VOY:Spirit Folk or "PaddyWorld"

[CharlesPhipps]

To be fair, the "families endangered by the threats of the week" thing isn't a mistake or Federation policy but laziness of the production staff to the ONE TIME THEY ACTUALLY PAID ATTENTION. The whole point of the saucers being able to break away from the ship is so they can take the ship into combat without endangering civilian personnel.

They just....didn't.

As for holograms and A.I? If I have to actually make an assumption, I tend to view it through the same lens as droids in Star Wars. Holograms are by nature non-sentient and limited by their programs but they are capable of becoming sentient if they're left alone long enough that their program starts to learn and develop.

Which I suppose means Starfleet needs to learn memory wipes.

[MaxWylde]

To be fair, the "families endangered by the threats of the week" thing isn't a mistake or Federation policy but laziness of the production staff to the ONE TIME THEY ACTUALLY PAID ATTENTION. The whole point of the saucers being able to break away from the ship is so they can take the ship into combat without endangering civilian personnel.

They just....didn't.

The writers may have paid attention, but not to correct or adjust the situation. They had to go along with Gene's strange vision so they could stay and continue writing, because if they ever brought up how silly and stupid it is to have families aboard a warship, they likely would've been fired. Consider that the few times we ever saw the Enterprise-D separate the saucer for that purpose, the ship was already in danger, and they did not evacuate the families prior anyway. What, did Gene or the writers really think that the baddies were just going to allow the Enterprise to evacuate their families into the saucer, separate it, and then get back to them? Does that sound very pragmatic to you?

On the one time, yes, one time, in The Arsenal of Freedom, where Geordi orders the saucer separated so that the families could be safe, they had already been engaged by the Echo Poppa drone, and it could've hurt or killed people aboard. The ship could've been destroyed, and nearly was if Geordi hadn't retreated. But most of the time, the ship doesn't have the time to do that. They're already engaged with the Borg, or whomever, in combat; shots are already traded. I seriously wonder if anyone at Starfleet HQ really reads after-action reports and considers maybe it's not good PR to have civilians needlessly killed in combat like this? If I were the leader of a rival to the Federation, I'd get no end of good propaganda to use against the Federation for this policy.

Because you don't see the Klingons, Romulans, or Cardassians do this kind of thing. We saw Zayel aboard Dukat's freighter, but that's a freighter, and even so we didn't see any other civvies aboard and he probably pulled some strings to have her aboard, a privilege of rank.

To be fair, we do see Picard complain that he's got a ship with children aboard, but he's not complaining about this because of their safety, but because he doesn't do too well with kids. He doesn't express antipathy toward the policy itself, merely the fact that this is what he's saddled with.

[Admiral X]

I think all the families are supposed to already be in the saucer section, at least as originally planned.

[ORCACommander]

we also have the term sophont which has not quite its made its way into dictionaries yet

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sophont

[bronnt]

As for holograms and A.I? If I have to actually make an assumption, I tend to view it through the same lens as droids in Star Wars. Holograms are by nature non-sentient and limited by their programs but they are capable of becoming sentient if they're left alone long enough that their program starts to learn and develop.

Which I suppose means Starfleet needs to learn memory wipes.

I find that concept a bit disturbing. I'd rather not pretend that someone repeatedly using the "Vulcan Love Slave" program is eventually going to be sexually exploiting a sapient being. But Star trek has an extremely poor record when it comes to consistent characterization for how their holograms even work.

Think about what we learn in "Author, Author." The EMH Mark 1 was rendered obsolete. So, instead of simply updating the software on starships or just deleting old files, they instead actually took those programs out of starships, uploaded them into some database (presumably with all their medical knowledge intact for some reason) and then took them to a mining colony. They excavated a mine, and then, instead of continuing to mine with whatever advanced machinery they had used for the excavation, they instead populated the whole mine with holographic emitters. They then activated all the EMH Mark-1s that had been taken out of starships, distributed a bunch of hand tools, and told them to get to work mining.

Just think about that whole scenario and how mindbogglingly little sense it makes.

[Wild_Kraken]

I liked Chuck's take that the Intrepid-class is just the future version of the F-35. So much of Voyager makes sense if you think of it as a runaway megaproject.

[Fixer]

I think all the families are supposed to already be in the saucer section, at least as originally planned.

It does. Though in generations they decided to evactuate the medical bay in the Saucer section, to the saucer section. Also they had all the children and families evacuated to the saucer section from engineering which suggests the Enterprise D was running on child labour

[CharlesPhipps]

Think about what we learn in "Author, Author." The EMH Mark 1 was rendered obsolete. So, instead of simply updating the software on starships or just deleting old files, they instead actually took those programs out of starships, uploaded them into some database (presumably with all their medical knowledge intact for some reason) and then took them to a mining colony. They excavated a mine, and then, instead of continuing to mine with whatever advanced machinery they had used for the excavation, they instead populated the whole mine with holographic emitters. They then activated all the EMH Mark-1s that had been taken out of starships, distributed a bunch of hand tools, and told them to get to work mining.

Just think about that whole scenario and how mindbogglingly little sense it makes.

You would be stunned at how many incredibly impractical projects have been repurposed to save money or justify their existence. Look at the Osprey.

[Dînadan]

Another reason the ‘evacuate civilians to the saucer and seperate’ doesn’t make much sense which is never brought up - as far as we’re aware the saucer doesn’t have Warp power, so would have to flee at impulse, meaning that for all practical purposes, it will get nowhere and will be caught in about three seconds flat after the drive Section has been defeated (and if there are multiple enemy ships, it’d be trivial for one or more to slip past and catch the saucer while the rest keep the drive section busy). Saucer separation makes much more sense as a combat manoeuvre, allowing you to engage the enemy from two directions simultaneously, but even then, as Chuck notes in the ‘Message in a bottle’ review, it’d be more practical to just have multiple smaller ships operating as a squadron from the get go.

[phantom000]

So should they have done with Fair Haven? How about this...

Fair Haven is a sub plot for one season, maybe more. It is used as a means for characterization and serve as a B-plot for episodes. Most of the characters in the town are created, or modified by the crew so that each of them will have someone to hang out with. Janeway creates Sullivan for herself and starts to become infatuated with him.

So here you have two places to go with this.

1. Janeway wrestling with the fear that she might be turning into a holo-addict, like Barclay. This would be an great window into her personality as she is trying to deal with this possibility while also trying not to let anyone else see what is happening.

2. Sullivan is becoming self-aware. His program is designed to adapt to human behavior, kinda like Minuet from TNG. As he adapts to Janeway he gets closer and closer to the threshold of consciousness. This would be like if Moriarty was a recurring character on TNG.