I liked Mr. Carey's role in the first season. However, he seemed to disappear until dying in season 7...I think he could have had a more prominent role.
Would Have Been Nice to See More LT Carey
- Thread starter mysticgeek
- Start date
I think the writers assumed they had long ago killed him off. Then came back for him in the end when they discovered they had accidentally left one standing.
I was impressed with how Enterprise managed to mostly do that. They kept the background characters fairly consistent more or less.
I won't speak to his buying the farm, as hux points out above, its been discussed recently a good bit and I made my points there. However, as to the thread's premise, I certainly think there would have been value in seeing him at least a couple of times a year, and not for a split second either (Fury). I don't know that I would have advocated his being the focal point in an episode, but he definitely had an everyman type quality that was appealing, he was extremely capable and dedicated to his work (and became reconciled to a decision that must have been a bitter pill to swallow), and he crafted that ship in the bottle for his boys (whom I would have liked to hear him talk about sometime).
What's not to like?
What's not to like?
I think his absence, and the absence of other minor characters for that matter, can largely be attributed to the heavy transition to Seven of Nine storylines. A lot of her episodes could be considered superfluous. I can only imagine what kind of episodes could have been written if they had decided to flesh out the rest of the ship's crew instead.
Carey stopped appearing half way through Season 1. Seven didn't arrive until Season 4. Ironically Carey appeared again during the Seven era. I agree about the lack of recurring characters probably being down to the domination of Seven and also the Doctor and Janeway.
Voyager had the potential to have some really good recurring characters, people missing their families, some not able to deal with the situation, a temporary assignment turned into a living nightmare, Maquis having to wear a uniform they hate, losing people they've become close too, etc. This was a series where the recurring characters could've excelled, seeing as how they're all there is and they're not getting relieved anytime soon.
Unfortunately, it never did and the people who could've been good to develop over time (or at least see more of) were left to fade into the black.
Unfortunately, it never did and the people who could've been good to develop over time (or at least see more of) were left to fade into the black.
I still blame UPN for a lot of this.
What's bad is they actually used reoccurring extras. You would see the same face in the background from time to time and I used to wonder "What's his story?" Oh well...
Hmm, sounds like an interesting fanfic challenge.
The fact is they were cheapos. They didn't want to fork over the money to pay for reoccurring Voy crew roles. A crying shame. It felt like Janeway and her senior officers are lost in space and everyone else was the proverbial hamster on the wheel peddling them home. Or holograms carrying work cases to appear as though the ship had people on it apart from the big chairs.
Oh, I forgot to answer the original question. Yes, it would have been nice to see him on more. Be'lanna being the brains alone down there made her look like a manager at Mc donalds and the background were the burger makers. Yes, Janeway would come down and give her two cents then we had Seven later, but in the end Be'lanna seemed to run that section on her own with drone like crew about. They were so two-dimensional. More carey!
Voyager was a small ship. Once they introduced recurring Secondaries they'd have to include them in every episode unless they could contrive a reason to not have them around.
They couldn't really get the Primary Cast to work in every episode (partially because some of the actors were phoning it in from Day One), so adding in more recurring characters would've cluttered stories up too much.
Nonsense, in TNG more often or not from S2 onwards, O'Brien was the Transporter Chief. Shall we go back even further to TOS and Kyle who was often the Transporter Chief. What about Ogawa, Barclay in TNG. They may only have been in a handful of episodes but they seemed more apart of TNG then most of VOY recurring characters.
They wouldn't have to contrieve a reason to include them in every episode, they are simply off-duty.
Why would they need to be in every episode?
If they don't work on the bridge or in engineering, you pretty much wouldn't see them unless the episode focused on them. Simply having them show up twice a season in the mess would have been adequate. A line here or there in the corridors, on an away mission, in the mess etc. Would have worked fine.
Voyager didn't even convince me that the regulars spent that much time together during their off hours. For a ship that turned into family, there should have been more off hours scenes.
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The Ent-D was a lot bigger than Voyager, which is all the explanation needed for why we wouldn't see everyone all the time. Voyager didn't have that luxury.
TOS only had three major characters, that leaves a lot of extra room for other characters to fit into stories and scripts.
Voyager was a much smaller ship with little room to stow unwanted characters off-camera, they would have to explain where they were whenever we didn't see them.
As stated above.
At which point the complaints become that they don't try hard enough to have them be in more episodes. Even if it's reasonable they couldn't be in every episode.
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