Slightly OT:Rewrite Voyager

[thethinker]

Rewrite Voyager so that it rates up there with the three previous ST with these rules
1. Crew must stay the same
2. Voyager must be stranded in the Delta Quadrant
3. There must be a GOOD reason for it getting stranded and another for not getting home right away.
4. Voyager must be stranded at least two seasons.
5. No PIS at least on a grand scale.

[Adam Safran]

With Kes or Seven?

[thethinker]

With Kes or Seven?

Certainly. You can have Kes survive more then one year and even get rid of the stupidity that she dies so young it is doubtful her species could develop past the Stone Age.

[shades of eternity]

Let's start with one simple change.

Instead of Voyager, make the Maquis ship be the one that survived.

Suddenly it's Janeway screaming for Chakotays help and showing what a bumbling nincompoop she was.

Now if that's not possible, let's start with some basics.

1. Did anybody know where the ship was week after week. I didn't. There was no way to show how far they had to go, and what they had to travel to. A web page would have been a nice touch, and a descent map would have seriously help show how @#$#@$ the team was.

2. Make Chakotay the Robert E. Lee character he was supposed to be. Polite, charming, but completely ruthless when his family is at stake (take a page from Garek will ya).

2. Neelix should have been a true rogue, instead of our friendly martian. There was a TNG episode that had a true friendly rogue that they should have pattened Neelix off to add conflict to the crew (by trying to get into the uniform of every female member of the crew, and every so often succeeding)

3. Janeway could be left the same (If they won't follow my editing), but she should have died during mid season, passing the torch instead of always being the most incompetant member of the crew.

4. The Kazon were bad klingons with afros. They should have looked totally different, and made more, tribal.

Also The Tray should have been made more then an one episode wonder and became as much a threat to voyager as the Kazon were. Perhaps a little chamber music, while they systematically kidnap and experiment on many of the voyager's crew, altering them forever.

5. The ocompa could be written out without batting an eye. Kes was a concept that never quite worked. They should have made her age more drastically in the series, and when cut, should have keep getting revenge on the crew, instead of during a one hour episode.

6. Seska was a cool concept, but being put with the Kazon, just didn't work.

7. The Borg did not deserve to be pussy whipped!!! I can't believe after being in the best star trek two parter of all time (the best of both worlds), and the only next gen movie that didn't suck (first contact), they would destroy one of their best villians in the name of the worst ship in the federation.

8. A forum should have been setup to throw ideas and give input on what voyager had learned about the races. Races should have been as distinctive as that one race that collects organs to survive (never remember their name).

9. They should have spent a season away from the federation, but in the alpha quadrant. I was so looking to watching the voyager crew getting humbled by Garek (in charge of the Cardassian empire) or Martok and Worf.

Good chance to bring back some classic trek races like the Andorians and gorn, and put a new twist on the information to put some original story telling in place.

10. More of a mixture of low tech/high tech. Voyager seemed to be the love boat with virtually no scarse resources (except for that multiparted episode), unless it was convienent for a plot device. Show them pulling true macgyvers and using low technology in ingenius way to compensate for their lack of resources. show that the federation education works beyond reversing the polarities, and make the ship feel grittier. Also have the ship go through serious appearence changes as they cannibalize their own technology and integrate alien technology. Use this integration as a benchmark to determine where they are on their trip.

10. Kim should have been the voyager equivelent of Bashir, not very liked at first, but evolves into a cool character (perhaps due to Paris'influences). This would be so much better then having him be the "honorary red shirt".

11. Tuvok had potential, but his biggest flaw was that he didn't contrast with the rest of the crew. Show his fighting prowess and his inner conflict. Make him a tad "logically paranoid" and have a touch of fear from the rest of the crew of having a powerful psychic on board. He should have shown his fighting prowess more and showed his extreme training with martial arts he mentioned from time to time. Also, he was the inflitrator of the maquis. Make him hated and feared by those members of the crew, and give it enough of a justification to make the ship interesting.

12. Races should be cool. Other then the organ races, I can only remember a couple of the races that weren't used as a convienent plot device. Make the new races mean something and make fans seriously regret not having them in the alpha quadrant.

13. That federation officer that had become a serial killer, would have been so much cooler, if they would have been showing his rehabilitation, instead of poof, your rehabilitated.
Perhaps developing a "silence of the lambs" relationship with one of the female members of the crew.

14. and finally when they finally go back and return to their people, there should have been at least an inquiry and/or a court marshal into the actions in the delta quadrant.

And throw Janeway in the brig for her actions.

Even if she could rationalize her actions, it would make for a last bit of storytelling.

How trek doesn't always mean living happily ever after.

The things I liked about Voyager consist of the following:

1. The Doctor

2, Seven's Breasts

3. Captain Proton.

4. Leonardo Davinci (played by John Rhys-Davis...if there was ever a character that should have pulled a Professor James Moriarty, it should have been him.)

...and have him get into bitter arguements with the doc :D

That is my two cents

[Rabid Trekkie]

My main changes would be to drop as much of the technobable as possible. I mean there still has to be some but try to go back to the way TOS handled it. You mention it once and try to come up with something bysides reverse the tachyon emission streams.

Voyager gets stranded in the Delta Quadrant when the array blows up when the Caretaker dies.

The Kazon stay as low tech (compared to Fed tech anyway) as they were, but I change them to something more along the lines of Genghis Khan when he was trying to forge his empire. Voyager is able to pull through because its got the coolest toys but its always dangerous as the Kazon use traps and swarm tactics. Pretty much Janeway and crew don't get to defeat them and hate it as they have to leave the territory as fast as possible instead of getting to help the people who will be conquered.

Speaking of the crew, the Maquis don't integrate so well. Chakotay can respect Janeway but can't conform to her codes as they are responsible for the tragedies that happened to his people. He also doesn't trust her as she was working with Tuvok to get info on him. I also drop the whole Seska as Cardassian spy and instead have her be a bit more militant in her dislike of the Feds. Chakotay turns against her when one of her sabotage plans almost blows up the whole ship with the Maquis on it. From that point on things get a bit easier between the Maquis and Feds but never exactly comfortable.

They don't go through Borg space. That was stupid. They get Seven when Voyager meets a lone Borg Sphere and the ship beams over drones. Voyager hits warp 9.9999 as fast as possible and leaves the Borg behind (the sphere doesn't follow as it is just a scoutship on a more important mission and the drones were mainly sent over to investigate why a Fed ship was so far from home) and spends the rest of the time trying to stop the drones from assimilating the ship. They are able to capture Seven and Janeway decides to see if they can help her the way Data and Crusher helped Picard.

The Doctor stays the same as he was cool.

Janeway decides to follow protocol less and worry about getting her people home more, but tries not to sacrifice her morals in the process. Also I let her and Chakotay get it on as the holo romance thing was really weird.

That's all I got right now.

[ragnarok_2012]

How about this for an idea:

Voyager is an experimental starfleet vessel with a highly classified FTL drive that isn't warp-based. It's also a very dangerous mission. They put together a group of castoffs to crew the mission because they're expendable. Tom Paris, for instance, is there because his father the Admiral pulled some strings ("This will make you a hero, son").

On the first and only test, the drive takes them to the Delta Quadrant...and dies. Starfleet never installed a warp drive in the vessel. At this stage of the experiment, it wasn't expected to travel more than a relatively short distance.

They don't know what happened, but they have to survive. They're 75 years away at the highest warp factor of a Starfleet vessel. They're surrounded by unknown and often hostile aliens with strange technology. They don't have a warp drive.

I agree that the aliens in the Delta Quadrant were pretty bland. And I hated their use of the Borg. More character depth, actual crew conflict, and a way of keeping track of their distance from the Federation would have been nice.

I'd also reveal in the show finale that Q was behind it all. At this point, the crew is 75 years older. Many of them are dead, but a few of the youngest survive. The ship is mostly crewed by their children now.

[thethinker]

How about this for an idea:

Voyager is an experimental starfleet vessel with a highly classified FTL drive that isn't warp-based. It's also a very dangerous mission. They put together a group of castoffs to crew the mission because they're expendable. Tom Paris, for instance, is there because his father the Admiral pulled some strings ("This will make you a hero, son").

On the first and only test, the drive takes them to the Delta Quadrant...and dies. Starfleet never installed a warp drive in the vessel. At this stage of the experiment, it wasn't expected to travel more than a relatively short distance.

They don't know what happened, but they have to survive. They're 75 years away at the highest warp factor of a Starfleet vessel. They're surrounded by unknown and often hostile aliens with strange technology. They don't have a warp drive.

I agree that the aliens in the Delta Quadrant were pretty bland. And I hated their use of the Borg. More character depth, actual crew conflict, and a way of keeping track of their distance from the Federation would have been nice.

I'd also reveal in the show finale that Q was behind it all. At this point, the crew is 75 years older. Many of them are dead, but a few of the youngest survive. The ship is mostly crewed by their children now.

Sounds cool, it certainly is MUCH better then what they came up with.

[ragnarok_2012]

Oh yeah, one more thing: I'd have the actors whose characters have passed on play their own children. With a bit of make-up and hair alterations, it might be doable.

[Cyke]

I can't go into details right now, but here's a short list:

-have Voyager struggle. What we saw in "Year of Hell" should've been damn near ever season, considering how much Voyager was fighting
-the aliens should have more variety. Why in the hell are they ALL humanoid with weird foreheads? Let's see some imagination. Other franchises with lesser budgets manage just fine.
-I'd like to see more friendly races. It's like Janeway picked a fight with almost every race out there. Hell, on that note, I'd like to see a true Federation counterpart. The galaxy is big, there has to be a chance that a few other races would form some sort of alliance.

That is all, for now.

[Dr. Banner]

-have Voyager struggle. What we saw in "Year of Hell" should've been damn near ever season, considering how much Voyager was fighting


YES!!

And a little thing called "CONTINUITY"!!!

When they lose a shuttle, it's GONE! When they run out of torpedoes, they're GONE!

When they lose a nacelle, it's GONE! When they replace it, it's alien, it looks out of place. When they patch up the ship, they use alien tech, or whatever they can find, the ship should become ugly to look at over time.

There was no struggle to survive. Life wasn't so bad. If they didn't make it back, it didn't matter, they had everything they needed. There was no POINT in them being so far away, as it was the same as any other ship seen on Star Trek. With a horrible crew. With a LIMITED crew dying off, how was it that Paris was demoted AND promoted, Tuvok was promoted, everyone was promoted except for Harry Kim, the eternal ensign?

Showing respect to your characters is another thing that would go a long way if re-writing the series.

[ragnarok_2012]

Banner: those are all great ideas. I second everything you said.

One of the many wonderful things about Battlestar Galactica is that they obviously have scarce resources. They lost most of their experienced pilots, and you can clearly see that the new guys this season are so incompetent that they can't even manage basic refueling maneuvers.

[Nate Grey]

Wow, so many good ideas, a lot I would have come up with myself, so I'm just gonna piggyback some of shade's comments to begin with:


2. Make Chakotay the Robert E. Lee character he was supposed to be. Polite, charming, but completely ruthless when his family is at stake (take a page from Garek will ya).

Wow, that would have been an excellent personality change for Chakotay. Like Janeway is Grant and he is Lee, huh? I like it. I'd also do it like DS9 as far as the uniforms go: the Maquis would keep their attire at least for 3 to 4 season, if for anything as a sort of quiet rebellion against having to work for Starfleet, even though they have no choice given the circumstance.

2. Neelix should have been a true rogue, instead of our friendly martian. There was a TNG episode that had a true friendly rogue that they should have pattened Neelix off to add conflict to the crew (by trying to get into the uniform of every female member of the crew, and every so often succeeding)

See, you have to understand the reason they made Neelix like that (or at least a strong possibility) is that at the time Voyager was coming on opposite DS9, and to make him the personality you discribed would have basically made him Quark. It would have been too much of a redux. Instead, I would have kept him the way he was, BUT I would have moved up the "Mortal Coil" episode a few seasons and kept his disenchanted attitude and have him slowly regain his cheery disposition over the rest of the season. Good stories could come from this.

3. Janeway could be left the same (If they won't follow my editing), but she should have died during mid season, passing the torch instead of always being the most incompetant member of the crew.

Naw, I'd leave Janeway alive through the whole series. Her biggest problem is that she was written inconsistantly, sternly following the rules one ep and tossing them aside another. I would play up her fanatical side, though, the side we saw in "Equinox." Hmm...that was actually desperation and pettiness, cause she wanted to one-up Ransom so bad she almost became him in the process. Chakotay had to check her on her behavior and got relieved of duty for his troubles. THAT I like, a checks and balances type of thing between Janeway and Chakotay.

4. The Kazon were bad klingons with afros. They should have looked totally different, and made more, tribal.

I'd probably combine the Kazon and the Hirogen somehow.

Also The Tray should have been made more then an one episode wonder and became as much a threat to voyager as the Kazon were. Perhaps a little chamber music, while they systematically kidnap and experiment on many of the voyager's crew, altering them forever.

The Tray? :confused:

5. The ocompa could be written out without batting an eye. Kes was a concept that never quite worked. They should have made her age more drastically in the series, and when cut, should have keep getting revenge on the crew, instead of during a one hour episode.

I'd ditch the aging them altogether (but figure out a way to keep the elogium biology factor they have) and play up their psychic abilities.

6. Seska was a cool concept, but being put with the Kazon, just didn't work.

Agreed. I don't know if I'd ditch her altogether or not, but I WOULD have made that baby she had actually Chakotay's.

7. The Borg did not deserve to be pussy whipped!!! I can't believe after being in the best star trek two parter of all time (the best of both worlds), and the only next gen movie that didn't suck (first contact), they would destroy one of their best villians in the name of the worst ship in the federation.

I probably would have left out the Borg altogether or at least figure out a way to just get Seven on board (someone mentioned a Borg scout ship?). I would have made her, well, like Illyria on Angel: a resident villain who slowly became part of the fold.

8. A forum should have been setup to throw ideas and give input on what voyager had learned about the races. Races should have been as distinctive as that one race that collects organs to survive (never remember their name).

Vidian. Not sure on the spelling, though. :D

9. They should have spent a season away from the federation, but in the alpha quadrant. I was so looking to watching the voyager crew getting humbled by Garek (in charge of the Cardassian empire) or Martok and Worf.

I'd have done it in reverse: Six seasons in the Delta, and the seventh in the Alpha quadrant. More on THAT later.


10. More of a mixture of low tech/high tech. Voyager seemed to be the love boat with virtually no scarse resources (except for that multiparted episode), unless it was convienent for a plot device. Show them pulling true macgyvers and using low technology in ingenius way to compensate for their lack of resources. show that the federation education works beyond reversing the polarities, and make the ship feel grittier. Also have the ship go through serious appearence changes as they cannibalize their own technology and integrate alien technology. Use this integration as a benchmark to determine where they are on their trip.

This was pretty much done in Year of Hell...and then reset in Year of Hell part 2. :rolleyes:

10. Kim should have been the voyager equivelent of Bashir, not very liked at first, but evolves into a cool character (perhaps due to Paris'influences). This would be so much better then having him be the "honorary red shirt".

Not a bad idea, but Bashir at least had his profession as a doctor to compensate for not being liked at first. What's Harry's leverage, being an ensign and all?

11. Tuvok had potential, but his biggest flaw was that he didn't contrast with the rest of the crew. Show his fighting prowess and his inner conflict. Make him a tad "logically paranoid" and have a touch of fear from the rest of the crew of having a powerful psychic on board. He should have shown his fighting prowess more and showed his extreme training with martial arts he mentioned from time to time. Also, he was the inflitrator of the maquis. Make him hated and feared by those members of the crew, and give it enough of a justification to make the ship interesting.

Not bad at all. :D I wish they had done that, since it seem like they hit a brick wall with him. Spock at least had to struggle with rejecting his human side, Tuvok pretty much had no struggle. It would have been interesting if his very student, Kes, was also secretly his biggest fear.

12. Races should be cool. Other then the organ races, I can only remember a couple of the races that weren't used as a convienent plot device. Make the new races mean something and make fans seriously regret not having them in the alpha quadrant.

Agreed...

13. That federation officer that had become a serial killer, would have been so much cooler, if they would have been showing his rehabilitation, instead of poof, your rehabilitated.
Perhaps developing a "silence of the lambs" relationship with one of the female members of the crew.

I actually liked the episode that introduced him, it was like Voyager's version of DS9's "Duet." I just wish, like "Duet", he died at the end. We really didn't need to see him again, I don't think.

14. and finally when they finally go back and return to their people, there should have been at least an inquiry and/or a court marshal into the actions in the delta quadrant.

And throw Janeway in the brig for her actions.

Even if she could rationalize her actions, it would make for a last bit of storytelling.

I'd at least have them face an inquary, a la TOS's "The Menagerie."

[Nate Grey]

Agreed with everything Banner said as well.

Voyager had their own version of Q that was used, what, once? The Female Caretaker. She should have effed with them at least once a season. This would supplant all those crappy Q eps we got instead.

"Void" was a good idea of how Voyager could have been. She should have tried to make a makeshift Federation, with aliens she had come to trust and were in similar straits as her. Well, maybe not trust, but need. This could have led to some good stories, especially if one of these downtrodden races were actually remnants of a ruling empire that just needed good tech to get started again. Lots of room for double crosses, hidden alliances, and season-long villains. We should have seen basically a Federation that's the mirror opposite of the Federation we're used to back in the Alpha quadrant.

And this evil Federation, this Empire (maybe even the Hirogen/Kazon combo I mentioned), could have followed Janeway right back to the Alpha quadrant when she finally makes it back at the end of season six. Season seven, the final season, would be Janeway and crew's inquary/court martial and the Federation struggling to fight another major threat so soon after the Dominion war. Janeway would have a lot to answer for but would ultimately redeem herself.

[shades of eternity]

two things.

1. With Neelix, I was actually thinking more a touch of ace rimmer then Quark. Make him charming, but make him a bastard like a touch of edmund blackadder.

2. Probably got the spelling wrong, but I was refering to the former slaveowners of the Kazon when I said the Tray. Tons of potential wasted.

[ragnarok_2012]

The actor that plays Q is a very good friend of the actress that plays Janeway (since before Voyager). So I figure that the reason he was on so much was simply because he wanted to be there for a friend.

[Cyke]

Speaking of Q, it's not a bad idea to have Q on Voyager. HOWEVER. The core aspect of Q's character is that he's always testing humanity, for one day humanity will become even greater than the Q Continuum, and he knows it; in his own twisted way, he's nurturing humanity's evolution by constantly testing them. Thank you, TNG.

In Voyager, though, he comes by to: stop a friend from committing suicide, look for a mate, and show off his son. In other words, Q was reduced from cosmic scientist to daytime talk show guest.

[marshal99]

Speaking of Q, it's not a bad idea to have Q on Voyager. HOWEVER. The core aspect of Q's character is that he's always testing humanity, for one day humanity will become even greater than the Q Continuum, and he knows it; in his own twisted way, he's nurturing humanity's evolution by constantly testing them. Thank you, TNG.

In Voyager, though, he comes by to: stop a friend from committing suicide, look for a mate, and show off his son. In other words, Q was reduced from cosmic scientist to daytime talk show guest.

Different captains , different dynamics. I'm just glad that Q appeared on Voyager.
Somehow, Q looking at Jean Luc Picard as a potential mate is disturbing to say the least if you were to swap the situation between the two shows around.

[Night]

In Voyager, though, he comes by to: stop a friend from committing suicide, look for a mate, and show off his son. In other words, Q was reduced from cosmic scientist to daytime talk show guest. The stop a friend from suicide was ok... but the rest of the Q's visits were lousy. Q should have been a constant plot device on "what is it worth to get home" always challenging Janeway's decisions. Look at Q's first appearance at the "Encounter at Farpoint" as a test on what Picard would do under unknown situations. Delta Quad offers tonnes of them because the whole quad is unknown. and more offering help …. at a price..

Voyager should have had to do much more bartering to get supplies. That should have constant questions of prime directive there. How much supplies can we get without giving away tech.

They should have gotten more tech off the maqui ship and have to struggle with a code that is more maqui to keep peace among the ranks.

Like others said, there should have been more integration of technology more engineering challenges due to such and the fact that resources are scarce... like in the DS9 episode with engineering the Holosuite.... a spatula as a plasma conductor.

Any race that has a short a life span a ocumpa needs to have a quicker reproductive cycle to be able to compensate…. Ocumpa ocumpa… everywhere all in different life cycles. Psychic abilities as a way to learn faster…. Edit them out by having them try to take over the ship when the numbers get too high.

Long lost federation tribe…. That got stuck many years before… that some want to stay and a few want to return. Have debates with them on whether voyager should stay or keep going. It’s also a way to pick up more crew members and learn tech tricks. Maybe trade alien tech for the remaining fed tech form the tribe…. That the tribe no longer uses.

[Tish-the-Scorpion]

species 8472 should have stayed around

[Cyke]

Different captains , different dynamics. I'm just glad that Q appeared on Voyager.
Somehow, Q looking at Jean Luc Picard as a potential mate is disturbing to say the least if you were to swap the situation between the two shows around.

Not necessarily different dynamics. After all, he treated Picard's crew, Sisko, and Janeway with the same kind of cocky pranks.

However, while he was always down for a good time, he was always arrogant enough to be above simple, standard domestic issues (the same applies to his appearance on DS9). Even that lovably goofy Robin Hood episode had some sort of deeper, cosmic meaning to Picard and Co.

Hell, the Q from DeLancie's own novels are in a somewhat stark contrast to Voyager/DS9 Q. If anything, it seemed that Voyager was bringing about changes to Q (the suicide episode led to the Q Civil War episode), as opposed to Q brining about changes on the Enterprise (Encounter led to All Good Things, Q Who to Best of Both Worlds, etc etc).

Simply having Q on a show waters down the character (again, he popped up on DS9 once, in what was really a filler episode). To me, that's essentially how Voyager treated Q. If Q's gonna be on there, I'd like something a bit more cosmic and exploratory which would lead to something profound about all humanity, not his fcuk buddy.

[thethinker]

I would take the experimental drive idea of Ragnarock. Kes would have the same lifespan as human beings. Neelix is more of a con man but still loyal to the ship because of Kes. Janeway uses him from time to time to con aliens. Chakotay and Janeway would fight more and the Maquis and Federation likewise. Let's face it the crew would act like US and USSR troops would have acted if thrown together for survival. They may work together but there would be no trust on either side. Maybe by the end of season 1 they could start cooperating more. Janeway willing to break the Prime Directive more to survive. She is more willing to trade tech for resources they need. I ageee with the others, once something is gone it is gone unless it is easily made. Paris is almost a villian. Janeway puts up with him because he is the best pilot but no one trusts him. Tuvak is more important, he should be the one with all the answers. Kim is promoted and doesn't remain an ensign forever. The doc is unchanged.

[ragnarok_2012]

I would take the experimental drive idea of Ragnarock. Kes would have the same lifespan as human beings. Neelix is more of a con man but still loyal to the ship because of Kes. Janeway uses him from time to time to con aliens. Chakotay and Janeway would fight more and the Maquis and Federation likewise. Let's face it the crew would act like US and USSR troops would have acted if thrown together for survival. They may work together but there would be no trust on either side. Maybe by the end of season 1 they could start cooperating more. Janeway willing to break the Prime Directive more to survive. She is more willing to trade tech for resources they need. I ageee with the others, once something is gone it is gone unless it is easily made. Paris is almost a villian. Janeway puts up with him because he is the best pilot but no one trusts him. Tuvak is more important, he should be the one with all the answers. Kim is promoted and doesn't remain an ensign forever. The doc is unchanged.

I'm still stoked that people liked my ideas :D