How do Niners feel about Voyager?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' started by TheGodBen, Oct 18, 2009.

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How do you feel about Voyager?

  1. I love Voyager, both it and DS9 are excellent

    13 vote(s)
    8.3%
  2. I like Voyager, but I prefer DS9

    56 vote(s)
    35.9%
  3. Voyager was okay, I have no strong feelings

    27 vote(s)
    17.3%
  4. I disliked Voyager, DS9 was the superior show

    43 vote(s)
    27.6%
  5. I loath Voyager, it ruined my life

    10 vote(s)
    6.4%
  6. I'm not a Niner but I want to vote in this poll

    7 vote(s)
    4.5%
  1. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    No, it was more than once Jake reminded Nog more than once and yes they used credits on DS9 but nowhere else.
     
  2. PKTrekGirl

    PKTrekGirl Arrogant Niner Thug Admiral

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    Actually, I strongly disagree with this statement.

    Personally, although I like Patrick Stewart, I think he is hugely overrated.

    Patrick Stewart is very good at 'stuffy', and 'straight-laced', and 'by-the-book-guy'. He is also good at 'annoyed/perturbed'.

    But he does NOT have a very large range outside of that very controlled sort of character. He is very good when you are casting a particular kind of character (ie, a straight-laced, stuffy, always-in-control Brit). But I do not consider him to be very versatile AT ALL.

    I mean, think about Avery Brooks playing both Sisko and MU Sisko. Or even playing Hawk. No WAY Patrick Stewart could ever pull off 'bad-ass'. He would look completely and utterly ridiculous. Or think about a character (any character) losing control of their emotions...from breaking down in tears to outright going postal. These are not parts for which Patrick Stewart is well suited.

    As I said, he is very good at the sort of parts he almost always plays - controlled, deliberate sorts of characters. But versatile, he is most definitely NOT.

    And just for the record, I do not think the best lead actor in a scifi show is Avery Brooks (in case someone wants to yell 'bias!'). IMO, the best lead actor in a scifi show would probably be Richard Dean Anderson. Or maybe David Duchovney (who convinced me SO MUCH that he 'was' Fox Mulder that I have had a REALLY hard time accepting his character on Californication, partially because he has now convinced me that he 'is' that guy - who is in about every way possible the exact opposite of Fox Mulder! :lol: ) or Edward James Olmos.

    And in Trek, I think I might give that crown to Kate Mulgrew, actually.... :p

    If I had to rate the actors who played lead character Trek captains as overall versatile actors, I would probably rate them like so:

    1. Kate Mulgrew
    2. William Shatner (he gets a HUGE boost in the versatility category for Denny Crane...even though I believe Denny Crane IS, in fact, William Shatner's real self)
    3. Avery Brooks (although he completely corners the market on 'bad-ass' as well as the seemingly opposite 'most likable guy captain')
    4. Chris Pine (although he is still young, he was GREAT in Trek XI. The last young-ish actor I recall who so totally OWNED a part was Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Pine was brilliant.)
    5. Patrick Stewart
    6. Scott Bakula
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2009
  3. Pemmer Harge

    Pemmer Harge Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Unless you worked on the show or are related to Avery Brooks I don't think bias could come into it!

    Range is all well and good, but I find Stewart's acting the most consistent. I also find his performances the most charismatic. Shatner, Brooks and Mulgrew have charisma too, but for me, Stewart owns his show like no other Trek lead.
     
  4. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well you're going to have to tell me which episodes actually had Jake explaining that humans don't use money because I only remeber it being said in In the Cards, and a google search for "Jake Sisko money" or "Jake Sisko currency" only brings up references to that one scene.

    I don't know, I think he's pretty good at being a flamboyant gay guy as well.
     
  5. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was going to mention Jeffrey if anyone didn't. :lol:
    I love Patrick Stewart and have seen him play everything from Ebenezer Scrooge to King Richard (Robin Hood Men In Tights) to Captain Jean Luc Picard to Sterling (Jeffrey), and I think he has a great range, and a stellar charisma. I agree that Avery Brooks is a very good actor, and has broad range, I also think the same of Kate Mulgrew and William Shatner (love Scott Bakula but his range is limited. He's good at what he does though), but yes indeedy, I'm a Niner, but Patrick Stewart owns just about every piece of stage he steps upon.

    J.
     
  6. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Patrick Stewart has actually played very different roles, but let's just stick to Picard. Picard was losing control of his emotions after the meld with Sarek. He was tortured mentally as well as physically and almost losing it at the end of "Chain of Command". And he was rather postal many times in "All Good Things..." And Stewart was brilliant and completely convincing in each of these scenes, which all presented a real danger for a lesser actor to overact. Stewart may be a stage actor, but I never found him too histrionic or theatrical for TV. He just sold every scene, besides having an enormous presence and charisma. TNG is certainly not my favorite Trek series, but Stewart is IMO head and shoulders above the other actors who played lead captains.

    As a character, I prefer Sisko to Picard, but I prefer Stewart to Brooks. Although it has to be said that Brooks was also very good, much better than many people give him credit for. He does however have a strange diction which sounds a little too histrionic when he is giving big speeches, which comes off as "overacting" to many people. I always thought he was better in the scenes where he was more restrained and low-key - as I said, the big speeches are really the only problem I have with Brooks.
     
  7. flemm

    flemm Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I'm not sure there'd even be much 24th century Trek without Stewart. He's the one that sold TNG, lent it credibility, played the lead in most of its best episodes and led even many who disliked TNG to begrudgingly admit that his performances as Picard were excellent.

    Stewart as Picard is also a very hard act to follow, which is one of the reasons that I think Avery Brook's work tends to be underrated. He effortlessly has the presence and gravitas to match Stewart's, and it helps that he also has a compelling voice. He inhabits the role of Captain with ease, as did Picard, which goes a long way toward selling the whole command structure that Trek relies on so heavily.

    Mulgrew and Bakula both have their strengths, and both did improve over time, but neither one ever inhabited to role of command as naturally or with as much conviction as Stewart and Brooks imo.
     
  8. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'd agree with DevilEyes about Brooks' diction - I'm not sure what's going on there, but whenever he speechified he just seemed off to me.

    Quite. One almost half-wishes there was a TNG episode where some random space whatzits gave Stewart a transparent excuse to show his incredible range as an actor.

    "This far and no further!"

    First Contact was pretty much a demostration of how well Stewart could be a badass. Whether that's a success is debateable, but I'd call it several mites above "utterly ridiculous."
    He's done both as Picard, and I think he handled it fairly well. The writing in Generations may have faltered but he did sell that moment. "Sarek" is, as observed, another stellar example.

    Eh. I haven't seen enough of Stargate to have an opinion on Anderson one way or the other (generally I think he's pretty good at being genial and the down-to-earth guy full of pop culture references, sorta like Ben Browder's character on Farscape, which I presume is why Browder was roped in to replace him), while Olmos I've seen having recently marathoned BSG. He's good, though he does oversell the odd moment by doing his patented stern, stubborn gruffness too much ("Daybreak", the suicide mission). Definitely the only example we've got of the stubborn old guy space opera lead in a post-Picard world, but the crown in my eyes would still go to Stewart. Nobody and I mean nobody speechifies like that guy.

    Anyway, while it's a good role and well played, it's not exactly versatile. Look serious, let your wonderfully weary face do the talking for you, growl out a few lines dead seriously and your paycheck is in the mail, Mr. Olmos. He does add quite a bit of subtelty and nuance to it, but even still...

    Duchovny is just some guy, I dunno. This X Files thing, never got into it for some reason. As for Mulgrew - eh. Everything I've seen her in, which is very little (um... this arc in Cheers, does that count?), she wasn't that different from how she handled Janeway.

    As for whether I could think of an actor I'd readily consider better or more versatile than Patrick Stewart as a space opera lead... well, nothing immediately comes to mind, but maybe I'll see it in a dream.
     
  9. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't see how anyone can say that Patrick Stewart doesn't have a good acting range. If anybody else had kissed a B I would have found it cringe-worthy, but he sells it, I can truly believe that he cares about that letter.

    And this has to be the only scene from a Ricky Gervais show that I found funny.
     
  10. Alex1939

    Alex1939 Captain Captain

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    I'm basically a lurker and don't post often, but have you seen all of TNG or any of Stewart's work outside of TNG?

    How about Dune? He was the tough trainer type and did that well. Or what about the show "Extras" where he acted as a silly horndog?

    There aren't many statements one could make that I would disagree with more than the above. Stewart is absolutely a versatile actor.
     
  11. PKTrekGirl

    PKTrekGirl Arrogant Niner Thug Admiral

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    Yes. I have seen ALL of TNG (including the movies), The X-Men movies, and Scrooge, as well as this stupid YouTube clip of him talking about a script full of naked women. And sorry...but I just don't see the range.

    As I said, he can do "annoyed" and "perturbed"....and maybe even "angry". That was not the issue.

    But those things are definitely NOT the same as "bad-ass" or "out of control". I just don't see him completely losing control convincingly - not in anything I've seen.

    And that STUPID YouTube skit I've seen of him talking about naked women in about every sentence. :rolleyes: Completely unconvincing and made him look like a moron that was trying too hard to be funny.

    But hey....like I said, your mileage may vary.
     
  12. Bones2

    Bones2 Commodore Commodore

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    That Patrick Stewart bit in Extras is possibly my favourite bit of comedy ever.
     
  13. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    I want to see Patrick Stewart and Hugh Laurie do a comedy sketch together.
     
  14. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I can't agree with that, what makes the clip so funny is how naturally he plays some of the lines, particularly "Mainly." I don't find Ricky Gervais all that funny and I don't understand why The Office and Extras were such big hits, but I think that clip is hilarious purely due to Patrick Stewart's performance.
     
  15. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I would like to retract my statement about disliking VOY (because even then it's bordering on true/untrue for me). I happened to get a chance to watch "Endgame", and yes, I realize a lot of VOY fans hated it (or at least the impression I got), but I actually liked it. It gelled rather nicely for me, and so I watched the other VOY episodes I have in the collection and they looked different this time. I would like to upgrade my vote from "disliked" to "liked but prefer DS9".

    I might even buy a season or two of VOY so I can watch them in chronological order.

    J.
     
  16. Alex1939

    Alex1939 Captain Captain

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    The original Dune? In that movie Stewart was more the hard soldier type and I thought he played it great. Granted he was younger.

    In TNG we've seen Stewart cry, lose his mind, fall in love, laugh out loud, it was all convincing to me.

    So you didn't like his performance in the TNG episode "Sarek"?


    Yeah I don't really find Gervais or whatever funny at all, but that skit with Stewart I thought was hilarious.

    Oh well, we all have different opinions, but to say Stewart is not a versatile actor, I don't think you'll find many that agree with you about that.
     
  17. VDCNI

    VDCNI Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I can kind of see where you're coming from with Patrick Stewart as he does play the stoic Brit characters very well and gets cast in those roles often.

    However having seen him on the London stage so many times in recent years and having seen a different (sometimes radically different) performance each time I can't in any way agree that he's not a versatile actor. Certainly I'd put him well ahead of any of the other Trek captains.
     
  18. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    On the subject of Patrick Stewart being funny or not, he was downright hilarious in that episode of Frasier he was in. Granted, that's a bit of both of the two times of Stewart we've discussed here - he's an educated, stiff, classical Brit, and he's also flamboyantly gay. But my god is it a great guest performance or what? (Yes. Yes it is.) I can even forgive the episode for recycling the plot from a completely hysterical episode from the first season, Patrick's just that good.
     
  19. Navaros

    Navaros Commodore Commodore

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    I don't like Voyager.

    I get extremely bored watching it.

    The lack of any character development (maybe a little bit for Seven and the Doc but that is about it) and ongoing story whatsoever, combined with the lack of conflict, combined with abandoning the premise by the end of the first episode, combined with the stories themselves being dreadfully boring and having little to no artistic merit (ie: holodeck love interests, singing clown etc. etc.) destroys the potential of the show to have any entertainment value for me.

    I do not see what is good about Voyager, other than a couple of very, very rare diamonds in the rough which are excellent episodes, like Think Tank and The Void. The excellent episodes are so few, and buried under so many unentertaining episodes, that IMO it is like they are excellent in spite of being Voyager episodes rather than because of being Voyager episodes.

    I would make almost exactly the same criticism for TNG as well, which IMO has the same flaws is no better than Voyager.
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2010
  20. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Wonderful, the one who proved my argument finally showed up...

    Or rather, the one most triumphant example out of others.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2010