Anyone ever see the 'Hellraiser' films? The villainous Cenobites are a lot like the Borg in appearance and in diminished 'threat' equivalency.
It's interesting you should mention this. I had a roomie back in 1994 who was terrified of the Cenobites, and was terrified of the Borg as well. She had a theory that the Borg were Cenobites. They looked alike, and both were tied to cubes. She saw Borg Cubes as Lament Configurations. It amused me.
As for using the Borg as some background enemy instead of the big bad, that wouldn't bring in the ratings. Most of the Borg episodes were Sweeps Week stories meant to draw in the viewers.
Plus, they couldn't make a new race to serve as VOY's enemy race because EVERY SINGLE TIME they tried that, the fans hated it. Every single time. Funny that they put VOY in the Delta Quadrant to get away from the older races but the fans rejected ever attempt at new species and pretty much told them to use only the older ones.
I can only speak for myself, but my experience as a viewer of Voyager is completely the opposite of what you're presenting here. I loved the idea that Voyager was in a new kind of space and would be encountering new kinds of life.
Fans saw them as "space lepers" and were repulsed by them and wanted them gone.
The Vidians are a great example of an alien species that Voyager got right in it's first season. I loved them right away. I thought they had a disturbing-for-Trek makeup, and were scary while being extremely sympathetic. Their first few appearances were extremely moving and I'd count them among the most interesting races that we've ever seen. I had no desire to see the Vidians go, but it made sense that we wouldn't encounter them more than a handful of times, and I actually feel that they were handled fairly well.
But I was also happy to see 'old aliens' the Borg, as we knew from TNG that the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant - so it just made sense that they would encounter the Borg.
Stop saying that, it's not true.
Sure it is, they were practically predisposed to hating any new Aliens VOY introduced from the very start because they didn't WANT any new aliens. They preferred the older ones. The Dominion from DS9 is an unfair double standard.
I'm a huge DS9 fan and I find this blanket statement that fans were predisposed to hating new aliens to be unrealistic. And to speak for what other fans 'WANT' is just silly. I can't say that I didn't like the older ones, and in many cases prefer them, but that was simply because the aliens that Voyager chose to use were often really lame...or just poorly written.
I'm not sure I understand your reference to The Dominion being an unfair double standard.
The fans hated the Kazon the second they saw what they looked like.
I actually liked all the new aliens presented in 'Caretaker' (it's my favorite Trek pilot), and I actually think if we'd only run into the Kazon in a single followup story that I would remember them fondly. My problems with the Kazon is that Voyager was constantly on the move and kept running into the Kazon for 2 seasons - and that for the most part these aliens seemed like a poor adversary IMO; developmentally wise they weren't interesting enough to sustain the longer storyline. Having Seska join them helped a lot. What didn't help was that in their relatively few appearances they had 1 truly terrible outing ("Initiations"), plus they were featured in a story arc which ended badly ("Investigations"). I did however think this experimental story arc was an
interesting failure, and I had high hopes that future story arcs would improve on the formula. Sadly, there were very few story arcs to follow.
They hated them for being "Predators"-types.
I don't hate the Hirogen, but I do feel they are a rip off of the Predators. The thing that I do like about them is that they appear in a story arc, which I feel is far better than the Kazon arc in Season 2. I didn't hate "The Killing Game" the way a lot of fans seem to, and I loved the followup episodes in Season 7.
People did not set out to hate the races developed on Voyager. Stop blaming the fans for the faults of the show.
I can blame them for being a bunch of whiny babies with double standards for Trek shows, because it's true.
It's not true for me. I have the same expectations for every tv series that I watch (including all the treks): continuity & character development. Voyager just wasn't able to deliver these things to the degree that the other Treks were, which is why it's my least favorite Trek, though there are still many episodes that I do enjoy.
8472 were hugely popular until In the Flesh made them Voyager's best buds.
