I think, in order to enjoy Voyager I would have to leave the premise behind. It's a basic framing device that doesn't add up much. So, as an occasional adventure it's fine. As something that, as you say, could have been more if it had pursued it's original premise it is disappointing.
I think that's my basic problem -- I can't let go of the premise. I can't just look at
The Odyssey and see a dude screwing around with his bros at sea, and I can't just look at
Star Trek: Voyager as light-hearted adventures. The tragedy of being stranded far from home is too real and permeates too much of the show whether or not the narrative wants to admit it.
Also, holding to the original premise wouldn't have given them seven years,
It not only would have given them seven years, it would quite literally have given them seventy years if they had wanted!
For instance, the condition of the ship couldn't have held up.
Thinking of that, it's a shame we rarely saw any outer space fixing of the ship.
Right off the bat, you've highlighted why it's a shame the narrative didn't embrace the premise: Things like keeping the ship running, obtaining scarce but vital supplies, lacking access to infinite resources, all could have been mined for interesting story ideas, both on plot levels and on thematic levels.
The Kes/Neelix pairing was a questionable decision, to be sure. Honestly, even though Kes looked adult, it was hard to get past her chronological age.
I mean, Kes didn't just
look like an adult; she
was an adult. Adults of her species are fully mature by the age of two years. However, given the ingrained attitudes of the audience, I agree it would have been better to avoid accidentally activating the "squick" button in the audiences' heads by just establishing that she was 20 or something, and that her species was doomed to die by age 25. I think that the idea of a short-lived species could have been really interesting and insightful if done well, but the concept was not handled well; the only way to deal with a character like that is to really lean into the idea that she only has a short time to live, to really lean into the idea of the inevitability of mortality, and how you cope with the knowledge that death is coming for you. That's tricky to do, but it could have made for some good episodes if the writers had actually embraced the concept. But instead, like so much of VOY, they introduced a really interesting idea and then refused to develop it in any meaningful sense -- a simulacrum of depth instead of actual depth.
Funny, I thought it was sort of the other way. DS9's edginess and serialization, disliked by many in its day, has grown on modern audiences. Contrastingly, Voyager's TNG Lite formula is less popular now than it was then.
In fairness to VOY, everything I've read has said that it's enjoying a renaissance. VOY was consistently Netflix's most-streamed ST series.
I think a bit problem with voyager actually living up to its premise and/or experimenting more with serialization was they simply didn't manage to make the Delta Quadrant as interesting as the Alpha/Beta Quadrant area.
With the rare exception none of the aliens they primed as potential recurring species/antagonists not the Talaxians, definitely not the Kazon, not the Vaadwaur, not those robots from Prototype...
The Vidiians and the Hirogen who had some potential were handled poorly (especially the Hirogen became a joke with their stupid Space Nazi holodeck episode...sorry, the moment you put an alien in a Nazi uniform it becomes laughable)
So the only two interesting species they had were the Borg, whom they used poorly, overused and turned into almost harmless villains that could easily be beat, and the Krenim, who only showed up in one episode.
I mean, seriously on the Borg, by season seven it seems like Janeway could walk into the Borg Queen's villain lair and slap her in the face whenever she felt like it.
I think all of the Delta Quadrant aliens could have been more interesting if executed by writers who were genuinely interested in those cultures.
The entire premise of the show - which involved crossing thousands of light years per season - honestly made any recurring aliens other than the Borg ridiculous. Particularly things like finding more Talaxians in Season 7.
If a linear journey back is the way forward, yeah.
If, on the other hand, you journey to home by getting through a set of local obstacles, then you've given yourself a setup that allows you to stay in one relative region and develop cultures while also progressing towards the goal of getting home.
It should have been serialized by having a set of maybe three dozen recurring characters who were on Voyager itself. Some could have been Starfleet/Maquis, and some aliens they picked up along the way. They did it a little with characters like Vorik, the Wildman family, the Borg kids, etc. But they could have done so much more.
Definitely. It makes no sense to treat an isolated crew of 140 or so as a vast pool of faceless interchangeables;
Voyager couldn't get crew transfers between episodes the way the
Enterprise-D could.
If things had been harder for Voyager then they would have lost more people (they lost surprisingly few people) and they wouldn't have had enough to run the ship. Yes, they could have had DQ aliens on the ship for temporary contracts, but there comes a point when there are so few Starfleet/Maquis that they will just want to stay in the Delta Quadrant anyway.
Maybe! Or, maybe you bring on Delta Quadrant characters who have a
reason for wanting to escape the Delta Quadrant. Maybe they're refugees who want to reach the Federation for protection from their oppressors. Maybe they're survivors of a brutal cataclysm looking for a new home who find the idea of the Federation inspiring. Again, there are many creative options they could have chosen to keep this interesting and really embrace the premise.
tl;dr (and probably quite controversial): I'm fine with Voyager not being nuBSG and I prefer Voyager.
I mean, nuBSG developer and showrunner Ronald D. Moore himself said that if he were the showrunner of VOY, it would not have been like nuBSG -- it wouldn't have been as dark because Moore's view is that it's not appropriate for ST to reach the level of darkness he went to with nuBSG.
However, I do think nuBSG presents good examples of ways in which a similar premise can be mined for more interesting stories that were mostly ignored on VOY.
No. Screw Lon Suder. I'm all for more conflict and more "problematic" crewmembers. Just not Lon Suder specifically.You don't need a murdering sociopath to have conflict.
No, you don't. But -- what if you have a murdering sociopath who is honestly, truly trying to make himself better? What if Janeway wants to ditch him but needs to reluctantly let him stay because he has some special skill they need to get home that other crew members can't easily develop? What if Suder learns of a medical treatment a DQ species has developed that would re-wire his brain to cause him to develop some primitive form of empathy? What if he wants that treatment but it would violate the Federation's laws against genetic engineering? Does Janeway allow it? Does she let him stay aboard after? Or, alternately, what if Janeway wants to force him to take that treatment against his will, because they can't ditch him but he's a danger to others?
In some ways, Seven of Nine herself had echoes of Lon Suder -- an initially unrepentant person who committed atrocities and has to go on a journey about coping with their past behavior. It's not the same, of course, but there are echoes.
But they could have done more and better things with Seska, for example. Or generally with a faction among the Marquis (and the Starfleet crew?) who was dissatisfied with Janeway's leadership and choices.
Absolutely! One of my biggest problems with VOY is that it does its Maquis characters dirty. The Maquis as a community have honest, genuine ideological disagreements with the Federation; their identity is fundamentally at conflict with "The Federation Way," and we should have seen that reflected in the show. The show should have been about both crews adapting to work with each other, not about Maquis just being absorbed into the Starfleet way of operating. And one of the key things we should have seen is disagreement with the idea of Starfleet hierarchy. It's all well and good to use a military hierarchy when you're on deployment for a few years in service of the Federation -- but
Voyager wasn't in Federation service. It's a ship that they were trapped on for the rest of their lives -- why would these people agree to just live under a Janeway dictatorship the rest of their lives? Why wouldn't they insist on some level of democratic governance for their community?
