I know when Janeway touches my arm like that and asks me to do things that might hurt.. that might even get me killed.. it's because she really really loves me.
I suppose it's better than battered Talaxian Syndrome... Random disgruntled crewmen threatening to dunk the hedgehog in eggs, flower and bread crumbs and fry the bastard live if he doesn't shut up and ladle out another dollop of leola root gruel.
But, Voyager could have easily brought on supporting crewmembers for longer. Half the recurring minor characters they unceremoniously just dropped. Carey stopped appearing except for one random appearance in Fury just to tell us when we were back in time again and one other appearance just to die, Hogan was eaten by a giant lizard-snake, that other guy got his face ripped off. They could have had more minor characters who played a larger role in the story.
Could of, should of, would of. It was ALL PLANNED that they would suffocate together in morale boosting bonhomie.
The actors very well may not have been available to reprise their roles that often. For example: many of the survivors of the Equinox were doing other shows and guess spots and very well could have been the reason why the writers couldn't revisit those characters. Second is budget. If they felt they didn't have the budget to keep Jen Lien and add Jeri Ryan, they might not have had the budget to pay those actors their salary. I can assume, the young newer actors like Manu & the other Borg kids work for much cheaper just for exposure.
If kids were that much cheaper, I'm amazed Voyager didn't enter a section of the galaxy where a weird virus killed all the adults. The problem starts well before they hire their actors. In the writers room, there has to be some sort of passion where some one says "I have this amazing idea for a character that i really think that we can run with for a couple episodes who... " And then Berman throws a shoe at them. Exodus, it's not Jeri vs Jenny, but what did they do with the Cullah/Seska money?
And of course one of those recurring characters in TNG ended up getting promoted to series regular on DSN, O'Brien who had something like 55 appearences in TNG.
If they sued her, they could have made money. If they didn't sue her, the rest of the cast could have felt entitled and safe enough to walk whenever they felt like it.
I was watching Archengela's channel on You Tube. He talks about the reset button and he talks about how lucky Voyager was. Under present conditions, Voyager would have been canceled in its first year. Archengela said that when viewing an episode of Voyager that it is better to forget what came before and what came after, and to view the episode as a stand-alone tale. Personally, for me, Voyager and Enterprise are tied at the bottom for the two series I dislike most. http://www.youtube.com/user/Archengeia
What pissed me off about TNG as I got older, was how misleading reading all those tng novels which were constantly referencing past episodes and re-established minor characters, as well as reading all the supporting nonfiction that explained how everything was connected, which was when I really began to notice how episodic and bottle necked TNG and TOS really was. I just assumed that the production staff were not assholes but because my imagination filled in the gaps left by their carelessness and neglect, I was a none the wiser 12 year old.
Assuming (like me) that you're just using IMDB, these numbers are a bit of a stretch, since IMDB lists a number of background performers alongside guest actors. By my count, TNG had three recurring characters appear in more than ten episodes (O'Brien at 53, Guinan at 28, and Ogawa at 16). It's been pointed out in this thread that VOY couldn't have recurring guest villains, since they were always on the move; DS9 could. But that reasoning still doesn't hold up to my eyes. Excluding villains, DS9 had nine recurring characters who appeared in more than ten episodes; VOY had three (counting Seska, who was first part of the crew, and then a villain). Naomi Wildman appears in the most episodes (17), Seska is at 13, and Icheb is at 11. I'm too lazy to type out all the numbers, but DS9 featured (non-villain) guest stars much more frequently.
I was counting the rubes who actually worked for a living. Crewman Martinez / ... (82 episodes, 1988-1994) Ensign Jae / ... (59 episodes, 1990-1994) Crewman Diana Giddings / ... (54 episodes, 1987-1994) Ensign Bennett / ... (49 episodes, 1987-1992) Ensign Gates / ... (46 episodes, 1990-1994) Ensign Kellogg / ... (40 episodes, 1990-1994) Jones / ... (33 episodes, 1988-1992) ... Actually thinking about allllllllllllll these people, it really says that TNG had the framework/raw resources to use these actors to have some ongoing lowerdecks stories.
What hasn't been pointed out in this thread is that both TOS and TNG aired during a time on tv that procedural shows were the norm and only cheap weekly soap operas, that were looked down upon, did serialization. That's why that being episodic is never held against TOS and TNG. But Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise followed directly after DS9, which focused very much on serialization, feeling like a let down since they went back to the episodic format. TV had changed around them but they refused to do the same. That's a big reason why ENT's ratings fell and that show ended up getting cancelled.
At the time VOY premiered, DS9 was only in it's 3rd season or so. It hadn't really become serialized by then. In fact, there wasn't that much successful serialization (especially of a genre show) around in 1995 that Paramount would risk it. ENT doesn't have much of an excuse, and it DID become more serial as it went on. But VOY really wasn't that much "stuck in the past" as detractors say.
Babylon 5 changed everything. The Narn Centauri war in season two, the shadow war, the moral decay then liberation of Earth, any of the personal arcs of the characters that saw their moral compasses just flip wildly for completely logical reasons... DS9 broke their 1950s cop show paradigm and tried play the long game like... You know the DS9 reset button that really pisses me off still every moment of my life, the first two episodes of season seven, have some really interesting introductions of Dax to all and sundry and then some absolute conflict with worf and I'm waiting for some escalation the next week, but in stead it's Take me out to the Holodeck and they're all buddies playing baseball. Of course some bile did ooze up 3/4s of a season later after Ezi and Worf slept together.
B5 wasn't well-known enough or financially successful enough for Paramount to allow the same thing for one of their flagship shows. If they'd waited until DS9 was done then VOY would've been better off.