Were the gel packs a bad idea? They were supposed to be superior technology, but they had no real backups and could shut down if someone brought cheese on to the ship. They seem like a step back for a starship.
Were the gel packs a bad idea?
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
The fact that you put obviously experimental technology that's crucial to a starship's normal functioning without any backup is idiotic at best.
Nevermind how green slime is supposed to process computer information more efficently even though those things are as big as a modern laptop.
^^^ and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. Cuz it's true. Excellent.
Anyways, bio-neural circuitry, okay I can see that as an interesting idea. How gel packs were featured on VOY is a whole other thing.
And really, did the computers on Voyager seem to perform any better than those on Enterprise-D or -E or any other starship? What was the difference? What improvement? It seemed to make little difference in terms of practical use by the crew.
Maybe it wasn't supposed to be better or an improvement... just different.
During the pilot, they made a big point to state that the bioneural gel packs were more efficent and computing data. They shown for the first time in Learning Curve, to be giant ziplock baggies of green slime and apparently limited in quantity and vulnerable to Talaxian cooking.
The only other time I recall them popping up was that season 7 episode where Voyager was trapped in alternate times in different sections, and Janeway and Chakotay had to zap the neural packs with technobabble problem solving hyposprays.
I think a starship with a cheese allergy is a hilarious idea. But in real life it'd get a LOT of Starfleet's designers fired.... probably a better fit for Moya than Voyager.
But still why was there no backup system? Even a ship that isn't stuck in the DQ could get stranded and if something as simple as cheese can cause a system wide failure, not having a backup is suicidal.
Seriously Voyager seems like it was designed by a mad man.
Been awhile since I watched Learning Curve, but they only had so many spare gel packs and I think Chakotay said they didn't have what they needed to swap it out to isoleniar chips.
So there was no guidelines drawn up against potential microorganism that could damage the ship?
The gel packs I thought at FIRST were going to be some cool new technology that made Voyager's computers more advanced...except for theirs being exactly the same as any other ship's by all indication and being susceptible to many ailments and dangers exclusive to them.
So, we have a whole new gaggle of cons, and not a single observable pro that normal computers don't also have. I have to wonder what genius in-universe thought these were a good idea.
So, we have a whole new gaggle of cons, and not a single observable pro that normal computers don't also have. I have to wonder what genius in-universe thought these were a good idea.
I suspect the original idea was for Voyager to have a sentient computer, much like the old Enterprise had in Diane Duane's early novels. How else would faster, smarter computing make ANY difference when the computers were already so capable in TNG?
I suspect they quickly realized the doc filled the crew's AI quota and the idea never developed. Or maybe it's because of this bio-neural stuff that Voyager's holograms were indistinguishable from real people?
I suspect they quickly realized the doc filled the crew's AI quota and the idea never developed. Or maybe it's because of this bio-neural stuff that Voyager's holograms were indistinguishable from real people?
The computers on Voyager did seem to hold far more than than any computer depicted on TNG or DS9. "Kiloquads" were the largest data-related unit mentioned before VGR started talking about megaquads and gigaquads regularly. I can only imagine that the bioneural gel packs contributed to the rapid increase in quad capacity over less than a decade.
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