VOY - Night

[Linkara]

I feel like the crew going absolutely apeshit over the isolation despite the fact that they're a small village that can interact with each other every day just fine is one of the dumbest things the franchise ever conceived.

Yes, I'd never voluntarily interact with Neelix but you're telling me that its utter MADNESS not seeing stars and just having to be with your coworkers?

It's not just the same people, but it's a contributing factor.

There is nothing new to DO. No new things to explore, no variations in routine, nothing new to stimulate or cause interesting new interactions. These are the same people you see every day. Eventually, you will exhaust conversation topics, you will have done everything there is to do with them. It grows resentment and frustration. And there is no escape from it.

It's like the tedium and boredom of an office job, but you're unable to go home at night. You just have to keep doing the same thing over and over, nothing to look forward to, nothing to break up what you're used to. During the pandemic, kids have actually had a tough time adjusting to figuring out how much time has passed because staying at home all the time and not getting to interact with their friends or do anything different means that they have a tougher time associating one day from another. And that's a kid, with boundless imagination and wonder at the world. Try having jaded adults who have no routine, no hope, nothing new, and the only escape is the holodeck, which has heavy competition for usage.

You're just doing the same thing over and over, seeing the same people over and over, and there is nothing to distract you from the existential horror of the void. You can't even look out a window and appreciate something pretty, because there's NOTHING.

[Riedquat]

I feel like the crew going absolutely apeshit over the isolation despite the fact that they're a small village that can interact with each other every day just fine is one of the dumbest things the franchise ever conceived.

Yes, I'd never voluntarily interact with Neelix but you're telling me that its utter MADNESS not seeing stars and just having to be with your coworkers?

It's not just the same people, but it's a contributing factor.

There is nothing new to DO. No new things to explore, no variations in routine, nothing new to stimulate or cause interesting new interactions. These are the same people you see every day. Eventually, you will exhaust conversation topics, you will have done everything there is to do with them. It grows resentment and frustration. And there is no escape from it.

It's like the tedium and boredom of an office job, but you're unable to go home at night. You just have to keep doing the same thing over and over, nothing to look forward to, nothing to break up what you're used to. During the pandemic, kids have actually had a tough time adjusting to figuring out how much time has passed because staying at home all the time and not getting to interact with their friends or do anything different means that they have a tougher time associating one day from another. And that's a kid, with boundless imagination and wonder at the world. Try having jaded adults who have no routine, no hope, nothing new, and the only escape is the holodeck, which has heavy competition for usage.

You're just doing the same thing over and over, seeing the same people over and over, and there is nothing to distract you from the existential horror of the void. You can't even look out a window and appreciate something pretty, because there's NOTHING.

Is it much different from a crew of a sailing ship stuck in a long calm? OK a bit more to look at outside the ship even if it's just sea, but on the other hand considerably more physical discomfort.

[Linkara]

Is it much different from a crew of a sailing ship stuck in a long calm? OK a bit more to look at outside the ship even if it's just sea, but on the other hand considerably more physical discomfort.

Yep!

And people developed cabin fever or were abused by the higher-ups on the ship or any number of other things. And that was just from a few months - I don't think long journeys on the ocean took 2 years, like the Voyager crew were going to be going through if they hadn't found a faster way out.

[FaxModem1]

Is it much different from a crew of a sailing ship stuck in a long calm? OK a bit more to look at outside the ship even if it's just sea, but on the other hand considerably more physical discomfort.

Yep!

And people developed cabin fever or were abused by the higher-ups on the ship or any number of other things. And that was just from a few months - I don't think long journeys on the ocean took 2 years, like the Voyager crew were going to be going through if they hadn't found a faster way out.

Stopping and scanning at every nebula and weird phenomena makes a lot of sense for why Voyager kept on stopping everywhere like a dog sniffing every mailbox, tree, and hydrant on a walk.

It gives them new experiences and varies the routine.

[Colbertnation]

Holding some long term American idol or Survivor type contest to see who gets the chance to throw Neelix out an airlock would definitely liven up the ship. Although I can understand in a weird way why having nothing outside the ship would be maddening. At least when you deliberately wander into anomalies or have to fight off hostile aliens there is a chance at ending your journey on Janeways Ship of the Damned.

[J!!]

During the pandemic, kids have actually had a tough time adjusting to figuring out how much time has passed because staying at home all the time and not getting to interact with their friends or do anything different means that they have a tougher time associating one day from another.

As a denizen of retail purgatory, I would fucking kill to have such problems.

[Madner Kami]

During the pandemic, kids have actually had a tough time adjusting to figuring out how much time has passed because staying at home all the time and not getting to interact with their friends or do anything different means that they have a tougher time associating one day from another.

As a denizen of retail purgatory, I would fucking kill to have such problems.

Exactly what I was thinking earlier. I don't see the problem, because we are living in that (supposed) nightmare.

[CrypticMirror]

Just teach the kids clocks, and restrict streaming to bring back the sensation of waiting for Saturday morning cartoons. It would mean parents had to put the effort into parenting their kids. Oh, I see the problem there...

[Frustration]

There's no good reason the computer couldn't generate multiple doctors if the situation required it other than the general nonsense of the Voyager writers.

Except there are likely both ethical issues to generating multiple copies of a sapient program and then not running them all, and logistical issues - sapient holodeck characters require a great deal of processing power to run, and generating one required a significant fraction of a Galaxy-class starship's computer resources. Why else is there so much interest in studying Data, whose brain creates a mind directly instead of through levels and levels of simulation kludges?

(You'll probably ask how all the episodes in which the Doctor is stored and run on tiny devices, or inside 7 of 9, or in which there are an entire village's worth of sapient hologram characters, are supposed to have worked. Then we'll have to agree that the Voyager writers were awful. It's like the transporters, only even worse.)

[Deledrius]

(You'll probably ask how all the episodes in which the Doctor is stored and run on tiny devices, or inside 7 of 9, or in which there are an entire village's worth of sapient hologram characters, are supposed to have worked. Then we'll have to agree that the Voyager writers were awful. It's like the transporters, only even worse.)

This is something I'll give the writers of Voyager the "no worse than your peers" award for. Everyone writing for Star Trek seems to have a general computer knowledge aptitude somewhere around "I know how to operate a typewriter or standalone word processor, as long as it's working perfectly". Somehow this seemed like a good idea for science fiction writers.

Most of the time they managed to get away with it, but instances like the Doctor end up showing where their lack of understanding, or even imagination, becomes starkly clear.

While I can grant that this was a product of its time, especially when TNG started, by the time of Voyager's end it was much harder to see as an acceptable blindspot. By 2020, it's incomprehensible, yet the new shows all demonstrate a continued lack of technological familiarity. It only comes across as a willful ignorance these days; you have to work hard to remain that uninformed and yet still manage to have a professional writing career.