Tl;Dr - everybody on Voyager lacks the most basic of common security sense, and roams the delta quadrant with the naivety of children. Discuss.
Long version: Let me preface by stating that we've watched all of TNG and DS9, and we're approaching the end of Voyager, so maybe I'm just burned out on Trek's writing in general, but why do so many of Voyager's plots require a complete lack of security common sense to work?
Case in point: we've just watched "Repression", wherein Tuvok has been attacking and mind melding with all of the old Marquis crew, who have now all recovered from their mystery comas and been put straight back on duty. Tuvok is in the brig talking with Janeway. Not only did they let him keep his combadge, but when he uses it to relay a bunch of strange words to Chakotay, who replies that he "understood", Janeway at no point thinks it might be prudent to have Chakotay immediately detained. This leads to a full ship takeover and Janeway almost getting killed.
Then literally the very next episode a random trader is able to straight up steal the doctor out from under everyone's noses. I know the internet was in its infancy when Voyager was created and we were all pretty naive about data security, but come on!
So many plots rely on critical systems being wide open for anyone to tamper with, or crew members lacking the most basic of common sense and/or being way too trusting of complete strangers.
I appreciate that it would be a pretty boring show if everything was locked down and people did their jobs properly, and that I might as well be complaining about the fallacy of Holodeck safety protocols, but I had to get it off my chest!
If it weren't for the fact that it's become a bit of a running joke to point out all of the ways a major plot device could've been avoided I think we'd have stopped watching a couple of seasons ago.
Has Trek always been this way, or is the writing on Voyager just particularly lazy/bad?
yes, Star Trek has always been like this – but so is every other show on TV, and I think that the reason we sometimes feel this way about Star Trek in particular is because we’ve come to idealise the Federation and think of its people as highly competent, the “best of the best”
all fiction requires a degree of suspension of disbelief, sci-fi perhaps quadruply so. many shows not only proceed at “the speed of plot”, but also often the answer to the question “why on Alpha Braga IV would you do that??!?!?” is “because narrative imperative” 💁♀️
I, too, get frustrated by some of the very obviously bad SOPs in Starfleet, like
– routinely sending all your senior officers on the same away mission & leaving the starship under the command of a lieutenant
– having senior officers on an away mission that includes a tactical security team & allowing the senior officers to lead the assault (see also, every cop show ever)
– not having standing orders that “if something seems even the slightest bit weird (e.g. you’re having visual or auditory hallucinations, events seeming to repeat themselves, etc.) then you must report it immediately”
– etc., etc., etc.
and I do also think that some specific episodes or recurring tropes exhibit particularly lazy writing in this regard, when a few tweaks could deliver the same outcome / message without requiring characters to do boneheaded things that are beneath their skill & intelligence, and I’d love to see some more instances where the writers do a bit more work to solve the more difficult writing challenge of having the characters exhibit the highest levels of competence & good procedures / tactics / strategies but still end up in situations that they then need to work together (and with others) to solve. it’s not like “superior alien intelligence / technology / resources exceeds the capability of Starfleet personnel operating at maximum efficiency, but our heroes manage to prevail anyway” isn’t a rich vein to mine
but as someone else has commented, the story – and in Star Trek’s case, very frequently the message – is the point, not so much the details of how we got there
so we watch anyway, and we enjoy immensely, and we love deeply, and we forgive the writers (usually) 🖖
Yeah, what are they, some kind of placeholder?
:
🇨🇵
lieutenant = lieu tenant = place holder“Lt. Plaice Holdor at your service!” 🫡