The fact that it was entirely about a political difference that no longer was present, kind of neutered it. Aside from that, the Maquis and Feds had no other real reason to be enemies because...well, without the DMZ thing they'd be morons to keep up the fight. If the other crew had been Romulans, the Fed's oldest enemies who have real differences, then I'd see a longer conflict. But even then there's only enough for 1 year or two. If they couldn't get over themselves after working together for a year or so, then they were never getting home. After all, DS9 resolved Sisko's tensions with Kira and Odo after 1 season and no one minded. Like I said, they weren't real enemies in the first place and the main reason for their conflict wasn't around anymore. Besides, the only reason they got stranded was because Janeway did exactly what the Maquis accused the Feds of NOT doing. She chose not to sacrifice the Ocampa to save herself and the crew, which is what the Maquis wanted the Feds to do over the DMZ and the Cardassians. Let's take a look at the various "Lost Ship" shows of the last 40 years worth remembering... Blakes Seven: Only intended to last 3 seasons, made it to four. Ends with everyone dead and the bad guys tougher than ever. LEXX: Drops the "Lost Ship" thing early in season 2, still only managed to make it to 4 seasons. Farscape: Dropped the "Lost Ship" thing after season 1, replaced it with the Peacekeeper/Scarran War and Wormhole tech storylines. Still only managed to make it to 4 seasons. NuBSG: Fell apart after 2 seasons, rot sets in by Season 3, needs literal Deus Ex Machina to end the show. It's just not sustainable. You need to drop it after a while and do something else. All those shows replaced the "Lost Ship" thing or already had other plots to begin with and STILL couldn't make it to 7. Sad thing is, Voyager did have good alternative plots that could've lasted the entire series like "Scorpion" or "The Void" but all they got for their efforts was panning. Meanwhile DS9 gets away with stuff like "Let he who is without sin". I always like Emissary the best out of all Trek premieres.
I'm not talking about the Maquis fighting Starfleet because of the DMZ, I'm talking about the Maquis fighting Starfleet because they think their way is better and they could make better choices and get the ship home faster... so they would fight Starfleet. There was more to the difference between Starfleet and the Maquis than just the DMZ and concessions to the Cardassians. That's what opened the rift, of course, but the Maquis was the perfect opportunity to present humans and Starfleet as more than just another one-note species or organization in Trek. Starfleet is a quadrant-spanning military that focuses on exploration and science. The Maquis is a collection of autonomous cells--much like the Bajoran resistance--that are all but anarchic in nature and operate more like privateers than anything approaching real organization. Starfleet rules and regulations kept being the reason for the crew having to pass up opportunity after opportunity to get home quicker. That's going to grate on people who've directly been on the wrong side of Starfleet morality and appeasement. It's the age old "listen to authority" vs "question authority" schism. It's much bigger, and much more interesting, than a few far-flung planets in the DMZ. Blakes Seven. BBC show. Written, run, and produced in a completely different way than American TV. Very much an apples to oranges comparison. LEXX. Badly written show that struggled from day one because it tried to be an "adult" HBO show on basic cable. Farscape. You're mistaking the premise of the show with the inciting incident that brought Crichton into the show. Crichton's storyline was very much about getting home, at first. But that's not the basic premise of the show as a whole. NuBSG. Yeah, it was a great start with a terrible end. "Hasn't been done well" =/= "can't be done". BSG could have worked if they'd decompressed a bit. Instead of running through episode after episode in the first two years of the Cylons just constantly chasing and catching up, but instead given them more breathing room to play out the human struggle the "lost in space" plot would have "lasted". Wow. I just watched Scorpion last night (going through some so-called "best of" episodes) and it was crap. Every other solution was some nonsensical technobabble ass-pull. "A skeletal lock. What's that?" "I don't know, I just made it up." Literal dialogue from the show. Let me be specific, the Borg-pact plot was ridiculous. But it's in the general vein of what I'm talking about, hard choices that cause conflict and tension between the crews. But I'm glad you brought up Scorpion. Remember the interplay between Janeway and Chakotay that drove their arc? That's what I'm talking about. Just because you share the same goals, doesn't mean you agree on how best to accomplish them. There's only so many times you can have your opinions second guessed, your suggestions ignored, and your people killed before you've had enough and stand up. Hence the tension I'm talking about that VOY largely lacked and could have used throughout the run. It's funny that you think Scorpion could have been a season-long arc, but you're also arguing that there shouldn't be any tension between the crews. Half of the story of Scorpion is the tension between the crews (in the form of Chakotay vs Janeway), which is exactly what I think the show could have used a lot more of. Hard choices that test the two crews' loyalty and trust of each other. A constant human struggle between them. You know, good drama.
Thing is, since the show suffered from Gilligan Syndrome...their ways to get home wouldn't work either. I'm sorry, but going around acting like Space Pirates wasn't going to help either. Like I said, Gilligan Syndrome. Their quest to get home was always going to end in failure because there was no other plot. If they DID have more than one plot, the way DS9 did, then there'd be more life to it. You disregarded B7 as being too different from American TV and Lexx as badly written, so I'll focus on these two: It was, but as the show went on they pushed in into the background and had other plots take over the show. Then they resolved Crichton's plot in S4 and had the other plots take over the show. Still wasn't enough to keep them on the air. If you don't make it the one driving plot, maybe. Don't think so. See, this is exactly what I was talking about. When DS9 had them team up with the Dominion to fight renegade Jem'Hadar no one cared but if they do something similar with the Borg then it's instant panning. DS9's "The Visitor" used technobabble to justify the plot and no one cared either. What Scorpion needed was Q popping up at the end and saying "You saved the Galaxy from annihilation, there was no other course of action. Kudos." And after the guys rebel against you enough times, you wonder enough is enough and you just ditch them on some random moon and take off, since you never needed them in the first place. Voyager could be run without the Maquis. I'm arguing you can only get 1 season of conflict before it just becomes silly. DS9 did that and no one minded. And after a year or two, they'd have to learn to trust one another and work together or they'd just be dead. Of course, I think they should just drop the Lost Ship after 2 seasons or so and just form a Delta Federation to fight off the Borg and 8472 as the rest of the series' plot. Then during season 3 or so they find a wormhole or something to resolve the "go home" thing, off-load the troublemakers back home and go back to the DQ willingly for the rest of the show.
Maybe this is just semantics, but I don't necessarily see falling ratings as "nastiness." Losing interest in a show is not the same as vilifying it. That's just deciding that you have better things to do with your time. If I "hated" every TV show that I stopped watching, I'd be drowning in bitterness. For the record, I watched VOYAGER religiously for its entire run, have seen every episode, and even have a couple seasons on DVD. I have the soundtrack album, too, and love VOYAGER's theme music, which is one of my favorite pieces of Trek music. I'm just questioning whether it was criticized more extensively than any other high-profile genre show. Prediction: When the new X-FILES series debuts, there will be fervent debates on whether it's as good as the original series. You heard it here first!
You can essentially ask the same quetion about the other Star Trek shows and each of the movies. Either you avoid the show outright (like I do with ENT and the new movies). Or you find another approach (like I did with DS9 - it grew dear to my heart when I started to read the novels). Sometimes characters gain more depth in the novels than they ever had on-screen. ENT is something new for me. As Greg Cox said, there was the "decontamination" scene in the pilot which put me off. And I struggeled through the first 4 or 5 episodes. Then I'm no fan of T'Pol. But I liked the ENT short stories I read so far. So I still have several Star Trek seasons ahead of me. People who never give Voyager a chance? It's their loss. Sometimes you learn to appreciate a show later on, when it's off the screen.
Which is what I'm suggesting, and you're poo-pooing. You're arguing that the show needs more than just one plot to make it work but you're also arguing against how either could work alone. Which is it? Lost in space plus conflicted crew as the main thrust long-term and threats of the week and see what develops in their exploration of the Delta Quadrant as they make their way home. Both TOS and TNG worked on the basic premise of "see what's out there", no reason that "see what's out there", "conflicted crew", and "lost in space" couldn't all work together. At least it would have something like an overarching push instead of a vague jumble of disconnected stories. If there's only 20-40 Maquis onboard, sure. That's why you'd have to make it more of an even split for the drama to work. Below a certain number of crew you can't run the ship, but there's not enough of Starfleet or the Maquis to outright run the ship alone. They have to work together, but they're at odds on the how best to accomplish their goals. It's a matter of degree, scale, and making sense in-universe. With the Jem'Hadar you had a group of soldiers that broke free of and betrayed their masters. The Defiant crew had to work with those masters (the Vorta) to prevent the renegades from gaining access to what amounted to a super-weapon. I don't know about you, but "renegade soldiers" is a far easier premise to buy than an ancient and super powerful species from another dimension who're telepathic, bent on cleansing this dimension (for no discernible reason), and who're so super-awesome that the Borg can't assimilate them, much less actually hope to fight. Nothing about the Borg-Voyager alliance makes one whit of sense. The writers invented a species so powerful that the Borg "feared" them enough to cause them to ally themselves with the much inferior crew of the Voyager. It was a solution (how to get a Borg drone on Voyager as a member of the crew) looking for a problem (super-duper special sauce awesome new species that threatens the Borg). Also think about what else was accomplished in these stories. The DS9 episode helped to flesh out the major threat species of the next few years, the VOY episode introduced a species that was only used two more times in the remaining few years of VOY. It's not the vague premise of "work with an enemy" that I find objectionable in VOY, it's the particulars of how it was handled. The particulars of "To the Death" made far more sense than the particulars of "Scorpion". Yeah, DS9 did technobabble problems and solutions. It's Trek, it's bound to happen. But it's a matter of degree. There's what a few episodes, a dozen, a score... across the entire run of DS9 that fall into that pattern, whereas with VOY it's basically every other episode or more. Same problem with much of TNG, though honestly. DS9 has better storytelling because it didn't rely on the technobabble problem and solution of the week nearly as frequently as the others.
I mean "external plot" like "Stop the 8472 aliens from destroying the Galaxy" or something. Because neither are sustainable for more than 1 season or so. Building a Delta Federation and fighting off an Extradimensional invasion con work for longer. Another problem: Voyager didn't have enough of a connection to the Delta Quadrant. I think instead of Maquis, they should've had the other crew members be other DQ aliens being held by the Caretaker that VOY takes on when the Array blows. It serves as a better connection to their surroundings. Or you drop it after a while and focus on more important things like saving the Galaxy from destruction and rebuilding civilizations. And gaining new external allies and how you clash with them while still occasionally clashing with yourself. DS9 did the same thing, they dropped a lot of the internal tension stuff as the Dominion plot progressed. Yeah, one is good for a 2 or 3 parter, the other is the kind of plot that drives an entire series. These guys were worse than the Borg, and more powerful and were a bigger priority to stop. They're a true Galactic threat while the Borg are far easier to repel and beat off. What they needed was Q to pop up and say "There was no other way to do this. You did the right thing, kudos." So any moron with half a brain cell would get it. We already knew there were species out there that could easily annihilate the Borg. They aren't the threat everyone thinks they are. They needed to get the Borg out of the way so VOY could bypass them. Another species decimating them neatly explains that and shows how awesome the VOY crew is that they could do what the Borg couldn't. Of course, I'm sure the audience would've preferred something contrived like the VOY crew running into El-Aurien survivors who have all kinds of super anti-Borg tech VOY can use to fight off the Borg and 8472. Because the audience hated Scorpion and hated the 8472 aliens. Meanwhile DS9 gets away with 1-D bozos like the Breen. It shows that VOY couldn't do anything big cool and Galaxy-saving without getting panned. This is what I'm getting at, the whole "Lost Ship" should've been dropped after a while and been more of an epic story involving the Delta Quadrant. Farscape had the Peacekeeper/Scarran war, DS9 had the Dominion, LEXX had numerous threats ranging from giant Insect Warlords to Satan, VOY should've similarly become about far more than just one lost ship.
My memory was that VOY recieved a laregly positive responsne when details of it's premise started to come out. When TNG and to a lesser extent DSN came out there was less competition in that genre, so in some respects VOY had to come out of the blocks strong unfortunatly like TNG and DSN before it the first few episodes were less than stellar.
My memory was that VOY received a WTF? response when details of it's premise started to come out. Then more when it was shown that the Captain was going to be a normal looking woman and not a Ripley knock-off.
Of course there are people who like it, but we're talking about what percentage of people who watched it liked it. Pointing to a few positive reviews on Amazon says nothing about that percentage. You might as well use a poll on TrekBBS as evidence that nobody dislikes science fiction. I think people were excited about the premise of Voyager when it was announced. But again, the producers were saying things about the show that they did not stick to, and they just did not offer up compelling scripts. Blame the network, blame burnout, blame Berman, but that's what happened. The show ended up with a third of the ratings it started with, and I haven't met a single person face to face who thought it was more than 'Okay'.
An oxymoron if there ever was one. I don't hate VOYAGER. Some episodes might have annoyed me from time to time, but I never hated it. It's a Star Trek show, and in my book, that alone automatically puts it head and shoulders above the rest of television.
Yes, that is exactly where I thought you have been trying to go with this; and I want to nip it in the bud. There is no call to insinuate the OP really can't know what he or she is talking about and has no right to claim. When I sought out the TrekBBS in 2000, the atmosphere here in the VOY forum was absolutely NUCLEAR. There was so much hatred toward the show and abuse of its fans (woe to those who actually liked the show) that I didn't come back for six months; hence my start date here of Feb 2001. It wasn't any different when I did return, but I didn't think it was fair that I should have to stay away because a lot of fans were behaving poorly. The issue in my opinion was that Niners were expecting more DS9, and they didn't get it. They got something different, and they were furious. Some years ago a poster did a bbs-wide survey here as a school project and learned that 60% of the respondents were DS9 fans first -- and that 40% of them liked no other Trek than DS9. So in addition to what they themselves said here in the forum, this survey bore out the reason for the bitterness. Niners were who we heard from the most. But one doesn't have to go back that far; there are plenty of people here now that will tell you the life of a fan of the show has been rough in this forum. It's not been a place for actual fans of the show but rather detractors of the show. I guess it's too much to expect that some so-called fans keep their qualified approval, backhanded compliments and lukewarm response to themselves. No one needs their crumbs. After all these years, I am way past fatigued of hearing how they really "don't hate the show," but are just "disappointed" and feel it "fell short" and "didn't live up to its premise," ad nauseam. I personally am not interested in the angst they suffer in their struggle with VOY. We all have things we don't like; just move on, for pete's sake.
Oh lol well does that (one person's experiences) must mean the whole or even a noteworthy percentage of Trek fandom? I think not. And I think the thousands of Voyager fans on other internet sites would very much disagree. Surprise, this site doesn't represent the whole of Trek fandom. And BTW I don't consider the 650 plus positive (4 stars and up) ratings on Amazon (out of not quite 800) for Voyager's season one "a few," and if some one does think that then IMO would suggest a reality check. As a long-time Trek fan I don't "blame" anyone for Voyager supposedly being inferior, because I don't consider it so. My opinion is as valid as anyone's. And for the many Trek fans I have known or met in person since Voyager premiered, most did like it, some quite a lot. Some not so much. But am not saying my experiences are definitive, just an example that one's person's opinions aren't the only one, believe it or not. Honestly, do some "people" just like being negative here?
What an odd response. "Either you love it and you're gushing or shut up." How about this: Either accept that others get to express their opinions, or just move on. For Pete's sake. BTW, I was disappointed by Voyager because it fell short of its potential and didn't live up to its premise. That doesn't mean I hate it, far from it. It's still Trek, so it's still good, but it's far, far from perfect. I see nothing wrong with acknowledging the flaws of any of the series or films. And I find it peculiar that so many people around here seem incapable of either acknowledging that their series or film of choice is not the single best thing ever to exist in the history of everything ever or of even accepting that the simple discussion of their series or film of choice's flaws are, in fact, a valid topic. For the record: TOS was the single hammiest, over-acted, over-written show I think I've ever seen. TNG, once it got going, had some really interesting ideas for shows that were poorly served by the vast disparity in acting ability of the cast and generally sloppy over-use of technobabble. DS9 had some great characters and storylines, but was marred by some of the stupidest concepts, over-use of religion, over-use of the Klingons, and over-reliance on the "hey, look... we're so dark" button. VOY has been discussed at length, but essentially the self-same comments you decry are spot on. ENT was another great premise that was simply not followed-through with and somehow managed to screw up one of the most long-established species in the franchise (Vulcans). And the less said about the anti-Trek heartless and hollow action-adventure films that Abrams helmed the better.
If you looked at tumblr, FB or LJ of yore you would think VOY was the most popular Trek ever. This site has always had a different crowd, fandom wise. If you only read this site to see how fandom skews you're getting a small slice of the pie. I always enjoy tumblr because the fandom focuses on what someone loves and how great it is rather than what they don't care for and why it sucks. I remember after I'd been on this site for a few years going to a con and talking to the people standing around the Trek club table, they were all male and they all said Voyager was their favorite series. I was actually shocked and going away I realized how much time on this BBS had influenced my view of fandoms opinions of the varying Treks. I should not have been shocked because outside of this BBS there is no overwhelming consensus as to which Trek is the superior one and which ones were bad.
And I've been to cons were TOS, TNG or DSN was peoples favourite Trek show. As you point out we all simply like different things, and we can be drawn towards places that share our views. Do different regions view the shows differently, i.e. is one ST show slightly more popular in the US than it is in the UK, is one more popular in Canada than Germany etc..? Viewer ratings on sites can be skewed slightly, after all if I really didn't like something I personally wouldn't even waste my time rating it. However if I really liked it I might be more inclined to rate it.
Voyager is shown more often in free TV than TOS. They show TOS on TV stations I can't receive. As to Voyager, TNG, and to a lesser extent DS9: they are currently stuck in a temporary causality loop.
I'm here for only several month. When I picture the Voyager bashing that must have taken place, I'm dismayed. Weren't there any mods? If so, they had their hands full. I'm surprised that the Wesley bashing is relatively moderate in the TNG forum. There also new characters in the litverse that provoked hate threads. Criticism is all well and good, but it's not what you say, but how you say it.
Kilana2, there was a mod. He essentially let his friends operate with impunity. At one point later on, I confronted him about it publicly on the forum; that he had let this happen on his watch. After that I don't remember ever seeing him again, at least not with that screen name. I also confronted one of the worst forum trolls about that time and got him to make a public apology on the forum; I haven't seen him around either, at least not with that screen name.