VOY: Juggernaut

[cdrood]

It's an overall problem with Trek, and one Chuck pointed out once (in one of the Red Dwarf reviews IIRC), and can result in them lecturing without seeing how they'd do in similar circumstances. If they convincingly go without when faced with such a position, rather than still go for their luxuries even with a cost then fair enough, but I can't see a society so used to luxuries doing that.

Yeah, and that was kind of the point I was trying to make with my first paragraph. Yes, logically, most uses of energy are going to be trivial compared to the main purposes of the ship-ie, the ability to travel at warp, as well as powering shields and weapons. Voyager still is a ship that should be stretched paper thin on resources at any given time due to their problems with resupply, and yet the people on board this ship have never had to part with luxuries. They eat well, they sleep comfortably, they bathe regularly, they have advanced holodecks which provide entertainment, they're never low on medical supplies.

The only time we see Voyager with any kind of a resource shortfall in the fifth season is "Course: Oblivion," which is not even our Voyager and it ends up being blown up at the end of the episode with zero consequences or impact on the main story.

This another reason I think DS9 is so well regarded. It tends to portray Earth as the rich neighborhood. Sisko once lamented to Kira how they don't get it because they already have paradise. It's why Section 31 was a great idea. Even The Federation, who agree not to use cloaking devices, has a seedy underbelly. Voyager should have been a great test of those values. What would they have to do in order to safely travel through unknown, possibly hostile territories with no support and no legal right to be there. A good percentage of the crew had already given up on some of those values. How do you deal when you can't get a meal by just asking a machine for it. They played lip service to hydroponics and Neelix's "kitchen".

I'm still 50/50 on whether letting Neelix cook made any logical sense (outside of his complete inability to do anything he claims he can). On the one hand, as a native of the quadrant, he's probably more familiar with the local foods. On the other, he's someone from one side of the galaxy cooking for people from the other.

[chaos42]

neelix cooking isn't a bad idea but they should have made him more like guinin from tng or quark he stays in the kitchen unless hes going to pick up produce ect. or doing something shady for the crew like meeting with locals who don't trust the humans but a neelix is a local species he just blends in, also i wish they had given him a more casual clothing.

also i think what i really wish is he wouldn't constantly say lyola root is good he should have said, its tastes terrible but if you uses it in small quantities you can't taste it and its a replacement for vitamin or other things they normally would have or replicate so they can save power that way.

it also bring me to a major mistake they made, they should have been converting sections of the ship to do other things like a refinery to smelt or and other stuff they find into usable matter, or breaking down stuff to use for replicators -i agree they need some type of raw matter to convert and looking for that raw matter might have been a good episode, like converting a fungus or algee into biomatter to use for food

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Chuck is dead on about the "fake science" problem is TNG era Trek.

This an example of what my brother calls "the fake science solution to the fake science problem". I usually use "technobabble" when talking about it with others. It's a real problem because of the lack of consequences and sense of real danger. I haven't watched Discovery, but if they are trying to avoid that, more power to them.

That's a really good description of the problem Trek had, with Voyager probably being the worst offender. It's very flawed drama.

At its best, sci-fi can present speculative technology or scenarios that are scientifically plausible, logically consistent, and have an already established set of rules. Sci-fi stories that do that perfectly are very rare, but you can still get by if the writers recognize that its the situation and characters that drive the drama, rather than the specifics of the problem.

Unfortunately, Voyager's characters are often very flat, and the drama is instead focused around a fake problem that doesn't even make sense. When the characters pull a magic solution out of nowhere, why are we supposed to care? More often than not the characters haven't grown, and more often than not it the problem isn't a puzzle that the audience has a chance of figuring out. The characters going on and on with their technobabble as if it actually matters is just maddening.

TOS did better at this, generally speaking, and the writers even toned down real life technical terms in favor of less accurate terminology that the audience was more likely to understand. But the best episodes from all the series are human dramas. The mechanics of City on the Edge of Forever or the science of The Visitor probably wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny, but its all window dressing. Voyager's Scorpion deals with tech, but the real quandary was a moral one.

[FaxModem1]

This another reason I think DS9 is so well regarded. It tends to portray Earth as the rich neighborhood. Sisko once lamented to Kira how they don't get it because they already have paradise. It's why Section 31 was a great idea. Even The Federation, who agree not to use cloaking devices, has a seedy underbelly. Voyager should have been a great test of those values. What would they have to do in order to safely travel through unknown, possibly hostile territories with no support and no legal right to be there. A good percentage of the crew had already given up on some of those values. How do you deal when you can't get a meal by just asking a machine for it. They played lip service to hydroponics and Neelix's "kitchen".

I think this point gets overemphasized by certain fans of Trek. The Federation facing what it's actually made of in a crisis is one thing. Revealing that it's corrupt as hell, and has rogue thought police is quite another. Section 31 is something that has taken on a life of it's own the fandom, because heaven forbid that the Federation works because it's actually a good government trying to make life better for it's current and future members.

I much prefer what DS9 showed us about the Federation in another lens. Sure, they live in paradise, and they do somewhat recognize that not everyone lives that way, so they do go out of their way to try and make other worlds more like paradise, and help them rebuild. Hence why Bajor goes from world dealing with starvation and civil war to potential Federation member in about half a decade. Doing good stories about that can be difficult, but I think it's preferable to the theme that the Utopia that our main characters strive for is all a lie, and when the chips are down, they're no better than the Romulans or the Cardassians.

[turbo_sailor67]

it would remind us why Torres is in charge (all the spats with Seven lately merely tell us Torres is in charge), plus for Carey it would at least be far more meaningful than being shot as a hostage.

Agreed; although as mockable as she is for getting to be CHENG for breaking a shipmate's nose, I have to say she's not far removed from one I served under who we acquired because he missed his ship's movement and he had only a vague clue as to what the equipment in the engine rooms were and what functions they performed, and how they did.

She needed all the development she could get because they really made her a caricature most of the time instead of a character by having her almost always "pissed off" at something or someone even in episodes where she isn't the main focus. Being "pissed off" at the beginning makes sense given the situation everyone finds themselves in, but the progression should have been coming to accept the life she was now stuck with and making the most out of it like the connection she makes with Paris.

There was plenty of potential for how this mix of a crew would deal with their situation but that had to be killed off naturally to "dumb it down" for a audience that I'm not sure how much of one was there. Not that "dumbing it down" is exclusive to Voyager, or Star Trek for that matter. Personally I find it insulting when any entertainment gets directed that it has to handicap itself because there aren't enough smart people in the audience for it.

[Admiral X]

What I find hilarious is the way they'd all brag about how many people in STEM fields got an interest in their fields because of Star Trek, then they'd turn around and act like their audience was stupid and wouldn't notice things, and that only teen-aged boys watched, etc.

[Koshundheit]

What I find hilarious is the way they'd all brag about how many people in STEM fields got an interest in their fields because of Star Trek, then they'd turn around and act like their audience was stupid and wouldn't notice things, and that only teen-aged boys watched, etc.

So true. If they ever needed a clear demonstration how wrong they were, that was Enterprise. They didn't manage to grow the audience by dumbing everything down and treating the audience like idiots. The dumber things got, the more of the audience vanished. As far as who their audience was, they surely had the demographics data showing Star Trek has always had a diverse audience. Insulting the audience seems to just be another way to try to excuse lazy writing.

It is a shame that despite good writing being one of the most key parts of making a good show, it is still too often given the least priority and respect. If it is "reality" TV or other pablum, a poor story may not hurt because the viewers will apparently watch almost anything. But if you are going to do a science fiction show, for goodness sake realize the audience probably will expect more than the bare minimum level of writing and storytelling competence.

[Fianna]

There was plenty of potential for how this mix of a crew would deal with their situation but that had to be killed off naturally to "dumb it down" for a audience that I'm not sure how much of one was there. Not that "dumbing it down" is exclusive to Voyager, or Star Trek for that matter. Personally I find it insulting when any entertainment gets directed that it has to handicap itself because there aren't enough smart people in the audience for it.

That wasn't done so much out of a desire to dumb it down, as it was the folks in charge really just wanted a continuation of TNG that had the exact same feel and did all the same things, so deliberately downplayed anything that would set their show apart.

[CareerKnight]

Doing good stories about that can be difficult, but I think it's preferable to the theme that the Utopia that our main characters strive for is all a lie, and when the chips are down, they're no better than the Romulans or the Cardassians.

I never got that the Utopia was a lie from DS9. The only people arguing that Section 31 is necessary are members of Section 31 (namely Sloan , the head of S31). Failing to live up to your ideals on occasion is not the same as being no better than someone who doesn't have them.

[turbo_sailor67]

[/quote]

That wasn't done so much out of a desire to dumb it down, as it was the folks in charge really just wanted a continuation of TNG that had the exact same feel and did all the same things, so deliberately downplayed anything that would set their show apart.
[/quote]

Could be, but they made a huge deal about how different they were going to be by having "a woman Captain" like that had never been seen in Star Trek, when you've had female admirals. Perhaps they were trying to do both at the same time? "continue" TNG and give "the exact same feel" and still be different? I don't claim to know what their thinking is but there was good potential in Voyager that really stood out at times that even depicted Captain Janeway in a reasonable Commanding Officer role.