What would have improved Voyager?

[Anwar]

The original idea was sound, there wasto be a 10 episode character arc for the char to slowly de-borg until she's more human looking and more character development as well.

But UPN hijacked the idea, said "make her sexier and get rid of that Borg look immediately" nd told them to stick her in a catsuit.

 

[DumbDumb2007]

a different captain

 

[Malcom]

Ezri said:
The parents of the crew of the USS Voyager used birth control

I hear someone from the DS9 board calling your name....

 

[Ezri]

Malcom said:

Ezri said:
The parents of the crew of the USS Voyager used birth control

Whats wrong with it. If the parents of the crew used birth control we would have a different crew right
I hear someone from the DS9 board calling your name....

 

[Guy Gardener]

Ah, but there would have been different terrorists too, if they count as crew.

Jeri was way sexier as a Borg.

 

[Ezri]

jeri sexier as a Borg ... was she sexy in the first place?

 

[Candlelight]

Out of interest, do we ever have any "what would improve DS9?" threads? Or is it just Voyager is perceived as so bad by other Trek fans that we seem to get it lots?

 

[Brennyren]

exodus said:

Brennyren said:

This is how I see it: you can justify the lack of conflict and the lack of any real desperation on Voyager any way you like, but at the end of the day, the question has to be: if there is no conflict amongst the crew, if there is no desperation in Voyager's situation, then what, exactly, is it that distinguishes VOY from every other Star Trek series? And the answer, I think, is "not much."

What!?

What made TNG different from TOS?

Political correctness, for one thing.

Seriously? Well, they operated much more in "settled" space and less on the frontier. They were more answerable to Starfleet. They were often described as the "flagship" of Starfleet, which meant that they were more often called on to act as diplomats. Come to think of it, they were somewhat more likely to use diplomacy as the solution to a problem. (Which is not for one minute to suggest that Kirk & Co. were incapable of diplomacy, of course, but that, if memory serves, they defaulted to more action-oriented solutions.)

What Made DS9 different for those two?

Given their location (on a station rather than on a ship), problems tended to come to them, rather than the reverse. Also because of the primary location, Sisko had less control over every element under his command than did ships' captains. Non-Federation aliens tended to play a bigger role, and to be more oppositional. Religion played a much larger role, and even received a certain degree of respect. People had relationships that lasted more than one episode. Oh, and there was a major ongoing WAR.

(Imagine what I could come up with if I were actually a Niner!)

What made ENT different from the others that came before it?

Not nearly enough, if you ask me. But then, I'm no ENT fan.

TOS had a Russian & a Japanese man as part of the bridge crew. Guess what, no conflict.

Why should there have been? Russia's war with Japan happened 400 years before TOS.

TNG has a Klingon as a crew member, no conflict.

Worf would hardly have been assigned to a Federation starship if he couldn't work with humans. But it's inaccurate to say that there was no conflict. More than once, Worf's preferences for warrior-style solutions put him at odds with his crewmates. More than once, Worf found his loyalty to the Federation conflicted with his loyalty to the race he was born to. And do you remember the episode where Worf refused to donate some genetic whatsis to save the life of a Romulan, simply because he was a Romulan and Worf was a Klingon? Worf might have been a Federation officer, but he was anything but a tame Klingon-in-forehead-only.

If you didn't get conflict from a Klingon,

As I believe I've demonstrated, you're arguing from a false premise here.

why would there be conflict from the Maquis, who were already Federation citizens?

They're all citizens? All of them? Every last one of them? In TNG's "Journey's End," the Federation citizens who wanted to stay in the DMZ had to renounce their citizenship, IIRC.

Well, let me see:

MAQUIS: Your people abandoned ours to the tender mercies of the Cardassians. FLEETERS: If you didn't like living in the DMZ, why did you go to war instead of just moving out?

FLEETERS: Our ship, our rules. MAQUIS: Partly our ship too, now. If we never took Fleet training or Fleet oaths or signed up to be part of Starfleet, howcum we have to do everything the same as you? Plus which, has it dawned on you that maybe we're better at surviving in hostile space than you?

FLEETERS: We're professional service people, and we think like them. MAQUIS: We're mostly civilians, and we think like civilians. We only ended up in our Fleet because we saw a pressing need.

FLEETERS: We like to explore. MAQUIS: We're not really into that. Can we take a straighter route home?

Even Sisko mentions in "The Maquis" how Federation citizens don't harm their own.

With all respect to Ben, I think that's more of an ideal than a fact. BTW, would this be the same Ben Sisko who poisoned the atmosphere of a planet against its own human inhabitants, simply to catch one guy he was really ticked off at?

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.

Except that we never saw them being reintegrated. Except for the occasional "Maquis episode" and the occasional (usually Maquis) "bad apple," they were completely integrated into the crew by episode three. We should have seen how it happened, instead of being presented with it as an accomplished fact.

Why do you think they stated over & over again in every season about how Voyager was the most advanced starship in Starfleet to date?

Do you know, I watched every episode of VOY from "Caretaker" to "Endgame," and I don't particularly remember this. In fact, I remember some "improvements" like the gelpacks initially causing more trouble than they solved. And even state-of-the-art technology is going to run into some problems when it's seven years away from maintenance yards.

They told us all from the very beginning there wasn't going to be conflict or ongoing power supply issues.

They who, and when did they tell us this?

If no scarcity, then why replicator rations? Why did Neelix recommend a mess hall to cut down on replicator use? Why foraging expeditions in early episodes?

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.

Some of which he failed, IIRC.

And I'm not rooting for Trek to become dystopian. What I would have liked to see was a situation in which the Trekkish idealism was challenged and prevailed. The fact of the matter is, on VOY that idealism was never really tested. Voyager's crew were, for the most part, "saints in paradise" (to borrow another phrase from DS9), which as you may recall is an easy thing to be.

Brennyren

 

[misskim86]

Year of Hell said:
Out of interest, do we ever have any "what would improve DS9?" threads? Or is it just Voyager is perceived as so bad by other Trek fans that we seem to get it lots?

DS9 was the best show of any Trek series.so no there are no real "what would improved ds9" threads, atleast no serious ones.

 

[Eminence]

Brennyren said:

exodus said:

Eminence said:
^^Well I meant more for bartering for supplies etc, but you're right; they could make many of the repairs they needed. People forget that this is a FEDERATION ship, a STAR TREK show, and one of the premises of Star Trek is that humanity has evolved by such leaps and bounds technologically that many material concerns have been overcome or solved. It ain't like they need to mine for oil to run their car; the Federation had developed renewable energy technology. So, whatever adjustments they might have had to make now that they were away from the Federation, would still have to be coupled with the fact they were still a Federation vessel with all of the Federation's technology at their disposal.

Exactly.

Just like there was never going to be any major conflict between the Maquis crew & the Starfleet one. They're both citizens of the Federation. We don't fight our own, that was all explained in DS9's "The Maquis pt.1&2". The fight was with the Cardassians because the Central Government was supplying weapons to both sides. It started in DS9's Circle Trilogy .

The Cardassian Central Command was secretly supplying the Bajorians living the the Demiliterized Zone with weapons. They did it to give them an excuse to supply Cardassian citizens with weapons to fight and harrass the Federation citizens living there too. When the Federation citizens(Maquis) fought back, it finally gave Cardassia a reason to eliminate those people living on their side of the Zone. The Cardies were always the enemy of the Maquis not the Federation.

This is how I see it: you can justify the lack of conflict and the lack of any real desperation on Voyager any way you like, but at the end of the day, the question has to be: if there is no conflict amongst the crew, if there is no desperation in Voyager's situation, then what, exactly, is it that distinguishes VOY from every other Star Trek series? And the answer, I think, is "not much."

To amplify: What is the point of combining Maquis and Starfleet crews if (except, of course, for the annual "Maquis episode") everybody gets along just fine from the get-go? Might as well make it an all-Starfleet crew in that case. And what is the point of stranding Voyager away from its chain of command and its supply lines if a) being away from the chain of command isn't going to change the way the ship is run (they're still true-blue Starfleet) and b) the crew is not going to have to find any alternate sources of supplies? Might as well leave them in the Alpha Quadrant.

What is the point of introducing differences in the premise if they're not going to have any effect in the execution? Again, I say: not much. Everything that could and should have made VOY daring and unique was frittered away in favor of everything that made it safe and familiar -- and that's a real shame.

One thing I have often wondered about society is when and where in our history did "being different" become such an important metric of being "good", or "worthwhile, or "of quality"??!! Historically, the importance of being different was passionately defended against forces of hegemony, against forces of universalization and normalization, because at the time, they sought to paint "different" as "inferior, less important". It was vital to defend differences so as to ensure equality WITH plurality in our society.

But somewhere along the way, what was "regular", what was "usual" or "ideal", started to become attacked, for not being "different enough". A whole new force of universalization came to be, only this time, being different was considered properly normal. And when these agents of "difference" began such an attack on the fold, they too began perpetuating the same injustice to which they cried foul before.

It is a sad turn of events in our sociology, and it is this same sort of attack that I see from Brennyren now, against Star Trek Voyager. Voyager was an exploration, an Exam of Starfleet Ideals. The point of the show was to display what can be accomplished when the crew does their level best to maintain those ideals--and boy did they do a great job. One other thing to note also is that...If in fact your ideals are really and truly strong, then they probably won't come into question all that much! Usually people who end up in moral conundrums tend to be less firm in the belief of their morals to begin with. Maybe Sisko's loyalty to the Starfleet way and the Federation's ideals just wasn't as strong as Janeway's?


You draw allusions to DS9, but remember this: DS9 had a war going on. Much of DS9's "differences" from other ST series that you cite are a direct result of that war storyline--take that out, and DS9 is pretty much like any other ST show--watch one of the non-war episodes (early Seasons, for example) to see evidence of this. For you to expect then, the same level of "difference" from the Federation ideal on Voyager is a bit silly -- Voyager, obviously, couldn't wage war against an entire quadrant! Further, I for one, would hope that humans wouldn't devolve into the type of moral ambiguity seen on DS9 just because they were far from home?!! I think our ideals are made of much sterner stuff.

 

[JoeZhang]

But they were never called upon to defend those ideas - that's the whole problem with the series! Sure there was the odd bit of hand waving but there is never any serious attempt to look at any struggle of ideals.

It was also absurd that people who had turned their back on star fleet (at least a couple were deserters) would just put on the uniform and suck it up.

Voyager just didn't ring true, that's the problem with it - there is no emotional truth to the series or the development of the characters (what little developed occurred for many of them) on it.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, I think the best thing that could have improved VOY was for the series to come much later, probably just as DS9 was wrapping up, and to be in first-run syndication rather than on UPN.

But things that I would have done differently:

1. The ship wouldn't be in the Delta Quadrant but in a very distant part of the Alpha Quadrant so far from Federation space that you really get the same effect of it being the only ship out there. The crew wouldn't be trying to get home, but they would get homesick now and then. There would be Klingon and Romulan ships in the region too, but only one of each with reoccuring characters.

2. The XO would have been a woman, and yes, I would have cast a young voluptuous type in the role as simply a physical counterpart to Janeway in the same way Riker was so taller and younger than Picard.

3. No Maquis. It would have been an all-Starfleet crew from the very beginning. There would be occasional conflicts between characters though.

4. No Borg. I know UPN loves 'em, but the idea that a single Intrepid-class ship can do what 40 starships couldn't just strikes me as funny...

5. No forgettable aliens of the week. There would only be about four or five alien races in the region of space the Voyager would encounter on a regular basis. Any other alien races would be Human, Vulcan, Andorian, etc. Let the major conflict be about a new hostile alien race coming in to take over the entire region and the Voyager organizing a reluctant interplanetary coalition to stop them.

6. No Neelix. No Kes. No Seven-of-Nine (the aforementioned female XO would serve as the show's reguired sex object).

 

[Ezri]

misskim86 said:

Year of Hell said:
Out of interest, do we ever have any "what would improve DS9?" threads? Or is it just Voyager is perceived as so bad by other Trek fans that we seem to get it lots?

DS9 was the best show of any Trek series.so no there are no real "what would improved ds9" threads, atleast no serious ones.

Hold it ... there is why Ezri Dax sucks threads

 

[exodus]

Brennyren said:

exodus said:

Brennyren said:

This is how I see it: you can justify the lack of conflict and the lack of any real desperation on Voyager any way you like, but at the end of the day, the question has to be: if there is no conflict amongst the crew, if there is no desperation in Voyager's situation, then what, exactly, is it that distinguishes VOY from every other Star Trek series? And the answer, I think, is "not much."

What!?

What made TNG different from TOS?

Political correctness, for one thing.

Seriously? Well, they operated much more in "settled" space and less on the frontier. They were more answerable to Starfleet. They were often described as the "flagship" of Starfleet, which meant that they were more often called on to act as diplomats. Come to think of it, they were somewhat more likely to use diplomacy as the solution to a problem. (Which is not for one minute to suggest that Kirk & Co. were incapable of diplomacy, of course, but that, if memory serves, they defaulted to more action-oriented solutions.)

What Made DS9 different for those two?

Given their location (on a station rather than on a ship), problems tended to come to them, rather than the reverse. Also because of the primary location, Sisko had less control over every element under his command than did ships' captains. Non-Federation aliens tended to play a bigger role, and to be more oppositional. Religion played a much larger role, and even received a certain degree of respect. People had relationships that lasted more than one episode. Oh, and there was a major ongoing WAR.

(Imagine what I could come up with if I were actually a Niner!)

What made ENT different from the others that came before it?

Not nearly enough, if you ask me. But then, I'm no ENT fan.

TOS had a Russian & a Japanese man as part of the bridge crew. Guess what, no conflict.

Why should there have been? Russia's war with Japan happened 400 years before TOS.

TNG has a Klingon as a crew member, no conflict.

Worf would hardly have been assigned to a Federation starship if he couldn't work with humans. But it's inaccurate to say that there was no conflict. More than once, Worf's preferences for warrior-style solutions put him at odds with his crewmates. More than once, Worf found his loyalty to the Federation conflicted with his loyalty to the race he was born to. And do you remember the episode where Worf refused to donate some genetic whatsis to save the life of a Romulan, simply because he was a Romulan and Worf was a Klingon? Worf might have been a Federation officer, but he was anything but a tame Klingon-in-forehead-only.

If you didn't get conflict from a Klingon,

As I believe I've demonstrated, you're arguing from a false premise here.

why would there be conflict from the Maquis, who were already Federation citizens?

They're all citizens? All of them? Every last one of them? In TNG's "Journey's End," the Federation citizens who wanted to stay in the DMZ had to renounce their citizenship, IIRC.

Well, let me see:

MAQUIS: Your people abandoned ours to the tender mercies of the Cardassians. FLEETERS: If you didn't like living in the DMZ, why did you go to war instead of just moving out?

FLEETERS: Our ship, our rules. MAQUIS: Partly our ship too, now. If we never took Fleet training or Fleet oaths or signed up to be part of Starfleet, howcum we have to do everything the same as you? Plus which, has it dawned on you that maybe we're better at surviving in hostile space than you?

FLEETERS: We're professional service people, and we think like them. MAQUIS: We're mostly civilians, and we think like civilians. We only ended up in our Fleet because we saw a pressing need.

FLEETERS: We like to explore. MAQUIS: We're not really into that. Can we take a straighter route home?

Even Sisko mentions in "The Maquis" how Federation citizens don't harm their own.

With all respect to Ben, I think that's more of an ideal than a fact. BTW, would this be the same Ben Sisko who poisoned the atmosphere of a planet against its own human inhabitants, simply to catch one guy he was really ticked off at?

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.

Except that we never saw them being reintegrated. Except for the occasional "Maquis episode" and the occasional (usually Maquis) "bad apple," they were completely integrated into the crew by episode three. We should have seen how it happened, instead of being presented with it as an accomplished fact.

Why do you think they stated over & over again in every season about how Voyager was the most advanced starship in Starfleet to date?

Do you know, I watched every episode of VOY from "Caretaker" to "Endgame," and I don't particularly remember this. In fact, I remember some "improvements" like the gelpacks initially causing more trouble than they solved. And even state-of-the-art technology is going to run into some problems when it's seven years away from maintenance yards.

They told us all from the very beginning there wasn't going to be conflict or ongoing power supply issues.

They who, and when did they tell us this?

If no scarcity, then why replicator rations? Why did Neelix recommend a mess hall to cut down on replicator use? Why foraging expeditions in early episodes?

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.

Some of which he failed, IIRC.

And I'm not rooting for Trek to become dystopian. What I would have liked to see was a situation in which the Trekkish idealism was challenged and prevailed. The fact of the matter is, on VOY that idealism was never really tested. Voyager's crew were, for the most part, "saints in paradise" (to borrow another phrase from DS9), which as you may recall is an easy thing to be.

Brennyren

DS9's "the Maquis 1&2" explain how the Maquis are still comsidered Federation citizens. If yoi live in the US and move to France, your personality & values don't change. The Maquis still had Fedration values. Dukat even told them they weren't going to make any progress against the Cardassians until they abandon their Federation values and learn to fight dirty. Eddington changed that by attacking Starfleet ships & poisoning planets.

"Caretaker", "Innocence", "Parallax", "Timeless", "Relitivity", "Future's End" to name a few all explain either how, why or mention how Voyager is the most advanced ship in Starfleet to date. Saving on use of the replicator for food and clothes allow energy and material to be used in other areas they really needed it, like ship repair which they showed them doing in one ep. when the ship was landed on a planet surface. Food and some medical supplies don't stay fresh forever. Material has to be replentished, even replicators have to be restocked for time to time. That's part of the job Neelix had(they asked him about inventory twice during the series)

Picard granted Worf the right to say "no" when it came to donating to the Romulan. He didn't like it but it was Worf's right under the law. Just like Picard granted Worf the right under Klingon religion to commit suicide when he back was broken. Picard only asked that Worf not perform Klingon ceremonies while during duty shifts.

I guess B&B felt that after watching both TNG & DS9, that they didn't need to hold our hands and lead us thru detail after detail. They figured that since many Trek fans nitpick every damn thing, they'd understand how the replictors were used in ship repair or why there was no conflict between crews. Besides, if the Maquis weren't going to agree with Starfleet rules, where the hell were they going to go?

 

[misskim86]

I think what people feel is that if they didn't bother having any problems between the maqui crew and Star Fleet crew, why the heck did they even bother?

 

[Ezri]

misskim86 said:
I think what people feel is that if they didn't bother having any problems between the maqui crew and Star Fleet crew, why the heck did they even bother?

True, the maqui and star fleet crew worked so well it was a pointless topic after the first season. Think they had to move away from the maqui as they were so pointless in DS9. It is a little strange that the last maqui was on Voyager as DS9 said they were all killed.

 

[JoeZhang]

But it goes deeper than that - they get stuck out there for 7 years and people aren't getting sick of the sight of each other? They still all act in that stiff formal way that they did in the first season - it's just doesn't ring true for people to act like that, that's why it made no sense to me - nobody seems to have an inner life that rings true.

It doesn't help that I could never find a reason why the crew would follow Janeway to the bathroom let alone across the universe.

 

[startrekwatcher]

misskim86 said:

Year of Hell said:
Out of interest, do we ever have any "what would improve DS9?" threads? Or is it just Voyager is perceived as so bad by other Trek fans that we seem to get it lots?

DS9 was the best show of any Trek series.so no there are no real "what would improved ds9" threads, atleast no serious ones.

That isn't true. I enjoyed DS9 but I wasn't oblivious to its weaknesses and flaws. And that sort of attitude is why a lot of fans think Niners are a bit full of themselves and their show.

DS9 had issues--Jadzia was dull and mishandled, it had a problem with including weak episodes in its arc hurting the momentum, the Ferengi comedies were cringe-worthy, the romance episodes were mostly bad, the show did attempt to have long term romantic relationships but most weren't handled well(Worf/Jadzia, Ezri/Bashir, Zek/Moogie etc), the Klingon conflict was pretty much wasted in season four, season three was an uneven mess, season one was just as weak as some of the weakest Trek seasons, interesting storylines never go anywhere.

DS9 had continuity issues. Sisko's dad is dead then alive, it was the Kressari smugling weapons to Circle not the race they mentioned in the Maquis two parter, they forgot the MU had a cloaking device to name a few.

 

[Ezri]

Well if they removed Janeway as the Captain, who would be next?

Sure the characters could fight it out to control the ship. It is just lame to keep on fighting without someone being killed. It would just be as lame to capture someone and place him in the brig ... they did that with one character and he got so lame they had to let him die. If it was an all out fight to control the ship, there would be so few characters that the show would be pointless.

Who would want to watch the crew of a ship turn on themselves and destroy each other? If that is the way it was going to be, one or two seasons before being cancelled

 

[exodus]

JoeZhang said:
But it goes deeper than that - they get stuck out there for 7 years and people aren't getting sick of the sight of each other? They still all act in that stiff formal way that they did in the first season - it's just doesn't ring true for people to act like that, that's why it made no sense to me - nobody seems to have an inner life that rings true.

Soldiers stationed over in Iraq get by.

Tom, Be'Lanna or Harry couldn't be station onboard the Enterprise and get away with talking back to the Captain or the mischief Tom did with Harry tampering with Tuvok's religious holo-program. Besides, the senior staff members are still trained Starfleet military. They're supposed to set an example for the rest of the crew. Senior members within our own military don't act up or out of line just because they've been gone from home for years. These are the types of events they have been trained for.

Holodecks are designed onboard Starfleet vessels for stress relief. They are the 24th century's answer to Bob Hope & the USO.