^ What is with your reticence when it comes to acknowledging that Voyager had more serialization and continuity than people think it did?
The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager
- Thread starter DigificWriter
- Start date
"More than people think".
You do understand how abstract that is?
It's unquantifiable.
Meanwhile, how awful was your belief in the terribleness of Voyager's continuity before this started, to now when you seem to think that it's the most amazing invention since the Ipod?
Did you have an epiphany, or have you always thought that Voyager's continuity is fantastic and you underwent no physical change whatsoever in your heart?
If it's a question of change and you have always thought that Voyagers continuity and serialization has been amazing, then Voyager's serialization and continuity is not better than you thought, it's still only amazing.
Any episode in season 3 except Scorpion, could have been seamlessly put into season two anywhere without any change to the script and no one would have noticed, even if one week they're saying we've been here for 3 years and the next episode they're saying we've been here for 2 years.
You do understand how abstract that is?
It's unquantifiable.
Meanwhile, how awful was your belief in the terribleness of Voyager's continuity before this started, to now when you seem to think that it's the most amazing invention since the Ipod?
Did you have an epiphany, or have you always thought that Voyager's continuity is fantastic and you underwent no physical change whatsoever in your heart?
If it's a question of change and you have always thought that Voyagers continuity and serialization has been amazing, then Voyager's serialization and continuity is not better than you thought, it's still only amazing.
Any episode in season 3 except Scorpion, could have been seamlessly put into season two anywhere without any change to the script and no one would have noticed, even if one week they're saying we've been here for 3 years and the next episode they're saying we've been here for 2 years.
My previous experience with Voyager was sporadic at best, and I therefore had no true sense of how much continuity and serialization it might actually have compared to how much continuity and serialization it's perceived to have. Once I began watching it from the beginning and in its proper sequence, though, I quickly realized that there was in fact more continuity and serialization in it than is the general perception and started this discussion in order to address the topic.
I don't know if you've ever watched Bones, but both it and Voyager are examples of series that can be viewed in any order, but shouldn't be because of how they're structured (for more on this subject as it concerns Bones, go check out this thread).
I don't know if you've ever watched Bones, but both it and Voyager are examples of series that can be viewed in any order, but shouldn't be because of how they're structured (for more on this subject as it concerns Bones, go check out this thread).
I been there before.
This all comes down to individual prefrences.
You state that the show can be viewed in any order with the provso that it shouldn't. That implies that you watch it out of order without getting confused by not knowing what has gone on in previous episodes. (Hence the critisims a lack of continuity)
Compare that to shows like B5 and DSN where you might lose some understanding of what is going on by missing an episode (true the saliant points are normally recapped briefly in the Previously/Last time part at the start o the teaser).
To some VOY should have been far closer to the standard set by B5 and DSN than it was. Yes in terms of antogists they would have to change, no one is denying that. But what about characters, some of DSN's secondary/guest characters had more development than some of VOY's main cast.
Were where VOY's secondary cast that could easily have been devopled. Sure we had the likes of Seska and Carey for the first couple of Seasons and Taurik and Vaurik for a couple of seasons. But we never really got to see the larger VOY family grow and develop as we did in DSN. And they could have done it, at times it felt as if O'Brein during his recurring run in TNG got more development than Kim did as a primary in VOY.
We never really got the impression they were resource poor, the whole point about the holodeck power supply being incompatable with the rest of the ship was for continuity (from TNGs "Booby Trap" so they wouldn't be called on holodeck power being used) but didn't they end up later forgotting about that?
Every show no doubt has continuity errors and yes as viewers we can overlook them, but there reaches a tipping point for each individual viewer where they think enough is enough and the suspesion of disbelief is broken.
And really many of the critisims levelled at VOY could have been diminished by a throw-away line. Or extras doing damage repairs in the background etc..
These little things would have cost very little and helped a little.
But I never really got the impression that the characters believed they might never see home again which was a distict possibility.
It's not my fault as a viewer if I hold them to something they say they can't do in episode 3 and can do it in episode 90. They got around the problem great, but isn't good stroy telling to inform your audiance as to how you got around the problem?
Being able to watch a
shows like Bones, Voyager, Homicide: Life on the Street, etc. in any order doesn't mean they lack continuity and serialization, though.
In most cases, Serialized Procedural shows have recurrent storylines and character-based stories that span multiple episodes and seasons, but still allow a viewer to jump straight into them at any point without being lost. If a viewer goes back and watches one of these kinds of shows in their entirety from the beginning, though, they'll more fully understand the context of the recurrent storylines and character arcs that are present in them.
That's what I meant when I said that a show like Bones or Voyager CAN be watched in any order, but SHOULDN'T be. It's not really a matter of personal preference so much as it is a matter of the PTBs of these types of shows designing their shows so that they offer the 'best of both worlds' in terms of the episodic and the serialized.
shows like Bones, Voyager, Homicide: Life on the Street, etc. in any order doesn't mean they lack continuity and serialization, though.
In most cases, Serialized Procedural shows have recurrent storylines and character-based stories that span multiple episodes and seasons, but still allow a viewer to jump straight into them at any point without being lost. If a viewer goes back and watches one of these kinds of shows in their entirety from the beginning, though, they'll more fully understand the context of the recurrent storylines and character arcs that are present in them.
That's what I meant when I said that a show like Bones or Voyager CAN be watched in any order, but SHOULDN'T be. It's not really a matter of personal preference so much as it is a matter of the PTBs of these types of shows designing their shows so that they offer the 'best of both worlds' in terms of the episodic and the serialized.
Being able to watch a
shows like Bones, Voyager, Homicide: Life on the Street, etc. in any order doesn't mean they lack continuity and serialization, though.
In most cases, Serialized Procedural shows have recurrent storylines and character-based stories that span multiple episodes and seasons, but still allow a viewer to jump straight into them at any point without being lost. If a viewer goes back and watches one of these kinds of shows in their entirety from the beginning, though, they'll more fully understand the context of the recurrent storylines and character arcs that are present in them.
That's what I meant when I said that a show like Bones or Voyager CAN be watched in any order, but SHOULDN'T be. It's not really a matter of personal preference so much as it is a matter of the PTBs of these types of shows designing their shows so that they offer the 'best of both worlds' in terms of the episodic and the serialized.
shows like Bones, Voyager, Homicide: Life on the Street, etc. in any order doesn't mean they lack continuity and serialization, though.
In most cases, Serialized Procedural shows have recurrent storylines and character-based stories that span multiple episodes and seasons, but still allow a viewer to jump straight into them at any point without being lost. If a viewer goes back and watches one of these kinds of shows in their entirety from the beginning, though, they'll more fully understand the context of the recurrent storylines and character arcs that are present in them.
That's what I meant when I said that a show like Bones or Voyager CAN be watched in any order, but SHOULDN'T be. It's not really a matter of personal preference so much as it is a matter of the PTBs of these types of shows designing their shows so that they offer the 'best of both worlds' in terms of the episodic and the serialized.
It's a procedural space woogie show.
They go through a process each week almost identically to save the space woogie or destroy the space woogie.
The space woogie shows up in the credits.
the space woogie pwns the crew.
All seems lost.
They turn the tables at the last moment.
Victory!
Tell a stupid joke.
...
It's the word serialized I have trouble with.
They go through a process each week almost identically to save the space woogie or destroy the space woogie.
The space woogie shows up in the credits.
the space woogie pwns the crew.
All seems lost.
They turn the tables at the last moment.
Victory!
Tell a stupid joke.
...
It's the word serialized I have trouble with.
The X-Files and Fringe are Sci-Fi Serialized Procedurals.
And nearly every script's crisis resolution is two pages of doubletalk in pseudo-technical terms that makes no sense at all. "We had to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow going to the antimatter injector relays, and then everything worked again."
Edited to add:
All right, so maybe it has been applied to them, I rarely watched X-Files and have never seen Fringe. But X-Files was a synthesis of the crime drama and science fiction. The term procedural originated as a reference to crime dramas. Voyager is not a crime show.
Wikipedia explains the term in the first sentence of the Procedural Drama article:
Edited to add:
DigificWriter said:
All right, so maybe it has been applied to them, I rarely watched X-Files and have never seen Fringe. But X-Files was a synthesis of the crime drama and science fiction. The term procedural originated as a reference to crime dramas. Voyager is not a crime show.
Wikipedia explains the term in the first sentence of the Procedural Drama article:
Meh. The Professor did the same thing with coconuts.
Yeah, but he was stuck on deserted island with two hot babes, and he was the local stud.
[/QUOTE]
No one complains about Doctor Who doing that for decades, or how his Sonic Screwdriver can do nearly anything.
Or how in TOS the Enterprise is basically a magic ship that can go at any needed speed, its weapons can do anything the plot needs done, and how they ALWAYS had the equipment on hand whenever they needed it.
Or how in DS9, despite there being a major war going on, none of the main cast died in said war except one who had a dispute with the Producers (Dax) and the Station never suffered resource shortages despite war usually causing that.
Apparently so... but as I've said to you before... the "well they did it too!" defense isn't exactly valid.
I love how casually you use "everyone" and "no one" when describing people with an opposing viewpoint.... you're spreading more than your share of the... venom, sir.
Since you started this exchange by criticizing one of my posts as complaining, the quote above apparently is referring to me as well. You seem to have trouble distinguishing venom from fond affection due to familiarity. The overuse of technobabble is a feature of all the shows during the Berman era. Roddenberry's Star Trek did it too, though in less technically sounding terms. Any science fiction show does it, simply by nature of the beast.
No discussion of any television show, regardless of genre, is going to be full of only praise and exhaltations. Pointing out flaws in a television show doesn't mean a person hates it.
Tell that to TOS fans, DS9 fans and NuBSG fans.
I love how casually you use "everyone" and "no one" when describing people with an opposing viewpoint.... you're spreading more than your share of the... venom, sir.
Gimme some slack, I've been dealing with some truly vitriolic haters (an entire Hatedom, to be frank) for about 18 years now. I'm more entitled than most when it comes to the defensive.
I am a TOS and DS9 fan, starting as early as 1966. I was even a fan of utter trash like My Mother the Car and Camp Runamuck. I've not seen NuBSG, so you can tell them yourself.
