Arkle wrote:Well, thank you. Part 4 is almost done, I swear. Just gotta finish adapting "Author, Author", after which I do "Friendship One" and "Homestead", and for the final chapter I re-do the finale from scratch.
Speaking of Endgame, my basic idea for a rewrite would take cues from Dark Frontier and be a heist-style plot:
Instead of the time-travelling Future-Admiral!Janeway bullshit, instead we get the normal Janeway and Voyager cast formulate a balls-to-the-wall insane plan to sneak past the Borg defenses surrounding the Transwarp Hub. Part of this plan involves disguising Voyager as a Borg Probe ship using a salvaged derilict hull from an
actual Borg Probe they destroyed. Then, as they pass through the Borg's security perimeter and reach the Hub station itself, they'll discard the Probe shell and make a break for the Transwarp Conduit to Earth; meanwhile, Seska and Suder are beamed over onto the Hub station in a suicide run, armed to the teeth with as many guns and bombs as they can carry, and attempt to infect the Borg central mainframe with a computer virus (while also carrying a talior-made Borg-targeted pathogen inside them as well).
Both Seska and Suder go along with this ludicriously suicidal plan, because they both know they're going to die anyways when they reach the Federation, so why not die on their own terms, killing as many Borg as possible before taking their precious Transwarp Hub with them too?
It'll eliminate the Stupid Future Technobabble Bullshit Mary Sue Deus Ex Machina Armor & Super-Duper Torpedos, and make the resolution be the result of the Voyager crew's own merits and abilities, rather than being just hand-given to them; and it'll also preserve the Borg as formidible adversaries to use in future works.
So what do you think? I'd be an improvement, that's for sure.
Oh, also: A Dominion War episode that serves as a replacement of sorts for "Eye of the Needle"; in this case, Voyager comes across a wormhole that leads straight back to the Alpha Quadrant... bad news is, it's one the Cardassian/Dominion side of the warzone smack-dab in the middle of the war. And the wormhole was an experimental wunderwaffe project by the Dominion attempting to re-establish contact with the Gamma Quadrant after getting locked out of the Bajoran Wormhole. Que Voyager Running Away Like Cowards in a Benny-Hill-esque chase across the system the device was tested.
Seska (still alive in this version) tries jumping ship to the Cardie/Dommie side, but quickly changes back once she learns the Obsidian Order is virtually extinct and the Cardies are playing second-fiddle to the Dominion.
Voyager in the end flees back to the Delta Quadrant, but not before sabotaging the wormhole generator first, preventing the Jem'Hadar horde chasing after them from following, and also inadvertently saving the AQ by preventing the Dominion from being able to get reinforcements from the GQ.
Voyager is one of those few Star Trek series where I think they could've gone a bit Farscape with their concepts and gotten away with it. I'd never even considered portraying Janeway as this Kerr Avon-esque figure, I thought of her more like Ellie Arroway from Contact -- a scientist whose lifelong dream has been turned into a reality with all the unfortunate, nasty consequences that come along with it. In the version I finished up a while ago, she finally brings her crew home in the seventh season and what finally causes her to break is that she has to finally let go of the reigns, let Voyager be captained by someone mentally fit and she can't do it. She has a breakdown after the inquiry and Chakotay convinces her to go to a Federation rehabilitation centre for a couple months to put herself back together. I latched onto Chuck's idea from his "Workforce" review that she was suffering from PTSD and honestly, it's a really interesting aspect to explore in a Trek captain.
