I can't speak to that particular example as I'm not aware of VOY being particularly criticized for that. As an example I can speak to - the softening of the the Borg - my feeling is that VOY encountered them with such greater frequency and intensity than the TNG folks did that there should have been more significant consequences -at some point-. Nevermind how "Unimatrix Zero"(?) made (even partial) assimilation look like a cakewalk. The poster who noted that VOY never appeared to suffer significant damage nor casualties from any of its multiple encounters with the Borg nailed it rather well IMO. Ironically I thought the whole point of the end of "The Gift" was that Kes had essentially pushed VOY out of Borg space, at least for the most part. Clearly either she didn't do that, the Borg underwent a massive expansion immediately afterward, or even the areas that aren't considered part of Borg space are nevertheless crawling with Borg, which makes little sense to me.
I don't believe that the Borg were softened. Voyager neve destroyed many cubes as people say they did. In regards to the Gift, they left what was the most highly populated area of borg. they have transwarp conduits so they can go anywhere, they're not limited to that area of space.
Whether an enemy has been softened is not merely a matter of how easy they are to destroy. I think I did a reasonable job of pointing out how I feel they were softened in other manners. In regards to "The Gift", I think it was a mistake to have the Borg show up as frequently as they did after that episode, as it gave the impression that Kes hadn't done much for them at all. Though to be fair I'd need a run-down of the episodes in which the Borg appear in order to assess which I'd be willing to discard. Actually, they could have bought that back a bit if the crew had ever referenced Kes's push along with a feeling of surprise that the Borg still had such a significant presence. Doesn't Chakotay in one episode say, somewhat laughably, "It's not every day we go looking for the Borg?" Yeahhhh....
Perhaps. But lets look at some other events "Q Who?" the Borg were about to destroy the Ent-D before Q snapped his fingers "BOBW"/"Emissary" the Borg wipe the floor with the Federation destroying 39 out of 40 ships before the Ent-D could accidently cause the Borg ships powergrid to overload via Locutus "First Contact", a fleet of Starships has been engaging the borg for light years inflicitng heavy damage. The only destroy the cube once again thanks to a residual link to Locutus/Picard. So it seems as if you need a fair few ships to even come close to destroying a cube.
I think this is a very valid point. When TOS, TNG, and DS9 were cast, the stars were relatively unknown. Trek had a reputation for picking stage actors for regulars. However, Kate Mulgrew had a significant fan following already, back when she was on Ryan's Hope she was a big time star. It's more evident in the shipper boards because it was and is largely female. Casting Kate Mulgrew brought in a lot of fans that had never seen any other Trek before. You have no idea how many times I've had to explain that Cardassia was devastated after the Dominion War, so much so that I doubt they would have paid any attention to a few Maquis that had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant for seven years, much less extradite them. To this day there are Voyager fans that only saw Voyager.
^Once again that depends on your point of view. From my point of view all of VOY's cast were unknown to me except maybe Robert Picardo who I had seen in a couple of films i.e. Innerspace.
The series was stuck with the episodic format apparently due to network request. Though I wish the Borg episodes could have been written as some sort of gradually escalating mini-arc spread over the years, as they got closer to "Borg Headquarters".
It was inevitable that the Borg would be softened in much the same way the Klingons, Romulans and even Cardassians were softened simply by exposure. The more we saw them, the less intimidating they became and the more difficult it was to sell them as 2 dimensional baddies The beauty of the Borg was that you could sell them as the 2 dimensional baddies without it becoming ridiculous because they weren't a sentient species with a culture, they were mindless drones and so wouldn't have to evolve in the same way the other species (used as baddies) throughout the franchise evolved I agree they became less threatening and intimidating as characters on Voyager but that was more to do with seeing them so often rather than undermining what had gone before. They were an impressive new threat but lets face it, once Starfleet had acquired some experience with the Borg, they could cope with them to some extent (even if they were still formidable) and were they ever that powerful to begin with anyway....i mean think about it....they dominated the Delta quadrant for goodness sake....a quadrant with the least impressive species in the entire galaxy
^ I agree. Any villain that is used a lot and defeated a great number of times is going to become a weak villain. How threatening can they be if they are always defeated at every encounter? I think VOY and TNG took the teeth out of the Borg.
Teeth will be irrelevant in the new order. Drones receive sufficient nourishment during regeneration periods. You will be assimilated at once. Bend over.
You can make an argument for a prime directive violation every time anybody talks to anybody on any other planet. Guy Gardener is just calling every instance of good samaritanism involving any pre-warp species or that has any impact on any culture a PD violation. You can certainly make that argument, but not without TOS, TNG and ENT being equally guilty. DS9 and Voyager may have had roughly the same number of episodes that involved time travel, but it's not really the same thing. Other than Past Tense, Trials, The Visitor, Little Green Men, you get instances more like Visionary or that Molly episode where one character makes an excursion to the past or future and everybody else stays home. In the average DS9 time travel episode, one character travels through time and is not in a position to profoundly change the timeline. In the average Voyager time travel episode, the entire ship gets fractured in time, and the future and/or past is at risk of being completely destroyed.
Overexposure to any given villain results in the "water down effect" in which they get progressively weaker so that the good guys can beat them even though they were introduced as this unstoppable force. Even DS9 did this with the Dominion. A single Jem'Hadar ship took out a Galaxy-class ship in their first encounter and by season 7, runabouts were destroying them. Voyager really did this on a bigger scale with the Borg. Oh they weren't destroying them, but they were dumbing them down in each encounter. Dark Frontier, the Queen was beaten in quite possibly the cheesiest action sequence ever, using technology they had supposedly assimilated even with it's creator a Borg Drone in that room. To say nothing of lacking security in what I guess is in effect their capital. In Unimatrix Zero... well heck... the Borg just go apeshit with this whole "rebellion" thing. What one person on a ship of hundreds of thousands might be subconsciously plotting against us? Blow it up! That's like dropping an atomic bomb on New York City because you think there might be an Al Quaeda cell in it. Yeah that solves the problem, but creates a lot more. You'd think a race based on efficiency and perfection would consider that. Not to mention these rebel drones apparently overpowering Borg ships with ease, despite those number differentials, how dumb they had to be to fall for the assimilate thing(awfully nice of the Borg not to permanently disfigure any of them with eye gouging or arm amputation in favor of a toaster), and to cap it all the absurdity of introducing a SUPER cube... And Voyager able to engage it without any harm... and actually force it to shut down for repairs... yeah. Then they just stopped pretending to dumb down the Borg in Endgame and gave Voyager godmode. Woo, let's go blowin up them Borg now! Pew pew!
If they wanted to show how a war would realistically tax resources, they failed. VOY's situation was not as bad as DS9's. TOS was supposed to be about them exploring the unknown and be on their own while doing so. Yet they freely violated that premise repeatedly, with no one caring. If one show gets away with doing this stuff with no complaints, then it begs the question why VOY is endlessly condemned for the same thing. It did have to, because it couldn't do anything else really when you consider how limited and unsustainable the premise was. There were no significant consequences for the TNG encounters either, aside from Picard's own character development. Why should they be so scared of the Borg all the time? By then, they knew there were worse things out there. The Ent-D destroyed the Borg Cube and all they needed was Data and Locutus. The Ent-D also destroyed the Renegade Borg ship in "Descent" all on their own too. And of course, if VOY had done the same thing and used a Solar Flare or a Black Hole or a Neutron Star to destroy or even DAMAGE a Borg ship (not even a Cube, maybe just a tiny Sphere or Scout ship) there'd be Hell to pay. I mean Heck, folks complained that there was a single Alien race out there that could fight the Borg (8472) yet if DS9 showed the Prophets destroying a Borg armada like they did to the Dominion in DS9 NO ONE would bat an eye. You just can't win.
This is pretty good at telling what is wrong in your opinion, except that wasn't the question. I ask why do you want the Borg to be so powerful in the first place. What is there about this particular group of beings that sets them above even the series heroes?
That's how they were originally established. That's how they used to be shown. And I agree that the weakening of the Borg is a natural result of having them featured so often. It's the only way your heroes can credibly survive. But that's not a justification for the show to go back to that well again and again; in fact, it should be the opposite. I would have been satisfied if the show featured the Borg as much as twice. The first time, you let the heroes exploit some weakness that lets them win-- barely. Just as in "The Best of Both Worlds." The second time is worse. The Borg are adapting to everything the crew tries. They're cutting the heroes to ribbons. But you let the heroes exploit some major weakness: they build a Subspace Vinculum Jammer or some such thing, that takes down the Borg Collective permanently. At a cost. You kill off one or more cast members, or multiple recurring characters, in the process. You do that and you've preserved the Borg's villain status. They weren't weakened. They were just as powerful and implacable as ever; the heroes just managed to find their Achilles heel before it was too late. They don't devolve into mustache-twirling villains who claim to be invincible but are shown onscreen to be totally ineffective. Edit to add: And you've got a good explanation for why the Queen didn't unleash every cube in that part of space and stomp that @#$% Starfleet ship into a greasy spot after their second or third encounter.
So was the Dominion. No one complained that they were depowered as DS9 went on. Not if they have no other option for a continuing enemy. And there's no need for there to be some permanent consequences from Borg encounters. There was little permanent damage done in TNG aside from Picard's time as Locutus. If the Borg's one and only major appearance in the series had been "Scorpion" with the idea being tweaked so that the 8472 annihilated the majority of the Collective before VOY came across them (explaining why the Borg don't send more ships after VOY, they don't have any), then you'd still be complaining that the Borg had been weakened in some way. Even if it was at the hands of super-aliens from another Universe. Hell, if we ever saw Q destroy a Borg Cube then you'd just complain the Borg were weakened by THAT too!
Why are you accusing me of complaining about everything when I just suggested a solution? Actually your "Scorpion" idea sounds fine to me. It's pretty much in line with what I said. Who says they had no other options for a continuing enemy?