Shows that should have been better

[Mr. Adventure]

Yes, I consider those criticisms to be nitpicking - especially the complaints about the condition of the ship and the endless supply of resources - because they don't actually affect the quality of the seties unless you, as an audience member, let them.

I think there was a lot of squandered opportunity for dramatic storytelling and a unique storyline for Trek that came from not taking full advantage of the setting. I actually first came to this BBS to discuss Voyager and what I found is that there are two kinds of Voyager watchers and that the fans of the show not only like the show as presented but that they have no interest in seeing those elements. Myself, I'd like to have seen the degradation of the ship and scrounging for resources and seeing Janeway struggle to keep the crew and mission working towards the ideals of Starfleet when stranded in the wilderness. I haven't watched it really since it aired but I felt at the time it wasn't unlike watching TNG whereas something like DS9 used the setting to provide novel plots.

 

[DigificWriter]

There are Voyager fans who agree with the perceived faults of the show and the notion that more could've been done with the premise, but I'm no longer one of said fans, as actually watching the show in its intended order brought me to the realization that, while not executed perfectly, it succeeded in reaching its potential far more than it failed.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

So, out of curiosity, where does one find the intended order of Voyager?

 

[DigificWriter]

The best place to get the intended order for Voyager is to go to Memory Alpha's entry for the series and sort their episode lists by Production Number. The only exception to this is that you need to use Airdate Order for Lifesigns and Investigations, which were inverted in Production Order but have to follow one another in terms of their linear narrative.

You can also sort things by Stardate, but with that order, you need to make sure that Lifesigns and Investigations still follow each other by Airdate and that Year of Hell P1 and P2 follow each other without any other episodes in between.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Putting aside the debate over whether the show should have been more faithful to the premise, and accepting that it was trying to be episodic and tell standalone stories.

Voyager has a mostly good character cast, and maybe a third of the episodes were quite good. It had some pretty major problems. It had certain bad story patterns and premises it went to far too often. It did the 'Two characters get on each others nerves, they are trapped in a small space with a task they need to work together on, and learn a greater respect for each other' way too often and usually with Neelix. It did the 'Some character is anxious about something relating to their main quirks. They go a bit nuts. Then have a realization and forget all about it' way too often. They went to the holodeck way too often. They leaned way too hard on time travel and the Borg in less and less believable setups. They seemed like they didn't have a clue what to do with characters who weren't defined by a gimmick. When Seven joined they started ignoring all characters but Janeway, her and the Doctor.

But, in episodes that avoided the show's problems, they usually did a good job.

 

[DigificWriter]

@JirinPanthosa I'm not going to get into the merits of whether or not the plot patterns you cite are good or bad, because I think that's a very subjective thing.I did want to point out, though, that the idea that Voyager used the Borg and/or Time Travel too much is a misconception, since out of 176 episodes (splitting the four double-length episodes into their component halves), there were a grand total of 34 episodes combined which involved either of/both of those things.

It also baffles me that anyone could complain that they used the holodeck 'too much', because, as with the Borg, Voyager is the one series where using the holodeck a lot actually made practical sense because it was really their only source of 'relaxation'. I guess one could make the argument that a ship that far from home shouldn't have used up its precious resources for something like the holodeck, but that's more of a nitpick, IMO, than anything that actually affected the quality of the series in any substantial way.

When it comes to characters, I can see where the perception might arise that Voyager became the "Seven, Janeway, and Doctor" show post-Season 4, but would make the counter-argument that the show by that point didn't need to be as much of an ensemble series as it had been, and the writers could afford to come up with stories that focused on the most popular characters (B'Elanna and Tom also got a lot of focus post-Season 4, both individually and as a pair).

 

[DigificWriter]

As an addendum to my earlier post about Voyager's intended viewing order, I'd forgotten that they produced several episodes in Season 3 out-of-sequence - Sacred Ground, False Profits, Flashback, and Basics P2 - meaning that said episodes also need to be watched either in Stardate order or Airdate order (depending on your preference).

 

[Warped9]

I find VOY completely unwatchable. It's TNG 2.0 with totally uninteresting characters. They could have just stranded the 1701D in a remote region and be done with it given after seven seasons I was bored with TNG.

Thankfully I had Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ I think you should rewatch the series in its intended order and see if doing so changes your mind.

 

[Warped9]

^ I think you should rewatch the series in its intended order and see if doing so changes your mind.

No. I detested it first time around. No way in hell I will subject myself to that again.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ Fine. It's your loss, though, because Voyager is as good, in its own way, as Babylon 5, especially if/when watched in its proper order.

 

[Warped9]

^ Fine. It's your loss, though, because Voyager is as good, in its own way, as Babylon 5, especially if/when watched in its proper order.

It's certainly not my loss in any way to be measured. I can find lots of other things I will find vastly more entertaining.

Just accept I will never waste my time watching VOY again.

 

[bigdaddy]

So, out of curiosity, where does one find the intended order of Voyager?

With your eyes closed and listening to music.

Honestly Dig, we get it, you like Voyager. The purpose of this is to talk about shows that could have been better. IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER, even you admitted it didn't even bother to worry about the whole premise of the show. We don't like it, you do, you think everything we say is nitpicking. Move on.

Honestly you are like an ex of mine, doesn't know how to move on, but will sit around and bitch because I don't agree with him anymore.

 

[DigificWriter]

Voyager didnt have to be better; it was fine just as it was, and all it takes for that to be made clear is to watch it as it was intended to be watched.

I'll drop the subject, though, and move on.

 

[Trekkin]

24 and Heroes.

I never hated them, and did watch both until their bitter ends. They also stared out being, you know, flawed-but-still-pretty-good-and-entertaining.

But oh holy hell - when things went downhill for those shows, they snowballed hard and fast.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

@DigificWriter

If they used the same two premises for a fifth of the episodes, that is way too much. The Borg are the kind of villain that are more threatening and impactful the less often you see them and using a boundariless make believe venue to drive stories is the definition of a crutch.

Leaning hard on disposable sitcom tropes is just plain bad writing. Voyager liked to define characters as the sum of their character quirks. Driving most character development through a few isolated distinguishing traits rather than having them react to situations as nuanced three dimensional adults is lazy and makes them seem shallow, boring and often childish.

It's also the reason characters like Kim and Chakotay were so dull. They didn't have distinguishing gimmicks, and to the Voyager writers, the two ways a character could react to something is by their 'quirk' or as a generic uniform. Whereas a better team of writers could have made them three dimensional without relying on quirks or gimmicks.

 

[bigdaddy]

Meaning on from Star Trek to Stargate...

I just rewetted what I called Stargate Command (Seasons 9-10 and that crap movie.) Val was the best thing to happen to Stargate, she actually fit in the show and was well written. I'm amazed. Because she wasn't in more of season 9 it really suffered. However season 10 wasn't as decent as I remember. They killed the Ori with like 8 episodes left and just did stand alone ones. It was very odd. I don't remember when they got word of it being canceled, but I figured they would have some more closure. Though I do like Unending, but the Asgard killing themselves and only giving their tech and knowledge to one country's space ship is completely insane.

But the movie, Ark of Truth was a mess. Clearly they only needed one more episode to end the story, but had 90 minutes (two episodes) to fill so they came up with that mess of a replicator story where Replicator meets Terminator. I rather they spent more time with the Arc, looking for it, trying to get it to work, than the lame Replicator storyline. Sure finding Ancient tech to save themselves and the universe got REALLY old by the end, but still better than fucking useless Replicators.

 

[MacLeod]

Well I agree that the Replicator part of "Ark of Truth" was it's weakest element and should never have made it into the script. As for the Asgard, surely they meant for thier knowledge to be shared by the people of Earth.

 

[bigdaddy]

Well I agree that the Replicator part of "Ark of Truth" was it's weakest element and should never have made it into the script. As for the Asgard, surely they meant for thier knowledge to be shared by the people of Earth.

Surely they did? If I were them I would make the human race actual come together. I doubt there are more than 25 countries o the planet that actually know about the Stargate program. The Asgard didn't stick the knowledge in a public place, they stuck it on an USA spaceship that only .5% of the population of the USA even knows about. The whole storyline was very odd. All I can think of is that the writers were planning for the future, maybe a 4th show, and didn't want the human race to be insanely powerful so they stuck the knowledge on the ship so in the future they can blow it up.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Farscape. I loved what it was trying to do and loved its concept. Aliens were very creative and detailed, and CGI is only just getting there. But I felt overall it took a long time to gain traction.

The stories IMHO, were a bit of a mess in the first two seasons; very campy with hammed up acting, and very random, though maybe that had more to do with the decade it was made in. Those seasons I don't think aged very well. Some of the stories, especially the multi-parters were very bloated, and I felt they could have benefited from being shorter. There was only one episode in the first season where I felt it was truly excellent, and that was the one where John first meets those wormhole aliens teaching him a lesson. Was kind of disappointed that there weren't more of those in the first season.

Third season, I felt, was its weakest. Fourth season is where I felt it finally hit its stride. You can see hints of story arcs in the earlier seasons, but here they used it to good advantage, and the acting was better, more subdued aside from that one episode (John Quixote) where they go back to the style of the first season, but overall it seemed like everything came together nicely and they finally understood what they wanted the show to be. Alas, the fourth was its last, and in that respect, I hesitate to say it, but it's a bit like Enterprise and how it struggled to find its footing. I wish the other seasons had been as good as the 4th. Haven't seen the Peacekeeper Wars, so I can't speak for that. Overall, I'm glad I've seen it, but I still wish it could have been better.