Only UPN would name their ship/show after a half mad engine of destruction which nearly destroyed the planet Earth after fragging a couple ships and a star base.
What would have improved Voyager?
- Thread starter arwag
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Reduce it to 4 or 5 seasons. 7 just seemed to drag out the inevitable "we're gonna try to get home but it won't be 'this' episode".
Reduce the cast to about 5 or 6 regulars. Having 9 requires the writers to create stories just to put the characters in to give the actors something to do (like Neelix after 'Fair Trade'). Either that or have the atrition rate of regulars very high.
All the major points have been addressed, like continuity, abundance of resources, etc.
I would like to have made the Kazon more badass, and not just a Klingon clone. Also, maybe have Janeway piss off a Kazon commander in the pilot, and he vows to hunt Voyager down, thus giving Voyager an ongoing enemy, similar to the Cylons chasing Galactica.
Character-wise I would've made Janeway younger, perhaps even the first officer of Voyager and the Caretaker kills the captain instead. That way Janeway would be thrust into the role and we'd see an up-and-coming captain instead of the experienced captains we always see (although Sisko started as a Commander, didn't he?). She would also have to deal with Chakotay a lot more, as he would have a lot more experience of commanding a ship.
I would ditch Tuvok, Kim & Kes, and make Neelix more of a Galen-type character (from Crusade).
Voyager would be more of a warship, like the Defiant, perhaps a failed Defiant-prototype. She would have a squadron of fighters assigned to her, which would make them very handy to have in the Delta Quadrant.
Season one would end with Chakotay conducting a mutiny, forcing Janeway into the airlock, ready to blow her into space.
Season two would end with Voyager forced to land on a planet and the crew forced to make a colony for themselves as they can't get back up.
Season three would end in Borg space, with Voyager under a Borg tractor beam and Janeway apparently assimilated.
Etc etc.
Reduce the cast to about 5 or 6 regulars. Having 9 requires the writers to create stories just to put the characters in to give the actors something to do (like Neelix after 'Fair Trade'). Either that or have the atrition rate of regulars very high.
All the major points have been addressed, like continuity, abundance of resources, etc.
I would like to have made the Kazon more badass, and not just a Klingon clone. Also, maybe have Janeway piss off a Kazon commander in the pilot, and he vows to hunt Voyager down, thus giving Voyager an ongoing enemy, similar to the Cylons chasing Galactica.
Character-wise I would've made Janeway younger, perhaps even the first officer of Voyager and the Caretaker kills the captain instead. That way Janeway would be thrust into the role and we'd see an up-and-coming captain instead of the experienced captains we always see (although Sisko started as a Commander, didn't he?). She would also have to deal with Chakotay a lot more, as he would have a lot more experience of commanding a ship.
I would ditch Tuvok, Kim & Kes, and make Neelix more of a Galen-type character (from Crusade).
Voyager would be more of a warship, like the Defiant, perhaps a failed Defiant-prototype. She would have a squadron of fighters assigned to her, which would make them very handy to have in the Delta Quadrant.
Season one would end with Chakotay conducting a mutiny, forcing Janeway into the airlock, ready to blow her into space.
Season two would end with Voyager forced to land on a planet and the crew forced to make a colony for themselves as they can't get back up.
Season three would end in Borg space, with Voyager under a Borg tractor beam and Janeway apparently assimilated.
Etc etc.
I saw the pilot to the fan SERIES Odyssey last night(the sequel to 7 years of Hidden frontier.). Well, I started it at 4 am, so I slept through some of the meat in the middle because my will tapped out, but I got the jist, that the guys writing it were seriously pissed at Voyager and they were redoing Caretaker.
Half the crew dead, third officer punk kid in charge separated from his husband by a whole galaxy, Romulan adviser running around in plain site suggesting pure evil, trapped in Andromeda with the story tapping in the pilot to the Kelvins from TOS who ran from Andromeda, meaning that they've actually googled their prediciment unlike some people.
What ferengi? There's ferengi in the Delta quadrant? Wow. How did that happen?
YOH, Voyager needed more main actors not less. Familiar faces. Not so much that everyone gets a whole issue focussed on them, but I did wait 5 years unfulfilled for the episode of Ally McBeal which would be all about Vonda Shepard (The singer in the bar.) and we found out what she really thought about those drunk lawyers.
Half the crew dead, third officer punk kid in charge separated from his husband by a whole galaxy, Romulan adviser running around in plain site suggesting pure evil, trapped in Andromeda with the story tapping in the pilot to the Kelvins from TOS who ran from Andromeda, meaning that they've actually googled their prediciment unlike some people.
What ferengi? There's ferengi in the Delta quadrant? Wow. How did that happen?
YOH, Voyager needed more main actors not less. Familiar faces. Not so much that everyone gets a whole issue focussed on them, but I did wait 5 years unfulfilled for the episode of Ally McBeal which would be all about Vonda Shepard (The singer in the bar.) and we found out what she really thought about those drunk lawyers.
I think people are getting too hung up on the technobabble bits of what Moore is saying - it's all made-up, you could come up with 101 babble reasons why the replicators don't work - the real point of what he is saying is that the show never came across as truthful to the audience. For example -
This is so true - it was all so cold and professional all the time - it's just unrealistic, people just don't act like!
and comments like this begger belief
This is so true - it was all so cold and professional all the time - it's just unrealistic, people just don't act like!
and comments like this begger belief
DS9 was all about a guy who ran a brothel. The episode where Jeffery Coombs tried to have Quark make Kira porn was hilarious... Was that a B story in Meridian? O, an Deanna was sure Reg was screwing a hologram of her, and Leah was sure Geordie was screwing a hologram of her. meanwhile the Doctor prescribed holosex for both Vorrik and Tuvok when they got their 7 year itchiness. Although Tuvokwas given his wife and Vorrik was offered a bevy of swim suit model s to gang bang... or did the Doctor seriously think that he was just going to have vanilia sex with only one of them? Which is probably what Kathy did upon the strict urging of the Doctor addressing loudly how well she needed to be banged till she for for got how to walk.
It's insane to think that they don't record everything that happens on the holodeck, although it didn't seem they had a visual feed to work from in that third season episode when Seska came back from the dead. there was a modesty filter that the holodeck could be monitored in a text based format.
He's such a pimp he makes penis's for other holograms if they only ask.
Drop all the Maquis crap. The forced conflict would have been even worse than quickly forgetting to make pointless references to it.
Drop all the conservation crap, until the ship is about to be destroyed.
Keep part of the crew in the stasis chambers in the life pods, or the transporter memory banks. The idea is to shorten the bite out of the life span.
Jennifer Lien had a lovely voice but Kes was a disaster. Nobody can figure why she wanted to spend her entire life on a starship going away from her home. The regular crew came to Delta Quadrant in less than seven minutes so they would naturally at some level think they could get home faster than seventy years. Kes did not have that experience to give her hope.
Leave Chakotay his little spiritual hallucinator gadget. I suppose UPN told them to drop that part of the character. But after they had to get out of the Maquis dead end and after Seska castrated him, losing the religion pretty much finished off the Chakotay character.
Drop the Seska arc. Leaving the Cardassian spy on board wasn't terribly interesting either but her machinations had no motivation other than innate evil. They certainly had nothing to do with getting home faster.
Drop Tom Paris. What kind of a name is Paris anyhow? Sounds like a pseudonym for Gary Stu.
Roxann Dawson was at least lively. But drop the half Klingon stuff and just make her bad tempered and in over her head because of staff shortages. Modern Klingons are completely stupid anyhow. But the idea that this little woman would aspire to master the idiotic frat house hijinks of the Klingons is unbelievable. (And Moore couldn't figure anything to do with Torres because he can't think straight about Klingons.)
The idea that Janeway was schizophrenic is really crazy since the character with two personalities was Seven of Nine. There should be a happy medium between barking like a dog and helpless femme. Play up the sibling rivalry with Kim.
Always remember that EMH is a comic character.
Drop all the conservation crap, until the ship is about to be destroyed.
Keep part of the crew in the stasis chambers in the life pods, or the transporter memory banks. The idea is to shorten the bite out of the life span.
Jennifer Lien had a lovely voice but Kes was a disaster. Nobody can figure why she wanted to spend her entire life on a starship going away from her home. The regular crew came to Delta Quadrant in less than seven minutes so they would naturally at some level think they could get home faster than seventy years. Kes did not have that experience to give her hope.
Leave Chakotay his little spiritual hallucinator gadget. I suppose UPN told them to drop that part of the character. But after they had to get out of the Maquis dead end and after Seska castrated him, losing the religion pretty much finished off the Chakotay character.
Drop the Seska arc. Leaving the Cardassian spy on board wasn't terribly interesting either but her machinations had no motivation other than innate evil. They certainly had nothing to do with getting home faster.
Drop Tom Paris. What kind of a name is Paris anyhow? Sounds like a pseudonym for Gary Stu.
Roxann Dawson was at least lively. But drop the half Klingon stuff and just make her bad tempered and in over her head because of staff shortages. Modern Klingons are completely stupid anyhow. But the idea that this little woman would aspire to master the idiotic frat house hijinks of the Klingons is unbelievable. (And Moore couldn't figure anything to do with Torres because he can't think straight about Klingons.)
The idea that Janeway was schizophrenic is really crazy since the character with two personalities was Seven of Nine. There should be a happy medium between barking like a dog and helpless femme. Play up the sibling rivalry with Kim.
Always remember that EMH is a comic character.
I don't know about anyone else, but one of the things I liked particularly about TNG and DS9 is that we got to know various alien races much better than we did any alien race in TOS. This started with the Klingons in TNG, of course, and culminated with the Bajorans and Cardassians in DS9. ST is science fiction, and a certain amount of technobabble can be way cool, but it's all for nothing if the characters don't work. Of course, ST is differentiated from other great science fiction sub-genres wherein there are no alien races (a lot of Asmiov's works, for instance) - so characters can differ from one another in really fundamental ways, and this is something that could have been exploited in a show like STV.
Voyager was trying to get home by traversing an incredible volume of space, a volume much, much larger than that occupied by the Federation, which itself was comprised of dozens of different races. If I'd been in charge, this is how I would have taken advantage of this:
Part of the show's bible would have included a statement to the effect of,
"Over the seven year arc of the show, the Voyager will pass through a volume of space that would contain dozens, if not hundreds of volumes comparable to the volume of the United Federation of Planets; some of these volumes will be occupied by similar federations, unions, conglomerates, empires, etc, of many species, while others will be occupied by a single species who expanded to occupy what was, for some reason, space empty of other intelligent species or who annihilated the other species they encountered. As Voyager passes through these volumes, we will get to know these species the way TNG and DS9 allowed us to get to know the Klingons, the Romulans, the Bajorans, the Cardassians, and races of the Dominion."
Every summer I would have wrangled the writers into a secluded location and said, "OK, people, this year we're gonna pass a couple of volumes equal to that of the Federation. Who occupies these volumes?".
So, every half season, I would have had a federation, union or empire, or some unitary species that would have been the centerpiece of, I don't know, three or four shows, so that we could really get a feeling for that species or federation (or union or whatever) species.
Sure, a few species might span the entire series, _e.g._ the Borg, the Vidiians, Species 8472, and the Hirogen Hunters. But for if I'd been in charge, I'd seen to it that we really got know, the way we did the Klingons and Romulans in TNG, and the Bajorans, Cardassians and the species of the Dominion in DS9, a couple species EVERY season of STV.
Anyway, that's how I would have improved Voyager.
Voyager was trying to get home by traversing an incredible volume of space, a volume much, much larger than that occupied by the Federation, which itself was comprised of dozens of different races. If I'd been in charge, this is how I would have taken advantage of this:
Part of the show's bible would have included a statement to the effect of,
"Over the seven year arc of the show, the Voyager will pass through a volume of space that would contain dozens, if not hundreds of volumes comparable to the volume of the United Federation of Planets; some of these volumes will be occupied by similar federations, unions, conglomerates, empires, etc, of many species, while others will be occupied by a single species who expanded to occupy what was, for some reason, space empty of other intelligent species or who annihilated the other species they encountered. As Voyager passes through these volumes, we will get to know these species the way TNG and DS9 allowed us to get to know the Klingons, the Romulans, the Bajorans, the Cardassians, and races of the Dominion."
Every summer I would have wrangled the writers into a secluded location and said, "OK, people, this year we're gonna pass a couple of volumes equal to that of the Federation. Who occupies these volumes?".
So, every half season, I would have had a federation, union or empire, or some unitary species that would have been the centerpiece of, I don't know, three or four shows, so that we could really get a feeling for that species or federation (or union or whatever) species.
Sure, a few species might span the entire series, _e.g._ the Borg, the Vidiians, Species 8472, and the Hirogen Hunters. But for if I'd been in charge, I'd seen to it that we really got know, the way we did the Klingons and Romulans in TNG, and the Bajorans, Cardassians and the species of the Dominion in DS9, a couple species EVERY season of STV.
Anyway, that's how I would have improved Voyager.
Michael Piller wanted to focus and deelop a few signature races but his attention was divided between Voyager and his other series-Legend.
So he wasn't there to push the issue. When Jeri Taylor got more control she didn't want to do that because she felt they were moving through space to get home and wouldn't be spending that much time in any given territory or region.
Another consideration she had was the cost of designing and developing the race's makeup costumes etc. Brannon Braga shared Jeri's opinion of more one-off species than spending too long on any one race.
So he wasn't there to push the issue. When Jeri Taylor got more control she didn't want to do that because she felt they were moving through space to get home and wouldn't be spending that much time in any given territory or region.
Another consideration she had was the cost of designing and developing the race's makeup costumes etc. Brannon Braga shared Jeri's opinion of more one-off species than spending too long on any one race.
What!?
What made TNG different from TOS?
What Made DS9 different for those two?
What made ENT different from the others that came before it?
TOS had a Russian & a Japanese man as part of the bridge crew. Guess what, no conflict.
TNG has a Klingon as a crew member, no conflict.
If you didn't get conflict from a Klingon, why would there be conflict from the Maquis, who were already Federation citizens? Even Sisko mentions in "The Maquis" how Federation citizens don't harm their own.
The point was: To reintergrate people that felt abandon by the Federation due to a treaty. Too show that both sides do get along for a greater good.
Why do you think they stated over & over again in every season about how Voyager was the most advanced starship in Starfleet to date? They told us all from the very beginning there wasn't going to be conflict or ongoing power supply issues.
Star Trek isn't about a dystopian future, it's about one were hope prevails. Even during the entire Dominion war and dealings with the Bajorians delt with Sisko's trials of hope & faith.
Because Trek echos theories and ideas started during the cold war. It was controversial to have a Russian, Japanese & Black person all together in harmony on a TV show. Many viewers expected conflict, just as we do now with the fictious Maquis. However, we never got it in any case. Roddenberry made Trek to show that peace and harmony can happen between people of different religious, political and racial back grounds. He wanted Trek to be about over coming adversity thru tolerance and peace. Voyager continues the idea he started by not having internal conflict onboard Voyager.
Berman worked side by side with Roddenberry all thru TNG until he passed away. Roddenberry taught Berman just what he wanted his Trek to become. Berman followed and kept Voyager to as close as Roddenberry wanted his Trek to be. I believe we the fans (thanks to DS9) have forgotten what the purpose of Trek was to be. Roddenberry didn't create Trek to be dark & gritty, he made it to teach morality & promote harmony.
Because there's a black woman stuck inbetween them?
Not having the ship self-regenerate >_>
less fillers
A more thought out way to bring 7 of 9 instead of "We need teh sex up"
less fillers
A more thought out way to bring 7 of 9 instead of "We need teh sex up"
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