Let's fix Voyager

[shran]

Let's fix the ship, the series, anything that people on this forum consider to be wrong about this series. I am bored and I know I have better things to do, but what the heck, why not.
I suppose we should at first take a look at the various problems the series deals with, then the ship, crew, and then go episode by episode to see what is wrong.
Fixing would be that a more sensible action or strategy would be recommended, which could reasonably have been applied to said situation.
I know there are a ton of things wrong with physics and the like, but as that would cancel the series as a whole I think we had best leave that part until later.
I suppose that as the list grows from the various contributions of the forum we could start posting the various solutions as proposed by everyone, discussing them as they are formed.

Series-wise
1. No sign of damage or wearing down anywhere at all. Should have been shown.
2. Why using so many shuttles? And never using the Aerowing?

Starfleet problems
1. The penal colony: Ankle monitors are cumbersome and heavy. A sub-dermal chip would do just fine.

Ship-wise
1. Why not just fix the nacelles in the upward position? It would save a lot of machinery and space. Or just find a way to eliminate the need for shifting nacelles.
2. Considering the combadge registers a lot of body signals, could the EMH be activated as soon as there are several crewmen dying or wounded severely?


Crew-related
1. Bring Paris over to DS9 after a briefing by a local starfleet liason instead of Janeway coming over to see him.
2. Janeway. 'Nuff said for now, but to be elaborated on.
3. Paris should be just an observer and be treated as such, so no uniform for him. It lessens the confusion for the crew.
4. EMH bedside manners would be appreciated.
5. Neelix should have been dumped by the time they got to the Necrit expanse.

Tactical decisions
1. The timer. Or rather, the lack thereof.
2.

Caretaker, pt. I
1. Why the hell does the doctor stop the treatment of a patient just to check with Paris and Kim?
Janeway decided to institute a policy of 'maintaining the political balance', yet at the same time she comes barging in in several ways. To be elaborated upon.

[Captain Seafort]

Caretaker, fixed

Still in progress, but a great read.

[Lighthawk]

Two things would have fixed Voyager, not made it perfect, but far more watchable.

1) Continuality. Stop hitting the damn reset button, and let things actually develop naturally. New things that stuck around only happened on Voy in short, violent bursts.

2) Actually pretend like the show is happening on the other damn side of the galaxy already, rather than just on the outer edge of the federation. The way most of the crew behaved in their day to day lives, you'd think they were just on an extended mission, rather than looking forward to spending the rest of their natural lives trying to get home.

And on a personal note, cut out all the stupid episodes revolving around some plot device that could get voyager home in an instant. One, EVERYONE knows it's not going to work out, because then the show would be over. Two, Voyager getting stranded was suppose to be some kind of one in a billion random chance occurrences, it should be treated as such, not have wormholes and space/time whatchamacallitis popping up all over the damn place which all somehow magically would not only transport Voyager thousands of lightyears, but do so conveniently in the right damn direction.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Two words: timed explosives.

Ooh, Voyager's back home!

[Deepcrush]

Never make the series to begin with. Other then Seven and the Doctor, it was a waste of film.

[Lighthawk]

Never make the series to begin with. Other then Seven and the Doctor, it was a waste of film.

Oh I wouldn't go that far. Just think of all the great SFdebris reviews we've gotten from it.

[Deepcrush]

Never make the series to begin with. Other then Seven and the Doctor, it was a waste of film.

Oh I wouldn't go that far. Just think of all the great SFdebris reviews we've gotten from it.

Yeah... just kill the series.

[Atekimogus]

Ship-wise
1. Why not just fix the nacelles in the upward position? It would save a lot of machinery and space. Or just find a way to eliminate the need for shifting nacelles.

There is nothing wrong with the general idea imho, you seamlessly adjust the nacelles to the most efficient position condsidering a given warp speed.
The problem with this concept is not that it is implausible, the problem lies with the out of universe shipmodell, production value and producers unwilling to care about such tiny details. Now I am not 100% sure but I do believe that Voyager - at least at the beginning - used a physical modell. Moving parts used in such modells are tricky, that is one of the reasons the klingon bird of prey stopped shifting its wings at one point in time, because the machinery was broken, so they fixed them in place, which is much cheaper. But even if they had used a CGI model do you really expect producer - who are unable to keep track of photon torpedoes fired - to pay any attention as to how fast the ship is moving and the correct angle of the nacelles for that speed?

As for fixing the ship, the whole design is butt-ugly and it started this "streamlined" stretched out, triangular trend which I really don't like. Gimme a saucer with a sidedish of necksection and nacelles!

[Reliant121]

It was a model. One of my DVD boxsets shows the model, how they destroyed the Caretakers array (which literally took a second and a half but dramatically shortened) and the burning Kazon dreadnaught which was made out of cardboard.

[Foxbat]

About plots revolving around getting home... This is a staple of these kind of shows (Gilligan's Island anyone?). WE know it won't work, but they don't. I think it would have been better to show the effects of failure on the crew a little more. Get your hopes up, only to have them dashed over and over, would pound down a crew's morale. And since a large complement of the crew were Maquis, they don't have the Federation mindset to follow orders and 'it'll be okay, we'll find another way' mentality.

One of my Voyager Nits: You have an ensign (Kim) in the same position and rank for 7 YEARS. Either promote him, or find someone else that can do the job better. Need a better system for performance assessment, Captain Janeway...

[Graham Kennedy]

What's funny is that their excuse was that since nobody transferred on or off, there was no room for promotions. But this is crap; half the point of the show was that most of the senior officers were killed in Episode 1. Kim was chief of operations, and if they are so shy of officers that an Ensign is in a department head role, then there should be plenty of room for promotions.

In fact a MUCH more realistic scenario was the one the USS Valiant was in on DS9, where the officers were killed off and the result was that cadets found themselves with field promotions left and right. Rather thank have Kim bemoaning his permanent Ensignhood, he should have been fretting at finding himself with a field promotion to Lieutenant Commander on his second day on the job.

[Captain Seafort]

Rather thank have Kim bemoaning his permanent Ensignhood, he should have been fretting at finding himself with a field promotion to Lieutenant Commander on his second day on the job.

What was really stupid about the whole business of ranks wasn't just Kim's stalled career, but the way everyone else was treated. While he stayed put, an incompetent crook, a punchy Academy dropout and a traitor all ended up outranking him, and Tuvok was promoted halfway through the series. Chakotay's appointment was necessary to win over the Maquis, but Torres's experience in stopping a heap of junk flying apart did not qualify her to run a Starfleet engineering department, and I fail to see why the driver even needed to be a commissioned officer, let alone a Lieutenant.

[Mikey]

I fail to see why the driver even needed to be a commissioned officer, let alone a Lieutenant.

Because said driver's daddy is an admiral?

[Coalition]

One option would hav been development of a barter economy between Voyager and the species they came across. Voyager's sensors provide a wealth of information, and they have ~100 people on board. I am quite confidant that if a Voyager-equivalent stopped overhead the Earth today, that we would be willing to trade a year's worth of preserved food in exchange for a copy of the database. Plus agreeing to build various items for Voyager to handle repairs (aka getting the technology, rough purpose of the item, and reverse engineering).

But yes, permanency would have been nice. If a component failed, they would have tried to replace it with Starfleet standard, but once those parts run out, the ship will slowly change its appearance. Instead of photons, they fire enhanced yield warheads, micro-conversion bombs, or other similar items. Or as Voyager travels across the sector, they copy ideas from the different races, and combine them in new ways.

Chuck had one idea where a ruthless critic goes over Voyager, and points out where things could be interpreted in ways that make Voyager look bad, then having Voyager arrested for suporting terrorism, genocide, and other items where it could be interpreted differently. As an example, genocide could be based on where Voyager helped out the Vidiians, but never rescued the people held captive in that location.

Whenever Janeway looks to be in a hurry, you'd have to explain it as being a brand new Captain, who has to grow into the role, and deal with people uner her command who literally know more than she does. Instead of having everyone agree with her, she has to stand up to them, and show that she is a leader, rather than everyone giving her the chair.

[Mikey]

There was that one ep in which Voyager was portrayed as heinous war criminals (from a future POV,) but it was just hand-washed away at the end. Agreed that the appearance of the ship should have changed as repairs were made with local tech, things were jury-rigged, etc.; even the paint job should have gotten shabbier. But, VOY's endless use of the ep-end reset button pushed that idea of continuity out of the way, as exemplified by the rabbit-like breeding tendencies of the common photon torpedo.