The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by DigificWriter, Oct 1, 2013.

  1. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    The audience needed a Scapegoat, and unfortunately they chose Berman and Braga when they really weren't responsible for most of the problems folks had.

    That, and Ron Moore kept blaming them for things (Along with Ira Behr) when the truth is closer that those two were being bratty and didn't realize the kind of pressure Berman was under from the Network.
     
  2. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Sure Berman had his bosses, everyone does, but in the Trek production world in the 90's the buck stopped at his desk.
     
  3. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Not with the UPN shows it didn't. With those shows, UPN Network Execs who smartly never gave their names were the ones really in charge.
     
  4. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Man.. blaming unnamed people who may or may not exist... are we at conspiracy theories to defend Voyager now? ;)
     
  5. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Well, it's clear that UPN was interfering with VOY and ENT in ways that TNG and DS9 did not have to endure. Since Berman is not UPN, it had to be some Network Execs higher up than him giving him those orders.

    It reminds me of "The Wire". For the longest time everyone hated Commissioner Burrell as some bureaucratic A-Hole who kept messing up cases and details for little to no reason. Then in his last appearance we find out most of his actions were due to him carrying out nonsensical and schizophrenic commands from the Mayor that Burrell knew were stupid and were messing things up, but carried them out because his job was on the line.
     
  6. DigificWriter

    DigificWriter Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've got a somewhat time-sensitive* question to ask Flashback and The Undiscovered Country: since I've never seen either, should I watch TUC before I watch Flashback, or would I be fine just watching Flashback?

    * I'm watching TNG's The Price right now and will then be watching False Profits, so I have probably 2 hours before I'd be ready to tackle either one or both of TUC and Flashback
     
  7. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    See if you can find the continuity errors.

    You should just watch the Undiscovered Country first because it's a damn good movie.

    Yes there are some scenes that are double/repeated/refilmed (10 years later) and there is story taking place during the Undiscovered country that we did not see in the movie and... IN the novelization of Flashback (in the 90s, I had a choice of buying the novelization of Flashback for 4 dollars, or waiting 2 years for the episode to air on the telly.) we actually "see" Sulu g... Well, that would be telling.
     
  8. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Oh, you mean where Tuvok gives Sulu a--- oops.
     
  9. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Sulu got serviced by Tuvok... while Janeway watched... she was jealous. ;)
     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Watch TUC first. That way Flashback is way cool even if you didn't wait however many years between the two!

    TUC is a great movie too :)

    Enjoy!
     
  11. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Even if Tim Russ was in Generations on The Enterprise A, and not in the Undiscovered Country on the Excelsior?
     
  12. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Those were his years in the V'Shar. Undercover.
     
  13. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I think the problem is Voyager was an 80s TV show in the 90s. In the 90s, serialized TV shows like X-Files were taking off, so Voyager's episodic story seemed behind the ball compared to other shows at the time.
     
  14. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    By 1995, serialized shows were not the norm. X-Files was the only real one and it was a trailblazer doing something unexpected. B5 wasn't well known and wasn't getting good enough viewers to make Paramount happy if VOY tried the same.

    If they had done what Berman had wanted and waited until DS9 was finished then there'd be other serial successes that Berman could show to Paramount as examples of what could be done.

    Also, it would've given them enough time to hire a permanent writing staff and iron out the shows' conceptual problems.
     
  15. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    Homicide: Life on the Street had a lot of serial elements (so did a lot of other cop shows from that period, as well as a few years earlier). The X-Files certainly wasn't the only serialized drama on the airwaves in the mid-90s.
     
  16. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Voyager and TNG both had an 'A plot and B plot' structure. This meant writers were instructed to write their stories with divergent plot strands that are sometimes both tied together somehow by the end of an episode, and were at other times entirely seperate from each other but were each individually tied up by the end of the episode.

    This is the 'format' on which both shows were built.

    In order to be a true 'Serialized Procedural', VOY would have needed to alter this structure so that the A Plot was a "planet of hats" show or another singular device that changes from week to week, while the B Plot was a never changing constant that stays the same from week to week, and is gradually built to a crescendo in the series finale.

    TNG and VOY did do this from time to time, but only on limited scales, usually for two-parters. An example would be TNG:Birthright, where Part 1 has got an episodic B Plot (Data's dream) which is resolved by the end of the episode, while it's serialized A plot (Worf investigating claims that his father is not dead) is carried over to the following episode.

    TNG:Birthright is a true 'Serialized Procedural' format, but on a much smaller scale than perhaps would be ideal.

    What has been suggested in this thread as being the format of a 'Serialized Procedural' in VOY is in fact simply continuity bleed: where one instance of continuity is carried through multiple episodes, but it is not in itself a "plot". It's a character arc, or a series of events that culminates in something later down the track. But it isn't, strictly, serialization. It isn't even episodic serialization. It's just good continuity.

    Nobody here is denying the point made by DigificWriter that Voyager did in fact have a great deal more episode-to-episode continuity than it is often held up as having. And this has been demonstrated ably by DigificWriter. But 'serialization' it most definitely was not.
     
  17. DigificWriter

    DigificWriter Vice Admiral Admiral

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    A Serialized Procedural is a Procedural Drama (i.e. Homicide: Life on the Street, The X-Files, Bones, and the new Hawaii 5-0, to name a few) which has elements of serialization to it and that, despite the fairly standalone nature of many of its episodes, does need to be watched in a specific order in order to accommodate the accurate unfolding and utilization of its serialized elements.

    Voyager, like the above shows, very much contains serialized elements mixed with procedural storytelling and very much does need to be watched in a specific order in order for its serialized elements to accurately unfold.
     
  18. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    OR you could just forget about the folding and the unfolding and hit random play all night and see if you ever get confused.
     
  19. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Well, to be fair Cop shows already have the mainstream audiences and appeal that Genre shows can only hope for when they begin. They can go for that kind of risk factor right from the start because they have a large enough audience potential to begin with.

    I'm talking serial Genre shows. British TV had been doing this since the 60s (Doctor Who) and 70s (Blakes Seven) but in the US this was pretty alien until the 90s. It wasn't even until the 2000s that it became more common for Genre shows to attempt this.

    Again, this supports Berman's idea of waiting until 2000 or 2001 to go Voyager. He understood things far better than is assumed.
     
  20. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I think this best illustrates the Berman problem: maybe he knew what was best, but he lacked the ability and will to oppose those who would do otherwise.