Generational Ship

[WarpTenLizard]

Let's suppose Voyager had remained lost long enough to become a generational ship. How do you think it would end up looking? (Besides Ensign Harry Kim still reporting to Captain Miral Paris.)

Would Voyager end up acquiring/building other ships, and become a traveling fleet, like in "Battlestar Galactica"? Would they eventually get a proper medical staff? How would families be managed onboard? Who's kids would have which positions?

For speculating on Voyager's next generation, feel free to include children that almost happened in the canon timeline: if Kes and Neelix had procreated in "Elogium;" if Seska's baby had been Chakotay's; if all four Borgletts had remained onboad; etc.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Janeway eventually gets a long-distance promotion to Admiral by Starfleet, who Voyager is in (in)frequent contact with as of "Pathfinder." Voyager ends up building and acquiring multiple ships, and becoming a fleet, over which Admiral Janeway commands.
• Tuvok gets taken out of the game by his mental condition from "Endgame." Most of the original crew willingly retire, to give their children a chance to "take the helm," knowing their kids are likely to spend their entire careers on Voyager.
• Harry Kim finally gets the captain's chair for a while, before retiring and giving over to Captain Naomi Wildman. Naturally, Naomi begins commanding one of the fleet's smaller ships, before getting Voyager.
• Icheb, who has been used as a weapon so many times (by his parents, then the Borg), rebels against that past by going into medicine, and becomes the chief doctor of one of the smaller ships
• Miral Pairs is not a clone of her mother, and doesn't go into engineering. Instead, Tom's flyboy personality and B'Elanna's rage and snark combine to create Voyager's very own Klingon Starbuck. Tom Paris stays at Voyager's helm, until the day he realizes that his daughter has surpassed him in skill, and he retires. Miral becomes chief conn officer of Voyager.
• The Borg twins take over as the Chief Engineers, becoming Voyager's Geek-Squad.
• Voyager might end up meeting with other lost ships, like the U.S.S. Hera (Geordie's mother's ship). Heck, maybe the Equinox survives, and joins the fleet.

Gimme more.

 

[Oddish]

Internally, there are more marriages, and more children born. As they grow, and as Voyager's need to conserve power fades, Neelix finds himself running the ship's impromptu daycare center, assisted by Naomi. The Doctor finds a way to cure Tuvok's mental condition, and he handles education for the older children.

I still maintain that we should eliminate a main character, and Chakotay isn't really doing anything. So, he heroically dies saving Voyager at some point. Tuvok is made first officer. Starfleet orders that Ensigns Wildman, Vorik, and Kim receive promotion to lieutenant.

Not sure what else at this point...

 

[Seven of Five]

It's a shame that more children weren't born on the ship during the show's run. The crew definitely felt like a family, but it would have been more realistic of them becoming partners, or married, and then having their own families. None of them knew if they would make it back.

 

[Oddish]

Precisely. It would have given us the opportunity to get to know some of Voyager's other crew, too.

 

[Qonundrum]

Kim needs to get some...


...promoting, that is...

Spoiler

 

[Oddish]

Harry would likely have struggled, had Voyager gone generational. He had more romances than any other crew member... they just weren't successful romances.

His fiancee was half a zettameter away.
The planet if the hot babes wanted to kill him.
He got a thing for the wrong twin.
He married a two-year-old, but then she never existed.
Seven of Borg... that didn't work out either.
A zombie, a terrorist, a hologram that wasn't a hologram, and an alien VD superspreader...
And even his date with an actual hologram was ruined by unexpected bovinity.

On the other hand, maybe in about 17 more years, Janeway might finally have awarded him that hollow pip...

 

[JirinPanthosa]

You mean a version of Voyager that ran consistently from 1995 until now? That'd be pretty neat, if it were written by writers who could handle it. Showing the children born early in the show, over a decade later taking roles in the ship, dealing with the situation they're in, the insular community and lack of freedom. Maybe at some point they try to push to settle down somewhere because they've never been to the home their parents long for and setting off a big debate.

Along the way, more and more ships like Neelix's who don't have a home of their own and are willing adapt to Starfleet's ways in order to belong somewhere and have access to Voyager's protection and technology join up.

In the season 36 finale, a colony from Voyager decides to settle down and the finally come to peace with it, but as Voyager is leaving, they realize the local Empire is heading straight there.

 

[There Be Whales Here]

Had Voyager stayed in the Delta Quadrant a few more decades I foresaw them being involved in many more space battles with hostile species that would have required them to eventually use their 100th photon torpedo out of the original, irreplaceable 38 and continue to suffer no permanently visible external or internal damage as a result of said conflicts.

I also think they would have continued to send their handful of irreplaceable shuttles out on missions that would require then to crash on a planetary surface where they would be a total loss until they self-replicated in Voyager's deceptively small shuttlebay.

I think Neelix would continue his quest to prefect his recipes with Leola roots; thereby subjecting a whole new generation of the crew's descendants to his cooking.

Finally, Harry Kim would enter into another awkward relationship with an alien woman and decide to actually remain on her planet this time, thereby retiring from Starfleet at the age of 90 with the rank of Ensign First-Class that Janeway created just for him.

 

[XCV330]

Harry Kim as a bitter old man shunned by the rest of the crew for his foolish fringe theory that there's a fungal network in subspace that could bring them home. If only Janeway had let him talk to that friendly Tardigrade calling itself Ephraim that showed up that one time..

 

[Oddish]

Had Voyager stayed in the Delta Quadrant a few more decades I foresaw them being involved in many more space battles with hostile species that would have required them to eventually use their 5000th photon torpedo out of the original, irreplaceable 38 and continue to suffer no permanently visible external or internal damage as a result of said conflicts.

Fixed that for you.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

Harry Kim as a bitter old man shunned by the rest of the crew for his foolish fringe theory that there's a fungal network in subspace that could bring them home. If only Janeway had let him talk to that friendly Tardigrade calling itself Ephraim that showed up that one time..

....maybe if Harry hadn't fallen in love with it, and foolishly entered an affair that almost caused the destruction of Voyager again, Janeway would've been more open to listening to him.

 

[Oddish]

Janeway finally finishes the cappuccino machine she's been building in her quarters. She retires to a nice little planet somewhere and opens a coffeehouse.

Chakotay gets in a fight with five Kazon pirates and kills them all, but is mortally wounded in the process.

B'Elanna is presumed blown to bits by Vidiians, but is proved to have been captured instead. Her and Tom's 3-year-old daughter turns up unexpectedly. Tom leaves the ship to raise her on the 37's planet, which they discover a convenient wormhole leading to.

The Doctor takes up longwindedly quoting history and getting repeatedly interrupted.

Harry slowly works up through the ranks and winds up the ship's captain.

 

[Tracy Trek]

1. Seska's baby actually is Chakotay's.
2. A way is found to keep Tuvix and still get Tuvok and Neelix back
3. Professor Gegen, the Voth scientist along with his daughter and son in law (who is also Gegen's assistant Vir) join the ship or join the fleet if it ends up being a fleet.
4. They find the ship that was commanded by Geordi's mother. Turns out it was a earlier Caretaker abduction. That ship joins Voyager.
5. Rain Robinson joins the crew.
6. The alien boy that the Dr. tries to help in the episode Critical Care doesn't die and decides to join the Dr. on Voyager and studies medicine himself.
7. All of the Borglets stay on board.
8. The Talaxian colony joins the Voyager fleet.

 

[Oddish]

After rewatching the end of "Resolutions" and reading Trek Today's commentary on the episode (it had some interesting insights), I would have had explored what happened on the planet between Janeway and Chakotay.

When they return to Voyager and talk shop, without even looking at each other... you get the sense that a lot more than hand holding happened between them in the weeks it took Voyager to return. A generational Voyager would provide a legit reason for these feelings to be explored.

If you REALLY wanted to complicate things, and why not, why not have Janeway and Paris's salamander offspring get rescued as well, and restored to human form?

 

[dupersuper]

[QUOTE="Oddish, post: 14002586, member: 81080If you REALLY wanted to complicate things, and why not, why not have Janeway and Paris's salamander offspring get rescued as well, and restored to human form? [/QUOTE]

What do you mean restored? They were never human.

 

[somebuddyX]

For real Voyager, I guess I would imagine the generational ship thing to have been whatever happened in the future timeline in "Shattered." It's twenty years in the future and everyone's slogging away doing the same job still wearing Starfleet uniforms.
If Voyager had been syndicated and didn't have the UPN spotlight shining down on Stage 8 and could do a bit more serialisation, I could see them doing the whole generational ship or ragtag fleet as part of just normal Voyager for part of it's duration. Maybe just something simple like in BSG how Pegasus flew with Galactica for half a season. It could just be an arc for a season and then wrapped up. I think I would have liked Equinox to have flown with Voyager for a bit, so their betrayal was all the more sweeter.
I think it would have been great to see more in-universe Voyager created media, like Tuvok's or the Doc's holoprograms. Maybe people just start making movies or art or whatever in their spare time. Maybe one of the deck walls becomes an impromptu art gallery or there's a movie theatre. Maybe there's an inhouse band that Harry can go play with.
Along the way the ship begins to look a bit different, subtly at first. They leave those exterior Borg modifications on from "Scorpion. I think of it like in Back to the Future, compare a stock Delorean and the Delorean at the end of the third movie, there's so many unique qualities to the latter that paint a really interesting picture of it's journeys.

 

[Oddish]

What do you mean restored? They were never human.

Granted. Transformed into human form, then. Though in general, I personally prefer just having the whole episode be revealed to be a bad dream, from Tom eating too much of Neelix's first attempt at enchiladas.

I think it would have been great to see more in-universe Voyager created media, like Tuvok's or the Doc's holoprograms. Maybe people just start making movies or art or whatever in their spare time. Maybe one of the deck walls becomes an impromptu art gallery or there's a movie theatre. Maybe there's an inhouse band that Harry can go play with.

There was a female crewman who played the oboe, Harry performed with her but we didn't see it. But yeah, while Tom's holonovels were cool, they could have done more.

Along the way the ship begins to look a bit different, subtly at first. They leave those exterior Borg modifications on from "Scorpion. I

And some wear and tear as well. At the end of the series, Voyager still looked as if it had just cruised out of its slip at Utopia Planitia for the first time, despite having been in enough battles to expend "thirty-eight" (yeah right) photon torpedoes.


In general, for the short term, I feel that Janeway's decision not to fraternize (romantically) with crew was a wise one. However, if the decision had been actively made to take Voyager generational, and the captain was actively encouraging intermarriage and procreation among the crew... it would almost be expected that she lead from the front in that regard.