question about aeroshuttle

[Jack_O'Neill]

I heard that on board of the starship Voyager was this unique aeroshuttle which can used for the short missions in the planet atmosphere.

Strange why they are never used this shuttle for the away missions?

jMjtd85.jpg

You can see this shuttle on exterior of U.S.S. Voyager:

hhRnYfY.jpg

I heard that all Intrepid class starships had this shuttle. Why crew of U.S.S. Voyager do not used this shuttle, why they're have created Delta flyer if their ship had this awesome shuttle?

[DigiFluid]

I don't think there was ever any in-universe reason. In the real world though, literally the reason it got scrapped was because by the time they were ready to create the VFX sequence for it, Insurrection was in the pipe and Rick Berman didn't want Voyager overshadowing the captain's yacht sequence in the film.

[P-90_177]

I will be forever ticked off about the aero shuttle. I despise the Delta Flyer to my very core, and the original idea for the Flyer’s first episode was that it’d be the aero shuttle instead...

[DigiFluid]

I will be forever ticked off about the aero shuttle. I despise the Delta Flyer to my very core, and the original idea for the Flyer’s first episode was that it’d be the aero shuttle instead...

Hey at least you're just mad about the Delta Flyer. I'm mad that Voyager happened at all

[P-90_177]

Hey at least you're just mad about the Delta Flyer. I'm mad that Voyager happened at all

You know I used to really hate on Voyager but then I rewatched it couple of times over the last year and I grew to really appreciate it. It’s still a massively wasted opportunity but I like the characters and how they interact. I just wish they’d been a lot more daring with it. But for what it is... it’s fine. This is fine. It’s fine... it’s fine...

[DigiFluid]

I try again, every few years. Always hoping that this time will be the time. This time will be the time it finally clicks for me. It never does. The best I can muster is "there are a handful of good ideas here, but the execution is atrocious."

Weirdly though, of all the Trek series, I think it's the one concept that most easily lends itself to a reboot.

[Jack_O'Neill]

Offtopic:

I want to see ST: Voyager reboot but in alternate universe aka Kelvin timeline. Maybe there will another stories by other angle. Maybe U.S.S. Voyager will be more powerful than original ship. I hope that you want to see this too.

[soniiiety]

ah that sucks, I really wanted to see the aero shuttle in action, isnt there a fan made animation of how it works?

i remember watching a youtube video about how it would land, it also included a part of the nox from stargate sg-1

they went to the city in the sky with it.

was pretty cool video.

[DigiFluid]

ah that sucks, I really wanted to see the aero shuttle in action, isnt there a fan made animation of how it works?

i remember watching a youtube video about how it would land, it also included a part of the nox from stargate sg-1

they went to the city in the sky with it.

was pretty cool video.

This video was allegedly made by Foundation (the company that did Star Trek's CGI) :

It was posted on YouTube by just some random account though, so I can't verify whether it's the real deal or just an excellent fan-made one.

[Xaeden]

Maybe U.S.S. Voyager will be more powerful than original ship.

Or finally create a fleet-based show using other ships stranded by the Caretaker and, eventually, survivors of Borg invasions like they should have in the first place.

I know, there are understandable budget constraints, but as DS9 demonstrated, they had the models and limited alien interior sets to pull it off. Since Voyager would be faster than the rest of the fleet, they could still do budget saving "planet of the week" episodes by having it go off on its own to collect resources while the fleet plodded along. A lot of conflict also would have taken place on standing sets early on as the inter-fleet conflict would have been far more intense than what they tried to create by incorporating Maquis into the crew.

And, of course, when space battles did occur, they would've been far more involved (like on DS9). Particularly interesting would have been the attempt to navigate Borg space. Instead of the brief alliance plot line, we could have had a punishing half-season or more arc of the fleet trying to survive and dodge the Borg and Species 8472 crossfire.

As the show progressed, they could have learned that the Dominion and the Federation were at war, and that could have had noteworthy consequences for fleet unity. When they came upon the one-way wormhole, the Federation ship on the other end could have come over to help resolve the conflict that was preventing the bulk of the fleet from getting there in time and could have become trapped as well. When they met another Federation ship taken by the Caretaker who used immoral means to try to get back home faster, the ship could have joined the fleet under new leadership instead of four crew members being the only survivors. Hell, that ship could have had its own, smaller fleet and they could have had a much larger arc centered around the conflict around these two groups and the possibility that some in Voyager's fleet might feel the other fleet better suits their ideological proclivities.

And imagine the final scene of the final episode: Voyager arrives in Federation space at the head of a fleet made up of some species that remain on poor terms in the Alpha Quadrant and all these refugees from the Delta Quadrant who decided to try to achieve better lives by joining in on this journey to make it back to the Alpha Quadrant.

They spoke a lot about maintaining the spirit of the Federation so far away from home, but the show could actually have been about creating a smaller form of the Federation on these ships traveling through the Delta Quadrant. I get why they wanted to do their own version of "one ship, trapped, alone on the other side of the galaxy," but they missed an opportunity to tread new ground.

[mad_gater]

Or finally create a fleet-based show using other ships stranded by the Caretaker and, eventually, survivors of Borg invasions like they should have in the first place.

I know, there are understandable budget constraints, but as DS9 demonstrated, they had the models and limited alien interior sets to pull it off. Since Voyager would be faster than the rest of the fleet, they could still do budget saving "planet of the week" episodes by having it go off on its own to collect resources while the fleet plodded along. A lot of conflict also would have taken place on standing sets early on as the inter-fleet conflict would have been far more intense than what they tried to create by incorporating Maquis into the crew.

And, of course, when space battles did occur, they would've been far more involved (like on DS9). Particularly interesting would have been the attempt to navigate Borg space. Instead of the brief alliance plot line, we could have had a punishing half-season or more arc of the fleet trying to survive and dodge the Borg and Species 8472 crossfire.

As the show progressed, they could have learned that the Dominion and the Federation were at war, and that could have had noteworthy consequences for fleet unity. When they came upon the one-way wormhole, the Federation ship on the other end could have come over to help resolve the conflict that was preventing the bulk of the fleet from getting there in time and could have become trapped as well. When they met another Federation ship taken by the Caretaker who used immoral means to try to get back home faster, the ship could have joined the fleet under new leadership instead of four crew members being the only survivors. Hell, that ship could have had its own, smaller fleet and they could have had a much larger arc centered around the conflict around these two groups and the possibility that some in Voyager's fleet might feel the other fleet better suits their ideological proclivities.

And imagine the final scene of the final episode: Voyager arrives in Federation space at the head of a fleet made up of some species that remain on poor terms in the Alpha Quadrant and all these refugees from the Delta Quadrant who decided to try to achieve better lives by joining in on this journey to make it back to the Alpha Quadrant.

They spoke a lot about maintaining the spirit of the Federation so far away from home, but the show could actually have been about creating a smaller form of the Federation on these ships traveling through the Delta Quadrant. I get why they wanted to do their own version of "one ship, trapped, alone on the other side of the galaxy," but they missed an opportunity to tread new ground.

the "rag tag fleet" idea might've been bandied about but dismissed as too BSG-esque

[P-90_177]

the "rag tag fleet" idea might've been bandied about but dismissed as too BSG-esque

I don’t think it was ever something that was really thought about in those terms. However Ronald D. Moore left Star Trek because of Voyager. He was involved in the earliest seasons of Voyager but quickly became annoyed at how Berman had no desire to have the show be anything other than another show placed firmly in “the Rodenberry Box” with limited continuity between episodes and everything wrapped up in a bow and everything reset by the end of each episode. RDM and a few others (Including Michael Piller I think) tried to push to have the show be a bit more rag-tag. I don’t think the idea of a fleet was ever considered much though. More the idea that Voyager would be struggling much more than it did and need to pick up alien weapons to augment their own (which is why the idea of a finite number of torpedos was first brought up) and that over time Voyager would take damage that they’d need to patch up rather than fully repair and so on.

When the Equinox showed up at the end of season 5 I think there was a notion to have it survive and join up with Voyager, but Berman shot down that idea straight away and Piller by that point knew that he couldn’t push the matter with him.

It’s a real shame considering that the original ideas they had for Voyager sounded great with the tensions with the Maquis being a key focus for much longer than they ended up being and having Season 4 be a full Year Of Hell instead of the simple two parter we got with time travel shennanigans.

[Xaeden]

My proposal isn't all that similar to BSG save that both refer to a "fleet" and both involve inter-fleet conflict, and there's a lot of ways in which the fleet concept in Voyager could have broken entirely new ground. Nonetheless, the one ship alone, far from home thing is, itself, similar to "Lost in Space," which is a trope that dates back to "The Odyssey," so it would be strange for them to refuse to want to be compared to another show when they were purposely treading much more well worn ground instead.

And Voyager is ultimately The Next Generation without the same level of occasional familiarity. They're both out there without any immediate backup and they're both mostly encountering new aliens of the week that we've never heard of before. That one is in the Delta Quadrant and the other in whatever backwater part of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant is a minor point. The significant difference is that TNG can (often magically so) suddenly find itself in Klingon or Romulan space or return home to Earth for a special episode or can dock at a Federation space station or can encounter other Federation ships more easily, etc. As a result, their actions sometimes have an impact on the larger "world."

People often attribute Voyager's ratings boost to Seven of Nine, but I would strongly argue that it was the Borg itself that turned things around for them. They finally brought in a familiar (and very popular) existing enemy and those first episodes with the Borg were among the show's most exciting. Before that, Voyager's enemies were bland and of little real importance because it was always evident that Voyager would eventually leave them behind, never to be seen again. This is problematic in a way that it is not when introducing a one-off villain in a standalone episode because they were trying to build these enemies up to be a recurring, multi-episode threat, but they weren't putting in the energy to develop them to the same degree as the Klingons or Cardassians or Romulans had been because once Voyager was out of their space they'd never be seen again. It's possible to develop epic 1 season and done enemies (Buffy sometimes did it), but perhaps the first two season writers were hoping to save their best alien ideas for DS9 or a future Star Trek show. Or maybe they just bombed it like TNG did when they first created the Ferengi.

Had Voyager introduced less than stellar temporary enemies while also exploring familiar faces and conflicts as Voyager attempted to navigate the balancing act of keeping a fleet together and had they also used this as an opportunity to let the audience learn more about lesser seen Alpha/Beta Quadrant aliens (e.g. the Gorn), the temporary nature of outside enemies wouldn't have mattered as much because the internal conflict and expansion of the familiar would have been the primary focus.

On top of the Borg, Voyager eventually did try to delve more into the familiar when they introduced a Klingon ship or time traveled to Earth and they gave some of the native recurring Delta Quadrant enemies more permanence by making it clear early on that they weren't going anywhere. The Hirogen, for example, were spread out across such large hunting grounds that it was just assumed they'd keep coming back until the end of the show. So the writers did seem to learn something from those first couple of seasons.

I have no idea if they ever seriously considered the fleet idea at any point in the show's early development. This is just something that I had been hoping for back when I was a fan of the franchise. I was extremely irritated when I watched Voyager's pilot and they mentioned other ships that were in range of the Caretaker, but they never tried to track them down. I also wasn't too pleased that they took out the Maquis ship so quickly. It should have been flying alongside Voyager for at least a few episodes as they worked together to trying to make contact with all the stranded ships. "Enterprise" was another missed opportunity to finally build a fleet based show. It would have been so much better, in my opinion, had the show opened with all three of Earth's warp 5 ships being sent out together to explore deep space for the first time, and it would have been very much doable given that they could have reused the same sets for the other two ships.

When Ronald D. Moore's BSG reboot introduced the Pegasus and kept it around for as long as it did, that was such a celebratory moment for me because it represented the sort of thing I had been hoping to see in Star Trek for years. Even though he had large fleets of ships fighting together in DS9, none of the ships save the Defiant ever really mattered too much because they were replaceable. To build a connection with other ships in the fleet and have their betrayals and destructions and last minute saves actually matter to audiences is something that Voyager could have easily done and whether because they never considered going that route or because it was rejected, it was an incredible missed opportunity.

[DigiFluid]

I remember at the time Voyager was on, being excited by the idea that with the introduction of the USS Equinox, now there could be two ships with a bunch more supporting cast and back and forth between the ships.

That turned out well.

[jelgate]

I sense sarcasm from you