I am currently rerunning Voyager for myself. I was going to write my next article for TrekToday, couldn't remember a few things, and one thing led to another. Historically - and contrary to popular opinion - I ranked my seasons in this order (fav to least fav): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Most shows aren't so orderly normally. Season 7 I recall placing between 3 and 5 somewhere. Cruising through at a fast rate, I wondered if I would be more forgiving. Sometimes shows I think are better when watched fast through. The latter stuff I've only seen once and I think I didn't even buy (considering I purchased every VHS previously and watched them many times that's quite a statement). Yet, I think I've hit my roadblock... amazing how I was really enjoying the reruns then within a few episodes found them painful. For me the downhill moment is The Killing Game. I find that two parter dull, unimaginative and contrived. But it gets worse. Vis a Vis... I think that may be one of the worst Star Treks ever. People rant on about Threshold, but quite frankly this makes Threshold look Oscar-worthy. It just makes no sense. Paris is suddenly an arsehole, he looks ill (not sure if that's deliberate or RDM)) with absolutely no setup or explanation whatsoever. Then they lead into some weak body swap and suddenly Tom is kissing B'Ellana like he's had some life lesson. Just awful. Omega Directive is not awful, but is silly. Then Unforgettable which I just had the misfortune to sit through. Dear god where to start. The plot holes you can fly a bus through. I don't mind forgiving some plot issues, but these are awful. Like why doesn't the doctor remember her? Why did no one create any personal logs saying "Hey, some woman is on board who we'll apparently forget." Why does Seven ask why Chakotay is flushing, even though earlier in the season she spotted the symptoms in Kim as signs of attraction? If the race is so secretive why do they have spaceships to fly about and meet people? What was the person doing out in space that she originally tracked down? Just plain awful. I feel like I've been enjoying my Voyager reruns, but I feel like this has been a massive bump in the road. I wonder if it'll go with my memory and further downhill now... which is a shame as I want to see this out to the end!
For me I'd say Voyager peaked in either season 3 or 4 and went downhill from there. Season's 1 and 2 were hard to take seriously by virtue of the villains must be just tailing Voyager for the better part of two years. Hard to imagine that Kazon space is that big when they can't even find their own water and their prisons are just rooms you're told not to leave. Season 5 things just started getting repetitive. Seven's a great character but every other episode focusing on her gets redundant. By season 6 when it was airing I just gave up on Voyager out of frustration. I wanted to like it, but it seemed the writers just wouldn't meet me halfway. When the DVDs came out I finally watched the rest of Voyager and found that season 7 was pretty good with the notable exception of the stupidity that was Endgame. Future Janeway comes and turns on GODMODE so they can beat the Borg OMG!!!!
Thanks to NetFlix, I've been rewatching a lot of Voyager for the first time in a long time. Overall, I really enjoy the series, the actors, sets, stories. I've kind of been skipping around, cherry picking episodes that sound good based on the description, whether I remember them well or not. I was all over the place for a while, but lately I've been focusing on the earlier seasons, and the first two. I find myself liking better the episodes that showed conflict between the two crews. I also find myself not enjoying the luxuries they are still able to afford themselves, despite their "predicament." Having the resources to play games and engage fantasies on the holodeck seems to run contrary to a ship out of reach, with limited supplies, resources, fuel, food, etc.
Altho I (mostly) loved Voyager from watching it 1st run in U.S. 1995 to 2001, was rather turned off by Endgame, so didn't really look at the show again until 2008. Then I found almost all the episodes on Youtube and saw almost all of them again (except for any non-favorites) during a marathon month of watching (yes, 4 or so eps. a day). Was pleasantly surprised at how well the show had held up and since then watch an episode or two every once in awhile. Am thinking, though, of trying to watch the seven seasons in order again (well why not, maybe just because I can for "free" on Amazon). Saw Caretaker again last week; lol, brought back pretty good memories. Have seen some eps. of TNG on BBCA lately; still enjoy them but they seem a little dated, maybe the new remastered blu-ray seasons will look better. Anyway, IMHO story-wise, Voy. seasons 4 through 6 were the best (yes too much Seven notwithstanding), but I also like eps. from seasons 1-3 and some of 7, too, guess it depends on someone's preferences.
When I watch it now I deliberately pick an ep I hated and so didn't rewatch endlessly. Most of the hated ones were in the first three seasons. As usual nothing was a bad as I remembered it and some of them I quite like now. With Trek I just about always like everything more with repeated viewings and time. Characters, episodes.. everything. Except Riker.
Voyager peaked in season 2 where almost all of the episodes were very good. Still good in season 3 even if there were som bum episodes there. Then it started to go down with season 6 as the worst season.
That pretty much echos my sentiment! Flashback and The Chute I was expecting to hate, but kinda didn't mind this time... with fresh eyes. Some I'd go even more positive. 'Retrospect', what could be a throwaway episode - and quite frankly had some horrid plot jumps - I think is one of Voyager's best on a rewatch. Interestingly I say that is one of Voy's best in 'retrospect' no pun intended, but it's the one that directly precedes the start of this topic - where I think the rot set in!
It's only going to get worse. The worse it gets, the stronger you get. You will survive this to be a better man. If it doesn't kill you. But this is very important. You must continue. No matter what happens. Or they win. You can't let Berman win. If you don't watch every last episode and hate every last episode, that deush can claim: "Why of course you didn't have a totally rewarding experience, you missed the quintessential episode that really tied the series together." You need to stay centered. If your doctor won't give you antinausea medication, ask the local nieghboughhood children where they buy their pot. Don't think of it as cheating. We all do it.
Season 3 is where it all started going pear-shaped. The first half of the third year was pretty mediocre, in fact everything up to Unity was uninspiring. Personally, I think the first two seasons are the best, and then after that the show just really struggled to find any real consistency. Every season seemed to be the same; a number of great episodes, a number of terrible episodes, and a number of 'meh' episodes that safely occupied the middle ground.
I'm up to the fifth season right now in my rewatch, where things are getting much fresher in my mind, and I can safely say I found more bad eggs in the first two seasons' baskets. There's more of an arc (by Voyager arc standards) in the fourth season than in anything else I've seen, too, which I'm pretty sure holds up 'til the end. FWIW, for me one of the major elements when I rate television seasons is how well the cast meshes. While it's true that Seven oversteps herself pretty quickly and that never changes, I find the general camaraderie of the cast much stronger from the third year forward. I care more about their relationships, even if certain characters begin soaking in the limelight at other characters' expenses. This is a big part of the reason I prefer the later seasons of TNG to some (lesser) extent. It's also partly why I hold the somewhat controversial opinion that DS9's seventh season is its strongest. I just love the chemistry that has built between the casts, for lack of a better term offhand. In this case, though, I'm in the majority, I guess. "4-7 is the best", and specifically, "either 4 or 5 is the best", seem like pretty commonplace opinions as far as VOY is concerned, as the TC insinuated. My opinions of the other Trek shows, except for TOS, are somewhat unorthodox though, so I guess I'll treasure this one.
Part of the problem I had with the later seasons was that by season 3, it was fairly obvious that Voyager wasn't going to be the show that I thought it was going to be. The character dynamics in the later seasons whilst improved over the earlier years were still a pale imitation of what they were achieving over on DS9. It probably didn't help that I'd grown to dislike a good proportion of the primary cast on Voyager.
Just recently finished a rewatch and shocked by couple of things: * how many episodes I'd completely forgetten; some were quite a surprise but realised I'd prob blanked out memory of most. * the Klingon episodes, B'Elanna's character (used to find whiney) and Tom/B'Elanna relationship - all of which I used to find dull - now among my favourite parts. * though love Seven and Doctor, by series 6-7 it's really beginning to feel like schtick and groundhog day episodes (Doc's holo-rights, Seven's seach for humanity). Yeah, we got the message - no need to bang us over the head with stuff like Virtuoso * series 5 - 7 generally pretty bad, esp. seven. * S1 has some pretty good stuff - The Cloud, which is funny as fuck, and Jetrel. Neelix's humour in first season much better. * still find that magistrate guy in Prime Factors creepy as hell; like a low-rent Merovingian. * Love The Killing Game now (didn't use to): folks are angry the Borg turned into wusses but what about Hirogen? Barely recognisable by end of show and literally reduced in stature. * what was the point of the Borg kids? Help. And what happened to poor old Naomi? And the Borg baby for that matter. There's loads of other stuff pissed me off, esp continuity, but ranted enough for now...
^^ I never liked the Hirogen. Never liked the Kazon either. The only new major races that were introduced that I felt added to the franchise overall were the Vidiians, and Species 8472. Sadly, both were somewhat under-utilized as the show went on.
In this regard I'll openly concede that watching the two shows as part of my childhood probably helped greatly. As a kid, I definitely grew to recognize the intense differences between how DS9 handled things and how VOY handled things, but I guess I was just like, "OK, so that's how the adults are writing this one, and that's how the adults are writing that one," and loved them both regardless. Now, I watch the show knowing what I'm getting into and being tempered by my enjoyment of it, despite its stagnation, as a kid. I never had that moment of realization that VOY wasn't going to be what I wanted it to be, because when I watched it, I was just too young to really formulate such desires. I know I was a bit disappointed in "Endgame" for not doing certain things I'd wanted, but that was the prime extent of it. If VOY premiered today, or if I were at least, say, 15 or so in 1995, I'd probably be right there with you. Age does funny things, I guess. It's not logical, but it permits me to enjoy the series more.
Well I'm the guy who quit Voyager in Season 6 and Enterprise early on in season 2 when they were airing. Voyager just got old and I never did like Enterprise. I will say now that I'm older, I'm more kindly disposed to both now from a sense of nostalgia coupled with it's over and it's what we have now with the exception of a new Abrams movie every three or four years for awhile.
Yep, the slow pacing of the franchise these days certainly ties into it as well. As I recall, I enjoyed ENT overall in its first year, but the first two-thirds or so of the second season were kind of brutal with a couple of exceptions. I was expanding my sci-fi TV palette, too, so as I realized what other space operas of the time could accomplish -- and may I take the opportunity to reflect kindly on the fact that there were multiple space operas on the air at one point! -- I grew increasingly frustrated with Enterprise. It bounced back for me in a big way in its second half, though.
Although I'd had brief exposure to TOS in my childhood it was TNG that really got me into Trek. After that, I dug DS9 as it was something vastly different. Voyager, just seemed like a bit of a backward step, but, the premise did intrigue me to a degree - the two crews, the tension, the central drive to get back home. I envisioned a Trek spin on Homer's odyssey. I never felt that they took full advantage of the premise, or the Maquis situation. In the first couple of seasons, this was harder to realize as the show was still finding its feet. It was all new, and we were just getting to know the DQ. All we'd known before was that it was the home of the Borg. Sadly, by the middle seasons it was becoming increasingly clear, to me at least, that the DQ was a bit on the dull side. I can appreciate people having fondness for things encountered during their formative years. Some of the sh1t I love, mainly through my nostalgic lens than anything else, is mind-boggling!
I used to write those Berman and Braga try to destroy the Star Trek franchise fanfics in the Fan Fic forum, but years after writing those, shockingly, I thought the B&B seasons were the most enjoyable (not the BEST, but the most enjoyable). These were Seasons 5 & 6. After that, I really like Season 4, with the Hirogen mini-arc and the enjoyable "Message in a Bottle" episode. The rest of the series I rank with Season 3, then 2, then 1, and in a distant seventh, Season 7.
You people.. Voyager is about the characters and when you love them you enjoy all the subtle and not subtle interactions despite the plot being an utter wank.