A season-long arc?

[t_smitts]

I've sometimes wondered if different episodes and storylines would've worked on different series. At first I thought about if the Xindi arc had taken place on Voyager (some alien threat to Earth/the Federation that originates in the Delta Quadrant and Voyager, being the only ship who can reach it is sent into the a dangerous area of space known as the Delphic Expanse).

From there, though, I got to thinking about the Year of Hell. What if, instead of a two-parter, where every thing is reset at the end, we actually got conflict that lasted an entire year, with Annorax and the Krenim being a adversary for an entire season. It just might've given the show a badly needed shake-up

What do you think? Could they have pulled it off? (It probably would've been better than diluting the Borg's scariness by running into them every fifth episode).

 

[Catarina]

Blame the network for never knowing. They shut down the idea. Braga proposed it. :-) I'm not sure if it would have felt too long, but yes, better than the cartoony run ins with the Borg all the time.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I want a season long arc of E2.

Oops.. still not Voyager.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I think a season-long Year of Hell would've been great!

They could've released Robert Beltram and Garrett Wang from their contracts and killed them off, Tuvok is then promoted to First Officer, so new characters could be added at Ops and Tactical (maybe a Bajoran Maquis to replace Kim and a female Security Chief).

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't know about season long but a six or ten episode arc would have been great.

 

[E-DUB]

Kind of an opposite thing but I would have liked to have seen a two-parter that covered a whole year and didn't reset. They did something like that on MASH once. Some thing that starts out small and grows over the course of the episode.

Once DS9 was off, they wouldn't have had to hold to the same timeline.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I enjoyed most of the two parters, they were often excellent. They could have extended that into mini arcs like you had on season 4 ENT and I would have been very happy.

 

[hux]

Perhaps if there was an alien species introduced early in the show that are taking a powerful weapon to Earth with the intention of destroying it and Voyager is constantly trying to catch up with them (occasionally they do but it remains unresolved). This could have been an ongoing story without removing the episodic element.

Alternatively, a season long "Repression" where the Maquis are brainwashed into taking over Voyager, and Janeway and a handful of Starfleet crew attempt to get the ship back as well as de-brainwash the Maquis crew.

Any ongoing story telling would have been nice, to be honest.

I enjoyed the "mini" arc of Seska being the ongoing enemy and Paris playing malcontent to try and determine who the spy was. That was as close as Voyager ever came to serialised story telling and it's shame they entirely dropped it after that.

Year of Hell? I seem to be one of the few people who doesn't like that two parter all that much but if it had a season long arc, I guess it could have been interesting.

There was definitely an opportunity for something more long term in Voyager.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

hux who is that man in your avatar?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Kind of an opposite thing but I would have liked to have seen a two-parter that covered a whole year and didn't reset. They did something like that on MASH once. Some thing that starts out small and grows over the course of the episode.

Once DS9 was off, they wouldn't have had to hold to the same timeline.

That would've been cool, if the consequences of YoH were permanent. If they came out seriously low on men and seriously damaged, if Tuvok had to deal with blindness at least for a good part of a season.

The reason they would have never gone for that though is that they were probably already thinking in terms of episodes like Message in a Bottle and Pathfinder, giving the crew occasional short term contact, and they couldn't show glimpses of the AQ one year ahead while the war was going on.

 

[wulfio]

Blame the network for never knowing. They shut down the idea. Braga proposed it. :-) I'm not sure if it would have felt too long, but yes, better than the cartoony run ins with the Borg all the time.

I thought it was Moore that wanted it. And when they said no he went and made BSG years later.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

hux has not answered my question. Obviously he is terrified.

 

[Unionized Elf]

Blame the network for never knowing. They shut down the idea. Braga proposed it. :-) I'm not sure if it would have felt too long, but yes, better than the cartoony run ins with the Borg all the time.

I thought it was Moore that wanted it. And when they said no he went and made BSG years later.

No, it was Braga who wanted to make Year of Hell a year-long arc. This was two years before Moore's time on Voyager, he was still working on DS9 at the time.

Moore had frustrations with how the writers room was run and in certain story decisions being made, most notably how does the show about a ship stranded away from Earth end up having the most episodes set on Earth, at least before Enterprise aired? It is believed Moore's experience on Voyager influenced his work on BSG. And while there are certainly parts of BSG that do seem "Voyager done different" I believe BSG is more a reaction to televised sci-fi overall.

 

[Starbreaker]

They probably could have managed to make the Species 8472/Borg story line into an entire season. Maybe the Hirogen hunting Voyager or something like that too.

 

[Anwar]

Kind of an opposite thing but I would have liked to have seen a two-parter that covered a whole year and didn't reset. They did something like that on MASH once. Some thing that starts out small and grows over the course of the episode.

Once DS9 was off, they wouldn't have had to hold to the same timeline.

That would've been cool, if the consequences of YoH were permanent. If they came out seriously low on men and seriously damaged, if Tuvok had to deal with blindness at least for a good part of a season.

And if they had worked long and hard to repair the ship, recollect the crew and found a Doctor to heal Tuvok, then the show would've just gotten complaints that they hit the Reset Button.

Even if it took several episodes to do it.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

There were plenty of things introduced that could have been multi-episode or even season-long or even multiple season-long story arcs. The con artists from season six, for example, could have built up a bit over several episodes, with Voyager encountering aliens who they've never met referring to things they never did.

Voyager had a lot of potential, a lot of the things that they had available to them could easily have been stories over an extended period of time. But the executives holding the pursestrings were the ones saying 'no keep everything self-contained and non-referential.'

 

[RyuRoots]

Kind of an opposite thing but I would have liked to have seen a two-parter that covered a whole year and didn't reset. They did something like that on MASH once. Some thing that starts out small and grows over the course of the episode.

Once DS9 was off, they wouldn't have had to hold to the same timeline.

That would've been cool, if the consequences of YoH were permanent. If they came out seriously low on men and seriously damaged, if Tuvok had to deal with blindness at least for a good part of a season.

And if they had worked long and hard to repair the ship, recollect the crew and found a Doctor to heal Tuvok, then the show would've just gotten complaints that they hit the Reset Button.

Even if it took several episodes to do it.

So...let me get this straight. If the show dealt with the consequences of the events of its more serious stories and didn't hit the reset button...your imaginary legion of unpleasable fans would complain that it did that exact thing. Glad to see that some things never change around here.

As for the actual topic, Year of Hell is an oft-brought up topic in terms of "what could've been" for the show, and it's a shame that a good story like that was so truncated and rendered ultimately irrelevant but it was definitely a good story. As for could the show have pulled it off? Hrmm...depends very strongly on what writers/directors were most active with it. Voyager's writing quality fluctuated a great deal depending on who was helming a given episode. That last part might sound a bit like "Well, duh!" but I do think that TNG and DS9 were more *consistent*, whatever one thinks of the quality of those shows.

 

[Silvercrest]

hux has not answered my question. Obviously he is terrified.

It's Thomas Huxley.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Thank you.

 

[suarezguy]

I think not developing more the tensions and then improving relations with Species 8472 (especially as the Borg were subsequently (over)used) was probably the biggest missed opportunity.