VOY - Alice

[cdrood]

The annoying thing about this episode is something Trek does far too frequently. They treat the unknown like there are no potential dangers, incompatibilities, etc. Who is going hook their brain up to some alien thing they just stumbled upon? It goes all the way back to The Naked TIme where the guy takes the glove off from his environmental suit.

[cdrood]

As to a Voyager specific problem with this episode has to do with Tom's need for parts. It never comes up in any other episode that parts are hard to come by. They built the Delta Flyer from scratch without it coming up. The video mentions the number of destroyed shuttles. Add in that Voyager's pristine condition in every episode makes the lines about backup systems ring hollow.

I

[remagynona]

Not to mention the fact that Neelix's ship, which despite being a garbage scow may have been at least slightly useful to have on many occasions, was just sitting in the shuttle bay collecting dust for 7 years making only a single forgettable appearance.

[CrypticMirror]

It ain't just the way they went through shuttles, but where they stored them all in the first place. Voyager's shuttlebay is not large. Just having Neelix's "Free Candy"-van in there ought to have filled it up. And then they go and cram in the Delta Flyer, which is pretty much as big as a runabout, and before that they had all the speedboat shaped shuttles and at least one of the TNG era blocky ones, how did these all fit?

[Mecha82]

The annoying thing about this episode is something Trek does far too frequently. They treat the unknown like there are no potential dangers, incompatibilities, etc. Who is going hook their brain up to some alien thing they just stumbled upon? It goes all the way back to The Naked TIme where the guy takes the glove off from his environmental suit.

That reminds me about that scene from Galaxy Quest were they land on that one planet and that one guy goes "Is there air? You don't know!".

[Rocketboy1313]

That would have pretty much just *been* Battlestar Galactica, and required about five times the budget Voyager had. You know, the show that couldn’t even afford a *matte painting* in The 37s? How do you imagine a flotilla of ships, the aliens, the battles, would look on the budget Voyager had?

I don't know, but I do know that ship models using preexisting assets or used to do a lot of design work up front (introducing races they would meet on the way back to the alpha quadrant) would have been a way to save on that.

I mean "Babylon 5" was using loads of different CGI ships and it came out a year before "Voyager".

[clearspira]

It ain't just the way they went through shuttles, but where they stored them all in the first place. Voyager's shuttlebay is not large. Just having Neelix's "Free Candy"-van in there ought to have filled it up. And then they go and cram in the Delta Flyer, which is pretty much as big as a runabout, and before that they had all the speedboat shaped shuttles and at least one of the TNG era blocky ones, how did these all fit?

Ex Astris Scientia has a wonderful article on this. TL;DR, going by every measurement and on-screen image we can, that shuttlebay must either have TARDIS-like proportions or the Delta Flyer and the shuttles have to be smaller than the visual effects and the technical manual claims they are (both being barely smaller than the actual shuttlebay itself.) Both are greatly unsatisfactory answers.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/delta-size.htm

[Kendrakirai]

That would have pretty much just *been* Battlestar Galactica, and required about five times the budget Voyager had. You know, the show that couldn’t even afford a *matte painting* in The 37s? How do you imagine a flotilla of ships, the aliens, the battles, would look on the budget Voyager had?

Is it that they couldn't afford a matte painting, or was the thinking, "This is the 90's; no one uses matte paintings anymore. It's either CG or nothing."?

Either way, they didn’t have anything to show the “amazing cities”, nor, as mentioned, a friggin juggler for Neekix’s cable access show.

[CrypticMirror]

It ain't just the way they went through shuttles, but where they stored them all in the first place. Voyager's shuttlebay is not large. Just having Neelix's "Free Candy"-van in there ought to have filled it up. And then they go and cram in the Delta Flyer, which is pretty much as big as a runabout, and before that they had all the speedboat shaped shuttles and at least one of the TNG era blocky ones, how did these all fit?

Ex Astris Scientia has a wonderful article on this. TL;DR, going by every measurement and on-screen image we can, that shuttlebay must either have TARDIS-like proportions or the Delta Flyer and the shuttles have to be smaller than the visual effects and the technical manual claims they are (both being barely smaller than the actual shuttlebay itself.) Both are greatly unsatisfactory answers.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/delta-size.htm

TNG had the opposite problem, IIRC. The Big-D's main shuttle bay alone ought to have been cavernous, but it hardly ever seemed to be more than a small pod. Maybe Q stole all its size to give to Voyager. Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Speaking of Q...