Star Trek: 11-ish Times Voyager Lost A Shuttle

It is the eternal question that has frankly befuddled all those watching the journey of "shining Voyager, far from home." Just what was going on with all those shuttles? Unlike the supposedly irreplaceable photon torpedoes, the precise number of shuttles Voyager had in the bay as it left DS9 for the Badlands was never stated on screen.

The Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual states that Voyager "normally carries two standard shuttlecraft." However, we know by now that Voyager definitely began with more than two shuttles. At the same time, the Intrepid-class wasn't a bottomless pit.

Without the Starfleet express delivery option, the only logical assumption is that the crew of Voyager made more as they went along. They built the Delta Flyer twice, so with the right parts, building a shuttle shouldn’t have been a problem.

In truth, a lot of speculation is required when putting a number to the times Voyager lost a shuttle on its way back to the Alpha Quadrant. Ex Astris Scientia, which has been a huge help in compiling this list, gives the number of "definitely lost" shuttlecraft at ten, with seven "probably lost," although its "cliché count" puts the number lost at 15. Elsewhere, you'll find the number 17 cited, with or without the much-needed asterisk. Memory Alpha gives 11, but they include Parturition (which we shan't) and seemingly forget about Gravity...

Now, sing along with The Doctor:

Rock-a-bye baby, in the space dock,

When the core blows, the shuttle will rock.

When the hull breaks, the shuttle will fall…

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.