Ok, so should Voyager have let Nelix park his ship aboard for so long? As long as he was cook\morale officer, he didn't need it. Even if he wanted to leave the ship, Voyager could have always dropped him off somewhere... and it was taking up room in the shuttlebay, not being used. Do you think Nelix should have been made to sell it, maybe in exchange for something Voyager needed or for something for himself? Should he have worked out some kind of agreement with Janeway, and the ship could have been used like the Delta Flyer was later on? Given it's a "native" ship to the Detla Quadrant, maybe it could have been more suited than some of the shuttlecraft... or maybe it could have been lent out for a mission and then get blown up? It seems to me that it's another case of Voyager not capitalizing on it's own story potential. Either that ship should have been used more, given the desperate needs of Voyager for "more" than Starfleet gave them before they got stranded, or maybe Neelix never ought to have owned a ship to begin with? On the other hand, the design they went with was no Delta Flyer, nor was it meant to be, so it's no surprise Neelix's ship stayed parked most of the series.
Every episode Janeway should have walked into the shuttlebay, ripped off a piece of Neelix's shuttle and flung it through the forcefield and the open shuttlebay doors until there was nothing left.
Given how many shuttlecraft Voyager lost over its journey, shuttlebay space was clearly not an issue.
I vote for "they should have used it more". Instead of the endless parade of destroyed shuttlecraft which just highlighted how little the writers cared about their premise, there should have been just two small ships available to them: Neelix's ship and the Delta Flyer. At least each of those ships has its own personality and function rather than the generic Federation shuttles which magically appear when needed by the plot.
Or they could have at least had Voyager obtain an industrial replicator, so they could explain why it had more shuttlecraft than one would expect. Torpedoes, too.
I don't recall Neelix being placed in indentured servitude so what right would Janeway have to seize his assets ? He was offered a berth on Voyager, he was free to come and go as he pleased. His ship was...his, and to be free to leave he'd need it available.
Didn't they use it once or twice? I seem to remember it being used in Workforce, when Neelix and Chakotay went to Quarra to look for the rest of the crew. They needed a ship that wasn't recognizably from the Federation.
They used it a few times. Why wouldn't you just park it onboard assuming there was room for it (which rightly or wrongly there did seem to be) rather than abandon it and leave it floating in space near Ocampa?
They should have used it more…It was an inconspicuous medium range vessel available from day one and they barely used it in the series. Perhaps they didn't because it had weak shields or too little maneuverability to be useful, but i seem to remember it fared OK the few times they used it. And yes, somehow they had space for a dozen of shuttles, the flyer and this ship…go figure! Pretty much agreed: they should have started with a full complement of shuttles and gradually lost almost all of them, remaining with the Flyer, Neelix's ship and little else…In fact Chakotai's remark at Paris' request to repair Alice should have underlined how much they needed support vessels by that point, not the opposite. But as usual the believability of Voyager's situation was stretched to the limit by a premise that hardly changed over the course of the seven years. Unpaid hangar rent?
Janeway wasn't a landlord so wouldn't have considered mooring costs with Neelix and if she tried he would have talked his way out of it Is his lucky charm in the engine room of his ship ever revealed? The stuffed insect that's seen as good luck in the engine room of a ship he mentions in End Game. Hope my memory isn't failing me here.
They even could have updated it with Federation technology (probably being significantly superior to what Neelix' vessel had) to make it more versatile and employ it more. In case Neelix really wanted to leave and they were afraid that Federation technology could fall in the hands of some aliens that shouldn't get it, they always could have retrofitted it to the original design.
Right. They bought Alice, after all. The ship had issues, but the principle was still sound. BTW, that episode PROVED that the crew had gotten their paws on an industrial replicator. Someone said Voyager had a FULL COMPLEMENT OF SHUTTLECRAFT. The only way that could happen is if they replaced the ones they had lost.