LOL
just pondering....imagin being ordered to head outside of the beta quadrent at top warp and have been making this journey for a year now and your in the middle of nowhere when starfleet kindly informs you that voyager, the ship your suppose to meet, have saved herself the trip and landed infront of Earth via a transwarp network.....

you can just hear that captain below out a soundly--"D'OH!!!!!"

Admiral Paris stands at a outdoor podium, reading off names of Voyager crew members. But the faces we see from low camera angle aren't familiar. He finally welcomes them home, although he wishes it was under different circumstances. Pull back to see a field of torpedo casing coffins draped with flags. A Starfleet crewman stands next to each. (End teaser.)

Reg Barclay (natch) walks through the halls of Voyager but seems depressed and doesn't respond to greetings. Janeway finally sits him down and asks what his problem is. He finally breaks down and tells her that she's not real, that the real Voyager crew is dead.

Flashback to the real Voyager, only a few days from rendezvous with the two ships. Janeway has a friendly subspace chat with one of the captains, Morgan Bateson (he felt out of place in the 24th century Federation).

Voyager is waiting for the ships around an idyllic planet. Then tables turn and Janeway and some others are captured by the natives. The Vaadwaur (sp?) appear and begin attacking Voyager. Voyager escapes but has to figure out how to rescue Janeway. Janeway finds out the planet is being threatened by the Vaadwaur, which is why they followed their commands.

Janeway and company finally escape back to Voyager, but now has to decide what to do. Janeway wants to help the planet, but others see home so close with the arrival of the two ships. They want to wait until the others can arrive to help in the fight. But Janeway doesn't want the Vaadwaur to get away like before. She feels responsible for releasing them on the galaxy. They go back to the planet where they're jumped by some Vaadwaur ships. Voyager apparently barely escapes but it's a ruse for the Delta Flyer to track the Vaadwaur through underspace back to their base of operations.

Janeway orders an attack and Voyager takes grievous damage. We see the damage inside. (Slow motion and no sound, unlike the usual talk-us-to-death Voyager. Play something maudlin like Nearer My God to Thee.) We see engineering in a shambles, B'Elanna bloodied and struggling to contain a warp core breach. Seven's corpse slowly floating in astrometrics, where gravity has failed. Neelix hanging on in the mess hall, trying not to get sucked through a window that's been blown out. And Janeway on the bridge, still barking silent commands over silent explosions as Harry and Chakotay fall. It's a valiant but futile fight.

From out of nowhere come several phaser beams. The two ships have arrived. The XO reports to Bateson that there are no life signs on Voyager. In anger, he orders them to blow the Vaadwaur to kingdom come. The base is destroyed.

Back to the holodeck. Barclay is grief-stricken. "They were too late." There are others around now, the rest of the Voyager command staff. Troi comes in looking for him. They comfort him by saying this is how they would have preferred to die, as heroes protecting innocents from aggressors. Barclay finally accepts. He and Troi slowly walk from the holodeck and the last shot shows the holocrew fading out. The end.

Cliched, yes. That's why I'm not a writer. But it would have been unique for Trek in actually having the crew making the ultimate sacrifice with no reset button in sight.

Anyway, I would of rather of seen the Aerowing used to ram it... although it seems a bit ID4-ish.

As for Roddenberry hating it, how is this that different from Spock giving his life for his crewmates in ST2, which GR liked? The men and women of Voyager knew the risks when they took the job. We never really see a face on the crews that perish in the line of duty. It's always the other crews, where at most we get to see the captain and maybe a couple of other officers. Not a lot of emotional connection. I think GR would approve of our gallant crew giving up their lives for the freedom and welfare of millions if not billions of innocents. I also think it's a nice bit of symmetry that in the premiere, Janeway decided to make a huge sacrifice just to save Kes' race and in the finale, Janeway would decide to make an even bigger sacrifice to save another race.

My way, they go out in a blaze of glory, and who in Starfleet wouldn't want to do that instead of dying in bed? Perhaps today is a good day to die.

"I meant out here in the real world. Does anyone out here care what happened to the Cardassians?"

Me. I care a lot. I've always been fascinated by them, and loved seeing what Andrew Robinson did with them in his novel, in praticular the reconstruction on Cardassia...