It never gets consistently "great" in my opinion, though there certainly are some "great" episodes (e.g. Scorpion, Timeless, Message in a bottle, etc.). However, I found Voyager usually of sufficient to good quality, entertaining and enjoyable. I like the earlier seasons slightly more than the later seasons. That's because in early seasons they still tried to be somewhat original/experimental, whereas in later seasons they had found what worked, probably resulting in a more consistent and less of a hit/miss quality, but also sometimes a somewhat more "formulaic" feel to a lot of episodes, even if they were well acted/executed ('whoops, another 7 of 9 discovers what it means to be human- episode. Ah, another EMH expands its capabilities one. "), Which is not to say that "standard fare" episodes aren't in the early seasons (e.g. the first 2 "normal" episodes of S1, Time and Again and Parallax)
What conversation? OP asked when something becomes good. There is no singular definition of 'good' when it comes to things like this. It's about personal enjoyment. Now a conversation would be...... 'I just finished all of Voyager, and I didn't like such and such. What did you guys like and dislike?' That's conversation.
My impression was *some* Sikarians were assimilated. Given all the defeats the Borg suffered in VOY....I have a hard time seeing them expand all the way to where VOY nearly started.
The conversation being someone asked for opinions on something, thus people come in to speak their mind. Not just pretty much say, "watch it and figure it out for yourself."
Season 3 is the one where many good episodes started to emerge. For instance "Flashback", "Future's End", "Macrocosm", "Unity", "Distant Origin", "Worst Case Scenario" and "Scorpion". This was the season of transitioning from a mediocre series to a very good Trek series.
I'm just finished Disc 2 of Season 6 and still mostly enjoying it. As I always say when it comes to Voyager there's a lot of mess to get through a lot of inconsistencies and many times of them not taking their own premise seriously but I still come out liking many episodes. "One Small Step" is one I just finished and it's just a nice little episode.
Or so. Every series needed time to get it's mojo. DS9 wasn't the best for a season or two, everyone complains about the first season of TNG, and I think they were really experimenting during the first couple of seasons of Voyager, IMO Seven was the ingredient the ensemble needed. I envy yu I've seen each episode of every series many, many times. I wish I could watch them all again like they were when they were new. Voyager became my favorite Star Trek, because IMO it was closest to the original series.
It's funny because my best friend is as much a Trekkie as I am and we were talking about what it would be like watching all Trek seasons again like it was the first time. Sometimes I wish I could rediscover them like they were new to me. There were so many fantastic episodes, especially when VOY had its original run here in Germany. Two part episodes like "Scorpion" or "Year Of Hell" were presented as movies in prime time. Man, they were a blast to me as a 10 year old boy.
DAMN!!!!!!!!!! I love this show!!!!!!!!!! Forgive me, I've had a few Captqain Mrogans. Cosmic Mouse, "Blink of an Eye" is one of my top tens... probably up there with "The Inner Light". What the heck??? When the doctor goes down to the surface for a few seconds but has lived there for two years... What on Earth don't you like about this episode? It's totally cerebral to emotional.
Well, they were pretty magical the first 10 times I watched them all the way through, not so much the next 10 times, and now the magic is gone. but those first 10 times, Wow. Really, I don'tcare about these over critical hater fools who spew nothing but negativity about one show or another, or one character or another. They can go to hell. I'd pay big bucks to watch TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT like they were new, another 20 times.
I'm rewatching Voyager now, too. In general I've found that season 1 is rough/uneven but with strong potential. Season 2 is wildly inconsistent with a few rare decent episodes and also some of the worst episodes in the franchise. 3 is only slightly more consistent, but enough to no longer be hitting those same lows. 4 was much better over all, far more consistent and even one episode I considered great. 5 seemed as good as 4 at first, then started taking a worryingly consistent dip after Once Upon a Time. The good news, though, is the last two eps I've seen have been better again and only one of those others was really bad, imo, so if the rest of the season is good again then 5 will be comparable to 4 overall. And that's where I am at the moment (also, I'm not even sure if I ever saw any of seasons 6 or 7 on tv back then, other than the finale, so from here on out it's basically all new to me).