What are your favorite things about Voyager? I like Kate Mulgrew's performance as Janeway, Tim Russ' performance as Tuvok, Roxann Dawson's performance as Torres, and Robert Picardo's performance as the doctor.
Seven of Nine Janeway Their interactions and the former learning a lost humanity from the latter after being free from the Borg all those decades. Tuvok - the most complex Vulcan to be presented, and Vulcan culture explored. (and not diluted down, unlike the Borg - which still got a decent introduction.) Neelix - quite the foil and I ma happy to be one of his three fans. (Ethan Philips also played a Ferengi in 'Menage a Troi' and is exceptional as a villain actor! That alone wants me to look up what else he's been and if he did villain roles. Okay, that's typecasting but he knew how to play Neelix from the start as well. A lesser actor couldn't make Neelix believeable. Like or dislike Neelix's character, one cannot deny he feels authentic and that's what a great actor can really do.) "Scorpion", "Year of Hell", "Blink of an Eye", "Hope and Fear", and "Timeless" as examples. After something as gritty as DS9 it's understandable that VOY would return to basics (TNG) while blending in a little TOS.
The characters. Very likeable. The actors who did a magnificent job in portraying those characters. The premise for the whole series about a ship lost in unknown space.
The last ‘90s Trek, before 9/11 & all the dystopia stories that has followed since. Good premises – both being stranded over 70 000 light years from home, and Starfleet and Maquis crews having to work together. Introduced dozens of new species – Talaxians, Ocampa, Hirogen, Viidians, Krenim, Kazon, Species 8472. Tuvix – the character was quite interesting. Adventures of Captain Proton. “Tsunkatse” – although not the greatest episode, it is a personal favourite of mine. And not just because Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson guest stars either. Naomi Wildman. The dynamics between the main characters (B’Elanna and Seven, Janeway and Seven, Seven and The Doctor, Chakotay and Janeway, Tuvok and Neelix, Paris and Kim, Paris and The Doctor, etc). Great two part episodes - "Scorpion" and "Year of Hell" The Delta Flyer.
* The premise * The blend of serialization and Procedural storytelling * The characters (especially Janeway, Tuvok, Seven, B'Elanna, and Tom)
I agree with all of this. The actors are really good, their characters interact wonderully, it's a great premise with a good blend of serialization and procedural storytelling. I'll be honest that I haven't seen the second half of VOY yet, so I have a lot to look forward to. I just saw 7 of 9 join the crew, and I have yet to have the pleasure of Captain Proton or the Year of Hell.
I like the characters and the stories! I especially like a good story that is written for the characters. For example, in "Body and Soul" the Doctor has to upload himself into Seven's Borg implants, which gives him control of her body. The doctor experiences human senses for the first time, and over indulges, upsetting Seven. Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo's performances are outstanding, and the story is interesting and funny. I could go on and on listing great character-based stories "Gravity", "Latent Image", "Timeless", "Living Witness", "Shattered", "Relativity"... so many great stories..
The premise and the aliens. I think they did a good job introducing new and in some cases, more morally complex aliens. The Vidians, the Hirogen, and Species 8472 were some of the best aliens in Trek, I think.
First, foremost and always: The characters (with the notable exception of Chuckles - a poorly conceived and poorly written character, played by a mediocre actor who did nothing to disguise the fact he didn't give a damn). The Voyager characters (with that one exception) are my favourite group in any Trek series. I liked them, I cared about them and I wanted to see what happened to them. The cast (again, with that one exception). They just worked, from day one. All of them (with that exception) were able to rise above the sometimes dismal material they had to work with and were professional and great to watch. The premise. Thanks to UPN it wasn't realised as fully as it could have been but it was still an excellent concept. Janeway. Regardless of how inconsistently she was written, she's someone I can actually imagine following. Eternal kudos to Mulgrew for making her such a memorable character. Tuvok. Despite the modern-era Trek tendency to portray Vulcans as insufferable arseholes, Tuvok was a fabulous character and Russ absolutely got Vulcans and how to portray them. The Janeway / Tuvok friendship - while it lasted, anyway. It was shoved aside as the series progressed but it was just brilliant when it was properly utilised. Seven. The character added so much to the show, despite the lazy writing ("Borg nanoprobes can do absolutely anything!!11!!"), and Ryan was (is) exceptional. The character could have been a disaster if played by a less capable performer. There's not a lot I dislike about the show, really. It was deeply flawed in many ways but it was nowhere near as bad as some people make it out to be and when it was good, it was bloody good. Shame Chuckles wasn't jettisoned out the nearest airlock as soon as possible but despite that chunk of dead wood the show had plenty going for it. IMO, anyway.
Tuvok was a great character and probably the best portrayal of a Vulcan other than Spock in the franchise. The opening music and montage are gorgeous
I love the characters and their distinct personalities. Tom is probably my favourite Voyager character and I even really enjoy Threshold with RDM's acting like a lunatic and ripping his own tongue out. I loved his dumb bar, his dumb traitor arc in Season 2 which was pretty much Trek's first swing at multiple episode continuity way before DS9 did it in Season 6. Captain Proton was always fun and his love of obscure historical trivia probably makes him the patron saint of Trekkies or fandom's in general. He has a nice romance with Torres and is a good husband and father. I think it's lack of major continuity works well if you just want to rewatch any episode in any order. But also I love how Voyager would revisit it's continuity in episodes like Shattered or Relativity or Before and After. "Oh Janeway has Season 1 hair, is this a flashback, oh wait Seven's there WTF?!" Or do alternate versions of the ship like Demon/Course:Oblivion, Living Witness and even Live Fast and Prosper. Brannon Braga was great at coming up with really interesting sci-fi concepts. Or they'd do stuff against the norm like have Distant Origin without regulars for an act or so, or do meta commentary on writing in Muse.
Yeah Tuvok is a great Vulcan, i think T'pol (which also does a brilliant vulcan) must have studied Voyager/Russ, i find them to be very similar.
There's some great Vulcans out there but I think Tim russ is the greatest. And I loved how Distant Origins started out with all those scenes from the aliens' perspective. I'd love to see that happen regularly.
One of my favourite aspects of Voyager was how often it balanced dealing with ethical dilemmas and lighted-hearted dynamics between characters. There was room for massive philosophical questioning of things like the rights of holograms like the Doctor and the humanity of Seven as a drone freed from the Collective, or how technology should or shouldn't be shared with other species, or whether or not Starfleet ships should disrupt indigenous cultures under the pretext of providing advancement or education etc, etc. But this was complimented with characters like Neelix who brought heaps of warmth to the show, or details like Harry Kim playing the clarinet, Seven playing kadis-kot with the youngest crew member Naomi Wildman, and Tom creating the Captain Proton holonovel series on the holodeck.
I like Chacotay ( that may be spelled wrong) He had been a Maquis leader and then he had to accept being a Starfleet leader. I see him being pulled in two directions. As a Maquis he was anti-Federation mantra, now suddenly it is supposed to be His mantra. I see him as close to tortured as one could be without physical pain. He comes off as glib and non-caring, but I think it's that he is supposed to be actually be living in a totally contrary way. There is an episode where he and Seven crash on a plant with people that are not advanced at all. Chacotay seems to accept that they can't leave and he is learning their customs right away. He seems like he wouldbe perfectly content just staying in the primative culture for the rest of his life. My other favorite is of course Janeway. For a lot of reasons.
Im a big fan of Chakotay. Just started a Voyager rewatch and Chakotay is great I mean the scenes where he's arguing with Janeway over the chief engineer position were really strong. He's a really interesting character to me
His character had more potential, and Beltran was perfectly cast despite his underuse. He wanted the role to do more as years went by, can't blame him... but this is the same VOY that also had a great premise (enemy factions now having to work together) and it was chucked out the window after, what, 2 episodes, with most of anything relegated as holodeck fantasy (e.g. "Worst Case Scenario", which is largely great as it is but the series needed its first year if not two to get this out of the way before using Klingon Clones Called "Kazon" as "enemy of the week fodder". Or during to ramp up the tension but given DS9 did the gritty war stuff the makers were also trying to return to basics (ship in space exploring new worlds as weekly anthologies, etc) hence what we ended up with instead. Paramount already had one serialized arc, which id did begrudgingly anyway.
Sense of family and homeliness. Humor. To start with two stereotypes, TNG characters are often almost too perfect, DS9 were cast in a very "grey" universe with big moral struggles to which there wasn't always a clear-cut answer. In Voyager, the balance was between those two and tuned down to a more 'homely' scale. I mean, sure, there were big battles and decisions with galaxy spanning ramifications, but a lot of the times, those moral dilemmas often were the kind of stuff we all have in our daily lives - neither the perfect universe of TNG nor the epic struggle between good and evil with grey areas with no clear cut answers as in DS9 -- in VOY you often knew what they "should" do, but still have problems with it because of their personal flaws, which actually resembles most of the situation I encounter in my day to day life. A different dimension of this 'homeliness' was that they literally had to build their own community, their own sense of home, since they weren't expecting to see their real home for another 70 years. In the better episodes of later seasons, a sense of family really pervaded the 'feel' of voyager. Also, the humor, the kind of pranks or quips they liked to play on one another, or everyone gladly suffering the grandiose ego of the EMH, for example. Also liked that they did some experimenting with episode formats. Muse is an interesting example. (and yes, VOY also had some notable flaws, but this thread isn't about those).
Voyager was for me, ultimately, perhaps the most flawed Star Trek show. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it though. Many aspects of it were very appealing to me. First of, the premise itself. Can you maintain a higher sense of morality and humanity when your day to day life becomes a struggle? When reaching your ultimate goal can be achieved quite easy by sacrifice of others? And not just once, but more often? Can you overcome prejudice? When you are forced to work with people who betrayed everything you stood for? When you're offered a second chance at making it in life, are you aware it's not simply taking it but also working hard for it everyday to make sure you don't fall back into old behavior? (Tom Paris) Can you truly give your whole being to a group of people, knowing you need them to survive the next 7 decades, knowing they will need you as much as you them? Being born in a family is one thing, building one and keeping it whole and safe is completely different. Voyager often struggled with those concept, but also made it work just as often. Not to mention that some very well conceived characters with some talented actors helped. There were episodes that I found rather dull in terms of story that worked because of the people telling the story.