Poll of the Week: Shortcut of the Week

[Laria Herren]

The most important aspect of the overall story of Voyager was the distance of their journey back home to the Alpha Quadrant. Shortening the distance that the ship had to travel, or even returning to Earth immediately was a frequent plot device in Voyager episodes. It seems like at least once a season there is the potential of some shortcut getting the crew back home only to not work out or only take them part of the way. On one occasion this desire to find an alternate way home got the ship stuck in a trap they thought was a wormhole.

It’s understandable that there were occasional episodes centered around this idea. Sometimes it was a good idea to shave time off of the trip like in the episode “Night” where the ship had to get clear of an empty void of space thousands of light years across or in the finale “Endgame”. However, it will appear in a story from time to time where it isn’t related to the primary plot. Sometimes the plot device of a shortcut to Earth was just used to raise the stakes of an episode and was never mentioned again. This week, we want to know which Voyager shortcut you felt was the least necessary for the episode. Let us know your answer below!

[+ Trellis Vondaryan]

A good Captain would have got the Caretaker to send the ship home in the first episode, thereby making all the other shortcuts null and void.

[WLandAlice]

I had to vote for the Voyager Conspiracy, perhaps not because the catapult was "unnecessary", but more for the fact that it was a Seven of Nine-Centric episode, and Seven was my least-like character. And my dislike of Seven of Nine probably stems from the number of ex-Borgs I've written with in Sims past.

[Blaidd Vescori]

I really disliked the way they wrote Kes out of Voyager. It all was so rushed and I am tired of the cliché that characters with significant psychic/spiritual abilities at one point or another have to 'evolve' into beings capable of bending space and time to that degree. I enjoyed Kes a lot more when she was treated like their equivalent of a counselor for having strong empathy.