Fans, why did the ratings slide?
- Thread starter Warped9
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Jaespol
Captain
I found it hard to forgive Voyager by ripping me out of the story with some of its stupid continuity mistakes such as the # of crew members, Tuvok's age etc. Instead of going "hmm, interesting episode", I'd be like "Are the writers f**king stupid, do they not watch previous episodes?" which kind of taints the experience...
How interesting. You can't forgive VOYAGER for their continuity mistakes, but apparently you can forgive NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE and the TREK movies for doing the same damn thing.
Great. More hypocricy.
i will admit that DS9 had the least amount of continuity gaffes due to their multi-episode story arcs, but they were still prevalent throughout. since TOS, all the other series were episodic in nature MEANING TPTB and writers weren't as concerned with continuity as the fans were. i like continuity to a point, but i'm not some freakin' trainspotter seeing if every carpet thread is in the same place from episode to episode (yes, folks, that last bit is hyperbole).
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The carpet in All Good Things was the wrong colour during the scenes in the past, it was unforgivable! 
Seriously though, the continuity problems on Voyager were fairly out there, in The Swarm Dr Shmully lost all his memories and his personality, but in the next episode everything was back to normal. They were constantly doing extreme things to the ship or the characters and then pretending they never happened. When DS9 did something extreme to a character (e.g. ret-conning that Bashir was genetically engineered) they would address that fact in later episodes, and they built stories around it. Yes they screwed up, but they tried not to screw up, little consideration to these things seemed to be made on Voyager.
Seriously though, the continuity problems on Voyager were fairly out there, in The Swarm Dr Shmully lost all his memories and his personality, but in the next episode everything was back to normal. They were constantly doing extreme things to the ship or the characters and then pretending they never happened. When DS9 did something extreme to a character (e.g. ret-conning that Bashir was genetically engineered) they would address that fact in later episodes, and they built stories around it. Yes they screwed up, but they tried not to screw up, little consideration to these things seemed to be made on Voyager.
right, but voyager's continuity "issues" were no worse than TNG or TOS which is what was the format it was based upon.The carpet in All Good Things was the wrong colour during the scenes in the past, it was unforgivable!
Seriously though, the continuity problems on Voyager were fairly out there, in The Swarm Dr Shmully lost all his memories and his personality, but in the next episode everything was back to normal. They were constantly doing extreme things to the ship or the characters and then pretending they never happened. When DS9 did something extreme to a character (e.g. ret-conning that Bashir was genetically engineered) they would address that fact in later episodes, and they built stories around it. Yes they screwed up, but they tried not to screw up, little consideration to these things seemed to be made on Voyager.
The reason DS9, VOY, and ENT faced declining viewing figures in syndication and on UPN in North America was largely due to American broadcast television alreadly sliding down into a deep, muddy ditch of mostly its own digging. It is more visibly in DEEP trouble now and a show like Dollhouse still buggering onwards on FOX despite having 3 million viewers is a strong indication on how badly TV has deteriorated. And what has happened to UPN? And I bet CBS too will go belly up once the CSI franchise is passe'.
Jaespol
Captain
Sorry but as I said the Voyager discontinuities were much more numerous and obvious. TNG simply didn't have as many continuity problems as Voyager at all and anyone who says it did is fooling themselves because by the very nature of Voyager its need for continuity is stronger. For example, if Enterprise were to be heavily damaged and fixed the next episode we could assume it had gone to spacedock, Voyager on the other hand - where's the continuity and explanation when the ship is blown to smithereens in "Deadlock" and ok in the next episde?
TOS and even TNG are more forgivable in a way because they were still fresh shows in Star Trek, by Voyager the writers really should have known what they were doing!
I think that there were different reasons why Voyager's ratings never became as good as TNG's.
First of all, TNG was the first series in the new-born Star Trek. It was good, had brilliant stories and excellent characters and the series developed and became better and better during the years. The original series always become the most successful, it's not often that the spin-offs become more popular.
Voyager was no. 3 in a row of good series. When Voyager started, the TNG fans were still mourning the loss of their series. For them, nothing could be compared with TNG. DS9 had managed to get a fanbase which was somewhat smaller than TNG's but very ardent and loyal. There wasn't that much left for Voyager. It became an overkill of Trek series in a very short time and Voyager was the one which suffered from that
Still Voyager did start with excellent characters and an excellent premise. Unfortunately, the writers weren't capable of using the full potential of the series, maybe because they had given their best during the TNG years and lost much of the inspiration.
But the worst problem was that the Voyager writers started to "play safe" when they saw that Voyager wasn't going to get the ratings TNG had. Instead of trying to develope Voyager after it's premise and really use the excellent characters and the great premise they had, they panicked and came up with, I must say it cowardly and short-sighted solutions.
Voyager would have been the series for story arcs due to the fact that they were traveling through uncharted space. Instead Voyager became the series with the most screw-ups of continuity.
The panic over the ratings also made those in charge make some serious mistakes:
"Let's make the series like TNG, the viewers love TNG"
"Let's bring in a sexy babe, the viewers love sexy babes"
"Let's bring in The Borg, the viewers love The Borg"
"Let's bring in some TNG characters, the viewers love TNG"
All that instead of giving Voyager its own identity.
And in season 6, when all stunts had failed and those in charge were busy planning for their new project "Enterprise", it was most like:
"Let's end this and get the hell out of here."
I think that it would have been best if Voyager had had an own and entirely new set of writers who could have used the potential the series had and also had been cool about the ratings instead of Berman, Braga and the others who looked too much at ratings and TNG.
Voyager would never have gooten as high ratings as TNG, that was impossible due to facts mentioned above but with better and more inspired writing and by using the characters and the premise for the show, the ratings could have been much higher.
First of all, TNG was the first series in the new-born Star Trek. It was good, had brilliant stories and excellent characters and the series developed and became better and better during the years. The original series always become the most successful, it's not often that the spin-offs become more popular.
Voyager was no. 3 in a row of good series. When Voyager started, the TNG fans were still mourning the loss of their series. For them, nothing could be compared with TNG. DS9 had managed to get a fanbase which was somewhat smaller than TNG's but very ardent and loyal. There wasn't that much left for Voyager. It became an overkill of Trek series in a very short time and Voyager was the one which suffered from that
Still Voyager did start with excellent characters and an excellent premise. Unfortunately, the writers weren't capable of using the full potential of the series, maybe because they had given their best during the TNG years and lost much of the inspiration.
But the worst problem was that the Voyager writers started to "play safe" when they saw that Voyager wasn't going to get the ratings TNG had. Instead of trying to develope Voyager after it's premise and really use the excellent characters and the great premise they had, they panicked and came up with, I must say it cowardly and short-sighted solutions.
Voyager would have been the series for story arcs due to the fact that they were traveling through uncharted space. Instead Voyager became the series with the most screw-ups of continuity.
The panic over the ratings also made those in charge make some serious mistakes:
"Let's make the series like TNG, the viewers love TNG"
"Let's bring in a sexy babe, the viewers love sexy babes"
"Let's bring in The Borg, the viewers love The Borg"
"Let's bring in some TNG characters, the viewers love TNG"
All that instead of giving Voyager its own identity.
And in season 6, when all stunts had failed and those in charge were busy planning for their new project "Enterprise", it was most like:
"Let's end this and get the hell out of here."
I think that it would have been best if Voyager had had an own and entirely new set of writers who could have used the potential the series had and also had been cool about the ratings instead of Berman, Braga and the others who looked too much at ratings and TNG.
Voyager would never have gooten as high ratings as TNG, that was impossible due to facts mentioned above but with better and more inspired writing and by using the characters and the premise for the show, the ratings could have been much higher.
VOY was creatively hamstrung from almost the start, with a underwhelming line of mediocre to shit-tastically awful episodes dominating much of S1, S2, & S3.
Were you interested in intelligent discussion or were you just looking for an opportunity to use the word "shit-tastically"? Just wondering if it was your intent to troll or not...
I did not intend to offend anybody and I'll elaborate in a less coarse, more sensitive manner.
Voyager had many great episodes, it was never a complete write off overall as a show and I defend many of its best episodes, but I do not think much of "Parallax", "The Cloud", "Ex Post Facto", "Non Sequitur", "Persistance of Vision", "Twisted", "Elogium", "Tattoo", "Threshold", and "Darkling". With these creatively stale and unentertaining episodes cropping up fairly often amongst the fair ("Jetrel") and good ("The Thaw") episodes it was no wonder many long term TNG fans and casual viewers were put off from tuning in on Voyager for more than a few weeks in their millions.
Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Michael Pillar were/are not on principle terrible writers, but they had their quality crash in Voyager because their best work was mostly back on TNG, and that led to creative inbreeding and diluting.
I hate to rain on your parade, but there was talk of Voyager being cancelled in its second year - the producers introduced the other Caretaker alien just in case.
That's much better.
I will agree with you that there are some episodes that are absolute clunkers (you don't want to get me started on "Endgame"). However, every Trek series had it clunkers. What makes this show for me are the characters. Even if you sit through a clunker you still want to know what happens next to them.
I'm a TNG fan and there were a few things going against Voyager.
Network control, I think one of the benefits TNG and DS9 had was that no network had power over the producers to add or subtract certain things.
For example 7of 9 an addition the network wanted
Also it was on UPN in many parts of the country didn't have a UPN station
Also they had to get ratings from a fractured fan base
TNG- had Generations and reruns, DS9 was on it third season and new sci-fi related shows were trying to get the sci-fi audience as well.
And the show became a bit predictable
There should have been a break but paramount said no
Network control, I think one of the benefits TNG and DS9 had was that no network had power over the producers to add or subtract certain things.
For example 7of 9 an addition the network wanted
Also it was on UPN in many parts of the country didn't have a UPN station
Also they had to get ratings from a fractured fan base
TNG- had Generations and reruns, DS9 was on it third season and new sci-fi related shows were trying to get the sci-fi audience as well.
And the show became a bit predictable
There should have been a break but paramount said no
There has been some speculation about that in recent years but I never saw or heard anything about a cancellation during the run of the series.
I must also state that I doubt that they would have cancelled the series in the middle of season 2 (when the female Caretaker showed up). "Enterprise" had horrible ratings and was gererally disliked by most fans but did at least last for 4 seasons. If Voyager should have been cancelled, I guess it would have been in season 5 or 6 considering the fact that the ratings continued to go down despite all stunts and were lower than they were in the first three seasons.
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Well it's rather a moot point seeing the show ended up running for seven years, but according to Stephen Edward Poe's behind the scenes book "Vision of the Future", Voyager's future during its second year was very much up in the air, and as a result, the writers did Cold Fire so they had the ground ready if the show was cancelled.
Perhaps most tellingly, the people considering canning the show were apparently the producers.
^^
Interesting! I didn't know about that.
Still, I can't understand the lack of patience here. They should have realized that Voyager was bound to remain in the shadows of TNG and in some aspects of DS9 too. However, they did seem to realize that dumping a series after just two seasons would have been a bit too hasty.
But I'm still surprised that Voyager never really took off.
By the way, how are the ratings for DS9? That series didn't have TNG's high ratings either despite having a very loyal fanbase.
Interesting! I didn't know about that.
Still, I can't understand the lack of patience here. They should have realized that Voyager was bound to remain in the shadows of TNG and in some aspects of DS9 too. However, they did seem to realize that dumping a series after just two seasons would have been a bit too hasty.
But I'm still surprised that Voyager never really took off.
By the way, how are the ratings for DS9? That series didn't have TNG's high ratings either despite having a very loyal fanbase.
My answer to this is going to be similar to my answer for this question regarding ENT: the show promised something slightly different, yet actually delivered more of the same type of stuff dressed up slightly, as the writers seemed to be getting worse at it, delivering good and bad episodes with an increasing disparity.
I never realised that, but it certainly goes some way to explaining why season three drops the Kazon and everything else like a stone, and the show makes a definite shift towards being a TNG clone. The first two seasons weren't great, but I think they made more attempts to keep a continuity, especially over the Kazon/Seska arc, and there are references to supply shortages and replicator rations, which disappeared after the third season. Once that didn't really work, they had another go at relaunching the show in season four, with Seven of Nine.
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