Shuttlecraft Status

Shuttlecraft Counting For Beginners

Once upon a time, way back at the start of Season Two, Chakotay managed to get a shuttlecraft blown to bits. A week later Harry Kim followed his superior officer's example and despatched a second one. And, rounding out the hat trick, Tom Paris achieved the fatal crash landing of a third shuttle on Planet Hell the week after that.

And a legend was born.

Well, in the overseas market anyway, since that's the order in which Initiations, Non Sequitur and Parturition were released on video and often aired. In the US, UPN chose to hold over four episodes from Season One and mix them in with the first few shows filmed for Season Two, as a result of which these three were somewhat more spread out. For those of us watching them in consecutive weeks though, it was an immediate cue that Voyager's shuttle attrition rate was going to be pretty high. I was keeping tabs on shuttle usage even before Unity brought along the fourth destroyed shuttle, and that was long before the serious damage of seasons four and five.

Voyager is just one little lonely ship, stranded a long way from home. It has no convenient starbase to slide into for a refit between episodes. The crew manage to repair a lot of damage as they go along, and doubtless they've availed themselves of Delta Quadrant repair facilities along the way as well, but there's still a limit to how much damage the main ship can take and still keep going. Disbelief can be suspended an awfully long way, but eventually there's a point beyond which you can't go. So, if you need to underline how serious the current crisis is by blowing something up you look to something disposable, and the shuttlecraft got themselves elected.

Having said that, Voyager's shuttle losses are a running joke that isn't always supported by the actual numbers. People's memories deceive them. They remember the shuttles that blew up in alternate universes and in holodeck simulations, as well as those that actually did leave an empty space in Voyager's shuttlebays. By the end of season three only four shuttles had actually been destroyed or irretrievably damaged... but folk myth would have you believe the number to be many times that.

Which is one of the reasons why I originally started this page: to set the record straight about how few shuttles have actually been lost. Of course, the people making the programme haven't exactly co-operated. They've been losing shuttles hand over fist ever since! However, since they established in Extreme Risk that Voyager's resources and facilities are equal to building a new shuttlecraft entirely from scratch and in Latent Image that there's a shuttle maintenance team down on Deck 11 whose entire working life is devoted to repairing and/or enhancing the shuttles, they probably feel that they've provided all the explanation they need to on why Voyager's shuttle supply never quite runs out.

Besides, they know people are looking and counting. What started almost by accident is probably by now as much of a production in-joke as the statistically improbable frequency with which the number 47 turns up.

Shuttle Appearance Tally

NOTE: Shuttle outings for seasons six and seven have not yet been tallied in their entirety.

* Tom Paris's shuttle was damaged in Basics: 1. The same shuttle was still damaged in Basics: 2 at the start of the following season, so it's only been counted once and split between the two episodes. To do anything else would be the same as counting shuttle damage done in Caretaker or Dark Frontier twice just because they're double length.

Shuttlecraft Graveyard

NOTE: Shuttle outings for seasons six and seven have not yet been tallied in their entirety.