Why do you like Voyager?

[otherjr]

Simple really. I dont hate Voyager with the same passion as a lot of people, but I still think it was pretty poor. Barely any element of the show seemed to actually tie in with them being stuck in the Delta Quadrant, and the characters didnt seem to relate well to each dramatically. The only show I ever enjoyed was Year of Hell. I get sick to the stomach when people say that Janeway was like a good mix of Picard and Sisko, seems to me people got that impression because she just flipped between what those two would have done depending on what was happening in the show.

It just confuses me that this show is more popular than DS9, a show which had excellent characters and an engaging story (until season 7). Im not here as a hater, I just honestly dont understand Voyagers popularity.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

I love chocolate peanut butter icecream from Baskin Robbins.

My aunt has tried it, but she doesn't like it at all.

Then again, as she pointed out the day she tried it for me, she doesn't like chocolate. Or peanut butter.

I love Voyager because... many elements of the show seemed to actually tie in with them being stuck in the Delta Quadrant. They weren't the vaunted Federation that aliens would genuflect in front of, they were just another ship in the cosmos, trying to make their way home, and pissing off a lot of people along the way. People that gossiped about them to other worlds, spoiling potential opportunities for allies and trade.

I loved Voyager because the characters seemed to relate well to each dramatically. The two outcasts, B'Elanna and Tom are prime examples of this, even though the real flirting didn't come for 2 more seasons. The way both took Harry under their wings is another example of this inter-relationship. I loved how Kes was the one organic who kept pushing the Doctor and the crew to consider the EMH as something more than a program. When she and B'Elanna ressurected him at the end of the swarm, and it appeared all his memories of his previous life were gone, you just FELT their sadness.... and when he started to hum the aria, you felt both women's hearts swell with thanksgiving.

As for why I love Janeway, I don't have the time or the words to explain that love completely. Perhaps its because Janeway was like a good mix of Kirk and Picard. She was young like Kirk, when she assumed command of Voyager and her command style wasn't yet set in stone like Picard's.

She came to love her crew as fiercely as Kirk did, and like a good rebel she DIDN'T BELIEVE in the "No-win" scenario. Consider HER Kobayashi Maru scenario....Drop her off 75,000 light years away with no hope to get home in Harry Kim's lifetime. What should she do? Set up housekeeping on the first Class M planet that comes along, ally herself with the first strong alien presence that comes along, or "Set a course... for home."

Even if you didn't watch Voyager, I think you know which choice she picked. She was Picard like in her attempts to settle things diplomatically, and in her attempts to understand things scientifically. But if there was a line to be drawn, she frequently drew it "Here! This far, NO further! The BORG will be stopped!"

Its been a while since I had Sisko on my screen, but what I remember about him was that he took himself and his responsibilities seriously, that he loved his friends and his family, and his baseball. And that he could live with moral ambiguity, if it meant saving the lives of his family and the Federation.

I loved how Janeway wasn't a cookie cutter Captain. I loved that this officer learned over the years in the DQ the price of hubris, and that "just" because she did something one way in season 1, didn't mean she would do the exact same thing under different circumstances in season 7. It made me realize that this Officer, this Woman was changing as she aged, as she was hit time and again with the tragedies and the triumphs that slammed her Voyager.

In other words....

I love chocolate peanut butter, you don't, and that's OKAY.

We BOTH were blessed by our respective shows.

 

[Joeman]

So I know you hate Denise Crosby and don't care for Voyager, so is there anything that you actually like?

While Voyager is not my favorite Trek show, it probably has close to my favorite cast of characters from top to bottom.

While the show has a lot of great eps, it also has a lot of pretty bad ones. That inconsistency is why Voyager is my 3rd favorite of the 4 modern Treks. I still love it though.

 

[Thestral]

Simple really. I dont hate Voyager with the same passion as a lot of people, but I still think it was pretty poor. Barely any element of the show seemed to actually tie in with them being stuck in the Delta Quadrant, and the characters didnt seem to relate well to each dramatically. The only show I ever enjoyed was Year of Hell. I get sick to the stomach when people say that Janeway was like a good mix of Picard and Sisko, seems to me people got that impression because she just flipped between what those two would have done depending on what was happening in the show.

It just confuses me that this show is more popular than DS9, a show which had excellent characters and an engaging story (until season 7). Im not here as a hater, I just honestly dont understand Voyagers popularity.

Personally, though I'm not the biggest fan by any means, I enjoy Voyager usually. When they got it right, they really got it right. "Year of Hell" is a good one; I'm also very fond of "Before and After," "Scorpion," "Timeless," "Living Witness," and "Course: Oblivion." If somebody told me to compile a top 20 episodes of Star Trek, some of these would be included.

It's got a good mix of characters that I enjoy or have no great feelings about (I particularly like Tom, B'Elanna, the Doctor, and Kes), and none that I dislike, let alone detest. Well... there is Neelix... but he's certainly no worse than Rom, especially late-seasons Rom.

I think aside from Excelsior, Voyager is the prettiest of the "star" ships.

For the most part, Voyager did kids "right" like DS9 did (if differently). Okay, I'll admit I don't remember much of the Borg kids, but I think Naomi Wildman was done right - I wish there'd been more of her family situation.

I think the potential of Voyager was much greater than the execution we received, which is why I get frustrated with it, but the characters and situations were all there for greatness and it occasionally shines through. Dollars to dishwater if you'd switched staffs for DS9 and Voyager, my opinions would be reversed.

Also... what's this about "until season 7" of DS9!?

 

[Lynx]

My reasons for liking Voyager:

1. The characters. They are great. As I see it, the best characters in Star Trek. Why I do like many of the characters in the other series as well, Voyager was the one where I took an immediate liking to the characters from day one.

2. The premise. The whole idea with a Federation starship with a mixed crew of Starfleet and Maquis lost on the other side of the galaxy with no contact at all with the Federation and Starfleet is brilliant.

Despite being dissatisfied with the later seasons of the series, Voyager remains a favorite.

 

[otherjr]

Thank you! I was going to write an argument against but Im not really sure since you guys have probably heard it all before; I was just curious to see what really got people going about Voyager because Ive never gotten it.

 

[henbane]

My reasons for liking Voyager:

1. The characters. They are great. As I see it, the best characters in Star Trek. Why I do like many of the characters in the other series as well, Voyager was the one where I took an immediate liking to the characters from day one.

2. The premise. The whole idea with a Federation starship with a mixed crew of Starfleet and Maquis lost on the other side of the galaxy with no contact at all with the Federation and Starfleet is brilliant.

Despite being dissatisfied with the later seasons of the series, Voyager remains a favorite.

Agree Lynx!

Also, I don't see Janeway as a mix of Picard and Sisko. She is more like Kirk with a touch more diplomacy. She was also delightfully flawed, which made her way more human, less predictable at times and less stodgy than a captain like Picard.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I love..

The characters. Really love Janeway, 7, the Doctor, Harry (UNDERRATED!!), Tuvok. I love how it's a real ensemble show and not just a Big Three show. The characters are so diverse and they are all quite strong and.. bright. No dullness here. They have the best interactions in all of Trek imho. No one is just the button pusher on the bridge.

The humor. Funniest Trek series by a mile. Picardo is a joy to watch. So many little interactions. His constant riffing on the varying characters added a real liveliness.. his observations add to the character development. Janeway is also quite a wit using humor to defuse potentially uncomfortable situations.

It's adventurous!! Cool stuff happens, it's colorful and there's rarely, rarely a dull ep. In fact I cannot think of a single dull ep while I could think of many dull eps in the other series.

Double episodes. ALL fantastic. Like a really good Trek movie. Consistently wonderful, we often watch a double ep for great a night.

Here's a few things I also loved..

The Borg. Lots of Borg. Borg and more Borg.. a main character who is ex-Borg! I love me some Borg and VOY is very Borgful.

Time travel. Okay I know some don't care for time travel but it is my favorite Trek theme. Quite a few time travel eps spread out over the series which have connections to each other. Very well done. Some really interesting glimpses into the future too.

Seska's story arc. I found it compelling,

Spoiler: Seska

the long deception, the question of whether she was totally using Chak (I think so), the revelation that it was never about Maquis agendas but about her own power, the tragic end with the Kazon, the sadness of that half Cardassian baby who will never know his species.. it all really gripped me.

I could probably think of about 1000 more things..

 

[kimc]

The characters.

 

[Deks]

I find the characters in Voyager far better and much more interesting in contrast to what I saw in DS9.

I don't get the fascination with DS9 though.
I found it a mild bore fest (even through the Dominion War story arc, which was entertaining, but utterly ruined various aspects of Trek, as did some of the premises in the show and Sisko in the later seasons).
And I saw Ds9 multiple times.

Voyager and Enterprise are better to me than DS9 was.
Even the story arcs in Enterprise were better done in my opinion.
I do enjoy prolonged story arcs, but Ds9 just dragged things out on various occasions, and then simply forgot about other at some other points.

But ... this isn't about Ds9.
Voyager ... I liked it as I already said because of the characters and the chemistry they had with each other.
Plus the premise was quite good (even though it was not explored to the fullest capacity).
Braga for example wanted to make a Year of Hell into a full season, which would be pretty great actually, but he got shot down by UPN in most of those decisions.

But Voyager did manage to pull off a bit of consistency in story telling so you get more continuity.
Especially with the Hirogen.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I like Voyager. It's bad/good episode ratio isn't great, but when it is good ("Scorpion", "Year of Hell" etc) it's good.

Sadly, when it's bad, it's baaaad. Far more tedious/boring/uninteresting episodes than it ever should have had. Too much lazy writing. Too many reset buttons.

Far too much meaningless babytalk technobabble. Cut out all the "trans-phasics" and "inverted polarizers" and "tertiary EPS nodes" and some episodes would be about 11 minutes long.

 

[Purdy Bear]

1. Captain Janeway was one of the first women to command a ship.

2. That the show actually was one of the only ones in the Star Trek phenomena to go back to the original path of seeking out the new worlds etc.

3. That it introduced a lot of new speices.

4. That up until Seven joined it was a NO Sexualised show, they spoilt it when they introduced the cat suit etc.

5. It didnt have a lot of really annoying characters such as the Ferengi, or Siskos kid.

6. A lot of what they went through was reasonably plausible.


As I was a 60s child, I pretty much watched the show from its first viewings in the UK and out of them all Voyager is still my favourite. I guess its a bit like Marmite/Vegimite some like it while others hate it.

PS: I actually enjoyed the Techno Babble.

 

[Jetfire]

At first because it was a Star Trek show and I loved TNG, grew up on TOS and DS9 fell flat for me...so VOY came along and I liked Janeway, Tom Paris & The Doctor...then came Seven Of Nine and it sealed the deal. I really enjoyed it during it's run and want to get it on DVD someday.

 

[borgfan8of5]

I like voyager because its a different situation that a crew hasn't been put in since the original series. They (the voyager crew) were stranded in the delta quadrant, a place where no federation ship had ever been before, and where forced to see things that no crew had ever seen before. I also believe that the series has great actors who were on par with the superb cast of Deep Space Nine. I'll be honest with you, in my opinion, the two best acted, and in general, series are Deep Space Nine and Voyager. In my opinion many episodes of TNG fell flat when it came to acting. For example, in one of my favorite episodes of TNG "the Best of Both Worlds" many of the conversations that we jump into seem like they are just starting. For example, there is a scene with Worf and Riker in which we jump in midway through the conversation and you can obviously tell that they just started talking. Not that that annoys me to much, but it is, to me, a sign of poor direction and acting. Remember, this is just my personal opinion, but I always felt that in both DS9 and VOY that when we jumped into a conversation it had been going on for quite a while. Really that's about it, I just think Voyager had better acting and the plot line for the entire series was very interesting, made sense, and was exploration of space like we hadn't seen for several decades.

 

[Solarbaby]

It is visually kinder to the eyes. High production values. Nearly all episodes are watchable without having too think too hard about the story or plot. You can literally just sloth out in fornt of the TV. DS9 and TNG and TOS and ENT take more brain power to enjoy.

I'm not saying Voyager is dumbed down but it seems there's a handful of stand out episodes of Voy compared to other Trek shows. It had a great pilot and opening concept for the show. Unfortunately the producers didn't take chances and make the show different enough or give it an edge. It was just TOS in the 24th century, different Quadrant.

Janeway and 7 of 9 and the doctor were great characters. The rest were boring.

 

[Michael]

The characters.

It's pretty much the same for me. The show has a lot of things going for it (cool, interesting, intelligent stories a lot of the time, a neat production design and some very good acting), but the characters are what I'm watching the show for.

 

[Jetfire]

Janeway and 7 of 9 and the doctor were great characters. The rest were boring.

Pretty much...Tom Paris could have been way more interesting but they dropped the ball later on with him. IMHO.

 

[Ensign Johnson]

Janeway makes me want to go back and watch episodes. I've been trying to give myself a break from Voyager as I've watched twice in a short amount of time, but when I see its on I find myself wanting to get my Janeway fix again. I always liked Janeway but after watching the whole show I loved her.
Voyager had a lot of great characters, some I loved (Janeway, EMH, Seven of Nine, Tuvok, Torres) and some I loved to hate (Paris and Kim).
Voyager also was funny especially Tuvok, Seven and the EMH.

I like DS9 too but for different reasons. I don't like as many DS9 characters but I do love Major Kira. I also like Quark and Jadzia as fun characters. The dark story lines that often span more than 2 episodes (does that ever happen on Voyager? Maybe the Seska thing?) is the main thing I liked about DS9.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Janeway and 7 of 9 and the doctor were great characters. The rest were boring.

Pretty much...Tom Paris could have been way more interesting but they dropped the ball later on with him. IMHO.

They dropped the ball with the idea that the Maquis were rebels who were going to find fitting in difficult. Paris did have some continued hiccups with the chain of command (like with the water planet) but he was so consistently a good boy that he was quite different from the potential he had at the start. IMHO this was the biggest ball dropped by VOY, the entire Maquis storyline. That's why I love Seska's story arc so much.

More machinations!! Oh well, so it turned into a different show than you would have speculated if you just saw the pilot.. it was still awesome

 

[tomalak301]

When Voyager Came on, I was still very much into Star Trek (Still am, but not to the extent as back then and given there is no Trek on, it's a little hard to "get into it") and was excited for another series. I liked the premise, and I really liked Mulgrew as Janeway. Then it turned into really liking Dawson, Jennifer Lien, and the rest of the cast and it was appointment viewing every week. Now, Voyager isn't my favorite series, but it's not as bad as a lot of people say. I still enjoy it from time to time.