Star Trek: 11-ish Times Voyager Lost A Shuttle

13. Type 8, The Tereshkova? — Initiations

Star Trek Voyager Initiations
CBS Media Ventures

Star Trek: Voyager waited until the second episode of its second season to blow up one of its shuttles for the first time. Weapons fire and a hull breach, even from the Kazon, will tend to have that effect.

At the start of Initiations, Commander Chakotay's Type 8 made quick work of disabling a Kazon fighter but was no match for a larger Kazon Predator-class later in the episode. The shuttle met its final demise in a descent of flames down to a Kazon moon.

The shots of the shuttle, particularly in the episode's opener, are of the Type 8 filming model, but its markings (as seen on the shuttle's port side) are an unintelligible blur. If we do compare the general morphology of the writing to that of images of the filming model, it becomes clear that the shuttle in Initiations is, not unexpectedly, labelled the Tereshkova.

However, this information is never properly given on screen, and moreover, the same filming model was used in later episodes, like Maneuvers, which would have some baffling on-screen implications if we were to accept that the Tereshkova was destroyed at all (pre-Non Sequitur), as Star Trek Voyager: A Vision of the Future suggested.

Contributor
Contributor

Jack has been a content creator for TrekCulture since 2022, and a Star Trek fan for as long as he can remember. He has authored over 170 articles, including one of TrekCulture's longest, and has appeared several times on the TrekCulture podcast. He holds a first-class honours degree in French from the University of Sussex, a master's with distinction in Language, Culture and History: French and Francophone Studies and a PhD in French from University College London (UCL). He has previously worked in the field of translation. His interests extend to science-fiction television and film more widely. His favourite series is Star Trek: Voyager, followed closely by Stargate SG-1.