RETROACTIVELY MAKING STAR TREK: VOYAGER GOOD, Part III
Sorry for the lengthy interruption. It turns out moving is just as unpleasant as I remembered. But I digress.

Dramatis Personae
Captain Elisabeth McKenna, Commanding Officer - Yeah, you're right, Janeway just isn't a worthy last name for a Star Trek captain. Also, I've been considering making Captain McKenna younger, in her mid-thirties; the Ulysses is her first command. Her previous posting was as Executive Officer of the U.S.S. Victory, a Galaxy-class starship, under the command of Captain Grok (a Tellarite). She commanded the Ulysses through her spaceworthiness trials and then on to Starbase Deep Space 9, where the ship took on personnel and equipment before heading off into the Badlands in search of Sovok, working undercover aboard Benicio Torres's missing Maquis raider....
Ensign Daniel Kim, Operations Officer - the only change here is that I realized Harry just doesn't work with the last name Kim. So, I've renamed our uptight young ensign after the actor Daniel Dae Kim, whom I've always wanted to see work with Daniel Day Lewis, just for the name thing. Lt. Cmdr. Data was second officer (next in the chain of command after the Executive Officer) aboard the Enterprise-D while he served as Operations Officer. This leads me to believe that Ops Officer is a respected position; thus, Dan must be very good to have received such a choice assignment right out of the Academy. Sure, the Ulysses is hardly the most impressive ship in Starfleet, but Ops Officer on any ship beats spending the next three years crawling through Jeffries Tubes on the Engineering night shift.

The Plot Thickens
Season One - In the pilot episode, still titled "Caretaker," we meet the senior staff of the Ulysses, half of whom are killed when the ship is pulled into the Delta Quadrant. We meet the Ocampa, the Vidiians (instead of the Kazon), the Caretaker, and Neelix and Kes. (The Vidiians are trying to get their rotting hands on the Ocampa; since the Ocampa only live seven years, they have a devilishly fast metabolism. The Vidiians figure they might be able to beat the Phage if they could only make their immune systems adapt more quickly than the disease.) Things happen more or less as they did in Voyager's "Caretaker," only better. Throughtout the season, fights and arguments break out between the Starfleet and Maquis crew, exacerbated by the long hours everyone works in order to keep the severly crippled ship flying. Power being at a minumum, the replicators are shut down and a large compartment is converted into a Mess Hall, where a hearty diet of emergency rations leaves the crew highly disgruntled. Nevertheless, through a series of typical Star Trek adventures, trust starts to blossom between McKenna and Torres, the good commander even developing feelings for his erstwhile pursuer. He seeks the counsel of K'rena, who has always held secret feelings for him, but good friend that she is, she advises him to pursue to captain if that's what his heart tells him. Nick is an immediate bad influence on Dan, but while Nick teaches the young ensign to be more reckless, Dan rekindles Nick's long-dead dream to be a model Starfleet officer. Benicio busts heads to keep the Maquis crew in line, increasingly alienating his former first officer, newly-minted "Lt." Cole. Convinced that they should do whatever it takes to find the second Caretaker, who has the ability to send them home, Cole plays on the frustrations of the Starfleet crew and his fellow Maquis to develop a substantial following by season's end. The ship visits Talax, Neelix's homeworld, under occupation by Haakonian forces following defeat in war; the crew envades the ravenous clutches of the Vidiians; they make contact with a Romulan scientist from twenty years in the past through a small, inherently unstable wormhole; the encounter the Kazon several times, but learn nothing on the Trabe; before the season's end, it is learned that Seska was really a Cardassian spy aboard Benicio's ship and she defects to the Kazon. Neelix remains a wildcard, an invaluabe source of local information, but an aloof ally; he is greatly impressed by the strength of conviction of Starfleet morality, but also perplexed by its limitations. Kes catches the eye of Nick Locarno and their fast friendship begins to evolve into something more, creating enmity between Nick and Neelix; her personal project aboard is the EMH, her mentor, and by season's end she is issued a blue Starfleet uniform and given a field comission as a nurse (Specialist Second Class). The season conclude's with the cliffhanger "The Mutiny, Part I": Cole makes his move, loyalties are tested, shots are fired, and the final image is Cole holding Captain McKenna at phaserpoint on her own bridge. "To be continued...."

Season Two - The mutineers comprise only a small portion of the crew, but take control of the entire ship. Most of the crew doesn't know how to react and are basically stunned into inaction. Oddly enough, most of the Maquis stay loyal to McKenna, following Benicio's lead. With the computer core isolated and rendered inoperable by McKenna's last command, the Ulysses sits all but dead in space. Sovok manages to escape from his quarters and begins a campaign of sabotage. While Lt. Carey, Cole's first officer who joined the mutiny because he felt slighted when K'rena was named Chief Engineer, tries to unlock to computer, Cole grows increasingly irrational, boasting of a grandiose trial for McKenna and the others, personally holding the captain hostage in her Ready Room. Inspired by Sovok, more and more of the crew actively turn against the mutineers, who are quickly turning on each other. When Cole tries to execute McKenna, Benicio tells his old friend that the captain will be killed only over his dead body. Neelix, a lukewarm supporter fo the mutiny, stands next to Torres in defense of the captain. "What are you doing?" roared Cole. "I'm defending my captain," Neelix replied. Cole nearly escapes, but is stopped by Carey, who tells him to accept that they've lost. Cole disintegrates Carey before being knocked against a wall by a telekinetic blast from Kes, something she didn't know she could do. A hasty court marital is arranged, and Captain McKenna sentences Cole and six others to be put off the ship and all the other mutineers (a little over twenty) to be reduced in rank and confined to quarters when not on duty. The mutineers are left a few kilometers outside a spaceport, presumably to never be seen again. The Ulysses encounters the Kazon again, and finds that Seska has risen to a position of some power through her persecution of the Trabe; the Doctor, working with a rescued Vidiian scientist, tries his hand at research and believes he's found a cure for the Phage, but then discoveres the disease is not so easily conquered; I've got more second season stuff, really!

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