What is highly implausible assuming we accept this premise is that the language would go unchanged for that long. There's no example of a spoken language that had remained unchanged for several centuries, let alone 45 millennia.
There sure is a lot of earth-related crap floating around in the Delta Quadrant.
- Thread starter Mr. 5618
- Start date
What is highly implausible assuming we accept this premise is that the language would go unchanged for that long. There's no example of a spoken language that had remained unchanged for several centuries, let alone 45 millennia.
No, it doesn't. We were able to desalinate water in the 1950's, before we had space travel, computers, or birth control. Surely the Kazon could find an Earth type planet and just suck up some water, then render it drinkable. And surely Voyager could provide some vintage technology to help them in that regard.
I agree onyour comments about Jake, Nog, Bshir and Harry. I found Jake extremely boring to start with but he became better as the series went on. Nog especially had great development and bashir too even if i didn't really like that "genmanipulated" plot. Harry didn't develope, sadly enough.
But imagine if Voyager had had writers with the same skill and imagination as the DS9 writers!
I also agree on the development of The Doctor and Seven. Unfortunately those two plus Janeway were the characters those in charge cared for while the others were left in the background.
Which was sad because the Voyager characters had so much potential. We can also compare with Deep Space Nine where the writers acttaly could write interesting stories for ten main characters for seven years!
The interaction between Tuvox and Neelix was great and sometimes even hilarious!
I have some thoughts...
B'ELANNA: She is the Problem Maquis. Has serious trouble fitting in due to her Klingon temper. Starts out as assistant engineer. Gets brigged and relieved of duty. Reinstated when Carey dies, but Janeway makes it very clear that this is out of great necessity, and it is her last chance. She slowly settles down. The conflict with her Klingon DNA occurs sooner. We see how married life and motherhood further smooths out her rough edges. An angry malcontent and outcast grows into a steady and capable asset.
HARRY: He starts out overwhelmed.
He was supposed to be operations assistant, and Voyager was set to pick up the actual ops officer after the Maquis hunt. Doesn't happen. Harry the ensign has to manage lieutenant level work, and some unruly Maquis underlings. Over time, he grows more capable, more confident, more assertive. When those extra rank pips appear on his collar (and they do), he deserves them.
JANEWAY: Though very capable, Kathryn Janeway was also very static and also kind of inconsistent. They could have easy brought her longstanding guilt at stranding her crew to the front, had her slowly get over it instead of having it be a brief issue in "Night". Also, have an actual year of hell, and have Janeway slowly devolve into the scarred and wild-haired Captain Ahab she played so well, and then back from the edge. Maybe, as Voyager grows more generational in nature, she softens on the idea of romance as well.
That's just 3 out of 10.
Regarding the inconsistency of Janeway, I don't think it's a coincidence that the inconsistencies tend to happen when the head writer changes.
I have to disagree with some of your suggestions for B'Elanna.
I think that her development in the first three seasons was OK, but maybe a bit too quick. She could have remained "the angry Maquis" for at least five-six episodes. I don't like the idea to kill off Carey, in fact I didn't like that he was killed off when he was. He was a great character who should have been a recurring character during the whole series. That's another thing that DS9 was better at. They had a bunch of recurring charaters like Garak, Nog, Dukat, Winn, Eddington who were very good. Voyager sjhould have done the same with Carey, Rollins, Dalby, henley, Chell and Gerron. When the story was about a ship lost in space,there should have been more of those recurring characters as crewmembers.
As for Janeway, I was unhappy with her development after season 3 when she became a bit schizophrenic. They could have skipped that and had her stay rather normal during the series.
Remember, I offered possibilities for 3 characters. That's all they were, ways those characters COULD have developed. They might have decided to do something completely different. As long as they had done SOMETHING!
Doing nothing with characters like Harry and Chakotay might not have been the worst imaginable answer... but it was a bad one.
Doing nothing with characters like Harry and Chakotay might not have been the worst imaginable answer... but it was a bad one.
Harry KIm evolves so little throughout the series that by the end of it he's practically identical to what he was at the beginning.
And that could work with a 100+ year old Vulcan like Tuvok or a middle aged, steady, and dependable Starfleet veteran like Chakotay. But not with a kid fresh out of academy. It's like expecting your 14-year-old to be the exact same on their 21st birthday.
Again, they clearly didn't think much of their viewers' intelligence.
Again, they clearly didn't think much of their viewers' intelligence.
Sorry but I have to disagree here. I still think that Voyager had the best characters even if I do hold the characters you mention in high esteem.
I can agree that Chakotay's background was poorly researched. But the character was great and imagine what could have been with good writers who had done a better research and wrote better stories.
The same for Harry Kim who had potential but was sadly wasted. Read some of the early Voyager books where Kim is actually doing something and you'll see the difference.
And Neelix is actually one of the best Star Trek characters when it comes to depth and realism.
Just consider his tragic background. He was living a happy life with his family on Rinax. All of a sudden all that changed when his family and friends were killed by the Haakonian Metreon Cascade. Now, that could have made anyone lose his or her mind and that happened to Neelix. In fact, he was actually a drug addict for a while but his friend Wixiban helped him out of this (Voyager book "Pathways by Jeri Taylor).
Then he found a new home on Voyager and did all he could to fit in. OK, he definitely had his issues. His annoying jealousy when it came to Kes (which lead to him losing her in the long run), his whims about being Morale Officer, journalist and whatsoever but that was obviously a result of the trauma he had went through. In that way, he was actually more realistic than some of the casual Starfleet cut-out characters who go through life without a scratch.
Not to mention that despite his inner demons, sometimes annoying behavior and despite his exaggerated ways of trying to please, he actually did everything he could to be friendly, helpful and supporing to everyone and as I see it, that makes him admirable in many ways.
"And little Sir Neelix in his colorful clothes
and the Anthraxic Citrus Peel Orange Juice in his glass
And Little Sir Neelix with his Leola Root plate
proved the strongest man at last
Without him, the crew would never have got so much food
without having to steal and loot
And Janeway would never have got the strength to lead the crew
without the little Leola Root"
Last verse from the old English song "John Barleycorn"
Song recorded by Traffic in 1970
and lyrics slightly altered by Lynx 2021
I'm talking about the characters we got, not the characters we could have gotten. We got the characters we see in the largely disappointing stories they made. Garak, Kai Winn, Dukat, Saavik, Riker, Lore, the Romulan Commander, Kevash Fazio (sp?), Nog, Quark...all had great actors AND great stories. Most got story ARCS. I agree the Voyager characters were all POTENTIALLY great characters played by capable actors, but in the stories we see they far too often just don't live up to that potential.
Neelix was great on paper, but he usually ended up being more Snarf than Panthro.
I imagine that reality would be one in which I agree with you that the Voyager characters are at least on par with the DS9/TNG/TOS characters, as they would have actually been developed.
I agree that they still had their feature episodes, but (in my view) not every feature episode is really about character development. For example, Fair Trade (mentioned earlier) tells us a lot about Neelix' hidden insecurities and assumptions. The very next episode, Alter Ego is supposedly a Tuvok feature episode, yet it doesn't develop Tuvok further as a character that much in my eyes.
The way I see the fragment, they are only stating they didn't have a spoken language 45,000 years ago when they first visited, not that they didn't develop any in the time between their follow-up visits- even though I think 45,000 years ago is still far too late to not have a spoken language. However, I do agree that it's highly unlikely those symbols (in the tattoos) would stay unchanged for so long
It wasn't just the Kazon. Neelix also states that 'nobody around here wastes water in this manner' when taking a bath on Voyager.
Yeah, the worst possible way probably would have been to kill them all off, except for Janeway, and the EMH (who can't die), and then later Seven, and still have all their glorious adventures and returning home triumphantly.
As for the Kazon-Ogla water problem, there is actually a possible explanation:
According to what we saw in "Caretaker" the Kazon-Ogla who were living on the Ocampa planet had problems with finding water. Neelix too did seem to have that problem. Now, that looks and sounds a bit strange because there would always be a chance to find ice in space, at least on some planet nearby. They did have spaceships of rather good quality after all.
But there's a possible explanation for that problem. The system is obviously small with only small rocky planets and a possible gas giant without any moons big enough to contain water or ice. Ocampa has no water on the surface and no water is to be found on the other planets
We can also assume that the wars and conflicts between the Kazon sects has made it very difficult for the Kazon-Ogla who are living on the Ocampa surface to travel outside the system. Maybe they are under siege from the Kazon-Nistrim or some other Kazon sect which makes it difficult for them to travel outside the system and difficult for other Kazon-Ogla ships to deliver water to them. As they don't want to leave Ocampa with its valuable Cormaline which they use to trade with, they have to live with the water problem, at least until they can make peace with other Kazon sects nearby or find water in some other way.
As for other species than the Kazon in the area, there were almost none. It was neelix, the Ocampa and the Caretaker. neelix had very little water since he didn't want to leave the debris field or couldn't due to a possible siege by other Kazon sects. The Ocampa had water and the Caretaker had water but wouldn't share it or trade with the Kazon.
More to be found on the Kes Website on the page "Voyager mysteries-and how to solve them".
I suppose it depends upon how loosely you'd interpret the 'around here'. Are we talking about this system only, or are we talking about everywhere where Neelix had traveled in his life? The fact that he doesn't even seem to recognise the word 'bath' (see here), or at the very least his reaction is one of utmost astonishment when Tuvok asks him whether he would care for one would direct me to think in the latter direction. (Then again, of course you can interpret the material differently).
Last edited:
My point was that they didn't need feature episodes to do development. All that are needed are a few scenes every now and then that show the characters engaged in new problems.
But they could have dusted a few characters whose arcs weren't going anywhere. They had Kes depart, so there was still the opportunity to kill one (permanently). Harry was a natural choice, but let's not forget Chakotay. His status as a Maquis had played itself out, Trek didn't like doing anything mystical without scientific explanation (Ronin wasn't a ghost, he was an anaphasic whatever), and snuffing the first officer would be almost as shocking as snuffing the captain (and shown that no one was safe). Money would have been saved, and few fans would likely have objected (aside from [if they bumped Chakotay] the legion of J/C shippers who weren't going to get what they wanted anyway). My longtime outrage regarding Harry Kim is because it was an insult to us, not any great regard for the character.
I heard they thought about replacing Janeway at a time, perhaps even with Picard... You know with one of these dimensional time paradox wormhole space anomaly rabbits in a hat tricks that the Star Trek writing staff have up their sleeves.
They originally hired Geneviève Bujold as the captain, and she was a trainwreck. Lasted a day and a half. There was talk of scrapping the plan for a female captain altogether, but they decided to bring back previous also rans (including Kate Mulgrew) for another try. They went with Mulgrew, but they were half expecting her to fail as well, and ultimately be replaced by a male. So, there were executives watching her like vultures for several months.
Yes, that's pretty much what I've heard.
Well, that really confirms my many statements about sloppy writing. I bet that they weren't even thinking when they wrote that comment for Neelix.
As for the whole scenario, as experienced SF and Star Trek writers they should have known that ice can be found anywhere in space and in a planet system and that it can be turned into water. If they had been smart and still wanted the "lack of water scenario", they would have created a scenario like the one I described in my suggestion to solve the problem, about a siege by other Kazon sects or so.
But not the Voyager writers! They just stumbled on like blindfolded rhinoceros, totally unaware of how stupid their scenarios where. And when they finally realized that "this isn't working", they just continued on their destructive road, just like "ah don't bother, the viewers will not notice.
Talk about dumbing down a whole fanbase!
Considering how sloppy and rushed their scripts seem to have been, it's a wonder that they actually managed to come up with such good stories and episodes after all.
That looks incredible. Were they really that stupid? That would really have killed the show.
Obviously those writers and producers didn't believe in the product they were working on and they also seem to have lost interest and inspiration very early on. really tragic, isn't it. They had a great premise, great characters and great actors and didn't believe in any of it. And as soon inspiration faded, they went for the "TNG card", like "let's bring in the Borg, the viewers love the Borg" or "let's bring in some TNG characters, the viewers love TNG".
In retrospect, those writers and producers should have been replaced at least in season 3 when the lack of ideas started to show up more and more or never have worked with Voyager at all. The series should have had a bunch of fresh writers with ideas and inspiration.
Last edited: