"Saving Voyager" Topic

Episodes of ST Voyager have been appearing on my Tivo.
I've been watching selected ones.

I have seen the series only once before: end to end. Unlike some, I never thought it a disaster. Certainly it had its share of poor episodes and the conclusion was not entirely satisfying. As a series, it could have been better.

A little late, I know, but how could the series have been improved? Tweaks, please, not "nuke it from orbit" type comments.

I'd like to nominate the removal of the Jar Jar Binks of Voyager: Neelix. The comedy doesn't work, nor does the pathos. He's an annoying little man.

Secondly, Seska. It was a pity to lose her to the Kazon. She made a wonderful serpent in Voyager's bosom. Not a figure of towering evil but guaranteed to express doubt over the Federation way. To think of herself over altruism. She could have been made a useful character right up to the end.

Finally, various plot lines, too soon abandoned. The Maquis-Federation frisson. Tom Paris' rehabilitation. The whole Kazon thing (they just, finally, outdistance them: no problems solved).

You thoughts?

I can only speak for myself, but somewhere round the second season I turned off more due to Trek burnout than anything else. I suspect many folks went through the same, as the series wasn't as universally bad as I recalled. Mind you, it had problems!

Too many time travel/causality loops.

I've never thought of Voyager as that bad. As all TV shows, it had low points. Specifically, up until Season 4, it was a bit of a drag. I never thought Neelix was the problem, but rather that Kes was dragging it down. You're right though, Maquis frisson between the Federation and Seska (had they kept her longer) would have made it a lot more interesting. But, with Seven of Nine I thought it got a lot better. She challenged Janeway in a lot of interesting and unconventional ways. And the constant returning to holo-rights activism (Even though The Doctor is my favorite character) and time loops got pretty rough.

Undoubtedly some great characters. The Doctor, B'lanna, Seven. Tuvok: who can't love a Vulcan? Even Janeway breaking a few moulds was mostly beneficial.

I think Voyagers biggest sin was reducing the Borg from an existential threat to a villain of the week. I liked the whole Species 8472 arc – an enemy they couldn't assimilate – but this too was wasted with the laughable fake Starfleet Academy episode with Boothby. Seven's Borg implants then just became a deus ex machina.

Certainly there were some stand-out episodes – Equinox with its "gone bad" federation crew is a favourite of mine.

I remember hearing there were a lot of issues with timing – they'd grab older scripts and use them without getting the writers to update them to consider ongoing characterisation and plot developments. This made things very, very inconsistent, and good ongoing plotlines were pretty much impossible when you could have a left-over script from the first series tossed in halfway through.

It was a bit of a messy series overall. I still liked it at the time.

Never liked Janeway.

I guess my major issue with it was that here they are, in a completely different quadrant of the galaxy and….everything is really the same…same economics, same political etc philosophy. The script thing, using old ones, yes, but that was a much more blatant lack of imagination in "Enterprise" (seriously, a race with a feather tatto on right side, with rebels with same tattoo on other side, destroy their civilization in a civil war??? C'mon…)

Never cared for the show. Didn't care if they never found their way home especially Janeway.

Ahh, Ochoin, I'm afraid you're fighting a losing battle, trying to nominate tweakables to 'improve' Voyager. In one sense, it needed no tweaking at all; it ran for 7 seasons, equal to the run of Next Generation, and therefore, equally successful!

But seriously – the ideas you raise are, sadly, completely at odds with the writing and creative style of the Star Trek brand; namely, 'everyone be nice to each other, and we'll have a few "pew pew pew" episodes now and then.;

There's two things Trek didn't do well during the 80s and 90s: Internal conflict and Change. It would have been great to see Paris or Seska as forces for conflict on board ol' wobble-wings. But, you just can't have that on a nice, well-mannered Starfleet ship. You'll upset the Trekkies. Or at least, the exec's at UPN. This reluctance to make drama of internal antagonisms was, apparently, one of the things that caused Ron Moore to despair about Trek's direction at the time.

Neelix takes a lot of punches in Voyager-bashing. A pity, because he was only the NPC that the DM added to the crew, so the PC's wouldn't go wandering off on adventures that he hadn't written a story for.

You want to talk annoying characters? Kes! Pointless, with a Capital P, in neon lights! She fulfilled no purpose, and contributed no significant role to the crew's makeup. She was the eternal sidekick, first to Neelix, then Tuvok, and lastly the Doctor. Poor kid. And of course, the thing about her being about 5 years old, and keeping Neelix's bed warm, was rather uncomfortable…

Casting Jeri Ryan was one of the few changes that worked in Voyager. I was initially horrified to see Trek give in to the 14 year old demographic when Miss Bouncy Borg strutted in, but Ryan grabbed the opportunity the role offered her by the throat, and snarled "Mine!" She inspired some great sci-fi and character-based writing, which was a welcome distraction from the aimless wondering and 'monster of the week' episodes which make up so much of Voyager's dawdle home.

The Kazon were never going anywhere in the story. They couldn't. The very nature of Voyager's 'mission' meant that only an enemy with a credibly HUGE empire could pose a genuine, series-long, threat. Thus, the Borg. Getting out of the Kazon's backyard asap was the right thing for the writers to do; the water-chasing pseudo-Klingons were a laughable baddie.

The ending wasn't just dissatisfying – it was the least impactful, most predictable, yawn-o-rama I have seen come from the Land of Trek, and that includes Generations and Insurrection. A bit of Borg, some temporal fairy-dust, a spot of CGI armour on the ship to keep the techno-geeks squealing, and poof! There's your ending!

I wouldn't nuke Voyager from orbit. But the writer's trailer should have taken a Quantum torp or three.

Heh. I had a dream that Miss Bouncy Borg grabbed me by the throat and snarled "mine".

Thinking about Voyager does bring back memories. Being in Australia we'd get two VHS releases per month, with two eps per tape. Trying to remember other sci fi shows from that period, and can't really think of any. Guess that's why I kept watching it to the bitter end, there wasn't much else out there that I already hadn't seen.

@ Macross
As you point out, it did go for 7 seasons so you'd expect a few stinkers as well as a few superb episodes.

I can agree with many of your arguments but I'm not sure it was a sanitised as you say.

For example, the Prime Directive (a PC concept if I've heard one) was put through the ringer in several episodes.
eg Prime Factors

I also think you get an overdose of time travel but then there's the 'Year of Hell' episodes which are nearly perfect.

fighting a losing battle

Yes….well it was lost because the show ended several years before…

Poorly written TV and movie script are pretty much the state of the art in entertainment media…..plots are after all a necessary evil to the "3P's" …..the production team, the promotions team and profitability analysts.

How to make Voyager better? Simple: Kill Brannon Braga.

I never understood the hate for Janeway. She had a different style, sure, but I always found her to be a capable captain. What is the hate based on?

Honestly while I like Scott Bakula as an actor quite a bit, I always hated the way Archer was portrayed in Enterprise. He showed complete lack of wisdom, jumped to conclusions immediately, and put his ship needlessly at risk at every turn. Would you really want to serve under him? He was like the drinking buddy in chief.

At least Janeway acted like a ship's captain. Archer was an awful ship's captain (but a fine actor).

Compare Kate Mulgrew's portrayal to the original actress they hired to be Janeway and you'll see the improvement in acting.

YouTube link

They might have had more success if the show-runners had set 'milestones' for the different seasons/series in advance. This is what Babylon 5 did to keep a consistent pacing thru its run.

Season 1: Ship is trashed… most of the season could be running from Kazon with most of the gee-whiz tech (transporters, replicators, photons) offline.

Season 2: Ship is more or less restored, running plotline that several crew (ex-Marquis) are having second thoughts about the 'long way home' and are considering drastic action to commandeer Voyager and possibly hunt down the Caretaker's companion (or some other action that gives them a morally-questionable shortcut home).

Season 3: Open season on Voyager. Word has spread of ship and its technology, so multiple enemies (Kazon, Vidiian, Hirogen) are now hunting it actively. Crew must decide whether to attempt to form some kind of alliance with one faction, or push the engines (and crew) as hard as possible to get out of the area.

Season 4: Confrontation with the Borg. Series of battles, culminating in the crew deciding to circumvent most of Borg Space, adding another decade to their journey.

Season 5: Evidence of another Federation Ship in Delta Quadrant. First half of season tracking clues. Second half is contact with Equinox, which plays out as it did in the series, but over more episodes.

Season 6: Enter Species 8472.

Season 7: Voyager is all but exhausted. Best hope for crew now is to find a suitable planet to seek refuge. Later half of season, crew gets evidence Borg are planning major attack on Federation. This sets up the final battle, and (possibly) use of the Borg conduits to get home. BUT NO TIME TRAVEL!

Within each season/series, you would also have some of the 'planet of the week' episodes. But they would have to be tailored to match the current state of affairs of the ship.

The idea is to give the overall show (and the setting) a sense of continuity instead of just a bunch of interchangeable one-week missions.

Time travel episodes are lazy writing. It ruined everyone one of the Trek properties, but mostly Enterprise.

What was particularly galling about the Voyager finale is that it felt like a re-write of 'Timeless' which was a decent episode.

Also, instead of our heroes making it home thru their own hard work, they were given the key to getting home by (effectively) a new character.

And I agree on Enterprise. Making the Temporal Cold War the framing story was an idiotic choice.

TGerritsen have to agree about the hate thing, I suppose for so many geeks she was to close to everyday life.

Between DS9, Babylon Five and Farscape, Voyager suffered from intense writing timidity.

It was a cop-out show with lazy writing, uninspired aliens and a premise that was neutered in an attempt to retread it into a variant of TNG.

It then devolved into the Doctor and Seven of Nine show.

Neelix should definitely have been spaced or at the very least have something shake him up a bit.

It would have been interesting if there was more antagonism between the Federation and Maquis cew . Tom Paris could have been an interesting "in-between" character who appeared to try to bring the sides together, but in a way that he appeared to have some agenda of his own (with a lot of involvement from Ceska) You could have a buildup over one or two seasons about Paris apparently planning something only to reveal it was Ceska pulling the strings and have Paris risk Voyager and the Crew to get his revenge.

A field promotion for Harry Kim would be nice.

I'd kick out the Kazon and use Species 8472 as an antagonist, maybe they are in the middle of a major civil war (to nicely parallel the Federation/Maquis relationship) and their whole conflict with the Borg is just a minor distraction, after which a smaller faction takes interest in Voyager's crew after several encounters thinking that what makes them "special" could be used as an advantage in their civil war. Ceska then hooks up with them, trying to use Species 8472 for her own goals.

Voyager's crew successfully defeat this threat, but draws so much attention they decide to exterminate the Federation they perceive as an even greater threat than the Borg "The Borg are simpleminded, they assimilate bodies and destroy souls, you assimilate minds and souls to your thinking, that makes you fare more dangerous."

This would be the chance for Paris to take revenge on Ceska and by sacrificing himself become a hero to the Federation and the Maquis.

That starship has sailed………

The initial plot idea has so much potential only to be watered down and finally just plain abandoned. As with much of the later Trek series and I include Next Gen with this the producers or directors or the writers or a combination of all of the above forgot the basic tenant that in order to have drama you must have conflict. The writing relied too much on external factors to generate drama. Lost also was how to manage resources when you are completely cut off from your line of supply. Of the three Trek series of that time period only Deep Space Nine seemed to understand how to keep a story going and made you care about the characters both the good and the bad.

ochoin really Neelix the Jar Jar Binks of Voyager I think NOT.

To me Kes was a crappy character the whole idea of her race aging backwards that was somewhat stupid.

For me the ONLY thing that saved the show for me was Seven of Nine her character was the ONLY reason I kept watching that show

The major problem with Janeway is that she had the most wildly inconsistent writing in the series. It was bad enough that Kate Mulgrew has said that she figured Janeway was bipolar or some other serious psychological issue.

It is not a good thing when in one episode she would declare that the Prime Directive mandated course of action A and less than a season later when faced with the same issue again she was equally adamant that the opposite action was mandated.

To me Kes was a crappy character the whole idea of her race aging backwards that was somewhat stupid.

That was just one episode… it was just her not her entire race.

Voyager's problem, as others have noted, is that it messed up the premise. It never did feel like two crews with totally different backgrounds learning to mesh as one. Even in the episodes focusing on that it never felt like it.

The worst example of this badly done "conflict" was the Riker/Picard one in the pilot for TNG. For those who forget both of them were fighting over Picard going on away missions…

Well, I have the option of picking the good episodes & deleting the poor (who can forget the 2 parter where they go to the holographic twee Irish village….NB avoid holodeck episodes).

You all probably know this site but it helps to pick the "goodies". Though I don't always agree with the reviewer (or one of his guest reviewers who hates everything: I mean why bother to watch the show?).

ex-astris-scientia.org

My suggestion: Have Voyager cross over with the Star Wars prequels, where Seven of Nine can have Jar Jar Binks' love child

Happy April Fools' Day, everyone!

tkdguy that's not very funny.