Caretaker (VOY)

[crankyconner]

Review: http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v801.php

Something that struck me odd was that at the end of the episode, Chakotay was willing to become Janeway's First Officer and have his officers become Starfleet crewmembers (only provisionally, but still). The former I would have thought Chakotay would have resisted being under Janeway's command, because he was the captain, well, leader on his own ship. And the latter because the Marquis hate Starfleet.

[FaxModem1]

Chakotay was without a ship. Janeway could have either put all the Maquis in the brig for 70 years, have them be freeloaders, or have them work for her and think of themselves as one group. She chose the latter.

Considering the disadvantage Chakotay was in, with Voyager's crew outnumbering his two to one, complying was probably a good call for the time being. Later on, the two crews integrated pretty well, so a mutiny was pointless.

[MaxWylde]

Later on, the two crews integrated pretty well, so a mutiny was pointless.

Which was sad. Mutiny should've always been a possibility throughout the series, especially under the command of this megalomaniac. I think it was rather an act of cowardice on the part of the producers not to keep that going, to make it so that Janeway has to continually earn the loyalty and respect of the Maquis to keep her position as Captain, not to mention the Starfleet personnel. Given how woefully ill-disciplined Starfleet officers are, I would say that being unnecessarily stranded in the Delta Quadrant is a situation that would be very taxing on these people.

In fact, from a writing perspective, I thought that the way they approached the situation gave no foils for Janeway to really contend with. You might say Chakotay offered a counter-veiling perspective on some of her decisions (notably helping the Borg against Species 8472), but he goes along with it anyway, so there's nobody really there to lock horns with her or Tuvok in a fundamental way. Indeed, I thought all the characters on the show were all wrong for the kind of show they initially wanted to have if they expected to have some real drama in there. Neelix is a terrific example: Ethan Phillips did the best he could, but here was an opportunity to create a really interesting character and they messed it up completely. Here was this guy who could've shown what life in the Delta Quadrant was truly like, rather than being a complete charlatan with a desire for authority, regardless of his ability to actually do what he says he can do, which he has none. He should've been the practical authority on survival, on doing what you can to muddle through in spite of whatever lofty principles Starfleet wants - the ultimate foil for Starfleet in general. Make him kind of like Malcolm Reynolds or, dare I say, someone like Jayne from Firefly.

This was also my big bugaboo about TNG in general. Gene's notion that mankind would abolish all internal conflicts and just go along happy with whatever was a big mistake, but I take my hat off to the likes of Ira Steven Behr for seeing this as a challenge. Worf, for instance, needed a real foil to show him what an idealistic guy he is, and I thought of someone like, say, a Romulan Starfleet Officer, someone who, like Worf, was raised on Earth but his parents defected from the Romulan Star Empire. He wouldn't have the same kind of adulation for the Star Empire as Worf seems to for the Klingon Empire, and thus has no interest in joining them for practical reasons, whereas Worf, for all his bluster for being Klingon and a warrior, never up and joins the Klingon Empire when he could've done so at anytime prior and during his service in Starfleet (and he returns to the Enterprise once the Klingon Civil War is concluded). Why doesn't he? Maybe this Romulan could tell him that the reason he doesn't is that if he joined the Empire, he'd be one warrior amongst many and he'd have to constantly prove his worth as one, whereas in Starfleet, he's the lion among the lambs, and thus there's the implication both that he's a coward and a bit lazy. Nice bit of dramatic tension there.

[StrangeDevice]

Which was sad. Mutiny should've always been a possibility throughout the series, especially under the command of this megalomaniac. I think it was rather an act of cowardice on the part of the producers not to keep that going, to make it so that Janeway has to continually earn the loyalty and respect of the Maquis to keep her position as Captain, not to mention the Starfleet personnel. Given how woefully ill-disciplined Starfleet officers are, I would say that being unnecessarily stranded in the Delta Quadrant is a situation that would be very taxing on these people.

Hence why the EMH and Seven of Nine ended up being the two breakout characters, one fulfilled the role of the McCoy and the other became Voyager's Spock (to the point that she eclipsed what should've been their Kirk). The pity there was that the rest of the crew faded into the background as a result. I don't really remember many episodes with Tom or Tuvok where they did something unique that couldn't have been done on any other show, for instance.

There are dozens of places you could've taken Paris's character (one of them basically being Apollo from Revival!BSG), but it would have been interesting to see Tuvok explore his curious perspective on the nature of evil. The deeply moral (what is essentially) policeman who gets more and more fascinated by the macabre aspects of criminal behaviour. Sudor would have been a marvellous foil for that, it's a shame that they decided not to make him a recurring character like Ro or Barclay and just chuck him to the wind.

Actually, I get the impression that come Braga's time on the show, they were almost more interested in having it be an anthology series with semi-recurring characters in the background. I wonder how the show would've fared if they'd gone that direction instead?

[animalia]

Does anyone know where I can view part 3?

[Nealithi]

So the Caretaker review is up again and it got me thinking.

How would you fix the issue? You want lost in space Trek edition, but want Janeway to be strong character.
My solution is this. Chakotay is ramming the kazon vessel. Janeway chooses to save Chakotay and thus the kazon ship rams the array. But instead of the self destruct, it damaged the device to send them home. Janeway has to decide, try and defend this array with one lone ship and hope they can fix it enough to get home. Or detonate it to keep what it does have out of the kazon and try and get home at warp. She chooses the long game as having better odds of survival.

Later she sees Chakotay with his crew in the overcrowded brig. As a Starfleet officer she can't keep them there for years. But the maquis have something she and the ship need. People that know how to work with less and thrive. So she enlists the maquis to join the ship.
As for Kes and Neelix? Don't have them eagerly ask to come along. Have Kes guilt Neelix into asking to help so as to make up for how he conned them. This leaves Neelix shady and makes Kes his Jimeny Cricket.

But how would you fix this?

[clearspira]

So the Caretaker review is up again and it got me thinking.

How would you fix the issue? You want lost in space Trek edition, but want Janeway to be strong character.
My solution is this. Chakotay is ramming the kazon vessel. Janeway chooses to save Chakotay and thus the kazon ship rams the array. But instead of the self destruct, it damaged the device to send them home. Janeway has to decide, try and defend this array with one lone ship and hope they can fix it enough to get home. Or detonate it to keep what it does have out of the kazon and try and get home at warp. She chooses the long game as having better odds of survival.

Later she sees Chakotay with his crew in the overcrowded brig. As a Starfleet officer she can't keep them there for years. But the maquis have something she and the ship need. People that know how to work with less and thrive. So she enlists the maquis to join the ship.
As for Kes and Neelix? Don't have them eagerly ask to come along. Have Kes guilt Neelix into asking to help so as to make up for how he conned them. This leaves Neelix shady and makes Kes his Jimeny Cricket.

But how would you fix this?

This episode has problems but I honestly think that it does its job. And really, its probably one of the better Trek pilots.

The issue is 100% on display only a few episodes in: Tom Paris is completely forgiven, the Maquis and the Starfleet crews are fast friends, and Neelix has lost any edge that he had and is now a clown and the kitchen dictator respectively.

You could redesign Caretaker to be a work of art and it would still be Voyager.

[Madner Kami]

Yup. "Caretaker" isn't a stellar start, but certainly one of the better, if not even the best series-opener Trek has had. The primary failure that needs fixing is, that the rest of the series largely doesn't hold to the serie's premise and promisses.

[McAvoy]

So the Caretaker review is up again and it got me thinking.

How would you fix the issue? You want lost in space Trek edition, but want Janeway to be strong character.
My solution is this. Chakotay is ramming the kazon vessel. Janeway chooses to save Chakotay and thus the kazon ship rams the array. But instead of the self destruct, it damaged the device to send them home. Janeway has to decide, try and defend this array with one lone ship and hope they can fix it enough to get home. Or detonate it to keep what it does have out of the kazon and try and get home at warp. She chooses the long game as having better odds of survival.

Later she sees Chakotay with his crew in the overcrowded brig. As a Starfleet officer she can't keep them there for years. But the maquis have something she and the ship need. People that know how to work with less and thrive. So she enlists the maquis to join the ship.
As for Kes and Neelix? Don't have them eagerly ask to come along. Have Kes guilt Neelix into asking to help so as to make up for how he conned them. This leaves Neelix shady and makes Kes his Jimeny Cricket.

But how would you fix this?

The whole damaging the array's self destruct thing definitely could have been expanded to the technology to send them home. Perhaps a line from Tuvok saying that it's possible Voyager could repair it, but he is unsure how long it would take and when the Kazon would be back. Easy enough. Fixes that little issue.

The Maquis is just one issue among many that Voyager had. If I recall it wasn't just Berman but also people above him that basically wanted the reset button on each episode. For reruns of course.

But yeah the Maquis should have been at least a one season long arc or perhaps even a series long arc.

[Makeitstop]

I feel like there was a much simpler way for the writers to have the dilemma without all the obvious ways in which they could have both destroyed the array and gone home. All they had to do was establish that their weapons don't work there.

Have someone draw a phaser when they first arrive only to have a local redneck NPC comment on it in a way that shows that they know what it is despite it being out of place for the setting. Show that they see it as harmless, as though trying to kill them is merely impolite. Then when things escalate later in the scene we can have the crew resist, only to find the phasers don't work. Follow that up with a throwaway line in the magic meeting room about explosives not working, that even the simplest and most archaic bombs fail to go off inside the array.

You could go into more detail if you wanted to, but that at least makes it clear that the array can only be destroyed from the outside. No bombs, no self destructs, no crew members sacrificing themselves to get everyone else home.

For bonus points, you could show characters interacting with the array, presumably in the form of an NPC (maybe the one hitting on Tom earlier) since we've established they have those and because it makes for better tv than watching people peck away at alien touchscreens. She's programmed to help the replacement caretaker, only banjo man unlocked the basic systems in an act of desperation, since he never got a successor. So now she's more than happy to aid whoever is interacting with her, though they'll only have limited functionality available until the new user's caretaker genes kick in and they can use those abilities to unlock the full potential of the array.

This would allow the show to explain that they can use the array to go home, and even that the trip home won't be as destructive since their proximity allows the array to prepare them for the trip by putting the entire ship in a stasis field that will protect them until they arrive safely on the other side, which would have the side effect of preventing them from firing their weapons at the last moment.

Oh, and while she isn't allowed to give away technology or let them download information, she has been programmed to educate the occupant of the array, and will happily teach the principles on which those technologies can be developed. Our NPC guide estimates that she could provide more scientific advancement in a few years than their civilization would achieve in the next century. And of course, that means she'd be happy to do the same for the Kazon if they take control of the array.

And there you have it. You can blow up the array, or you can leave it intact for the Kazon while you return safe and sound in the alpha quadrant, but you can't do both.