The positive Voyager thread: What was good with the series?

Again, all of these are top notch episodes, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how someone perceives them as being any more or less poorly executed than any of the other series. The idea is so preposterous to me that the only thing I can come up with for an excuse is a strong female lead vis a vis the captain. Everyone hates the strong female captain, the men who are subordinate to her, the strong and confident Seven, but everyone loves Kes, a weak, helpless little elfin boy that needs Neelix to save her, the doctor to teach her to be a nurse, Tuvok to teach her to be telepathic, and be weak enough for an alien to take over her mind.

I'm not trying to be contentious here... I just don't see it, and I don't get it. What I see is a series true to TOS.

 

Again when I say that Archer is a bungling fool, I don't see you or any other tell me that's because I have a prejudice against strong male leads.

What's good for the goose is also good for the gander.

 

I'm surprised it's so overlooked and fans tend to have a "meh" reaction to it. To me, it was a real science fiction story with a little Twilight Zone added to it. It had a lot of irony. This fake crew had the same memories and thoughts as the real ones and wanted to get home and ended up being destroyed before anyone could find their wreckage. Mind bender.

I just think Voyager overstretched things like time travel to the point there was no fascination whatsoever left. The previous three already stretched the area thin and Voyager overdid it.

The Borg--between the Borg Queen and Voyager understanding just about everything about them and outwitting them constantly created kind of a fatigue with them. The Super Borg (gimmicky), Borg Children, Borg daydreaming and starting a rebellion-and more--it was too much.

But I do like that Voyager took the crazier risks creatively.

Isn't she just perfect. That makes her even more sexy!

 

The problem with the way Voyager treated time travel is that it's an anything goes bullshit. at the end of future's end, Braxton never experienced the timeline but Janeway and the others remember him experience it. So which is it? and Then when we see him later he did experience it... So they can't even be coherent with themselves!! And absolutely everything Voyager does about time travel is just like that. They don't even try to make it look like they care.

Janeway learns to type on a keyboard quite fast in a matter of seconds, as a matter of fact so does Scotty. I mean these are not people, they are androids.

 

hmmm... And the same thing happens in every TOS time travel episode, any TNG episode where they go to the past, and any DS9 episode where they go to the past. The crew always remember their experiences. In Future's End, this makes perfect sense. Voyager went back to the past and stopped the inventor guy from going to the future. Voyager has to remember their experiences. While the Braxton at the end never experienced the inventor guy going to the future and destroying it...because Voyager stopped him. He is traveling back to put Voyager back in the delta quadrant. He is leaving from the same point in his own time, that the Braxton at the beginning did. He never experienced the events that the earlier Braxton did.

If you want something to complain about, it should be the return of Braxton in season 5, but that is more of a "fun" episode, and doesn't take itself as seriously.

I've said this many times here. The other shows (TOS, TNG, DS9, and ENT) did time travel stories just as much as Voyager; Averaging about one or two per season. Any complaints about Voyager's time travel travel mechanics can be applied just as easily to the other series.

 

lol, even her sweat smells like proverbial roses, so I am told.

 

And that's not her talking, it's the Doctor.

 

They are characters in a science fiction television series. Very often with these types of shows, the viewer has to suspend disbelief so that they don't obsess about things that prevent them from enjoying the work.

If you really want to criticize at that level, everything sucks. What I'm trying to tell you, that I hope you understand at some point, is that when you're looking through rose colored glasses at your favorite show, all these little mistakes disappear. When you've got the glasses off, and you're picking nits, they are magnified and stick out like a sore thumb.

And then what good is it to anyone? Who the hell cares if Janeway or Scotty learn to type quickly? If that's what you're focusing on, you're better off watching Two and a Half Men.

 

MY point is that every complaint can be applied to all the other series. Every one of them.

BTW, They don't always remember what happened in all time travel episodes, for example "Time and Again".

 

But Archer isn't a bungling fool. I don't know why you bother with Star Trek, since you seem to dislike everything about it. Why don't you write a few perfect Voyager scripts, publish them on this site, and show us how it's supposed to be done.

 

Archer was written as a little too hotheaded, emotional, almost pigheaded (as in, implausibly so) on occasion, usually when interacting with Vulcans other than T'Pol. I think that should have been toned down, but overall those instances are few and far between. Besides such moments, he's portrayed as a smart guy, competent as captain, even if naive in the very early episodes.

By season 2, he's totally great at his job, and knows what he's doing. By season 3, he's grizzled; an expert and professional at dealing with aliens, hostile aliens, other problems in space, etc. By then, he's a fighter, a born leader. It's totally believable that his crew and the macos look up to, and are totally loyal to him.

 

Annorax's Delete Gun from "Year of Hell" is one of the coolest sci-fi concepts ever. Shoot something and not only does it stop existing, but it now never existed leading to a massive knock-on effect throughout the universe. And only the guys doing it and anyone who's happened upon temporal shielding knows anything's changed.

 

I've just recently started to actually enjoy Voyager -- within the last few months -- and for exactly the reason I previously disliked it. I always hated how this show refused to engage with the darkness of it's premise. But lately, as the actual world gets darker, and as I spend more and more of my own time directly engaging with said darkness, I find more value in a show about people in a terrible, seemingly hopeless situation, but who insistently stay positive and upbeat, to a degree that's almost delusional.

Well, of course you didn't, because the protests of sexualization of women on Star Trek are not about protesting sexualization, they're about protesting inequality. I've always said there's one respect in which Enterprise is clearly the best of all Trek shows: its the only series to get objectification right. For once, they objectified the men nearly as much as the women, and thus it all becomes unobjectionable. Archer/Trip getting sweaty and barechested wasn't a new problem -- it was the fix of the existing problem.

If Voyager had also picked up a hot young male character who spent years in a crotch-hugging bodysuit, there would not still be complaints about Seven's catsuit today.

(I mean, I'm sure there would have been some complaints, in that Trek fandom is huge and diverse, and at any given moment you can find someone willing to complain about literally any aspect of it. But they would have been more fringe, bullshit complaints, because with a hot guy costumed to a similarly sexualized degree, Voyager would have been walking the walk and not just talking the talk)

 

Seriously, In "Into Darkness" we see Alice Eve in what looks like a bathing suit for like five seconds and people said that she's been hired only for that scene!

 

Lyndsey Ballard was a great character/performance - wish we'd seen more of her earlier

 

Kim Rhodes did a great job. I also love her character, Sheriff Jody Mills, on SUPERNATURAL. (And a damn shame WAYWARD SISTERS didn't get the green light. She's a strong enough actress to lead.)

 

Voyager does rank last on my list of Star Trek shows--mostly for the missed opportunities (for one, I think the union between the Starfleet and Maquis crews should have taken longer--a gradually earning of respect as they worked together, with a lot of initial mistrust through the first season or two at least---and more difficulties for the ship over the 7 years, maybe something leaning toward Equinox though maybe not quite as bad).

BUT, I own the series on DVD and watch it through from time to time. There are plenty of good episodes. I can tell reading some of the comments here that fan opinions are all over the place (Chakotay was boring.....Chakotay was great; "Twisted" was a terrible episode, "Twisted" was a favorite, etc.etc.).

I liked that it was a totally unexplored area of the galaxy. I also liked that they spent a period of time with some aliens and didn't just have an 'alien of the week' (though there were some aliens that fell into that category). You had 2+ seasons of the Kazon and the Vidians, the Hirogen, the Borg, the Heirarchy, and that polluting species (was it the Malon?). Eventually they would move beyond someone's space, but it would take months in some cases, or even years.

I liked most of the characters. I agree Janeway could be a bit too self-righteous at times, but she had some things I liked about her. She had a mischievous streak as well. I remember when the doctor had to return to the ship after he planned to leave to be an opera singer and she made him squirm a bit.

I also happened to like many things about Chakotay. There was a certain inner peace about his character that I liked. Paris could border on irritating, but he did come up with some great holo-programs. And along with the Doctor I saw a lot of growth in his character over the course of the series. He started off as a wise-cracking smart ass but would become a vital part of the crew. He still could be wise-cracking but he became a responsible part of the crew. One of his shining moments was when B'Elanna wanted to alter the DNA of their baby and his impassioned plea to her why she shouldn't.

And in the episode where the Doctor creates a holographic family and has difficulty facing his "daughter's" death (personally as a dad with a daughter I have to admit I find that episode very difficult to watch) Paris has one of his shining moments there when he gives surprising wise advice to the Doctor about understanding people requires him to experience pain as well. That was a huge growing moment for both characters I thought.

Kim didn't impress me a whole lot. But I have to admit to being amused by his failure in areas of romance that Paris loved to bring up ("first it was a hologram, then a Borg, then a...." and so on). Kes was up and down....though I loved hearing Jennifer Lien speak....she has one of the most soothing voices. Neelix grated on my nerves....except in "Mortal Coil" when he has a religious crisis I guess you would call it and he contemplates suicide. It was one of a few episodes where his character was actually an asset IMO.

And I loved all the mind twisting episodes....yes, including "Twisted". I loved things aren't as they seem type episodes like "Course: Oblivion" and "Year of Hell". Species 8472 was interesting as well, and I loved that they eventually came to an understanding later on. In a way a perfect embodiment of what Starfleet is really about....finding a way to peacefully co-exist, even with formally hostile enemies.

 

Voyager was good with parodic episodes, like the one with the B'omar Sovereignty for example. The way Seven humiliated these braggarts was priceless.

 

Parodic?