And Starfleet would build an engine to only go one way why exactly?
Straight Up Niners: How Would You Have (re) Written ST: Voyager?
- Thread starter Photon
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And Starfleet would build an engine to only go one way why exactly?
It's a prototype that fails when they reach the other side, or it's drawn to the energy given off by the Caretaker's Array and this also blows it out, etc.
Some contrivance to start the show.
EDIT: What the show really needed was a plot beyond "Go home", because that would give them something to accomplish within the series itself instead of having only a premise that could only be accomplished by the very end.
Farscape's premise of "Crichton wants to go home" became secondary by the end of the 1st season when the plot began to revolve around the wormhole technology and the Scarran/Peacekeeper war.
NuGalactica's premise of finding Earth was secondary to the "How do you maintain order in a post-apocalypse world?" plot.
VOY needed another plot in addition to "Get home".
Some contrivance to start the show.
EDIT: What the show really needed was a plot beyond "Go home", because that would give them something to accomplish within the series itself instead of having only a premise that could only be accomplished by the very end.
Farscape's premise of "Crichton wants to go home" became secondary by the end of the 1st season when the plot began to revolve around the wormhole technology and the Scarran/Peacekeeper war.
NuGalactica's premise of finding Earth was secondary to the "How do you maintain order in a post-apocalypse world?" plot.
VOY needed another plot in addition to "Get home".
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That would have been a great show, Photon.
I would re-write Voyager by simply sticking to its original premise, namely:
That means no illiterate aliens of the week, no singing Bozo the clown holograms of the week, no holodeck soap operas of the week, etc.
Just an ongoing story based on the premise.
IMO The Void is far and away the best VOY episode because it is the (one of the?) only one that sticks to the premise, and it executes it very well.
Basically, I'd take The Void and make it series-long instead of just one episode.
^I disagree, the premise could last as long as they could write it. The fact that they may have given up on it after two years, says more about the writers than the premise. Remember some of the writers for the show came up with the premise. If they couldn't support that premise then they should never have gone with it.
I agree, they should have realized it wasn't a truly sustainable premise in the first place (someone one these boards told me that TOS was to have a similar premise to VOY, but Roddenberry himself realized it wasn't that good and dropped it).
Every other "Lost Ship" show worth remembering always either ditched their "Lost Ship" premise after 1 season or so, or always had another premise that truly drove the show.
VOY sorely needed that, and didn't have it.
Every other "Lost Ship" show worth remembering always either ditched their "Lost Ship" premise after 1 season or so, or always had another premise that truly drove the show.
VOY sorely needed that, and didn't have it.
And that only proved that the premise of a lost ship isn't good enough, because NuBSG was about a mobile civilization rather than one ship and dealt with how an entire civilization survives a Nomadic transition rather than one ship.
And it was only good for 2 seasons before the show fell apart, which further highlights the limits of the premise.
And the Cylons were lame villains who were only good as long as they never told us what they wanted to do, because Moore never bothered really thinking them out and when he did what we learned was lame.
And it was only good for 2 seasons before the show fell apart, which further highlights the limits of the premise.
And the Cylons were lame villains who were only good as long as they never told us what they wanted to do, because Moore never bothered really thinking them out and when he did what we learned was lame.
Overall, I think that Voyager was a great premise that was executed with only partial success.
(I only read the first two pages of posts, so if some of this has been said, my apologies.)
I think Voyager should have been more like Stargate Universe. The personal conflict should have been ramped up a bit. So here is an itemized list of my changes:
1. Have them start out for the first two of three episodes in the Alpha Quadrant. Make it more serialized and have Janeway and CHakotay establish a truly adversarial relationship. Imagine if Sherlock Holmes was paired off with Moriarty for the rest of their lives, and forced to rely on one another for survival. By the time they got to the Delta Quadrant, they would have been tried and true enemies.
2. I like the idea already put forth of keeping track of resources. It seems we were always running low on everything but never actually ran out of ANYTHING. The ship should have had more alien tech visible over the seasons.
3. Rely less on comedy and stop making "safe" episodes. Encourage the morality plays that made Janeway a great character. The show was just so neat and tidy. It should have been messier.
4. There should have been more of an overall arc besides getting home. Whether it was stopping an impending invasion, or preventing a catastrophe that would eventually affect the Federation. But there should have been more urgency.
5. DSN had a wealth of periphery characters. Characters that added depth and complexity to an already fantastic series and allowed for greater interpersonal relationships. Voyager had 150 odd (we never do get an accurate count, because the crew count always seems like the number was pulled out a wormhole.) crewmembers, but we only see crewmen for a season at a time. (Carey, season 1, Vorik, season 3, Tal Celes (sp?) season 6, etc.) Ensign Wildman was one of the few guest stars who made it all seven seasons. And she was more a means to get a kid on the ship.)
5. If you're going to cast a regular, then don't make them window dressing. Chakotay, Neelix, Kim, and Tuvok were criminally underutilizied. They're unpopular characters because the writers did little to nurture any kind of character growth.
Just my two cents (and then some)
(I only read the first two pages of posts, so if some of this has been said, my apologies.)
I think Voyager should have been more like Stargate Universe. The personal conflict should have been ramped up a bit. So here is an itemized list of my changes:
1. Have them start out for the first two of three episodes in the Alpha Quadrant. Make it more serialized and have Janeway and CHakotay establish a truly adversarial relationship. Imagine if Sherlock Holmes was paired off with Moriarty for the rest of their lives, and forced to rely on one another for survival. By the time they got to the Delta Quadrant, they would have been tried and true enemies.
2. I like the idea already put forth of keeping track of resources. It seems we were always running low on everything but never actually ran out of ANYTHING. The ship should have had more alien tech visible over the seasons.
3. Rely less on comedy and stop making "safe" episodes. Encourage the morality plays that made Janeway a great character. The show was just so neat and tidy. It should have been messier.
4. There should have been more of an overall arc besides getting home. Whether it was stopping an impending invasion, or preventing a catastrophe that would eventually affect the Federation. But there should have been more urgency.
5. DSN had a wealth of periphery characters. Characters that added depth and complexity to an already fantastic series and allowed for greater interpersonal relationships. Voyager had 150 odd (we never do get an accurate count, because the crew count always seems like the number was pulled out a wormhole.) crewmembers, but we only see crewmen for a season at a time. (Carey, season 1, Vorik, season 3, Tal Celes (sp?) season 6, etc.) Ensign Wildman was one of the few guest stars who made it all seven seasons. And she was more a means to get a kid on the ship.)
5. If you're going to cast a regular, then don't make them window dressing. Chakotay, Neelix, Kim, and Tuvok were criminally underutilizied. They're unpopular characters because the writers did little to nurture any kind of character growth.
Just my two cents (and then some)
Having read many early story documents relating to the original series, I find that scenario unlikely. Star Trek was never going to feature the ship being lost in the unknown.
I like this idea quite a bit, actually. Indeed, imagine if the cat and mouse game had been played out even longer between the characters -- say, an entire season -- only to end with them being forced together in the season one finale. Playing out the scenario over a number of episodes would have given the revelation that Tuvok was a Starfleet Officer more weight, too, and allowed the two crews to develop more personal resentment towards one another that could have paid off in seasons to come.
In the very least, it shouldn't have been in the business of presenting the resource issue as a pressing one (like the torpedo limit) if it was going to quickly ignore it. Either run with a premise or don't use it.
A thousand times yes. Since primary characters aren't likely to be killed off that often, developing a pool of recognizable secondary and tertiary characters would have allowed for the show's many red shirt deaths to have actual dramatic weight. It would have also left the ideas that the ship was a family and the crew pool small and limited more believable.
Definitely. Reducing the size of the principle cast in favor of more recurring players would have probably saved the show money, too. I wonder how much money the production ate due to certain regulars that either didn't appear in episodes, or were given very little to do?
Harvey,
glad to hear that someone else thinks the way I do.
One of things I love about the novel series Vanguard (which I am just getting into) is that the cast of characters doesn't correspond to the usual department head dynamic that has been a Star Trek prerequisite. I don't think we needed an Operations officer, primary helmsman, or morale officer. I am not saying get rid of those characters, but it seemed like they needed to plug regular actors into predetermined roles on the ship, and that took precedence over creating an overall character dynamic. And there is nothing saying a guest star in season one couldn't become a regular in season two or three.
Or, if you insist on a large cast, follow the way of SGU or B5, where you may go a few episodes without seeing certain characters, as they are not important to the plot at hand.
And I love the idea of dragging out the Alpha Quadrant plotline for an entire season. Then getting lost in the Delta Quadrant is no longer the primary plot, but an extension of the adversary dynamic developed over the first season. A short first season (say ten to thirteen eps) would have been fine as well. It seems like SyFy, for all of its faults, does produce better seasons of its series by limited season length. Following this logic, Voyager could have had a half to full season back home at the end of the series as well. I think it would have served for a LOT of character resolution to not be rushed to tie everything up in ninety minutes. Then we wouldn't have been subjected to the ill-advised and painful Chakotay/Seven no-mance, Tuvok's magical disorder than minifested overnight, or the Doc's model/arm candy wife.
But going back to the secondary cast idea, it would have been nice to see more Maquis who didn't integrate quite so well throughout the series. Besides the ones who were traitors or eaten by alien dinosaurs, and killed off early, we don't see much in the way of Maquis. Crewman Gerron could easily have been the "apprentice" character that Icheb became. Perhaps Mariah Henley could have been a little more rebellious than wearing a red headband. Although I did like the scenes in S2 where B'Elanna is dressing down Hogan for being as hot headed as she was when the show began.
glad to hear that someone else thinks the way I do.
One of things I love about the novel series Vanguard (which I am just getting into) is that the cast of characters doesn't correspond to the usual department head dynamic that has been a Star Trek prerequisite. I don't think we needed an Operations officer, primary helmsman, or morale officer. I am not saying get rid of those characters, but it seemed like they needed to plug regular actors into predetermined roles on the ship, and that took precedence over creating an overall character dynamic. And there is nothing saying a guest star in season one couldn't become a regular in season two or three. Or, if you insist on a large cast, follow the way of SGU or B5, where you may go a few episodes without seeing certain characters, as they are not important to the plot at hand.
And I love the idea of dragging out the Alpha Quadrant plotline for an entire season. Then getting lost in the Delta Quadrant is no longer the primary plot, but an extension of the adversary dynamic developed over the first season. A short first season (say ten to thirteen eps) would have been fine as well. It seems like SyFy, for all of its faults, does produce better seasons of its series by limited season length. Following this logic, Voyager could have had a half to full season back home at the end of the series as well. I think it would have served for a LOT of character resolution to not be rushed to tie everything up in ninety minutes. Then we wouldn't have been subjected to the ill-advised and painful Chakotay/Seven no-mance, Tuvok's magical disorder than minifested overnight, or the Doc's model/arm candy wife.
But going back to the secondary cast idea, it would have been nice to see more Maquis who didn't integrate quite so well throughout the series. Besides the ones who were traitors or eaten by alien dinosaurs, and killed off early, we don't see much in the way of Maquis. Crewman Gerron could easily have been the "apprentice" character that Icheb became. Perhaps Mariah Henley could have been a little more rebellious than wearing a red headband. Although I did like the scenes in S2 where B'Elanna is dressing down Hogan for being as hot headed as she was when the show began.
I do agree that the show should have had another series arc beyond the "Go Home" one that they could never accomplish or the show would be over.
And the shorter seasons, easier to keep things straight and do arcs when there are fewer episodes.
You're spot on with the Maquis, they should have been established better before they became the second crew for VOY because the Maquis just weren't that developed before the show.
If they wanted the second crew to be a proper foil to the Fleeters, they either needed to develop the Maquis more beforehand, use Romulans, or have the second crew be random DQ aliens that were on the Array.
The Primary cast should have been smaller, 5 or so characters. The rest would be recurring secondaries.
And the shorter seasons, easier to keep things straight and do arcs when there are fewer episodes.
You're spot on with the Maquis, they should have been established better before they became the second crew for VOY because the Maquis just weren't that developed before the show.
If they wanted the second crew to be a proper foil to the Fleeters, they either needed to develop the Maquis more beforehand, use Romulans, or have the second crew be random DQ aliens that were on the Array.
The Primary cast should have been smaller, 5 or so characters. The rest would be recurring secondaries.
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