It may not be the big reason, but it is a reason. I've seen loads of people say that VOY made fighting the Borg insanely easy by "constantly blowing up their ships".
You know how sometimes a perfectly capable woman pretends she sucks at something to make her boyfriend feel less insignificant and mediocre? The Queen and Harry is all I'm saying.
Are we talking about Voyager the ship, or Voyager the series? The entire Federation almost fell to one cube only 10 years earlier. Now when the almighty Collective pick fights, the Borg lose planets. Meanwhile... Icheb alone could taken out a cube if he had sex with a drone on the opposing forces. Borg AIDS. If he had sex with the Queen... Well, what Janeway did in Endgame is what would have have happened to the collective at any point that the Queen and Icheb slipped into a bubble bath together and enjoyed each others boodies. The only thing that stopped the dominoes falling which would have inoculated the entire crew against assimilation (after a fashion), was that boys awkward virginity.
This is what happens when you're constantly replacing Showrunners nearly every season. TOS' plot was a similar "Out on our own" type thing, where was its' serialization? No worse than how DS9 should've had more war damage, but always looked good. They had an Industrial Replicator, and space is full of things for them to draw power from. Their "We lack power!" thing wasn't thought out very well. What didn't make sense was them saying they couldn't make more torpedoes. TOS and TNG did this too. No on complained. In TNG any damage done by the Borg or crews lost were always replaced by the next episode, with no holdovers from their prior encounters leaving any "scars" (except Picard). No one complained there. Of course, most of it comes down to the pathetic whining over how there shouldn't be a single alien species capable of fighting the Borg at all. That Voyager showed there was even ONE alien species that could fight the Borg (the 8472) was just another strike against the show. Nevermind that if TNG or DS9 had introduced the 8472 aliens, no one would mind and they'd think it made sense for there to be aliens on par with the Borg.
Okay, so they weren't. But my point stands. Voyager never lost a single crewman to them. They weren't a credible threat. In "Equinox", Captain Ransom says, "We haven't seen so much as a cube." As if a single cube is negligible. It used to be that a single cube would cause a Starfleet captain to need to change his shorts. And that SHOULD have been the perception of the Borg at the time Equinox was lost. Ransom's dialogue shows how the writers were really thinking. "Just another villain."
The thing I don't get is why all the Borg love. Now I do realize that some of you are big fans of the Borg, and I get that, but I have never understood why. I'm genuinely interested in this because to me any villain is disposable, they have to be for the plot lines to work. The undefeatable enemy is boring, and good conflict is only in the perception that the hero might fail, not in the perception that the hero can never win. So I respectfully ask you why do you feel the way you do? I am seeking opinions, not documentation. The way I see it is that the Borg suffer from crippling over specialization, that's their weakness. Once that vulnerability is know, the Borg can be taken down quickly. The Borg force anyone to adapt to them, they do not adapt to anyone else, that's also a weakness. I don't see the Borg as different from any other of the Trek villains, they are useful as antagonists in the short run. Then they have to become friendly (as the Klingons) or disappear. "The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long." (Bladerunner)
I think there wsa a lot of borg on Voyager for a few reasons... 1) The popularity of the Borg on TNG, those episodes were highly rated and most people always say that The Best of Both Wolds is an amazing episode if not their favorite 2) the popularity of the movie First Contact. Even today First Contact is rated high among the movies 3) Voyager is in the Delta Quadrant, home of the borg. I bet if they never ran into the borg they wuld have been just as criticized for that too
I didn't take his statement to imply that one cube is neglegible. I too that statement to imply that they simply have not seen any borg at all.
However in TOS they pulled into a Federation starbase every few months. And just because TOS did 30 years earlier doesn't mean that it was right. Starbase Deep Space Nine was only in a couple of major battles itself, It also had the resources of the Federation to call upon. Please cite onscreen referrence for this industrial replicator. It's not my fault as a viewer if I call them on issues which they ignore after they themselves drew attention to it. It's writing 101 don't call attention to something and expect your audiance to ignore it. See above point, whther it be a novel/TV episode/Film etc.. Don't call attention to a point if you later ignore it or don't at least provide a line saying how you overcome it. TOS and TNG did this too. No on complained.[/quote] And I never said they didn't but which out of the main cast characters got the least development in TOS and TNG (bear in mind in TOS at most they had 3 main cast Kirk, Spock and McCoy , all the others were technically guest stars). And once again just because other shows have done it, doesn't mean it's ok.
Then TOS violated it's own premise, which was that they'd be out there away from the Federation for 5 years exploring the unknown. If the war was really that bad, they'd stretch out their supply lines and resources and it should've shown. And DS9 was near the front lines of the war. It was already shown in the three prior shows how the Ship and Station crews can build stuff. I agree, limiting themselves by saying they couldn't make torpedoes (without explaining why) was a bad idea. The TOS chars underwent NO character growth until the movies, no one cared.
It does mean that. But that's not all it means. That expression is intended to describe the smallest part of the subject: you haven't seen that, and by extension you haven't seen the rest of him either. Asking about a person? "I haven't seen so much as a hair on his head." Inquiring about a missing toolbox? "I haven't seen so much as a screwdriver." Tracking the neighbors' cat? "I haven't seen so much as a hairball." Looking for a Vulcan? "I haven't seen so much as the tips of his pointy green ears." Inquiring about the Borg? "I haven't seen so much as a nanoprobe" or, perhaps, "I haven't seen so much as a drone." What Ransom said basically means, "We haven't seen so much as a rampaging unstoppable juggernaut", which makes no sense. Since that's obviously not what he meant, I can only conclude the writers were taking the Borg pretty lightly.
^^And Deep Space Nine also served as a repair station, as such wouldn't it get a decent amount of resources? TOS's premise as stated was "It's five year mission to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." It never directly said it would be a five year mission without returning home to a starbase? Sure you can could perhaps say it's implied. But implied is not the same thiung as stated.
After the station was retaken from the Dominion it was named headquarters for the 9th fleet so yeah it probably had a good supply of resources.
In any case, this discussion is about (perceived) flaws with "Voyager". Saying "other shows did it too!" isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a valid argument. Or rather it may be a valid argument against those shows but is hardly an argument in favor of "Voyager".
but the question is, if Voyager is doing the same kind of things that the other shows did and didn't get criticized for, why is Voyager criticized for those things.
Why are you assuming that anyone criticizing VOY for an issue wouldn't be willing to criticize the other show(s) for the same issue? The thread as I understand it is about (perceived) problems with VOY, not about things VOY did wrong but the other shows did right. If you want us to only discuss issues that we don't feel apply to any of the other Trek series, that should be stipulated. For instance, I feel VOY should have had greater intra-series continuity. I -also- wish DS9 had tighter intra-series continuity, but I believe DS9 handled it better than VOY. But this thread's about VOY, so I would tend to focus on the VOY side of things, not the DS9 issues.
Because Voyager came later and chose to retread old ground when it didn't have to. "Bad"+"Seen it all before" trumps just plain "Bad."
Having been a member of several trek boards for many many years I've posted in boards for all the shows and I've never seen people criticize the other shows for the same things that voyager was criticized for actually an example of that is one example of a misconception that I gave in the opening post. Time travel...Voyager gets criticzed for having too many time travel episodes, but as I pointed out they had the same number as TNG and only one more than DS9, and those shows never get criticized for having too much time travel.