Not to mention, Humans don't need a Por Far or Elogium to signal mating. I wouldn't be surprised if Humans out numbered Vulcans.
I imagine Vulcan could make similar comments about humanity.
A nine year lifespan. With one child per pregnancy. Doing the math, they'd be extinct long before now, simply becuase two Ocampa only make one Ocampa per generation - that means half the population dies each generation.
In contrast, humans live on average around eighty years and can have multiple children.
The Vulcans would have no logical basis for similar comments about humanity, just because their average lifespan is at least twice as long as a human's - the average human lives nine times as long as an Ocampa.
A lover defends Voyager
- Thread starter Vykan12
- Start date
Good point. Well said.
Dammit! Where were you people 5 years ago when I used to say the same things?
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Also they needed to take care of each other as well.
You really have some good points here which I agree on.
Jaespol wrote:
Yes, I really agree on that!
Jaespol
Captain
Jaespol: Warp signature. Voyager is the only ship in that quaderant with a Federation warp signature. Plus, you saw in "Distant Origin" that they leave a trail of evidence due to their trading & leaving things behind. The Kazon also have an information network thru all those they trade & bully.
..or to make it even simplier: if you drive thru the ghetto in a tricked out yellow Mustang. Everybody is going to notice you.
That's now what I meant.
Voyager should have been going at high warp for good chunks of their journey, the Kazon aren't sophisticated enough to replicate water...how on earth did they keep up with the best ship in Starfleet?
I guess its one of those times you need some suspension of disbelief, yet suspension of disbelief for two seasons is a tall order!
Also I imagine Ocampans lived for longer before their world was destroyed.
I'm also puzzled why some people thought Voyager's earlier seasons were stronger than the later ones. Sure the show was creatively out of gas by the time of S7, more so than what TNG was in its final season, but Season 5 alone was broadly better than S2 & S3, with some individually great episodes comparable to most of the good episodes DS9 had.
The premise of Star Trek itself requires suspension of disbelief. Travelling faster than the speed of light is physically impossible, as one easy example. Another would be in time travel. Your very existence in a different time period would alter the course of history, yet the show seems to believe that only major actions by time travelers can change the course of history. Then if transporters, replicators and holosuites really did exist, you'd expect it would cause all sorts of addictions that none of the shows ever seem to explore.
Jaespol
Captain
But there are different levels of suspension of belief.
I'm willing to suspend my belief and accept faster than light travel but I can't accept the show breaking its own internal logic whereby a ship that can probably only do a maximum warp of 5 can consistently cash up with a ship that's frequently going at warp 8 +
I can't say the Kazon being able to keep up with Voyager is that hard to accept, even if it might possibly defy the show's internal logic (I would have to explore the details more closely).
The show makes a big point out of Voyager being easily distracted by every anomaly it runs by, so it isn't certain that they'd be going at high warp for good chunks of their journey. You may then ask how they ever managed to get home, but recall that a lot of their progress is made by external influences, such as Kes' "death".
Another problem with Voyager usually travelling at high warp is in that the ship has supply problems. There's many episodes where Voyager is short on di-lithium, so it seems reasonable to assume they'd conserve it as best as possible by travelling a bit slower.
And how does that alone indicate that they lack technological sophistication in other areas? Any civilization has its strengths and weaknesses. Look at the Videans, who were extremely advanced in medicine, but most likely crippled in other disciplines of science.
Yes, I know I am only offering some convoluted speculations to fill in what are likely plotholes, but this really doesn't seem as bad as some of the other farfetched ideas Star Trek has presented us in its shows. The episode of DS9 I just saw had O'Brien going through a temporal anomaly where he'd see the future, then tell the station crew how to alter it for their own personal gain, which is an active violation of the temporal prime directive. I especially liked one of the later lines in the episode when O'Brian talks to himself:
"if you feel bad and you're my past self, shouldn't I feel bad?"
"I hate temporal mechanics!"
The show is basically making fun of its own inconsistency concerning time travel.
Then, at the end of the episode, they discover that the Romulans were planning to destroy DS9, but instead of arresting these Romulans for something along the lines of attempted murder, they just civilly escort them out of the station. What is DS9 going to do about any future Romulan threats? There are a lot of questions to be posed based on that, a lot more than this little quirk concerning the Kazon's lack of technology.
Maybe I'm picking on the wrong episode, but I can find these kinds of issues in most episodes I watch, and they're immediate, not something that requires a lot of thought to yield a contradiction.
The show makes a big point out of Voyager being easily distracted by every anomaly it runs by, so it isn't certain that they'd be going at high warp for good chunks of their journey. You may then ask how they ever managed to get home, but recall that a lot of their progress is made by external influences, such as Kes' "death".
Another problem with Voyager usually travelling at high warp is in that the ship has supply problems. There's many episodes where Voyager is short on di-lithium, so it seems reasonable to assume they'd conserve it as best as possible by travelling a bit slower.
And how does that alone indicate that they lack technological sophistication in other areas? Any civilization has its strengths and weaknesses. Look at the Videans, who were extremely advanced in medicine, but most likely crippled in other disciplines of science.
Yes, I know I am only offering some convoluted speculations to fill in what are likely plotholes, but this really doesn't seem as bad as some of the other farfetched ideas Star Trek has presented us in its shows. The episode of DS9 I just saw had O'Brien going through a temporal anomaly where he'd see the future, then tell the station crew how to alter it for their own personal gain, which is an active violation of the temporal prime directive. I especially liked one of the later lines in the episode when O'Brian talks to himself:
"if you feel bad and you're my past self, shouldn't I feel bad?"
"I hate temporal mechanics!"
The show is basically making fun of its own inconsistency concerning time travel.
Then, at the end of the episode, they discover that the Romulans were planning to destroy DS9, but instead of arresting these Romulans for something along the lines of attempted murder, they just civilly escort them out of the station. What is DS9 going to do about any future Romulan threats? There are a lot of questions to be posed based on that, a lot more than this little quirk concerning the Kazon's lack of technology.
Maybe I'm picking on the wrong episode, but I can find these kinds of issues in most episodes I watch, and they're immediate, not something that requires a lot of thought to yield a contradiction.
That's part of why I love the episode Relativity so much - the dialogue gets somewhat tongue-in-cheek at some points, to the point that they're basically lampshading their own usages.
I imagine Vulcan could make similar comments about humanity.
A nine year lifespan. With one child per pregnancy. Doing the math, they'd be extinct long before now, simply becuase two Ocampa only make one Ocampa per generation - that means half the population dies each generation.
In contrast, humans live on average around eighty years and can have multiple children.
The Vulcans would have no logical basis for similar comments about humanity, just because their average lifespan is at least twice as long as a human's - the average human lives nine times as long as an Ocampa.
The Ocampa live underground, disease free and all their needs are taken care of and my point was that it's all a matter of a point of view. And there are other Ocampa out there who live longer than ten year lifespans.
I'm not sure what the lack of a replicator has to do with being a good tracker?Jaespol: Warp signature. Voyager is the only ship in that quaderant with a Federation warp signature. Plus, you saw in "Distant Origin" that they leave a trail of evidence due to their trading & leaving things behind. The Kazon also have an information network thru all those they trade & bully.
..or to make it even simplier: if you drive thru the ghetto in a tricked out yellow Mustang. Everybody is going to notice you.
That's now what I meant.
Voyager should have been going at high warp for good chunks of their journey, the Kazon aren't sophisticated enough to replicate water...how on earth did they keep up with the best ship in Starfleet?
I guess its one of those times you need some suspension of disbelief, yet suspension of disbelief for two seasons is a tall order!
Also I imagine Ocampans lived for longer before their world was destroyed.
Also, it was specifically stated that the Kazon inherited their ships when they rebelled from the Trabe. Just because they knew how to fly and maintain them doesn't mean they would figure out how to operate everything or have the technological know-how to develop replicators.
Inherently, a given civilization will have different areas of technological focus from another. The overall Trabe/Kazon technological level might have been at an approximately 2150/ENT level of tech, with superior engines and weapons compared to the Earth Starfleet but inferior everything else.
Heck, it's likely even Kirk's era, which did have transporters, didn't have real replicators. He might have been just as surprised by 'making water from thin air.'
Inherently, a given civilization will have different areas of technological focus from another. The overall Trabe/Kazon technological level might have been at an approximately 2150/ENT level of tech, with superior engines and weapons compared to the Earth Starfleet but inferior everything else.
Heck, it's likely even Kirk's era, which did have transporters, didn't have real replicators. He might have been just as surprised by 'making water from thin air.'
Jaespol
Captain
I'm not sure what the lack of a replicator has to do with being a good tracker?Jaespol: Warp signature. Voyager is the only ship in that quaderant with a Federation warp signature. Plus, you saw in "Distant Origin" that they leave a trail of evidence due to their trading & leaving things behind. The Kazon also have an information network thru all those they trade & bully.
..or to make it even simplier: if you drive thru the ghetto in a tricked out yellow Mustang. Everybody is going to notice you.
That's now what I meant.
Voyager should have been going at high warp for good chunks of their journey, the Kazon aren't sophisticated enough to replicate water...how on earth did they keep up with the best ship in Starfleet?
I guess its one of those times you need some suspension of disbelief, yet suspension of disbelief for two seasons is a tall order!
Also I imagine Ocampans lived for longer before their world was destroyed.
Nothing, none of us are talking about tracking, the point is the speed of the Kazon ship.
Ok people, a few things
-@Vykan, " Look at the Videans, who were extremely advanced in medicine, but most likely crippled in other disciplines of science."
Ok, there's no evidence for that whatsoever.
-The argument that Voyager were stopping off a lot...
The fact is Voyager is going at pretty high warp and there's a lot of difference in speed between one warp level and the other. Anytime they were going at high warp above the Kazons should have put a lot of difference between them
-The Kazon inheriting their ships from the Trabe- the Trabe were clearly nowhere near as advanced as Voyager considering the sturdiness of their ships, the lack of power in their weapons...their inability to replicate and transport. These people seems like a pre-Enterprise Starfleet to me, we're supposed to believe they span "two seasons" of space?
@Tachyon, you agree with Exodus? What part exactly, he only argued the Kazon were good at tracking, this has nothing to do with the problem at hand.
You say the Kazon had other ships so the Kazon could have bothered them for a couple of seasons no problem. Not only do I find it difficult to believe the Kazon's power stretches across so much space but the fact is Seska can only go as fast as her ship and somehow I doubt from all they've seen their warp capability would be so good.
Yes I know its just a TV show but I'm probably getting my dislike of the Kazon to creep in here (I really thought they were terrible villains) but the fact is you need to suspend muy mucho belief to believe Seska managed to keep up with Voyager in that hunk of junk she beamed over to.
I actually thought a lot of Voyager's lameness was attributed to the overrated, overlooked Jeri Taylor instead of the much harassed Brannon Braga (though he peddled his fair share of crap since TNG, like "Genesis" and "Sub Rosa", although I've been enjoying most of his TNG episodes on Virgin 1 repeats).
Braga, although he doesn't seem to really love Star Trek like say..Moore, always wanted to do edgy, crazy, mindblowing and epic stuff. He doesn't care about continuity or character, but he likes real adventure. See how he wanted a year long Year of Hell.
I blame UPN and Berman alot more for Voyager's failings than Braga. And while Jeri Taylor wrote some very good stuff she was too pc and safe for my tastes.
I blame UPN and Berman alot more for Voyager's failings than Braga. And while Jeri Taylor wrote some very good stuff she was too pc and safe for my tastes.
I’m not surprised to be honest. I’d probably be of a similar opinion had that been my experience as well. IMO, the first two seasons of TNG are woeful, with the odd exception. DS9 is better, but again only really has a handful of outstanding episodes in that first couple of years. In contrast, Voyager’s first couple of years are IMO, probably the series’ best.
The problem being that they only achieved this at the expense of the superior Paris/Kim dynamic.
There shouldn’t have been any contact with Starfleet. A similar faux pas to Stargate Atlantis’ getting back in contact with Earth. The basic premise of the series is that they’re stranded, a long way from home. Why undermine that by qualifying it by having them being able to remain in contact with home.
Along with the introduction of other ‘super technology’ helped undermine the credibility of the series.
Fairy tale endings in Voyager’s case though, were in certain episodes, quite literal. I can’t remember any of the other shows utilising the BRB as much as Voyager did.
Technobabble was prevalent in most of the latter Trek series, and in itself can’t be used as a primary criticism of Voyager. However, more often with Voyager than any of the other series, the technobabble often went hand-in-hand with a deus ex machina ending, and/or to facilitate the BRB resolution to an episode.
IMO, the worst thing about the series. Comparing and contrasting the relative myriad of characters established on DS9, particularly over the mid-to-later seasons, the Voyager characters fare very poorly. Similarly, they do not hold up well against the casts for TOS or TNG either. Enterprise, you can make an argument that character-for-character Voyager has a better raft of people, but that’s about it.
Janeway’s attitude towards the PD is ridiculous. Despite often being preachy and judgemental around it, she often violates it on a whim. Prime examples, the series finale, she has no problem in changing the entire timeline of the universe to save two crew members? WTF? How selfish is that? Just because she couldn’t deal with their loss? The second example is worse still, she chastises Captain Ransom of the Equinox for exploiting aliens to get home quicker, conveniently forgetting that she agreed a pact with the Borg to commit genocide against Species 8472 in exchange for passage through Borg space? Again, WTF?
You also can’t fault her sense of priorities. At the end of the premiere you have the speech about getting home as fast as possible, yet by the second or third episode she has the ship stopping off looking in nearby gas clouds for coffee? Eh?
Also love the fact that she feels it appropriate to poke her nose into the affairs of others, and downright preach the values and morals of the Federation to all and sundry, often imposing those views on others. Again, liberal view of the PD anyone?
Of course it goes without saying that it’s hardly a surprise that Mulgrew wasn’t first choice to play Janeway, I’m just surprised that she was second choice. Woefully miscast, and as much as TOS could rely on Shatner, and TNG could rely on Stewart, Voyager simply did not have the strong lead that it desperately needed at times.
Quite simply, he doesn’t. There was little character development over the course of the seven years, and a pretty uncharismatic character. You could argue that this is down to him being Vulcan, but that makes no difference, Spock was charismatic under the same restrictions.
Paris is one of the better characters from the show, but take his progression and run it against someone like Garak from DS9, or even Damar. There’s little comparison. Paris’ journey is fairly simplistic and often he just appears to be maneuvered from A to B with little finesse. As mentioned above, they really should have pushed the Paris/Kim dynamic in the same manner that DS9 did with O’Brien and Bashir. The Paris/Torres dynamic never did anything for me.
Laforge of the first two seasons, yes, without a doubt. Overall, much more open to debate, although I do tend to agree. Personally, I much preferred O’Brien, and Trip from Enterprise was the best character on that show, and better than either. As far as engineers go, it’s hard to look past Scotty for likeability, but the development of that character wasn’t as significant on TOS as character development wasn’t one of the key themes in those days.
Well I can make an obvious argument for Bashir, but that might spoil things. Again though, in terms of ships doctors, as great a character as the EMH is, and he is, IMO, the best character on VOY, he pales in comparison to Bones I’m afraid. At least we can say quite categorically that he’s better than Dr Crusher, and IMO, Phlox.
Personally, I actually liked the character, and think that she gets far more stick than she deserves. That being said, the detractors DO have a point to a degree. As much decent development that she may have had, they had to go and spoil it by putting her in the catsuit again. A Blatent attempt at boosting the viewers with a bit of T’n’A, which didn’t work. Thankfully, she was a half-decent character though.
Both were awful, with very little development. Kim’s still an ensign at the end of the series? Even the former criminal’s managed to get back into the good books and earn himself a promotion, but not Harry!
Wesley was the most irritating character in Sci-Fi, bar perhaps Jar Jar Binks, at least for the first couple of seasons. Seasons 3 and 4 Wesley are much better. Kira, no comparison. Kira’s feistier than Torres and it’s played a lot more genuinely. Sisco over Janeway, again, there’s no comparison. Sisko’s relationship with his son, Jake, and his attitude towards the Bajorans and their faith, and his role in it, are all journeys in themselves, and all far more interesting and meaningful than any Janeway development that I can remember.
Watch the seven seasons of DS9 and then come back. Even the most ardent of Voyager fans would have to admit that DS9 trumps all other Treks on the peripheral characters front. Garak for example, is considered peripheral, but is one of the more rounded characters of any of the Trek shows. Beyond that you literally have about 20 characters that can be considered peripheral and contribute massively towards the narrative and the environment of DS9.
Presentation and special effects are similar for all of the Treks, production values are high and for their respective times, state of the art. Voyager’s were no better, no worse IMO.
DS9 is far more demanding. It would be easy to try and say that it caters to a more dedicated audience, but I don’t personally feel that you could prove that either way. Suffice to say, DS9 is critically better regarded, largely because it was bolder than Voyager, it was different, and it dared to be different at a time when Voyager was just becoming more and more bland and safe. It took Trek in a completely different direction and set a new tone that was unfamiliar to Trek at the time. Voyager, by contrast, added little to the franchise. Most of what it offered had been done both before, and better, by either TOS or TNG.
As for the relationships, DS9 had by far the most complex set of dynamics of any of the Star Trek series. The Odo/Quark one in particular is one of the key strengths of DS9. Whilst this probably won’t be apparent from the first couple of seasons alone, by the end of the series, it’s perfectly obvious.
Voyager DID produce some standout episodes. Sadly, these were few and far between. The show had a relatively weak cast, that told uninspiring and often unoriginal stories, and despite having a fantastic premise, proceeded to play everything safe and became of the greatest missed opportunities in the whole franchise.
The best thing that you could do really, to give yourself a balanced and considered position would be to watch the rest of TNG and the rest of DS9. I have no problem with people holding their own opinions, and if you like Voyager, good luck to you, but as always with opinions, everyone’s got one, and often they’ll challenge your own
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