Star Trek: 11-ish Times Voyager Lost A Shuttle

14. Type Casting

If you thought it was just a numbers game — like musical chairs but with explosions — then let's have a look at shuttle types, names, and models. As detailed in Star Trek Voyager: A Vision of the Future, creators had hoped to design and build an entirely new shuttle for the fledgling series before it aired, but there was no more room left in the budget. They modified the Type 6 miniature from Star Trek: The Next Generation to become the Type 8.

When it came to giving a name to this new-ish shuttle, several were considered — from Einstein to Amelia Earhart to Marie Curie to Mae Jemison. In the end, the Type 8 filming model was named for the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

Voyager also had at least one Type 6 shuttlecraft, which first appeared in Innocence. Shots of the miniature Type 6 model can then be seen in Macrocosm, and, in Coda, a Type 6 shuttle was named in dialogue as the Sacajawea.

Things get messy in Macrocosm and Coda, however. In both episodes, the shuttle is a Type 6 on the outside, but, on the inside, the Master Display Screen clearly shows a Type 8. There are various other examples of this Type 6 on the outside/Type 8 on the MSD confusion. In other episodes, such as Rise, the shuttle is visibly the Type 8 model on descent, only to be replaced by the Type 6 once on the ground. That's really just the tip of the Type 6/Type 8 switcheroos.

Introduced in season two, Voyager's actually brand new shuttlecraft design equally causes problems. Its designer Rick Sternbach called it the 'Type 12,' but in Resolutions, writers called it the 'Type 9.'

Finally, there's the infamous Aeroshuttle/Captain's Yacht. Sorry, not sorry, Neelix, we're also ignoring the Baxial.