A Voyager confession

[Rhionnach]

I have a confession to make.

When Voyager was first shown I hated it. I didn't watch beyond half of the first season. I couldn't stand Janeway, and as for Neelix and Kes - airlock now!

People told me it eventually got better but I simply couldn't being myself to watch it. Until Virgin 1 began running it on an endless loop. Once I got beyond the first few episodes which I detested I found myself having a better appreciation of it.

Don't get me wrong, I still find Neelix annoying but once Kes went he improved a bit. Still unsure about Seven of Nine, though, as I don't like the Booby Borg look. Why couldn't she just wear a uniform like everyone else?

Janeway's voice still grates, but I can tolerate it. And some of the storylines have been very good. Bit of a change of opinion from when I first saw it.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Don't feel to bad; even though the show always held my interest, I've always had mixed feelings about Voyager myself.

The first two seasons were rather poor, but once the Kazon were gone it got a lot better, IMO (WORST VILLIANS EVER!).

As for the characters - I always liked Janeway, but she definitely needed to be written more consistently. One week she was a caring, lovable mother figure to the crew, the next she was a balls-to-wall, hard charging, gung-ho warrior, with little connection between the two characterizations. Neelix, I agree, airlock NOW! I never liked him, and never will. Kes, again I liked her but she needed better writing. It always seemed like the writers didn't know what to do with her so they never really tried. Seven was one of my favorite characters on the show. However, I will agree she definitely needed to wear a uniform.

It makes no sense to me why all the Maquis crewmembers had to wear Starfleet uniforms, even though they weren't part of Starfleet, but Neelix, Kes, and Seven didn't have to wear one. Also, in the one episode we saw Seven wear a uniform, "Relativity," she looked amazingly better than when she wore her usual catsuit. But, then again, I think Troi always looked better in a Starfleet uniform as well. Heck, even T'Pol looked better in the one episode we saw her in one on Enterprise, "Twilight."

 

[RyuRoots]

Totally agreed, Admiral Shran, especially about the uniforms on Seven and T'pol. Neelix I didn't think was a big deal since he was just a frycook. But Seven actually issued orders to Starfleet personnel. As such, it will always bother the living hell out of me that she never had to wear a uniform (which she looked incredibly hot in in Relativity) and instead kept wearing those stupid frigging catsuits.

And the Kazon! Oy vey. Klingon Lite, anyone? It's amazing those maroons could figure which side of an airlock was safe to stand in before Seska came along.

As far as Neelix, the most frustrating thing to me is that I think he CAN be a good character, and Philips IS a good actor. Personally, I really liked him in Drive and if he was always presented that way, I'd really like him.

I'd definitely recommend that you keep on watching, Rhionnach. The best is yet to come, definitely. Just be warned, its last seasons aren't nearly as good as DS9's or TNG's overall.

 

[maneth]

Yeah, the Kazon. They combine the worst features of the Klingons and the Ferengi with no redeeming features whatsoever. So useless the Borg refused to assimilate them, because they wouldn't bring anything useful to the collective...

I like Voyager. My biggest gripe with the show is the way they totally ruined the Borg. Other than that, it's mostly good.

 

[Deckerd]

Rhionnach there's a great episode with salamanders in it. What a treat.

 

[Arix]

Don't feel to bad; even though the show always held my interest, I've always had mixed feelings about Voyager myself.

The first two seasons were rather poor, but once the Kazon were gone it got a lot better, IMO (WORST VILLIANS EVER!).

As for the characters - I always liked Janeway, but she definitely needed to be written more consistently. One week she was a caring, lovable mother figure to the crew, the next she was a balls-to-wall, hard charging, gung-ho warrior, with little connection between the two characterizations. Neelix, I agree, airlock NOW! I never liked him, and never will. Kes, again I liked her but she needed better writing. It always seemed like the writers didn't know what to do with her so they never really tried. Seven was one of my favorite characters on the show. However, I will agree she definitely needed to wear a uniform.

It makes no sense to me why all the Maquis crewmembers had to wear Starfleet uniforms, even though they weren't part of Starfleet, but Neelix, Kes, and Seven didn't have to wear one. Also, in the one episode we saw Seven wear a uniform, "Relativity," she looked amazingly better than when she wore her usual catsuit. But, then again, I think Troi always looked better in a Starfleet uniform as well. Heck, even T'Pol looked better in the one episode we saw her in one on Enterprise, "Twilight."

I agree with all of the above! I am pleasantly surprised to discover that Admiral Shran, once again, shares exactly the same opinion on a subject as I do.

 

[I am not Spock]

Voyager was fine overall. I found it entertaining. It could have been better, yes, but I look at it for what it was, not for what it could have been. It's a fine, entertaining sci fi series. Certainly not an insult to Star Trek.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I completely agree with the uniform criticisms! 7 deserved better. What a powerhouse of command she looked in that uniform. Wow.. you can imagine her captaining a ship dressed like that unlike the silly lycra pj's.

Rhionnach VOY has some fantastic double eps. We have probably rewatched the double eps the most.

 

[Anwar]

Keeping Seven out of the uniform was a thematic choice, to show that she was more or less an outsider amongst the crew. I know there'll be whining about how all the Maquis should've been the same, but the difference between Maquis and Ex-Borg is bigger so the thematic decision made more sense for her.

The Kazon, well the showrunners wanted generic bad guys whom the VOY crew could blast away at without needing the develop them. They're basically an entire villain race of generic mooks whom never got much development because their role in the story didn't require it.

And VOY didn't ruin the Borg, it was inevitable.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Hey hey, the Kazon have great hair! It's.. crunchy.

 

[freak]

And the Kazon! Oy vey. Klingon Lite, anyone? It's amazing those maroons could figure which side of an airlock was safe to stand in before Seska came along..

! Holy cow! I gotta REAL kick outta that one! That's hilarious! Anyway, I do agree about the Kazon..didn't their hair look like matted up Christmas trees that got sucked up in a vacuum cleaner and then spit back out and put on their heads?! Was it just me or did all Voyager enemies claim to want something? For instance, the Kazons wanted their technology, the Vidiians wanted body parts from the crew..and the Borg..well, they just wanted to assilimilate your ass! I personally preferred the Kazons over the Borg because they were more interesting to watch. As for Seska, oy vey on that too! I KNEW there was something bad about this chick the moment I first laid eyes on her! She was out to get the crew and especially Chakotay. Yall can imagine my anger when she taunted Chakotay in front of the crew nontheless, telling everyone that she's pregnant with his child! I felt like saying: why I outta..%^%$&#$%^&*! POW!
I must admit something too..in the beginning, I didn't think that Voyager was really gonna launch as well as the viewers were hoping. For me it started off pretty good and ended well, but that was about it for me. But I gave it another chance after seeing Parralex and have since then had mixed feelings about the show as well. But I'm glad the OP gave it a second chance! It's interesting what you find out what you were missing all those years! It's kinda like me with NCIS..I didn't know what I was missing when I didn't watch that show.

 

[RyuRoots]

And VOY didn't ruin the Borg, it was inevitable.

Yeah, like how DS9 inevitably ruined the Dominio-oh wait, they didn't.

EDIT: Addendum:

That is to say, no. It wasn't inevitable. They had an easy out in that they simply didn't have to use them as much as they did. So please don't turn another thread into a tirade about the evil insane hating fans that don't exist.

As far as the Kazon, I can understand where they were coming from, but making them even slightly competent on their own would go a long way. I mean, they don't need to be geniuses or even get development...but like, a peg above loony toons villains, if you could take them a little more seriously, it'd help.

 

[Saito S]

Keeping Seven out of the uniform was a thematic choice, to show that she was more or less an outsider amongst the crew. I know there'll be whining about how all the Maquis should've been the same, but the difference between Maquis and Ex-Borg is bigger so the thematic decision made more sense for her.

I don't particularly think having the Maquis NOT wear Starfleet uniforms would have made a whole lot of sense, after Janeway's "...a Starfleet crew" in the pilot. Putting aside the legit debate about how integrated these two crews should have become, and how fast, if the intention of both Janeway and Chakotay IS to integrate them, and Chakotay has accepted that they are going to function as a Starfleet crew, then the uniforms make sense.

Seven not wearing a uniform made no sense (especially after season 4), and the idea that it was a thematic decision to show her as an outsider completely falls apart, if you ask me, battered to dust by the fact that she was given serious scientific responsibilities on the ship, including the authority to give orders to actual Starfleet officers.

Of course, the fact that she was in a catsuit, of all things, didn't help.

The Kazon, well the showrunners wanted generic bad guys whom the VOY crew could blast away at without needing the develop them. They're basically an entire villain race of generic mooks whom never got much development because their role in the story didn't require it.

That's what they got. The Kazon were generic bad guys, alright. If that's REALLY what they were aiming for ("Hey, let's just make these guys idiots so we can keep throwing them at Voyager without having to put any thought into it!") then that was a serious misstep. None of the three Trek series before Voyager put out a bad guy that was intended to be recurring without putting some kind of thought into who they were, what they were all about, etc. And for good reason: wholly generic villains suck, except perhaps in pure "Plot, what plot?" action movies or Saturday morning cartoons.

Hell, the Voyager writers themselves later proved that they could do much, much better when it came to bad guys: the Vidiians, the Hirogen, and Species 8472 were all very interesting, well-realized threats with a lot of potential. Granted, I didn't like how a fair chunk of that potential was ultimately used (or, perhaps more accurately, squandered), but the potential was there. The Kazon were ridiculous and stupid as bad guys from the moment they showed up in "Caretaker".

And VOY didn't ruin the Borg, it was inevitable.

Besides RyuRoots point about the Dominion, I would disagree with this on the basis of the very compelling Borg-centered storyline that has threaded through some of the TNG relaunch books and into the Destiny trilogy, which I just began reading. The authors of these books even managed to salvage some of what I thought Voyager's worst offenses were when it came to handling the Borg, and turn those plot points into background elements that served the ongoing story well.

Hey hey, the Kazon have great hair! It's.. crunchy.

And for my part, I always thought the Kazon hair made it look like they had piled a bunch of dried scarps of garbage on their heads.

 

[Anwar]

And VOY didn't ruin the Borg, it was inevitable.

Yeah, like how DS9 inevitably ruined the Dominio-oh wait, they didn't.

DS9 had access to entire armadas of good guys as well as existing empires of good guys to have the Dominion attack and defeat without harming the main characters, which is what kept them from suffering villain decay.

VOY on the other hand, had NOTHING. They had no existing empires/federations, they had no armada of good guys, all they had was one ship with 150 people on it. In that kind of situation, you can't just blow up the ship and/or kill a ton of people because then the show is over. Thus, in order to keep the show on the air, they had to survive every encounter with every enemy.

VOY simply didn't have the resources DS9 did when it came to maintaining villains as super-tough invincible enemies. That's also why none of the other villains met their "potential", because meeting said potential required doing stuff that a single ship on its own couldn't survive.

As for Seven, there was that in-show justification that she needed the suit to continually regenerate from borg implants that couldn't be removed. So there was some handwaving about it.

And hell, the pretty sci-fi babe in a strange outfit has been a staple of sci-fi for so long, Trek shouldn't be called on it anymore than anyone else.

 

[RyuRoots]

And VOY didn't ruin the Borg, it was inevitable.

Yeah, like how DS9 inevitably ruined the Dominio-oh wait, they didn't.

DS9 had access to entire armadas of good guys as well as existing empires of good guys to have the Dominion attack and defeat without harming the main characters, which is what kept them from suffering villain decay.

VOY on the other hand, had NOTHING. They had no existing empires/federations, they had no armada of good guys, all they had was one ship with 150 people on it. In that kind of situation, you can't just blow up the ship and/or kill a ton of people because then the show is over. Thus, in order to keep the show on the air, they had to survive every encounter with every enemy.

VOY simply didn't have the resources DS9 did when it came to maintaining villains as super-tough invincible enemies. That's also why none of the other villains met their "potential", because meeting said potential required doing stuff that a single ship on its own couldn't survive.

As for Seven, there was that in-show justification that she needed the suit to continually regenerate from borg implants that couldn't be removed. So there was some handwaving about it.

And hell, the pretty sci-fi babe in a strange outfit has been a staple of sci-fi for so long, Trek shouldn't be called on it anymore than anyone else.

You seemed to miss the part of my post where I said they simply didn't have to use the Borg as much as they did. TNG didn't, and it (mostly) worked fine for them. And Kes took them out of established Borg space in The Gift, so they had a reason if they only wanted to use them a few more times.

As far as the Dominion, no, I don't mean the big war with the UFP as a whole. I mean, look at incidents like To the Death, Rocks and Shoals,The Ship, Hippocratic Oath, and The Siege of AR-558 where it's just our heroes vs some Jem'Hadar (give or take a few Vorta). Regardless of how each of these episodes (and I'm probably forgetting several along these lines) is resolved, they never get "de-fanged". In every one of them the Jem'Hadar are fierce and a genuine threat and they never lose that throughout the show's run.

 

[Anwar]

Which, again, was because DS9 was able to offer up plenty of non-main character ships and personnel for the Jem'Hadar to kill off with impunity or simply had them both fighting together against a third opponent. Or they explored the character of the Jem'Hadar without them being an adversary at all.

NONE of which could be replicated with the Borg in VOY. Or ANY of the villains in VOY, frankly.

 

[Diddle]

I have a confession to make.

When Voyager was first shown I hated it. I didn't watch beyond half of the first season. I couldn't stand Janeway, and as for Neelix and Kes - airlock now!

People told me it eventually got better but I simply couldn't being myself to watch it. Until Virgin 1 began running it on an endless loop. Once I got beyond the first few episodes which I detested I found myself having a better appreciation of it.

Don't get me wrong, I still find Neelix annoying but once Kes went he improved a bit. Still unsure about Seven of Nine, though, as I don't like the Booby Borg look. Why couldn't she just wear a uniform like everyone else?

Janeway's voice still grates, but I can tolerate it. And some of the storylines have been very good. Bit of a change of opinion from when I first saw it.

If it makes you feel any better the only reason why I started watching Voyager was because of Q. Now given that Q is one of my favorite characters ever and a deeply hate all his episodes it's easy to assume that I'd have stopped watching it after the painful experience it was watching those episodes. Well, I didn't.

The reason why I kept watching it was because I randomly watched the episode The Omega Directive that was in the Captain's Log DVD Boxset. Then I fell in love with Seven, watched her episodes and after a while actually got into the series and finished watching it as a whole.

I like Voyager mostly because it makes me laugh, it's a fun series and I can't take it much seriously.

 

[RyuRoots]

Which, again, was because DS9 was able to offer up plenty of non-main character ships and personnel for the Jem'Hadar to kill off with impunity or simply had them both fighting together against a third opponent. Or they explored the character of the Jem'Hadar without them being an adversary at all.

NONE of which could be replicated with the Borg in VOY. Or ANY of the villains in VOY, frankly.

Why couldn't VOY have explored the Borg or some other villains without being an adversary, exactly? TNG did, so it's not limited to DS9. And it's not limited by where you are on the starmap.

Why couldn't VOY have worked against or with a third party dealing with one of their villains, exactly? It's not as if there was any shortage of aliens-of-the-week.

And they didn't just kill off every non-main at every opportunity in DS9. In fact, they were pretty good about that, which is one thing I applaud DS9 for. The Ship alright, I'll give you that. But it was a big part of the episode focusing that they were actually people who died and not faceless, nameless mooks.

 

[Anwar]

Why couldn't VOY have explored the Borg or some other villains without being an adversary, exactly? TNG did, so it's not limited to DS9.

What, "I Borg"? Given that episodes' polarizing nature, it's best that they didn't. They tried their best with episodes like "Unity" but it was a failure which turned them off to future attempts. And in TNG they still had the whole Federation there to back them up, so it made sense not every encounter with the Romulans and Cardassians would be a shooting match. VOY had NO ONE backing them up, so it made little sense for there to be episodes where the Kazon or Vidiians WEREN'T going full force to kill everyone.

Why couldn't VOY have worked against or with a third party dealing with one of their villains, exactly? It's not as if there was any shortage of aliens-of-the-week.

They did in "Alliances" and that episode was a failure with the fandom, they did in "Scorpion" and that episode is considered the beginning of the Borg decay, the Vidiians and Hirogen were too strong for random aliens-of-the-week to overpower (otherwise there'd be complaints that neither should still be threats in the DQ with stronger aliens around). VOY just didn't have DS9 and TNG's advantages when it came to villains.

And they didn't just kill off every non-main at every opportunity in DS9. In fact, they were pretty good about that, which is one thing I applaud DS9 for. The Ship alright, I'll give you that. But it was a big part of the episode focusing that they were actually people who died and not faceless, nameless mooks.

They still had the non-mains to kill off and the non-main ships to destroy, which VOY didn't have. And yes, doing so was a big part of why the Dominion's threat never faded. They wouldn't be as respected as they are if not for destroying the Odyssey and all the other killings.

 

[Saito S]

VOY simply didn't have the resources DS9 did when it came to maintaining villains as super-tough invincible enemies. That's also why none of the other villains met their "potential", because meeting said potential required doing stuff that a single ship on its own couldn't survive.

DS9 didn't have any "super-tough invincible enemies." Not one, ever.

They had tough enemies. Enemies that were believable as credible threats, and never lost that status. But Jem'Hadar were hardly unstoppable. That's all I (and many others) would have asked from the Borg on VOY. They don't need to be invincible, just not "lolborg", which they became.

And why must the effectiveness of these adversaries be based SOLELY on how badly they can knock the ship around? Everything in the paragraph I quoted relates to how Voyager's hands were tied when it came to villains because of how they couldn't blow up the ship. What about the fact that the Romulans from TOS (the Klingons, not so much; they were pretty simplistic, I'll grant) and TNG, the Borg in TNG, the Dominion in DS9... these were more than just bad guys to shoot at. They were interesting, for reasons beyond their ability to blow up our heroes ships. That is the problem with the Kazon.

As for the Borg... RyuRoots makes a good point (that I hadn't even thought to bring up) that they could have just not used the Borg so much in the first place. But if you ARE going to use them a lot, there is a middle ground between "they are invincible and will blow up our ship" and "we can beat them easily." Voyager, in later seasons, was fighting off Borg ships like they were any other ordinary adversary. Hell, Janeway at one point decided to hunt Borg ships for resources. This is DUMB when the Borg were supposed to be pretty much the biggest threat in straight combat. So have Voyager survive WITHOUT beating them in straight combat! TNG did it all the time (and before you bring this defense up again, no, it had nothing to do with falling back on being in Federation territory. The Federation armada in BoBW got its ass kicked, so that made no difference). In BoBW, no one could stop the Borg ship in straight combat. The E-D crew ended up beating them through technical trickery and guile. In First Contact, a fleet of Starfleet ships (one that was made up of far newer and more combat capable ships than the BoBW fleet) barely managed to take the thing out JUST as it was reaching Earth (and even then, Picard used his intimate knowledge of the Borg to pinpoint a weakness; hard to say if Starfleet would have won without that). In "I, Borg", they hid from the Borg ship that came for Hugh so they wouldn't have to fight it. Yet we have Voyager fighting off Borg ships left and right, and beating them with the Delta Flyer.

Which, again, was because DS9 was able to offer up plenty of non-main character ships and personnel for the Jem'Hadar to kill off with impunity or simply had them both fighting together against a third opponent. Or they explored the character of the Jem'Hadar without them being an adversary at all.

NONE of which could be replicated with the Borg in VOY. Or ANY of the villains in VOY, frankly.

I have one major example to counter this. And that example is... Voyager! Specifically, "Scorpion". That was brilliant. One of the best 2-parters in all of Trek. And the Borg were handled perfectly. They were menacing, threatening, and scary as ever, despite the fact that Species 8472 was tearing them apart (which was, in and of itself, a great twist). It was made very clear throughout both eps that fighting even one cube would be a really really bad thing (so they didn't. They found other ways to deal with the problem). They even did what you said DS9 did, only in a MUCH bigger way (Sisko and crew only teamed up with Jem'Hadar once, and that was just to fight alongside Jem'Hadar against other Jem'Hadar, and was a far less epic episode than Scorpion was): they teamed up with the Borg to deal with Species 8472. Of course, this was later revealed to be a mistake, and in the end, there were no easy answers because the fact of the matter was that both the Borg AND Species 8472 represented serious threats to the galaxy. That's what made this ep great! It's not just about villains that can beat the crap out of you, it's about villains that are interesting to watch. You keep saying Voyager couldn't do this. Well, in Scorpion, Voyager DID it, with TWO villains at once, as well as Trek has ever done villains.

So what happened? Why couldn't they do what they had already done with the Borg? Why couldn't the Viidians and Species 8472 - both of whom started out as interesting, fantastic villains - stay interesting?
This is the biggest shame to me about Voyager in general. I can't just write the whole series off and say "It sucked" because it had moments of greatness. The writing was just so damned inconsistent.

As for Seven, there was that in-show justification that she needed the suit to continually regenerate from borg implants that couldn't be removed. So there was some handwaving about it.

Bwa? I don't remember that at all. Which ep was that in?

And hell, the pretty sci-fi babe in a strange outfit has been a staple of sci-fi for so long, Trek shouldn't be called on it anymore than anyone else.

I'm not calling Trek out on it more than I would call out anyone else. This "staple" is an archaic, stupid, offensive tradition that would be best completely done away with. Any other sci-fi that is guilty of the same thing with a character like Seven (or Troi) would earn my criticism to the same degree.