Did Voyager Just Fail to Adapt The Changing Landscape of Televsion

[MacLeod]

^ I think even the producers of the show have admitted they would have prefered a more serialised style, but were explicitly stopped from doing that by the network (UPN).

Then they should have adopted a premise which would have leant itself more towards an episodic approach ala TOS and TNG. Seialsied doesn't always mean better than episodic and vice versa, just that you use the one which best suits the overall premise of your show. Which a fair few believe VOY failed to do. The fact that the edict might have come from the network is irrelevant, one of the key critisims levelled at VOY was that it failed to live upto it's premise. Would it have been a better show if it was more serialised no one can say. I suspect that we would be having a similar debate had it been for those that favour a more episodic appraoch to their TV.

It's the simple fact that you can't please everyone all of the time, some people love VOY for what it was, others feel they missed an opportunity and the biggest sense I get is that a many were disappointed in what we got. Not hatred but disappointment.

The thing is, and I've seen it argued elsewhere, TNG didn't have this reset-button mentality. Sure, it wasn't overtly praying at the altar of serialisation, but they did have this "unspoken agreement" that episodes could be left with threads hanging, and that later episodes could pick up those threads and run with them. Out of that we got the Duras storyline, we got Worf and Alexander, we got the ongoing thing with Data/Lore/Soong, we got Romulan episodes that built upon each other, we got Hugh Borg... on the whole, TNG had an open universe, where decisions in one episode could (and often *did*) come back and bite them on the ass in a later one. While that wasn't exactly serialisation, it was hardly the reset-button either. And TNG did explore many ongoing arc plots as a result. It's a part of what made the show really come into it's own.

Voyager's conceptual problem, more than anything else, was that the crew have got a fix on their location in the DQ, relative to their start point in the AQ, from the very beginning. And a constant mission to "set a course... for home". Which naturally meant that by it's very nature they would constantly be leaving things behind that would never be picked up again. If Voyager had been truely lost, and had to "fly blind" in their adventures in the Delta Quadrant, then there would have been more opportunity for them to be going around in circles and picking up ongoing plots involving semi-recurring characters. Just like TNG often did.

Voyager didn't need to change. It needed an open-ended format to begin with, but it didn't get one, it got the USS Reset-Button instead.

Sure they are moving on from one adventure to another, but what about things that don't rely on that such as the crew, sure some characters such as the EMH had growth but others had very little character growth. What about secondary characters, lets look at O'Brien from his TNG days we got to know him as a character over the 55 or so episodes that he appeared in. Sure VOY had the odd secondary character who appeared in a few episodes then was never brought back, almost as if the writers thought they had killed them off.

Besides there is still plenty of scope for introducing arc story lines even given VOY location. They hear rumours of a race who might be able to help, or a race has heard they plight and comes looking for them, wiull they help or not?

 

[Anwar]

Look, as it is the premise was "Gilligan's Island in space" wherein you KNEW their quest to get home would never bear fruit til the ending otherwise the show would be over.

Voyager's biggest problem was the lack of an actual plot that could be accomplished without ending the show. Something that had NOTHING to do with going home. If they spent the first 2 or so seasons not knowing where they were it'd allow them to build up a setting and external characters and flesh out their surroundings more. Then by the time they do know how to get home there's some Galactic Crisis unfolding and they have to stop it before it destroys the Galaxy or whatever.

That and the cast was too big anyways, smaller casts are easier to write for.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Voyager was a case of weak writing combined with oversaturation of the market (Trek was no longer unique or in short-supply). Whether episodic or arc-based, a show will be mostly judged on the quality of its writing.

I agree with this and would add that it was even distinctive in its execution. VOY was simply a bit bland, and forgettable, for the most part, rather than engaging. And that goes back to writing and characterization.

To me, it seemed as if there was nothing really buzzworthy about VOY outside of Trek's fandom other than Jeri Ryan in her padded catsuits.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Look, as it is the premise was "Gilligan's Island in space" wherein you KNEW their quest to get home would never bear fruit til the ending otherwise the show would be over.

Voyager's biggest problem was the lack of an actual plot that could be accomplished without ending the show. Something that had NOTHING to do with going home. If they spent the first 2 or so seasons not knowing where they were it'd allow them to build up a setting and external characters and flesh out their surroundings more. Then by the time they do know how to get home there's some Galactic Crisis unfolding and they have to stop it before it destroys the Galaxy or whatever.

That and the cast was too big anyways, smaller casts are easier to write for.

That's funny. I thought the cast was too reduced.

 

[Anwar]

Look, as it is the premise was "Gilligan's Island in space" wherein you KNEW their quest to get home would never bear fruit til the ending otherwise the show would be over.

Voyager's biggest problem was the lack of an actual plot that could be accomplished without ending the show. Something that had NOTHING to do with going home. If they spent the first 2 or so seasons not knowing where they were it'd allow them to build up a setting and external characters and flesh out their surroundings more. Then by the time they do know how to get home there's some Galactic Crisis unfolding and they have to stop it before it destroys the Galaxy or whatever.

That and the cast was too big anyways, smaller casts are easier to write for.

That's funny. I thought the cast was too reduced.

TOS got by with only 3 Central characters and everyone else as Secondary.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Look, as it is the premise was "Gilligan's Island in space" wherein you KNEW their quest to get home would never bear fruit til the ending otherwise the show would be over.

Voyager's biggest problem was the lack of an actual plot that could be accomplished without ending the show. Something that had NOTHING to do with going home. If they spent the first 2 or so seasons not knowing where they were it'd allow them to build up a setting and external characters and flesh out their surroundings more. Then by the time they do know how to get home there's some Galactic Crisis unfolding and they have to stop it before it destroys the Galaxy or whatever.

That and the cast was too big anyways, smaller casts are easier to write for.

That's funny. I thought the cast was too reduced.

TOS got by with only 3 Central characters and everyone else as Secondary.

What three? By my count they were at least six.

 

[RandyS]

That's funny. I thought the cast was too reduced.

TOS got by with only 3 Central characters and everyone else as Secondary.

What three? By my count they were at least six.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Everybody else was secondary.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

TOS got by with only 3 Central characters and everyone else as Secondary.

What three? By my count they were at least six.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Everybody else was secondary.

Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and later Chekov. I am sorry but they weren't more secondary than Kim, Tom, B'Lana and Seven or the doctor.


Janeway, Tuvok and Chakotay being the main characters.

 

[MacLeod]

That's funny. I thought the cast was too reduced.

TOS got by with only 3 Central characters and everyone else as Secondary.

What three? By my count they were at least six.

Perhaps Principals/main cast members would be a better description. i.e. they recieved main title billing. Not credited as Guest Star etc...

 

[Guy Gardener]

No one deserved Top billing on Voyager.

There just didn't seem to be one star above the rest.

It's was an ensemble.

Kirk still got maybe at least 3 times as many lines as the supporting cast members in almost every episode.

In Voyager, all the Little people completely got to be a star of an episode a couple times a year.

 

[Isolinear]

No one deserved Top billing on Voyager.

There just didn't seem to be one star above the rest.

It's was an ensemble.

The first couple of seasons maybe. In later seasons it was definitely the Janeway/Seven/Doctor show.

Was Voyager 'old-fashioned' in the mid-90's? I don't remember enough shows from back then. Didn't seem like it. What I do know is the lighting was a bit old-fashioned. Voyager has that late-TNG sitcom-look most of the time. When you compare it to something like the X-files it's like night and day.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

No one deserved Top billing on Voyager.

There just didn't seem to be one star above the rest.

It's was an ensemble.

Kirk still got maybe at least 3 times as many lines as the supporting cast members in almost every episode.

In Voyager, all the Little people completely got to be a star of an episode a couple times a year.

I saw the statistics on that and I remember some of it. For instance the Doctor gets only one line in one episode. I'll let you guess which one. And seven even gets zero lines in one of the late episodes. Guess which one it is?

 

[Anwar]

What three? By my count they were at least six.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Everybody else was secondary.

Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and later Chekov. I am sorry but they weren't more secondary than Kim, Tom, B'Lana and Seven or the doctor.


Janeway, Tuvok and Chakotay being the main characters.

Yes, the point being that no one complains that TOS' secondary characters were just secondaries but the complaints keep coming in for VOY's cast.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Everybody else was secondary.

Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and later Chekov. I am sorry but they weren't more secondary than Kim, Tom, B'Lana and Seven or the doctor.


Janeway, Tuvok and Chakotay being the main characters.

Yes, the point being that no one complains that TOS' secondary characters were just secondaries but the complaints keep coming in for VOY's cast.

To be fair Voyager lasted seven seasons and TOS only three.

 

[Guy Gardener]

TOS was paint by numbers.

Unless there was a Richard Dean Anderson situation, where the lead actor asked to be demoted and then removed entirely... But no one believes that possible of Shatner's Ego.

 

[Lance]

Voyager definitely had a "big three", like TOS.

Which characters those three actually were seems to be a matter of some debate.

I've seen some people swear blind VOY's big three were Kate/Picardo/Ryan, while others have said Kate/McNeil/Picardo, or Kate/McNeil/Ryan, or some other permutation.

Almost nobody says Garrett To The Wang was part of the Big Three.


Say what some might about it, but TOS at least nails it's flag to the mast with a clearly identifiable hierarchy in the cast:

Kirk > Spock > McCoy > [BIG GAP] > Scotty > [EVEN BIGGER GAP] > Everyone Else.

Which one ended up being the janitor, that's the big question.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

TOS was paint by numbers.

Unless there was a Richard Dean Anderson situation, where the lead actor asked to be demoted and then removed entirely... But no one believes that possible of Shatner's Ego.

Stargate lasted ten seasons, that's way more than any of the STs.

 

[Guy Gardener]

In Season 8, Richard Dean asked to have his responsibilities halved. Season 8 by the obtuse is called Samgate because it is so Cartercentric. In season 9 he was a General who stood in the back ground after they brought in those kids from Farscape, which means that his participation in the show was halved even again. In season ten they brought in a new General, so Richard Dean Anderson only had a couple special guest appearances, because he had effectively left the show. I'm not an expert on the behind the scenes of Stargate, but I understand that he was just bored and tired of the role.

Can you imagine a similar bashful exit strategy, making elbow room for everyone else, from William Shatner if Star Trek had continued until the bicentennial?

 

[JD5000]

I can't imagine one now, app. half a century later.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

In Season 8, Richard Dean asked to have his responsibilities halved. Season 8 by the obtuse is called Samgate because it is so Cartercentric. In season 9 he was a General who stood in the back ground after they brought in those kids from Farscape, which means that his participation in the show was halved even again. In season ten they brought in a new General, so Richard Dean Anderson only had a couple special guest appearances, because he had effectively left the show. I'm not an expert on the behind the scenes of Stargate, but I understand that he was just bored and tired of the role.

Can you imagine a similar bashful exit strategy, making elbow room for everyone else, from William Shatner if Star Trek had continued until the bicentennial?

Probably not, he's still in Star trek stuff after all these years.