Did Voyager even have a series bible?

[Deledrius]

It always feels like weird personal opinions when they make those comments about replicated food. It just doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise.

[Admiral X]

My head canon is that while replicated food replicates the chemical composition of food, being artificially created means the texture isn't quite right (or something along those lines), and thus doesn't taste as good as good that was grown. Or maybe the vegans are right and that death flavor is what makes all the difference.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think, canonically, it's purely psychosomatic. But that doesn't mean it's not real.

No one can ACTUALLY tell the difference because it's 100% the same molecularly.

But their brain KNOWS its different.

[Makeshift Python]

Only way to settle that is serve a character replicated food and tell them it was home cooked, and if they say "it tastes to synthetic" then they've passed the test.

[MerelyAFan]

With Voyager its odd that show that had so many proverbial cooks in the kitchen still so consistently felt like television comfort food. It almost feels like the various pressures of the show (UPN's directives, the clashing character/tone interpretations in the writer's room, Berman & Braga's odd instincts about episodes) sanded down any prominent edges the show might have had to the point of it feeling in some ways like the ST show with least distinct identity.

[Fianna]

You'd think, if the writers room had such a broad consensus of not liking the "stranded on the far side of the galaxy" premise, that at some point during Voyager's seven year run, they'd have decided, "You know what? Let's have them finally get home this season, then send them off on adventures in the Alpha Quadrant."

[Makeshift Python]

You'd think, if the writers room had such a broad consensus of not liking the "stranded on the far side of the galaxy" premise, that at some point during Voyager's seven year run, they'd have decided, "You know what? Let's have them finally get home this season, then send them off on adventures in the Alpha Quadrant."

According to Moore was heavily heavily considered when Braga was showrunner, but ultimately he never made the decision, probably because taking such a direction was just be another way of saying “I give up, I don’t know what to do with this concept” and I don’t think they wanted that perception of the show. It would have been like blowing up DS9 and putting all the crew on the Defiant to explore the galaxy.

[CharlesPhipps]

With Voyager its odd that show that had so many proverbial cooks in the kitchen still so consistently felt like television comfort food. It almost feels like the various pressures of the show (UPN's directives, the clashing character/tone interpretations in the writer's room, Berman & Braga's odd instincts about episodes) sanded down any prominent edges the show might have had to the point of it feeling in some ways like the ST show with least distinct identity.

UPN didn't want Voyager. They wanted Star Trek. As similar to Star Trek as was presently in the public consciousness as possible.

Mind you, Seth MacFarlane has admitted that he wanted to do TNG himself.

It's just the meeting went like this.

"I'd like to do a optimistic utopian science fiction show. Like Star Trek."

"Sure, have a guaranteed full season and 2 million an episode."

"Well...that was easy."

"It's a comedy, right? With dick and fart jokes?"

"Umm...yes?"

[Durandal_1707]

Replicated food is every bit as good as real food. It has to be. The tech is based on transporter tech, which can replicate entire people with 100% accuracy (and if it can't, I sure as hell wouldn't ever want to step into one). If it can do that, surely it can perfect a steak.

And a steak produced by the replicator probably is better than a home-cooked steak, because I imagine the program was continually evolved over a long period of time; if someone managed to make a better steak than what the replicator had, they'd scan it and make a new replicator program from it. After enough years of that, a steak made by the replicator is probably pretty close to the Platonic ideal of a perfectly-prepared steak.

The problem is likely that even though it is an excellent steak, it's always the same steak. You won't get little random variations in the quality of the meat or levels of doneness—it'll always be Exactly. The same. Steak. And since the Federation doesn't use live animals for meat anymore, the program won't be evolving anymore; it'll be permanently stuck at whatever the state of the art was regarding steaks when they made the full transition. So, I can see how that could become monotonous for people, even if from an objective point of view it is pretty near the best steak ever cooked in human history.

[CharlesPhipps]

Mind you, transporting the exact same person through space is different from assembling someone from scratch.

At least theoretically since Barclay exists when being transported.