15 Years Later, VOY Seems So Much Better

[suarezguy]

Without any reservation, I have to say I absolutely despise the Kazon characters, especially Seska.

I think the Kazon were a good example of the show wanting to have something be kind of like the past (the Klingons) but not too much so, also fresh, and instead feeling way way too much exactly like that past element but less interesting and even lackluster.

I like Seska a lot as a Bajoran, so-so her as really being a Cardassian.

 

[Gary7]

I think the Kazon were a good example of the show wanting to have something be kind of like the past (the Klingons) but not too much so, also fresh, and instead feeling way way too much exactly like that past element but less interesting and even lackluster.

I like Seska a lot as a Bajoran, so-so her as really being a Cardassian.

Yep, the Kazon were Klingon-lite with bansai hairdos. They were ironic, really. They had some pretty large spacecraft, and yet many Kazon factions were technically inept. I think they could have been better written.

I will admit that Seska was fine as a Bajoran. I really don't buy this "biological conversion" crap. A Cardassian has very different physiology. Just consider that enormous shoulder mass... it's there for a reason. You just don't "cut it out" converting someone to a human or Bajoran. Can't hide that shit. Total fail in my book.

 

[Prax]

It's really easy for me to get sucked back into this show. If I owned the DVDs, I probably wouldn't watch it all(or any of them for that matter), but thanks to netflix, all it takes is 3 taps of a finger and its on. Then I'll watch another, and another, and another. Eventually I'll get through all the episodes in no particular order, then put it down for a year or two. I don't do this with any other show besides Voyager and the other trek shows.

 

[KimMH]

Yep, the Kazon were Klingon-lite with bansai hairdos. They were ironic, really. They had some pretty large spacecraft, and yet many Kazon factions were technically inept. I think they could have been better written.

I will admit that Seska was fine as a Bajoran. I really don't buy this "biological conversion" crap. A Cardassian has very different physiology. Just consider that enormous shoulder mass... it's there for a reason. You just don't "cut it out" converting someone to a human or Bajoran. Can't hide that shit. Total fail in my book.

The biological thing was a really wide swing but I liked Seska and wish she’d stayed underground longer.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think they wanted the Delta Quadrant to put Voyager in a tribal anarchic situation. The Kazon were their attempt at that. They just failed to make them unique and interesting.

Part of the reason they failed is the Klingons existed and all the obvious ideas for it were really close to just being Klingons.

 

[Qonundrum]

VOY has aged well in some aspects, not as much in others. Classics "Timeless" often still have awkward Borg technobabble wedged in that feel like convenience. Near-classics like "The Killing Game" feature half-baked callbacks* AND the added bonus of getting around just how the Hirogen took over the ship and crew, who don't even lament on it in the epilogue. The potential with the holodeck saving the Hirogen, brings up a clever and huge plot idea, but it all gets dropped, as was the internal conflict between the Hirogen (which is by-the-numbers throwaway the moment the old leader figure is killed by the inexperienced kid figure because that solves everything nothing) and then we never see the species again until the straw-grasping season seven takes place when they should be far enough away from their territory... In a later episode, species 8472 is wasted with Boothby coming in for no reason**.

I do appreciate how "Threshold", "Retrospect", and others try to find new issues to tackle - as sci-fi or commenting on the human condition, but they go too far out in so many directions that the whole episode keels over. Or was that the real point, to get audiences to think and react in unexpected ways?

"Blink of an Eye" is definitely an all-time great. "Year of Hell" is pretty much pristine. "Scorpion" manages the near-impossible. "Living Witness" is another sublime entry. TNG couldn't do these episodes...

* Really, when learning about prey, getting them in unusual experiences would make more sense than YASB - yet another space battle (Worf 359, where one Borg blast is almost enough to cripple a ship

** Really, 8472 is going to swim 86,099 light years to go fiddle with Earth now? (Not 86,100? Missed it by that much...)

 

[Qonundrum]

Watching or rewatching a show years later takes away the weight of expectation you have first time.

You enjoy it for what it is, rather than resent it for not being what you wish it was.

Ah, it's the anti-drug!

But in seriousness, the weight of expectation depends on what the viewer is wanting to see. And viewers rarely think alike. It's not unlike attempting to corral a herd of cats.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Another difference between watching Voyager now and watching it then is then, the market was saturated with shows with a tone more like Voyager, and now, the market is saturated with shows with a darker tone. So now *Voyager* is the change of pace.

 

[Kor]

At the time, I preferred VOY over DS9.
TBH, it's the other way around now.

Kor

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I've always strongly preferred which one I was currently rewatching

I just love Janeway and 7 and their interaction with everyone so much, even if a storyline is on the lame side I'm amused by and loving the characters.

 

[andersonh1]

Have any of you re-watched and had a change of heart about VOY?

Very much so. I did not really like Voyager when it first aired. I watched most of the first two seasons, portions of the third, and scattered episodes afterward, but I skipped most of seasons 4-7. The Star Trek reboot movie in 2009 got me in a mood to watch some Trek, and of course there were nearly four whole seasons of Voyager I had not seen. I bought season 4 on DVD at a good price and me and my wife sat down to watch, and though I hoped that I would like it well enough, I was pleasantly surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. I've since seen every episode (and have currently started a start to finish marathon after having not watched much for a few years) and Voyager sometimes passes TNG as my second favorite of the 90s Star Treks. I like characters that I did not like at the time, I like most episodes that I did not like on first broadcast, and it's clear to me t that I stopped watching about the time the show took a major uptick in quality. These days I really enjoy Voyager, and I'm quite happy to have revised my opinions on the show. Even the "reset button" episodes that so annoyed me (I remember complaining that "nothing's ever real on that show") don't bother me as much. I still don't like Threshold though....

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don’t think they set out to make the Kazon like the Klingons. I think they were going for a Wild West lawless feel and when they reached for ideas they couldn’t get far enough away from Klingons.

They kind of trapped themselves because the feel they were going for was more brutal than they were free to portray. So the result was toothless anger and tropey social anachronisms.

The DQ of the first two seasons was “The Wild West except when it wasn’t”. You were constantly in danger of Kazon attack, only every other planet you come across is immune to them.

 

[Lance]

And it doesn’t say, “hey, it’s the 90s” at all to me.

Agreed. Occasionally it has a moment or two especially early on, but on the whole I think they did an admirable job of keeping it genuinely timeless, in some ways more than Deep Space Nine, and definitely more than The Next Generation.

 

[Lance]

I don’t think they set out to make the Kazon like the Klingons. I think they were going for a Wild West lawless feel and when they reached for ideas they couldn’t get far enough away from Klingons.

They kind of trapped themselves because the feel they were going for was more brutal than they were free to portray. So the result was toothless anger and tropey social anachronisms.

The DQ of the first two seasons was “The Wild West except when it wasn’t”. You were constantly in danger of Kazon attack, only every other planet you come across is immune to them.

This is one of those things where I think they'd do well if they were making it today. With the freedoms that Discovery and Picard have got in showing darker, more gruesome things. Conceptually Voyager was always the darkest series. The DQ operates by different rules and Voyager is unsafe, alone, and a long way from home, having to think on their feet to survive far from the comforts of home. The 'wild west' analogy is a good one. I think the likes of Kazon, Vidians, Species 8472 etc would benefit from being able to show their true horror, not hamstrung by a family friendly timeslot. And I think Voyager does good at hinting these things, it just couldn't go as far in showing them as maybe the format of the show suggests.

 

[rfmcdpei]

My opinion of Voyager changed substantially as a result of Kirsten Beyer's novels. These made the point to me that the show's problems was not its conception, not its characters or actors necessarily, but that it had inconsistent writing.

Voyager these days feels more like TOS, honestly, a show that had very good stuff and very bad stuff. "Brain and brain, what is brain!" and Warp 10 salamanders, if you would.

 

[Gaith]

I'll say this for Voyager: it's got an all-around engaging and charismatic cast. Compare that to Enterprise, where the mains are either dull as dishwater (Park, Montgomery, Keating), or mildly engaging at best (Bakula, Trineer, Blalock), with only Billingsley standing out as the exception. Even Garrett Wang has as much personality than the non-Billingsley Enterprise gang, and he's the blandest of the Voyager mains...

 

[marlboro]

Watching or rewatching a show years later takes away the weight of expectation you have first time.

You enjoy it for what it is, rather than resent it for not being what you wish it was.

A very wise observation. I didn't expect to attain enlightenment on the Trekbbs Voyager board and yet here we are.