What I want is a game where you're the captain of a ship during the Dominion War or something, lost behind enemy lines, and you have to survive. Gotta keep the ship maintained, gotta keep the officers alive, and so on. Some officers are better than others and you have to manage the crew. What I would love is several different characters with actual stories, rather than names and stats, so there's more immersion. Gotta have a good amount of them, too, since officers tend to get ragdolled in the bridge during combat.
I always thought that this basic premise would have been a better setup for Voyager than we got. Janeway and the crew get wormholed across the galaxy all the same, but it takes place during the darkest days of the Dominion War.
Just before they get teleported there’s some garbled transmission that sounds like there’s been an attack on Earth, which the audience of course knows is wrong, but the crew don’t because it gets cut off.
Now Janeway is stuck at the other end of the Galaxy, battling for survival, whilst also thinking that they might be the last remnants of Star Fleet. The crew decide that rather than heading home, they’ll instead head for Dominion space and attack them in the rear. As the series goes on they start rallying a fleet of allies along the way (who are always a warp jump behind for budgetary reasons).
It’s a much darker series, as they are desperate to get back to the fight and are willing to do whatever is necessary to get home. Janeway is going full Kurtz as time goes on, while the rest of the crew attempt to hold on to their ideals. When they meet USS Equinox they greet the crew as heroes and Captain Ransom becomes one of the main cast, he becomes a voice of reason for Janeway. Ransom wants to get his people home safe, Janeway just wants to avenge the Federation.
3-4 seasons in they reach Dominion space and Janeway and her fleet proceed to go full Direlewanger on their asses despite the war being over. The last season of the show is Janeway fighting the Founders, no one knowing who’s doing the attacking because it’s hit and run, Voyager was thought lost and the people that the Dominion are fighting aren’t acting very starfleet (rather than ketracel-white white necklaces, its Vorta ears).
Last few episodes would be Voyagers crew being debriefed and reintegrating into society, the political fallout, and how Starfleet deals with a crew that went full Hutu.
Anyway, that’s my fanfic of how Voyager might not have been a very middling show. Thanks for reading.
