographic in real world America is not made up of a majority of white stock.

Heck, the best they could come up with for the Kazon was inspired by the aftermath of the LA Riots. Except they never really explored that, they ripped the white guys headline out of the newspaper and just ran with "these guys are rival gang members, but in space". It's like they were utterly unable to understand the underlying reasons why the riots actually happened.

If the show had actually explored the tensions and conflicts that led to those riots, and placed that into the context of a space faring race, hey *then* we'd have a story.

Voyager's crew needed to be more diverse, and to embrace that diversity. Instead, like TNG before it, everybody just lined up to be bland little toy soldiers by episode three. Some characters hung onto their uniqueness a little longer than others, but there's so much more potential right there on the page in "Caretaker" than we ever saw for the remaining seven years.

Might just be but having those type of characters shouln't have been a big deal (if it was). I just want to be entertained, If I'm not being entertained I will simply switch off regardless of the cast make-up the opposite is true I will watch a show if I'm being entertained reagrless of the cast make-up