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Biggest problem with "Voyager" is that they didn't really take any chances.
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
That sounded like some pseudoscience coming from a scientist. Phlox even had the cure already, he just didn't want to give it to them based on that type of reasoning.
Seriously, if an asteroid was heading towards 24th century earth, do you think the humans (Phlox included) would think, "that's just natural selection at work, we were meant to be destroyed?"
The thing I noticed with Federation humans are, whenever their survival is threatened they have no problem asking for help from neutral, outside forces. Picard, Sisko, Janeway Kirk, all have done it.
TNG almost did something similar in Pen Pals, when they were discussing the prime directive and whether to save a small alien girl and her people on a doomed planet . They were wondering if the planet's destruction was part of a "cosmic plan", and used words like "fate".
It should have been more of a discussion of what would be the humane, moral and legal thing to do, but they were injecting concepts like fate and destiny into it.
Carey was used as a visual cue to the audience that this was "early Voyager" in the episodes Fury and Relativity.
While we're criticizing Voyager for "nameless redshirts", let's not leave DS9 out, which rarely ever gave an identity to it's redshirts. Worse than Voyager, they very very rarely even had speaking roles. There were always all those nameless bajoran militia and SF crewmen walking around, handing off padds, looking glum. I'm having a really hard time remembering episodes that have them roles.
The ones that come to mind are The Ship, Empok Nor(a Bryan Fuller episode), and Field of Fire. Remember Muniz? That guy could give Bashir a run for his money in the bromance department...but oh, he died. Or how about Lt. Ilario? he died immediately, all because Miles and Julian wouldnt let him play on the holodeck with him. Empok Nor? Yep, they died. I don't even remember their names.
Enterprise handled red shirts much better, but even then, their are limitations.
EDIT: I noted Fuller because he only wrote a few episodes.
While we're criticizing Voyager for "nameless redshirts", let's not leave DS9 out, which rarely ever gave an identity to it's redshirts. Worse than Voyager, they very very rarely even had speaking roles. There were always all those nameless bajoran militia and SF crewmen walking around, handing off padds, looking glum. I'm having a really hard time remembering episodes that have them roles.
The ones that come to mind are The Ship, Empok Nor(a Bryan Fuller episode), and Field of Fire. Remember Muniz? That guy could give Bashir a run for his money in the bromance department...but oh, he died. Or how about Lt. Ilario? he died immediately, all because Miles and Julian wouldnt let him play on the holodeck with him. Empok Nor? Yep, they died. I don't even remember their names.
Enterprise handled red shirts much better, but even then, their are limitations.
EDIT: I noted Fuller because he only wrote a few episodes.
Yeah if anything DS9 being as it tried to be a war story ought to have had more red shirts if you ask me.
Voyager had more "non-ranking characters" Ensign and Naomi Wildman, the Borg Children, and a few others.
Voyager had more "non-ranking characters" Ensign and Naomi Wildman, the Borg Children, and a few others.
VOY had less crewmembers that could be replaced, though. Their loss should be more impactful because there are so few of them.
It had around 140 total post Caretaker and I don't think Voyager suffered that many casualties in proportion to its total crew complement.
Hope you have a nice holiday. I would like to read your Janeway resume please. And it better be good.
I know, I mean if we start fleshing out secondary characters stupidly they will become main characters. These criticisms are becoming childish.
But DSN unlike VOY could have people transferring in and out of assignment, new officers from the academy etc...VOY was stuck with the limited number of crew they had so it's easier to have one shot characters in DSN than it is in VOY. And really if you want to build a sense of family/community on VOY, developing a decent core of secondary characters would have helped. But then again they seemed to struggle to develop some of their primary characters.
I've wondered why they stopped showing Ensign Wildman but kept showing Naomi. Seemed like an odd decision to keep showing the child but never the mother. On the other hand, Neelix becomes her (sorta) surrogate father and 7 becomes her friend so maybe they wanted to focus on those dynamics instead.
152 crew members, according to the episode "The 37s." Someone did a breakdown of all the deaths, and calculated they lost 22 crewmembers, which is a 15% loss.
And, I'm not asking for every one to be fleshed out, but it would be nice to have some characterization. The setting is unique so why not take advantage of it and tell unique stories?
I always had the impression the crew count was down to 60 or something.
Considering they spent so much money on make up and such, true, why not do an episode featuring the back ground crew members--have them speak and talk like normal people--to make them seem more real?
Not just Naomi Wildman or the Borg children (which in a way did not count IMO).
Like I said, I knew there were over 50 crew members at least but it always seemed like there were barely 20 people on that ship.
They had several episodes like this. Good Shepherd is entirely about some random people, one of whom you see again later. There are also several other people who get some fair screen time for extras, Tabor and Chell for example.
That Voyager is stranded and you have the opportunity to highlight other crew members who might usually just be relegated to one shot episodes, or we wouldn't expect to see again because of transfers. No, they don't have to be as in depth as the mains, but why not explore them a little bit. As @Sophie74656 pointed out, "Good Shepherd" is a great example of this, with a character who, quite honestly, was very unique for the Star Trek world, being someone who enlisted just fulfill some education requirements only to be stranded in a roll he didn't want. I mean, here is an individual who is resentful of having to be in Starfleet in the first place, and now is stuck? I daresay that's almost drama.
DS9 had access to the entire Trekverse and had their Galactic War storyline, that gave them more storytelling possibilities to give other characters more to do than Voyager who could NOT flesh out their surroundings and do a War storyline that took over the entire show.
People who critique don't realize how utterly constrained Voyager was compared to the other Trek shows.
The fact that the show is subjected to such hyper-criticism doesn't help.
Personally I'm glad they didn't focus more on other crew members. I would rather see screen time used for main characters that i care about
Constraints make good art.
So, the rest should be faceless nobodies?
I'm not asking for every episode to be focused on secondary characters, but even M*A*S*H managed to flesh out some of their secondary and tertiary characters over their run. It really doesn't have to take up as much time as is being imagined.
Sometimes. But not always. Especially given the freedoms the other shows got.
MASH had a smaller main cast than Voyager, it's inherently easier to tell a story when you have a smaller cast.
VOY would've been better off with the Central Cast just being Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris and the Doctor.
Kim, Kes, Neelix and Torres should've been Secondaries who didn't need to be seen all the time or be in every episode.
