The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager

[DigificWriter]

@Guy: You're getting unnecessarily nitpicky on this Braxton thing.

@Anwar: I disagree that Voyager suffered from not having a more clear-cut 'path' mapped out when it came to the show's basic premise -one ship, far from 'familiar shores', trying to make it home - and the execution of said premise.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's math. Two points make a line. Three points make a line or an arc or a triangle.

An arc looks like a half circle sorta.

starts from zero on the x axis with an origin, rises on the y axis with development, falls on y axis and then heads back towards zero on the x axis because of firther development that has fundamentally changed the status quo of the story and is heading towards a conclusion which is again zero on the x axis.

Like a ball in flight.

I ('m sure? I) said changing the acting, is cheating, but bringing a character back from cold storage means that a story line is getting curvature even if it is cheating.

How hard is it to get an actor to accept 10 grand for a couple hours work, and then come back every now and then for another ten grand?

 

[JarodRussell]

Before killing Tuvix, Tuvix speaks to everyone on the bridge, telling them they will have to live with it. And tada, no one has to live with it because the show completely forgot about the entire incident by the next episode.

The doctor becomes insane because of a moral conflict in his programming and has to deal with it instead of wiping his program. But even that is completely forgotten about.

Some crewmember that we have never seen before dies and returns and is supposed to be best friends with everyone. Yeah right.

Even that year of hell thing completely misfired. There was an episode where Kes aged backwards and at the end reported everyone about the Krenim and their temporal torpedoes. And then they meet the Krenim and nobody remembers.

Stuff like that annoyed me the most about Voyager. It barely has any continuity.

I prefer DS9.

 

[Anwar]

DS9 did the same stuff too, for all of Sisko's talk about "Saving the dream!" in Far Beyond the Stars he then goes and destroys the dream himself in "Pale Moonlight" and his character does not change at all.

For everything that happened to O'Brien in "Hard Time" he's okay by the next episode.

Bashir finally realizes how arrogant he is in "The Quickening" and then he's back to normal in the next episode.

DS9 "dropped the ball" as much as Voyager did, it had SOME character moments but it flopped just as much.

DS9 had a more workable premise than Voyager as well.

As for the "Year of Hell" thing, Kes ended up leaving the ship meaning that the entire timelines thing she experienced never would've happened. That episode more or less retconned itself out of existence when she left, explaining why no one remembers the Krenim.

 

[KaraBear]

Before killing Tuvix, Tuvix speaks to everyone on the bridge, telling them they will have to live with it. And tada, no one has to live with it because the show completely forgot about the entire incident by the next episode.

The doctor becomes insane because of a moral conflict in his programming and has to deal with it instead of wiping his program. But even that is completely forgotten about.

Some crewmember that we have never seen before dies and returns and is supposed to be best friends with everyone. Yeah right.

Even that year of hell thing completely misfired. There was an episode where Kes aged backwards and at the end reported everyone about the Krenim and their temporal torpedoes. And then they meet the Krenim and nobody remembers.

Stuff like that annoyed me the most about Voyager. It barely has any continuity.

I prefer DS9.

not following up on some things doesn't mean no continuity.

there is plenty of continuity and arcs. I've posted some above

 

[KaraBear]

DS9 did the same stuff too, for all of Sisko's talk about "Saving the dream!" in Far Beyond the Stars he then goes and destroys the dream himself in "Pale Moonlight" and his character does not change at all.

For everything that happened to O'Brien in "Hard Time" he's okay by the next episode.

Bashir finally realizes how arrogant he is in "The Quickening" and then he's back to normal in the next episode.

DS9 "dropped the ball" as much as Voyager did, it had SOME character moments but it flopped just as much.

DS9 had a more workable premise than Voyager as well.

As for the "Year of Hell" thing, Kes ended up leaving the ship meaning that the entire timelines thing she experienced never would've happened. That episode more or less retconned itself out of existence when she left, explaining why no one remembers the Krenim.

yep, exactly. Obrien lived a lifetime in an alien prison, starving and believing he killed someone, next episode he's fine.
Garak tortured Odo, but they never talk about that again
Worf disobeyed orders durring a mission to save his wife, no mention of that agin
and what did happen to all those tribbles on the promenade?

 

[Guy Gardener]

A show with no continuity is the Outter Limits from the early 1990s UNTIL IT WASN'T.

170 episodes of Voyager and we "experts" can only find 5 or 6 arcs that covered maybe a dozen episodes.

For all of Seven of Nine's exploration of her humanity, whatever lesson she supposedly learned, the following week she was a dumbass again starting from first principles all over again like Scorpion was a week ago through out her entire run..

SHE DIDN'T EVEN CHANGE HER CLOTHES!

 

[Anwar]

Everyone in Trek had a limited wardrobe man!

 

[Anwar]

@Anwar: I disagree that Voyager suffered from not having a more clear-cut 'path' mapped out when it came to the show's basic premise -one ship, far from 'familiar shores', trying to make it home - and the execution of said premise.

"Lost in Space" isn't really a sustainable premise for more than 2 seasons at the very most, neither is "Crew divided on everything". Most tensions would realistically fade after 1 season or so, otherwise we're dealing with seriously messed up people.

The whole "Always on the move" thing damaged the show's ability to flesh out their surroundings as well.

 

[MacLeod]

The argument often is that VOY lacked continuity not that it had no continuity, there is a subtle difference.

The premise indictaed a more serialised show, yet what we got was a largely episodic show i.e. a re-hash of TNG. Had VOY been set in the AQ exploring the borders of UFP space much like TOS and TNG some of the critisims would not have been made, as that premise would indicate a more episodic show.

But leaving aside that for now, audiance tatses where changing around that time to wanting more serialised shows.

The are some that that hate VOY, some that accept it for what it was and some who feel it could have been so much more, and some of those who critise VOY come from those who feel it could have bee more, they don't hate it per say they just feel it didin't live up to it's potential.

 

[KaraBear]

with all this talk about arcs...I have to ask, besides the dominion war, what were the big arcs on DS9? on TNG? Why was voyager supposed to have these arcs when the other shows didn't?

 

[KaraBear]

The argument often is that VOY lacked continuity not that it had no continuity, there is a subtle difference.

The premise indictaed a more serialised show, yet what we got was a largely episodic show i.e. a re-hash of TNG. Had VOY been set in the AQ exploring the borders of UFP space much like TOS and TNG some of the critisims would not have been made, as that premise would indicate a more episodic show.

But leaving aside that for now, audiance tatses where changing around that time to wanting more serialised shows.

The are some that that hate VOY, some that accept it for what it was and some who feel it could have been so much more, and some of those who critise VOY come from those who feel it could have bee more, they don't hate it per say they just feel it didin't live up to it's potential.

there are also people who LIKE the show, think it's pretty darn good the way it is, love the characters, etc.

 

[BruntFCA]

DS9 did the same stuff too, for all of Sisko's talk about "Saving the dream!" in Far Beyond the Stars he then goes and destroys the dream himself in "Pale Moonlight" and his character does not change at all.

Sisko changes big time over the course of the show.

For everything that happened to O'Brien in "Hard Time" he's okay by the next episode.

You definitely have a point here, "Hard Time" is a brilliant episode but the fact that it was completely forgotten about really hurts it.

Bashir finally realizes how arrogant he is in "The Quickening" and then he's back to normal in the next episode.

Bashir wasn't "back to normal" at all, there's a definite change in him for the rest of the series.

DS9 "dropped the ball" as much as Voyager did, it had SOME character moments but it flopped just as much.

DS9 had a hell of a lot more then "SOME" character moments. Nog went from a punk kid to a veteran of war(with several stops in between) over the course of the series and he wasn't even a main character. DS9 even managed in one episode to give Morn more character development then any recurring character on VOY

DS9 had a more workable premise than Voyager as well.

I'm not entirely convinced that DS9 had a more workable premise then VOY, the difference is that DS9 BUILT on the original premise whereas VOY actively fought against its own premise,

As for the "Year of Hell" thing, Kes ended up leaving the ship meaning that the entire timelines thing she experienced never would've happened. That episode more or less retconned itself out of existence when she left, explaining why no one remembers the Krenim.

That is the way time travel works in Back to the future not in Star Trek, if it did then old Harry wouldn't have been able to save Voyager in "Timeless" and Old Janeway wouldn't have been able to send Voyager home in Endgame.

When compared to DS9 there is a big lack of continuity and serialization on VOY. Most episodes of VOY add nothing to the overall tapestry of the series. On DS9 most episodes add SOMETHING to the overall tapestry of the show even if it is just Nog learning how to read.

 

[DigificWriter]

Kes' warnings about the Krenim in Before and After weren't ignored. They weren't directly referenced, but there is a small subtle callback to them in YoH.

In its execution, Voyager ended up being different than what it had originally been envisioned and marketed as being, but I've come to realize that that's okay and what we got was in fact excellent. It's not perfect, but few things are.

 

[Guy Gardener]

with all this talk about arcs...I have to ask, besides the dominion war, what were the big arcs on DS9? on TNG? Why was voyager supposed to have these arcs when the other shows didn't?

TNG was just as bad as Voyager.

But TNG's job was to be better than TOS.

Voyagers job was to be better than TNG.

 

[KaraBear]

with all this talk about arcs...I have to ask, besides the dominion war, what were the big arcs on DS9? on TNG? Why was voyager supposed to have these arcs when the other shows didn't?

TNG was just as bad as Voyager.

But TNG's job was to be better than TOS.

Voyagers job was to be better than TNG.

that doesn't answer my question at all

 

[DigificWriter]

You really can't compare TNG, DS9, and Voyager to one another because they're entirely different. TNG is almost wholly episodic, DS9 is heavily serialized, and Voyager is a hybrid of those two formats that, as I have noted, is analogous to a 'serialized procedural drama' such as Bones.

 

[BruntFCA]

with all this talk about arcs...I have to ask, besides the dominion war, what were the big arcs on DS9? on TNG? Why was voyager supposed to have these arcs when the other shows didn't?

TNG's premise was just about a ship flying around space exploring, so arcs and serialization aren't to be expected. VOY on the other hand had an actual goal to obtain(getting home) and obstacles to over come(two different crews alone and cutoff from starfleet) so an amount of continuity and serialization was to be expected.

As for DS9, aside from all of the character arcs for main and recurring characters you had the Emissary arc, Bajoren political arc, Klingon arc, Ferengi arc, Cardassian arc, Changeling infiltration arc, Mirror universe arc, and a few others that I'm forgetting

 

[Guy Gardener]

with all this talk about arcs...I have to ask, besides the dominion war, what were the big arcs on DS9? on TNG? Why was voyager supposed to have these arcs when the other shows didn't?

TNG was just as bad as Voyager.

But TNG's job was to be better than TOS.

Voyagers job was to be better than TNG.

that doesn't answer my question at all

Yes it does.

Just not in a way that makes you happy.

Okay, so I didn't want to write half a page about the most obvious story arcs for DS9, which wouldn't make any sense if you haven't seen DS9, and shouldn't have to be asked if you have seen DS9.

Bashir... Wide eyed optimist frontier medicine goofy for the girl with spots... Hates O'Brien... Optimism beat down by listening to Garrak's lies at their daily lunches... Whoring it about like a slut... Lyta the dabo girl/girlfriend... Best friends with O'Brien, darts, the Alamo, fighting jerry across the channel... Genetically modified superman... More powerful than god (Arrogant doctor not magic super powers.).. Replaced by a changeling for 1/4 of a season... Section 32 operative... Lonely and bitter... Makes headway with another spotty girl... "Miles I love Ezri, but I like you better." ...Lives happily ever after as grizzled BMOC after everyone with shoulders wanders off.

The end.

Compare that to Kim.

Wide eyed optimist gerbil fool... Gains weight... The end.

TNG didn't need arcs because TNG wasn't expected to have arcs because it was made by the same people who made TOS for the first couple years.

That's why TNG gets a free pass. It's old.

Voyager was made at the same time as a couple other shows like DS9, Xena, Buffy and Babylon 5 which were using arcs and soap opera paradigm where stories just continued week to week, DS9 didn't start this till season three, but because DS9 did start 2 years earlier using the TNG adventure/reset model, it seems like Voyager was taking a step back because it was interested in a stupider audience who wanted simpler stories that only took 42 minutes to tell and you could miss a month and come back without being confused.

 

[DigificWriter]

VOY had an actual goal to obtain(getting home) and obstacles to over come(two different crews alone and cutoff from starfleet) so an amount of continuity and serialization was to be expected.

An expectation that they did in fact deliver on, albeit in a different fashion than they had originally intended.