USS Voyager fired 123 of its 38 photon torpedoes

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If they have replicators, they ought to be able to make photon torpedoes. The only sticking point might be making the anti-matter for the warheads, but I guess they can get that wherever they got the anti-matter for the warp core.

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That would explain why they tried to avoid using the replicators for food. The resources were needed elsewhere. Presumably they were also able to harvest some of the raw materials they needed from planets or asteroids.

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Well, they said they couldn’t make more.

However IMO it’s a tolerable gap. One could assume that they figured out how to make some, or traded for the key parts, or whatever, eventually. A commenter on youtube also pointed out that some of the firings took place in time loops or alternate universes, or whatever, so don’t necessarily count.

Even more however, however, this does illustrate a common failing of sci-fi, particularly in TV or movies, of which Voyager is an extremely strong example: the unwillingness of writers to accept core consequences of their setting, and resulting blandness. I assert that Voyager would have been a much better show, somewhat in the way that DS9 eventually was, if it had not constantly run with its tail between its legs from the fact that the ship was isolated for years and moving rapidly through unknown territory.

Imagine if they had taken that “year of hell” episode and instead of time-looping it out of existence recovered from that over the entire season? Could have been pretty epic.

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yeah, pretty much. They can replicate shuttle crafts after all and those have their own warp cores on top of everything else and they have traded for quite a lot of resources over the years while spreading strife and misery through the delta quadrant.

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I like to imagine Tuvok smirking when Janeway says “and no way to replace them.”

Yes. No way. No way at all. Let’s see how long it takes them to figure out the math isn’t working out. I mean, I could tell them that the “DRM” on the torpedoes is a simple ROT-13 but that would ruin the fun.

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“I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking “did he fire 38 shots or only 37?” Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a type-6 photon torpedo, and will destroy an unshielded target in a single hit, you’ve gotta ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”

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Spacey version of the classic Hollywood Repeater

I loathed that show. Sometimes I wondered if it was deliberately incoherent.

They’re got the fastest ship in the quadrant, and they’re trying to make their best speed towards home – and they had recurring antagonists. In the first episode, they pick up Neelix as a guide, and somehow, he has personal experience with the surrounding cultures after they’ve travelled continuously for several years. Kes has a lifespan of four years, so she decides to head to Earth to get a medical degree – and after several years of travel, she turns around and goes home, then somehow comes all the way back. They kept having run-ins with aliens that were supposed to have really advanced medical technology, but couldn’t seem to cure a viral infection, when the Federation had medicine based on nanotechnology.

I finally stopped watching entirely when the ship encounters a black hole, Janeway says something about the event horizon, and Neelix turns to Kes, and says, in a tone of voice that suggests he’s reading an encyclopedia entry to a child, “An EVENT HORIZON is a POWERFUL ENERGY FIELD that surrounds a black hole…”

One thing I’ve got to say for Voyager, though, was that the holographic doctor was both a genuinely novel point of view, and he was both interesting and amusing.

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Not DS 9 the other Ron Moore franchise: Battle star Galactica was like this for a while.

If they lost a ship, a person, a limb, all their homeworlds it stayed lost (except for that starbuck stuff). The psychological tolls on realistic characters was stunning.

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They were just following the time-honored tradition of old Westerns, in which a six-shooter can fire 37 times without reloading.

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Photon torpedoes CAN’T be considered canon

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And yet, BSG kicks off with a dire, dire prediction of how quickly the fleet will exhaust its food and water reserves, a notion that is quickly thrown aside and barely mentioned again.

Of course, they do find the handy planet of protein-rich algae in season 3, which counts for something, although I found it questionable that said algae seemed to be trivially converted into palatable alcohol, given how much of that was getting thrown around.

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Making the show incoherent was completely intentional. Rick Berman and other writers on the show could not give less of a shit for the premise and went out of their way to fuck things up, writers coming from DS9 quickly discovered that the writing process for Voyager was hellish.

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Why mention it? You can just watch them get dirtier and dirtier.

Did a bit of research into where Janeway’s quote comes from- (memory alpha to the rescue) - it’s from the episode where they’re searching for energy in a nebula, and that their ‘energy reserves were nearly depleted’ [sic] - which might explain Janeway’s extra nervousness.

Otherwise, when in the Alpha quadrant, they would have refuelled and stocked up on torpedoes at nearby star bases. I suppose I’d go along with the idea that initially they’d have hoped to have been back in a relatively short time. That way of thinking would have taken a little while to get over, hence Janeway’s initial comment about having limited supplies. Only after they’d settled into the journey would they maybe have shifted their resources and started transporting up resources from planets.

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I rewatched the first season last year. Watch the second episode and listen to the scientific explanation of a trapped ship within a singularity’s event horizon, a “very powerful energy field surrounding it”. I’m all for making things up for the sake of making a fun show, but this was just farcical and I had a wee bit trouble getting past it.

I did get past it as I do enjoy the romp, but only by the passing time. I think about the explanation now and it’s infuriating! It’s not an energy field, you assholes! Don’t feed kids such bullshit! You’re Star Trek! Make some shit up about “Tachyon emissions”, not established theories!

God!

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Yes, because rearranging simple molecules based on light elements is such a burden.

To be equalled only by Moon Base Alpha’s overdraft in “Eagle” spaceships in Space 1999.

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Talking about his Stargate:Universe gig, I think John Scalzi mentioned one aspect of his role was to “count the bullets”; make sure people weren’t running around wasting resources or, if they were, then to ensure there were consequences.