Random Trek thoughts

[stryke]

Have been doing a binge of Chuck's reviews over the last week, just started Voyager, and getting to Phage prompted this musing.

Occampa only live for nine years, Neelix gets one of Kes' lungs in this episode, does that mean he's going to drop dead two years into living with his new Talaxian family? I mean obviously he's already dropped dead once, but I figure whatever Seven did isn't going to slow down natural body deterioration, and Neelix still has a rather vital bodypart set on fast forward.

Possible this got covered in Phage already that I'm just not remembering, but that would involve actually rewatching Phage, and I cancelled my Paramount+ sub when Lower Decks ended anyway even if I did fancy doing that for some reason.

[m4a2000]

In the Phage near the end a vidiian helps the Doctor with the transplant. With their medical tech I guess we can assume the lung was altered enough to last in Neelix for a normal life time.

Also, and this is something I've always thought about, is we know Occampa can live beyond 9 years. In Cold Fire we hear of that Occampa that Suspiria take care of living to near 20. This could all mean Neelix should be able to live for some time and once it does come up in his new home they would be able to find another one if needed.

Not a perfect answer, but that's what I have. Now what I want to know is how come on Voyager there wasn't enough quarters for everyone to have their own. We see a few times people sharing quarters, but even with Voyager's small size it had more than enough rooms for everyone.

[Nobody700]

Yeah but the implication of the episode is that she's using her whatever powers to extend their ages, given she also gave them psychic powers.

On the room situation... I will defend Voyager. Power conversion. Some rooms are probably blacked out unless needed, to conserve power.

[clearspira]

My random Trek thought: Why is it that Neelix, Kes and Seven all managed to stay out of Starfleet when coming aboard Voyager, but the Maquis junior officers were conscripted? And it is a conscription. Sure, some of them could have been drafted as they were former Starfleet, but some were implicitly stated by Janeway as not having gone to the Academy. They are in fact just civilians who became rebels to fight for their homes who may or may not have been declared enemies of the state. Does Starfleet actually wield that sort of power even over former Federation citizens?

Also, if as we see in the episodes ''Learning Curve'' and ''Ensign Ro'' that you are not allowed an earring essential to your religion and cultural identity, would Riker or Tuvok have confiscated a turban? Many things have not aged well in Trek, and I feel as if this is one of them. And as Chuck notes, Worf's baldric and Troi's cleavage were apparently just fine from day 1. ''Captain's discretion'' really does seem to boil down to ''are you in my special clique?'' Not really what one would expect from a liberal utopia.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Those are both good points.

Honestly, I think it would have helped loads just to have the Maqui not be in Starfleet uniforms. A nice visual reminder that they aren't like the rest of the crew could have done wonders for the show.

[McAvoy]

Well they were not given Starfleet ranks. As in no pips but something else even if they held rank comparable to Starfleet personnel. Torres and Chakotay for example.

Yeah they just rushed through that process. Every Maquis just agreed to it. Like they had no choice. Could have at least had an episode after Caretaker for that. The aftermath. But nope. We did get a Tuvok episode though with a handful of Maquis troublemakers so I guess we at least got that.

[stryke]

Not a perfect answer, but that's what I have. Now what I want to know is how come on Voyager there wasn't enough quarters for everyone to have their own. We see a few times people sharing quarters, but even with Voyager's small size it had more than enough rooms for everyone.

I think Lower Decks suggests another answer to that. If you're trapped in the Delta Quadrant do you really want to be sleeping on corridor bunk beds for potentially 70 years, and so even sharing quarters is going to prefferable to that. They also lost half the Starfleet crew due to the Caretaker so likely they reallocated the officer bedrooms around to allow all of the new combined crew to use them with some doubling up, and so the corridor bunk beds went unused.

What's amusing though is that Neelix did have a spare room for Seven that she pretty much never used which had to annoy some of the crewman and marquis conscripts that had been sharing a room for six years at that point while there was one going spare that they hadn't been allowed to move into for some reason.

[clearspira]

Star Trek logistics are weird. Let's make this another random Trek thought of the day.

The Feds have access to the resources of hundreds of planets, anti-matter reactors and replicators... but they cannot spare the resources apparantly to add one extra deck so that the junior officers aren't living in a hallway or bunking up like Lister and Rimmer.

And as mentioned earlier, power constraints are a legit reason on Voyager. But everywhere else?

[TGLS]

Well, let's be generous and say that one cabin could fit four LD bunks (including their share of other living spaces). This would imply that if they went with cabins for all, then the living quarters space used by junior officers would be four times larger, or perhaps four decks. On a 15 deck ship, this would be a 20% increase in size...

[stryke]

I wonder if it might be an aspirational thing to encourage the lower ranks to excel, and to rank up to attain better living conditions. Maybe they're worried if they don't they'll just end up with a bunch of blue uniform Picards.

Like they even deliberately gave them more limited replicator recipes and that was shown to be straightfoward to adjust to unlock the full options. That feels like it took more work doing that than just having the same options for all of the fleet replicators as standard. Maybe that's what some of the admirals get up to back at Starfleet. Determining who gets to eat what and justifying it based on some nebulous ideas of boosting productivity/efficiency.