How were Chakotay and B'elanna able to fly a ship with damaged engines?

Question

In the Voyager episode: "Future's End, Part II" Chakotay and B'Elanna crash land on earth.

CHAKOTAY: Propulsion is offline. Voyager, we're going down

Later in the episode they get rescued by the doctor and have the shuttle working immediately. They proceed to blow up the truck that they think has the time machine in it.

One would think that the crash itself would add additional damage to what they had incurred already.

After they were rescued by the doctor they had almost no time to get to Paris and Tuvok.

It does state in the episode:

EMH: Tuvok's at the shuttle. He's starting repairs.

How were they able to get the ship working again so quickly? They had no spare parts with them and had to get it working immediately. If they could get it working so quickly, why not do it before they crashed?

Answer 1

Within the episode there's no confirmation of how the shuttle was repaired. One assumes that since the main problem was Starling's device interfering with the shuttle's flight systems, Tuvok may have needed to jigger with either the engines or the computer systems in order to effect repairs:

TORRES: The interference is disrupting computer pathways.

CHAKOTAY: *Aft thrusters are down ... Propulsion is offline

Failing that, the shuttlecraft has its own replicator if additional spare parts were needed.

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As to why they crash-landed (e.g. rather than repairing the damage while still flying), the answer is that there are a substantial number of components, including the impulse engines that are on the outside of the ship. There may also not have been time to fix whatever was broken before they hit the ground.