Why is the Trek community so negative about Voyager?

[Saito S]

They were able to study Crusher's logs on Picard's assimilated body, they got valuable data studying Seven, they got even more from Borg technology recovered in "Scorpion" and "Dark Frontier" and the Doctor's method of blocking assimilation was only TEMPORARY.

As I already said in my previous post, it's also about an ATTITUDE. My feeling from the Voyager crew in regards to the Borg in later seasons was "Meh, they're really just not that big a deal. *shrug*". This was NOT true in Scorpion; even WITH the pounding they were taking from 8472, the Borg were still treated with a proper degree of caution and respected for the threat they were.

Now, if you feel differently, that's fine. But stop trying to just pin this on some imaginary double standard concept. I (and many others) felt that VOY often (but not always) treated the Borg in a different (inferior) way with how threatening they seemed, compared to how TNG and FC treated them. That's it.

God, exodus was right. It's just "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" with anything Voyager ever did. Nothing would ever shut you guys up.

Right, because it's not like any of us have ever said that despite threads like these, we actually DO LIKE THE SHOW OVERALL, we just see wasted potential and wish it would have been (and think it easily could have been) even better than it was. That's some relentless hatred, there.

It's also based in continuity they would fear the Borg less, seeing how the Federation survived every Borg attack without much in the way of real loss (yes, there were the 40 ships but they even acknowledged that they'd be back up within a year). So if they win every time, and don't really lose anything in the process then it's fully within reason you'd come to see said foe as less powerful than you did before.

One line from Shelby (a line that, frankly, felt out of place and inappropriate to me in its delivery) does not override reality. I don't think Picard, Sisko, Jake, or the families and friends of the 11,000 Starfleet officers killed at Wolf 359 would take kindly to someone asserting that the Federation never suffered "real loss" to the Borg.

It's like DS9. They were freaked by the Dominion at first, then as the show went on they saw them just as another foe who could be beaten. Single Dominion vessels weren't fear-inspiring and it was only in those major battles that there were serious fears.

Bolded part is just completely untrue. The Jem'Hadar were NEVER viewed as "just another foe." As for being able to beat them... that was never NOT true. They were very tough, but Sisko and Quark KOd/killed a few of them in their FIRST appearance. They were never depicted as being as powerful as the Borg in the first place.

"Fear-inspiring" doesn't really work here either. "Freaked-out" is what you would be when faced with demons, or cloud creatures, or giant space amoebas, or Borg. Dominion ships are powerful, but again, they operate on the same principles, with the same kinds of battle capabilities, as Federation ships. Jem'Hadar are powerful, but they are just bi-pedal, humanoid aliens. They are not fundamentally different in any kind of awe-inspiring way from Humans, Klingons, Vulcans, etc. They had some advantages at first (most notably, the ability to bypass Starfleet shields), but they weren't just a completely different KIND of threat like the Borg are. And again, I'm not asking for depictions of actual fear on the part of the Voyager crew; as I said, these are professional military officers (well, for the most part). Fear would only be visible when things got REALLY bad. It's more an overall lack of respect for the threat the Borg could still represent. That respect never went away for the Dominion in DS9.

And until he says otherwise, Darkwing duck's statement is a blanket statement surrounding all Borg appearances in VOY including the Probe. If he didn't mean it that way he should have been more clear.

RyuRoots covered this. To interpret Darkwing's statement as literally "All Voyager Borg encounters without exception were crap" is simply incorrect.

 

[Anwar]

As I already said in my previous post, it's also about an ATTITUDE. My feeling from the Voyager crew in regards to the Borg in later seasons was "Meh, they're really just not that big a deal. *shrug*". This was NOT true in Scorpion; even WITH the pounding they were taking from 8472, the Borg were still treated with a proper degree of caution and respected for the threat they were.

Not really, any fear and caution taken was simply because of the greater situation and the knowledge that if things didn't work out the galaxy was screwed since the 8472 were omnicidal maniacs and not just cyborgs who didn't do anything unless provoked.

Now, if you feel differently, that's fine. But stop trying to just pin this on some imaginary double standard concept. I (and many others) felt that VOY often (but not always) treated the Borg in a different (inferior) way with how threatening they seemed, compared to how TNG and FC treated them. That's it.

If I was a writer on a show where I KNEW no matter how dangerous a situation was or how "intimidating" some folks thought an enemy were, that the studio would NEVER let me seriously endanger anyone or allow any consequences for this enemy encounter, I wouldn't care about how dangerous an enemy was since I knew nothing would happen by the end.

Right, because it's not like any of us have ever said that despite threads like these, we actually DO LIKE THE SHOW OVERALL, we just see wasted potential and wish it would have been (and think it easily could have been) even better than it was. That's some relentless hatred, there.

And you're doing a GREAT example of showing your appreciation for the show in this thread...

One line from Shelby (a line that, frankly, felt out of place and inappropriate to me in its delivery) does not override reality. I don't think Picard, Sisko, Jake, or the families and friends of the 11,000 Starfleet officers killed at Wolf 359 would take kindly to someone asserting that the Federation never suffered "real loss" to the Borg.

Which is why VOY needed cannon fodder to sacrifice to the Borg. And I don't mean lose a few crewmembers out of a small crew to begin with, I mean lose thousands of other guys off the ship to the Borg.

And side from what happened in BOBW, there were never any consequences for further Borg appearances.

Bolded part is just completely untrue. The Jem'Hadar were NEVER viewed as "just another foe." As for being able to beat them... that was never NOT true. They were very tough, but Sisko and Quark KOd/killed a few of them in their FIRST appearance. They were never depicted as being as powerful as the Borg in the first place.

Which is why super-powerful near-invincible enemies really suck, drama-wise, if you use them more than once. BOBW should have destroyed all the Borg, everywhere. If they were going to stick with the "One Lone Ship" premise in VOY then all their enemies had to either be 1) Beatable or 2) Inferior in some way that VOY could always escape.

"Fear-inspiring" doesn't really work here either. "Freaked-out" is what you would be when faced with demons, or cloud creatures, or giant space amoebas, or Borg.

Not when you face it all and survive. After all, "character development" is growing from experiences and if you face the incredible enough times it just isn't scary anymore.

And again, I'm not asking for depictions of actual fear on the part of the Voyager crew; as I said, these are professional military officers (well, for the most part). Fear would only be visible when things got REALLY bad. It's more an overall lack of respect for the threat the Borg could still represent. That respect never went away for the Dominion in DS9.

DS9 had cannon fodder to sacrifice to the Dominion to maintain their power and fear. How do you maintain fear and power when your enemies don't kill anyone or do anything of major consequence? And I don't mean by killing off a main character, because that's just not good enough. Either you don't use enemies that need stuff that doesn't fit in the premise of the show, or you give the show a different premise.

To interpret Darkwing's statement as literally "All Voyager Borg encounters without exception were crap" is simply incorrect.

Then he shouldn't have said it in such a blanketed way in the first place.

 

[RyuRoots]

I'm not gonna bother with an even more massive quote chain, so I'll just tackle them in order:

Right, because it's not like they were trying much to avoid the Borg entirely, and certainly there was NO opposition whatsoever to trying to bargain with them.

But you're not a writer as far as I know, so how is this relevant to anything?

I think he is, too! I'm glad we're in agreement that we all like Voyager here!

You do realize "consequences" means more than "people dying", right? Hugh's individuality represented a really big deal, and Descent showed us the consequences of freeing him, and effectively wraps up that story. And tell me, why does Voyager supposedly need thousands of ships to sacrifice when BOBW and FC are the only time other ships are lost to the Borg onscreen? The Dominion were still a threat when there was only the Defiant around, or when it was Jem'Hadar on foot. The Borg felt like a very real threat in Scorpion to me as-is.

So which one is it? Is it invincible, effectively invincible, now NEAR invincible? Do please pick one. Frankly, Scorpion proved that they could still use the Borg well without de-fanging them, so I really must disagree.

That's not character development though. Toning the Borg down to "something you get used to" is bad writing, not development.

If you want an answer to your question, go watch Rocks and Shoals, Scorpion, and/or Starship Mine. No main characters die, but I think in each case the antagonists feel threatening. And what do you know, thousands of ships weren't sacrificed in any of them. That's how.

His statement was fine; twisting it into something completely foreign from what he said is the issue.

 

[Anwar]

Consequences mean that the outcome of the episode has some lasting effect on the Trekverse as a whole, or at least the show itself. BOBW permanently affected Picard, Sisko and helped set up DS9. I, Borg and Descent didn't have any real effect on the show or the Trekverse since Hugh and his Borg were never seen again. No characters were permanently affected or changed, nothing was changed.

Same with FC, there were no lasting effects to that Borg encounter except that Picard went revenge crazy for a bit that was self-contained.

It's the double standard again. TNG was able to destroy the Borg cruiser in Descent without any help, and no one cared. If VOY had done it, everyone would have complained. Simple. And seeing how aside from that BOBW was their only other major encounter in the show proper, wherein they lost militarily a large number of people, VOY would have to maintain that. And in FC they lost a lot of ships and people too.

Anything remotely invincible is a bad choice, bottom line. And like I said there are folks who felt that Scorpion began the Borg decay by showing they could lose in straight up combat. They couldn't keep showing the Borg getting blown up by 8472 without pissing off the audience.

It's not toning the Borg down, it's toughening the crew up.

In Scorpion, thousands of ships were sacrificed. Borg ships. To build up the threat of the 8472. So the 8472 got to be threatening by blowing up stuff at the cost of the Borg's own reputation, no-win scenario for VOY (one of many).

His statement was not fine, it was a blanket statement that implied that every Borg appearance was a failure in VOY.

 

[RyuRoots]

Believe whatever you want to, Anwar. I can take no more circular logic, strawman arguments, and inanity. I have been beaten--nay, broken. There are five lights.

(I apologize to zar for plagiarism, it was too good of an exit post)

 

[Saito S]

Believe whatever you want to, Anwar. I can take no more circular logic, strawman arguments, and inanity. I have been beaten--nay, broken. There are five lights.

(I apologize to zar for plagiarism, it was too good of an exit post)

My policy on these kinds of zany train wreck threads is to continue on as long as the debate (such as it is in this case ) remains interesting and/or entertaining. Up till now, this has been the case here, but I too am spent on this particular conflict.

I can go on and on for days about how there is no double standard, there is no hatedome, etc etc etc... Nothing else I can say will make any difference, so I'm out. If something else in the thread catches my fancy, I'll post, but I'm done "debating" with Anwar.

 

[zar]

After all, "character development" is growing from experiences and if you face the incredible enough times it just isn't scary anymore.

It's not toning the Borg down, it's toughening the crew up.

That is certainly a... creative way to defend Voyager.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Consequences mean that the outcome of the episode has some lasting effect on the Trekverse as a whole, or at least the show itself. BOBW permanently affected Picard, Sisko and helped set up DS9. I, Borg and Descent didn't have any real effect on the show or the Trekverse since Hugh and his Borg were never seen again. No characters were permanently affected or changed, nothing was changed.

Same with FC, there were no lasting effects to that Borg encounter except that Picard went revenge crazy for a bit that was self-contained.

It's the double standard again. TNG was able to destroy the Borg cruiser in Descent without any help, and no one cared. If VOY had done it, everyone would have complained. Simple.

So, we've gone from everyone always complaining about VOY nonstop to everyone "would have complained."

And seeing how aside from that BOBW was their only other major encounter in the show proper, wherein they lost militarily a large number of people, VOY would have to maintain that.

Why?

And like I said there are folks who felt that Scorpion began the Borg decay by showing they could lose in straight up combat.

Who?

His statement was not fine, it was a blanket statement that implied that every Borg appearance was a failure in VOY.

NO. IT. WASN'T! What he was saying was that the cumulative effect of so many appearances harmed the image of the Borg. He never said that every appearance was a failure.

 

[Cepstrum]

Wow. That was an awesome analysis.

Thank you, sonak. Very kind of you to say that.

 

[Cepstrum]

Sorry for the interruption. I know there's debate going back and forth, so please disregard my opinions as necessary.

Oh no you don't. I want to make sure everyone in this topic, and the entire Voyager forum, reads what you just posted.

You perfectly answered a question in 600 words what dozens of people have not been able to do in 447 posts. As a moderate fan of Voyager I completely agree with what you said and I think even Voyager haters would completely agree with your post. Excellent post.

Now I just need to copy that to notepad.

Oh wow. That's really nice of you to say. I appreciate positive feedback very, very much.

 

[Anwar]

So, we've gone from everyone always complaining about VOY nonstop to everyone "would have complained."

Well, they complain about most other stuff in VOY too it's just the Borg were a more touchy subject.

Why?

Because aside from "Descent" every Borg encounter had folks dying to maintain their threat level. Q Who?, BOBW, FC, even Descent had folks killed off-screen.

Of course, VOY didn't have anyone to sacrifice on that scale in the first place. But that requires the show's detractors to be rational.

Who?

Darkwing Duck, for one. Otherwise he wouldn't have said VOY emasculated the Borg.

NO. IT. WASN'T! What he was saying was that the cumulative effect of so many appearances harmed the image of the Borg. He never said that every appearance was a failure.

No, I said it was a bad idea to have the Borg be a recurring enemy (because they suck in that role). Darkwing said that VOY emasculated the Borg, he never clarified, which leads to the understandable conclusion that he hated all Borg appearances on the show from beginning to end. Including Scorpion.

 

[TheGodBen]

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[Anwar]

It's the vicious cycle (again), VOY should never have used any of the pre-existing Trek races in the first place.

Do you know why the audience was more accepting of TNG's new aliens like the Borg, Ferengi and Cardassians, or why the DS9 crowd are okay with the Dominion? It's because they still had the old aliens around, and they could intertwine stories about the new aliens with the old aliens and appease the crowd to the point they came to like the new ones as well.

VOY simply did not have that advantage. It was just another no-win scenario. Like SO MUCH of the show.

And no, it didn't matter how well-written or creative the new aliens were.

 

[Cepstrum]

Just out of curiosity, Anwar, because you write quite a bit about VOY and seem to be very familiar with it: can you briefly summarize your own opinion of the show? How do you rate it compared to the other series?

I *do* know of the several things you would have changed, but as is, how do you like it?

 

[exodus]

It seemed like they hit the reset button quite a bit.

Whoever said that was right. To me, that was the main problem with Voyager. I did enjoy the show but nothing compares to DS9 in my mind.

I never saw the reset as a problem.
I don't see what difference it makes if those in the show don't remember the events, we do. We saw the real story and remember it. IMO the problem is as long as DS9 is put on a pedestal, no Trek is ever going to be seen as good enough no matter how close they come. No Trek can ever be different because it's always going to be compared to it. IMO if there was no DS9, Voy would be seen as just as good as TNG.

What's ironic is, Ira Behr admitted he hates Trek and wanted DS9 to be a non-Trek like as they'd allow.
I think Rick Berman loves Trek and wanted to me Voy. a show Gene Roddenberry would be proud of and I think he did. If Roddenberry were still alive, I very much doubt DS9 would have been the show we got.

 

[flemm]

Believe whatever you want to, Anwar. I can take no more circular logic, strawman arguments, and inanity. I have been beaten--nay, broken. There are five lights.

(I apologize to zar for plagiarism, it was too good of an exit post)

Arguing with Anwar has been compared to the pounding of waves upon the shore: over the centuries it might grind the rocks to dust, but by human standards it is difficult to witness any impact. Can we justify spending our fleeting moments of existence in such a futile manner?

 

[TheGodBen]

IMO the problem is as long as DS9 is put on a pedestal, no Trek is ever going to be seen as good enough no matter how close they come.

To put something on a pedestal implies that it is perfect, and DS9 is clearly not perfect, I don't think anyone would claim such a thing.

But DS9 is my favourite Trek show, and it's one of my favourite TV shows of all time, and I compare all shows to DS9 in some way. What's wrong with that? I also compare DS9 to the likes of The Wire, The Sopranos and The West Wing, and DS9 comes out unfavourably compared to those shows, so should I not do that? My love of DS9 isn't affected by my belief that it is inferior to those other shows, and I still prefer DS9 to those shows even though I know it's not technically as good.

What's ironic is, Ira Behr admitted he hates Trek and wanted DS9 to be a non-Trek like as they'd allow.

Source?

I've never read anything to suggest that Ira Behr hated Star Trek, what he didn't like was the constraints created by Roddenberry for TNG, the so-called Roddenberry Box. TOS didn't have those constraints, and Ira Behr and Ron Moore wanted Star Trek to return to the better yet still flawed vision of humanity presented in TOS and to move away from the idealised vision of humanity presented in early TNG. To claim that that means he hated all of Star Trek is an exaggeration.

 

[Anwar]

To put something on a pedestal implies that it is perfect, and DS9 is clearly not perfect, I don't think anyone would claim such a thing.

It sure seems like it, the way VOY keeps getting trashed simply for not being DS9.

And the whole "TNG made humans too perfect" thing is just BS. The TNG humans had flaws like anyone else, and we were shown that. The only difference is that we were shown that, yes, meeting aliens and developing new technologies WOULD change human society and how humans saw themselves and the Universe. Is that so hard to believe?

All TOS did was make things 100% the way they were in the 1960s with little to no differences aside from humans being in space and now fighting Klingons instead of Soviets. Which is fine, but if you're just to make things exactly the same I have to wonder what the purpose of setting a show in the future or in space is.

 

[exodus]

Source?

I've never read anything to suggest that Ira Behr hated Star Trek, what he didn't like was the constraints created by Roddenberry for TNG, the so-called Roddenberry Box. TOS didn't have those constraints, and Ira Behr and Ron Moore wanted Star Trek to return to the better yet still flawed vision of humanity presented in TOS and to move away from the idealised vision of humanity presented in early TNG. To claim that that means he hated all of Star Trek is an exaggeration.

He stated so himself in a documentary of Trek that aired on PBS.

How can you claim it's an exaggeration if you didn't hear him say it yourself?

 

[Anwar]

Just out of curiosity, Anwar, because you write quite a bit about VOY and seem to be very familiar with it: can you briefly summarize your own opinion of the show? How do you rate it compared to the other series?

I *do* know of the several things you would have changed, but as is, how do you like it?

It could have been better, but it was never going to be like Farscape, SGU or NuBSG so I don't let that influence my opinion (I LIKED Farscape). I'd have liked it if they serialized the show a bit more and used their recurring aliens more, but I also know why that didn't happen. Some characters were just poorly designed or they picked a lousy actor that doomed the character, but for the most part I liked them.

I never expected the show to be some Galactic Epic, and I think it may have been better if the show ended with the idea that they were getting home but we never saw it happen since that would have led to some silly "We're home now what?" ending.