What If...Voyager

[Bry_Sinclair]

Following on from my What If thread in TNG, I thought about how I would do Voyager differently.

On the edge of the DMZ, the Maquis raider Liberty, commanded by Thomas Riker, fights against a Cardassian warship and manages to slip away into the Badlands, using the plasma eddies as a weapon against their attackers. Heading for a repair base they pick up a strange scanning beam and then a massive displacement wave, but before the ship can escape they are swept away.

The newly launched Intrepid-Class U.S.S. Voyager heads out on a recon mission of the Cardassian border, going through the Badlands in search of hostile forces. But in the midst of the plasma field, they too pick up a strong scanning beam and displacement wave and are pulled across space to the Delta Quadrant.

During the journey the Voyager takes heavy damage and casualties, included among them is Captain Kathryn Janeway. Just before she dies she promotes her new First Officer, Lieutenant Commander Neal Hawk (former conn officer from the Enterprise-D), to Captain with the order to get the crew home. Hawk, working with the survivors of the Voyager and the Maquis raider (including an undercover Starfleet officer), they must find a way to get home, possibly by using the same technology that brought them to the far flung region of space, controlled by the mysterious Caretaker.

The "What If..." crew:
Commanding Officer -- CAPT Neal Hawk -- Human/Male
First Officer -- LT CDR Tuvok -- Vulcan/Male
Chief Operations Officer -- LT (FC) Thomas Riker -- Human/Male
Chief Flight Control Officer -- LT JG Lyana Stadi -- Betazoid/Female
Chief Security Officer -- LT JG Sito Jaxa -- Bajoran/Female
Chief Engineering Officer -- LT JG (FC) B'Elanna Torres -- Human-Klingon/Female
Chief Science Officer -- ENS Harry Kim -- Human/Male
Chief Medical Officer -- DR Crusher -- Hologram/Female
Guide/Liaison -- Araan -- Alaxian/Male
Field Medic -- Kes -- Ocampan/Female

Sito Jaxa's disappearance at the end of TNG was a means of getting her into the Maquis as an undercover operative.
The EMH Programme is based on Head of Starfleet Medical, Commander Beverly Crusher.
Neelix has been replaced with a younger fitter character in his place (alien look still to be decided).
(FC) = Field Commission, for former Maquis personnel.

-Bry

 

[Michael]

So ... ultimately it's the same series, with a few names changed.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Well, the same crew, but a different spot in space. It would literally be TNG 2.0 as opposed to just being called that.

Hrmm... I would like the idea of Thomas Riker instead of Chakotay, but I don't like the idea of replacing so many of the Voyager crew with doubles of or minor characters in TNG. I much prefer learning new characters and trying to figure out how they will react.

With the crew list you just mentioned, I already know that based on the past 7 years.

 

[SpyOne]

Well, if we are just playing musical chairs with the cast, .... sure, I like Sito Jaxa.
And I'll change Tom Paris' name to Nick Locarno, since I have infinite budget and don't care who I have to pay for those rights. (Who negotiated that stupid contract, anyway?)
And I'll tie in to my post over in TNG by stating again that the new OPS ensign on Voyager is Wesley Crusher.

But instead I'd do some fiddling with the existing show: Make Tuvok the XO, with the Maquis starting out more as helpful passengers than full crew members.
Have people from many of the worlds Voyager visits come along for the ride. Have members of the crew occasionally decide to stay behind on some world they have visited. Have other ships decide to join Voyager on the journey.
Give Seven of Nine some integral plot-destroying ability (like Troi's empathy), so that when some producer says, "Hey, could we replace (Tuvok/Belanna/Chakotay/Harry/The Doctor) in this episode with Seven?" the writers/executive producer will have some ammo for saying "No.".
Have an executive producer who will say "No."
Brannon Braga wrote some of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, but apparently he needs a supervisor who can (and will) say to him, "No, Brannon, that's a stupid idea." He's just not Executive Producer material. IMO.

Get it OFF UPN. Yes, I know the folks who own the show own the network. Tell them that if they'll build a real network, with affiliates in all the major markets in the US, we'll consider it. And even then, the network can't have editorial control. Tell them that we have a model for success, and they can get on board on let us take it elsewhere, but we aren't going to "fix" what's working.

 

[Anwar]

Don't make it a flagship show, Trek works best when its left to its own devices and being a flagship show means too much executive meddling. Plus now the Producers can say "no" while before they couldn't.

No UPN, it should've been syndicated.

Don't make the show until 2000 or 2001. By then CGI would've gotten cheaper so it'd be easier to alter ship designs than it would've been in the late 90s.

Keep Jeri Taylor off the show.

Make the other crew Romulans instead of Maquis, since they really ARE the enemies of the Federation.

Have Neelix come with a crew of Talaxian mercenaries and not just himself.

There, now we have three different factions on one ship that have to survive.

Oh, and explain that they only need a few dozen people to work the ship. That way they can kill off nameless faceless extras in enemy attacks without having the audience ask how they can run the ship with people dying. Like how Galactica had thousands of nameless faceless extras to kill off in the Ragtag fleet without harming the Galactica crew at all.

OR, we can read this:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=101620

 

[M-Red]

Make the other crew Romulans instead of Maquis, since they really ARE the enemies of the Federation.

Have Neelix come with a crew of Talaxian mercenaries and not just himself.

There, now we have three different factions on one ship that have to survive.

Great concept. A triangular struggle between a SF crew and two other species would have given them so many more options, even if it retained the exact same cast and episodic format.


Having Romulan main characters would have been just awesome. That would allow us to finally explore Rommie culture...something we didn't even get in DS9. And having multiple Talaxians would have allowed them to develop the "weird alien" culture more --like the Ferengi in DS9 --while moving around that bright spotlight that was solely on Neelix.


Maybe a couple of main characters for both the Romulans and Talaxians...with a few of each in the background...


and they could have began with the exact same main cast.

1. Janeway
2. Beltran as Romulan XO
3. Paris
3. Tuvok
4. Kim
5. Roxanne Dawson as Romulan engineer
6. EMH
7. Neelix
8. Jennifer Lien as Talaxian female


That would have completely changed the entire dynamics of the show. I'm not a hater, but that "what if" makes me think it could have worked very well.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, basically I'd just do what Berman WANTED to do all along and not make VOY until DS9 was finished. The intervening years would give them time to iron out bugs in the plot and the characters instead of the rushed into production thing we got with VOY and ENT.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I like the idea of Tuvok being Janeway's first officer and the tension between the Starfleet and Maquis crew members stemming from what they consider to be Tuvok's betrayal after he is revealed as a infiltrator (like the pilot). Chakotay would be more in tune with his Native American heritage (this seemed to be abandoned after the first couple of seasons) and I would have used Nick Locarno from "The First Duty" as I believe was originally intended. I also highly recommend clicking on Anwar's alternate Voyager thread...its a pretty epic read.