Nate the Great fixes Voyager

[Nate the Great]

And some episodes will be heavily modified. Right now I picture "Threshold" without the Warp 10 or lizards, but instead merely being much closer to Warp 10. It's enough of a problem that navigation is impossible at that speed. Do we take the chance of the jump taking us farther away, even another galaxy or intergalactic space?

[Nate the Great]

Last night I had a breakthrough regarding how to fix the Maquis. I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out. To summarize my main complaints about the premise:


1. The DMZ settlers had a simple choice: return to the Federation or stay unarmed and not bother the Cardassians.
2. And yet the Maquis claim that the DMZ settlers were abandoned by the Federation in the name of peace.


Okay, let's fix it. Here's a possible timeline:


1. Starfleet informs the DMZ colony leaders of the new deal and the choice that they have to make.
2. Some DMZ leaders do this, but most choose to stay. Some want to maintain their power, some were already discontented with the Federation, some are Bajorans who feel that the Cardassians should've given up more.
3. The leaders who choose to stay don't tell the actual colonists that they had the chance to return to the Federation.

4. The Federation pulls out of the DMZ, believing that everyone who wanted to leave has left. The ones left behind now believe they have been abandoned.
5. The remaining colonists stay armed because they haven't been told the full conditions of the deal. They attack the Cardassians because they haven't been told not to, or because their leaders tell them to.
6. So now we have chaos. The Federation tries telling them again that they should leave, but now it's too late as far as the colonists are concerned. It's not really because of Federation hospitality, now it looks like the Federation is avoiding a political disaster, just like they did when they "abandoned" the colonies in the first place. The Federation (through no fault of their own) has lost trust and needs to rebuild it.

7. Now we have a self-perpetuating circle. The Cardassians attack the Maquis because the deal is broke, the Maquis attack the Cardassians to defend "their" land, the Maquis attack the Federation because they hate them (based on misinformation), etc.
8. And by now the leaders who started this whole thing are now either dead, insane, or have stolen what they could and abandoned the barrel fire that they started.



Opinions?

[Flying Gremlin]

Plausible. However, from what I remember, the Maquis were formed because the Cardassians were breaking the DMZ by shipping weapons to their colonies, and Starfleet was sticking to the treaty too much to balance the power by arming their own citizens in response. The Federation colonists got peeved as did several Starfleet officers, hence the Maquis were formed.

[Nate the Great]

Could someone explain why the Klingon and Romulan Neutral Zones mostly worked, when the DMZ never did? Like, ever? Was the Cardassian War really so bad that we wanted to end it in any way we could ASAP?


I will agree, however, that Picard was a little too optimistic in "Ensign Ro", etc. He wanted the quick and easy solution to the immediate problem, not a long-lasting one.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Could someone explain why the Klingon and Romulan Neutral Zones mostly worked, when the DMZ never did? Like, ever? Was the Cardassian War really so bad that we wanted to end it in any way we could ASAP?

The Neutral Zones of the empires did not have as many settled worlds as this border. From the backstory I refreshed myself on at Memory Alpha about the DMZ and the Cardassian War, there wasn't much to go on as to why the conflict started. As the latter document guesses, it could be due to expansionist policies of the Cardassians due to resource shortages, like the ones that led to the occupation of Bajor.

Or it could be that Cardassians are the douches of the galaxy.

[Nate the Great]

Before I start "Caretaker" proper, let's deal with the opening infodump:


Unhappy with a new treaty, Federation Colonists along the Cardassian border have banded together.
Calling themselves 'The Maquis', they continue to fight the Cardassians.
Some consider them heroes, but to the governments of the Federation and Cardassia, they are outlaws.

Ugh. Let's try "The peace treaty between the Federation and the Cardassian Union gave the colonists within the Demilitarized Zone a choice to either return to the Federation or remain without their citizenship. Because of misinformation and corrupt leadership, most of the colonists believe themselves abandoned by the Federation. Calling themselves the Maquis, they have chosen to stay and fight to evict the Cardassians from their homes. This has created renewed tensions between the two powers, with the Maquis trapped in between and being considered outlaws."

[Nate the Great]

I've been considering how to make this thread different from the inevitable Voyager retrospective in 2025. Therefore, I've decided on a few ground rules:


* No Treknobabble nits except where necessary to fix the main plot of the episode.

* No references to other series except where specifically mentioned in the Voyager episode. i.e. in "Death Wish" I can bring up Q's previous relationship with humanity, in "Prototype" I can talk about Data, in "False Profits" I can talk about "The Price", etc.
* No fixing individual lines. I'll be tweaking motivations here, not the actual lines. I may be coming back to this thread during the Voyager retrospective to build on my earlier comments.
* No gushing over particular lines or moments. That kind of thing can wait for the retrospective.



"Caretaker"


* Janeway should've done the necessary research on Tom to not bring up his father in the first conversation. She could've done this at a later point, at the same time that we cover Tom's relationship with his father. Counterpoint their relationships, goals, outlooks on life, etc.

* If the idea was to introduce the original Voyager crew to make it more poignant when they die, more work was needed to establish them. And making fun of Paris all the time wasn't the way to do it. Only one person had to clash with him besides Harry, most likely the original first officer.
* Now's not the time to bring up the bio-neural gel packs. Save it for a later episode when they're actually important. We need the screentime to establish the series premise! Treknology changes (except the EMH of course) can wait until later, along with explaining the moving nacelles if it is supposed to prevent "Force of Nature"-style damage.
* I'm okay with Janeway having a background as a science officer a la Mosaic, but poking around engineering is too much. In fact, this general idea of "all of the senior members of each department got killed, that's why we need the Maquis" is too much. Furthermore, we already have too much to cover in this pilot, all we need is a random voice over the comm saying that they're doing their best!
* The idea that every single member of the medical staff was in Sickbay simultaneously is absurd. I get why we need to kill the CO, but that doesn't mean there aren't nurses. They're out of their depth, being junior officers, so we still need the EMH, but give him some help!
* The whole farm illusion thing is a waste of time that could've been better spent elsewhere. I would almost prefer a copy of Emissary where each person sees a different thing, and Caretaker is in a different role in each. It would be good for character development and you'd only need a short time for each.

* I'll deal with the desert planet/water is more valuable than gold thing in the retrospective. Suffice to say, it's stupid. They could pay Neelix in another way. Just offering to fix his ship a la "Outrageous Okona" would be enough.

* The Maquis ship (the Val Jean) remaining unnamed is stupid. In fact, I hate it in general when enemy ships are unnamed. When we face the Romulans, do you think they refer to us as "the Starfleet ship"? I doubt it.
* The basic plot is okay, I just wish it could've been fleshed out a bit.
* I've said it before, I'll say it again: destroying the Array was necessary. Janeway feels no guilt, nobody blames her.