Would the show have been better off without the Maquis?

[WoTe]

We know the Maquis were vastly underutilized. But was that component even for the best?

So many shortcomings stems from the producers/writer's desire to always lazily reach back into the alpha quadrant and do next to no compelling "world building" in the Delta Quadrant.

Think how much alpha quadrant was in the show. The Maquis. The 37s. The wormhole to the Romulan Captain. Federation Time ship & 20th Century earth adventure. The Ferengi from the Wormhole. Cardassian Spies and Cardassian Nukes. Barclay & all that. The Borg. Etcetera, etcetera.

This was always the crutch. The child never learned to walk on her own. A gimmick can carry an episode but nothing beyond that.

What if Voyager would have been forced early on to bring more Delta Quadrant crewmembers on board instead of having the Maquis as a ready made ersatz crew, who were basically presented as convenient 2nd rate Federation crewmembers with a passing familiarity with SF tech and protocol? It would have at least forced the writers to think where these characters came from, who they were, and what not.

Now, this can come across extremely weakly. DS9 had a lot of unmemorable aliens in the beginning. "Move Along Home" for instance, one of the weakest eps in Trek. Just like how the Ferengi was a half-baked concept in beginning TNG. But when DS9 was forced to be its own show in later seasons, it rose up to the challenge. And it all stemmed from world building which in turn gave rise to episodes.

Voyager never world-built. It actively ran away from that. Most episodes never arose organically from developments on the show, they were just a series of concept shows. Concepts often done before in Trek.

 

[hux]

Voyager started with good intentions. Sadly, the first world building they attempted involved the Kazon (terrible) and then a half-hearted attempt with the Vidians. These two didn't work (especially the Kazon) and they didn't bother trying again until the Hirogen (nothing new) and the Malon (oh dear).

Most of the interesting species they came up with ended up being one-off aliens that we didn't see much more of (Voth, Devore, etc). Why they chose to have the worst, most uninteresting species as recurring aliens is anyone's guess. Maybe they needed ongoing aliens to be one dimensional so that Voyager had a nice black & white conflict to deal with. Dunno.

Voyager and the words, "wasted potential" will forever go hand in hand.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

It would've been an interesting angle, they could've sparked dozens of mini-Federations on their journey home from all the benevolent races they met (surely not every species in the DQ is evil or out for power/technology). It would've fit in better with the ideals of the Starfleet, to seek out new life.

On the other hand, it might've been more interesting if they'd used an actual adversary as the other AQ crew onboard--such as the Romulans or even the Cardassians (both races have small scout ships that could've been swept away)--to give some actual sense of different sides and beliefs.

 

[Tosk]

it might've been more interesting if they'd used an actual adversary as the other AQ crew onboard--such as the Romulans or even the Cardassians

Good in theory, but my gut tells me they would have wasted that potential just as much as they did the Maquis.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

^ That is very true.

It's a shame really, VOY could've been something great, if they'd taken the time and given it some thought and better continuity. It will forever be the series I'm most disappointed in, as there was the chance do some really excellent things with it, but they just kept missing their mark.

 

[stardream]

I blame the network. Apparently the writers had plans but the powers that be quashed them.

 

[Terok Nor]

The main Maquis crew members began acting like Starfleet officers very soon after the pilot episode so as far as the likes of Chakotay and B'Elanna are concerned it made little difference if they were Maquis or not after a short time. The other Maquis such as Suder, Jonas, Chell and Seska provided more in the way of conflict but they were just guest stars. After building the Maquis up on TNG and DS9 the writers of Voyager really didn't do a whole lot with them. I often forgot the Maquis even existed.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Damn those PTB! ::shakes fist at the heavens::

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Maquis always irritated the shit out of me, so I'd say, YES.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm not sure if "better off" is the right term, but considering the Maquis aspect was so rapidly dropped, they could have done without it. The idea might have required some changes to the storyline, make Voyager a ship which already had some history, Janeway's been captain for years and characters like Chakotay and B'Elanna had only just transferred aboard, therefore you could still have newbies clashing with the old guard, though they'd have to reign in on certain things, like if B'Elanna had been a proper Starfleet officer she couldn't break a fellow officer's nose, or at least there'd be more consequences than we saw.

 

[Lynx]

The Maquis were an important part of the series. Without them, the series would have been much more tame.

 

[Anwar]

The Maquis conflict was never going to last long anyways, there wasn't enough life to it.

Farscape had most of its cast be from the area of space the show took place in, so they had built-in reasoning and connections to the are that allowed them to world-build. Voyager would've been better off doing the same and having the crew have lots of DQ aliens in it as well.

 

[stardream]

The Maquis conflict was never going to last long anyways, there wasn't enough life to it.

I posted about this in another thread. I wish there had been an episode/B plot where the Maquis would come to the realization that keeping up old animosities in the DQ was just not worth it. They were far from their 'real' enemies and what they needed to focus on was surviving. Some of them could have even gone through some kind of depression or sense of loss because they were so tied to the rebellion.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I like the idea of Voyager having to work side by side to people with different values who don't necessarily like them. Just, that's not what happened.

Voyager has a premise that inherently resists world building. It was a bit of a stretch that the Kazon were even able to follow them for the first two years. And if it weren't an AQ race, then they wouldn't have the same motivation to get home or much motivation to work with them. For a local race to work they would have had to be thousands of years away from home instead of 70 so they would need to be stationary.

Maybe it should have been Romulans.

 

[iMike]

I think UPN probably had a lot of constraints on the show runners. In the ENT Blu-Ray docs Berman and Braga talked about the network's constraints on that series, I'm sure VOY suffered to some extent for the same reason. Both shows should have been syndicated like TNG and DS9 and I think we would have seen greater creative diversity.

I kind of enjoyed the Pathfinder project storyline, but the inclusion of the Ferengi, extra Cardassians, a Romulan from the Alpha Quadrant (but in the past) ... some of these things were just a bit ridiculous.

My only real complaint about the Maquis is that they assimilated too quickly into the Starfleet crew. Couldn't that have been dragged out until the S1 Finale?