End of Season 5 weirdness

[SpyOne]

It became obvious to expect less from Voyager, but there's never been a convincing reason supplied to me why they had to try less than other shows to create their own mythos?

I've heard it was the network: the execs wanted a show that got ratings like TNG and thought they knew how to get it: They overruled any conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crews, said no to any multi-episode story arcs, and otherwise meddled the show to death.

I get this all like seventh-hand, like from some website where some guy said he's heard someone say that the producers had hinted at it, but it makes more sense to me than the previous working theory I'd had: Berman & Braga were actively trying to alienate all the established fans, possibly in an effort to kill the franchise. That had replaced my working theory before it, which was that Berman & Braga were complete idiots who wouldn't know a good idea if it hit them in the face.

I encountered a comment in a blog by a former TV writer about a conversation he'd had with a friend who was a producer. He gave the friend the standard writer's complaint: that the producer kept making changes that were killing the show (in this case a sitcom), robbing it of what made it unique or good and making it like everything else; more to the point, making it a poor imitation of what had been popular a few years ago. He was quite surprised when his friend the producer agreed that most of the shows he had produced would have been better if he had done nothing, made no changes, and let the writers make the show they had pitched.
When he asked his friend why, knowing that, he continued to make changes to shows; why he meddled when he knew his meddling actually reduced the product's chance of success, the producer replied, "I'm getting paid here. I can't just do nothing."

Hollywood is a very weird place, and apparently a lot of the people in charge really are idiots.

 

[Anwar]

Berman and Michael Piller both stated that UPN was interfering with the show from day one, and even rushed it into production to begin with. They both originally wanted to wait until DS9 was nearly done to do VOY instead of having two shows on at the same time.

Ira Behr, however, didn't bother doing any research on his own and just decided to blame Berman for all his problems when he was doing DS9 which is what ultimately led to B&B becoming the scapegoats for the entire fandom whenever they had complaints.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But Dude, "they were just following orders"!

That's the excuse Harry probably used for how he helped the Hirogen torture the crew for a month.

Complicit collaboration.

 

[exodus]

why is it always voy that is blamed for inconsistencies? watched enterprise's 'storm front' yesterday, in part 1 they say the german army has taken moscow but the russians are trying to take it back, part 2 claims lenin was assassinated in 1916, the communist revolution never happened, and germany never invaded the soviet union.

May the Prophets guide you, Winn!
Amen!
Not to mention the inconsistancies in TNG.
The biggest one being the radical difference in the appearence of the Trill, for example.

 

[exodus]

She isn't that dumb--except when she is that dumb. I'm thinking of "Inside Man" when the Reg Barkley hologram very nearly destroys the ship by taking into some geodesic fold. I thought she was pretty gullible in that episode--and very much out of character.

Like I said, "aliens" can get us home.
Too her Barclay was someone they had all come to know for nearly 2 years as trustworthy and wore a Starfleet uniform.
Too quote Sisko: " I make it a habit never to question anybody wearing that uniform."
Janeway never questioned Ransom at first either until she caught him in a lie.

If Janeway isn't dumb, and IS suspicious, and DOESN'T trust them, AND thinks they are con artists... Why'd she give them Seven?

Her pet.

..because there would be no story & the viewer also has to be brought to the conclusion that the Think Tank wasn't legit. If Janeway flat out said "No, you're con-artist!!" we'd be posting complaining about how'd she know that and how there is no build up to the conclusion causing folks to once again bring up Voyager being inconsistant where none exists.


Seven is also a citizen, not an officer.
Janeway can't order Seven to say either.

 

[crouteru]

Ira Behr, however, didn't bother doing any research on his own and just decided to blame Berman for all his problems when he was doing DS9 which is what ultimately led to B&B becoming the scapegoats for the entire fandom whenever they had complaints.

Where exactly did you read this? You're twisting the truth - Behr and Berman always got on well with eachother, it's just that Berman didn't have as much involvement in the development of DS9.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Even officer don't have to stay.

Tom was allowed to bog off and hook up with a talaxian convoy.

But that was Janeway being smart.

(It doesn't happen.)

She set up a confidence trick and played Chakotay for a patsy, just to uncover Jonas and rout Seska .

But in this case, she wasn't playing a long game, the girl was completely fooled well into the fourth act.

The thing is Exodus, we haven't seen the thousands of adventures they had between episodes where they met an alien, traded goods honestly and moved on with no toxic aftermath and felt totally smug and good about themselves afterwards.

(I'm just going to take 40 minutes to watch the episode, and I'll decide the point that i think that Janeway realised that she is being flimflammed.)

They restored the geostability of a planet in days which took the scientists of that own world years to fail at... they figured out how those smurfs were trying to outfox them with superior spytech.

Bastards but not insincere about their technology.

She's playing with a space rubix cube rather than thinking about home. She's at home not being at home that maybe the gal doesn't even want to go home any more? Harry is so important that they let him play with his space ribixs cube on the bridge.

Someone's paying 23 plus ships full of bounty hunters to chase her and then Duckman shows up and she doesn't make the connection?

"And how do we know that you are not a hazzari trap?"

(Baiting, not serious.)

she thinks the king is a drone? (Which is the same mistake she makes with Seven.)

Advanced tech superior to the Borg.

It not that they don't have the tech, it's that they are assholes.

:I recommend the replicators, they're very popular this year."

That'll get her back in jail.

20 minutes in, after the first meeting, she says to Chuckles:

"I have some qualms about thier morality, but I beleive they can help us."

4 minutes later, she has a serious conversation with Seven about if she wants to be sold.

They do not sense any duplicity whatsoever.

A half blind moron wearing rose coloured glasses should have, but Kathy didn't.

half an hour in and she still can't see the interconnectedness of their threat: "it looks like we're facing two threats now, the hazari and our would be saviours."

"We'll hold off on the torture"

Hehehehe.

Janeway loves the torture.

And then when the analysed the Malon hologram to find the Duckman undercurrent: "Well it appears our Hazari paradox is more complicated than we thought."

Well. It took her 30 minutes into a 42 minute program to figure out who the big bad was.

They did set a trap, and Seven was only handed over as part of a trap but the audience was completely aware and it played out not nearly as cunning as Counterpoint where every one was faked out.

"sigh"

Stupid, stupid, blunt episode.

 

[Anwar]

Ira Behr, however, didn't bother doing any research on his own and just decided to blame Berman for all his problems when he was doing DS9 which is what ultimately led to B&B becoming the scapegoats for the entire fandom whenever they had complaints.

Where exactly did you read this? You're twisting the truth - Behr and Berman always got on well with eachother, it's just that Berman didn't have as much involvement in the development of DS9.

He and Piller co-created the show together, and Berman didn't want Voyager on at the same time as DS9 because he felt DS9 should get the total audience and not have them split between shows.

However, whenever anyone involved in DS9 is asked anything about Berman all they had to say were nasty things about him. He was their scapegoat, pure and simple. Then the fandom decided to do the same instead of doing research and fingering the REAL culprits for what they didn't like.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Fingering means something else where I come from.

 

[Withers]

there's never been a convincing reason supplied to me why they had to try less than other shows to create their own mythos?

I agree with this. They have every bit as much "drawing board" as TNG had when it started. If anything being in the Delta Quadrant with no ties to the Alpha Quadrant gave them more creative freedom than DS9 had. And, to their credit, they did try.

My question is why they sucked so badly at it. TNG gave us all sorts of new and interesting species while at the same time elaborating on already existing species at length. DS9 gave us a bunch of new interesting species and elaborated on existing species at length. Voyager, on the other hand, gave us a bunch of half assed species and ruined more or less anything it touched in regard to previously established species, characters, et all.

Why? Being forced to be episodic by UPN is no excuse.

-Withers-​

 

[Anwar]

VOY couldn't develop any of their aliens to the extent TNG and DS9 did because they were always moving and never stuck around long enough, and they didn't have the arc option either. Plus one arc of 2-3 episodes isn't enough to develop a new alien race to TNG/DS9 levels.

Also, the only aliens they could use from TNG/DS9 were too powerful to begin with and had to be depowered to be used on the show.

 

[Withers]

That's bunk. TNG was constantly on the move too. Sure, they could return to whatever said alien species they needed for an episode whenever they wanted, but it wasn't as though Voyager ever treated the idea that they were on the path to Earth stop them from having species pop up well after they should have been beyond their space. If they were going to do something wrong (ignore the fact that they were traveling) they should have done it right (by making the species worthy of returning.)

Also, the only aliens they could use from TNG/DS9 were too powerful to begin with and had to be depowered to be used on the show.

Then they shouldn't have used them at all or very sparingly (like DS9 did with Q- they got his obligatory episode out of the way early and he never showed up again.) Why? Because they came up with interesting characters on their own.

And... I'm not getting into it with you over the Borg again. We've been down that path already.

-Withers-​

 

[Anwar]

TNG went wherever the Feds needed them to go, and since their aliens were all in a fixed position the ENT-D could easily go wherever they needed to go to encounter them as much as they wanted. VOY was always on the move and whenever they DID have an alien race appear more then 2-3 times they got criticized for it, no matter what aliens were used. Thus, they never had the time or episodes to develop any of them to TNG/DS9 levels and whatever good developments these aliens got were overshadowed by the critiques.

VOY simply wasn't capable of living up to your standards of "interesting characters". It was inherent in the show.

 

[Withers]

Look, the point isn't how often they showed up. The fact is I don't care if it was one "one and done" as far as their appearances went. The frequency with which certain species showed up is an entirely different argument.

What I'm saying is that they had the freedom to create anything they wanted to create. What they did with that freedom was pure crap more often than it was anything else. Their additions to the Trek Universe, species wise, was abysmal by comparison. There's no reason they couldn't have done a better job introducing interesting species. It was as though they were thinking "The wells run dry... let's just go with... this and hope nobody notices."

-Withers-​

 

[Anwar]

When all you've got as a protagonist is a lamely armed small vessel that can't really fight back in a major manner, your well for villains HAS run dry.

It's like having a show about a crippled man of average intelligence traveling through a land full of brigands and thieves. In that kind of story, there isn't much you can throw at him that will be impressive.

And besides, the Vidiians, Hirogen and 8472 all got great intros (even though they were all hated species) as good as any show.

 

[RyuRoots]

When all you've got as a protagonist is a lamely armed small vessel that can't really fight back in a major manner, your well for villains HAS run dry.

It's like having a show about a crippled man of average intelligence traveling through a land full of brigands and thieves. In that kind of story, there isn't much you can throw at him that will be impressive.

And besides, the Vidiians, Hirogen and 8472 all got great intros (even though they were all hated species) as good as any show.

Wasn't Voyager described as "quick and smart"? Just saying.

 

[SpyOne]

But Dude, "they were just following orders"!

That's the excuse Harry probably used for how he helped the Hirogen torture the crew for a month.

Complicit collaboration.

Oh, definitely.
Same source said that's why Ron Moore quit.

But I always blame the mastermind more than his pawns, even if they were complicit pawns.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Like I said, "aliens" can get us home.
Too her Barclay was someone they had all come to know for nearly 2 years as trustworthy and wore a Starfleet uniform.
Too quote Sisko: " I make it a habit never to question anybody wearing that uniform."
Janeway never questioned Ransom at first either until she caught him in a lie.

If Janeway isn't dumb, and IS suspicious, and DOESN'T trust them, AND thinks they are con artists... Why'd she give them Seven?

Her pet.

..because there would be no story & the viewer also has to be brought to the conclusion that the Think Tank wasn't legit. If Janeway flat out said "No, you're con-artist!!" we'd be posting complaining about how'd she know that and how there is no build up to the conclusion causing folks to once again bring up Voyager being inconsistant where none exists.


Seven is also a citizen, not an officer.
Janeway can't order Seven to say either.

So if the Think Tank ARE con-artists and didn't cure the Phage, that still begs the question, then how the hell did they even know about the Vidiians, considering they were 45,000 light-years away AND were con-artists?

 

[Guy Gardener]

They heard about Seven, they decided they wanted Seven, and then did the legwork by ransacking the ships library computer... Spent some time thinking about how to get seven, months possibly, then they thought vicing Voyagers nuts in a mouse trap which can only be saved by a supreme and noble sacrifice from Seven of Nine would save the lives or every one she cared about and Mr Paris.

Iceberg tip, Titanic, y'know.

 

[Anwar]

When all you've got as a protagonist is a lamely armed small vessel that can't really fight back in a major manner, your well for villains HAS run dry.

It's like having a show about a crippled man of average intelligence traveling through a land full of brigands and thieves. In that kind of story, there isn't much you can throw at him that will be impressive.

And besides, the Vidiians, Hirogen and 8472 all got great intros (even though they were all hated species) as good as any show.

Wasn't Voyager described as "quick and smart"? Just saying.

Not really, seeing how every single alien race they encountered were more advanced than they were. Except the Kazon.