Alternate History in Star Trek Part 23: Voyager asks “You Want Borg With That?

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @Thande here

 

[Thande]

While writing this I was reminded of how much I enjoyed watching season 4 of VGR at the time (well, a bit later due to the dreaded transatlantic transmission delay), there was a lot of potential there, though not all of it was realised in the end. It only occurred to me while writing this how "Year of Hell", a two-part story as part of a broader series not related to AH, is actually way more thoughtful about the concept of 'going back in time to wank your country/ideology/etc' than 9/10ths of AH where it's the primary focus.

edit: also thanks Gary for linking to my previous articles in the text.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

@Thande
Interesting article. I've only seen a couple of Vgr episodes and they were early ones, but as an on/off ST fan, it's good to read about the wider ST universe - including all its inconsistencies! I did enjoy reading about the 'Year of Hell' and agree with you that the concept of 'my nation is much stronger now but I've screwed over my personal life' is generally overlooked in AH.

@Gary Oswald
<nitpick> the 'discuss this' link at the end of the article doesn't link to this thread but to the 'Articles' sub-forum </nitpick>

 

[Gary Oswald]

@Gary Oswald
<nitpick> the 'discuss this' link at the end of the article doesn't link to this thread but to the 'Articles' sub-forum </nitpick>

Yeah, that will happen occassionally, I'm afraid. My phone app only allows me to add links of a certain length and the title of this thread is too long for that, so linking to the forum is the best I can do until I am home and using my computer instead which won't be til 7pm.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

<still off-topic>

<snip>

I had no idea some apps had length restrictions (I don't have a smartphone) - every day's a school day. I just thought I'd mention it in case you'd put it in as a placeholder then forgotten to update it, as that's the sort of thing I do all the time!
I'll stop derailing the discussion now...
</off-topic>

 

[RyanF]

I don't know that a television spin-off about Sulu and Excelsior would have been viable, but it really strikes me as something they should have gone all-in on with multimedia spin-offs that were well done in the 90s. A novel series like New Frontier or Titan, comics, maybe video games with live action appearances from Takei, Whitney, Russ, and Christian Slater if he needs some quick cash.

We need a spin-off novel where Nicholas Locarno and Taurik go up against Tom Paris and Vorik.

I always have to be reminded how "Before and After" isn't meant as a send-off for Kes since it seems like something they'd do knowing the character won't be back next year.

Apropos of nothing, "Real Life" was the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager I ever saw.

Between them, "Worst Case Scenario" and "Year of Hell" are almost annoying in how much they're a bit of 'Now let's take a look at what you could have won!'

Pointing out the irony of using the name Northwest Passage makes me want to see the Starfleet equivalent of Franklin's lost expedition.

There is a real irony in perhaps the best ending of any Voyager tale being one that is so explicitly and unashamedly a massive reset button.

I know a lot of people just refuse to accept the viability of "Year of Hell" as a season long arc, as though the twenty-two part version would be the exact same details of the two-part version just stretched out eleven times. Rather, much like the Dominion War arcs on Deep Space Nine feel it would have to have breather episodes and be more episodic in general than what we're used to as serialised television storytelling in 2023.

Didn't know about that suggestion from Roxann Dawson, it's actually a great idea and a real shame they never went through with it.

 

[Thande]

I know a lot of people just refuse to accept the viability of "Year of Hell" as a season long arc, as though the twenty-two part version would be the exact same details of the two-part version just stretched out eleven times. Rather, much like the Dominion War arcs on Deep Space Nine feel it would have to have breather episodes and be more episodic in general than what we're used to as serialised television storytelling in 2023.

Indeed. When I get to the Dominion War, by the way, that was another case where they had to fight for it (successfully this time); some apparently wanted to just make the Cardassian occupation of DS9 a mere two-parter, which would have been such a letdown.

There are two spinoff books involving the Lower Decks cast (as in Taurik & co, not the modern animated series) and what the Enterprise-E was allegedly doing in the Dominion War, which we'll get to.

 

[OwenM]

In “Real Life” the Doctor creates his own holodeck family, but makes them too perfect and Tom has other ideas about making things more realistic. “Distant Origin” is somewhat similar to the TOS novel “First Frontier” but a lot stupider – an advanced race called the Voth turn out to be descended from Earth dinosaurs, not because they were taken from Earth by Preservers or whatever, but just left the planet in a fleet of spaceships because they were already an advanced race we have obviously discovered no archaeological trace of. Also they don’t seem that much more advanced to say they already had space travel 65 million years ago. Anyway it’s just an excuse to do the Things Galileo Didn’t Actually Say Or Do plot about science vs faith and the nature of truth, with the usual irony that it’s based on a baseless legend of what Galileo supposedly did rather than what he actually did. The Very Clever Irony is that in this case the pro-science side is saying evolution is wrong and the Voth didn’t evolve in the Delta Quadrant, you see. Stargate SG-1, which I’ll probably cover at some point in the future, acquired a reputation for similar plot ideas to contemporaneous Star Trek and did this idea way more cleverly and less ‘look, dinosaurs!’ in “New Ground”. Also this episode does the usual nonsense with misunderstanding what evolution is by having the crew ‘simulate the future evolution of dinosaurs’ on the holodeck – with no new information, mind you, so anyone back on Earth could’ve done this at any time – and ending up with a Voth. I hate to break it to you, lads, but dinosaurs are not Pokémon, their future evolution is not decided by Game Freak ahead of time. You are definitely qualified to do a story about the nature of scientific ‘truth’ vs faith. Ugh, moving on.

Yeah - terrible execution but an interesting idea that explores things I always feel go a bit unaddressed by works with species getting transplanted somehow

 

[ChrisNuttall]

The problem with the Borg is that they are just too powerful - the only thing that saves the crew in Q Who is a (very well justified, for once) duex ex machina. The Best of Both Worlds offers a hacking solution, then ... what? A lone drone, and a Lore-controlled spin-off; First Contact, again, weakens the Borg by letting Picard use his unique insight into them, then pitting the crew against a small group of Borg invading the ship rather than a giant cube. Voyager had problems using the Borg without falling onto thin stories.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

An old contact of mine spent quite some time trying to reconcile what we saw in ‘The Q and the Grey’ in a manner that actually made sense and produced a bunch of Q-themed fan fiction.

http://www.alara.net/trek/qcontinuum.html

She also did a set of short stories set in a timeline where Q’s side of the civil war … lost.

https://archiveofourown.org/series/714

They’re pretty good, certainly a lot better than Picard S2 or the post-STING books.

Chris

 

[Gary Oswald]

An old contact of mine spent quite some time trying to reconcile what we saw in ‘The Q and the Grey’ in a manner that actually made sense and produced a bunch of Q-themed fan fiction.

http://www.alara.net/trek/qcontinuum.html

She also did a set of short stories set in a timeline where Q’s side of the civil war … lost.

https://archiveofourown.org/series/714

They’re pretty good, certainly a lot better than Picard S2 or the post-STING books.

Chris

You used to know Alara too? Small world.

 

[Ciclavex]

I love the article, @Thande but I do have one major nitpick.

Of course we have to follow up that extravaganza with a string of forgettable episodes: “Random Thoughts”, “Concerning Flight” (where Janeway’s Leonardo da Vinci hologram accidentally ends up on another planet with help from the Doctor’s holoemitter – Star Trek has forgotten that da Vinci is supposed to actually be Flint from TOS, of course),

The episode actually brings this up, and Janeway explicitly rubbishes “Requiem for Methuselah” in-character as yet another one of Kirk’s tall tales. The episode doesn’t even actually contradict TOS in the end; the holographic Da Vinci is merely a construct of the historical Da Vinci by 24th century people, and if Janeway’s perspective is the usual perspective in the 24th century Federation, then it doesn’t actually matter what happened in “Requiem” — it’s not even necessarily being retconned, just that the people of the 24th century just don’t believe that it really happened.

 

[OwenM]

I love the article, @Thande but I do have one major nitpick.



The episode actually brings this up, and Janeway explicitly rubbishes “Requiem for Methuselah” in-character as yet another one of Kirk’s tall tales. The episode doesn’t even actually contradict TOS in the end; the holographic Da Vinci is merely a construct of the historical Da Vinci by 24th century people, and if Janeway’s perspective is the usual perspective in the 24th century Federation, then it doesn’t actually matter what happened in “Requiem” — it’s not even necessarily being retconned, just that the people of the 24th century just don’t believe that it really happened.

This is why I love this site

 

[ChrisNuttall]

You used to know Alara too? Small world.

I wrote a spin-off fic for Judgement Day. Years ago now ...

 

[Thande]

I love the article, @Thande but I do have one major nitpick.



The episode actually brings this up, and Janeway explicitly rubbishes “Requiem for Methuselah” in-character as yet another one of Kirk’s tall tales. The episode doesn’t even actually contradict TOS in the end; the holographic Da Vinci is merely a construct of the historical Da Vinci by 24th century people, and if Janeway’s perspective is the usual perspective in the 24th century Federation, then it doesn’t actually matter what happened in “Requiem” — it’s not even necessarily being retconned, just that the people of the 24th century just don’t believe that it really happened.

Really? I saw the episode at the time and I have no memory of that. Props to the writers if they did so, in that case. Peter David does something similar with how Kirk is seen in the 24th century in his New Frontier books.