Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager
That's my problem with Voyager as well - most of the time I don't feel like I'm watching an ongoing and evolving story. I WANT to see characters change and grow over the course of time, and it's a lot harder to see this with the Voyager characters, the Doctor and Seven aside.
When I watch Voyager, I can look to the episodes and specifically say 'I liked that one, that one was okay, I hated that one, I appreciated the idea behind that one but would have done this instead...' It's all episodic, with a focus on what they did solely in the individual episodes, not as part of a grander series-wide tapestry, since very little affects a later story. But when I watch other shows, I find myself looking over the episodes at a later date and realizing 'oh, that's why they did this then! Now it makes sense.' That's hard on me, because I don't want safe television - I'm entertained by thinking, by seeing this or that challenge my presumptions and make me think about who I am, what I've done, what I want, why I do these things. Too often, it felt like Voyager took a safe road instead of challenging the audience to ask the questions their concepts could easily pose.
i realize being in a thread that is primarily for trek fans who have problems with voyager, and i'm not trying to be rude here, but were you watching the same show as me with the same open mind?? to me, this series had the much more evolution for most of its characters than any of the other trek series (DS9 was second thoug). even with its episodic nature there was a sense of continuity maintained. the difference b/t it and, say, DS9 is that there weren't periodic reminders being made by one of the characters. it just usually didn't happen again on voyager. the other thing i think is lost on many viewers is the unspoken metaphors and symbolism that voyager is rife with as compared to the other modern day treks. but, y'all mean to tell me that with TNG y'all looked over later episodes and then realized that's why did something in an earlier episode?
My problem with the character development in Voyager was that there were no arcs for the characters, other than the Doctor and Seven's development into more humanized characters. To me, this feels like it was done primarily out of how when the characters arrived, they were essentially blank slates and anything could be done with them, while the other characters had lives that existed before they arrived on Voyager. Beyond those two, the only really character arc and growth I saw was with Tom and B'Elanna, Tom going from the womanizing and somewhat jerky man to a loving and devoted, though somewhat smartass-y, husband, and B'Elanna becoming more comfortable in being both human and Klingon. These developments and growths are only visible from watching multiple seasons, though, rather than having seasonal character arcs, leading the character from one point to another in their lives.
I never said that the other Trek serieses lacked the same problem (the words I used specifically were 'other shows,' but I wasn't thinking specifically of the other Treks), and I hold TNG up as an example of the same lack of defined character arcs and ball-drops with certain characters I see in Voyager, and even the Klingon arc for Worf seems mostly ignored outside of the focus episodes. I see Star Trek as having a lot of problems with defining what they're going to do with their characters. Really, the reason I let DS9 off the hook in this regard is that there were some gradual character arcs that were carried through over the seasons - O'Brien and Bashir's friendship grew over the space of a couple of seasons from O'Brien loathing him to them becoming Heterosexual Life Partners. Sisko went from a reluctant religious icon into a man with deep faith in the beings he once viewed soley as 'wormhole aliens.' Odo had two, looking for his people and then his relationship with Kira developing from friends to lovers.
I did not see these long-term character arcs on Voyager. When I look at the Chakotay or Tuvok or (and especially) Harry Kim of Caretaker, I cannot see a difference in the version that appears in Endgame. However, I do see changes in the Ben Sisko, the Kira Nerys, the Odo, the Julian Bashir, even the Quark we see in Emissary and What You Leave Behind. Ezri, in the space of one year, became more confidant in who she was now, with the Dax symbiont, also clearly growing and changing over the course of the year. The characters were expected to grow and change and learn from their experiences, but I never quite felt the same with the characters on Voyager.
That, to me, is my biggest problem with Voyager - when a character has an experience that would normally demand follow-up, it's usually left alone, not to mention how on occasion, the 'character crisis' of the week was completely out of the blue. The episode 'Extreme Risk,' for example had no build up and no follow up. We're told that B'Elanna has grown somewhat suicidal since learning of the Maquis being wiped out back in the Alpha Quadrant, but the first indication we get that something's wrong is seeing her in the holodeck, deactivating safety protocols in that episode. Likewise, given that suicidal depression is a real issue, they should have shown how she deals with this in later episodes - even Juggernaut, later in the season, could have been an opportunity to ask how she is dealing, but I don't recall even lip service being paid to the earlier episode.
I can enjoy Voyager - when it's good, it's really good, and the ideas can get me thinking about my own life. But the reverse is true, that when it's bad it's really bad. And when I look back on Voyager as a whole, I see more missed opportunities with the stories it presented than any other, and most if not all of the episodes that reached that level I wanted, they were ones that focused on or at least heavily featured either Seven or the Doctor. However, with the really good episodes of DS9, there's a good sampling of most of the main cast. I want to watch not just an interesting Sci-Fi story, but something about ALL of the characters it claims in the ensemble.
When I look at Voyager, the missed opportunities and ball drops feel very tangible, as opposed to the missed opportunities and ball drops on DS9, and even to an extent TNG - TNG's main mission statement was that they were continuing the exploration of the final frontier. Voyager was about two crews coming together to find a way home. TNG just promises that they'll continue to explore space and the human condition, but built into that premise is no hint that they'll be taking the characters places. Voyager's premise seems like it would lead to a lot of stories that are told solely on board the ship, exploring the aspects of two groups of people who may not really be all that compatible learning from one another and becoming something else, as they need to rely on one another to make the long trip back home. But I never get the feeling that Voyager is far from home - most episodes we see feel like the story could have just as easily taken place back in the Alpha Quadrant, because they'll often feature aliens of the week, instead of doing something with the characters in their situation of being far from home, probably never to see their families and loved ones again. I'm not saying I wanted Voyager to be a completely dark and depressing show, but I think that the episodes and the characters were TOO happy for people in their situation.
The longer I go on, the more I start to feel I'm losing the point I started out with, so I'm going to stop my ranting here.
