One new idea meant for the 3rd avatar patch...

posted on December 9th, 2009, 4:51 pm

Oh, and Janeway is unfortunately an admiral in FO 

An Admiral in Starfleet and a Captain in the Delta Quadrent together? She's good...

posted on December 9th, 2009, 4:54 pm

Or it's a temporal anomaly caused by too many senseless time travel 

posted on December 9th, 2009, 4:58 pm

An Admiral in Starfleet and a Captain in the Delta Quadrent together? She's good...

No time travel needed - as I said before, the timeline doesn't exactly diverge in the middle of Voyager, they just decide to start adding in their own FO history at that point, and so keep and lose some things after to make a nicer story

More "well-known" characters will be added in as well - not just FO ones . All for the future though 

posted on December 11th, 2009, 1:19 am

I'm sorry, this may seem ill mannered of me, but I cannot let poor Captain Janeway go so undefended; personally, I don't see what you all have against her. I think you would be hard pressed to find any Federation or Starfleet official who would have questioned her actions in the Delta Quadrant, given the conditions. Remember that she was a fresh captain, her first mission was to hunt down Chakotay (See her Memory Alpha bio; link's at the top of the thread). Starfleet figured it would be quick and easy: Chase down this little Maquis ship with a Starfleet spy already on it, haul it back to DS9, next mission. No where in her orders was: Get sucked up by an alien array and get stranded 75,000 light-years from home.

Remember too, the conditions he was stuck in, namely, the Delta Quadrant. Half or more of the quadrant is controlled by the Borg: unstoppable cyborgs who can wipe an entire species from the face of the galaxy in under a week. The rest is either unaligned, singular star systems who might control one or two neighboring systems, or small organized interstellar states, many of which react aggressively to outsiders. There is no large, stable, friendly, helpful interstellar power like the Federation. It is essentially the wild west or some other unexplored region. The point is, she cannot just call up the first admiral who responds or consult the "Federation Regulations and General Orders Interpretation Guide for Starfleet Captains" when ever she needs guidance. In the absence of that higher authority she has to consider factors such as the ultimate goal (getting home), her crew (not getting them killed), other parties (mostly the benevolent ones), people shooting at her, standing regulations and orders, her personal feelings (she is still human), and then make a judgement call.

Since someone brought up the Caretaker Array incident, I'll use that as an example. Consider first the situation: her ship has been dragged across the universe to who knows where and is a hair's width from falling apart. Her crew isn't in much better shape. Half the senior staff are dead, including her first officer, chief engineer, and chief medical officer, and on top of that, they have been beamed away to be analyzed and put back. She has a bunch of Maquis on her hands, most of whom don't like Starfleet and three Kazon war ships bearing down on Voyager, and oh yes, the Caretaker is dead.

These are, essentially, her options:

• Try to defend the array.
• Run.
• Destroy the array as the Caretaker had intended to do before he died (proof at Memory Alpha: Caretaker (Episode))

If she tries to defend the array in the hopes that it can be used to return home, chances are Voyager would be destroyed and the array falls into the hands of the Kazon who would use it to attack first the Ocampa and then probably other species, and perhaps even use it to launch incursions into other parts of the galaxy. If she runs, there is a chance the Kazon will follow but they still gain control of the array. Obviously neither of these is a good outcome. Thus her only viable option is to destroy the array. This will prevent the Kazon from acquiring it, something which the Caretaker didn't want, and serves as a show of power. The downside of course is they are stranded for the moment. As Spock would say however, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Here, that many are the Ocampa, the first two options probably result in their destruction, as well as the possible destruction of Voyager. This does not satisfy the needs of the many. Better to destroy the array, which has served its purpose and strand one more ship, than try to save it, hold on to it, and use it to maybe get back. Yes, it could be argued that such a move could potentially save the Ocampa, but it would be temporary as nothing would stop the Kazon from swooping in after Voyager left.

Ultimately Janeway had a decision to make and she had to make it on the spur of the moment and it was not an easy decision, but I doubt that even a captain like Picard would have come to a different decision (granted his ship was bigger, so maybe he could have fended off three Kazon warships, but still). Picard of course would have tried to talk the Kazon down and probably would have discovered, rather quickly, that they are not the talking sort and we're back at square one.

The bottom line here is: don't discredit Janeway just because she stretched the rules under unconventional circumstances. Frankly I think Janeway, at heart, prefers a more strict, more conservative interpretation of the rules, much like Picard in some ways, although Picard tends to prefer the "reasonablist" interpretation; he knows the rules need to be bent sometimes and is quite reasonable in when to bend them. This is in stark contrast to someone like Captain Ransom of the Equinox who obviously prefers a very loose and liberal interpretation.

If you still disagree, fine, but Lancelot must defend his Guenevere. On a separate note, Worf would certainly make an interesting choice, I don't know about Crusher, and as for Nog, 20 years is not quite enough time for him to rise that far, he might have become a commander or captain in that time, but not an admiral. I do wish that we could choose from more than two avatars, I suppose in the end it doesn't matter who they are.

posted on December 11th, 2009, 1:42 am

These are, essentially, her options:

• Try to defend the array.
• Run.
• Destroy the array as the Caretaker had intended to do before he died (proof at Memory Alpha: Caretaker (Episode))

[*] Instead of destroying the array by firing tricobalt-torps, set some of them to time detonation and lend the Kazon off as long as it takes to do so. Beam the tricobalt-torps aboard the station and activate the station to escape.

Advantage: Kazon don't know much about technology. They reacted like cavemen when they saw the watertanks beam down. Why should they be able to beam over and disarm them? Oh, and stranding would not happen, too. Mission complete o.O

posted on December 11th, 2009, 1:57 am

That plan assumes they know exactly how to activate the array and remotely at that, target the array, that the array "just works" and doesn't need time to charge or something, that tricobalts can be set to time delayed detonation or that they are transporter safe, and that the ship would survive long enough to enact this plan, considering it was already in bad shape. Additionally, you are assuming that it would be able to survive the return trip. The wave that brought them to the Delta Quadrant nearly sent their warp core critical. The ride back in an already weakened state would be even more risky. Chances are they would return as a dust cloud.

Granted the Kazon are pretty slow, though they did build relatively large starships which were warp capable, so... 

And you must admit, this plan would be pretty hard to haul out of even Tuvok's ass in the time they had, which was next to none. (Mind all of this is contrary to the fact that if it had gone down like this, there wouldn't have been a show  )

[Tyler]

posted on December 11th, 2009, 2:03 am

Last edited by Tyler on December 11th, 2009, 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Granted the Kazon are pretty slow, though they did build relatively large starships which were warp capable, so... 

Correction: The Trabe 'built relatively large starships which were warp capable' and the Kazon stole their opressors ships. RedEyedRaven's use of the word 'Caveman' for them is quite accurate, because they are nothing more than Cavemen who stole modest-level ships.

posted on December 11th, 2009, 2:11 am

Correction: The Trabe 'built relatively large starships which were warp capable' and the Kazon stole their opressors ships.

Sorry, I didn't quite realize that. Not that it affects my analysis, but.

posted on December 11th, 2009, 9:53 pm

IF I remember correctly, the Kazon once were the slaves of the Trabe and when they escaped, they did it along with their ships. It is a loooong time ago I really watched Voyager.

posted on December 12th, 2009, 2:19 am

That's right from what I remember when I was reading up for my analysis.

posted on December 28th, 2009, 4:49 pm

Janeway was an inconsistent character as sometimes she would go by the federation rules exactly to the point of letting a civilization destroy themselves with polaric-ion thingies, but other times threw the rules out when much less was at stake.  It's one of the major problems with Voyager, everything including the characters is written a certain way just for that one episode to meet the plot requirements with no concern for other episodes, it's also a major cause of the overwhelming technobabble.  Maybe the FO timeline can give her a definite character (and thus explain why things are different beginning with Voyager.)