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.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Ex Post Facto

Let’s get this out of the way right off: I love noir.

I love craggy, tough-as-nails gumshoes in battered fedoras and rumpled suits, rubbing their five-o-clock shadows while drinking scotch and talking about the mean streets. I love morally ambiguous detective stories where you’re not supposed to like the hero, you’re just supposed to respect him, and where his detective skills relied less on Holmesian deduction and more on telling when someone was lying, being fast with a gun, keeping the cops at bay, and never, ever trusting the dame.

It's not sexist when Bogey does it. That's the rule, right?

In many ways the entire genre is sexist, where women are either innocent virgins to be protected, or seductive vamps to be used and/or ensnared by, and more often than not the plot twist is that the former turns out to be the latter. And yet men are treated no better, being either crafty and manipulative villains or thuggish and stupid goons. It is a world where everyone has the worst intentions, and no one has virtue. And I love it.

And so when I talk about Ex Post Facto, Voyager’s obvious tribute to noir, I am predisposed to like it. But right from the start it’s an awkward mix. Roddenberry’s future is bright, clean, and idealistic. Noir is the opposite of all those things. It’s like if someone took Superman, a beacon of hope, truth, and justice, and made him a distrusted, hated outcast who eventually had to turn to destruction and violence to save a morally ambiguous people from a morally evil villain and… oh yeah.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Eye of the Needle

I consider this episode to be typical of the problem with Star Trek: Voyager. A good setup, an interesting and engaging crisis, particularly excellent acting, and a muddled ending that seems to undermine everything.

Plus, this episode makes absolutely no sense less than halfway through the first season. I mean, no sense.

Plus, it's a "Voyager may get to go home!" episode. Which automatically means the audience is just waiting for some deus ex machina excuse for why it won't work, which is what happens with every single "Voyager may get to go home!" episode to the point where I can barely remember any other distinctions between them.

At least this one has Romulans, and I love me some Romulans.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: The Cloud

Normally I am all in favor of character development episodes. I think there needs to be more character development in most television series, especially action and/or sci-fi series. So by all rights I should love this episode, which has the flimsiest of plots stringing together a series of vignettes that develop the character of the main cast.

The problem is, this needs to be good character development. And oh boy, is it not.

So as Voyager plunges headlong into the "It's actually a life-form!" plot that should be enjoyable, but somehow isn't, let's try to rewrite these terrible characters into something better.

Especially Chakotay. For Gene's sake, writers, what were you thinking?

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Phage

Some Voyager episodes are so bad that they are legendary. Some Voyager episodes would be good, if only they had fixed one or two fundamental problems. But some Voyager episodes should have been good, but for some reason they just weren't. Perhaps the acting was just a little sub-par. Perhaps there were some minor problems that built up. But for whatever reason, what should have been a decent show becomes mediocre at best.

Phage is one of those episodes. It is difficult to pin down just why Phage is mediocre. It should be great. And yet... somehow it is not. Oh, it's not bad, which in Voyager puts it in the top tier, but it's not the great show that it should be. Because the basic plot is solid, it will not require much to turn this into a classic Trek episode. Let's see what we can do.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Time And Again

Oh Gene dammit, another time travel episode? The second one in a row? You mean that there has only been one non-time-travel episode thus far in Voyager, and that was the pilot?

At least this one wasn't written by Brannon Braga. Last week I fixed Parallax by essentially removing all time travel elements from the story. There is no way to do that with this one. The whole plot revolves around time travel, the Prime Directive, and Janeway screwing up.

Luckily, the whole episode turns out to be a dream. Er, I mean an alternate timeline that never happened. So none of it matters! I say luckily, because you don't want it to matter.

Let's try to fix that. Let's try to turn this episode, declared the worst episode of Season 1 by Star Trek Magazine, into an episode that you want to happen... and then fix the ending so it actually does.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Parallax

The first episode of Voyager got the Starfleet and Maquis crews to the Delta Quadrant, established that they are on a journey home, and established that the mixed crew will have to work together. So obviously, the second episode has to show that tension, and it also has to highlight the two characters who were glossed over in the first episode, B'Elanna and the Doctor.

Which Parallax does... in a way that makes the Maquis seem completely unimportant by burying the central conflict between the crews, to only be brought out again occasionally. In addition, Parallax gives us our first taste of a problem that only got worse and worse as the seasons wore on: Janeway, the evil megalomaniacal star tyrant.

Now keep in mind, in my rewritten universe Chakotay and the Maquis are still in their old uniforms, and Chakotay is not just Janeway's lapdog. You may want to refresh your memory by looking at last week's post.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Caretaker

How do you handle a two hour pilot? You have to showcase all your ensemble cast, have a gripping story that sets your series apart from its fellows, and seed a lot of stories for the future.

To be fair, Caretaker, the two-hour pilot of Star Trek: Voyager, does a decent job of this. Decent... but far from excellent. And the conclusion is just... ugh. And since this column is all about armchair quarterbacking anyway, let's go ahead and rewrite the pilot from a mediocre story, to a great Star Trek tale.

I am going to be jumping around a bit and discussing my rewrite thematically, rather than chronologically, so if you do not still carry the scars of Voyager permanently in your mind, you might want to brush up on the synopsis of Caretaker over at the Memory Alpha Wiki.