The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager

I hated that impassioned speech about freaking boats to Janeway. WHO CARES? We all have shit we liked when we were a kid that we don't do full time now.

 

Seeing how they had Seven stand in for Kes during things like "Year of Hell" (scanning the Chroniton Warhead) it's most likely they just took a leftover story element for Kes and gave it to Seven.

 

And the story elements were immediately one million times more interesting.

 

Can't say I ever really cared for the Doc/Seven angle. What I liked about the Doc/Kes was that it was he that was doing the learning, ironically from someone who was only one year old, and I could buy that he'd be attracted to her. With Seven, I just never felt anything for it. As far as interaction, I very much prefer scenes with Seven and Tuvok sharing their views of humanity.

 

Some of us agree with him.

I just don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care if other people don't agree with me.

 

The list of "Maquis episodes" does a lot, in my mind, to illustrate the problems of narrative development from episode to episode, season to season. In many of the episodes, the Maquis aspect is no more than a minor aspect of the characters' background, if not simply throwaway lines that give the characters depth. Many of them are really just Seska episodes: her conflicts had far superseded her mission to infiltrate the organization, transforming almost immediately into issues of how the ship was failing to capitalize on opportunities (as well as her personal issues with Chakotay). (ETA: almost all Maquis episodes concerned a conflict with an outside source rather than a tension within the crew, and even when that happened, it was more between Chakotay and the remaining Maquis). Too many Maquis episodes are really just contrivances in which someone from the past has come up with a means of seeking personal revenge. Worst Case Scenario? someone forgot to tell Chakotay and B'Elanna that their Maquis story had ended long before it did in the Alpha Quadrant.

The fact that TNG and DS9 did fewer Maquis episodes seems irrelevant: they introduced the Maquis as a vehicle that Michael Piller intended to be a prime aspect of Voyager. Nonetheless, Voyager never developed the Maquis as well as the other shows did, particularly with Ro Laren and Michael Eddington. THose two spoke more to an evolving and unique way of life more than Chakotay did (and of which he would less and less).

 

I could never believe Chakotay as a Maquis leader. This is what he said to a young Kazon in the episode "Initiations", in the episode where suddenly he's a staunch pacifist, claims his home is Arizona:

It's funny he actually says that, especially when the issue at the heart of the entire Maquis deal is essentially a LAND DISPUTE.

 

Was there anyone Seven didn't order around, at least once?

Somebody has to program it. Obviously Janeway needs help since she's incapable of making it work properly.

Any populated world that isn't the home world of some species is a colony world.

Naomi spent a lot of time with her mother off-camera. When it came to the rest of the time, several of the crew were tutoring Naomi, and she spent time on the holodeck and with her friends. And don't most kids go through a phase where they consider their parents boring?

A group of a dozen people (or fewer) can have a command clique.

This is a very helpful list. I hadn't realized there was this much.

I honestly can't see the Year of Hell taking a whole season. If you can't go anywhere because the ship doesn't work, and there's no power for the holodeck, that doesn't leave much room for 22 episodes, unless they keep getting visited or invaded by outsiders.

They should have just left Janeway and Chakotay stranded on New Earth.

Maybe she changed her mind, or else thought the Hirogen situation warranted it?

I happen to appreciate DigificWriter's efforts, and do agree.

The Skipper and Gilligan should have fixed the damn boat. As for the Professor, I can see it this way:

"I'm a physicist, not a shipwright!"

The millionaire's heirs would have been pragmatic and taken their inheritances early, and was Ginger really that beloved? I can't recall her ever doing one useful thing on that island.


As far as I'm concerned, Voyager's worst continuity sin was in forgetting about the Borg baby.

 

I award Timewalker a Golden Borg Sphere statuette for Perfection in Multi-Quote!

 

Actual size?

 

It is big enough that if you hit someone with it they would die.

 

You're awarding me a statuette of a sphere?

As if I didn't have enough trouble keeping track of my stuff, you're giving me yet another thing the cats can bat under the fridge...

(multi-quote is one of the handiest features ever invented! )

 

I think there was a lot more continuity at the start of the show.

That's the thing really. It wasn't truly 'serialization' by any measure, but there's definitely a, shall we say, richer vein of continuity in the first four seasons or so. At least as much as there ever was in TNG anyway.

It really only started going to hell after Jeri Taylor left the show and Branon Braga starting sitting in her chair. That was really when the policy of "who cares, nobody'll even remember any of this shit next week" seemed to really start taking effect.

Coincidence?

 

^ The exhaustive breakdown I posted earlier runs contrary to that notion.

As for Brannon Braga, it's become cliche to bash on him, but, by and large, there's no real justification for it that I can find. There is no real significant difference, substantively or stylistically speaking, between Voyager under Jeri Taylor's guidance and Voyager under Braga's guidance.

 

Considering that Braga wanted to increase the serialization and have episode continue directly into one another, I doubt this.

 

Well there was a noticeable trend of fewer "Janeway is awesome" episodes.

 

That is neither a substantive or stylistic thing. When you change showrunners, you're going to get a situation where the new showrunner has a different 'pet character' (or characters) than the old. It's an inevitability.

For good or for ill, Janeway was Taylor's 'pet character', and Seven was Braga's, which did admittedly frustrate some people.

Personally, I think Seven needed the exposure she got, although it did get a little overboard at times, but, as I said, the amount of attention any one character got isn't a substantive or stylistic issue.

 

I was going to put this in the Season 5 thread, but it seems to relate to this thread...I just watched "Juggernaut," and the control of B'Elanna's anger issues seems to be out of place for her arc. That would have worked better in the first or second season for me. I was waiting for them to reveal that she was pregnant and that was why she was having extreme anger issues again. But that didn't happen, so the whole thing just seemed like a leap backward for her character arc.

This strikes me as perhaps an attempt to focus on somebody other than Seven but not quite knowing what to do with the other characters at this point. Discontinuity? Is that a word? Or a new character arc with poorly executed continuity? I'm continuing my re-watch so I myself can't answer these questions.

 

^ I haven't seen that episode, but, based on what I know about B'Elanna's characterization as a whole, I'm not surprised that they'd bring her anger issues up again because, as demonstrated by Faces, it's an ingrained part of who she is, and even if she has it managed most of the time, it's still there.

So, no, revisiting an ingrained facet of her character even though she seems to have moved beyond being 'ruled' by said facet isn't an example of discontinuity in the least.

 

B'Elanna is never going to completely "move beyond" her anger issues until she embraces them as Klingon strengths rather than human failings. When she's old she'll have made peace with it I PREDICT like Spock did with his human side. It's okay to be both these species, not to fight for one to be your identity.