Not exactly. Every show had technobabble, but Voyager seemed to rely on it more, and I can't think of one TOS reset ending.
Where did the show go wrong?
- Thread starter gakelly
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Not exactly. Every show had technobabble, but Voyager seemed to rely on it more, and I can't think of one TOS reset ending.
It's heavy on it in the first two or three seasons, when Michael Piller was running the show, but so was DS9 when he was running that show, and especially TNG under Piller.
What do you mean by "reset ending"?
Sounds like Picard.
The "it was all a dream" type crap or the timeline will be reset to how it normally was after the time travel and nothing that happened will have any meaning is what he means by reset.
I wish the final episode of Voyager would have had Harry Kim wake up and be back on Earth getting ready to ship out on his first mission on Voyager and he tells some dude about a troubling dream that he had, and then we find out the entire series never really happened. Of course the final episode would have had to have the typical Braga junk where someone was drifting back and forth through different time periods.
Each time they use the "It was all a dream" Deus Ex Machina and things alike it really feels like a cheat.
Apparently, beating the crap out of his brother makes Picard a better man than Chakotay!Except that Picard never asks his dead father for advice.
I am not sure it's a fair assessment. They fought and neither was a clear winner. Plus it was after his brother admitted bullying him when he was younger.
So let me get this straight:
You don't like "It was all a dream type crap." I don't believe Voyager ever did this.
...but, your preferred finale is that "It was all a dream."
As for a time travel episode where the timeline is reset, this is like the basics of a conventional time travel story. TOS does it at least twice.
City on the Edge of Forever- McCoy goes back in time, screws up the timeline. Kirk and Spock then go back and fix it. All is reset. All is restored, and everyone else has no clue what happened.
Return to Tomorrow- The Enterprise accidently goes back in time, is forced to abduct an air force pilot. The whole episode is spent trying to remove any evidence of their being there, but in the end, they go back one or two days earlier, restore the timeline, then go back to the future. Everything is Reset, none of it ever happened.
This also takes place in time travel episodes on TNG, DS9, and ENT multiple times.
I listed Voyagers 10 or 11 time travel episodes a page or so back. Out of those, only a few of them do the "reset" ending, and they are highly praised episodes anyway, like Year of Hell, and Timeless. And this is out of 170+ episodes...7 years of a show.
I'm not sure why you keep mentioning Brannon Braga. He wrote some of the very best episodes on TNG and VOY. No writer can hit a home run every single time. For instance, Ira S. Behr wrote Let he who is Without Sin. But besides all that, Brannon Braga was not Voyager's showrunner until season 4, and not its sole showrunner until season 5 & 6. Then he left the show at the end of Season 6.
And Voyager's strongest and most consistently high quality seasons, I think most would agree, are seasons 4 and 5, when Braga was in charge, or mostly in charge.
Seasons 1-3, and 4 were run by Michael Piller and/or Jeri Taylor. Season 7 was run Kenneth Biller. By "run," I mean in charge of the writer's room, and the creative vision of the show.
Besides sharing head writers with TNG and DS9, Voyager shared many other writers with those shows, not to mention directors, crew, and guest actors.
So when you make a comment about Braga followed by "for 7 years of Voyager," you aren't making sense.
Edit: I don't remember Chakotay ever beating up his dad. Did this happen? Though, he was jerk to him as an angsty teenager
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First of all, the finale being all a dream was sarcasm
Secondly, if you can find anywhere that I ever made a comment about Braga followed by "for 7 years of Voyager" please point it out to me. I have never said anything remotely close to that in any of my comments...and since you put it in quotes, you are either making it up or have me confused with someone else.
I apologize. You started talking about the finale and I must have confused the threads, but you said this:
The second TOS episode you mention about the Air Force pilot is "TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY". "RETURN TO TOMORROW" is with Sargon and Henoch. (I can see why people confuse those titles, though.)
Regarding 'time travel reset', I think what they are referring to is more about how everything we see didn't end up happening and therefore not truly developing the characters. Good examples of this would be "Yesterday's Enterprise", "TIME AND AGAIN", "YEAR OF HELL", "TIMELESS", and "TWILIGHT". We as the audience saw it happen, but because of whatever time issue was used to resolve it, it never really happened to those characters. That's a 'time reset' episode.
With "THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER" and "TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY", those events DID happen and they remember it at the end of the episode, even if it isn't mentioned later in the series. So not a reset episode.
DS9 never hit the reset button, at least with their time episodes. (DS9 and TOS are the only series NOT to use the reset button with time travel stories. DISCOVERY is still on the air, so we won't know until it finishes it's run.)
"PAST TENSE", "VISIONARY", "THE VISITOR", "LITTLE GREEN MEN", " TRIALS AND TRIBBLE-ATIONS", "CHILDREN OF TIME", "TIME'S ORPHAN"... all of them had at least someone remember the events at the end, so those events actually happened to the characters.
Brannon Braga - he was the only writer of VOYAGER who was there for the entire run... he did a few stories and a couple teleplays for season 7. Kenneth Biller came in partway through season 1.
I do agree that Braga brought some great episodes to the franchise, and was a very imaginative, high concept writer. The thing he is notorious for, at least to me (and quite possibly many people), is his over-reliance and use of time travel in his episodes.
He wrote, co-wrote, did the story, or did the teleplay of about 100 episodes and 2 movies... out of those, 22 episodes and both movies involved time travel in some way. That's 1/4 of his work, quite a large amount for one subject. Again, some of those are REALLY great ones... it's just too much time travel for one man, honestly. Someone can get too comfortable with it and use it as a crutch.
What's wrong with a linear direction? Anyway, they often didn't go with a direct route. What's wrong with a "species of the week" format?
Whut? no....
A valid point
This makes no sense...
No. The use of Borg has nothing to do with "need for recurring characters/species.
Voyager never beat several Borg cubes at once until Endgame thanks to futuristic technology. Voyager could handle a single Kazon ship without someone with insider information. Having a whole of fleet of Kazon facing them was hard to handle, especially without anybody who has experience serving on a Kazon vessel. Voyager often barely got out of trouble facing a single Borg vessel even with Seven's help I'd admit they did make Borg seem less of a threat, but only because we saw them more often.
The Visitor
If these are good examples of the "reset button," add to that The Visitor, then surely the reset button is a good thing, and should be spoken of highly. Besides Time and Again, the rest of these are some of the most beloved episodes in all of Star Trek, even Twilight, one of ENT's greatest stories.
Are there any other examples? Or is that the conclusive list.
I mentioned "THE VISITOR" in my post, and Ben Sisko DOES remember what happened from his time jumps, so not fully a reset like the other examples I mention.
And I never said the reset was a good or bad thing, just was explaining WHAT it was and some examples.
And I never said the reset was a good or bad thing, just was explaining WHAT it was and some examples.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a "species of the week" format as with most things it's all about the execution of that format. Now for me aside from a few nods every now and then I never really got the impression that our characters thought they might never see home again. Whilst there was some character growth and development there could have been more characters like Kim and Chakotay weren't too different from when we first saw them. The show could have developed a strong cast of secondary characters i.e. like Carey
How does a species of the week format prevent the show from doing that?
Eh...?
Were we supposed to see them act like they were worried they'd never get home? I think it was intentional. I'd agree they could have had a strong cast of secondary characters like they did on DS9.
As for Chakotay, he was already a seasoned officer. He's a very reflective and intelligent man who saw himself as a scientist first. He may have believed that he'd be in prison if they got home. He lived on starships for most of his adult life, so living on Voyager wasn't...enough of a change for him...no more fighting Cardies and once again exploring. It may be an issue for certain Maquis, but not so much for him.
He's at an age where one doesn't change that much in seven years. He was in his forties when they first got into the Delta Quadrant and was pushing fifty when they got home. Personality and behavior usually don't change that much, especially with someone who already had lost so much. His parents seem to be dead and he didn't seem have many close friends left. He probably was content on Voyager.
Were we supposed to see them act like they were worried they'd never get home? I think it was intentional. I'd agree they could have had a strong cast of secondary characters like they did on DS9.
As for Chakotay, he was already a seasoned officer. He's a very reflective and intelligent man who saw himself as a scientist first. He may have believed that he'd be in prison if they got home. He lived on starships for most of his adult life, so living on Voyager wasn't...enough of a change for him...no more fighting Cardies and once again exploring. It may be an issue for certain Maquis, but not so much for him.
He's at an age where one doesn't change that much in seven years. He was in his forties when they first got into the Delta Quadrant and was pushing fifty when they got home. Personality and behavior usually don't change that much, especially with someone who already had lost so much. His parents seem to be dead and he didn't seem have many close friends left. He probably was content on Voyager.
And in any show, there are going to be characters set up to have growth and change while others aren't, and act as anchors for the ones that do.
In Voyager, the characters set up to have growth are Tom Paris, B'elanna, Kes, the Doctor, and Seven.
Ensign Kim probably should be a "growth character," but yes, he doesn't change that much. He should have at least matured like Bashir, who didn't always have "growth," but was occasionally tweaked for a new season.
Chakotay didn't really need to change any more than he did. And they all got development, some more than others.
There are other characters in Star Trek who don't grow or change, like O'Brien, or Jadzia. Worf, despite soo many episodes focusing on him, does not really change as a character.
Sisko has some subtle growth(not counting the change to demigod), and I would say Janeway has some subtle growth as well.
In Voyager, the characters set up to have growth are Tom Paris, B'elanna, Kes, the Doctor, and Seven.
Ensign Kim probably should be a "growth character," but yes, he doesn't change that much. He should have at least matured like Bashir, who didn't always have "growth," but was occasionally tweaked for a new season.
Chakotay didn't really need to change any more than he did. And they all got development, some more than others.
There are other characters in Star Trek who don't grow or change, like O'Brien, or Jadzia. Worf, despite soo many episodes focusing on him, does not really change as a character.
Sisko has some subtle growth(not counting the change to demigod), and I would say Janeway has some subtle growth as well.
Where did the show go wrong:
From even before the first episode aired, in the writters room..
They concived a Very good premise, Lets send a Federation ship across the galaxy with no easy way home., then they dropped the ball when they didn't plan out what they wanted to do with it. With a full series, they would have 7 years.
Much has been said about the series being "serialized" like what B5 and others were up to, I agree, this premise was ripe for that type of story telling, even if it was "Mini Arcs" like Ds9 was doing.
It would have been nice to not have a "Alien of the Week" but an alien, or over arching problem for the year/season.
Ideas that they had for 1 episode could have been drawn out over multipule episodes
Example: the one where they crossed the void.. they could have stretched that out to half a season easy, Have them see that they would have to cross the void, maybe a few months, so show them getting ready, supplies, fuel etc. maybe crack open the stasis chambers to save power.. then you have the crossing, WITHOUT the shortcut, but you have species living in the void, rouge planets, rogue stars, etc. red or brown dwarfs.. you know be scientifically creative!
For the Maquis crew, you could have had a few be slackers, or ones that REALLY wanted off the ship, you could have had an episode or few, lead up to say a 1/4 of the crew wanting to mutiny, or wanting to pick a planet an settle down rather than risk the trip home, which has a good chance in not succeeding.. Maybe instead of having the Equinox being assholes, maybe they set off home, but after awhile, they realize, there ship is to small, and not enough resources, and can't make the trip back home, so they find some planet, and they settle down. Enter voyager, year 4-5, and they encounter the equinox, and then some of the crew elect to stay behind to settle on there planet.. ( great way to get rid of characters that arrnt working out, and infuse new ones by adding people that want to go home and not settle)
The new Full Circle novels are what Voyager should have been, atleaset crew wise, her books make me Care about that crew.. ( speaking of Stargate Universe.. you could have spaced the whole crew.. and I would have cheered!)
From even before the first episode aired, in the writters room..
They concived a Very good premise, Lets send a Federation ship across the galaxy with no easy way home., then they dropped the ball when they didn't plan out what they wanted to do with it. With a full series, they would have 7 years.
Much has been said about the series being "serialized" like what B5 and others were up to, I agree, this premise was ripe for that type of story telling, even if it was "Mini Arcs" like Ds9 was doing.
It would have been nice to not have a "Alien of the Week" but an alien, or over arching problem for the year/season.
Ideas that they had for 1 episode could have been drawn out over multipule episodes
Example: the one where they crossed the void.. they could have stretched that out to half a season easy, Have them see that they would have to cross the void, maybe a few months, so show them getting ready, supplies, fuel etc. maybe crack open the stasis chambers to save power.. then you have the crossing, WITHOUT the shortcut, but you have species living in the void, rouge planets, rogue stars, etc. red or brown dwarfs.. you know be scientifically creative!
For the Maquis crew, you could have had a few be slackers, or ones that REALLY wanted off the ship, you could have had an episode or few, lead up to say a 1/4 of the crew wanting to mutiny, or wanting to pick a planet an settle down rather than risk the trip home, which has a good chance in not succeeding.. Maybe instead of having the Equinox being assholes, maybe they set off home, but after awhile, they realize, there ship is to small, and not enough resources, and can't make the trip back home, so they find some planet, and they settle down. Enter voyager, year 4-5, and they encounter the equinox, and then some of the crew elect to stay behind to settle on there planet.. ( great way to get rid of characters that arrnt working out, and infuse new ones by adding people that want to go home and not settle)
The new Full Circle novels are what Voyager should have been, atleaset crew wise, her books make me Care about that crew.. ( speaking of Stargate Universe.. you could have spaced the whole crew.. and I would have cheered!)
I like the idea of the Equinox crew settled on the planet. A lot of the rest was actually covered in the show.
The show's premise makes for the perfect platform to tell classic sci fi Star Trek stories. It makes a horrible platform for telling serialized Babylon 5 type stories. They are always on the move. Every season brings new groups of aliens to encounter, while having to abandon the old ones.
The better examples of seasonal arcs were season 2, with the Seska wants to take the ship story, and season 4. The introduce the borg slowly in season 3. The big stuff happens in scorpion, and the story arc culminates in the season 4 finale.
The show's premise makes for the perfect platform to tell classic sci fi Star Trek stories. It makes a horrible platform for telling serialized Babylon 5 type stories. They are always on the move. Every season brings new groups of aliens to encounter, while having to abandon the old ones.
The better examples of seasonal arcs were season 2, with the Seska wants to take the ship story, and season 4. The introduce the borg slowly in season 3. The big stuff happens in scorpion, and the story arc culminates in the season 4 finale.
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