I am surprised, though, that not even the lovable Mr. Spock could explain how the ships force fields worked. Can someone try explaining this system. I am also stressed that not one show attempted to explain how artificial gravity works. Does not gravity have its origin and its affect through the actual fabric of space its self, as stated in Quantum Mechanics and String Theory?

Sherriea

All I have to add apart from that is:

“Get that cheese to Sickbay….!”

*Ahem*
:D

The super duper replicator that all those shuttles and photon torpedoes came from on a ship with limited resources. They must of had those bussard collectors working overtime to keep the deuterium tanks full and the fusion reactors powered up to keep the replicators going and the holodecks running all the time! :-)

Obviously hits and misses are common to all speculation, but Voyager took those chances, damn the torpedoes.

Every week, Voyager brought us an astounding array of fascinating science, such as:

- A phage that degraded an entire space-faring species into desperate organ-hunters, pouring every ounce of R&D into accelerating medical breakthroughs decades or centuries faster than normal

- A violent, treacherous race of subspace tunnel builders

- A temporal bubble that housed an entire civilization, where centuries to them passed as hours to us, and an in-orbit high albedo USS Voyager becomes their deity

- Centuries in the future, a museum in the Delta Quadrant relates to us a “faulty history” of their encounter with Voyager

Not only that, Voyager frequently explored the “nature of the soul”, philosophy, and religion. All in all, the writers took Trek to a place where everything under the sun could be explored.

Voyager gave us great ideas that were explored from different angles by characters inside each episode, not just thrown around as plot points to get to the next action sequence. Many of Voyager’s ideas are interesting to discuss fifteen years later.

I still consider Voyager to be the 4th best Trek series (TOS, TNG, DS9) overall, but in a lot of ways, comparing STV to the others is apples/oranges. I’d put 20 episodes of STV up against any list of great TV scifi, not just Trek.

Outstanding article, thank you.

PS: At this point, because we live in “The Age of the Reboot”, I’d like to cast my vote for Star Trek: Voyager. Imagine a BSG-like series in which two disparate factions that hate each other are forced to serve together in an entirely unexplored area of space, where crew suffers great loss and every week the ship becomes a battered, dirty, grungy and increasingly uninhabitable hulk. Federation principles are bent and broken as highly questionable and unethical methods are required to survive. In some ways, I kind of wish that the crew of USS Voyager was more like the crew of the ill-fated USS Equinox.

A question: What do you feel was your greatest and or favorite contribution to any of the series?

I really enjoyed your work and have a tough time deciding which things stand out for me.

Having been present at some of the first demonstrations of ruby laser holograms I think I can shed some light.

First, your idea that somehow such holographic images must involve conventional theater projection is a misnomer. The light scattering produced in such holographic images are caused by interference patterns of colliding waves of light and are perfectly visible in a vacuum. And that is not the only mechanism of optics capable of producing a 3-D image in such a setting. Just as the mirrors of Hubble work fine in space so would a conventional 3-D imaging spherical mirror using conventional optics, that you could purchase at at most magic shops.

For an interesting story that does have some transporter-like complications, see Christopher Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE.