I'll concede this point. I don't exactly remember what the Maquis had done in DS9 prior to Voyager's premiere. Had they turned into a crazy mass-murderers yet?
Does It Get Better???
- Thread starter AdmiralScreed
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Yes and no. Unlike Starfleet, they didn't have a book of rules that they followed. They were a group of very different people. Some were very mild mannered, like Chakotay, and others were blood thirsty killers, like Suder, Jonas, and Seska.
Well, yes, but I'm talking specific events. What had the Maquis, as a group, actually done prior to Voyager getting lost in the Delta Quadrant? The Maquis in the beginning of DS9 were very different from how they ended up; I'm just trying to remember what had actually transpired in the Alpha Quadrant before Chakotay and Co. were forced to stop being Maquis.
He was the introvert who spent all of his time on Deck 15. The only reason he signed on to Voyager was so he could get one years experience in order to apply for an advanced degree in Cosmology, but just his luck that Voyager gets sucked into the Delta Quadrant one week later. Suffice it to say, he was quite pissed that he was going to spend the rest of his life on a ship he didn't want to be on in the first place.Sure...?Or more like Crewman Harren, from season 6 episode Good Shepard?I'd basically be Harry Kim.
I don't remember that one too well.
Chakotay's Maquis Cell were already operating under a quasi-military Hierarchy, the one Chakotay himself set up. They'd never be an effective force without SOME kind of structure, and being ex-Fleet Chakotay's system wouldn't be that far removed from Starfleet's norm.
And honestly, it would be one seriously lame show if they did nothing but fly through space ignoring everything around them except whenever they needed to stop somewhere for supplies. This is Star Trek, investigating weird stuff is what they do.
And honestly, it would be one seriously lame show if they did nothing but fly through space ignoring everything around them except whenever they needed to stop somewhere for supplies. This is Star Trek, investigating weird stuff is what they do.
They had done pretty much everything notable by that point. I think that the Thomas Riker incident was prior to Voyager, because no one on Voyager knew about the Dominion yet. After Voyager begins is when we find out that the Cardassians were planning on attacking the Dominion, not the Maquis.
The only plotlines that I can recall happening after Voyager gets lost concerning the Maquis are the Eddington arc and stealing the replicators, and then obviously the entirety of the Maquis getting wiped out by the Dominion. After the Cardassians get dominated by the Dominion, the Maquis are pretty quiet for a few years. Their goal was to live in the DMZ, and with the Cardassian military massively scaled back, they got their wish.
Ah, good. so basically that's the last major thing to involve the Maquis before Voyager gets trapped in the Delta Quadrant. Later, in Improbable Cause, we find out that the secret fleet was being built to fight the Dominion, and that attack was the catalyst for change in the Alpha Quadrant, with the Obsedian Order getting wiped out.
Anyway, as this relates to ST: Voyager, the Maquis on Voyager have no idea what's going on in the Alpha Quadrant during all this, so as far as they know the Maquis are still fighting the good fight.
Like I said, the Maquis were kind of a not-well-thought out idea to begin with. They were better off either using Romulans, or have there also be a bunch of DQ aliens held prisoner by the Kazon (or the Caretaker) who become the second crew.
Heck, in a VOY rewrite I did I had Neelix end up using/tricking the VOY crew in helping him retake Talax from the Haakonians and install himself as the new Ruler of the planet.
Heck, in a VOY rewrite I did I had Neelix end up using/tricking the VOY crew in helping him retake Talax from the Haakonians and install himself as the new Ruler of the planet.
What I was trying to get across was that some of the Maquis should have been angry that Janeway was wasting time and resources stopping at random planets and studying spacial anomalies. I like those stories just as much as the next guy, but from the standpoint of a Maquis that kind of stuff should have looked like a waste of time. All of the constant delays that Janeway was responsible for should have created more conflict than it did.
I don't even get it.
Once again, your complete lack of imagination/penchant for exaggeration is showing. The idea was that there would be a crew that follows rules and strategies that are a mix of Starfleet principles and Maquis pragmatism - a new kind of order and approach. That wouldn't change the number of stories that we could have gotten since the ship often needed to stop and get supplies/trade and seek out new technologies/wormholes etc anyway. They just would have taken a newer, fresher, more interesting approach to everything that would have helped "Voyager" stand out more as a show on its own and not a TNG clone as so many people call it.
I disagree. Preemptive Strike on TNG and practically every Maquis episode on DS9 were gold, IMO. What made the Maquis so great was that they were sympathetic characters with admirable goals, but unlike Starfleet they weren't bound by rules and restrictions, or for that matter even their own conscious. Kind of like Sisko in In The Pale Moonlight. They'd do almost anything in order to accomplish their goals. The Maquis on Voyager should have been willing to stand up to Janeway and question her authority, and, if necessary, remove her from her position and put someone in command who was more likely to get them home faster and in one piece.
The Maquis were frontier people who had struggled to establish their colonies, they were a world apart from people like Picard or Janeway who applied haughty principles and ethics to everything. That was the main difference and that was where the compromise was to take place. Voyager shouldn't have been like Enterprise where every challenge ended in some discussion about Federation principles and an executive decision by the captain, it should have been about being more pragmatic. A properly combined Starfleet/Maquis crew wouldn't have just been waiting for Janeway's decision on whether to clandestinely acquire the technology from "Prime Factors" - there would have been a more open discussion taking in pragmatism and principles. Janeway's decision was basically "we can't break their law so we're not taking the technology", but a decision by a crew that had combined Starfleet/Maquis principles would be "We are breaking their law but we aren't hurting anyone, so we believe its acceptable to do this in this situation as it helps us get home". Ethics and pragmatism can co-exist. Unfortunately we got Janeway's executive decision, scolding B'Ellana for even thinking about going near the platforms to just LOOK at them and the crew having to resort to acting behind her back to get the technology. I mean the whole point of Chakotay being first officer was to bring some Maquis into the command structure on Voyager but unfortunately he became a lapdog way too quickly and we never really even saw him talking with the Maquis or asking them what they thought,.
And that brings me to one of the main problems of the Maquis aboard Voyager situation - the lack of secondary characters. The average Maquis or Starfleet officer never really had a voice, we didn't KNOW what the people on the ship were thinking besides the main characters and that's a huge problem. It was a ship of around 140 people 70 years from home but the emotional impact on the crew as a whole was barely even mentioned in passing. They just continued to saunter about the ship in their color-coded Starfleet uniforms acting like it was any other ship.
Voyager needed far more secondary characters to flesh out the situation and let us know what's going on. I came up with a plot for a Voyager episode where two crewmembers see their friend killed on an away mission and decide to resign their commision and live on Voyager as civilians in order to avoid the danger of a mission they never signed up for.
I don't think that's too far off what some crewmembers could have potentially felt, not everyone is going to be all "let's get going back to earth and we're all gonna do our jobs 100% because we're enlightened future humans", I'm sure there would have been a myriad of different attitudes and approaches to the situation but we saw none of that. There just wasn't any depth to that ship. "Star Trek: Voyager" was basically a vehicle for the writers to tell us a lot of entertaining science-fiction stories, it was never really more than that, it never felt real.
And that brings me to one of the main problems of the Maquis aboard Voyager situation - the lack of secondary characters. The average Maquis or Starfleet officer never really had a voice, we didn't KNOW what the people on the ship were thinking besides the main characters and that's a huge problem. It was a ship of around 140 people 70 years from home but the emotional impact on the crew as a whole was barely even mentioned in passing. They just continued to saunter about the ship in their color-coded Starfleet uniforms acting like it was any other ship.
Voyager needed far more secondary characters to flesh out the situation and let us know what's going on. I came up with a plot for a Voyager episode where two crewmembers see their friend killed on an away mission and decide to resign their commision and live on Voyager as civilians in order to avoid the danger of a mission they never signed up for.
I don't think that's too far off what some crewmembers could have potentially felt, not everyone is going to be all "let's get going back to earth and we're all gonna do our jobs 100% because we're enlightened future humans", I'm sure there would have been a myriad of different attitudes and approaches to the situation but we saw none of that. There just wasn't any depth to that ship. "Star Trek: Voyager" was basically a vehicle for the writers to tell us a lot of entertaining science-fiction stories, it was never really more than that, it never felt real.
^^^I couldn't have said it better myself.
I'd say it would, you take away the exploration elements and you lose like 50% of storytelling possibilities that come with things like investigating space phenomena, abandoned worlds or unknown distress calls.
All of which would be ignored or not done under Maquis rules.
No exploring means no seeking out new anythings.
More like Anti-Trek. Instead of exploring, they run from everything. Instead of helping folks in need, they ignore them because its "not their problem". Nevermind that the Maquis would know better than anyone what its' like to be abandoned or at a powerful enemy's mercy.
Hell, even in Farscape they were just a bunch of escaped prisoners on a stolen prison transport and even THEY did "investigate weird stuff" stories without anyone complaining.
The thing is, they could have easily maintained both the Maquis pragmatism (though I still think the Maquis weren't the right choice for the show) AND the exploration elements. If they didn't know where they were, or how to get home it totally justifies all the random exploring even for the Maquis. They can't fault Starfleet for spending time on exploring if they don't know how to get home anyways, random exploring would be their best bet to go home in that case.
I wasn't that bothered with them exploring the occasional planet or anomaly tbh and I don't think it really happened that often. I do think there should have been more episodes where they actively seek out new technologies to help their journey however. Voyager should have been rocking some awesome new alien technologies by the time we got to season 7 but unfortunately the ship didn't change whatsoever except for the astrometrics lab. And that basically brings us back to the problem of Voyager never changing despite its unique situation. We started off well with Neelix's canteen and then nothing. I've always thought that if they'd got rid of the holodeck stuff then the ship could have had a couple of cool additions and sets to provide recreation for the crew - maybe a permanent hydroponics garden (a good place for Kes to hang out) and some other recreational facilities beyond that bland, grey, military looking canteen we got. Voyager really was lacking color.
Who took over aeroponics after Kes left?
Was that busy work?
Did Janeway decide to hide her down in Cargobay Two after an unfortunate conversation with her magic mirror?
Neelix taking her lung is like the huntsman taking Snow's heart, and Harry is sort of a dwarf and....
Was that busy work?
Did Janeway decide to hide her down in Cargobay Two after an unfortunate conversation with her magic mirror?
Neelix taking her lung is like the huntsman taking Snow's heart, and Harry is sort of a dwarf and....
That was a budgetary thing more than a plot choice. They had a lot of leftover props and sets from TNG's holodeck stories, which made it easier to use them. Making all these new sets for the ship, commerce planet sets, repair stations/space drydocks would've broken the budget they had.
That's also why they didn't change the ship model either, it meant they could keep using stock footage since CGI alterations would've been really expensive back then as well. Year of Hell was as far as they were willing to go because of how expensive just doing it for two episodes was.
If they'd done what Berman wanted and waited until DS9 was done, they'd have started off with superior CGI tech (instead of starting off with physical models) and have plenty of leftover DS9 props and stuff from the TNG movies to use. And also they'd have had enough time to iron out VOY's conceptual problems (and it did have them).
So I'd be the complete polar opposite of that guy.
