By starting a thread for each of those shows and movies in their own forum, like the VOYAGER one here.
There's already one for DS9 that I started a while back.
How to resolve 6 Voyager Inconsistencies in 85 seconds
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By starting a thread for each of those shows and movies in their own forum, like the VOYAGER one here.
There's already one for DS9 that I started a while back.
Add to my last... if you wanted to do such a thing, good on you. But honestly, I don't plan to. TNG was the first show to air, so it had less scope for violating its own canon. DS9 was just better run; it had far fewer issues (though don't get me started on "Inquisition" and "In the Pale Moonlight", not in this topic anyway). And Enterprise had serious flaws, but most of them would have required what I call "broken arm" fixes at least (i.e. a moderate amount of intervention, such as deleting the photon torpedoes). This topic was intended to point out "band-aid" fixes, inconsistencies that could have been fixed with mere seconds of dialogue. In and of themselves, they would not bring VOY up to achieving its full potential. With their deplorable lack of professionalism, disregard for Trek canon, and unwillingness to give the viewers what they wanted, the showrunners made that impossible.
The two shows certainly had their less awesome moments, but I think you're right.
VOY had an incomplete premise, and problematic one at that. That's the core issue.
True. But fixing the show properly would require (a) finding a way to hold to the show's initial premise (the ship has limited resources, the Maquis are on the edge of rebellion, the characters will be changed by what's ahead) from start to end, or (b) reinventing the series mid-run (example: Voyager makes it home and then we see what its crew does next). These would be enormous changes... forget about band-aids or casts, these modifications would be akin to major surgery. I can at least understand why those things didn't happen. They made a decision to turn VOY into TNG Part 2 with different characters. Maybe it made the show worse in the long run, but it put bread on the table in the short run. McDonalds might serve inferior food to a swanky French restaurant, but it makes a reliable profit.
As I said before, this was about things that would have been infuriatingly simple to do. Got a Borg baby onboard and don't want to deal with a cast member that young? Shoot a scene where she's returned to her people. Want to launch more ordnance? Introduce some friendly people who use compatible matter-antimatter weapons tech. Got people writing in demanding to know just why DIDN'T Harry Kim find a little box on his chair? Put a
ing box on his chair! Is it that hard to take some pride in your work?While VOY's premise may have been incomplete, I still think that it was more fleshed out than TNG's ('we have this successor exploration ship to Kirk's enterprise with an all new crew set about 80 years into the further future, let's see where we go from there, we'll make it up as we go along'). So I don't think incompleteness in itself is automatically a problem. As for the problematic part, are you talking about how the crew faction tensions between Starfleet and Maquis couldn't realistically have lasted for 7 years?
It could have lasted for one or two, though. With occasional flare-ups later on.
The entire premise is Anti-Trek. Instead of going out to boldly explore, it's about running away from everything. And yes, the internal conflicts couldn't have lasted that long either.
Look at the Walking Dead, the show fell apart after 3 seasons because it couldn't sustain itself for the same reasons.
Well, in that case I'd expect you to also have some problems with the DS9 premise. Even though there still was some exploration of the Gamma Quadrant, far more often stuff came to the station than them going out to explore.
Also, Voyager still explored while trying to get home - even to an implausible degree. If getting home really was their main goal they should have interfered far less with the local 'wildlife' and not get involved in local conflicts, conferences, races, making detours to observe interesting stellar phenomena, etc, as much as they apparently did.
But I understan how you could see its 'trying to get home' premise as Star Trek in reverse.
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The premise was great. The problem was bad writers and producers.
Voyager actually had a better premise than Deep Space Nine.
But Deep Space Nine had writers and producers who could cope with a premise about a stationary space station by coming up with great stories, character development and changing scenarios, from the Cardassian-Bajoran conflict and the start of exploration of the Gamma Quadrant to the Dominion War and the constant developing of the characters and their relations etc.
The writers and producers of Voyager couldn't handle that. They started to run out of steam already in season 3.
They couldn't even come up with a decent end episode.
"Gilligan's Island in Space" is a good premise for 7 years? Sorry, but after 1-2 seasons you need to reinvent yourself past that.
And by having more to work with, while VOY was deeply restrained.
So just like NuBSG, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, the Walking Dead all fell apart just as fast if not faster?
Not just because of the restraining premise, but probably also because the network executives breathed much more in the VOY writing team's necks (as it was supposed to be the new flagship show) than they did in the necks of the writing team of 'odd cousin' DS9.
Even so, perhaps I should start a speculative 'what if VOY's and DS9's writing teams had been reversed?' discussion thread.
I actually posited that idea a while back... Braga over to DS9 and Moore and Echevarria to VGR. Braga, while having a great imagination and high concepts, did seem a bit more focused on plot than driving characters forward, which was one of DS9's best traits. I don't think he would have fit in as well there.
Moore and Echevarria... they probably might have made a difference with the characters in terms of making it more ensemble, but given UPN's constant interference, it would have been very difficult for both of them. I can actually see Moore leaving after 2 years... 3 at most. Echevarria might have stuck it out a little longer, but definitely would not be there for the full run.
I actually think the way the three of them were divided up to their respective shows after TNG ended was the best case scenario.
^Even though I don't recall that specific post of yours, it's quite possible I subconsciously got the idea from it.
I don't remember if it was a new thread I started or just an idea in a regular post on another thread that was already open. I know it was a while back, though... not sure if it was this year, but almost certain it was no earlier than 2021.
(Yeah, I know I did a terrible job at narrowing down the possibilities. Apologies.)
Every journey has a homeward leg.
Nor should they have. But on Voyager, everyone was besties from Day 1. Even potential conflicts (Tuvok/Chakotay, Torres/Carey, Paris/almost anyone) were buried quickly. The only conflict they didn't bury was Paris and Neelix throwing spaghetti at each other over Kes.
Well then it would just be a soap opera set in space.
Question: "You have a character who's a newly commissioned ensign, fresh out of the academy. What rank should he be by the end if the series?"
DS9 Writer: "I'd probably have him get promoted to LTJG after a couple of years, maybe quietly advance him to full lieutenant around about Season 6."
VOY Writer: "Uh... ensign?"
They both had good premises. DS9 was a stationary location, but at a major hub of exploration, location for commerce, and strategic military base. And VOY was a ship on a long journey.
EXACTLY. DS9 developed its existing characters, and found new ones in unexpected places. VOY had two well-developed characters, a few moderately developed ones, a character who was too schizophrenic to develop visibly, a couple of main cast characters it did nothing to, a couple of potentially interesting recurring characters who it threw over the side, and a whole lotta extras who weren't even allowed to say "Brig" on camera.
They did a great job building up a satisfying future for most of the characters... them deleted that future and replaced it with a whole lotta nothing.
It can be argued that they did, by making the replicators work, the torpedoes infinite, and Voyager able to build better shuttles than an orbital shipyard.
Janeway would have had a couple brief romances, married Chakotay, had a kid, kept the dog Q gave her, transitioned Voyager to an intergenerational community, gotten her crew through a very real year of hell, actually visibly regretted splitting Tuvix, and both her time with Chakotay and the experience she had in "Sacred Ground" would have given her a new appreciation for the unseen world. Instead of bouncing around like a ten-cent bouncy ball in a tile bathroom, she would have followed a far more linear path.
As Gilligan's Island was about being stuck on an island and Voyager was about being stuck on a ship heading home, I would say “Odyssey in Space” would be a closer analogy. Voyager even made the trip in seven years compared to Odysseus‘ ten so they actually sped it up a bit.
If I remember right, seven years of Odysseus's ten-year "odyssey" was spent in the care of Kalypso, who had become enamored with him and offered him immortality if he would stay with her. Voyager, at least, was moving most of the time.Voyager even made the trip in seven years compared to Odysseus‘ ten so they actually sped it up a bit.
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