Star Trek: 11-ish Times Voyager Lost A Shuttle

13. Type 8, The Tereshkova? — Initiations

Voyager Shuttle Star Trek
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 Kiely is a writer with a PhD in French and almost certainly an unhealthy obsession with Star Trek.