Ace Dreamer
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Cerulean Stars: An Asari Security Officer in Commander Sisko's Court
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frozenchicken
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As far as explanations for Janeway's choices go, I like 'Janeway spent all 7 years in a coffee-powered state of constant sleep deprivation'.
Something tells me that with a sector based strategic outlook available (to say nothing of the differences caused by some early butterflies) she's going to be armed with far more than just 5,000 photon torpedoes (especially since said outlook is aware of the possibility of a battlestation showing up, even if it'll be rather low for decades/might not be 100% applicable to her universe). Interior defences are probably gonna get a ton of Klingons killed if they just beam in like chumps like in the show, more so than was canon.
Ah, the Deferi. STOs first attempt at an original species (iirc) that was more than just a species of the week/episode and rather rough around their highly balanced edges as a result (still better than the Kobali, though, by light years). I don't know if they'll ever really come up in this fic, but if they do I'd love to see your take on them.
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SemiSaneAuthor
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I still rule the whole of Voyager as, "Part of The Temporal Cold War gone hot," which explains more than the lack of continuity but also, "Infinite Shuttlecraft Works!"
Ace Dreamer
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Given the existential danger from the Borg, and the potential transformative effect of the EMH on the Federation, based on holographic 'real' AIs, you're suggesting Voyager was an important playing piece in the eyes of quite a few different groups?
I'm... unsure how important the Delta Flyer might have been viz future Starfleet small ship design...
SemiSaneAuthor
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You're forgetting Quantum Slipstream, Future Janeway's tech she brings back, and The Krenim as just three points as a thing.
While it goes Caretaker. Then the weird anomaly which is not a Black Hole, Voyager Canon Writers. And then we have a temporal incident which cancels itself out. So it's almost like the early temporal episode in Voyager, near the very beginning of Series 1, is someone trying to remove Voyager from the board.
Well, there is then the Quinn thing which leads to The Q Civil War. Which is arguably a temporal strike on The Q. One which the results of The Q Civil War may have gotten what it intended.
Voyager being an episodic timeline where each episode is it's own timeline with vague continuity to previous ones? From a Doylist perspective it's the Show Writers messing up. From a Watsonian perspective? It's the Temporal Cold War gone full Temporal Fuckery.
Yes, I think you're remembering from Hiver, you can read Hiver's first story part here. We're now four stories in, mind, and Janeway and Co. only finally make the appearance in story 3, so there's a bit of reading to get through....
Part 1 - 75kwords. Part two is 83k. Part 3 is 95k. And then you're caught up to the current arc.
Oh - for those who have not yet read it - Hiver's take on Star Trek completely eliminates one canon tech from the series - transporters are explicitly not possible for the current Fed/Kling/Rom tech (replicators do exist but use energy and special feedstock to create what you're asking for). Higher tech level societies may have it, but not them. Makes for some better story, I feel.
On topic, oh yes, that poor Voyager crew... Janeway definitely was not the captain that would have been sent had Starfleet had any inclining as to what was going on. Voyager was literally her first time in the command chair.
My personal biggest issue is with those who bring up the (relative commonality) of deuterium and why Voyager was constantly running low as a plot hole.
But we don't know what form deuterium mining takes in the Federation. What machinery is required, what refining / isolation procedures need to be done to separate it out from protium... and Voyager is a science ship. Not a mineral resource engine.
The counter example I usually offer is something along the lines of nuke powered carriers can operate for literal decades on one load of fuel... but are not remotely set up to mine, process, enrich, and refine uranium into usable rods for their reactors.
Voyage was set up for long-term voyage yes, but only in the sense that it would be back into Fed space and all its nummy nummy resources to keep the ship going again every few years.
One ship, alone and cut off from all support, literally limited to only what they can beg, borrow, or the ever-popular Strategic Transportation of Equipment/goods to Alternate Location... that changes things entirely.
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Pretty sure it was actually multiple different fanfics, including Hivers, combined with not having watched the show in years.
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So yes or no survey question, should I do Heroes and Demons as a readable interlude taking place inside Raine's holoprogram?
And yea, for as jokey as Lower Decks can get, they weren't shy about pointing out that Janeway was in a very difficult position with her decisions.
Instead I just work around Transporters in logical ways, for example, any world where a ground battle is going on? They're almost completely useless because of Transporter scramblers/jammers. The people who tried to kidnap and replace Raine with a duplicate? They blocked her com and were preventing transport into and out of the building. The Klingon hall Quark and Grilka had to schlep their assess too? Transporter jammers.
Because the world adapts.
She missed being assigned a California Class starter solely due to the fact that she was the star pupil of the Admiral behind the Intrepid project.
And yea, for as jokey as Lower Decks can get, they weren't shy about pointing out that Janeway was in a very difficult position with her decisions.
Pretty much spot on to how I was put things together for this story.
It's a rogue moon, so no planet. And testing for life is a standard Starfleet procedure before demolition.
Ironically this is more or less how they did it in canon, with most of DS9's tactical refits being stuff they snuck on board under the guise of spare parts from junked ships.
When the map I'm using doesn't have sector names for a location I pull from a map that does.
I'm personally not a fan of tossing things out of canon like that.
Instead I just work around Transporters in logical ways, for example, any world where a ground battle is going on? They're almost completely useless because of Transporter scramblers/jammers. The people who tried to kidnap and replace Raine with a duplicate? They blocked her com and were preventing transport into and out of the building. The Klingon hall Quark and Grilka had to schlep their assess too? Transporter jammers.
Because the world adapts.
A big part of that was because Deuterium was shorthand, the actual matter reactant was a specific Deuterium/Tritium mix.
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I'm not really a fan of just removing such a staple of Star Trek either, if you want to do something like that the Khan Victorious! route sits better with me.
In that story on Alternate History, Khan wins and the entire human race becomes Augments, so humans (and later the Federation) don't have their irrational fear of genetic engineering. To balance this out, one of the attempts to surpass lightspeed with transporter tech in the leadup to Cochrane went appallingly bad, so they've got an 'irrational' fear of transporters instead. The tech still exists, and sometimes gets used for moving non-living supplies, but humans completely refuse to travel that way.
Cecylene
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The problem with being outside of protocol and beyond any intended supply lines is that all existing doctrine assumes that at worst you're outside by an estimably possible distance. Janeway being throw into not just a Trial by Fire but instead the whole damn volcano runs the eternal risk of everyone dying quickly or very slowly. So she makes mistakes because her risk assessment isn't the normal Starfleet Captain's position of "If I fuck up I can send a message to Starfleet to at least attempt a rescue of the escape pod survivors." it is, "If I fuck up, that's it game over. Rocks fall and everyone dies."
Janeway needed to constantly be running the mental calculus on risk vs. reward with every torpedo launched, every injury healed, and ever ydetour made. Because sure Recrystalization was possible and extended the Warp Core's life by huge margins... but the Warp Core was still steadily depleting its fuel even at a snails pace. Is this detour worth it, is this mission going to put someone in a situation where we as a lone ship without access to Starfleet medical facilities cannot cure/heal them? Are we going to need these weapons for a bigger threat or danger later? If I stress these parts, how many man hours will I lose to checking it and is it worth depleting our supply of replicator material to create any replacements we need?
Janeway was in an awful situation, the fact she made it back at all is also the kind of thing that explains why she was the right person for the job at least in-universe.
A fun thing about Electronic Warfare in modern times, is if your side is willing to forgo radar and radio it is entirely possible to just shut it down completely and there's nothing anyone can do about it because you're not carefully blocking specific channels you're dumping raw electromagnetic garbage into the airwaves and the only way through it is by brute-forcing your own signal through the waveform cheesegrater. Transporters require a lot of careful mechanics and computations, deflector fields of any strength will cause safety measures built into the molecular image scanner or the confinement beam to just hard stop any transport attempt.
This is also not including stuff like Remat Detonators and other devices designed to make using a Transporter the thing that kills you. If you create a field that doesn't stop transporters but rather spoofs the Targeting Scanner into thinking the destination is fine? Congratulations you've made your enemy's transporters into either suicide machines or the Heisenberg Compensator will blow a gasket and your enemies will be trying to figure out how you're blocking transport.
Qoheleth
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My money for any Voyager 'idiot balls' bouncing around is still on "the most stressful surprise long-term posting of the 24th century, with no surviving crew members competent to provide mental healthcare". There was a lot of brain problems on that boat, and the ones we got to see as on-camera plots had to be resolved with 'my friend played therapist and got lucky' type solutions.
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This exactly. Jane way gets a lot of undeserved flak because people compare her to Kirk and Picard and the crew of their respective Enterprises. Except those were flagships, crewed by the absolute best of the best in Starfleet, including incredibly unique talents that couldn't be found anywhere else in the Federation.
Voyager was supposed to be a minor exploration and science vessel. In a normal course of events Janeway is the captain of the minor ship who exists in the story to emphasize just how badass the crew of the Enterprise is by ending up in over her head and making some mistake that Geordi or Data will figure out after the third commercial break.
Voyager was a B-tier federation star ship, crewed by the B and C tier members of Starfleet, had half her crew killed and replaced by dropouts and renegades, that got dropped into S tier trouble, and was incredibly lucky that her specialty was long term exploration. All told, Janeway did a pretty decent job.
Thank you for making this point before I could get home and make it myself, I had this precise same thought earlier today.
From a Doylist perspective, Picard and Kirk had the benefit of being in a show that aimed at portraying humanity at their best, as explorers, archeologists, diplomats, and warriors. They journeyed into the unknown for the sake of it, intentionally and with abundant preparation.
Janeway was damned to survive an Odyssey tribute from the very start, it's explicitly a show about being far from home, isolated, and forced to make difficult decisions. They are storm-tossed refugees, not Lewis and Clark. Even more so than the others, her job as a character is to be overwhelmed and power through with ingenuity and grit. What's interesting about their story is the fundamental problem they face, and once something is no longer interesting, it ceases being a problem.
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Except all the difficult decisions were always ultimately without any real consequence. Janeway gives a weapon to the borg resulting in billions of lives lost? "I'm sorry that happened" was essentially her response when confronted about the ramifications of her decision. Saving a civilization? "We do not know the consequences" is her response.
The years have poisoned my view on the character admittedly. Perhaps the way I see Janeway's version of captaining is she uses the code as an excuse for inaction, and when she decides to do something that goes against federation ideals it suddenly isn't an issue.
I suppose in my view she doesn't make the difficult decisions because she always takes the easy way out, and she has the audacity to stand on her pedestal and moralize.
This is just my personal view of the character. Edit: Anyways I'll drop the topic after this comment I said what I wanted to say. Don't wanna derail into voyager hate bashing or anything like that. Just wanted to share my thoughts on janeway.
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I say Yes!
Naw, it's a totally valid interpretation of the character. She's not a flawless philosopher-king, that's not what her character's about. James Kirk will beat up a gorn then shoot it in the face with an improvised bazooka, and brood over the terrible costs of war, and we forgive him this. That's his character stretched to a breaking point of survival at any cost against a worthy foe.
Janeway's entire deal is that she's a captain who has decided the absolute moral imperative is to get her people home, survival at all costs. That's where she starts, not where she ends up once every few episodes. Maybe that's the wrong thing for a Federation captain to be, maybe the galaxy would be better served by captains who let their crew die rather than cross certain lines. But that doesn't sound like Odysseus, and that's simply not who she is, either.
That's a fine thing to not like. Kirk and Picard are aspirational paragons in a vision of humanity that's diplomatic and compassionate, but also totally ready to whip out a double-fisted punch if necessary. That's legitimately great and I don't blame you if it's your favorite flavor. I'm just glad we have more options to choose from, that they mixed it up with Sisko, and then all the rest.
(Carol Freeman's probably my personal favorite, simply for how absolutely nakedly open she is with her flaws in front of the camera. She gets to alternate between being a recurring problem / obstacle and being the most ardent ally the protagonists have, which is a great place for a character to be.)
Anyway, back on topic, I do enjoy the depiction of Janeway in this fic, however brief it may prove to be. "Humility? Decorum? Never heard of them. Give me coffee--scratch that, give me engineer who made this coffee," sounds about right.
Ace Dreamer
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Sounds like fun...
Would probably be good to do a previous bit which establishes the relationship between our pair of holographic medical staff, though...
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If Vae needs to base Janeway on how she was depicted, I would honestly suggest going with how she's depicted in Prodigy. Definitely the best version of her...
Qoheleth
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As much fun as it'd be, scope creep is the silent killer. If a day rolls around when your muse is really excited about this plotbunny, then go for it. But don't feel like it's a mandatory entry on your to-do list.
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The idea I'm playing with is instead of happening in Beowolf the alien encounter happens in Citadel Noir.
Which would be where The Doctor and Korra first meet.
In my mind Prodigy Janeway is Janeway after years of character growth.
Ironically small "meanwhile's" inter-spaced in the story to help me keep focus on the main storyline by giving me a place to throw those idea's before they develop into another full on story like Dark Stars did.
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"Hirogen. What the fuck is your...deal??"