Why is the Trek community so negative about Voyager?
- Thread starter ReadyAndWilling
- Start date
Only if he actually went through with the lawsuit, I'm guessing.
While I agree with you (yes, it is possible) that the Maquis shouldn't have been trying to overthrow the Fleeters because the DMZ situation, that doesn't mean they should just agree with everything the Fleeters practiced and said. There should have been disagreements, arguments and occasional insubordination due to their conflicting viewpoints.
Again I'm agreeing with you (what's going on here?).
The fact that the studio thought people wouldn't accept a female captain who had her orders and authority questioned was a major part of the problem. And that in itself, IMO, is a very sexist attitude.
Your idea about a female Maquis leader sounds pretty intriguing.
If he has concrete evidence, why doesn't he release it instead of issuing vague statements based on second-hand gossip, rumors and anecdotal similiarities?
What good what it do if he did, especially after what's done is done?
Didn't George Lucas try and sue the original BSG by claiming it ripped off Star Wars and loose?
I don't know, only J. Mikey can answer that question.
He's going to be at NYC Comic Con. next month.
If I can get tickets to go, maybe I'll see if I can ask him.
Maybe, but it would have worked out better to that effect if they had bothered properly defining just what the Maquis way was beyond "Guys who fight the Cardies and sometimes the Feds". They don't have any potential problems with the Feds aside from messing with local worlds (they wouldn't exploit them for their own ends, that would betray some of their own core beliefs about planetary rights and stuff) if they feel that world needs help.
For example, in Farscape the crew are all composed of criminals and some truly violent criminals. As well as a member of their single mutual enemy. Now THAT is a crew where conflict makes sense since they were all truly enemies to begin with.
If VOY had used Romulans as the second crew, and then numbers been a bit more equal, then there's much more room for conflict as the other crew would have genuine values and politics opposed to the Feds.
Yes, either make the other crew Romulans so it makes sense that Janeway couldn't control them in a way the studio could understand, or make the Maquis leader a woman to show that it's not a sexist thing since the opposition is also a woman.
number6
Vice Admiral
Promise me you'll call him "J.Mikey" to his face.
They tried to do some of that, in Learning Curve. We see that the Maquis don't respond well to living under Starfleet regulations - they fix things when they see fit, they don't like the dress code, they resent being treated like raw cadets, etc. After that episode, however, it's all just dropped. VOY needed more of that.
number6
Vice Admiral
I will give you a dollar.
They needed something deeper than that, and earlier. Maybe they demand to have any away teams be at least half Maquis, they think that since certain positions should be all Maquis like B'Ellanas immediate Engineering Staff (of course they'd have to compromise on that). Better food and supplies for those who worked for it instead of the "everyone gets the same". More of a meritocracy than a set Chain of Command.
Maybe they want certain areas of the ship to be theirs and theirs alone for training and meetings and such instead of having to co-habitate with the Fleeters.
Re: Why is the Trek community so negative about Voyager?
One of many reasons...
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Endgame_(episode)
One of many reasons...
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Endgame_(episode)
number6
Vice Admiral
Endgame wasn't bad at all. Not as bad as any of those Singing Doctor and Singing 7 o 9 episodes.. Not as bad as the Borg children.. Not as bad as the episode with The Rock...
Endgame was a pretty packed episode, and it reunited us with the original Borg Queen, showed us what the crew were going to do once they moved on with their lives, it gave us a chance to see the repercussions and consequences of Janeway's growing guilt over stranding her crew, and gave us a chance to see a heroic crew defeat a long standing foe carried over from the previous Star Trek shows..
I don't get the hate over Endgame at all.
Endgame was a pretty packed episode, and it reunited us with the original Borg Queen, showed us what the crew were going to do once they moved on with their lives, it gave us a chance to see the repercussions and consequences of Janeway's growing guilt over stranding her crew, and gave us a chance to see a heroic crew defeat a long standing foe carried over from the previous Star Trek shows..
I don't get the hate over Endgame at all.
I don't mind Endgame, but it is flawed. The admiral doesn't have sufficient reason to change the past imho. The C/7 romance was cheesy, at best, and out of the blue. It was one too many uses of the Borg in a series that had used them enough. It was a watered down version of a much better time travel episode, "Timeless," the 100th episode. And, finally, it really didn't close the loop on some of the lingering questions--like what would happen to the Maquis? To the Equinox crew? And so on.
How much better it would have been if they had brought back a different foe from the past and come up with a unique ending that started a few episodes from the end--at least two or three. My vote goes to the "Dragon Teeth" Vaadwaur and their subspace corridors. I kept waiting for those guys to reappear, and I thought that their corridors would have been a dandy route to the Alpha Quadrant (though not right into Earth's orbit, please).
I did enjoy the two Janeways, though, and thought Mulgrew did a good job at that. And, of course, the confrontation between Janeway and the Borg queen was a great element, too.
I agree with both of you.
Feels weird, doesn't it?
But yeah... I think the Maquis as "semi-enemies" could have worked much better than it did. I don't really have as much of a general issue as you do, Anwar, with the Maquis in terms of how they were defined. There was one thing that always bugged me though: were they Federation citizens or weren't they. In TNG's "Journey's End," Picard tells them that by staying, they WON'T be any longer. Then in "Preemptive Strike", he tells the Maquis ships attacking the Cardie warship at the beginning of the ep that "you are Federation citizens" and that their actions are a treaty violation. This "are they/aren't they" nebulousness was never really nailed down through DS9, and undercut what I felt was an otherwise effective long-term story arc.
Those are some interesting suggestions with the demands the Maquis crew on Voyager could make. Obviously, those things wouldn't be granted, but just having the demands made could have helped with the whole "What happened to the promised conflict?" angle. Especially if they were made over the course of season 1, and not all at once, with each (denied) request serving as an example to the most extreme Maquis that maybe serving with the Fleeters isn't so bad (they don't get any of their really outlandish request granted, yet the sky doesn't fall, so they slowly come to accept things as they are).
As for "Learning Curve", my big issues with that are twofold. One, as has been discussed to death, the Maquis/Starfleet tensions were severely downplayed for the most part, then suddenly, out of the blue, comes Learning Curve, which seems to jam it down our throats, and it makes a weird contrast. Two, Tuvok was honestly being kind of an ass. If the creators wanted to show him trying to teach Maquis crewman about "the Starfleet way", then they did a lousy job. He was picking at them for things that Starfleet doesn't even HAVE regulations for! Seven years of TNG made it QUITE clear that "Starfleet dress code" is "Wear your uniform while on duty. Make sure it looks nice." The idea that Henley's headband, Chell's pendant, or Gerron's earring are in any way "against regulations" is preposterous.
Look at that! A normal conversation!
Not going to turn this into a huge "Endgame" rant post (and the merits/flaws of that ep have been discussed to death anyway), but to sum it succinctly: I don't feel that it's Voyager's single worst episode, by any stretch. However, my problems with it in short stem from the fact that I felt it did the opposite of some of the things for which you praise it. As far as what the crew did with their lives, we saw a glimpse of a future that was entirely erased. Janeway's growing guilt culminated in her (future!Janeway, that is) deciding to take action that I found morally repugnant, at best. I believe it was Gaith in another thread who linked to an article about "Endgame" that summed up Future!Janeway's actions in a way that I found perfect: she became Annorax from "Year of Hell." And the Borg weren't handled too badly in "Endgame" itself, despite my feelings about how there were handled in the show as a whole, but they felt almost incidental in a way. I think the show would have been MUCH better served by using some other plot device as the central key problem/method of ultimately getting home (my vote would go to the female Caretaker from "Cold Fire". Not only was she just DROPPED after that ep, which I always thought was weird, it would bring VOY full circle to have their final adventure be about a Caretaker).
Oh, and of course, C/7.
I don't know. Ensign Ro made it clear that Bajoran ear-rings were against the dress code regulations. Maybe having the ornamentation is something that individual captains and officers can allow if they feel like granting crewmembers some leeway.
Of course, if that's the case, I'd say Tuvok needed to allow the Maquis to keep their headbands, pendants and ear-rings - as a way of showing that he was willing to bend to their needs and not just forcing them to conform to his and Starfleet's ways.
I know it feels kinda wierd.Look at that! A normal conversation!
In For the Cause, Eddington says that if Kassidy Yates is a Maquis then she's not a Federation citizen.
In Journey's End, Picard isn't talking about Maquis, just memebers of that colony, who deliberately and freely gave up their UFP citizenship.
Maybe, after the events of Preemptive Strike, the Federation decided to strip any known member of the Maquis of his or her Federation citizenship.
Eh, I thought of that, but I don't really believe that's the case either.
1) Starfleet is smart with how they use their human(oid) resources. When we look at how assignments work, what kinds of quarters and amenities they tend to have aboard ship, etc., it's clear that Starfleet has learned an important lesson, one which many modern corporations haven't: happy people are productive people. With that in mind, it makes sense to me that they would be a little bit more laid back when it comes to things like dress code than most real military forces.
2) Starfleet is multi-species. 150+, to be exact. There are going to be some for whom something like an earring or a pendant or what have you has some sort of exceptional cultural significance. I think Riker was just grousing at Ro because he doesn't like her. And Ro didn't feel it was worth arguing over, despite the fact that (assuming my interpretation was the correct one, of course) technically, since Starfleet dress code wouldn't prohibit her from wearing the earring, she would be in the right if she made a fuss over it.
3) As for individual captains... in "Chain of Command, part 2", after returning from the black ops mission, Worf is back on the bridge, in his uniform... with his Klingon sash thing. While serving under Captain "get that fish out of the ready room" Jelico, who's got to be the most tightly-wound, by-the-book Captain ever featured on TNG.
I know! I'm worried that a meteor's going to strike the Earth tomorrow or something.I know it feels kinda wierd.Look at that! A normal conversation!
This thread is something else.
Last edited:
Similar threads
- Sticky
