Even if his pov is earnest, forthcoming, and without spite, it's still just a tiny window of time in a show that was on air for seven years. He had a falling out with Braga, who was EP during season 6. Moore didn't feel welcomed on the show.
I don't see any reason not to take him at face value. Otherwise your just left the big coincidence that people are infinitely forgiving of DS9 and hyper-critical of
Voyager and a guy who worked on both shows simply had a skewed perspective when he noticed a lot of differences in how the shows were managed that sync up almost perfectly with the criticisms people have.
BTW, it was also Braga who wanted to do more with Year of Hell(he wrote it) He was about to take over as head writer for season 4 and planned it to the season finale/premiere, before the Borg storyline came to fruition, but not a season long episode. Season 4 is possibly the most solid season of the show. How many great stories would be lost?
How many great stories would've been gained? We don't know. We have no idea what this alternate version of
Voyager would've looked like. Your attitude seems to be "They avoided risks the show turned out okay, so clearly they made the right decision. If they had done what people are suggesting it might not have turned out so good." It sort of reminds me of that episode of
Seinfeld where Jerry owes that annoying rival comedian lunch. "We could go to the same place again and it'd be good, but it would be the same. We could go somewhere else and it would be different, but it might not be as good." If they went somewhere else and it's not as good, does that mean they made the "wrong" decision? With the benefit of hindsight, certainly.
On the opposite end of the scale, we have Moore's own BSG reboot. He took the challenge of a lost ship and scarce resources head on and most people would say the show fizzled out in the end. Does that mean he made the "wrong" decision by trying to stick to the challenges he had set up for the show? Would it have been more commendable if he had dropped all that after a few episodes and stuck to more familiar sci-fi territory and the show was generally pleasant to watch it's whole run? I honestly can't say.
I've said this before: There seems to be this false dichotomy and popular notion that More serialization=good. There are trade offs. Voyager is (as others have said) a "serialized procedural" just like TNG, DS9, and Enterprise. It has many ongoing arcs, and still acts as a platform for telling interesting sci fi stories.
The complaints here are more particular than that. It isn't just serialization for serialization's sake. It's that certain aspects of the premise warranted more continuity. If the premise is that the ship has to fend for itself, for example, damage and resources should be an ongoing issue.
IMO, it doesn't need to be more melodramatic, more soap opera, more angst, or any of the other things people have imagined into Voyager's premise.
(Cue dramatic music)
"Unhappy with a new treaty, Federation Colonists along the Cardassian border have banded together.
Calling themselves 'The Maquis,' they continue to fight the Cardassians.
Some consider them heroes, but to the governments of the Federation and Cardassia, they are outlaws."
For someone like me, who saw some episodes in the middle of
Voyager's run before the pilot, it was almost surreal how big a deal the pilot seemed to make out of them. I don't even think I knew there was supposed to be a mixed crew in the first few episodes I saw. It isn't just the pilot either.
Parallax teases you with the idea of a maquis mutiny before immediately dropping it and giving us one of the most painful and cliched spacial anomoly stories imaginable.
Alliances presents an issue that looks like it could fracture the crew only to be largely forgotten later.
There are also supply issues mentioned early on that never fully materialized.
