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Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

So after a rewatch of DS9 (still holds up, some episodes even better than when they came out) I thought I'd try Voyager to see if it was as bad as I remembered.



IMHO, it's worse.

Which is bizarre because it followed TNG and DS9, both of which are quite watchable still, and had a lot of the same folks behind the camera.

And at its core is a really good idea, a ship lost far from home with a crew assembled from Starfleet folks and freedom fighters/terrorist/criminals from the Marque. Limited resources, internal tensions, new threats... it should have worked.

But it doesn't. Many episodes are terrible, like 1st season TNG terrible, some are serviceable and the very best episodes only rise to the level of good.

(for the record the 2 good ones I found are Equinox and Year of Hell. In Equinox the Voyager crew finds another Star Fleet ship that's been utterly trashed and is trying to get home by kidnapping and torturing aliens for fuel. In Year of Hell Voyager is hunted (and blown to hell) by aliens with time weapons. It has a built in reset button but at least is entertaining. Is it a coincidence that both went to very dark places?)

Some of it may just have been exhaustion of the formula after 14 seasons of TNG and DS9 (which might explain why Enterprise was even worse). The last 2 TNG films were pretty awful too.

But it might also be that the show was in the awkward period in TV history when networks were trying serialized shows (instead resetting to the status quo at the end of every episode) but not yet committed. But considering that Buffy and B5 had already done serialized programs (to say nothing of shows like Dallas and Dynasty) it's more that Paramount made a decision not to build from episode to episode despite a concept that really called for it.

I dunno. Any thoughts?

 
   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






I’ve heard it oft blamed on the show having different writers for different episodes who didn’t always agree or communicate their intentions well, so you end up with like bi polar Janeway who’s a by the book Prime Directive adherent one week, and a rogue I’m getting my crew home no matter what the next. And then there’s the time Paris was turned into a newt and had newt babies, but he got better.

 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So after a rewatch of DS9 (still holds up, some episodes even better than when they came out) I thought I'd try Voyager to see if it was as bad as I remembered.



IMHO, it's worse.

Which is bizarre because it followed TNG and DS9, both of which are quite watchable still, and had a lot of the same folks behind the camera.

I dunno. Any thoughts?


The Leftists and feminists who wrote and cast the show made sure the concept was destroyed before it even started.
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

RealAndTrue wrote:


The Leftists and feminists who wrote and cast the show made sure the concept was destroyed before it even started.


That's where you wanna go for your second post huh?



You won't be here long.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 AduroT wrote:
I’ve heard it oft blamed on the show having different writers for different episodes who didn’t always agree or communicate their intentions well, so you end up with like bi polar Janeway who’s a by the book Prime Directive adherent one week, and a rogue I’m getting my crew home no matter what the next. And then there’s the time Paris was turned into a newt and had newt babies, but he got better.


Different writers for different episodes? Heck they had different writers for the A and B plots!

A plot - we have no power, we can't replicate food, we're gonna die.
B plot - Janeway's holodeck program as a governess in a haunted manor



TNG had the same issue

A plot - monsters are eating the hull! we gonna die!
B plot - Luxanna Troi's wedding preparation

But TNG managed to pull it off more times than not.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/02 21:45:00


 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

2 Problems stand out with Voyager;

-The writers couldn't stick to the concept a lot of the time. This includes both the course of certain characters and the show itself. Many episodes have solid concepts that they failed to follow through on, or really fethed up messages (Tuvix). The show had a survival/adventure theme but rarely fully utilized it. Voyager would only occasionally have supply problems and would often engage in fights only to miraculously repair next episode which doesn't work when you're so far from base. Rarely did it feel like Voyager was as far from home as everyone insisted. The show basically never fully explored its potentially best theme; how would a Starfleet crew far from the Federation stick to their ideals/break from them when in desperate times? Of course, that would mean embracing the moral complexity that was brought to the fore in DS9 which the writers of Voyager explicitly wanted to avoid.

-The cast never got along and while I don't think this is too obvious on screen, you can kind of see it compared to TNG and DS9 where the cast often got along quite well and made the show better because they all got along. Voyager had constant arguments over billing, feuds between the cast (Beltran and Picardo being quite infamous for it), and this compounded with the arrested development of numerous character arcs that simply weren't allowed to advance (eternal ensign Kim). At the end of the day only The Doctor and Seven actually had any character development. The rest of the cast was more often than not inconsistently written.

I'd agree there was awkwardness in the late 90s as TV began moving to serialized storytelling and away from episodic, but I'd point out Voyager was explicitly a backstep on this front. DS9 is (IMO) the high water mark of Star Trek and its balance of serial story telling vs episodic relief is a big reason for why. Voyager in comparison was explicitly written to recapture the style of TOS, and don't get me wrong TOS has a special place in my heart but TOS is gak. TOS wasn't aging well even when TNG was starting and the idea of throwing the franchise back to that style of storytelling was practically self-sabotage by nostalgia nuts who wanted to relieve the good old days ignoring they weren't that good (and I'd accuse Kurtzman's tenure of almost universally committing the same cardinal sin). Much like TOS, Voyager really only has maybe a dozen actually good episodes. The rest are utterly forgettable and get more forgettable each passing year.

This message was edited 8 times. Last update was at 2022/07/02 21:53:12


   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

Voyager sucked for two reasons:

1) A lot of the writing was just plain bad. Awkward "moral dilemmas", bad science, shameless "LOOK BOOBS", plot elements that are never followed up on, etc. Too much of the show feels like they gave a budget to some 14 year old's Star Trek fanfiction instead of paying for real writers. And it extends to the entire premise of the show. Does nobody in Starfleet know how to make a timed explosive? Voyager should have been a one-episode tangent in TNG or DS9, where they plant a timed bomb on the plot device and go home.

2) The entire premise is fundamentally incompatible with the kind of show they were trying to make. A show in a fairly static setting where each episode stands alone works. A show where you have a single story broken up into multiple episodes that need to be watched in sequence works. But with Voyager you had the overall plot arc of getting home that had to still be compatible with hitting the reset button at the end of the episode. So it completely undermined any sense of meaning when the crew encountered a new thing that might get them home faster. You knew as soon as they mentioned it that the technobabble thing of the week would inevitably fail to work for whatever technobabble reason and they'd be no closer to getting home than when the episode started. And, having dug that hole, the writers insisted on digging it even deeper by being lazy and making "we found a new thing that might help us get home faster" a common story. With far too many episodes you're already hitting the "next episode" button before the credits are finished because you know you're about to waste your time with another non-story.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/02 21:54:56


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

CadianSgtBob wrote:
2) The entire premise is fundamentally incompatible with the kind of show they were trying to make. A show in a fairly static setting where each episode stands alone works. A show where you have a single story broken up into multiple episodes that need to be watched in sequence works. But with Voyager you had the overall plot arc of getting home that had to still be compatible with hitting the reset button at the end of the episode. So it completely undermined any sense of meaning when the crew encountered a new thing that might get them home faster. You knew as soon as they mentioned it that the technobabble thing of the week would inevitably fail to work for whatever technobabble reason and they'd be no closer to getting home than when the episode started. And, having dug that hole, the writers insisted on digging it even deeper by being lazy and making "we found a new thing that might help us get home faster" a common story. With far too many episodes you're already hitting the "next episode" button before the credits are finished because you know you're about to waste your time with another non-story.


TLDR: How do you know Gilligan's not getting off the island? Because it would end the series

   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




It sucked for more than 2 reasons. The casting ruined the show.
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 LordofHats wrote:
TLDR: How do you know Gilligan's not getting off the island? Because it would end the series


Pretty much. Voyager tried to be a serious scifi show with the premise of a 60s sitcom that most people watched for "so bad it's good" reasons.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






1. Evidently made from the sweepings of TNG’s writer’s room.

2. No tension amongst the crew. Like. At all. Maquis and Federation suddenly all just playing nice.

3. A general lack of chemistry amongst the cast.

4. Yes we got a new quadrant to explore, but due to the overarching plot (getting home), nothing is of any permanence.

5. Neelix. Oh god what a pointless and irritating character of precisely no redeeming qualities.

6. Neelix having a…..physical romance…with Kes. Kes, who was, canonically….two years old. Grrrrroooooooossssssssssssss.

Now. Here’s my pitch for an improved version.

Starts off as is. Federation and Maquis crew end up abducted to the Delta Quadrant.

Once there, they find they’re not the only ones. There are ships of different ages and designs. Some familiar, some not. The Caretaker’s Array isn’t doing it deliberately. It’s a malfunctioning piece of ancient tech, seemingly use by an advanced rate for rapid transportation across the Galaxy.

So advance, nobody has compatibly technology. Worse, the method of transport has utterly buggered their drives/computers/whatever to the point of being undebuggerable.

Except for Voyager, thanks to the new fangled bio-neural gel pack tnings.

Immediately puts Janeway in a powerful but awkward situation. The other ships have been preying on each other and cannibalising ships for their own survival. Distrust and outright hostility is rife. Morale is universally low.

She could do arguably The Right Thing, and share this new tech miracle as widely as possible. Provide each ship in turn with a means to get home. But can they be truly trusted? Is this more power over the fate of others than any Starfleet Captain should have?

In the end of the first season (or the first half) the decision is made, tech is shared, Sudden and Inevitable Betrayal blah blah blah. You now have a Galactica style ragtag flotilla heading back to home. Further drama comes in from a loose Council of Captains, and DS9 style genuine moral quandaries as to which approach is best when the devil is driving.

If you’re really, really brave? Let us see Janeway slowly become corrupted by her status amongst this fleet. Not in a moustache twirling way, but ever more compromising of her moral compass in the name of getting everyone home.


   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

RealAndTrue wrote:
It sucked for more than 2 reasons. The casting ruined the show.


I don't think that's entirely fair.

Much like Hayden Christensen, the cast of Voyager rarely, if ever, had a chance to do anything with their skills or talents. Mulgrew, Picardo, and Russ were all established actors. Ryan, despite constantly being cast as fan-service, managed to play the role of Seven very well. Enough that her character endures.

The cast wasn't the problem.

The writer's constant need to maintain status quo was. Garret Wang would be the most egregious example in this regard. He's a good actor. He could have carried more in the show, but the show wasn't allowed to break status quo so anytime Harry Kim advanced as a young officer nothing ever came of it. Year of Hell is especially blatant example of this where Wang really got Kim to shine only for it to all come to nothing.

The only bad actors in the show IMO were Beltran and McNeill. And it's not even that Beltran couldn't have acted better if he wanted to. He just clearly didn't care to try and constantly phoned it in. Chakotay as a character was probably the weakest of the entire show and I know people hat Neelix but Neelix is at least memorable for how much he was hated. Beltran was a complete non-presence. McNeill idk. Maybe he got hit with the same problem as Wang but I feel like he's really just not that capable of an actor.

At the end of the day Picardo and Ryan were the only members of the cast who ever really got a chance to show their talent and characters. Mulgrew on the other hand famously said she had to portray Janeway as if she were bipolar because Janeway's personality would flip randomly from episode to episode.

   
Made in de
Huge Bone Giant






The big problem Voyager has is that the way Captain Janeway is written to always be right while displaying the highest virtues is incompatible with the long way from home scenario. The latter needs a measure of tension to work, a visible toll on ship and crew either ethically or materially that just doesn't happen because Janeway is always right in the end, both morally and factually, which ironically makes Voyager stranded in the Delta Quadrant a far safer workplace than ships in Federation territory. There losses can be replaced and damage can be repaired, so the writers are more willing to include dramatic moments. Voyager needs to be more careful with its resources. and because apparently the writers' mandate was that the captain can't fail, it manages to do so quite flawlessly. And with that goes any dramatic tension even in a serialized format in which the default expectation is that not permanent harm comes to the main cast.

It's not surprising that Equinox and Year of Hell work because they are true to the premise of the show, if the worst case scenarios that the show would not be able to maintain in the long run if the Janeway problem didn't get in the way of it to begin with.

I'm sure there are many things in detail which plague individual episodes, but the fundamental flaw of the show is that it never even tries to deliver on its premise (or promise, if you will). A few years later you have Stargate Atlantis, which is far more of a lighthearted space adventure than Star Trek, take the same idea and do a far better job of painting a grim picture. The "good" guys still win in the end, but every major step along the way they make the best decisions they can and things still only get worse. Voyager doesn't do that and the big threat presented to the crew is that they die of old age before they get home. The lights stay on, there's always food on the table, they don't run out of torpedoes to put in the launch tubes, they don't run out of reactor fuel, they don't run out of repair materials, they lose like half a dozen crew during the show and even the need to keep traveling means that even if they make enemies, they eventually just leave them behind. That's only somewhat changed when the Borg show up, but luckily Janeway is always right, so the Borg aren't a big deal, so whatever.

Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone? 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

On the topic of this thread, fans have successfully funded a Voyager documentary.




This is the same band of people who created What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine. Hopefully, it's of the same quality and doesn't shirk from some of the messiness that really shaped what the show became. On the one hand, I can get the cast and crew wanting to be positive and talk about the show and its successes, but I think more than almost any other entry in the franchise Voyager really was defined by its failures. While DS9 stood the test of time and rose above to become one of the best-loved entries, Voyager I think has tanked. Even Enterprise or Discovery gets more fan discussion, if only because being genuinely awful sparks more reaction than just plain sucking.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/02 23:13:18


   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






It just wasn't good. There were some standouts every so often and a load of episodes that were good but not for the reasons they should be.
Anyway, #justicefortuvix.
   
Made in us
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






I feel we should also consider the bits that made TNG and DS9 good. All three series had their fair share of utter guff, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

In TNG, we see solid character progression, which continues on and carries over. Picard becomes less curmudgeonly, and less, I wanna say childphobic but perhaps that’s overegging. Riker matures. Data gets closer to humanity (though never comes that close) and so on and so forth.

In DS9, we see a crew that can’t simply warp away from each adventure. It also did excellent fleshing out of not just characters, but entire species (Bajoran, Ferengi, Cardassian, Klingon, Jem Hadar, Founders, Vorta). We see where and when The Federation’s admirable ideals are compromised. It was a new and thankfully interesting perspective for us the audience. I mean…..Gul Dakat is a superb character, because even when he’s being a massive Child Born Out Of Wedlock, he’s just so effing charming. Garak and Quark likewise. It played with moral grey areas and indeed morally ambiguous characters beautifully.

Voyager utterly lacked that. The Kazon could’ve been interesting, but weren’t and never really developed beyond a two dimensional species. As said above, even the main characters never really developed and grew.

   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




The Kazon were discount Klingons with none of the redeeming characteristics from TNG or DS9.

Neelix was... weird. He's super creepy and demonstrably untrustworthy from the get-go, and his usefulness as a guide always had a timer on it (the further they travelled, the less useful he was). Having a experimental chef isn't really a feature for another mouth to feed (especially given how many star fleet people have master levels in one or two non-star fleet life skills.

The premise is interesting in theory, but 'get out of the show' as goal is only meaningful if things happen along the way. No one plays Oregon Trail for nothing to happen.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/03 04:04:46


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in ca
Preacher of the Emperor






There's a rogue internet voice-on-a-screen out there that goes by SFDebris, he's gone into some depth about the issues he has with Voyager and does a pretty good job outlining how some of its famous failings y'all have brought up factor in to the creation of certain episodes. He's also fairly knowledgeable, does his research, and is able to highlight how certain writers write certain characters a certain way, etc. It's all very informative.

Personally if I had to blame any one thing it would be Rick Berman.

There's a lot that can be said about Berman, a lot of it bad. He took over Trek as Roddenberry was in decline, and you can track his influence on TNG as it becomes less idealistic from those early two seasons (for more good than ill, IMO), he famously curtailed any attempts by that era of shows to tackle gay rights issues, including early TNG's somewhat legendary AIDS allegory episode. Jadzia Dax was killed off because he tried to bully Terry Farrell and she called his bluff, and then he tried to cover it up by saying she had quit the show to be on Becker. He's also the reason Garak and Bashir stopped having their friendly lunches and they both started dating noticeably younger actresses, and so on, forever.

Anyway, Voyager was his baby. For all the collaboration that is involved in the creation of a major network TV show, it can't be understated that he deserves credit for the brilliant premise that show has, and the absolutely brutal ways the show sabotaged that premise right out the gate. He used that premise, the small lone ship, stranded out and alone with limited supplies and two crews that had to band together to survive; in order to sell that show concept to the network and to the audience, and then he turned around and told the crew that they were all going to be wearing starfleet uniforms, every episode had to have a return to the status quo, and they'd have to tie him up and lock him in a closet if they ever wanted to do a starfleet/maquis conflict episode.

The constraints he puts them under is the reason the writers can never pull together and push the show in the direction they want it, because some of them love that great premise too much to let it go, and others need to appease the producer first and foremost. After DS9 wraps up, Moore comes to write for Voyager, and is so put off because of that working environment that he leaves to make Battlestar Galactica. In turn, without the Yin to his Yang, Brannon Braga goes off the deep end and spirals out of control with goofy 'high concept' episodes.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/03 05:39:42


   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

The only thing I'll ever remember SFDebris for is;




(it says something that most of Sisko's badass memes were spawned by this one spiel XD)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/03 05:53:21


   
Made in us
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain






A Protoss colony world

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
1. Evidently made from the sweepings of TNG’s writer’s room.

2. No tension amongst the crew. Like. At all. Maquis and Federation suddenly all just playing nice.

3. A general lack of chemistry amongst the cast.

4. Yes we got a new quadrant to explore, but due to the overarching plot (getting home), nothing is of any permanence.

5. Neelix. Oh god what a pointless and irritating character of precisely no redeeming qualities.

6. Neelix having a…..physical romance…with Kes. Kes, who was, canonically….two years old. Grrrrroooooooossssssssssssss.

1: Yeah, there were some pretty bad episodes which might have been TNG reject scripts, but honestly there were some pretty terrible episodes of TNG and DS9 as well.

2: There was a bit, at the beginning, and let's not forget Seska and her "mole" in the crew (who was a Maquis). Your point is fair though; that could have been more of what season 1 was about (getting the two crews to work together and trust each other).

3: Some characters worked well together (I actually like the "bromance" between Paris and Kim, as an example), but definitely not quite as good of a general camaraderie as there was in the previous shows (TOS, TNG, DS9). I don't think it was as bad as many are saying though.

4: This was inevitable due to the format of the show; when you have a ship traveling through space and not staying anywhere for long (due to the overarching mission to get back home), they are going to leave people/races behind and never see them again. I can't really call this a weakness; rather just the nature of the beast with this kind of story.

5: I actually like Neelix and don't get all the hate. Is it so wrong to have a character on the show who's an eternal optimist? He made a good foil for Tuvok, as the two are complete opposites.

6: Timewise, Kes might have been two years old, but her species matures at a much faster rate. She's as developed as a human being who's in her late teens/early twenties, and the actress was obviously of age. This never really bothered me other than Kes being a little too "innocent", which I suppose could make her seem much more child-like.

I actually enjoy Voyager, warts and all. I've been rewatching it recently, and despite the many completely valid arguments for it being a bad show I still enjoy it, and will defend it. Some of the episodes are truly pretty good, and others are truly dire, but that's true of all of the Trek series.

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 Mr_Rose wrote:
Who doesn’t love crazy mutant squawk-puppies? Eh? Nobody, that’s who.
 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 ZergSmasher wrote:
5: I actually like Neelix and don't get all the hate.


I feel like a big part of the problem really is that Neelix was consistently unhelpful. Like, it was a D6 roll every episode and on a 6 he knew a random tidbit of info but nothing particularly helpful to the crew. From there, the character was struck as a constant extra wheel on a show of poorly developed characters.

Timewise, Kes might have been two years old, but her species matures at a much faster rate.


I'd agree with this. I can see why people get hung up on it and it not just Star Trek.

One of the big couples in Worm is Armsmaster and Dragon and Dragon is only something like 10 at best while Armsmaster is in his 30s, but Dragon is miles away one of the most responsible and adult characters in the story (and practically the most mature person in any room she happens to be in). And she's an AI and the author set out not to write her like some internet dude's waifu to avoid the creepy gak. Watching out for pedo bait is one thing. Being dumb about it though is containing to writing IMO, especially Sci-fi where species maturing at different rates is a ripe topic that is so barely explored even in Star Trek. Kes character was not written like a child who didn't know how to handle herself. Her naivete about the broader world was matched by being one of the early season's most emotionally mature characters.

If anything the issue with her and Neelix is that their relationship felt incredibly hollow. The series would very rarely bring up that it even existed, or depicted it as a father/daughter relationship sometimes, and then it remembered they were a couple only to forget about it again. Which is really the most persistent issue with everything in Voyager; an inability to stick to concept.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/03 06:33:27


   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






The thing I remember with Kes was the writer’s bad math. They only live to 7. Sexually mature and have a single kid at age 4. Their parents help them thru it.

 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 AduroT wrote:
The thing I remember with Kes was the writer’s bad math. They only live to 7. Sexually mature and have a single kid at age 4. Their parents help them thru it.


I feel like that's endemic to speculative fiction to be fair.

People throw out spans of time that are utterly absurd half the time. Numbers that are bizarrely low or high. I mean if every Ocampa only has one kid, how has the species not gone extinct? They need 2 parents but only have 1 kid. They're going to die out in a couple generations.

But then again I'd never credit Voyager's writers with having thought things through so XD

   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

It's so good to know that, in these troubled times when so many things divide us, we can all come together and really, really hate Voyager.

Like down to ad hominum attacks on individual actors, writers and producers. Like people have actually done research and dug into the question of how come this show was awful.

Poor Enterprise, the most I can say about it is disappointing and dull, it's not even worth the energy to hate

 
   
Made in de
Huge Bone Giant






To be fair Voyager gave us the Doctor and Seven, so something good came of it after all.

I actually liked Enterprise well enough, perhaps the last season excluded. Wrap up seasons because the show got canceled are always so awkward. Season 3 having an overarching story arc was pretty cool, though, and the whole revenge for the attack on earth thing that eventually was solved by reaching out and making peace instead of blowing the hell out of things was pretty on spot for Star Trek.

Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone? 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Poor Enterprise, the most I can say about it is disappointing and dull, it's not even worth the energy to hate


We can even blame Voyager for that too! After Voyager burned all interest in giving a new show the benefit of the doubt it was really easy to just shrug and turn off Enterprise once it was obvious how bad it was going to be.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






 Geifer wrote:
To be fair Voyager gave us the Doctor and Seven, so something good came of it after all.

I actually liked Enterprise well enough, perhaps the last season excluded. Wrap up seasons because the show got canceled are always so awkward. Season 3 having an overarching story arc was pretty cool, though, and the whole revenge for the attack on earth thing that eventually was solved by reaching out and making peace instead of blowing the hell out of things was pretty on spot for Star Trek.


And season 3’s arc was rushed too! The story was supposed to go into season 4, but they were told they were being canceled, so rushed a conclusion. Then we’re surprised with a forth season renewal that left them without a planned story. Same thing that happened to Babylon 5.

 
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's so good to know that, in these troubled times when so many things divide us, we can all come together and really, really hate Voyager.

Hate is a strong word. I'd even go far as to say that as something to put on while I paint, Voyager is perfectly fine if not good and it's easier to sit and watch than TNG for me. Don't get me wrong I do like TNG sometimes (Best of Both Worlds, the very short Klingon Civil War) but overall I just CBA with it.

Poor Enterprise, the most I can say about it is disappointing and dull, it's not even worth the energy to hate

Nah Enterprise is a lot better than is generally accepted. I'd take it over Voyager and TNG.
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

It's interesting to think about what might have been if Voyager had been a serial instead of episodic.

Season 1 - Take the pilot and spend a season on it. Voyager and Marquis ship are sucked into the Delta Quadrant and chase each other around making allies and enemies. The Marquis captain goes full Captain Ahab vowing to get home no matter who he has to kill while Janeway tries to remain ethical. Some of the Marquis think they should jump ship, so do some Voyager crew. End the season with a bloodbath, kill half of each crew and THEN unite them. Have them pick up Delta Quad strays and only after exhausting any hope of using the Caretaker array to get home do they decide to try the 70 year trip on their own.

Season 2 - Marquis/Starfleet friction ending in Chakotay becoming first officer to appease the Marquis.

Season 3 - The Borg. Someone gets assimilated and never quite gets put back right.

Etc.

It would also help if the show could be done in a way that the cast is not necessarily permanent. If it had a Game of Thrones style 'anyone can die' set of rules the stakes would have been so much higher.

Or even if they'd just been more married to showing that Voyager is having a rough time. Every time some walks down a corridor have wires hanging and someone welding a bulkhead or two people screaming at each other as a display sparks.

Ron Moore's BSG did a fantastic job of this, and it only came a few years after Voyager.

 
   
Made in us
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






True. Though they had just done significant “oh for heaven’s sake what’s broken now” in DS9.

   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

During the first run, I stopped watching Voyager at the “get this cheese to sickbay” episode. But I came back to it later because the Doctor and Seven, and all the cool new starship designs, made it just worth having on while working on HW in college.

Voyager had a pretty good legacy:

1. Voyager hate on SFDebris and FirstTVDrama was hilarious. Recontextualized the show into bad-good, which is a better watch than it deserves.

2. The starship designs. The writers and producers may have lost all interest, but the effects guys were mining gold. Half of the good gak on Ex Astris Scientia comes from Voyager. (The other half is the exploration of TNG kitbashes seen in the background for half a second each.)

3. The messed up continuity lead to some truly creative problem solving in the novels. Writers with an obsessive need to tie together canon rose to new levels to fill in and flesh out the bizarre universe Voyager accidentally created. Christopher Bennet’s Department of Temporal Investigations book earned a slow clap-into-standing ovation for this.

   
 
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