Richard: "I wanted to be there for them. To protect them."
Sela: "Protect us from what?"
Sela: "Protect us from what?"
In the not-too-distant future, Earth is on the brink of uninhabitability from environmental destruction and pollution. Fortunately, a habitable planet has been discovered. Unfortunately it will take 85 years to reach.
A plan is made for a multi-generational journey to scout the planet, with the final scouting crew being the grandchildren of those who left Earth. To help them cope with the psychological rigors of such a monumental journey a crew is raised in isolation (so that they don't miss Earth) and given daily doses of a medication that suppresses strong emotions.
Ten years into the first generation, the plan begins to go awry, and the naive crew must deal with terrors from both without and within.
Voyagers contains examples of the following tropes:
- Attempted Rape: Zac molests Sela early on and then he heads to her cabin with the intention of finishing what he started. Christopher has to pretend he’s doing this to Sela in order to protect her.
- Artificial Humans: The main 30 humans are bred from the scientists during the experiment, and were kept in isolation from the rest of the whole Earth.
- Big Bad: Zac takes on this role as he’s the cause of the disorder on the ship.
- Cain and Abel: Christopher and Zac. Although not genetically related they are raised by the same father figure. There is rivalry between them for prestige and attention, which evolves into jealousy, hostility, and rage as their emotional inhibitions are lost, and as with the trope namer the child who is less favored eventually decides the "good" son has to die.
- Control Freak: Zac constantly pushes himself as this at every single turn wanting everyone to become helplessly loyal to him.
- Disney Death: Christopher when he’s pushed out the airlock by Zac.
- Disney Villain Death: Zac when Sela kicks him out the airlock.
- Drunk with Power: Zac of course, given he kills Richard and then looms the threat of a pretend alien over everyone in an attempt to force everyone to submit to his authority.
- Evil Former Friend: Zac is a good friend of Christopher’s before the former starts wanting to exert control over everyone.
- Garden of Eden: The whole story could be seen as an extended allegory for the biblical garden and the fall of man, with "The Blue" standing in for the Forbidden Fruit.
- Hobbes Was Right: Admittedly there's more to it, but the moment their primary authority figure is gone most of the crew goes barbaric. Only the imposition of new authority, first through fear, later through consensus, brings any sort of order. The exceptions to this behavior are suitably horrified.
- Humans Are Bastards: Despite the environmental and possibly extraterrestrial threats, it is human nature (and poor impulse control) that puts the most people in mortal danger.
- It's All About Me: All Zac cares about is that everyone submits to his control and authority and doesn’t care about the panic he causes or lives that are lost to make it happen.
- Never My Fault: Zac blames his killing of Richard on Richard being possessed by the "alien" so that blame doesn’t fall on him and instead he can divert it to someone else at his own whim.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Many of the crew live in fear of an alien on the hull of the ship. Creaking sounds that pervade the ship are attributed to it, but the most they see on their monitors is an ill-defined shadow or force.Child: "I'm afraid."
Richard: "Afraid of what?"
Child: "I don't know." - Poor Communication Kills: Most of the conflict could have been avoided if "the plan" did not involve unnecessarily withholding information from the crew, or if the people who could authorize the disclosure of information did not require months to respond to messages. The second part is an unavoidable part of deep-space travel, the first was just lack of sensible foresight.
- Teens Are Monsters: Zac specifically since he incites violence and death as a power play. Kai’s willingness to go along with it makes him susceptible to it too.
