Forget the Maquis! The Romulans Should Have Been Used!

[patlandness]

One of the things that is often hammered over and over is the failure of the Maquis storyline on Voyager. I personally, thought the Maquis was a rather dumb idea for the Voyager premise. I mean, they're 70,000 light years away from the home they're fighting for and the enemies that threaten it. Their organization is moot.

(However if they were out-and-out separatists from the Federation with their own conflicting agenda with "paradise" like Eddington talked about in "For the Cause", that would have been intriguing.)

Buuuut...what if it were a Romulan scoutship that was pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker along with Voyager. Now, *there* would have been some friction!

Two archenemies working together to achieve a common goal. If that's not Trek, I don't know what is!

Or...originally designed the Maquis as a Federation/Romulan problem rather than the Cardassians and then force the 3 crews to work together without killing each other.

I oftened wondered why they didn't follow up with "Eye of the Needle" and with a little imagination figured out a way to throw Romulans into the mix Federation/Maquis mix.

Imagine the friction between Tuvok and a permanent Romulan presence. And Torres, that would have been something to see!

This way we could have gotten more insight into the most criminally underused and relatively unexplored green-blooded race.

 

[J47]

Honestly, it wouldn't've mattered. They'd've done away with it in the same manner.

 

[Kegek]

They would have, yes. And the Maquis allowed for a little more internal diversity as well - you could have your Native American spiritualist and your hotheaded half-Klingon, while the Romulans might be limited to, well, more Romulans.

DS9 had the same problem with combining Stsrfleet with the Bajoran Militia, and its solution was to make one of the show's two regular members of the Bajoran militia a non-Bajoran - namely Odo. Are you suggesting VOY did something similar?

I agree that they needed to be coupled with a group that had solid ideological objections to the Federation, not essentially Federation people who had a disagreement about partition and a treaty that was utterly irrelevant in a Delta Quadrant context. In the end, all being a Maquis was on VOY - before submerged entirely - was that you were a bit edgier and more unorthodox then those sticks-in-the-mud.

 

[Guy Gardener]

so that would mean that Beltrane would have been a Romulan-Indian...A Reeman, not that such things existed back then, crap crap movie, but maybe a cultural schism between the smothe heads and bumpy heads? Meanwhile Dawson would still be half Klingon which we already saw Kim's girlfriend play out in t TNG...

TNG did some fab stuff witht he Maquis, and DS( went to (*&^ing town. J47 is right on the money these people have no ability to milk a contention.

 

[RoJoHen]

Janeway at the end of Season 7: "I don't think of you or the others as Romulans. I think of you as part of my crew."

I don't think that would have worked as well.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Why not?

If she had bedded one of them, or there were Romulan children, or half Romulan children running around calling her aunt kathy.

Spock nearly bedded a Romulan how killed Kirk, Saavik is said to be a Romulan by some who shagged spock half a bakers dozen times on the Genesis planet. Bashir and Sisko got along fameously with some Romulans until it was the humans who stabbed the romulans in the back. Kira and a Romulan had a conversation about lollie pops. Riker rescued a ship full of the buggers and probably made some impressive inraods to peace...

Romulans screw even Klingons and humans love the Romulan booze.

Lots of little hybrids all over the place after seven years.

 

[Anwar]

I don't think UPN would've been able to force the VOY writing staff into gettin rid of the crew tension in the two crews were actually real enemies to begin with and not just a bunch of the same people (all from the Federation). So maybe making them Romulans or Cardassians would work.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You ever held warm feelings for some one who was firing torpedoes at you until you went to jail for defending your home from thieves?

 

[Kegek]

Anwar said:
I don't think UPN would've been able to force the VOY writing staff into gettin rid of the crew tension in the two crews were actually real enemies to begin with

Uh, sure they could. Star Trek is all about that stuff. TOS had America's old foe, Japan, and her current nemesis, Russia, both represented among the bridge crew. TNG put the old TOS enemy, the Klingons, on the bridge.

 

[TeutonicNights]

I think the Maquis should have had some Cardie prisoners with them. Although Chakotay, Suder and gang weren't exactly the types to take prisoners.

 

[Kegek]

^
The show could have used Seska or a Seska-like character as one of the regular Maquis characters - that is, a Maquis who was really a Cardassian spy. Instead, we got a Maquis who was really a Starfleet spy... which, in a crew of Starfleet and Maquis where he was the original tactical officer, didn't mean much.

 

[Anwar]

Kegek said:

Anwar said:
I don't think UPN would've been able to force the VOY writing staff into gettin rid of the crew tension in the two crews were actually real enemies to begin with

Uh, sure they could. Star Trek is all about that stuff. TOS had America's old foe, Japan, and her current nemesis, Russia, both represented among the bridge crew. TNG put the old TOS enemy, the Klingons, on the bridge.

There was enough of a time gap for both of those "enemy in the crew" things to work.

The Romulans were still a Fed enemy (pretty much) by the time of VOY so they wouldn't just integrate just liek that, especially if both the Romulan commander and Janeway were about at the same time.

Also, the Romulans have actual differences from the Federation, unlike the Maquis who for the most part weren't that different from the Feddies other than wanting to keep fighting the Cardies.

NuBSG works because the people of the various colonies all did have their own societies and ideologies, allowing clashes to occur. The Maquis really aren't different from the Feddies so there never was that much reason for tensions. Having it be Cardies or Romulans would've worked a lot better.

 

[DS9forever]

When deciding which enemy to have on DS9, Berman said something like "They bore me" about the Romulans. But he also said the Borg only work when used once a season.

 

[Anwar]

He was talking about the Cardassians when he referred to boring species on DS9.

He then told Piller and co create a new villain group from the other end of the wormhole that had three levels to it, IE he gave the the order to create the Dominion.

 

[Ro_Laren]

TeutonicNights said:
I think the Maquis should have had some Cardie prisoners with them. Although Chakotay, Suder and gang weren't exactly the types to take prisoners.

Dukat? Garak?

 

[DS9forever]

Anwar said:
He was talking about the Cardassians when he referred to boring species on DS9.

He then told Piller and co create a new villain group from the other end of the wormhole that had three levels to it, IE he gave the the order to create the Dominion.

Did he not say he thought the Cardassians would be "one note" characters?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Just because he's tone deaf, why does he have to assume the rest of the universe is too?

 

[I am not Spock]

I like this idea.

Also, what if the other ship pulled into the DQ was Gul Evek's Cardassian ship seen in 'Caretaker'?

Having the Voyager crew working with the Maquis members, and Evek's Cardassian crew would have been interesting. Part of the fun would have been watching Janeway keep the Cardies and the Maquis from slitting each others throats at every given opportunity!

 

[I am not Spock]

Anwar said:
He was talking about the Cardassians when he referred to boring species on DS9.

He then told Piller and co create a new villain group from the other end of the wormhole that had three levels to it, IE he gave the the order to create the Dominion.

No kidding? Berman thought Cardies were boring adversaries? Wow, that just shows how out of touch he really was with the fanbase. On the plus side, we can thank him for coming up with the idea for the Dominion.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Yes? It was Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb and not the 150 people working for him who had signed away there legal claims on anything they discovered while working for him.

The silly frack probably just caught an episode of babylon 5. Y'know, that whole Worker, religious and warrior 3 is sacred thing.

That is, if the description of his input her wasn't underpainted? Remeber that Southpark about curse words? and the next amzing step in programming was to say the same bad word twice? Yeah, there were 4(nonextinct.) Xindi, for them, was his input... "Make some aliens with four layers to their society, I'm going for lunch."