How would you have set up the premise to Voyager?

[Captain Nate]

So I am watching Star Trek Voyager for the first time in a condensed version (50 episodes in 50 days)
http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/50-days-of-voyager.283281/

I have just finished watching the pilot episode. The premise of how Voyager gets stranded seems ok to me but I am sure we can come with something better. So lets pretend you are a writer for Star Trek Voyager. It has been decided that you want to make a series about a starship stranded in the delta quadrant 76 light years from earth. How would the starship get stranded there? Q? A wormhole? Space folding? Lets hear some cool ideas!

 

[LJones41]

I wouldn't have bothered with what was shown. I'm not intimidated by the idea of a woman starship captain.

 

[Captain Nate]

I wouldn't have bothered with what was shown. I'm not intimidated by the idea of a woman starship captain.

I wouldn't have bothered with what was shown. I'm not intimidated by the idea of a woman starship captain.

Keep the Female captain. But did you buy the whole Caretaker plotline?

 

[A Chimpanzee & 2 Trainees]

I'm of the opinion that it really doesn't matter much. The Caretaker was a means to an end, and whatever you think of it, it did accomplish the goal. What's important is what you do with the concept after you get there, rather than how you got there to begin with. That's also why, after Caretaker, you really didn't see hide nor hair of them until episode with the vengeful female caretaker (Cesperia? was that her name?) showed up. (I forget the episode..)

It's sort of like saying "how would you have warp drive work?" How warp drive works, officially, doesn't matter unless you're trying to write something like Scotty's Technical Manual. It's enough that you have to suspend disbelief and say "Yes, there is this thing called warp that lets them travel vast distances and reach other stars/aliens."

 

[Sophie74656]

For me it doesn't really matter HOW they got to the DQ. The point is that they got there and they can't get back the same way.

 

[Lynx]

I would have set it up exactly as it was. I really love the original premise for the show and also "Caretaker" which is an excellent episode.

 

[UnknownSample]

I'd have kept the original idea of Voyager and the Maquis ship travelling side by side through the series. As for getting to the DQ, I hated how undramatic and anti-climactic the actual trip was. Just a flash or something and they're there.

 

[Tracy Trek]

That's also why, after Caretaker, you really didn't see hide nor hair of them until episode with the vengeful female caretaker (Cesperia? was that her name?) showed up. (I forget the episode..)

I think the episode was called Cold Fire.

 

[The_Baroness]

I'd have kept the original idea of Voyager and the Maquis ship travelling side by side through the series. As for getting to the DQ, I hated how undramatic and anti-climactic the actual trip was. Just a flash or something and they're there.

With a ship blown half to shit and a crew about 50% less alive than it was to begin with?

 

[Paradise City]

I'd begin it after TUC, end it after TNG. Have it multigenerational with them arriving back battered and bruised.

 

[SPCTRE]

I know this is only tangential to the purpose of the thread, but I love the premise of VOY. I wouldn't really want to change it.

 

[φ of π]

Just say that the Caretaker's array was only calibrated to bring things from elsewhere in the galaxy, and doesn't have to capability to send them back.

To reverse the process would have taken years to figure out, and the Kazon fleet would be converging on the array within a few days, so they have no choice but to destroy it.

 

[stardream]

I would have kept Robbie McNeil but have him play Nick Larcarno as originally planned. I go with the premise that they are two different characters.
I would also go with the idea that Janeway was not the Captain to begin with but was forced to assume that position because of the death of the original commanding officer.
The rest is fine although I would make Neelix a little less annoying.

 

[φ of π]

I'd heard the reason he didn't reprise his role as Locarno was because of royalties.

 

[Paradise City]

I just see Locarno and Paris as cousins. Tim Russ appearing as Tuvok amused me, remembering him in Invasive Procedures as a Klingon mercenary and in Starship Mine as a human one. Perhaps there was some tryst between a Vulcan and a Klingon and a human back in the day that produced all these cousins. Dunno.

 

[The_Baroness]

I was fine with the caretaker array. The mechanism for them getting to the DQ didn't really matter.

I'd have done as I said on a another thread though and made it an actual 70 year journey and each series catches up with the crew every 10 years or so and explores the changes that are taking place.

Otherwise, I'd have ditched the Maquis. It was a pointless plot point because aside from a handful of early episodes the differences between Starfleet and Maquis was not explored at all. I like the idea of two crews working together but it would have been much better had the other crew been true traditional opposition. A romulan crew would have been interesting, or a Cardassian one.

Imagine how much more interesting it might have been if instead of B'Leanna getting all mad 'cos the dominion have wiped out the Maquis, if the mixed crew had instead learned that the Fedearation and Cardassians were on opposite sides of a bloody war and how that might affect the dynamic of an already strained crew.

 

[The_Baroness]

I just see Locarno and Paris as cousins. Tim Russ appearing as Tuvok amused me, remembering him in Invasive Procedures as a Klingon mercenary and in Starship Mine as a human one. Perhaps there was some tryst between a Vulcan and a Klingon and a human back in the day that produced all these cousins. Dunno.

Wasn't he on the Enterprise B too?

(plus of course ACTUAL Tuvok in the DS9 mirror universe)

 

[Captain Nate]

What if instead of Maquis it was a ship of convicted felons?

 

[The_Baroness]

If those felons were the worst of the worst. A bunch of Nauusicaan and Orion pirates, smugglers and gangsters, sure.

A bunch of federation convicts? Can't see it'd be much different.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In the Alpha Quadrant, the U.S.S. Voyager comes across an alien probe, which begins attacking them. The starship is able to destroy it, but in doing so the energy release folds space and sends them to the other side of the galaxy, where the original probe was once from--though it's builders are almost extinct.

The ship finds itself in a dangerous region of space, where resources are limited and the local inhabitants have learned to prey on the ships that appear. Voyager survives the initial attack, with the help of another ship from the Alpha/Beta Quadrant (whether it be a Maquis raider, Romulan scout, Nyberrite Alliance corvette, whatever), which is barely scrapping by. They are aided by a Talaxian mercenary who has convinced them of a planet rich with supplies, though they are in no condition to go there, however the larger Voyager is.

This leads them to a planet that was once home to an advanced race (the ones who sent out the probes), but where there is only one left taking care of the dying world. The planet is the focus of many other races in the region, all looking to strip it of it's technology to use against the others, though the Caretaker uses their tech to keep them away.

Voyager manage to make contact with him and reach the surface, where they learn that he is actually protecting the Ocampa, an innocent race that also evolved on his world, from all that the Kazon (and others) would do to them. Shocked to hear where the crew are from and how they got there, he tells them that he has only one such device left. The crew must sacrifice their chance of getting home to safeguard the lives and future of the Ocampa far away from the Caretaker's planet, even if it does mean going it alone without his protection and guidance for the first time.

The process destroys the planet and all of its advanced technology, stranding Voyager and the other ship in the Delta Quadrant making a long journey home.