It's 1994, and you are a producer for Star Trek: Voyager....and you have to make it kino

It's 1994, and you are a producer for Star Trek: Voyager....and you have to make it kino.

>You can not recast
>You can not cancel the show
>Most of the production staff must remain

What do you do?

kill the cast, filming it live, as both the pilot ep, and finale

Does swapping characters count as a recast?

Janeway dies at the end of the first season, Tuvok takes charge.
Kes and Neelix get btfo half-way through season 2.
Seven and Belanna fuck like crazed targs for the entire show.
The Borg kids never happen.

No

Oh god I'd forgotten about the borg kids.
That was fucking special, holy fucking kek.

Define kino

Chakotay would have taken charge.

No, if i were in charge Chakotay would have been a lot more Maquis than he actually was, thus staying as second in command and offering other views on Tuvok's more cold and logical leadership...i mean the man was a total pussy that became more or less a yes-man to whatever bs Janeway said.

Try to change Berman's mind on the whole "It's the future, people shouldn't have emotions" thing.

Add more tension between the Federation and the Maquis.

that's because Janeway made logical choices against which there was no argument

Hahaha oh my

Have the ship get progressively more fucked as the seasons go on

Make it seem like survival is actually a hard thing

Take full advantage of the environment Voyager is set in, find script writers that can write good stories that the best Trek is known for. Actively engage with the cast and see if they have character ideas they'd like to explore. More shows that focus on maintaining Federation/Starfleet ideals when completely isolated from them. Conflicts and challenges with having a split Starfleet-Maquis crew.

I actually like all the cast and have heard some weren't given the chance to grow and develop their characters. There was some hostility with I think Mulgrew and Ryan that should have been nipped in the bud earlier. Involve more crew members that aren't part of the command staff.

I don't know exactly what producers do but I always hear that Rick Berman is in part responsible for why Voyager often sucked so I'd just do the opposite of him.

This would've been a nice touch.
Having to deal with constant shortages of every kind and having to make sketchy fucking deals to get the ship properly repaired, or just deal with letting the ship slip into ill repair would've been an interesting route to take.

Maybe for the Sol Empire timeline, Janeway was the true villian of Voyager.

but that's all stuff that happened, one of the reason they were always scouting planets was to have a constant supply of resources

name one case

They hand-wave it off far too easily though. It should have been a larger part of the show.

Have the ship show more wear and tear

Have more of an emphasis on survival and the toll the journey has taken on the crew

Have more ships join Voyager on it's journey. Have the Equinox come sooner. Have Ransom there as a part of the main cast, and have his crew be more willing to want to do more questionable stuff. Beyond that, just more ships. Some come and some go. If Star Trek was the wagon train to the stars, have Voyager as the convoy across them.

Have much more tension between the Starfleet and Marquis crews. Certainly don't have them wear the uniform.

I make the show entirely about social justice and identity politics, and also make it entirely on the nose. While the show will still be shit, the message conveyed will be that identity politics only serves to destroy the value of something that could be good, thus becoming a kinowarning to all future events.

Make it like Enterprise season 3

>alone and vastly outgunned in hostile space
>resource shortages
>the ship steadily gets beaten up, both inside and outside
>things start out okay and hopeful, but over time real strain starts to show among the crew

The problems between Federation and Maquis should take much longer to resolve .. the Maquis should not simply assimilate to the Federation ideals, there should be a kind of merging of the two out of necessity and isolation (maybe increase the number of Maquis and also up the death toll among the original Voyager crew, so the ratio ends up being like 3:1 instead of 20:1). It would be a continuation of the DS9 theme of critiquing the Federation's ideals. Eventually they'd find a way to keep the spirit of the Federation alive, even if they don't quite live up to every edict. Obviously Chakotay would need to be much more assertive than he was in the show.

Have better villains. The Kazon were lacklustre and the others were gimmicky (organ-stealer race, hunter race, pollution race ...) The Borg debacle goes without saying. DS9 somehow managed to have two richly interesting villain races -- the Cardassians and the Dominion. Hell even the Xindi in ENT were sort of neat, so I'm sure Voyager writers could manage at least one.

>name one case

Tuvix
Borg alliance

>Tuvix
Justified. It's just the trolley problem in Star Trek form and Janeway made the right choice.

>Borg alliance
The Borg sarted it, but att he time Janeway allied with them 8472 had already decided to wipe out everything in non-fluidic space so she really made a better choice than just letting 8472 massacre the borg and then come after everyone else.

This is how Voyager could have been saved.

I mean here's an idea I literally just thought of: instead of the retarded Seska-helps-Kazons plotline, have her be found out as a Cardassian and the conflict is over what they should do with her:

- Maquis crew want her executed
- Starfleet crew just want to exile her

And Seska has the opportunity to defend her actions and criticize everyone else.

The whole ship is deadlocked over what to do, and Janeway can't decide one way or the other without half the ship mutinying. Therefore we get:

Courtroom episode (like The Drumhead and Measure of a Man) only this time there's three sides: Maquis, Federation, and Seska herself. The jury is made up of the only three neutral people on the ship: Neelix, Kes, and the Doctor (his personality is newly formed and he doesn't have a loyalty to Starfleet as such). Three sides, three people to convince, three episodes long.

With that premise, the drama would just write itself. Instant trek-kino.

>give Harry Kim something to do
>get rid of the "humans have to be flat" rule
>enforce more specific characterization
>Update Beltran's contract and tell him he can take the show seriously or fuck off

The show becomes a character study of Janeway as she slowly laxes military standards over the seasons until the ending where the focus pulls back and shows the Voyager and its crew as the murderous tech pirates they have become.

Ending is Janeway on trial giving a speech ala A Few Good Men.

they're stranded in the delta quadrant yet their trip on voyager is cushy as fuck. Would have made their suffering and struggle worse, kind of like battlestar galactica. Barely surviving, losing their sanity, rations and other provisions. Shit would be DARK. yet hopeful. can't be too grim either.

>It's just the trolley problem in Star Trek form and Janeway made the right choice.

This.

Also don't forget that as Tuvix begged for his life, not a SINGLE member of the bridge defended him. They just stared at him like he was freaking out because someone ate his lunch.

>b-but muh orders

Fuck off with that, they were 70 years from starfleet jurisdiction at the time.

All the ideas here are great.
>longer plot arcs like the Year of Hell lasting an entire series, detailing the alliances they make and character development
>changes to the ship and uniforms visible with new technology
>kill off main characters
>Maquis rebel and kill Janeway, starfleet crew retake the ship with Captain Tuvok and a more chaotic neutral Tom Paris as his first officer

>more minor roles like Carey in engineering, Samantha Wildman and others
Barclay was a fan favourite in TNG, so I don't see why this wouldn't work. Vorik /ourguy/ did nothing wrong.

darktrek is gay

>killing Janeway and making Tuvok captain

was with you until here .. bipolar Janeway is the best asset the show had, it could have been incredible if the writers took it seriously.

Maybe have her go too far, get booted out by the crew and demote her to crewman and as a recurring character. Kate Mulgrew is a decent actress and well worth keeping on. She did her best with some awful writing.

I don't think you can demote captains all the way down to crewman, and even if you could it would be a waste of her talents as an actress .. would be a "jump-the-shark" moment. I think the frog-in-boiling-water approach would work better, where each decision is only marginally worse than the previous one. Having her suddenly snap would be difficult to write the aftermath of.

Such an act would require a superior officer, and Janeway is THE superior officer. The crew could Mutiny and throw her in the brig.

fun fact: Carey only appeared for years in flashback episodes because the writers thought he was dead. when they found out he wasn't near the very end, the writers promptly killed him off!

Janeway hated him so much that she made sure to travel back in time to slightly after his death, so that he'd stay dead.