When did voyager go wrong?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by WesleysDisciple, Mar 27, 2013.

  1. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Then their skin falls off.
     
  2. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Well Cardassians are sort of reptilian, for all we know they might shed their skin every year like a snake.

    Which reminds me of the time my dog found a snakeskin, thought it was alive, and barked at it for 2 minutes.
     
  3. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Kind of like the Maquis barking at the Cardassians when they were already doomed..
     
  4. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Well, he'd bark at anything he didn't understand until I showed him it was all right. Once he barked at a plastic bag stuck on a bush, another time he barked at a plastic bucket on its side in a carpark, and the topper was barking at a plastic Santa Claus figure in someone's yard.
    Oddly, he never barked in the house after I once told him to shut up.
     
  5. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    So if plastic Doctor Who aliens invaded your home to do bad things you'd have some warning.
     
  6. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Not anymore, he died 8 years ago. I miss him terribly, had him for 10 or 11 years, longest I'd had any dog.

    The cat I have now would just go hide, though a neighbor lady has an attack cat.
     
  7. Bry_Sinclair

    Bry_Sinclair Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It went wrong at the beginning of S4 when they disposed of the wrong character and shoe-horned in the walking pair of boobs. After that it became Star Trek: The Seven Show (with Janeway and the Doctor as sidekicks).
     
  8. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    The real walking pair of boobs was Neelix and Kim.
     
  9. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    How about Deadlocke where the entire crew except for Harry and Naomi were killed and replaced by duplicates creatd by a quantum scission, even though this Harry was foreign from a different universe as of Non Sequitor.
     
  10. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    Chakotay could've sung the Disney's Peter Pan's "What Makes The Red Man Red" and it wouldn't have made his character any less offensive. I find it funny that they made Chakotay the guy who broke up Tom's gambling pot in the season 2 episode "Meld". A Native American who has a problem with gambling. All Chakotay was missing to make his stereotype Indian character complete was to be a crippling alcoholic.
     
  11. secretreeve

    secretreeve Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    I just have to add, if this was not the case, then episodes such as year of hell would not have had that "HOLY CRAP!" factor.
     
  12. Captain Kathryn

    Captain Kathryn Commodore Commodore

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    That's because it was funny! :lol:

    Besides 1 or 2 episodes (I think Tattoo was one of them, not sure though), he never used the term "Rubber Tree People". He usually just said "my people" which made it seem even more like some random ambiguous tribe. And SO many Native American stereotypes...I can't even begin on that one. He was like a walking stereotype.

    I still think the face tattoo was kind of hot though.

    I love Q's tattoo comments to Chakotay. :rommie:

    Q: Facial art. Ooo, how very wilderness of you.
    CHAKOTAY: Captain?

    Then he mentions it again in "The Q and the Grey" lol.

    CHAKOTAY: Any more questions?
    Q: I was wondering, Kathy. What could anyone possibly see in this big oaf, anyway? Is it the tattoo? Because mine's bigger!
    JANEWAY: Not big enough.
     
  13. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I agree about the tatt hottness. He wore it well.

    Maybe I should start saying "my people" every time I am doing something outside the realm of science. Or when anyone questions me.

    "Are you sure you want your coffee with five sugars?"

    "My people value sweetness."
     
  14. bullethead

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    From what I understand, the reason Chakotay is a bunch of stereotypes is because Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor got taken in by a con man who presented himself as a Native American expert, instead of them going out to recruit actual academics.

    IIRC, in Fade In, Piller explains the whole Maquis in uniform thing at the end of Caretaker as a result of audience focus testers hating the conflict in DS9.
     
  15. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    NuBSG pulled of dozens episodes dealing with limited supplies, food and internal threats. Worked for them just fine. VOY took a lot of liberties with it self and the audience by making everything that is normally a danger no threat at all.

    They never have trouble finding the same mineral that powers the warp core in DQ that they could in the AQ despite being so far away from the AQ. At least they could do was have an episode where the crew has to find someway to refine another ore to be compatible with exisiting systems.

    Someone has already mentioned Kes' pathetic potted plant hydroponics bay. Also SFDebris put it perfectly when he critized early VOY attempt at drama because the crew was seen as " roughing it because they couldnt eat replicated food". A stab at replicator rations plot that lasts all through the series for some reason.

    The Maqui being all previous Fed citizens, ex Starfleet officers, and Bajorans would have no serious beef with StarFleet. At the end of Caretaker I'm not suprised the Maqui all put on those uniforms. I'm unsure of the timeline dates but VOY debutted after "The Maqui" on DS9 and "Preemptive Strike" on TNG. From my recollection the actual formation of the maqui wasn't that long ago by caretaker. So I highly doubt every single member was down to ride to hell and back for the cause like VOY made it seem and I doubt they were all early season one B'Ellana Torres and that one asshole from "Learning Curve" ' We do things the Maqui way'. As if they had were some hard as nails rough necks living a daily struggle. The maqui (besides the Bajoran ones) always struck me as stuck up privilege group who decided to form a coalition and fight their antagonists because they couldn't get their way. Even though the alternative was simply to move out of Cardassian space or the DMZ.
     
  16. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I didn't want a serialised show full of angry bitter people, conflict and 'realism' (whatever the frak that is in a SF show). We had DS9 for that. I wanted a camp, fluffy episodic show. Job done, VOY!
     
  17. teya

    teya Vice Admiral Admiral

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    They didn't need to talk to academics. All they needed to do was talk to some real live Indians living in the 20th century. Pick a tribe, any tribe. Want to go with Mayan, as Beltran suggested?

    All they needed to do was talk to their gardeners.
     
  18. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Yes, Jamake Highwater, an Armenian whose real name was Jay Marks. Doubts about his authenticity were appearing more than 10 years before Voyager hit the air.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater
     
  19. hux

    hux Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    For me, they started to lose their way in season three and the tried and tested, formulaic trek stories were starting to assert themselves after some good set ups had been basically abandoned (i guess they felt they'd done all they could with the Maquis and the Kazon had been found wanting as regular baddies by that point)

    So yeah, it became a little more formulaic after that but the final straw was when Janeway completely lost her marbles in Scorpion and established herself as an erratic captain (she was just about getting away with it before then) and Chakotay was establishing himself as someone that didn't have the balls to stop her

    After that it was a fun romp but i think we all know it could have been so much more
     
  20. bullethead

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Well, if I recall correctly, the con man who advised the Voyager staff on Chakotay's character got the job by presenting himself as an Indian. At least with an academic you can get people to look into their credentials and even better, they probably knew actual Indians the writers could talk to.