Ship Damage

[NX-01]

Hi guys, I dunno if this has been posted before. I did look but couldn't see a thread about this.

Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant for 7 years and had many battles....how come it allways good as good as new at the beginning of the next episode. OK granted some of the damage could have been repaired but for some of the damage would have required a space yard.

I like Voyager, but I think I would have liked it more if it did have battle scars....make it more believeable. What do you guys think?

 

[Mage]

Voyager had a reset button after every episode, which included battle damage.

Seriously though, it would have been very cool, but it ment that every now and then they had to to completely re-do even the most basic of effects-shots. It would've cost to much.

 

[Lord Manitou]

If I was a foe of Voyager and its humans I would hope they didn't possess replicators. But alas they do.
In Deadlock most of the ship was destroyed by photon bursts from the other split Voyager-but the next ep. shows a healed Voyager.

 

[NX-01]

I know they had replicators but it would have taken a lot of man hours to fix the ship. But lets not forget they had to rashion the use replicators.

 

[The Mole]

This is one of the things that let Voyager down for me. But as mentioned by Mage, it would mean they wouldn't be able to re-use "stock" footage of the ship in flight and stuff. It would have required a lot of man hours to rework every shot to get this effect.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

of course they could have anticipated this an build a model they could have filmed in progressive states of damage and decay to produce stock footage for any occasion in one big damage shooting session

 

[NX-01]

of course they could have anticipated this an build a model they could have filmed in progressive states of damage and decay to produce stock footage for any occasion in one big damage shooting session

Thats what I was thinking. I mean they new the story line before they started making the series.

 

[F. King Daniel]

IIRC, redoing all the "stock footage" flybys of Voyager would have been too expensive back then - and even moreso before they switched from physical models to CG in season four.

I recall reading somewhere (no idea where, so don't put too much faith in it) that the writers were hoping to be able to blow off one of Voyager's nacelles and replace it with an alien one - which if true would have looked kinda silly.

I would have loved to see Voyager's sets a little more messed up. The odd patchwork repair, a few mismatched, welded wall sections, ill-fitted replacement consoles here and there, some external workaround piping in engineering etc. But with replicators I guess you just put in the broken components and get nice fresh ones in return (also good for Voyager's infinite supply of shuttles and torpedoes!)

Several years later, the idea of a perma-trashed hero ship was finally realized in the epic third season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

 

[Anwar]

Yep, the only reason NuBSG got away with damaging the ship as much as it did was because FX for it were easier and cheaper by then.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Too hard to add battle damage for the physical model, and probably still too expensive and difficult to add progressive battle damage to the CG stock shots. They'd only just switched to CG, so it was probably a bit too much at once to worry about, and by the point it became feasible, it was probably too late to ignore the several years they went unscathed. It had been well established that they could magically fix every cosmetic flaw.

Which is one reason I love Year of Hell. We got battle damage that they couldn't repair!

 

[Timo]

I guess we could rationalize it away by saying that the ship couldn't work at all unless the outer surface was intact and capable of withstanding the rigors of warp. And the means of repairing the surface resulted in an automatic, integrated paint job that cost nothing extra...

Inside, the ship might have been completely messed up, with zigzagging reinforcement beams in place of original elegant ribbing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Misco]

I recall reading somewhere (no idea where, so don't put too much faith in it) that the writers were hoping to be able to blow off one of Voyager's nacelles and replace it with an alien one - which if true would have looked kinda silly.

It's this kind of idiocy which almost makes me glad they didn't show battle damage. Almost.

 

[G2309]

I think they were too scared to "mess up" the ship. TNg was the most popular show and it was all squeky clean. They probably thought a constantly run down ship wouldn't be star trek enough.
I always wondered if this is what put people off ds9 as it wasnt a squeky clean works all the time starship. Part of the reason it felt different to other trek shows.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Hi guys, I dunno if this has been posted before. I did look but couldn't see a thread about this.

Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant for 7 years and had many battles....how come it allways good as good as new at the beginning of the next episode. OK granted some of the damage could have been repaired but for some of the damage would have required a space yard.

I like Voyager, but I think I would have liked it more if it did have battle scars....make it more believeable. What do you guys think?

heehee

That's a classic complaint, you probably haven't read it here because it's like the color of the hull, so obvious it's not up for discussion much.

I think by Endgame the ship should have looked like it did in Year of Hell. But then you'd also have to damage the people a bit more.. psychologically. It would be a different show. Darker, edgier.. yeah I would have loved that but I also love all the Doctor eps and Captain Proton eps which might have been out of place in a darker VOY.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

It's not like the Delta Quadrant is a vast empty space consisting of Borg and Kazon territory. There are quite a few times that Voyager is shown docking at stations and resupplying or trading. I doubt Janeway would just rely on only the efforts of her Engineering personnel.

 

[antiquityscion]

IIRC, redoing all the "stock footage" flybys of Voyager would have been too expensive back then - and even moreso before they switched from physical models to CG in season four.

I recall reading somewhere (no idea where, so don't put too much faith in it) that the writers were hoping to be able to blow off one of Voyager's nacelles and replace it with an alien one - which if true would have looked kinda silly.

I would have loved to see Voyager's sets a little more messed up. The odd patchwork repair, a few mismatched, welded wall sections, ill-fitted replacement consoles here and there, some external workaround piping in engineering etc. But with replicators I guess you just put in the broken components and get nice fresh ones in return (also good for Voyager's infinite supply of shuttles and torpedoes!)

Several years later, the idea of a perma-trashed hero ship was finally realized in the epic third season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

I agree. i think if they couldn't depict damage as a cost factor, they did depict voyager with borg tech in Scorpion. If they had just left some of those mods on, it would have been awesome.

 

[BlobVanDam]

IIRC, redoing all the "stock footage" flybys of Voyager would have been too expensive back then - and even moreso before they switched from physical models to CG in season four.

I recall reading somewhere (no idea where, so don't put too much faith in it) that the writers were hoping to be able to blow off one of Voyager's nacelles and replace it with an alien one - which if true would have looked kinda silly.

I would have loved to see Voyager's sets a little more messed up. The odd patchwork repair, a few mismatched, welded wall sections, ill-fitted replacement consoles here and there, some external workaround piping in engineering etc. But with replicators I guess you just put in the broken components and get nice fresh ones in return (also good for Voyager's infinite supply of shuttles and torpedoes!)

Several years later, the idea of a perma-trashed hero ship was finally realized in the epic third season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

I agree. i think if they couldn't depict damage as a cost factor, they did depict voyager with borg tech in Scorpion. If they had just left some of those mods on, it would have been awesome.

When I saw the Borg mods, I was hoping they'd keep them at least for a little while, but unfortunately it still has the same cost issues as showing damage.

 

[Anwar]

This is why they should have waited until after DS9 was finished, by then CGI would've been a lot cheaper and easier to use for everything. Plus they'd have all of TNG and DS9's leftover props to use.

 

[JTAC]

It's not like the Delta Quadrant is a vast empty space consisting of Borg and Kazon territory. There are quite a few times that Voyager is shown docking at stations and resupplying or trading. I doubt Janeway would just rely on only the efforts of her Engineering personnel.

Good answer. Just finished watching Endgame (again, had myself a Voyager marathon) and one of the final shots of Voyager making it's way home is this screen cap I took.

Voyager and it's crew were mostly more advanced than those they encountered. Like Dancing Doctor said, the races they encountered at ports and stations would have repaired and resupplied matter for the ship and replicators. Voyager had the technological bargaining advantage.

The ship got back to Earth in a better state than when it left. Minus some crew, RIP.

 

[Leathco]

I would have been OK with the no damage thing IF we would have seen Voyager docked at an alien shipyard dock or starbase every so often at the beginning or end of an episode every so often, lets say 4 times a season for repairs. I only remember a couple episodes where they did this throughout the whole series run though (but I only own 5 out of 7 seasons)