How would you change the show?

Hmmm . . . I disagree. Considering that both factions were stranded in the Delta Quadrant together, I cannot see how any semblance of conflict between the two could have lasted beyond Seasons One and/or Two. For me, it would be like beating a dead horse - like Nerys' past as a resistance fighter in "Deep Space Nine".

Or perhaps, the showrunners could have allowed Janeway to be a man.

 

And that could have been a much more relevant part of the story. Finding raw materials to build shuttles, trading for antimatter to manufacture photons, repairing battle damage... or maybe even sustaining it. At the end of the series, Voyager still looked fresh out of Utopia Planitia.

The Year of Hell never happened, the Borg were a joke, the Maquis mutiny was a holosimulation, the Equinox was a one-episode wonder, the quantum slipstream drive was never mentioned after it didn't work, and Harry never had any resentment about Tom getting the promotion he deserved. In short, there were ways they could have created new plots and conflicts, the Reset Button simply obliterated them en masse.

Indeed. Remember Kira and Quark; she pretty much always detested him. Not everyone needed to get along, and certainly not all the time.

 

Of course not. But you can build on it and create it to actually sell the idea of family that Voyager tried to sell.

 

Voyager's notion of "family" would have worked better if it had developed more characters. As opposed to the main ten, Naomi, Icheb, and... uhhh... anyone? Maybe Sam Wildman and Vorik, sort of. DS9 had over 25 fully realized characters, after all.

 

Because there's no way they could've survived it without a reset button.

No more than they were after BOBW. All VOY did was show there were other aliens out there the Borg couldn't fight, which was inevitable

Again, after 1 or 2 seasons the tensions between them would have been resolved.

You can't get a series worth of conflict from them either.

Cause...it didn't work.

None of which could have been enough for a proper series plot, unlike the Dominion in DS9 or Cylons in NuBSG or the Peacekeeper/Scarran War in Farscape.

They barely interacted, for one thing.

 

Kira and Quark interacted fairly frequently.

Season 1 and early season 2, Kira detested him. Particularly due to Quark being directly responsible for almost killing Jadzia in "INVASIVE PROCEDURES". In "SANCTUARY", he did her the favor of having the musician play for a month in his bar, though he did request some 'bounce' to his music.

She softened on him a bit between the middle of season 2 to 4, though she got even with him in "MERIDIAN" for his attempts at using her as a hologram.

She was back to pissed with him bevause of "BUSINESS AS USUAL", and they had a LOT of interaction in the Occupation Arc of the station.

She even listened to his warnings about mirror Bareil and convinced Sisko to trade Keevan so Quark can rescue his mom.

 

Sure they could. Just have the damage be less extreme than it was.

The issue wasn't 8472 whomping on the Borg... it was Voyager regularly beating them. You know, ONE ship, after one Borg cube stomped on 39 of them?

Then have the Maquis mutiny in the second season.

No, but you can have the two ships travel together awhile.

It worked, just not perfectly. It shaved nine years off Voyager's journey. Worth another mention, I think. Indeed, I still like it as the way Voyager gets home. The time travel thing? Other episodes did it better.

 

Indeed. In TNG the Borg were shown to be formidable with potential weaknesses. In VOY one ship with supposed limited resources continually beat them, evaded them, recovered from assimilation with no ill effects, broke in to a super duper tactical cube, and caused the Borg Queen to start self-destructing their own ships. All because of Voyager.

I think that showing more experiments, and risk, would actually drive home that the journey home was dangerous and their desire to get home actually more poignant.

 

Let me put it this way, if the season finale had them find a spacedock willing to help them with repairs and doctors to heal things like Tuvok's blindness and the next episode was set 6 months later....it would still be called a gutless reset button.

It very much was. The fans couldn't tolerate the Borg ever losing in combat to anyone. No matter who.

So just like the Enterprise could survive shots from the Borg that destroyed other ships in one hit?

That would have to be the end of it, and most of the Maquis characters involved in the Mutiny getting killed too because they proved they had no place on the ship anymore. Hell, have the Mutiny be part of that two-parter where the Kazon take over the ship and have it be because the Maquis helped them....and the Kazon repay them by killing the majority of the Maquis off. The only ones spared are the ones who refused to Mutiny.

There, plot resolved.

Again, this couldn't be more than a temporary thing before Equinox was destroyed and left in the past.

Beh, just have Kes evolve into a new Caretaker after they finally defeat the Female Caretaker in the finale and she sends them home.

So like how the Dominion got weaker over time and didn't show off the more advanced technologies they started off with?

Or how easily the Borg were defeated in First Contact compared to BOBW?

 

Worse.

 

Trust me, if "Scorpion" had been the one and only time the Borg showed up in VOY and we never saw them again after Kes threw them beyond their space, the audience would've been howling over how the Borg's image was ruined because of the 8472 aliens.

 

I don't think so, because no matter how powerful a foe is, there's always a bigger, more powerful one to smack that one down.

The real defanging of the Borg was when VOYAGER took away the terror of being assimilated... "UNIMATRIX ZERO", when Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres get assimilated to infiltrate a tactical cube. That was the nail in the coffin on the Borg being any kind of credible threat. (This started with "DARK FRONTIER" in season 5, honestly.)

 

Maybe. Maybe not. But the repeated defeating of the Borg by Voyager is worse. At that point the Borg deserve a ruined reputation.

 

Then the audience shouldn't have gotten so mad at the 8472 aliens for existing.

By that logic, the threat of assimilation was neutered after "I, Borg" because all it took to De-Assimilate Hugh was surviving a shuttle crash.

The same way the Daleks keep getting beaten by the Doctor?

 

Hugh wasn't 'de-assimilated' in "I, Borg". He was gaining his sense of self identity. Janeway and the others got assimilated but it was shrugged off completely, whereas before it was a source of massive PTSD for Picard and Seven's entire character journey was getting back the humanity that was stolen from her as a child.

And Hugh's next appearance clearly showed there were issues with his gaining individuality, because he described feeling so lost that he and the other Borg felt the need to be controlled again. Never mind whatever anger he held after the failed experiments Lore did on them.

So no, Hugh's situation did not neuter it. (I'll agree that it gave hope for other assimilated people and that might be construed as neutering. But that wasn't the point of "I, Borg"... being able to look past the face of your enemy and see a victim was the point. "UNIMATRIX ZERO" purposefully made assimilation something to just shrug off because it was a part of the plan. It completely undermined what Picard and Seven went through, not to mention the colony in "UNITY", the trio in "SURVIVAL INSTINCT", Icheb, or the other kids.)

 

And all it would have taken to obliterate them would be to show them an MC Escher print.

 

So with High and Picard, they were pre FC assimilations (as would 7 have been) which was more invasive and "manual"

Maybe with the development of nano probes it became less traumatic as they dull the brain in a way before the full equipment installation occurs?

Or possibly with Janeway, Tuvok, BLT it could be that following his work with 7, Icheb, etc the Doctor has developed a treatment of sorts to help alleviate the trauma?

You are right that, as presented, they are neutered so I'm just trying to head canon it a bit

 

Actually, now that you mention it, how come more don't complain about "Unity" ruining the Borg too? That story had an off-hand mention of a Cube being destroyed and the crew being de-assimilated but no one complained about it.

After everything they'd learned from Borg technology, it's inevitable that some kind of counter-measures to Borg Assimilation would be discovered to neutralize it.

Heck, if it had been TNG that did this then I doubt anyone would complain. They'd say "Oh well they learned a lot from studying Picard when he was assimilated and naturally would develop a countermeasure".

It's less that these were bad ideas, it's more that it wasn't Picard starring in these stories.

 

The colony in "UNITY" were like Hugh... regaining their sense of self identity. The cube was still around, it was just completely powered down. Until they used Chakotay to start up their own collective, and self-destructed the cube.

That group took time to regain themselves, based on dialogue. It clearly wasn't an easy road, from what we saw on that world.

 

I had no problem with 8472, indeed it's kind of cool that the Borg (the unstoppable juggernaut of the TMG era) finally found a species they couldn't assimilate. My issue was with Voyager being able to apparently smack the Borg around at will.