Would Voyager have been better if the ship returned to Earth sooner?

[The Overlord]

Would Voyager have been better if the ship returned to Earth sooner? Frankly I think I was more interested in seeing the post Dominion War Alpha Quadrant then seeing Voyager go travel through the Delta Quadrant after a while.

[laika]

interesting question!

I really liked the whole being lost in space plot...I think it brought up a lot of great issues and storylines for episodes and it kept be entertained...and still does.

[R. Star]

Having Voyager get home in season 4 or 5 would've been a flop and anti-climatic to the extreme I think. Especially given after a years long voyage it's inevitable that the crew splits up.

What I would have liked is a five or six episode long story arc to wrap up season 7 getting them home with at least one episode dedicated to being an epilogue. The list of stupid things in Endgame is long, but the worst part of it is. "Okay, they're home. The end." After Seven years they could've given a bit more closure than that.

[Seven of Five]

Yeah I would have preferred something like that. Endgame was a bum note to go out on.

I always wondered about getting the crew home just before the last episode, and then have the finale set a year or so later. I'm thinking it would be a partial epilogue, but could also involve the Voyager crew needing to reunite to help Earth against some Delta Quadrant foe they have experience against. Not necessarily the Borg either.

I appreciated that the writers of Endgame did show us some of the Voyager crew in the future, but their fate was null and void after Admiral Janeway altered the timeline. Too much time was spent on characters that didn't exist, whereas the real crew were like, "Oh we're home now. Roll credits!"

[tomswift2002]

I think it might've been better had Voyager stayed in the Delta Quadrant and then had five or six (or more) movies (theatrical or TV) between 2002 and 2014 showing the crew returning home, and getting home in the fifth, and then having the sixth showing the crew in the Alpha Quadrant.

[R. Star]

Seven of Five wrote:

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I appreciated that the writers of Endgame did show us some of the Voyager crew in the future, but their fate was null and void after Admiral Janeway altered the timeline. Too much time was spent on characters that didn't exist, whereas the real crew were like, "Oh we're home now. Roll credits!"

For a moment, when i was watching it for the first time, I was thinking it was a brilliant way to close the series, with a reunion and the tale being told in flashback. This was going to allow us to learn simultaneously how they get home and what happened with their lives afterwards.

Then they pull the overused time travel cliche tool out of the box... again. The Borg were the bad guy... again. Then even with plot elements that they should be familiar with they bungle it. The Borg were so watered down at this point, they just stopped even pretending the Collective was threatening somehow. Oi, Voyager could have been so much more. The potential was there.

[The Overlord]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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I think it might've been better had Voyager stayed in the Delta Quadrant and then had five or six (or more) movies (theatrical or TV) between 2002 and 2014 showing the crew returning home, and getting home in the fifth, and then having the sixth showing the crew in the Alpha Quadrant.

I don't think so, that would just be dragging things out and the Voyager writers are having trouble coming up with interesting things for the Voyager crew to do by season 7. Plus I think the Delta Quadrant is kinda boring. Making six movies about Voyager trying to come home sound like a dull and badly paced affair.

[Anwar]

Farscape did this by having Crichton return to Earth in the middle of S4. But it survived beyond that point by having already given the show a second plot beyond "Crichton searches for home".

VOY unfortunately had no second plot to drive the series beyond "Go home".

[Dukhat]

The Overlord wrote:

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Plus I think the Delta Quadrant is kinda boring.

It was only as boring as the writers and producers made it. That was the whole point of putting the ship in the Delta Quadrant in the first place; to be able to tell new fresh stories in a new area of space.

If the writing was fresh and unorthodox and the stories were interesting, it could have been the best Trek show ever made...no restrictions at all. There was some of that at the very beginning with Chakotay and his spirit guide and vision quests.

But they decided to make it a "Starfleet" ship just like the Enterprise-D we saw for seven years. They decided to create adversaries that were basically just Klingons by any other name. They decided to go with the alien of the week + we need to get back to Earth + I'm the female captain and you do what I say shtick, when they could have done so much more.

IMHO, they should never have returned to Earth (at least not the silly way they did). The ship should have been lost and no one should ever have found out what happened to it.

[Timewalker]

Seven of Five wrote:

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I always wondered about getting the crew home just before the last episode, and then have the finale set a year or so later. I'm thinking it would be a partial epilogue, but could also involve the Voyager crew needing to reunite to help Earth against some Delta Quadrant foe they have experience against. Not necessarily the Borg either.

After discovering the crew really didn't like Leola root stew, Neelix leads an invasion force to the Alpha Quadrant to avenge his honor.

Dukhat wrote:

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IMHO, they should never have returned to Earth (at least not the silly way they did). The ship should have been lost and no one should ever have found out what happened to it.

Or they find an Earth that is NOTHING like they remember... maybe Admiral Janeway's time travel shenanigans (or Voyager's, for going along with it) really screwed up everything.

After all, the series premise is that they're trying to go back to Earth. It never promised which Earth.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

No, Voyager should not have gotten home earlier to tell us what happened after the Dominion war. That's DS9's plot, maybe they should have ended the war a season or two sooner and told that on DS9.

Voyager shouldn't have stuck to the one season = one year formula. I'd have liked them to skip further and further forward as the show went on, like "Year of Hell" - but I guess that'd have meant more story arcs and eventually aging the actors would have violated Voyager's network-mandated "stand alone episodes we can show in whatever order we want and not leave viewers confused" rule.

Dukhat wrote:

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IMHO, they should never have returned to Earth (at least not the silly way they did). The ship should have been lost and no one should ever have found out what happened to it.

Stargate Universe ended like that. Although it was dictated by cancellation and not the finale they were hoping for, I thought it was fantastic.
(then again, Voyager would never have had the fantastic, evocative music which made the ending so special)

[teacake]

But WHY are they still wearing the same clothes as Day One when the ship clearly came with tons of multicoloured quilts that every bed has and when you know there are many many beds unused? Why didn't they make new clothes with the quilts? TWO YEARS in the same clothes!

I agree though fantastic ending and fantastic music. Star Trek would not have been that brave with endings, planned or forced upon them by cancellation. See: TATV.

[Sindatur]

teacock wrote:

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But WHY are they still wearing the same clothes as Day One when the ship clearly came with tons of multicoloured quilts that every bed has and when you know there are many many beds unused? Why didn't they make new clothes with the quilts? TWO YEARS in the same clothes!

I agree though fantastic ending and fantastic music. Star Trek would not have been that brave with endings, planned or forced upon them by cancellation. See: TATV.

Oh look, another Fan who thinks TATV was actually the ENT Finale, rather than some Fan Fiction story that made the rounds. Where did this ridiculous myth come from?

I think Voyager Finale should've been a two parter. The Penultimate episode, should've been an hour long, and gotten them halfway through the final Getting Home story. Then the following week, the Finale, should've been a 2 hour episode, half of it to finish out the arc, and the other half of it, to see what became of the crew after returning home. I don't believe they would've ever risked typing up the arc, and then following the next week with "What became of the crew" episode. Going like that, probably would've had the ratings really in the toilet for that final episode.

Definitely, it would've been a bad idea, IMHO, to bring Voyager home before the last few episodes.

[R. Star]

Sindatur wrote:

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Oh look, another Fan who thinks TATV was actually the ENT Finale, rather than some Fan Fiction story that made the rounds. Where did this ridiculous myth come from?

Oh look, another fan who's in denial that the producers & writers actually signed off on the stupidity that was TATV.

[Relayer1]

Stranding Voyager was an obvious way to avoid all the Trek stuff we'd all seen before.

Unfortunately, that was the stuff most of us seemed to like, and the stuff they gave us instead wasn't exactly scintillating. What should have been new and exciting was in fact, very bland, safe and watered down.

I would have brought it home after the first couple of (dull) seasons and retooled it completely. New plots, new crew (no more Mulgrew and Russ) and a proper look at the post Dominion war landscape...