I liked the Borg more before the Borg Queen and Q before Voyager.

I dunno. The Borg should have been the primary antagonist. Ideally, the Borg "arc" (term used loosely) would've been VOY's Dominion War. In theory, VOY could have been even better than DS9.

But just a general low quality kept that from ever happening.

In my mind, there's a nebulous concept of a perfect Voyager that plays out a lot like Star Trek: Battlestar Galactica, except the Cylons are the Borg, and Tom Zarek is Chakotay. It's weird to think, given the wholly different atmosphere, themes and competence level, how similar in the basic story both shows were. (Except with one you didn't know it was bad until the last forty-five minutes of the series. So, hey, I guess Voyager wins points for straightforwardness and honesty.)

 

I can see that working quite well, actually, even from the little amount I watched BSG.

I guess my point is that it's a shame that the Borg had to be used and in turn dumbed down to be the antagonist.

 

People keep saying this, but I just don't see it. Most of the stuff in BSG just wouldn't have worked for VOY, at all.

As for the VOY Aliens, the only ones that really stunk were the Kazon. The others would've worked out better if they'd been kept around, but the backlash from the fans kept that from happening (that and Jeri Taylor). They just didn't WANT any new Aliens to begin with.

 

^Not a 1:1 copy, of course, if for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than BSG made a lot of missteps over the years, particularly New Caprica and the ending. Funnily enough, though, ending Voyager with the crew

Spoiler: Daybreak

winding up stranded in the past and becoming parents to the human race

would have been far less stupid because for the most part they were

Spoiler: the same

actually capable of donating genetic material to humans of 150,000 years ago.

At any rate, VOY wanted their TNG cake to eat too, so they couldn't go as far as, dramatically, they needed to with Starfleet/Maquis tensions, for example, as BSG ultimately did with the military and Zarek; they wanted Borg, but they had to be cuddly and defanged; they wanted "peaceful exploration," so we got a few decent eps and a fair number of truly meaningless and also bad one-offs like that one where Tom has sex with a bird.

Regarding their aliens, I have a few nice words about Species 8472 and Hirogen: they were okay.

Here's something kind of weird, we have species like the Talaxians and Kazon and Hirogen and the Voth all those guys who've been spacefaring for some time. Was it ever explained why they either 1)weren't living in mortal terror of the Borg or 2)or actually in mortal combat with the Borg at the time Voyager was thrown into the DQ? I mean, obviously they are on or near the borders of "Borg space," and the Borg are likened to a virus or a cancer, and can't really possess a stable border, being bent on constant exploitation and assimilation. Not to mention no DQ species other than 8472 and possibly the Voth seemed to pose much of a challenge to them. So why weren't the Borg, like, everywhere?

Actually, I do vaguely remember the Kazon (I think) being deemed "unworthy" of assimilation. Well, what about extermination? And Talax for good measure.

 

I don't have many answers regarding why the Borg weren't assimilating the species we saw. I always assumed that the Nekrit Expanse that Voyager crossed before encountering the Borg acted as some kind of barrier.

We know the Kazon were 'unworthy.' I don't think the Borg care about exterminating a species if they have nothing to offer for assimilation. The Vidiians would probably be avoided for the same reason. The Voth seemed to live in a city-ship, so I'm guessing they would be good at avoiding the Borg. The Hirogen I honestly have no answer about; when VGR was encountering them, Kes had supposedly thrown the ship past Borg-controlled space yet the Borg did come back.

It might have been more interesting if we'd seen the Borg try to assimilate the Vidiians for their medical technology (or maybe something random we hadn't seen - a long range transporter, a warp coil) only to find that the Phage could destroy the nanoprobes.