So many horrible characters aboard the Voyager

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Hespen wrote:

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I'd like to give an update.

Neelix
After seeing him desperately wanting to hook up with that Klingon woman (season 7) I ended up liking him. It only took 7 seasons for me to like him. Then during homestead he was pretty bad ass, so he grew on me. Like I said it only took seven seasons to finally like Neelix. Hate him for six seasons, kind of like him in season 7.

Commander Chipotle
What an idiot. This has got to be the worst character in sci-fi history.

Commander Chipotle & Seven Romance
I'm not a writer, I have no talent when it comes to writing a story. I NEVER say this, but even I could write a better romance story than this. It just made no sense, at all? WTF? LOL.

Paris
Yawn

Harry Kim
Double Yawn

Torres
She never stopped bitching, why would anyone write a female character that just bitches constantly?

End Game Season 7 Finale
Quite possibly one of the worst finales to a show I've ever seen.

Summary

Voyager killed star trek. It will take years for star trek to recover from this mess.

They should of focused on Janeway, Tuvok, Doctor, Seven, Kes, ECheb. They should of showed Neelix desperately wanting to hook up with alien females (like he did with that klingon woman lol)

Deep Space Nine was vastly superior to Voyager.

I do not recommend watching Voyager, I strongly recommend no one watch it. Save yourself the trouble, the show is pretty bad. I've seen all seven seasons and it's just bad. Like I said, Voyager killed Star Trek. It will take years to recover from this mess.

DS9 was bland and too frequently dull. It wasted far too much time on preachy whiny Bajorans and Mirror Universe lipstick lesbians. And pulled plot twists out of it's ass, like Sisko praying away a Dominion war fleet and Bashir's awkward retcon into an augment genius.

But if DS9 is your ultimate Trek, you should be watching Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, not Voyager, Next Gen or Enterprise.

[DalekJim]

I'd agree DS9 is the best Trek but it shouldn't be held as the standard for Trek casts. It's the only one without a bland void in the main crew. Not a Sulu, Dr. Crusher or Harry Kim in sight.

Voyager is a hugely annoying show for many reasons but The Doctor, Seven of Nine and Kes are all great characters. Replacing one of the few good characters with another good character is one of the most frustrating things in all of Trek.

Voyager is frequently dumb and mediocre but people exaggerate how bad it is. Mainly because it had the potential to be the best series.

[Loci2378]

There are no horrible characters on Voyager, but many average characters. Some missed oppertunities on Chakotay, Kim, Kes and Neelix.

My favorites are Janeway, the Holodoc and Seven.

...and any Star Trek Series has it's own Highlights of Characters:

TOS: Kirk, Spock and McCoy
TNG: Picard and Data
DS9: Sisko and Dax
VOY: Janeway, The Doctor and Seven
ENT: Archer and T'Pol.

These are MY favorites of all Star Trek Series.

[Anwar]

DalekJim wrote:

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Voyager is frequently dumb and mediocre but people exaggerate how bad it is. Mainly because it had the potential to be the best series.

Not really, if they had given the show a bigger premise than "Lost ship" then there'd be more potential. But as it is, the premise was rather constraining.

[dub]

Anwar wrote:

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Not really, if they had given the show a bigger premise than "Lost ship" then there'd be more potential. But as it is, the premise was rather constraining.

A ship that's decades away from home with enemies forced to live/work together in a setting where viewers are used to seeing everything run smoothly and get repaired quickly...I think the potential is there for a groundbreaking Trek show if they took more risks early on. But they didn't come anywhere close to reaching the potential of what it could have been (in my opinion, anyway). I still need to watch the later seasons so I can't opine about the show as a whole, but the early seasons -- while they were okay -- didn't do what I hoped/expected they would given the initial setup. I was expecting things to be broken and then repaired with atypical materials, which did happen from time to time -- but as the series progresses, the vessel and the sets should always be changing with new materials, altering the look of the ship/sets in a major way. For the most part, Voyager always looked squeaky clean. I was expecting them to acquire new tools, clothing, etc., then wear the new clothing because their existing uniforms wore out or were ripped/burned on missions. I expected them to perhaps have a rough landing on a planet and be forced to stay there for several episodes hiding or waiting for repairs. I definitely expected more fighting between Federation officers and the Maquis on an ongoing basis -- perhaps to the point that they eventually split up permanently on two ships, then for the remainder of the series we see the journey of these two separate groups. Maybe even have episodes where they must fight each other (on their separate ships) and cause setbacks for each other -- then other episodes where they reluctantly work together. Things like that, and there's so much more that could have been done. More serial drama, more risks. So yes, I saw a lot of potential given the premise.

[Anwar]

dub wrote:

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A ship that's decades away from home with enemies forced to live/work together in a setting where viewers are used to seeing everything run smoothly and get repaired quickly...I think the potential is there for a groundbreaking Trek show if they took more risks early on.

A ship that isn't really lost since it knows exactly how to get home, which cuts out a plot that would've allowed them to spend time in one area of space and get to flesh out the local aliens much better.

Also, if something is broken it can never be repaired, ever, otherwise the premise is violated (no support, remember?). They can never ever make an allies or trade with anyone because that violates the "No Support" clause too.

Anyone who dies can never ever be replaced, because to get some new crewmembers from any alien worlds they encounter would violate the "No support" clause again. And they can't train replacements either.

So basically, they have no reason to stick around and flesh out their surroundings, they have no reason to do any "visit a planet" type story because that might violate the "No support" plot. They can't take any lingering damage because there'd be no way to fix it, they can't kill off anyone important because there'd be no way around that or to get replacements.

They also can't do anything big and cool like save the Galaxy from some extragalactic invasion because that'd make them "too important" for one small ship (they tried that with "Scorpion" and the 8472 aliens and no one liked it).

That's pretty damn constrained.

And the internal tensions were never going to be that good either because the Maquis weren't set up properly as "the second crew" to conflict with the Fleeters. Even if they were, after 1-2 seasons it wouldn't make any sense for them to still act like enemies unless they were truly disturbed individuals.

[Bry_Sinclair]

I find VOY very irritating as they missed the mark on so many things, including the characters.

The crew accepted their situation too easily, with no major morale or emotional problems being lost and in all likelihood never seeing their families and loved ones again. All the Starfleet-Maquis 'tension' never came to anything and fizzled out after a couple of years. They took to firing at every alien and ship they encountered, rarely making any friends along the way, though despite getting their asses kicked on a regular basis the ship was always pristine, fully functional and they had all the creature comforts.

They had it far too easy, they could have been on a deep space mission in the alpha quadrant for all the peril they faced, as it was always pretty obvious they would make it through--even more so after Borg tech saved the day every week.

The PTB never took any chances or risks, favouring the reset button over any real character development or something that would upset the status quo.

[Anwar]

Bry_Sinclair wrote:

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I find VOY very irritating as they missed the mark on so many things, including the characters.

The crew accepted their situation too easily, with no major morale or emotional problems being lost and in all likelihood never seeing their families and loved ones again.

But this was nothing new, it happened to Kirk and Picard.

All the Starfleet-Maquis 'tension' never came to anything and fizzled out after a couple of years.

Realistically, the tensions wouldn't have lasted more than a season and a half anyways.

They took to firing at every alien and ship they encountered, rarely making any friends along the way,

Yeah, mistake.

though despite getting their asses kicked on a regular basis the ship was always pristine, fully functional and they had all the creature comforts.

So the ship is easier to maintain than everyone assumed?

The PTB never took any chances or risks, favouring the reset button over any real character development or something that would upset the status quo.

The show lacked a plot beyond "Lost in Space". If it had one, then there'd be more room for that stuff.

[USS Firefly]

But this was nothing new, it happened to Kirk and Picard.

But they weren't lost.

[Anwar]

USS Firefly wrote:

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But they weren't lost.

Neither was the Voyager crew, they knew where they were and exactly where Earth was.

If they WERE truly lost, then there's something to work with because it means they HAVE to explore because they can't just set a course for Earth.

[Lynx]

Horrible characters?

As I see it, Voyager had the best characters of all Trek shows.

[Lance]

The trouble with people trying to compare Voyager with DS9 is that they're fundamentally different types of show. You can't really compare them. DS9 was sold directly into syndication (just like TNG) whereas Voyager was a network show. Voyager was hamstrung by too many network directives about what it can and can't be, where DS9 had more freedom to just say "fuck it, let's just blow up some shit!" (that's an actual Ron Moore quote btw). Truth is there were a whole shitload more Men In Suits™ issuing disapproving memos to the Voyager producers every day than there were to the DS9 guys on the other side of the Paramount lot. Rick Berman would turn up at his office every day and open his inbox and just have to deal with dozens of people saying "our audience research suggests Voyager would be more popular if the cast wore funny hats -- can we have an episode where Janeway finds a planet of hats?", and all his dreams about being in charge of something edgy would just melt. The setup was there in the series bible for a really terrific series, and yes, the character dynamic was excellent on paper. But Voyager was fighting a losing battle from the start. Virtually from the pilot episode, those memos started coming in: "Great television shows always have a reset button! Can't you guys have a reset button on your ship?".

Ironically, what would have really helped Voyager would have been to have a format more like what we got in years three and four of Enterprise: a series of three-to-four part storylines (mini-arcs) that would have given the characters and situations some extra room to breathe, instead of having to have everything wrapped up in 60 mins including commercials. I say 'ironically' because Enterprise was a network show too, but the pervailing feeling about what was popular in tv shows had changed alot since Voyager was on, and suddenly the very same ominous Men In Suits™ who had asked for Planet Of The Funny Hats stories were all lining up at Berman's office door to say how great it would be to have ongoing story arcs and character conflict. Hence the temporal cold war.

[Anwar]

They should've just done what Berman argued for, and waited until DS9 was finished before doing VOY. It would've given them time to hire new writers and iron out the problems in the premise.

[Relayer1]

Not employing Kate Mulgrew or Tim Russ would have helped too...

[heavy lids]

Relayer1 wrote:

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Not employing Kate Mulgrew or Tim Russ would have helped too...

Or not employing any of the cast besides the EMH. I like VOY, but it's cast/crew was pretty stale.