New series with old recurring characters, could it work?
- Thread starter JesterFace
- Start date
I think that was just an inside joke the author found amusing.
Don't forget Icheb, the only Delta Quadrant native to return to Earth with Voyager. At least his killer was brought to some degree of justice.
Then there was Maddox...and the Rikers son we never met...
As I've said many times, here and when teaching writing, any idea can work. It requires talent to create compelling characters, or in this case to make somewhat two dimensional characters more compelling and rounded, and then time to apply the talent.
As a side note, Trek has a tendency to develop the backgrounds of interesting conflicts in the Bibles...and then have the characters work through problems in the first few episodes. That's a losing proposition.
As a side note, Trek has a tendency to develop the backgrounds of interesting conflicts in the Bibles...and then have the characters work through problems in the first few episodes. That's a losing proposition.
I assume you refer to character bibles... yeah, that reminds me of the Maquis in Voyager. There was so much conflict potential there, never really explored properly.
That's a great example. The Maquis/Starfleet conflict could have powered most of a season. They did come back to it a couple of times, and they made good episodes, but I was very disappointed with how it played out overall.
Honestly, I don't really see how the Starfleet-Maquis tensions could have played out, long term. Many of the Maquis were former Starfleet officers anyway who would have eventually kept the ones who weren't Starfleet in line, and really does the political situation at home really matter that much when you're essentially all alone in a distant region of the galaxy just trying to make it through day to day with alien street gangs and organ harvesters chasing you?
For me, it's the difference between drama and action-adventure. If the maquis were truly committed to their cause, I don't think they would have been able to turn those feelings off within a couple of days.
I've said this elsewhere, but it reminds me of 3001. There's a paragraph after Frank Poole has been revived which basically says something on the order of "He was said that all his friends were long dead and everything he knew was long gone, but there were so many new things and people to see that he couldn't stay sad." The very first time I read that I thought "This is maybe how Clarke sees humanity, and maybe how hard sf fans see humanity, but it's not how real people behave."
In a similar fashion, I think that the Seska/Chakotay thing was drama in their minds, but it comes off as romantic melodrama, a soap opera plot.
Maquis: "The Federation government turned our homes over to the Cardassians who are pillaging our homes and murdering our families and neighbours as we speak."
Starfleet: "'Kay. We're not with the government, we're explorers who are in denial about being a military. We didn't sign the papers to turn over your homes. And does what the Cardassians are doing to your family right now prevent you from doing you're job right now? Or do you want the alien organ harvesters to board the ship and take you liver?"
Thanks for helping make my point
Real people are not always practical. People who commit large scale murder are especially not always practical. And having them make decisions like deciding between fighting alongside people that they hate in order to survive and letting those people die at the cost of their own lives would have a lot of dramatic value.
Was there any hatred between Starfleet and the Maquis in the Alpha Quadrant, though? I mean, yes, Starfleet would arrest the Maquis as terrorists, but for the most part the Maquis made an effort to avoid starting a fight with Starfleet. The only exception was DS9 For the Uniform, but that was more Eddington's personal vendetta with Sisko than it was official Maquis policy regarding Starfleet.
I think we'll mostly have to agree to disagree here. From my POV, one of the driving elements in developing the show was going to be conflict between the Maquis and Star Fleet crew elements, and this had me excited about watching it. After the first few episodes they pretty much let it drop. Your POV appears to be that continuing the conflict would have been unrealistic, but I think that realistically, working out the integration of those two crews would have taken weeks or months, and would have made the show much more exciting from a dramatic point of view.
I think that was the other way around. Sisko had the personal vendetta against Eddington.
They both had a vendetta against each other. My point is, it's the only time the Maquis attacked Starfleet without provocation, which I'm sure had more to do with the Sisko-Eddington vendetta than it did official Maquis policy.
It seems to me that the discussion has things backwards.
It was the Starfleet members who had reason to be angry at the Maquis, not the Maquis who had reason to be angry at the Starfleet.
The war (or wars) between the Federation and the Cardassion Union apparently lasted for years and was apparently a small scale frontier skirmish for the Federation - nobody mentioned that there was a war with the Cardassians during the first seasons of TNG. But it was probably a much bigger deal for the Cardassians than it was for the Federation.
Becasue after the war was over, the border of non Cardassian space reached deeap into the former space of the Cardassian Union.
The Cardassians had to grant independence to, or cede to the Federation, a lot of formerly Cardassian ruled planets. Persumably the Federation annexed all the Cardassian military bases and Cardassian inhabited colonies in that zone, no doubt allowing the Cardassian colonists to emigrate to Cardassian space if they wanted to, while requireing that he Cardassian Union grant independence to every planet and system with native intelligent life in that zone, so that every single system in that zone would now be either indpendent (withe he option to join the Federation in the future without any Cardassian objections) or Federation ruled.
Not doubt the Cardassian Union expanded outward in all directions from Cardassia Prime in an ever enlargening spherical shape. Until the Federation war (or wars) resulted in the Federation annexing or setting free from the Cardassians all solar systems in that zone I mentioned.
And as far as I can tell, that zone of space would have been at best, a narrow cone of space including many solar systems pointed like a daggar at the heart of cardassia, Cardassia Prime, the Cardassian homeworld and capital planet, and at worst it would have been an entire hemisphere of the former Cardassian Union, half of all the former Cardassian space and worlds.
No doubt the Cardassian military tried to violate the peace treaty turns and keep possession of Bajor as a defensive position in any future wars with the Federation, until the Federation pressured Cardassia into evacuating Bajor, leaving Cardassia Prime even more vulnerable to any future Federation attack.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Bajor and Cardassia must be near neighbors as interstellar distances go.
For one thing, in "Explorers" Sisko built a replca of a 800year old Bajoran spacecraft:
And when Ben and Jake set out in their solar sailed Bajoran ship:
QUOTE] (Big crash.)
JAKE: What was that?
SISKO: I'm not sure, but whatever hit us almost tore off the port mainsail.
(The stars start streaking by in a familiar way.)
SISKO: Main power's offline. We're moving at warp.
JAKE: How can that be?
SISKO: I don't know.
(And it stops)
JAKE: What happened?
SISKO: That's a good question. (checks the star chart) There's no record of any spatial anomalies in this region.
JAKE: What are these?
SISKO: Tachyon eddies. They run all through this area.
JAKE: Could we have gotten caught up in one?
SISKO: No, tachyons don't have enough mass to affect a ship of. This isn't an ordinary ship. It has a lot more surface area relative to its mass.
JAKE: Because of the sails.
SISKO: And since tachyons travel faster than light, it could be that their impact on the sails somehow accelerated us to warp speeds. We could be light years off course.
JAKE: The question is, where did we end up? [/QUOTE]
Later Cardassian ships arrive at Ben and jake's ship:
So if the tachyon eddies take Bajoran ships from the Bajoran system to the Cardassian system instead of too other solar systems, those two solar systems must be really close by interstellar standards.
Furthermore, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual 1998 states that Bajor and Cardassia Prime are only five light years apart.
According to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, (p. 3) the exact distance between Cardassia and Bajor was 5.25 light years. According to a stellar cartography map on the same page, Cardassia was located in the Bajor sector. [1]
In 2375, the location of Cardassia was labeled on a tactical map that was displayed in the wardroom of Deep Space 9. Cardassia was located approximately five light years from Bajor, thirty light years from Starbase 375, and fifty-five light years from Ferenginar. (DS9: "When It Rains...", okudagram)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cardassia_Prime
So cardassia has literally no defenses left beyond their home system against any future Federation attack on Cardassia Prime. The Cardassians could only have agreed to such terms in the armistice and the peace treaty if they had no choice, as a last ditch effort to prevent a Federation fleet from attacking Cardassia Prime.
So the minor border skirmish with the Cardassians from the Federation point of view must have been a disastrous armageddon from the Cardassian point of view. The Cardassians were crushingly defeated.
So it seems reasonable for all the Federation colonists living along the former Cardassian border to rejoice at the Cardassian defeat and their freedom from any fear of Cardassian aggression in the future.
It seems to me that only a tiny percentage of the Federation colonies near the Cardassian border had any problems with the new treaty borders. Probably the Federation surrounded the entire former space of the Cardassian Union, making it an enclave within Federation space like san Marino within Italy.. Once the cardassians had expanded to the limits of federatin space, there was no where left for them to expand to, and no doubt one of their reasons for the wars as an attept to break through to spacebeyond the FEderation.
And quite possibly the Federation granted some Federation colonies to the Cardassians - as various episodes show that they did - as a partial compensation for all the planets which the Cardassians had to give up. And those planets would have been on the side of the cardassian union which was farthest frm the center of the federation. So the Cardassians could now expand into unclaimed space, but only in the difrection leading away from the main centers of the Federation and away from future conflicts with the Federation.
But that would be only in a small sector of the Federation-Cardassian border.
The Federation colonists on the planets that were ceded to the Cardassians were citizens of the Federation, and owed their highest loyalty to the Federation. The entire Federation was their home, not merely the Federation-Cardassian borderlands, and not merely the one sector of the Federation-Cardassian borderlands which were ceded to the Cardassians, and not merely the individual systems and planets they lived on.
In the USA there is a law of eminent domain. Federal, state, county, and municipal governments can seize the property of private citizens, paying htem fair market value for that property, to serve public purposes. The property where I once lived was seized by the local school board and is now a school parking lot. So no doubt the Federation offered the colonists on the ceded planets fair prices for their property and payment of their expenses to move to other planets.
And any colonists who turned down such offers to say on the planets ceded to the Cardassians, risking various conflicts with the cardassians, would have been recklessly risking the lives of their families and friends who they may have persuaded to stay, and were recklessly risking increasing tensions with the Cardassians and making a new war with the Cardassians more likely.
And what gave those small groups of stubbon colonists the right to risk a future hellish war in which the total number of persons killed might tens, or hundreds, or thousands, or maybe even millions of times as great as the total number of colonists affected by the peace treaty?
And as a matter of fact the Maquis did cause a lot of trouble with the Cardassians, and no doubt many Cardassians believed the Federation was secretly backing the Maquis. And eventually the Cardassian anger at the Maquis may have been one of the main reasons for Cardassia Joining the Dominion, and for the outbreak of the Dominion War in which Starfleet suffered several casualty rates and the Federation often seemed to be on the verge of total defeat.
So it seems to me that after they learned about the outbreak of the Dominion War, the Starfleet members of Voyager's crew had a lot to be angry at the Maquis about, considering their them largely responsible for the disasters of the Dominion War.
It was the Starfleet members who had reason to be angry at the Maquis, not the Maquis who had reason to be angry at the Starfleet.
The war (or wars) between the Federation and the Cardassion Union apparently lasted for years and was apparently a small scale frontier skirmish for the Federation - nobody mentioned that there was a war with the Cardassians during the first seasons of TNG. But it was probably a much bigger deal for the Cardassians than it was for the Federation.
Becasue after the war was over, the border of non Cardassian space reached deeap into the former space of the Cardassian Union.
The Cardassians had to grant independence to, or cede to the Federation, a lot of formerly Cardassian ruled planets. Persumably the Federation annexed all the Cardassian military bases and Cardassian inhabited colonies in that zone, no doubt allowing the Cardassian colonists to emigrate to Cardassian space if they wanted to, while requireing that he Cardassian Union grant independence to every planet and system with native intelligent life in that zone, so that every single system in that zone would now be either indpendent (withe he option to join the Federation in the future without any Cardassian objections) or Federation ruled.
Not doubt the Cardassian Union expanded outward in all directions from Cardassia Prime in an ever enlargening spherical shape. Until the Federation war (or wars) resulted in the Federation annexing or setting free from the Cardassians all solar systems in that zone I mentioned.
And as far as I can tell, that zone of space would have been at best, a narrow cone of space including many solar systems pointed like a daggar at the heart of cardassia, Cardassia Prime, the Cardassian homeworld and capital planet, and at worst it would have been an entire hemisphere of the former Cardassian Union, half of all the former Cardassian space and worlds.
No doubt the Cardassian military tried to violate the peace treaty turns and keep possession of Bajor as a defensive position in any future wars with the Federation, until the Federation pressured Cardassia into evacuating Bajor, leaving Cardassia Prime even more vulnerable to any future Federation attack.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Bajor and Cardassia must be near neighbors as interstellar distances go.
For one thing, in "Explorers" Sisko built a replca of a 800year old Bajoran spacecraft:
And when Ben and Jake set out in their solar sailed Bajoran ship:
QUOTE] (Big crash.)
JAKE: What was that?
SISKO: I'm not sure, but whatever hit us almost tore off the port mainsail.
(The stars start streaking by in a familiar way.)
SISKO: Main power's offline. We're moving at warp.
JAKE: How can that be?
SISKO: I don't know.
(And it stops)
JAKE: What happened?
SISKO: That's a good question. (checks the star chart) There's no record of any spatial anomalies in this region.
JAKE: What are these?
SISKO: Tachyon eddies. They run all through this area.
JAKE: Could we have gotten caught up in one?
SISKO: No, tachyons don't have enough mass to affect a ship of. This isn't an ordinary ship. It has a lot more surface area relative to its mass.
JAKE: Because of the sails.
SISKO: And since tachyons travel faster than light, it could be that their impact on the sails somehow accelerated us to warp speeds. We could be light years off course.
JAKE: The question is, where did we end up? [/QUOTE]
Later Cardassian ships arrive at Ben and jake's ship:
So if the tachyon eddies take Bajoran ships from the Bajoran system to the Cardassian system instead of too other solar systems, those two solar systems must be really close by interstellar standards.
Furthermore, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual 1998 states that Bajor and Cardassia Prime are only five light years apart.
According to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, (p. 3) the exact distance between Cardassia and Bajor was 5.25 light years. According to a stellar cartography map on the same page, Cardassia was located in the Bajor sector. [1]
In 2375, the location of Cardassia was labeled on a tactical map that was displayed in the wardroom of Deep Space 9. Cardassia was located approximately five light years from Bajor, thirty light years from Starbase 375, and fifty-five light years from Ferenginar. (DS9: "When It Rains...", okudagram)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cardassia_Prime
So cardassia has literally no defenses left beyond their home system against any future Federation attack on Cardassia Prime. The Cardassians could only have agreed to such terms in the armistice and the peace treaty if they had no choice, as a last ditch effort to prevent a Federation fleet from attacking Cardassia Prime.
So the minor border skirmish with the Cardassians from the Federation point of view must have been a disastrous armageddon from the Cardassian point of view. The Cardassians were crushingly defeated.
So it seems reasonable for all the Federation colonists living along the former Cardassian border to rejoice at the Cardassian defeat and their freedom from any fear of Cardassian aggression in the future.
It seems to me that only a tiny percentage of the Federation colonies near the Cardassian border had any problems with the new treaty borders. Probably the Federation surrounded the entire former space of the Cardassian Union, making it an enclave within Federation space like san Marino within Italy.. Once the cardassians had expanded to the limits of federatin space, there was no where left for them to expand to, and no doubt one of their reasons for the wars as an attept to break through to spacebeyond the FEderation.
And quite possibly the Federation granted some Federation colonies to the Cardassians - as various episodes show that they did - as a partial compensation for all the planets which the Cardassians had to give up. And those planets would have been on the side of the cardassian union which was farthest frm the center of the federation. So the Cardassians could now expand into unclaimed space, but only in the difrection leading away from the main centers of the Federation and away from future conflicts with the Federation.
But that would be only in a small sector of the Federation-Cardassian border.
The Federation colonists on the planets that were ceded to the Cardassians were citizens of the Federation, and owed their highest loyalty to the Federation. The entire Federation was their home, not merely the Federation-Cardassian borderlands, and not merely the one sector of the Federation-Cardassian borderlands which were ceded to the Cardassians, and not merely the individual systems and planets they lived on.
In the USA there is a law of eminent domain. Federal, state, county, and municipal governments can seize the property of private citizens, paying htem fair market value for that property, to serve public purposes. The property where I once lived was seized by the local school board and is now a school parking lot. So no doubt the Federation offered the colonists on the ceded planets fair prices for their property and payment of their expenses to move to other planets.
And any colonists who turned down such offers to say on the planets ceded to the Cardassians, risking various conflicts with the cardassians, would have been recklessly risking the lives of their families and friends who they may have persuaded to stay, and were recklessly risking increasing tensions with the Cardassians and making a new war with the Cardassians more likely.
And what gave those small groups of stubbon colonists the right to risk a future hellish war in which the total number of persons killed might tens, or hundreds, or thousands, or maybe even millions of times as great as the total number of colonists affected by the peace treaty?
And as a matter of fact the Maquis did cause a lot of trouble with the Cardassians, and no doubt many Cardassians believed the Federation was secretly backing the Maquis. And eventually the Cardassian anger at the Maquis may have been one of the main reasons for Cardassia Joining the Dominion, and for the outbreak of the Dominion War in which Starfleet suffered several casualty rates and the Federation often seemed to be on the verge of total defeat.
So it seems to me that after they learned about the outbreak of the Dominion War, the Starfleet members of Voyager's crew had a lot to be angry at the Maquis about, considering their them largely responsible for the disasters of the Dominion War.
20 years ago, maybe. Today, not so much anymore.
