Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: State of Flux

Every modern Star Trek series has an episode where the show really hits its stride, where it finds itself. For TNG I would argue it was in the second season, around the time of "A Matter of Honor". DS9 I would argue was the first season finale, "In The Hands of the Prophets". And by all rights, "State of Flux" should have been when Voyager hit its stride.

I'm not going to lie. This is a fantastic episode. It's well done, and it shows the characters in all their complexity. It should have set the tone for the entire show. Too bad that did not happen.

There are not going to be many rewrites for this one. A few nitpicks, but mostly talking about the ramifications of this show that should have resonated throughout the series. As always this will be thematic rather than chronological, so you might want to refresh your memory of the episode over at Memory Alpha.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Prime Factors

One of the unwritten rules of Star Trek is that the Federation will generally be the most advanced, most enlightened organization out there. Oh sure, they might run into super-advanced aliens every so often, but those are mostly one-off adventures, or technologically advanced but socially-stunted groups like the Borg.

But Voyager is all alone in the Delta Quadrant. What if they ran into a planet that was more advanced than the Federation? What if suddenly Voyager was on the other side of the fence? What if they were the backwards aliens, and this other culture were the enlightened ones? And what if this enlightened culture had their own version of the famous Prime Directive, and that rule kept Voyager from getting the help they need?

What a fantastic high-concept Star Trek episode that would make! What a unique twist on an old Roddenberry staple! It is the sort of plot that could really only happen deep in the Delta Quadrant, almost tailor-made for Voyager!

Let's look at how Voyager screws it up, and see if we can rewrite it to be better.

As always this will be a thematic rather than chronological rewrite, so you may want to familiarize yourself with the original plot over at the Memory Alpha Wiki.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Emanations

At its best, Star Trek inspires us. It takes a complex issue that we wrestle with in our world and points us toward a solution, sheering away the struggles and conflicts of our time and presenting us a utopian vision of the future.

This is not one of those episodes.

But at its second-best Star Trek illuminates an aspect of humanity, using the medium of science-fiction to explore it to a degree quite impossible in a more realistic literary style. And Emanations does this beautifully. So beautifully that I am at a loss. How do you rewrite something that is good? I mean really, really good. The best episode I have yet covered in Voyager.

Two ways. First, you nitpick. And I will be doing a bit of that at the end. Second, you hold it up as a template for how Voyager should have been, if it had been a better show. I have been saying all along that Voyager had the potential to be a fantastic series, and no episode thus far reveals that better than Emanations.

As always, this rewrite will be thematic rather than chronological, so you may want to re-familiarize yourself with the plot over at the Memory Alpha Wiki.