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Another Stereotypical Best Season Poll

Your favorite season is...


  • Total voters
    30

Quinton O'Connor

Commodore
Commodore
I'm just curious what the general consensus is around here. Since this is such a well-known and long-lasting Trek forum, I'm going to assume it's mostly in keeping with the overall statement on the series -- its middle seasons were its crowning achievement. But I'd be interested in seeing if that winds up being fiercely debated here, and what individual users' opinions are.

This is something I won't be commenting on too much, because I haven't seen the show in ages. Just something I'm doing to gauge BBS opinions while... well, while watching my girlfriend play Grand Theft Auto IV, at the moment, but yeah.
 
S4 gets my vote. It was a marked jump in quality over the first three seasons to me, led into by the excellent Scorpion. It felt like there was a good use of continuity, such as Torres recalling her own development when talking to Seven, or introducing the Hirogen early before we got a good look at them. It also had many truly standout episodes, and it really felt like the showrunners finally had a good grip on how to make the show great. ...and then we had Season 5, but hey, they had it for a while anyway.
 
That's the year I'm anticipating the bulk of the votes to go toward, and I'm expecting a lot of people to cite similar rationale in the process. It really sounds like the fourth season was something special, although I do see the fifth listed as 'second best' often.
 
I'm on an epic one-episode-a-day rewatch since getting the DVD's. All I can say for sure so far is that season two has been much better than season one.
 
I'm on an epic one-episode-a-day rewatch since getting the DVD's. All I can say for sure so far is that season two has been much better than season one.

That sounds like a bucket full of fun. I was attempting to do a single episode a day for a while when I started my review thread for DS9, but between the show just getting so good and my girlfriend not wanting to wait for me to type up every review... well, that's one big reason I'm so behind!

I hear the second season is significantly stronger than the first, and the third is stronger than the second, and then the fourth is much, much stronger than that. I hear that often. I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts on the matter... in a few months. :lol:
 
I say season 3. While season 4 has that "landmark" addition of Seven of Nine, I never really cared for her in that season. And yeah, season 4 has wonderful episodes: Scorpion Part II, the Gift, Scientific Method, Message in a Bottle, Hunters, One, Living Witness, Year of Hell, and even the Killing Game. Season 3 was much better paced and then of course for the JetC'ers it had Coda. But it also had Flashback, Sacred Ground, Future's End I & II, The Chute, Warlord, the Q and the Grey, Blood Fever, Unity, Before and After, Worst Case Scenario, and Real Life.

So I go with 3
 
As someone who watched the show loyally from when it started (I was 10) to getting a tear in my eye (at 17) when the show ended, I do admit it's a tough choice. As the one Trek series I watched completely from beginning to end, Voyager does and will always hold a special place in my heart. The best season is a toughie, but out of these three, personally...

Season Two - Much revilled by many, this was when I was really into the show as a kid. So much so, that when UPN had a trailer that made it look like they might get home, my 10 or 11 year old self would jump up and say "They're getting home!" Of course, now I know better. But, I find myself coming back to many greats here often such as "Dreadnought," "Prototype," "Projections" and "Deadlock" (Season Two - the year of one episode names, lol! :P). I also enjoyed the Kazon ark and even enjoy hated episodes like "Twisted" and even "Threshold."

Season Four - Starting off with a BANG with the superlative "Scorpion," Season Four brought in the fascinating Seven of Nine, really cemented the CGI into high quality mode, and upped the quality of the show that much more, although I wish Kes hadn't left the show. Besides "Scorpion," the season has some great two-parters like "Year of Hell" and other great episodes like "Hope and Fear," "Living Witness," "The Omega Directive" and even enjoyable lighter fare like "Vis a Vis."

Season Five - But, in the end, my vote goes to edge Season Five by a bit. "Night" was a great start to the season and "Equinox" was a stellar cliffhanger. And, in between you had "Relativity," "Dark Frontier," "Bliss," "Warhead" and "Timeless." It was just a GREAT show by then, and that season had very few clunkers to me.
 
I know exactly what you mean about a younger self interpreting things differently. I feel like a day doesn't go by around here that I don't bring up how TNG premiered when I was less than a month old and I rarely missed an episode of the franchise on through the end of Enterprise, with certain gaps for exceptions. but it wasn't until a certain point that I was old enough to begin grasping things, and by then, DS9 was a couple of seasons away from closing.

The second season of Voyager... boy, I was about seven or eight. I'm confident I fell for those teasers as well. And episodes like "Threshold" went straight over my head in how 'bad' they supposedly are, because I was about seven or eight. Watching Paris' tongue fall out = gold when you're that age, and this is coming from someone who read Crichton's Jurassic Park at age five. No matter how mature you are, that's not getting past you when you're that young.

So, folks, were seasons six and seven the stinkers people say they are? Mainly six; a lot of people seem to think seven picked up, at least.
 
Season 2 is my favorite due to episodes like "Resistance", "Meld" and "Death Wish". :mallory:
 
I'm in the "can't decide" camp. VOY may be the only show where I can't bring myself to pick a favorite season. My favorite part of VOY are TGB's reviews to be quite honest :lol:

Edit: Strike that, I like season 6 best, come to think of it. Mind you, I actually enjoyed the Seven/Doctor-centric episodes - especially the lighthearted ones - as well as Barclay's cameos :techman:
 
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I remember liking those, too, SPCTRE. It's nice to see a vote for the sixth season; I was starting to think that's the last thing I'd see.
 
Man, it sounds like the show really went down the drain after some great seasons. D:

It didn't go down the drain, good episodes continued to be pumped out by the writers well into season 7. The problem was that the show didn't really develop and it was mainly just self contained episode after self contained episode.
Seasons 5-7 have a wealth of great episodes.
 
Season four is my favorite. Nearly every episode is great. Season five is a pretty close second with season two just inches behind five. One, Three, Six and Seven are such mixed bags I wouldn't begin to know how to rate those.
 
Man, it sounds like the show really went down the drain after some great seasons. D:

It didn't go down the drain, good episodes continued to be pumped out by the writers well into season 7. The problem was that the show didn't really develop and it was mainly just self contained episode after self contained episode.
Seasons 5-7 have a wealth of great episodes.

Ah, I see. Well, that's reassuring, thanks.
 
Ok, now that I have some time, I am going to give my opinions of the seasons :)

Season 1

In my opinion, an overall very strong start for Voyager.
For me, the distinguishing factor for this season is the dialogue and the interaction between the characters. All the characters here feel very organic, real and their relationships have a depth and truth to them that wasn't really seen in the early seasons of any other Trek show. Even episodes with poor plots such as Parallax and The Cloud were often saved by the characters.
Best of Trek: "Phage", "Jetrel", "Faces", "Prime Factors"
Lowpoint: "Cathexis", the kind of filler crap often seen in early seasons.

Season 2

Season 2 is an interesting combination of an attempt at a long term story arc (The Kazon) and completely episodic storytelling - the epitome of which must be "Deadlock" which was the first ocassion where it became extremely apparent the writers weren't particularly interested in having the show become completely fluid with the events of preceding episodes affecting later episodes. To see the ship nearly damaged beyond repair in "Deadlock" and then squeaky clean in the next episode was a real :eek: moment for me.
The Kazon episodes have grown on me and I can appreciate the general story going on, but unfortunately the Kazon were a fairly laughable villain and too many holes began appearing such as how exactly a technologically behind species could even keep up with Voyager.
Overall for me, Season 2 is a very mixed big probably leaning towards more bad than good. There was an inexcusably large number of poor episodes overall compared to a much stronger season 1.
Best of Trek: "Deadlock", "Tuvix", "The Thaw"
Lowpoint: "Tatoo", misguided

Season 3
With this season, out went attempts at any types of story arc and in went endless episodic shows and an abandonment of continuity. The results were extremely mixed and it wasn't uncommon to have an atrocious episode followed by a superb episode. This led to the feeling of a lack of direction in the show.
The lowpoint of season 3 came right before the highpoint at the end of the season when we were given a stream of extremely strong episodes beginning with "Before and After" that seemed to signal the writers might have been pulling their shit together.
Best of Trek: "Before and After", "Distant Origin", "Scorpion Part I"
Lowpoint: "Favorite Son", the type of unbelievably bad filler episode that may have been avoided if we had had an arc.

Season 4
Season 4 was an immense improvement in consistency and writing quality but many people seem to forget that we were already seeing big improvements in quality towards the end of season 3.
For me, Seven of Nine was a complete boon to the show at this point. Her character was fresh and interesting, introducing some much needed tension into the mix and I found myself excited every time a new episode would focus on her - which was often!
The writers migrated once again to adding some sense of continuity into their writing as we got small story arcs involving the Hirogen and communicating with Starfleet that made the show feel much more kinetic than it had in season 3.
Some of this good energy began to dissipate by the end of the season with weak offerings such as "Demon", "Vis a Vis" and "Unforgettable".
Overall this season was marked by two feelings for me. One was the excitement of the new character Seven and the satisfaction she gave me as a Trek viewer in her storylines and the new opportunities she created for storytelling.
Another was one of loss. While season 4 was very strong, the tone of the show changed and it seemed to become darker and slightly less vibrant than it previously had been. One big reason for this was the loss of Kes who was not only a good character with a ton of potential but also seemed to have added significantly to the tone Voyager had set in its first 3 years.
Best of Trek: "The Gift", "Year of Hell", "Message in a Bottle", "Prey", "Retrospect"
Lowpoint: "Demon", its fitting that an episode dealing with low supplies, a premise that should have been central to Voyager's premise, is so shoddily handled.

Season 5
This season was when Braga took over the reins of Voyager and also when the show began to stagnate albeit at a pretty high level of writing.
While this season had plenty of great episodes and Seven continued to fascinate, although slightly less than in season 4, there was little feeling of progression or moving forward.
Now that the initial excitement of a new character had rubbed off a bit, I began to miss the Voyager of season 1 when there was fairly even attention paid to each character and there was a feeling of being lost and a bit more *emotion* to the show.
What we got in Season 5 was a very disjointed series of episodes - many of which had great writing, but little sense of continuity or cohesion for me.
I often name "Dark Frontier" when expressing my frustrations with the lack of continuity or sense of reality felt in Voyager. Janeway remarks at the beginning that they have added at least 2000 lightyears onto their journey trying to avoid the Borg, but this is something we never heard and in fact they hadn't run into the Borg in ages. It was at the point I just had to accept to enjoy each episode as it came and accept Voyager for what it was, a collection of episodes with minimal continuity between them.
Overall the enjoyment of season 5, much like the show, really leans of whether you can accept Voyager's failings and just learn to enjoy it as an episodic show.
Best of Trek: "Once Upon a Time", "Latent Image", "Dark Froniter", "Someone to Watch Over Me", "Equinox"
Lowpoint: "In The Flesh", its suitable that as we cruise into the final seasons which are mostly devoid of any interesting alien villains that the writers should castrate one of Voyager's best villains.

Season 6
This was "Voyager" on autopilot. The usual mix of excellent, good and poor episodes were churned out with very little direction.
Season 6 is notable for probably having one of the strongest starts of any Trek season however, with 4 fantastic episodes.
Best of Trek: "Barge of the Dead", "Pathfinder", "Blink of an Eye", "Child's Play", "Muse".
Lowpoint: "Fury", unbelievably badly conceived episode which was not only terrible in itself but actually managed to change events in the first 3 seasons.

Season 7
Voyager continued on autopilot and while good episodes continued to be produced, there was a chronic feeling of "more of the same".
There wasn't no development however. Voyager at this point, much like TNG, felt very "comfortable". We knew the characters and we firmly knew what kind of things to expect- some people like that.
Best of Trek: "Critical Care", "Lineage", "Author Author".
Lowpoint: "Endgame", not as bad as Enterprise's finale but still a rather lazy effort.

Overall, I like Voyager a lot. I no longer find myself getting worked up over what could have been, I simply enjoy the multitude of sci-fi concepts and stories they explored.

If I were to rate the seasons from best to worst

Season 4
Season 1
Season 5
Season 6
Season 3
Season 7
Season 2
 
Wow, that's quite the reply! I really appreciate the time and dedication you put into that. It was rather insightful.

Until recently, I'd never seen anyone list the first season so highly. Reading your thoughts, I can see where you'd arrive at that conclusion. And I take it a big part of the reason the final season is so low is because it just kept going on with the typical 'autopilot' that you'd grown accustomed to?
 
I rewatched season 1 of Voyager in the last year and it really shot up my list. I was surprised how much I liked every single character, even Harry who I grew to really dislike due to the complete lack of depth given to him by the writers during the remainder.
Janeway was also a much better character, which is helped by Mulgrew's slightly more emotional approach, I also felt Mulgrew's acting was more organic in those days. In the later seasons it began to become far too posey and self aware.

As for season 7 being so low, that's precisely the reason. Season 7 was still good but nothing particularly made it stand out over season 6 and 7.
 
Alright I haven't voted YET because I'm almost positive I can't decide. However, I really loved season 5 for NIGHT, BRIDE OF CHAOTICA, COUNTERPOINT, ONE, DARK FRONTIER, LATIENT IMAGE(I think S5)... Just to name a few that come to mind. Oh and Janeway was wicked hot in season 5 IMO ;) Well there was something slightly different about her hottness ;)
 
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