Biggest problem with "Voyager" is that they didn't really take any chances.

Voyager has about 5 "space battles" per season. I thought this thread was about taking chances

 

Personally I don't understand all the fuss about there not being more conflict with the Maquis crew. The point was they banded together to deal with their situation. The maquis were still reasonable people, not just terrorists looking for a fight. What would constant confict accomplish?

 

Well, that's your opinion. Voyager has more in common with Ent.It's a small ship. Everyone knows each other. The Captain is accessible.

Who is to say to what degree Maquis/Starfleet conflict should be, or how long it should go on for? The Maquis and Starfleet aren't enemies, they're family. Janeway and Chakotay built an environment conducive to both groups working together. The people that couldn't fit in were weeded out in one way or another by season 3.

 

Reasonable people usually don't become terrorist. It takes a certain mindset to do something like that. That means most of them should have problems trying to live the life of a starfleet officer. Not to mention the fact that with Voyager cut off from the AQ it makes sense that they would have certain survival skills that would benefit a starfleet crew who are more use to doing things by the book.

Jason

 

Voyager took one big chance: the basic format itself was a risk. "Starfleet ship, alone in unfriendly territory, with no lifeline to home and no familiar Star Trek aliens." On paper that's the biggest system shock to the franchise they could possibly take. In practical terms however, they seemed to backtrack from those ambitions almost immediately..... only a few episodes into the series the crew makes contact with Romulans, and the cast contains within it Vulcans and (half-human) Klingons, so that the writers could do all those Vulcan, Klingon and Half-Human-type stories. Within the first few years we'd even had a Ferengi story. Almost as soon as they came up with the premise, they were already baking into it more conventional Star Trek elements to try and offset the "offbeat" nature of the format. Ironically, it was these decisions more than anything that I think took away from the series' potential, as it encouraged generic lazy writers to write generic lazy Star Trek stories, because they knew the format was going to be able to support them in their generic laziness. Same goes with things like having a working Holodeck, stuff like that which felt like a 'comfort zone' for the writers to snuggle up in. The format should've been bold enough to jettison everything like that. It's hard to accentuate the 'cut off from everything familiar' angle when Paris and Kim can just recreate Earth on the holodeck anytime they are feeling homesick.

On the topic of the Maquis, again there was a certain error in them all being former-Starfleet officers. Some of 'em may have been hot-headed rejects, but characters like Commander Chakotay and Torres have got a fundamental amount of Starfleet training to call on. They aren't "civilians thrust into a military environment", they're all former military who have to make very little effort to assimilate back into the crew. 'The Great Starfleet-Maquis Conflict' was already a dead horse by episode two.

 

Yaknow, I agree with a lot of that, but I'll stop short at ever calling the writers lazy. I can't even begin to imagine the daunting task of pushing out 26 unique, Network worthy sci Fi stories a year.

Anyways, I thought this thread was about Voyager's taking chances or not taking them. I just wrote a big post and no one has replied to it yet. Not even OP. I put a lot of thought into it and am totally bummed.

 

Here, I'll post it again. Hopefully this isn't a breach of Starfleet Regulations.

Risks/Chances Voyager took:

-These are off the top of my head, but I've got a few.

• The setting- TNG did a lot of heavy lifting in terms of world building. DS9 & Voyager, as spin-offs would benefit from that, but Voyager had to start over in a sense. The show was always planned to be seven seasons, and the setting always changing. They had to keep coming up with new alien races/characters and could not very often fall back on old ones. This "Odyssey" format is a writing challenge already, let alone 26 hour-long episodes per year for 7 years.

• Captain Janeway- Yes, we've heard this all before, but I have something to add. The producer's of Voyager no doubt knew there would be some fan backlash when they presented the main character, the captain, as a female. It seems however, to have been worse than anticipated, with Trekkies sending in so much hatemail, including death threats. However, what I feel was very smart and sophisticated, was the way Janeway/Voyager was written in this regard. She's presented as the captain, and that's the end of it. She's not waging a battle against sexism. There's no overcompensating. Try to find a Network show, even today, that addresses feminism topics how Voyager does, by not addressing it at all-It's just a given. The most we get is probably Q poking fun by calling her "Madame Captain."

• Seven of Nine- Now I know you're thinking that this wasn't a risk at all, but adding a new main character is always a risk. When DS9 was looking to boost/recover ratings, they brought in Worf; an established character who was already one of the most popular among fans. When Voyager wanted to do likewise, they didn't have that option(unless they wrote something really contrived.) They brought in an entirely new character...and it paid off. Janeway and Seven are probably the most iconic characters from Voyager in pop culture.

• Risky Episodes- There were some risky episodes. One that immediately comes to mind is Bride of Chaotica. An throwback in black & white, with super cheesy dialogue. Can you imagine if something went wrong here? It would be hated worse than Threshold. Captain proton was also introduced in Night and seen again in 30 days so that this episode didn't come out of the blue. And what happened? It paid off. It's now an iconic fan favorite.

• Episodes focused on unknown characters- I can think of a few episodes that don't really feature the main cast, where the writers have to establish an entire alien culture, and let them carry the episode. A perfect example of this is Distant Origin. It's really amazing how developed the Voth are after a single episode. Living Witness is another one, as is Dragon's Teeth. Or how about Pathfinder, an episode that doesn't feature the Voyager cast and where "Lt. Broccali" gets more attention and development than he ever had on TNG. Dwight Schultz does an amazing job, and carries the show. There's a very emotional moment at the end. EDIT: Or how about Message in a Bottle. How's that for taking chances...a whole hour of watching Andy Dick.

• Episodes that are very dark for Trek or a family show- There are a few Voyager episodes that are pretty dark, such as Revulsion, or The Thaw. Or perhaps Equinox, where Janeway tortures(or almost tortures)a crewman. Or episodes that deal with very complex, dark emotions, like Extreme Risk.

I think my post is growing a little long, but you get the idea.

Verdict:

Voyager is not without risk or reward.

 

Prax, that was a fabulous post! Thank you for the taking the time to get that down.

 

Was I the only one who was pretty much expecting that they would have an episode dealing with the 2 Ferengi? Because from watching TNG, we know that 2 Ferengi were stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

I also briefly thought they might run into Traveler Wesley.

 

Instead we got Q, Mrs. Q, and Q junior. Humans are savage, huh? How's your civil war going, Q? Exploded any stars in inhabited systems lately?

 

Lance, I can understand how most of the examples you present can be presented as 'lazy writing' but they also mostly fit in with the show's premise, IMHO.

Evidently, the crew is going to grab any chance they get at contact with the Alpha Quadrant. The only thing that is dubious is how likely it is that they would actually find such a wormhole within a few weeks. But unrealistic probabilities are a failing of all Trek series, not only VOY: incredibly serendipitous finds and discoveries, chance meetings between people with a shared history on random locations (say a starbase) do occur with a higher frequency than could reasonably be expected given the size of the galaxy. All Trek series use this convenient writer's trick. Would it have been OK if they had found the wormhole in, say, the 3rd year of the series?

It would be unrealistic for them not to be there among the crew and other aliens as well (Bajorans, Bolians). There have always been complaints about there being far too few aliens in Starfleet crews in any of the series. As long as VOY doesn't overy focus on that, I have no problem with an occasional 'intra crew' episode. After all, the crew is a tiny little piece of the Alpha Quadrant, lost out there, in the Delta Quadrant. I, for one, would have liked an episode centered around crewman Chell, as we don't know much about Bolians.

A hook from TNG's ep The price, in which these two Ferengi were lost in, explicitly, the Delta Quadrant. Of course VOY was not going to waste that opportunity. I can't really complain about that. The only side thought here is again how likely it actually would be they would come across each other in the vast DQ, but I commented on that already.

I do agree that it was a lame copout to make the holodeck have an independent (and incompatible) energy source so that even when the rest of the ship had a desperate energy shortage, the holodeck would still be able to run. But, assuming that there is enough energy for it, I think it is very likely the Holodeck would be used in this manner for relieving homesickness or tensions. Would you have half of the crew using devices such as a 'synaptic stimulator' (such as the Equinox crew did), or, probably worse, fleeing in drugs?

Whether VOY should have devoted entire episodes to the holodeck is yet another discussion. Then again, every trek series has told stories that were somewhat disconnected to the main premise of being explorers in space, starting with TOS.

Torres was too hot-headed to make it through the Academy.

 

Great post! I have a few episodes to add if you don't mind. To your bullet point about episodes focused on unknown characters I would add Muse. While it is a about "The rescue of B'Elanna Torres" it also established the society of the planet she was on and made you care about those people.

To dark episodes I would add Mortal Coil, and Lineage. Suicide and altering your child's dna bacause of your own fear of abandonment are pretty strong and serious issues. I would also add Deadlock. Showing the baby dying, even if she was replaced by a duplicate was certainly risky.

Edit: I will also add Tuvix to the dark episode list. In the end he begs for his life and Janeway essentially kills him against his wishes. Pretty dark.

 

Jason

 

Well, thing is that....the Maquis conflict was never going to last THAT long in the first place. The Feds and Maquis weren't diehard enemies, and they were the only familiar faces each other had in the DQ. To keep up the fight for all 7 seasons over a political dispute that was 75 years away would just be silly.

I mean, in DS9 did Kira and Odo stay adversarial to Sisko for all 7 seasons? No, they got over their differences within ONE season and that was that.

 

I disagree that conflict would naturally go away. It would most likely simply change over time and new conflicts would arise. Also with KIra and Odo while they learned how to work with starfleet they still felt independent from it. A starfleet officer isn't going to go get revenge because someone has killed her friends or teach Carddisians how to become terrorist or stand up against the Romulans, even if it pisses off Starfleet. It's one thing to work with people and another to fully embrace everything they do and not every want to have them also embrace some of your own views.

Jason

 

I guess i see the potential for conflict between Starfleet and maquis in regards to situations where upholding some Starfleet regulation was interfering with a possible way home. But durring the course of the show this happened very infrequently. In fact I can only think of one instance where that happened, in Prime Factors.

I think people were expecting more conflict because of the wording that the Maquis were terrorists. I think people are applying some curent definition of what a terrorist is. In Star Trek we are shown that pretty much everyone has a different philosophy of life than we do now. To quote Picard "we strive to better ourselves". The maquis are still enlightened people. They're not thugs out looking for a fight (for the most part) the organization was formed because they disagreed with Starfleet's treaty with Cardassia. They are still reasonable people who realize they are all stuck in a bad situation and know they have to work together to get out of it or just to survive.

 

If they couldn't learn to cooperate after a while, they were never going to survive. The Feds and Maquis were never real enemies, I mean the Maquis had only been around for 1 year when Voyager started!

If they'd made the other crew Romulans, then it'd make more sense for longer conflict.

They still got over their tension with Sisko and were his close friends the rest of the series.

That's fine....but the problem here is that the Maquis way wasn't defined properly before Voyager. In fact, as that particular Cell was formed and run by a Fleeter like Chakotay the way they operated probably already WAS like the Fleeters.

 

That is an interesting thought. Chakotay probably did run his ship more like a Starfleet ship. He was probably a lt. Commander or higher when he left Starfleet. I think you get a sense if this in the end of Caretaker when B'Elanna asks who is she to make the decision for everyone and he just calmly says, she's the captain.

 

I don't think the writers never really took full advantage of the Maquis premise. I also think that Janeway was written inconsistently and made some questionable decisions.

It would have been interesting if the writers had made lemons into lemonade, by having the crew become more fractured and mutinous as the years passed instead of less so. A lot of potential for drama there, imo.

 

We did see a little more of them afterwards with Edington but I would say that "Voyager" could have define them even more, especially since the were invented for the show to begin with.

Jason