Star Trek (VOY): Dreadnought

[J!!]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

i've noticed that when people talk about ways Voyager could've been improved, a lot of the ideas people come up with are stuff that would've made the show more like BSG. to the point that i actually half suspect that Ron Moore was thinking along the same lines; looking at Voyager's squandered potential & making a whole show out of all the things he would've done differently if he'd been running it.

[AlucardNoir]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

Personally I would have been fine with an ENT season 3 like continuity for VOY. Then again, VOY, ENT and BSG ended with rather poor episodes so there's only that much that could have been saved either way.

[J!!]

Perhaps they could have made a better story if they had had Torres run across such a thing while on a supply run in a runabout and Voyager was unable to intercept the dreadnought before it reached its target. Then the dreadnought would have only had to have been slightly tougher (or faster) than a runabout rather than the uber war machine seen here, which maybe makes more tactical sense if it could deliver moon cracking power in its final move. This would have been obviously contrived but perhaps less of a plot hole.

I like this a bit better. You can have Chakotay and maybe one other person in the shuttlecraft with her, and they're going to be struggling to figure out what they can accomplish with just a shuttle. It's contrived that they'd be out of range of Voyager to prevent it moving at high warp, sure, but makes sense that this warhead has more limited defensive capabilities, just being survivable enough to reach its target and then blow up. Then you can have the scene where they're planning to dismantle it for parts and it makes a bit more sense.

how about if, rather than being some badass fleet-destroying gunship, the thing were a stealth missile? not cloaked exactly, but with a powerful ECM suite, which jams both sensors & communication. that way, the shuttle doesn't have to be way the fuck out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to prevent voyager from helping them; on the one hand, they can't detect the thing without being right on top of it, and on the other, being that close prevents them from talking to voyager. pulling back enough to communicate with or be detectable by voyager would mean losing sight of the missile, in which case it would slip away & they'd probably never find it again, so they're forced to stick close & try to deal with it on their own.

[Revolverman]

how about if, rather than being some badass fleet-destroying gunship, the thing were a stealth missile? not cloaked exactly, but with a powerful ECM suite, which jams both sensors & communication.

You mean use real-life tactics? Pfft, we all know ICBMs have more guns then the USS Iowa!

[BunBun299]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

I had a similar thought about Voyager a while back. The Caretaker was supposedly bringing ships there for months. You could have had anything you liked stuck in this area. No heavy cruisers like the Enterprise or warships like the Defiant. You want Voyager to be the toughest ship around. But you could have had any number of ships there at the start. Plenty of opportunity for drama protecting them as you go. And not every ship stranded there need necessarily trust Voyager. Maybe there's a Romulan transport that would say screw you guys for stranding is out here, we'll make out own way home. Only to have them pop up again a few episodes later. Maybe they're in trouble, or maybe they are trouble.

So many things they could have done turning Voyager into the center of a new mobile Federation.

[Mickey_Rat15]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

And then you have Janeway making Admiral Cain look like a humanitarian, but totally morally justified by the end of the episode.

[PapaPalpatine]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

I had a similar thought about Voyager a while back. The Caretaker was supposedly bringing ships there for months. You could have had anything you liked stuck in this area. No heavy cruisers like the Enterprise or warships like the Defiant. You want Voyager to be the toughest ship around. But you could have had any number of ships there at the start. Plenty of opportunity for drama protecting them as you go. And not every ship stranded there need necessarily trust Voyager. Maybe there's a Romulan transport that would say screw you guys for stranding is out here, we'll make out own way home. Only to have them pop up again a few episodes later. Maybe they're in trouble, or maybe they are trouble.

So many things they could have done turning Voyager into the center of a new mobile Federation.

Even exploring the wrecks of ships brought to the Delta Quadrant by Banjo Man would be worthwhile on the off chance they could find materials and items that would be useful. Some metal salvage for repairs to Voyager or building replacements for those shuttles that get a Burn, Baby, Burn in so many episodes. Maybe get some additional photon torpedoes.

[WhiteDragon25]

Yeah, the Cardassians never seemed like the people who were building super-advanced unstoppable warships.

It makes sense to me, actually: remember that the Cardassians are supposed to be SPACE NAZIS. And what do Cardassians and Nazis both have in common?

Having a penchant for ridiculously over-the-top wunderwaffe, of course. And just like the Nazis, said wunderwaffe are poorly-conceived boondoggles that are overrated and expensive to build, and were likely the pet project of some high-ranking official competing with his rivals for prestige. Fascist systems were never the paragons of efficiency and unity they made themselves out to be; mostly style, little substance.

I can find it perfectly plausible that the Cardassians would create such a weapon like the Dreadnought.

[Beastro]

Killing trained airplane pilots in kamikaze runs is a waste of resources, but it has a psychological appeal for the attacker and a psychological horror for the victim because of just how acute the damage that can be inflicted by such a strike, if successful.

It was actually more of a waste of aircraft than crew (although by the given Japan's lack of fuel they had far more aircraft than fuel to use them with, that was the main driver of 'kazi' use which was to maximize fuel use to damage caused). Kamakazi pilots required extremely low flight hours to be trained in their mission, which when it boils down to it is to know enough to fly their aircraft at what they're looking at and not flinch to pull away.

Much of flight training centers around things like combat and that big sticky thing, landing, which is something Kamakazi's had no need to toy with.

(which would have been a better name than "Dreadnought" but they probably did not want to get into a copyright dispute with Saberhagen).

The name gets more and more amusing to me when it's so misused in Sci-Fi given it's background as a name that originated in the RN during an era (1500s) when religiously themed ship names was wide spread (In the case of Spain they were ubiquitous until the 19th Century and remained into the 20th).

[bronnt]

It makes sense to me, actually: remember that the Cardassians are supposed to be SPACE NAZIS. And what do Cardassians and Nazis both have in common?

Having a penchant for ridiculously over-the-top wunderwaffe, of course. And just like the Nazis, said wunderwaffe are poorly-conceived boondoggles that are overrated and expensive to build, and were likely the pet project of some high-ranking official competing with his rivals for prestige. Fascist systems were never the paragons of efficiency and unity they made themselves out to be; mostly style, little substance.

I can find it perfectly plausible that the Cardassians would create such a weapon like the Dreadnought.

Even if they're supposedly Nazis in personality, there's like zero evidence of them having super advanced weaponry other than this one episode. With the Germans, it was V2 rockets, and jet aircraft, and extremely heavily armored tanks (to the point of straining their fuel supplies), plus their research into atomic weaponry.

What else did the Cardassian break out? Their best frontline starships were horribly outclassed by Galaxy-class ships, and during the war, the Federation was producing a few Defiant class ships and even the Enterprise E.

What's more, they're a second rate power. They're more like Mussolini's Italy than they are Nazi Germany.