How Deep Is Your Love for VOY?

[Sophie74656]

I couldn't tell you how many fanfics I've read...probably hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I have ideas for my own but I'm a terrible writer.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I'm not a great writer, either! Although, I've had girlfriends complimenting my writing style, regarding letters I've written them, at the time. Readers can easily forgive an author not being a wordsmith, if the words are true. If they're speaking from the heart. In fact, such a quality is often appreciated. As long as you spell-check everything, you shouldn't have a problem. Especially if you're brief and to the point. People like a succinct author. When one's paid by the word ... despite whatever they might think, if they even care ... it shows. Within those limits, write for yourself, mainly and you'll do fine. Just fine ...

 

[Degra1]

It's my third favorite behind tng and ds9. I had high hopes for it when it started out but it never really had a consistently in quality. I never cared that it wasn't serialized or addressed the supply issue or had ongoing maquis tensions. No, I was just interested in entertaining standalones but far too often the series never delivered

Plus the characters were awfully bland with the worst ones being tuvok chakotay neelix Kim and Paris--which was probably why so few episodes that them headlining. I love Kate mulgrew to pieces and was disappointed that janeway at times wasn't written better

All that said I have over recent years discovered a newfound appreciation for it after sitting through do much crap as far as tv over the last fifteen years. Even mediocre trek is better than most other tv. There's a comforting quality to voyager and it definitely felt like Trek unlike Enterprise which really didn't

 

[Tracy Trek]

Let me put it this way. I have written and read a good number of fanfiction stories based on the series. I have also written a good number of articles and episode reviews for my blogs.

Do you have links to your stories or blogs? If you're allowed to put the links in a post.

 

[Logopolis]

I'm afraid I fell out of love with Voyager despite the show being my first love of Trek. During my teenage years the show could do no wrong but as I branched out to other Trek's, I realised a lot of it had been done before and better than Voyager. Essentially, I went from being a massive fan (to the extent of fan fics and RP) to acquiescing with RDM's views of the show upon a recent re-watch of the show. Great in memory, but a love affair that is best remembered for its time than one to be rekindled.

 

[Thomas Eugene]

RDM's views of the show

Which were ... ?

 

[Logopolis]

Which were ... ?

Here (take note - the font is HORRIBLE and can be very difficult on the eyes):

http://www.lcarscom.net/rdm1000118.htm

Just some highlights (but the while thing is worth a read).

By the end of the pilot, you have the Maquis in those Starfleet uniforms, and— boom—we’ve begun the grand homogenization. Now they are any other ship. I don’t know what the difference is between Voyager and the Defiant or the Saratoga or the Enterprise or any other ship sitting around the Alpha Quadrant doing its Starfleet gig. That to me is appalling, because if anything, Voyager—coming home, over this journey, with that crew—by the time they got back to Earth, they should be their own subculture. They should be so different from the people who left, that Starfleet won’t even recognize them any more. What are the things that would truly come up on a ship lost like that? Wouldn’t they have to start not only bending Starfleet protocols, but throwing some of them right out the window? If you think about it in somewhat realistic terms: you’re on Voyager; you are on the other side of the galaxy; for all you know, it is really going to take another century to get home, and there is every chance that you are not going to make it, but maybe your children or grandchildren will. Are you really going let Captain Janeway rule the ship for the next century. It seems like, in that kind of situation, the ship would eventually evolve its own sort of society. It would have to function in some way, other than just this military protocol that we repeat over and over again because it’s the only thing we know.

Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy, and they have already run into some alien race recreating Starfleet Academy. They’ve run into Ferengi, the Romulans. It doesn’t feel like they are that far away from home. It just doesn’t feel like they are in that much trouble out there. At its heart, VOYAGER secretly wishes it was NEXT GENERATION. If you really get down to it, VOYAGER on some level just wishes it was NEXT GEN. It really wants to be back in the Alpha Quadrant: ‘Just let us be normal STAR TREK.

On the ship itself:

It wasn’t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn’t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. That didn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all, and it’s a lie to the audience. I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. VOYAGER is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spick-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn’t act like this.

 

[Thomas Eugene]

Here (take note - the font is HORRIBLE and can be very difficult on the eyes):

http://www.lcarscom.net/rdm1000118.htm

Just some highlights (but the while thing is worth a read).



On the ship itself:

Very interesting although this would have resulted in a darker show and I am VERY happy they didn't go in that direction. DS9 is there if you want dark, TNG is there if you want light but boring and Voyager is there if you want light and interesting. At least, this is what these shows feel to me.
With Voyager, they concentrated on family and I think this is in stark contrast to all the other ST shows (all the other shows on tv, I think). A lot of people say VOY is TNG light but TNG never seemed particularly dark to me so Voyager in this respect wasn't any lighter. Whenever I watch PARALLAX, I always have the impression that since the producers wanted this family feeling to be the most distinctive characteristic of this show, they wanted to emphasize this with the events in that episode early on.
I know that a lot of people think VOY did not live up to their expectations but it did to mine. To me, this was never going to be about a conflict-driven situation in a confined space between two fighting groups (it seems to me this was what most people wanted from the show) - but this was going to be about a strongly united family who are there for each other no matter what they odds and the show lived up to this premise / promise from the very first moment on. When the two crews became friends by the end of Episode Three, the producers had made us understand that what would distinguish this show from other Trek shows would be a sense of family done in a way where no Trek had gone before. In this sense it did live up to MY expectations. To me, this was a new element about Star Trek and I thought it was brilliantly done.
If it had been about the fight with the Maquis, it would have felt too similar to DS9, esp. if that dark tone had also been present. To me, DS9 is not a particularly interesting show but the reason for this is not because the stories are not good enough but because it is just too gritty for my taste.
Voyager on the other hand is very enjoyable. To me it blended old and new elements very nicely. From the other Trek shows it inherited the "boldly go ..." thing and elevated it to perfection in my book since they were in an unknown part of the galaxy so they had no other choice but to explore. At the same time, it provided us with this new concept of a Starfleet crew (=Starfleet + integrated Maquis crew) being capable of functioning as a big family and again, elevated this concept to levels that no other show had done before (or since).

JMO, of course.

Thanks for sharing it.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Actually, concerning Ronald D. Moore's thoughts. In the third excerpt he spoke about trading for supplies, about it being one of the things that didn't happen. Actually that was touched on, and not just mentioned. Had they not been trading for supplies in episodes like Hope and Fear, also Live Fast and Prosper? And it was mentioned other times.

I do agree that the thing with the shuttlecrafts and torpedos strain credibility. They could have shown them struggling more. But it does not affect the fact that I like Voyager and it's my favorite Trek and it will continue to be. It had a sense of family that I didn't always see in the others. The characters felt like people I could relate to.

Didn't Ronald D. Moore write for the new Battlestar Galactica? I guess he thinks that's what Voyager should have been.

 

[Logopolis]

Very interesting although this would have resulted in a darker show and I am VERY happy they didn't go in that direction. DS9 is there if you want dark, TNG is there if you want light but boring and Voyager is there if you want light and interesting. At least, this is what these shows feel to me.
With Voyager, they concentrated on family and I think this is in stark contrast to all the other ST shows (all the other shows on tv, I think). A lot of people say VOY is TNG light but TNG never seemed particularly dark to me so Voyager in this respect wasn't any lighter. Whenever I watch PARALLAX, I always have the impression that since the producers wanted this family feeling to be the most distinctive characteristic of this show, they wanted to emphasize this with the events in that episode early on.

I wouldn't want Voyager particularly darker, just grittier in that there are lasting consequences for the crew throughout the show. Kind of like Enterprise Season 3 - we see the crew really work. Their uniforms are dirty, the bruising and scarring on their faces remain for the entire season. Voyager just needed to be more present with a greater attention to detail.

If it had been about the fight with the Maquis, it would have felt too similar to DS9, esp. if that dark tone had also been present. To me, DS9 is not a particularly interesting show but the reason for this is not because the stories are not good enough but because it is just too gritty for my taste.

Agreed. It's a better show for not being a Marquis show.

Actually, concerning Ronald D. Moore's thoughts. In the third excerpt he spoke about trading for supplies, about it being one of the things that didn't happen. Actually that was touched on, and not just mentioned. Had they not been trading for supplies in episodes like Hope and Fear, also Live Fast and Prosper? And it was mentioned other times.

Look at Season 7's The Void. It's excellent and is precisely the type of show I wanted. In that episode, Starfleet's morality is put to the test because the convenience of replicators or endless supplies is stripped away. The result? Characterisation and tension. Much like the origin stories of 007 (Casino Royale) or Batman (Batman Begins), we see the characters stripped down to their bare essentials which is where all that remains is the character. A highlight episode, but also frustrating because it is an insight of what could have been.