Why strip Voyager of its borg and alien tech enhancements?

[chrinFinity]

I don't know if it was a Christie Golden decision, Kirsten Beyer, or maybe pocket editors, but all the borg tech got ripped out of Voyager when it was refit.

From a real world standpoint, why was that editorial decision made, and by whom?

From an in-universe standpoint, it seems like a lost advantage.

 

[chrinFinity]

To clarify, I'm not talking about "futury" upgrades here, I'm talking about the Borg enhancements and the various alien technology integrations and upgrades that are implied to have taken place over the first Delta Quadrant years.

 

[Christopher]

As I recall, the in-universe reason was so that the tech upgrades could be studied by Starfleet, reverse-engineered, and integrated into future ships. And we have seen the payoff of that with quantum slipstream drive and transphasic torpedoes.

 

[chrinFinity]

As I recall, the in-universe reason was so that the tech upgrades could be studied by Starfleet, reverse-engineered, and integrated into future ships. And we have seen the payoff of that with quantum slipstream drive and transphasic torpedoes.

For sure, but it would make more sense to have kept them in situ and study Voyager as a working example. But then we wouldn't have access to Voyager for story purposes, I guess.

I wonder if any of the tech on Voyager would have turned into pixie dust at the conclusion of Destiny had it been left in?

 

[chrinFinity]

I've never fully understood the nebulous mechanics of the Caeliar conversion as it pertains to Borg props, ships, etc.

 

[Christopher]

For sure, but it would make more sense to have kept them in situ and study Voyager as a working example. But then we wouldn't have access to Voyager for story purposes, I guess.

After all the combat and chaos the ship had gone through over seven years without access to a drydock, it was probably a wreck and needed a thorough overhaul right down to the spaceframe before it would be ready to go back into service. Heck, probably any ship that had been in the field for seven years would be way overdue for having its components swapped out and upgraded anyway.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe Starfleet didn't want to risk leaving Borg technology integrated into a ship of the line, on the assumption that it might reactivate itself and assimilate the ship on its own?

 

[Idran]

I've never fully understood the nebulous mechanics of the Caeliar conversion as it pertains to Borg props, ships, etc.

If it was active, it was decomposed too; if it was inactive, it stayed as it was, but decomposed if activated.

 

[Enterprise1701]

What if at the time that the Caeliar dissolved the Borg Collective, there was some piece of Borg material trapped in a subspace fold or out of phase or something? Would the Caeliar's influence have reached that far?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

At the time of Voyager's refit, Starfleet was going through some heavy Borg paranoia, all but torturing Seven and Icheb because they thought they were Borg spies or something. They were probably paranoid that the Borg technology was going to send data to the Collective or take over the ship or something.

They probably wouldn't want Romulan or Dominion technology they don't completely understand on their ships either.

 

[JD]

I never really gave that much thought to this stuff. I know they took all of the non-standard stuff off of the ship to study and I didn't really think there was an ulterior motive.

 

[BobtheGunslinge]

Why do they never use transphasic torpedoes outside of the Destiy trilogy? For that matter, what made them transphasic?

 

[Christopher]

Why do they never use transphasic torpedoes outside of the Destiy trilogy? For that matter, what made them transphasic?

The reason they were held back against the Borg was to keep the Borg from adapting to them too quickly. Beyond that, I guess there just isn't a need for them in most cases, since they were specifically created to fight the Borg's defenses.

As for the explanation of the technobabble label, I recall that Dave and I both offered our own respective explanations in Destiny and Greater Than the Sum, then compared notes and tweaked them a bit to reconcile them. IIRC, it was something to do with being able to shift rapidly among multiple "phases" (in the sense used in "The Next Phase" and "Time's Arrow") and thus be able to pass intangibly through Borg defenses, shifting phase too rapidly for the defenses to adapt to.

So it's not that they're some kind of ultra-superweapon, just that they're a type of weapon tailored specifically to the needs of fighting the Borg and hard for the Borg to adapt to. So they wouldn't necessarily work as well in other combat situations. Maybe they're inefficient and difficult to make in large numbers and just generally aren't worth the effort elsewhere.

 

[Csalem]

Heck, photon torpedoes still appear in the novels even though we have had quantum torpedoes since at least FC.

 

[rahullak]

And I guess new tech is just more exciting than reusing old tech after a while. From a story enjoyment standpoint, that is.

 

[chrinFinity]

Regarding the torpedos, I prefer Christopher's explanation that they're harder to make and don't give much if any performance boost against non-Borg opponents, and therefore aren't worth it.

The armor I don't much care for because it makes no sense from a science standpoint.

I still think stripping all the unique borg and alien technology (not obtained via time travel) undoes the character development of the ship. It's disrespectful.

I think I also remember reading that they swapped the neural gel-packs with isolinear circuits too. That's a shame. Just because the gel-packs were alternately neglected and incompetently utilized by the show's writers doesn't mean something interesting couldn't have been done with them in the novels.

 

[Idran]

The armor I don't much care for because it makes no sense from a science standpoint.

That's why I hate warp drive too.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

The armor I don't much care for because it makes no sense from a science standpoint.

That's why I hate warp drive too.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In what way doesn't warp drive make sense, scientifically? It's a completely made-up technology.

 

[JD]

Regarding the torpedos, I prefer Christopher's explanation that they're harder to make and don't give much if any performance boost against non-Borg opponents, and therefore aren't worth it.

The armor I don't much care for because it makes no sense from a science standpoint.

I still think stripping all the unique borg and alien technology (not obtained via time travel) undoes the character development of the ship. It's disrespectful.

I think I also remember reading that they swapped the neural gel-packs with isolinear circuits too. That's a shame. Just because the gel-packs were alternately neglected and incompetently utilized by the show's writers doesn't mean something interesting couldn't have been done with them in the novels.

They took out the bio-neural gel-packs? That's a shame, I always thought they were a cool idea.