Reboot Voyager: A Hypothetical.

[Dînadan]

If I was redoing Voyager, then I think I'd like to do the following:

Have things matter, and unless it's made explicit that Voyager has put in somewhere for repairs (either docking at an alien star base in the episode or mentioning in the opening captain's log that they did so between episodes), the ship interiors should look battered and to a degree in a state of disrepair (especially if the plot of the episode is how screwed they are). Also, don't have the plot of one episode be about looking for resource X, having them fail to get it and then the next episode having resource X in abundance; if the episode can't be rewritten to avoid this, then at the very least the episodes should have their running order switched so the problem is minimised and can be handwaved that an unseen event between the episodes depleted reserves of resource X (oh and try not to make resouce X be one of the most common elements in the universe - I'm looking at you deuterium!).

Similarly, don't have the crew become homogenised by the first episode after the pilot. I'm not saying the Starfleet-Marquis conflict should stick around for the entire run, but at the least I'd have the Marquis characters stay in their civilian clothes, slowly transitioning into Starfleet uniforms over season 1 to show how they're growing together overtime. I'd have only Chakotay and a few extras adopt uniforms straight away (explained with them being ex-Starfleet and choosing to reactivate their commissions).

Similarly I'd have the early seasons have a theme of them building alliances. Possibly something like the first half of season 1 being about just surviving, and then the second half and season 2 be about alliance building with the season ending with them establishing a sort of proto-Federation with Voyager departing to bring their allies' applications for membership to the actual Federation.

I'd also make the Kaxon a credible threat rather than a bumbling group of dim witted thugs. Let's accept that they need to be a warrior race that's not just Klingons in a different forehead. Okay. I'd have them have a focus around honour, but take it in a different direction to what the Klingons have. Instead of the Klingon warrior obsession with them spouting how everything is a combat even things like being a lawyer, I'd have it be the honour is about doing a good job a serving society the best you can and to further differentiate them from the Klingons give them a cast system so that the aforementioned honour is about serving in your cast (e.g. a doctor is regarded honourably for saving lives but if he took up arms and killed thousands in combat he wouldn't be viewed honourably even though a member of the Warrior Cast who'd done the same would be toasted and celebrated). In this light they're a warrior race simply because the Warrior cast is on top and Voyager and others mostly only deal with the Warriors. And over the two seasons it'd be their dealings with Voyager that leads to a cultural revolution that leads to the other casts being awarded higher regard and more equality.


As for characters:

I'd have Janeway not start as the Captain and be younger. I'd start her as a Commander or even Lt. Commander, recently promoted to that rank and the first officer. Whatever brings Voyager to the Delta Quadrant (whether it's still the Caretaker or something else) kills the Captain, forcing Janeway to take charge. As such destroying the array being a mistake is because she's out of her depth in that moment and her story arc would be about her learning from that and other mistakes and how she grows into the role of Captain.

Chakotay I'd make older, fitting with his backstory of being an instructor at the academy, and would serve as one of Janeway's advisors. I'd also get an actual expert in Native American cultures to help write his backstory. I'd either chose an actual tribe for him to be from, or (to help with him representing all Native Americans), explicitly state his colony was founded by people from various tribes and over a couple of centuries they've intermingled resulting in a blend of all of them.

Tuvok I'd leave much the same.

Nelix I'd make more like the Ahab alien in Bliss. He's gruff, rugged and seasoned. He'd serve as a guide and would have actual survival and combat skills. I'd also change his backstory from loosing his sister to loosing his wife and young daughter, and that fuels why he associates with young girls (eg Kes and Naomi) so often; he has a protective (grand)fatherly relationship with them rather than a slightly creepy clingy one (this would change his antagonism against Tom from being jealousy over Kes to him being protective of her and not wanting to see her hurt). If his role as Mess Officer is kept, then I'd make his leathal chef aspect be not out of incompetence but down to his alien physiology having slightly different needs to the others.

Together, Nelix, Tuvok and Chakotay would serve as a sort of Chorus for Janeway, being her chief advisors. Tuvok would be the unemotional and logical Spock to Neelix's passionate and emotional Bones, with Chakotay serving as the middle ground as a balance.

Unless rights prevented it, I'd make Paris Locarno. If it was just the name, then I'd make it that Locarno was a name Tom took to avoid preferential treatment due to who his dad was.

Keep the rest pretty much the same, but in the case of Harry and Torres, give them more to work with over the course of the series. Notable changes for those two, give Torres the Chief Engineer position because she's an engineering genius/savant, not because she beat up the other candidate, and give Harry a promotion at some point.

I'd also emphasise building a supporting cast. DS9 showed how effective fleshing out its supporting cast was, and I think it's even more important for Voyager to have one considering it has no access to replacement crew. It also has an advantage in that when you want to show a situation is especially dangerous you can injure or kill one of them to show character shields aren't in full effect; or for something especially shocking you can kill off a main character and then you'll have a fleshed out replacement who won't appear from nowhere. And if you do kill them off you can do the thing they did with Carry to show timetravel has happened, except this time they'd actually be dead rather than forgotten.

Something I think might also be interesting is to stretch the Q's son thing out; have Q bring him to Voyager in say season 3 or 4, and have the episode end with him being left there. At this point he slots into the supporting cast and stays there. This then ties into the finale when Q collects him and reveals, as he stated in 'All Good Things', the trial of humanity by the Q is still ongoing, and Q Jr's presence on Voyager (and the actual reason they were brought to the Delta Quadrant) is part of the trial.

Also, assuming this is going to be followed by an Enterprise reboot and that is going to still have the Temporal Cold War, then at some point I'd include a Borg episode to lay some groundwork for it and explain why the Borg only used time travel in First Contact. I'd have the Borg reveal that they're aware of the TCW and in First Contact they went to Earth to try and warn the Federation, but were attacked and decided to play the role of the villain and draw Picard back in time so he could ensure First Contact occurred. The reason they don't normally use time travel is partly because they don't want to get drawn into the TCW and partly because they know mucking with time can be dangerous and isn't worth the hassle unless they're desperate.

[FaxModem1]

Something I think might also be interesting is to stretch the Q's son thing out; have Q bring him to Voyager in say season 3 or 4, and have the episode end with him being left there. At this point he slots into the supporting cast and stays there. This then ties into the finale when Q collects him and reveals, as he stated in 'All Good Things', the trial of humanity by the Q is still ongoing, and Q Jr's presence on Voyager (and the actual reason they were brought to the Delta Quadrant) is part of the trial.

I like this idea. q having to learn all about humanity, and his exploration of friendships, relationships, living as a mortal, etc., with him secretly being under the orders of his father, Q. It'd be a full exploration of what 'Deja Q' presented. It could be developed into even showing that q is conflicted on where his loyalties lie. Especially as he develops a real friendship with Icheb.

[Dînadan]

One more idea I had (I was going to start a thread called 'Voyager, where potential goes...to live?' for people to post ideas that Voyager could have done but missed out on (inspired by my current archive binge of Chuck's reviews where I think it's fair to say his view of Voyager (and Enterprise for that matter) can be summed up as 'Voyager, where potential goes to die'), but I think this thread makes it redundant so I'm going to post it here instead) is about the Borg Queen.

The Queen can probably be seen as a misstep due to the negative effects she had on the Borg and how after her introduction the Borg degraded into generic villains. As such I think something that could have been done to explain this and potentially remove her to return the Borg to their faceless force of nature status is to reveal that she'd only recently became Queen. To explain the discrepancy about her presence on the Cube in 'Best of Both Worlds' I'd reveal that originally she was just a semi-autonomous drone akin to Locutus, and when the Enterprise crew sent the 'sleep' command she wasn't fully effected and that allowed her to upload into the Borg internet and corrupt the hive mind resulting in her becoming Queen in a rebuilt body (possibly also encorporate the splinter group formed due to Hugh's reassimilation into this as having caused more damage which let gain more control). This would also allow for an explanation of why sometimes she has to call drones off attacking as her semi-autonomous nature meaning that she's not fully integrated into the hive mind so has to exert direct commands sometimes.

[FakeGeekGirl]

So by reboot, do we mean how we would fix the show if we had a time machine, Polyjuice potion, and a lock of Rick Berman's hair, or what we would do with it now, in the context of all that has passed? I'll assume the former.

I'd keep the same cast and basic premise with a few caveats.

Let Kate Mulgrew play with the thing she mentioned in interviews that she thought Janeway might have a mental illness. Some people would be upset that the first female captain has such an issue, and we'd all have to suffer through some painful "Women be crazy" jokes from certain corners, but I can imagine how precious that would be to kids who were struggling with depression or bipolar to see their struggle reflected with a character who was still a respected leader.

Instead of having Robert Beltran play Chakotay or any similar character, I'd have him play the straight-laced ship's doctor. After the other doctor is killed (there was seriously always only one doctor for the whole ship?) the EMH is activated to help him since one doctor trying to take care of an entire ship is insane especially during a crisis. (Or he can be a nurse if there's some kind of hard "only one doctor per show" rule being enforced.) The flesh and blood doctor and the holographic Doctor butt heads constantly, and over the course of the show have to learn to work together to do what's best for the crew.

Instead of just going with made up nonsense for Chakotay's history, the showrunners consult actual Native American experts, pick a tribe, and research that tribe, involving members of the community in script approval to make sure they're portraying the culture accurately. And then cast an actual Native American person in the role.

I'm not sure exactly what I'd do with B'Elanna but I'd want to give her something more to do. We had so many stories about her embracing Klingon heritage - why not some about embracing the human half of her heritage? Or alternately, have her identifying completely with humanity and not getting constantly angry at everything, to add more punch to the storylines about Klingon heritage?

I'd definitely make Tom Paris and Locarno the same person, just because ... they so obviously were. Otherwise there isn't much I would change about his character other than just let him do one or two jobs instead of EVERYTHING.

Have Harry start out much the same but instead of literally telling Garret Wang to be more boring, let him imbue Harry with some charisma. And for the love of God let him grow as a character over the course of the show, give him a couple of promotions throughout. If you want to be really brave, let Wang play the character as gay. Instead of pining for his fiancee Libby, he's pining for his fiance Leo and no one thinks this is a big deal. But this being the nineties it probably wouldn't have gone over well so that can stay or go, but the character development doesn't.

I think Neelix is actually mostly fine - just tone down his more obnoxious tendencies. Have him be less of a buttinski and actually be useful sometimes.

When they pick up Seven I would have her be less sexualized. Because as pointed out in these very forums she's essentially a frightened child when separated from the collective which is why she flips out so much compared to someone assimilated as an adult and someone presumably born into it like Hugh. Plus it's Jeri Ryan she would still be sexy in a trash bag with armholes cut in it - the catsuit is very overkill for making her Ms. Fanservice.

In terms of what would change plotwise? For starters I'd have a lot more ships pulled through by the Caretaker array. Voyager ends up teaming up with a bunch of other survivors - Cardassian, Maquis, a small Federation science vessel (maybe the Equinox, maybe somethign else), some traders (maybe Ferengi if we feel brave), and maybe even a Dominion ship or two. Molly Hagan has said she kicked herself later for turning down coming back as Eris for "The Search" because she went to another audition, and I really liked her in "The Jem'Hadar" so I would vote for her, or for Kilana from "The Ship" as that was done in one of the Myriad Universe novellas. Or original characters - I really like the Vorta and would have been happy to see more of them.

Anyway, upon being pulled to the Delta Quadrant, Voyager makes an alliance with the other displaced ships to try to get home. The Kaizon seem like more impressive enemies if it takes a whole mini fleet to take down their warship as opposed to Chakotay's tiny ship. I'd do something to remove the "just set a fuse and run like hell" option for destroying the array - maybe make it clear that like twenty more Kaizon warships are within minutes of arrival and so there's not enough time to get anyone home, let alone all of them plus blow the array. So now Voyager is stuck in the Delta Quadrant with at least a few other ships (though many were destroyed in the attack and their surviving crews had to be beamed aboard). Eris / Kilana / other Vorta reveals she doesn't want to go home via heading directly to the Gamma Quadrant because there is something really scary in that direction between where they are and reinforcements from home, either another arm of Borg space or something as bad as / scarier than the Borg. (That's a minor point but it always bugged me in the novella I mentioned that Kilana would be heading in the same direction as Voyager despite the fact that it would be either the same distance or shorter for her to go directly home rather than head for the alpha quadrant entrance of the wormhole, and the idea of something worse than the Borg would be a nice teaser for a future spinoff.) Everyone teams up, however reluctantly, and you have a fleet made up of strange bedfellows just desperately trying to find their way home.

From there on carry on about like the show did, only better. Focus on the tension between the crew, especially now that other groups such as Cardassians are present, and this has real consequences. Don't have the ship look shiny and brand new all the time. Minimize the technobabble and focus on character development. People get married, have kids, get promoted, get killed. Change the status quo more often, and have real stakes and consequences. I think it's okay for it to be mostly episodic - they wouldn't stay in one place very long after all - but have continuous subplots / arcs due to the complex interactions of the crew and damage to the ship. They could spend several episodes in one place looking for a crucial material needed to make a replacement part for a crucial part of the ship, for instance.

I'd have the journey through Borg space take longer and be more suspenseful - a lot of playing cat and mouse with the Borg and just praying they don't get detected.

And I'd have them get home thanks to Q, in pretty much the same way Chuck suggested. If we have to have a deus ex machina, can it at least be an essentially literal deus? And the actually show them getting home instead of that nonsense they did in Endgame where you never actually saw the current Voyager crew get all the way home.

[Dînadan]

The flesh and blood doctor and the holographic Doctor butt heads constantly, and over the course of the show have to learn to work together to do what's best for the crew.

I smell sitcom...


In all serious, some interesting ideas and put like that, Voyager had the potential to probably be the most diverse Trek series to that date. We've got:

Janeway = role model for those with mental health issues
Chakotay = role model for Native Americans
Harry = role model for LGB people (and also East Asians a la Sulu)
Torres = role model for people of mixed race
Tuvok = possibly role model for black people a la Uhura
Tom = boarderline, but possibly could pass for a non-stereotype role model for nerds/geeks considering his hobbies and breadth of knowledge
Seska = assuming she was kept on would continue the Worf theme of yesterday's enemy being today's ally

Any I missed?


Only downside is I can see people mocking the show by calling it "the USS Diversity", but screw those arseholes.

[FakeGeekGirl]

In all serious, some interesting ideas and put like that, Voyager had the potential to probably be the most diverse Trek series to that date. We've got:

Janeway = role model for those with mental health issues
Chakotay = role model for Native Americans
Harry = role model for LGB people (and also East Asians a la Sulu)
Torres = role model for people of mixed race
Tuvok = possibly role model for black people a la Uhura
Tom = boarderline, but possibly could pass for a non-stereotype role model for nerds/geeks considering his hobbies and breadth of knowledge
Seska = assuming she was kept on would continue the Worf theme of yesterday's enemy being today's ally

Any I missed?


Only downside is I can see people mocking the show by calling it "the USS Diversity", but screw those arseholes.

Well it was already pretty diverse even the way it was. Plus if you went with having an actual Native American person as Chakotay but still keeping Robert Beltran in the cast in some capacity, you could easily have his character be Latino like his actor and add another "slot" though I don't really think of it like that ... One day having diverse casts will be normal rather than the big deal it is now.

And I second the motion to "screw those arseholes." I have heard some of them make that complaint about TNG or indeed about any show where more than two people with melanin in their skin show up. They'll never be happy and why should we care if they are?

[Dînadan]

Another idea I've just had is to do a twist on the 'Carey only shows up in past sequences' quirk; remember that nobody ensign in 'Latent Image'? Well in episodes after Latent Image have her appear in past sequences (and even Forrest Gump her into some scenes where past episodes are shown), implying that Janeway's purge of all records of her was so thorough that she purged her presence from the audience's minds too

[FakeGeekGirl]

Another idea I've just had is to do a twist on the 'Carey only shows up in past sequences' quirk; remember that nobody ensign in 'Latent Image'? Well in episodes after Latent Image have her appear in past sequences (and even Forrest Gump her into some scenes where past episodes are shown), implying that Janeway's purge of all records of her was so thorough that she purged her presence from the audience's minds too

Damn. That's just diabolical.

[FaxModem1]

I think a problem with having Janeway having a mental illness is that 24th century medicine should be able to help with anything biological. Janeway just needs her 'technobabble' treatment and she's fine.

Unless you want to say that Voyager's supply runs dry and then she starts cracking. That'd be kind of dark, though.

[excalibur]

The problem with any Trek series like this is people always clamoring for representation of *insert* before we even discuss good story writing, production, etc. I think that's the major problem with Discovery where they are trying so hard to appease to the broad PC current trending crowd before even a word was written down on setting, ship design or where in the timeline this all fits in. Appeasing political agenda and pushing towards a show that's more towards addressing modern day themes than future themes would make a mess of a good premise. I think for a show about a utopian future of humanity, all our social issues we want to pick on today would be so passive in the show that it would be irrelevant because to them, it is the common norm. But for producers of a show, they want to grab as many audience to their production as possible and in term will draw attention to everything they think is good to the point where it defines characters more than actual development.

Now, I don't know how the new Trek show will turn out but just from the behind the scenes chatter alone and the mess of production...it could end up being a "How NOT to make a Trek series"

This is why I am glad other favorite sci fi series are not being revived like Stargate. They tried to make it more hip and relevant with current TV drama like in SGU, which failed so hard...I personally believe Star Trek as a franchise is old and had been dying for a long time.