RETROACTIVELY MAKING STAR TREK: VOYAGER GOOD, Part II
Now that I've set the stage for Star Trek: Odyssey, it's time to let the crew kick some ass.

The Big Picture, Part II
"Shit! Even in the future nothing works!" Words of wisdom from Spaceballs that will unfortunately dominate the lives of the brave men and women of the Ulysses. On Voyager, the ship was tossed halfway across the galaxy, heavily damaging the ship and killing a large contingent of the crew. (At least, I hope it killed a large contingent of the crew, because if the only casualties were, conveniently, the Executive Officer, the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Engineer, and the Conn Officer, then the writing was even worse than I already thought.) After a few episodes, though, everything was fixed and worked perfectly for the rest of the series. Jesucristo, people, Starfleet ships are robust, but an experience like that requires some serious time in Spacedock, not just a few replacement welds and some duct tape! After her battles with the Borg in "The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I and II," the Enterprise-D had to put into Earth Station McKinley for weeks of refit; the Ulysses's passage to the Delta Quadrant was even more traumatic.

The Ulysses requires major systemic work, the kind of work that can only be done in Spacedock. The problem being that the nearest Spacedock is back in the Federation, 70,000 light years away. So, in the aftermath of "Caretaker," Captain Janeway finds her ship in deep trouble: half her senior staff is dead, a quarter of her general crew with them; approximately twenty Maquis wildcards now on her ship, their leader her new XO; the ghoulish Vidiians are on their tail; and her ship all but crippled. Things don't really improve much after that. Even after the Maquis are integrated into the crew, the Ulysses is dreadfully shorthanded. As the series evolves, so will the ship. Alien parts will have to be used to repair damaged systems and even conduct routine maintenance. Both the exterior and the interior of the ship will reflect these changes. Eventually, I'd like to see one entire warp nacelle replaced, a new main deflector dish, and some manner of bad ass alien rail gun fitted to the bottom of the saucer section. The Voyager was always well stocked with everything it needed; the Ulysses is not quite so fortunate. She is classified as a scoutship, not an explorer. Her operational range is months, not years. Besides, the mission to locate Sovok and Torres's missing ship was not supposed to take more than a few weeks; so, the Ulysses isn't even as well prepared as she could have been. The crew will have to beg, barter, and steal everything they need. Borrowing a page from Greek myth, sometimes in order to secure the materials they need, the ship will have to perform some service for their supplier, be it carrying passengers, locating certain rare items, or protecting a convoy from pirates. It's not that Captain Janeway wants to do these things, but finding herself a universe away from everything she's ever known and responsible for the well-being of her crew, she doesn't have much choice. The voyage of the Ulysses is one conducted on a shoe-strong budget, not the normal bloated expedition of a noble Federation starship.

Also, everybody's going to get laid. In the seven-year run of Voyager, only two babies were born, and one of the mothers had been pregnant when the ship left port. Under normal cicumstances, Starfleet officers are normally reluctant to marry, not wanting to subject spouses and children to the uncertainty of life on a starship. However, they do this knowing they are still in touch with their family and friends off-ship, as well as having access to all the paradise worlds of the Federation. The crew of the Ulysses are on their own. For all they know, it will take at least seventy years to get home (we the audience of course know that they must get home before the series ends, but - shhhh! - they don't know that). For no other reason then sheer isolation and boredom, not to mention providing a replacement crew, people will start hooking up. Sure, maybe you don't find anybody on the ship all that attractive, but given that those 130 people are the only chance you have for any kind of love life, I think they'd start to look a whole lot better. Then of course there is the issue of pon farr, the Vulcan mating lust that all males experience once every seven years. Sure, Sovok's married, but when pon farr hits, he'll need a woman, any woman, and methinks his old friend Elisabeth will begin to look quite tasty, no matter how Platonic their friendship. Elisabeth and Benicio? I cannot say, we'd have to see how the actors played off one another. "Benny, Captain, my friends call me Benny."

Over the course of the journey, the crew will become nothing less than a family, with Captain Janeway and Commander Torres as dysfunctional mother and father figures. The crew on TNG and especially DS9 bonded. Those characters loved each other as only people who have faced death together can. The crew on Voyager were as stiff as boards from the first episode to the last. If anything, they had negative interpersonal chemistry. With only each other for companionship, though, alone in a sea of the unknown, the crew of the Ulysses will be thicker than thieves. Not that there would be a complete breakdown of Starfleet protocol, but I have a hard time imagining that after seven years they would still be calling each other "Lieutenant" and "Crewman." Harry won't call the captain Elisabeth in the middle of a crisis on the bridge, but neither will people be addressed by the impersonality of rank and last name (for example, Crewman Putterman). Try "Hey, you know Dave? The guy who works down in Deflector Control?" "Oh, yeah, what about him?" "Well, I heard that he and Jenny broke up. Nick, this is your chance to score with one of the Delany sisters!"

The Heavies
In many ways, heroes are only as good as their villains.

Seska
Very little change here, I thought Seska was one of the few things done well on Voyager. She is a Cardassian, but had been surgically altered to look Bajoran and assigned to inflitrate the Maquis. In doing so, she found herself on Torres's ship when it was sucked into the Delta Quadrant. More on her later.

Hunter Cole
He is the major adversary of Odyssey. Torres's first officer aboard the Maquis ship, he feels betrayed when his friend and former commander makes a deal with a hated Starfleet captain. Cole joined the Maquis not because he believes that the Federation has abandoned the colonies in the Demilitarized Zone, but because he is a man out of sync with his times. Hunter Cole is a mercenary at heart, a brutal killer in a time when humans have left their bloody, greedy heritage behind; he gets not a small thrill from killing. Cole is a monster, made all the more dangerous because he knows he is a monster.

The Vidiians
Essentially unaltered, the entire Vidiian race is suffering from a plague known as the Phage. The Phage kills slowly, taking the body organ by organ, driving the Vidiians to seek donors, willing or not, wherever they can be found. They raid and capture ships, seeking not treasure, but the organs of their prisoners. Quite the macabre enterprise.

The Kazon
The Kazon sucked. However, there is one facet of them I find fascinating: their former masters, the Trabe. The Kazon were once crushed under the boot of the Trabe, who encouraged tribal rivalries in order to make them easier to control. In time, however, the Kazon rose up against the Trabe and broke their power. Now the two races are at each other's throats. From everything we've seen, the Kazon are savages. In Odyssey, they force Trabe engineers to maintain their stolen Trabe technology in working order; thus, they are subject to frequent sabotage. The Trabe are no angels, and would gladly do the same to the Kazon. Think the Israelis and the Palestinians, only both sides are wrong and there is no Rabin.

More to Come
Next time, the major story arcs of seasons one and two. I haven't really worked it out beyond then.