How would you change the show?

[fireproof78]

NuBSG, Farscape and DS9 say otherwise.

Some shows keep to their premise and adjust in series.. Voyager did not. Voyager set up a serialized premise and then used reset buttons expecting the audience to forgot and just go along to get along.

Sorry, Voyager set up a premise then ignored it. That's not any other shows or the people who watched it's fault.

then I doubt anyone would complain when we saw the Borg losing to someone else.

I did and friends of mine too. So, no. Hearsay, of course.

 

[Oddish]

Oooo-kay...

The audience saw NONE of that, all they cared about was the Backup EMH plot point and they let it ruin the whole episode for them.

Honestly, I didn't. I figure if the Voyager crew could build a Warp 7 shuttle from scratch, they could probably figure out a way to back up their EMH. After all, Zimmerman made multiple copies, so it must have been possible.

Once the writers realized the audience hated them, that killed their interest in continuing to use them.

Did that hate come after Scorpion, or after In the Flesh? Because the latter definitely made them less scary.

Let he who is without sin" from DS9 got a better reception than "Living Witness" did. I think that says it all.

Well, Voyager got a better reception than DS9 did, at time of release. It took some time for the misunderstood middle child to get some love.

told you, the audience couldn't let go of the "EMH Backup" thing and let it ruin the entire story for them. "Let he who is without sin" didn't have that, so there was no "plot hole" for them to get mad over.

Problem is, VOY's continuity people were sloppy, indifferent, or both. Ten seconds of technobabble would have resolved all issues.

Sounds like my "How to resolve..." topic needs another entry.

VOYAGER definitely had their share of bad ones... "FAVORITE SON", "SPIRIT FOLK", "FURY", "UNIMATRIX ZERO", and "FALSE PROFITS"

"Threshold"...

VOYAGER gets flak for many things, and some of those things are very rightly deserved.

Indeed, yes. Some of it from me. But, if other shows do the same thing, I give them the same treatment.

And Species 8472 only appeared twice... the "SCORPION" two-parter and "IN THE FLESH". As far as I know, the only real complaint about them was they were underused or not used to potential, which honestly they weren't.

Very true.

Go to YouTube, folks will watch clips from ENT that they used to be nothing but negative comments and now they're all "Wow, I miss real Trek like this", but you won't see that happen to any Voyager Clips. They're as full of spite as ever.

Maybe... but I've seen a lot of love for Voyager, too. Many people regard Janeway as their favorite captain.

The 5 survivors of Equinox... never seen or heard again.

That's a symptom of a greater issue with VOY... the fact that the crew had the 10 mains, a couple of recurring kids, two or three junior officers who showed up now and then... and 130 nonentities.

ASHES TO ASHES"... Kim says he basically got himself assigned quarters near Ballard while at the Academy, and was apparently in love with her. How easily we forget about Libby, huh? Smells like reset.

Harry was at the Academy for four years. More than long enough to crush on Ballard for a semester or two, then meet Libby and move on to her. It's actually not uncommon for an 18-21 year old kid to have multiple girlfriends in college.

 

[fireproof78]

That's a symptom of a greater issue with VOY... the fact that the crew had the 10 mains, a couple of recurring kids, two or three junior officers who showed up now and then... and 130 nonentities.

I recently read a post regarding TOS and the tendency towards very static characterization in that show. The idea was of course that you could jump in to the adventure each week without having to catch up on the previous week. So, any character changes would be kept at a minimum. Oddly, this became a Star Trek formula, starting with TOS, progressing to TNG, and rubbing off on VOY as well. DS9 tried to escape this but didn't always do so successfully, and took some time to be accepted as such, of breaking away.

Voyager had some positives but continuity wasn't one of them. It fell back on TNG style storytelling tropes when TV was moving towards more serialized style storytelling, where characters could progress in more obvious ways.

Again, I'll reiterate, when Voyager was on it did very well. But, with it's premise it ignored it unless convenient, and hoped others would. But, as often happens in the Star Trek world inconsistencies are still noticed.

 

[Sci]

I think there are two fundamental problems with Star Trek: Voyager:

1. The premise of the show is in conflict with the show the writers actually wanted to make day-to-day, and the writers never tried to resolve this conflict.
2. The majority of the characters have a striking lack of specificity to their personalities and histories, causing them to be thinly-sketched and ill-defined.

For number one: The premise of the show demands serialization and interpersonal conflict. This is a show about 150 people stuffed into a tin can, about 50 of whom were in open violent rebellion against the other 100 before they were trapped. But they're already undermining their own premise at the end of "Caretaker, Part II" by having the Maquis put on Starfleet uniforms and agree to operate as a Starfleet crew. If you did a Star Wars equivalent with 100 Galactic Imperial Navy officers and 50 officers of the Rebel Alliance, the Rebels would not realistically agree to wear Imperial uniforms and operate as an Imperial crew, even if they agreed to work together to get home. People who are committed secessionists, to the point of being willing to take up arms, are not realistically going to be willing to become officers of the power they're rebelling against.

For that matter, it's unrealistic that the Maquis characters would just agree to Starfleet's hierarchical command structure. They may be outnumbered by the Starfleeters, but they hold a veto in that the ship cannot function without that extra 50 people. Realistically, Chakotay should have said, "Listen. We're willing to become one crew, to work together to get home. But the trade-off is, this isn't going to be a purely Starfleet ship. The condition of us joining your ship is that Voyager will be a democracy. We'll have a democratically elected ship's legislature. We recognize that you're gonna be captain, but I'm going to be executive officer, and we will both answer to the ship's legislature -- and if the legislature wants to replace one of us, they have that authority. When there's an emergency, the captain is in charge. But when there isn't an emergency, the legislature has to be able to replace the captain. This ship is going to be our community, and we need some kind of democracy here."

There are other examples of how the premise is in conflict with the show the writers wanted to write. They made a big to-do of setting up a situation where Voyager would lack resources... but then they came up with a technobabble reason why the holodeck always worked even if the replicators didn't. We're told Voyager only has X number of torpedoes early in the show... and then this is completely ignored and we're left to assume they just figured out how to start replicating whatever they needed. They even build two entirely new runabout-sized support craft in the Delta Flyer and Delta Flyer II! How can I take the idea that these people are cut off from their civilization seriously if they never lack for resources?

Which, if the writers didn't want to do the show that the premise obliged, well, okay. Retool the show then. It became clear that the fundamental premise of Star Trek: Discovery was incompatible with the creative vision that the writers developed by the end of season two.... so they re-tooled the entire show! They took a big dramatic risk by changing the setting to the 32nd Century, but it worked! If the VOY writers didn't want to write the show their premise obliged them, they should have just sent Voyager home already.

For point number two... I'm thinking of how incredibly vague the backstories of the various characters really are. Why did B'Elanna become a Maquis -- what specific political developments drove her to decide to take up arms? What specific event made Chakotay decide to become a Maquis? What does Neelix really want out of life other than to be a generally amiable character? What needs was Tom trying to meet when he became such a troubled young man? What kind of relationship does Harry have with his parents beyond "loving and proud?" Who are these people at their cores? A stronger sense of specificity for their characters would have improved the show greatly.

 

[Farscape One]

They were, they were just reset buttons with padding between them.



Something like that should've made it impossible for her to get with the surviving Crichton. But she never experiences difficulties with him. It's a reset button, it had no lasting impact on their relationship. It just took time for the reset button to be pushed.



Again, it is. It's just a long one that took time to be fully pushed.



Which doesn't change that he always ended up back where he started with his position with the Peacekeepers.



The only difference was that VOY's took less time to be pushed fully.



And what's stopping them from reassessing things so that they can make more torpedoes?



So build more, they have replicators and the power to do so.



No, just an inconsistency.



DS9 did the same thing with "To the Death" by having the Station be repaired super fast after the Pylon was blown off.



They're spread out.



Not a reset, they never say "We never encountered another Fed ship out here." they just don't want to use those characters.



If they couldn't get Lien back, then that's the reason



Young people do stuff like that.



So have I. Apparently reset buttons are fine if you put a lot a padding in there too.



So the audience prefers to let insignificant things ruin good stories for them rather than just appreciate a good story. This proves that Voyager just can't win.



A hypothetical with a lot backing its validity.

You clearly don't have an understanding of what a reset button is.

A reset button is used that makes the previous episodes essentially forgotten or useless... and it's usually done with the next episode, maybe 2 or 3 more.

With all the FARSCAPE examples listed, not only was there entire seasons between the scenarios but there is actual remembrance of events in between them.

Take D'Argo and Chiana. In season 3, if you actually watched and paid attention, D'Argo was very much arms length with Chiana. Except for Zhaan's death, which hit everyone hard, but even he acknowledged that despite what happened between them, that scenario called for him to not leave her alone in pain, because he was also in pain with Zhaan's loss. And slowly, in season 4, he takes down his emotional walls, and they get back together at the very end of the season. That's not a reset... that is a CHARACTER JOURNEY. You know, the one thing we love watching because ACTUAL GROWTH HAPPENS.

In real life, things like that situation have happened, so it's not unrealistic. What would have been a reset would be if they end up back together after 2 or 3 episodes, but they didn't go that route because the writers actually treated the audience like intelligent people and also cared about the characters.


And I am finished talking with you about VOYAGER... you clearly don't understand the reset button or how often it was used.

Also done with you on the FARSCAPE side of this with 'reset buttons', because again, you have a clear lack of understanding of what the term means.

 

[Oddish]

A lot of VOY's issues can be classified as decisions made with the intent of keeping the show running. For instance, the audience seems to want a TNG clone rather than "Gillian's Island" in space. So, they retool the show in that direction. It makes VOY a worse show from our perspective, but it keeps the show running in the here and now of the 1990's. Same thing with not featuring gay representation (something Kate Mulgrew advocated)... the powers that be probably gauged the fan reaction to "Rejoined" and made a decision based on that. Right or wrong, it was understandable. Entertainment might be a bully pulpit for discussing controversial issues, but you do have to keep one eye on the ratings.

It's similar to my willingness to tolerate Riker's irrational unwillingness to take his own command. It's stupid and goes against his brilliant character arc in "Best of Both Worlds", but Jonathan Frakes was popular. So, he stayed, simple as that.

 

[Anwar]

Some shows keep to their premise and adjust in series.. Voyager did not. Voyager set up a serialized premise and then used reset buttons expecting the audience to forgot and just go along to get along.

Sorry, Voyager set up a premise then ignored it. That's not any other shows or the people who watched it's fault

Every other show that VOY gets compared to had their own usage of the reset button.

I did and friends of mine too. So, no. Hearsay, of course.

So then the fault lay with TNG with creating an unsustainable premise. If they'd introduced them more like DS9 did with the Dominion, showing they were powerful but could still be killed, things would've worked out better.

Honestly, I didn't. I figure if the Voyager crew could build a Warp 7 shuttle from scratch, they could probably figure out a way to back up their EMH. After all, Zimmerman made multiple copies, so it must have been possible

Yeah well, now folks are willing to say "Okay, minor plot annoyance. I won't let it ruin the story."

Not so back when VOY was on the air.

Did that hate come after Scorpion, or after In the Flesh? Because the latter definitely made them less scary.

It started as soon as the opening scene of Scorpion aired, the sight of anyone being able to blast a Cube apart enraged the audience.

Problem is, VOY's continuity people were sloppy, indifferent, or both. Ten seconds of technobabble would have resolved all issues

I doubt any explanation would have satisfied the audience.

Very true

Kind of hard to use them to potential when the entire plot of the Borg/8472 conflict was derided from start to finish.

[quote[That's a symptom of a greater issue with VOY... the fact that the crew had the 10 mains, a couple of recurring kids, two or three junior officers who showed up now and then... and 130 nonentities.[/quote]

Beh, that's every Trek.

I think there are two fundamental problems with Star Trek: Voyager:

Probably more, Voyager's problem was that it was an incomplete show to begin with. "Lost Ship" stories aren't good for more than 2 seasons worth of stories in the first place, it's not sustainable.

For number one: The premise of the show demands serialization and interpersonal conflict. This is a show about 150 people stuffed into a tin can, about 50 of whom were in open violent rebellion against the other 100 before they were trapped. But they're already undermining their own premise at the end of "Caretaker, Part II" by having the Maquis put on Starfleet uniforms and agree to operate as a Starfleet crew.

This is one of the problems, the Maquis. And it's not the lack of conflict, it's that the Maquis aren't a good choice for it. Their big beef with the Feds was a political dispute that was no longer present in the Delta Quadrant, meaning real conflict over that couldn't last.

Now, if the other crew had been Romulans then the conflict would have made more sense and been more long lasting. REAL Ancient enemies having to work together.

Though preferably, Voyager shouldn't have been a Starfleet ship to start with. It should've been an alien ship they find on the Array and the crew should've been a small group of Fleeters and the rest being random Delta Quadrant aliens trapped on the Array when the Fleeters free them.

If the VOY writers didn't want to write the show their premise obliged them, they should have just sent Voyager home already.

They were thinking of that, it's why the Female Caretaker was brought in so early and wasted. Instead of being the main villain of the show, she showed up once and that was it. It's because the writers had no faith in the Lost Ship premise.

Now, they were partly right because "Lost Ship" isn't sustainable. But they still wasted the Female Caretaker.

You clearly don't have an understanding of what a reset button is.

A reset button is used that makes the previous episodes essentially forgotten or useless... and it's usually done with the next episode, maybe 2 or 3 more.

I'll use another example: NuBSG. After the "New Caprica" arc, they just have Apollo work out and lose all the weight he put on in like 1 episode.

Anytime Adama loses his position as Commander of the Fleet he ALWAYS gets it back, Roslin ALWAYS ends up back as President no matter what.

Take D'Argo and Chiana. In season 3, if you actually watched and paid attention, D'Argo was very much arms length with Chiana. Except for Zhaan's death, which hit everyone hard, but even he acknowledged that despite what happened between them, that scenario called for him to not leave her alone in pain, because he was also in pain with Zhaan's loss. And slowly, in season 4, he takes down his emotional walls, and they get back together at the very end of the season. That's not a reset... that is a CHARACTER JOURNEY. You know, the one thing we love watching because ACTUAL GROWTH HAPPENS.

Does he ever mention that Chiana betrayed him after that? Did either really change as a person during the breakup? No, they didn't. Whatever changes they went through had nothing to do with their separation but other character stuff with other characters.

I'll use another example, in "Crackers Don't Matter", Rygel is mad at D'Argo for trying to kill him and tells him he'll need time to deal with that. By the next episode, they're fine.

Or that episode where Crichton and Aeryn were trapped on that planet and grew old together. That got reset at the end and everyone forgot except Stark and Zhaan and neither of them mentioned it to anyone.

A lot of VOY's issues can be classified as decisions made with the intent of keeping the show running.

Yes, VOY as a premise was something better suited to coming out in 2000 or after. In 1995 on a Conservative Network that wanted a TNG clone, it wasn't a good idea.

Of course, it needed more than a "Lost Ship" plot too. That's only good for 2 seasons.

 

[Oddish]

I recently read a post regarding TOS and the tendency towards very static characterization in that show. The idea was of course that you could jump in to the adventure each week without having to catch up on the previous week

Very true. Even characters who had "DEVELOP ME" spray painted on them in fluorescent orange letters were just kept at a certain point. Harry was a competent performer from the start, but never grew into a seasoned, wise LIEUTENANT who could have blown Quark's hustle off in three seconds. And B'Elanna, instead of slowly gaining emotional control and the captain's confidence, progressed a whole lot in "Parallax" and then never really went any further.

Every other show that VOY gets compared to had their own usage of the reset button.

True. I remember being extremely pissed off at the convenient death of Lee Nollis, because they couldn't even show Bajor's political situation stabilizing. Classic Big Red Reset Button.

So then the fault lay with TNG with creating an unsustainable premise. If they'd introduced them more like DS9 did with the Dominion, showing they were powerful but could still be killed, things would've worked out

Theoretically, Enterprise's deflector dish blast could have killed them; the Borg just sidestepped this by assimilating Picard. And of course, the Borg WERE killed at the end of BoBW.

Yeah well, now folks are willing to say "Okay, minor plot annoyance. I won't let it ruin the story."

Not so back when VOY was on the air.

Other Treks took a beating when they were on the air as well. TOS, TNG, and (especially) DS9 included.

It started as soon as the opening scene of Scorpion aired, the sight of anyone being able to blast a Cube apart enraged the audience.

I believe you. But it was well explained: 8472's weapons were biological instead of technological, and could not be adapted to. A perfect Achilles heel for a technological terror like the Borg.

I doubt any explanation would have satisfied the audience.

I am only one, but I have a topic full of perfectly satisfactory technobabble solutions to VOY issues that would have taken minutes to pop out. Point is, they didn't even try. They just randomly changed things and expected us to just nod and smile.

Beh, that's every Trek.

Tell that to Weyoun, Nog, Rom, Dukat, Damar, Winn, Bareil, Keiko, Kassidy, Martok, Ross, Garak, the female Changeling, and all the other wonderfully developed DS9 characters.

With a psycho, a Cardassian agent, several Maquis who hadn't really adapted, an immature Vulcan, a mom, a few ex-Borg kids, Barclay on Earth, and others in the arsenal, VOY could have given us the same.

Probably more, Voyager's problem was that it was an incomplete show to begin with. "Lost Ship" stories aren't good for more than 2 seasons worth of stories in the first place, it's not sustainable.

Indeed, but Voyager could have still had TNG type storylines without changing its overall premise. Fire fewer photon torpedoes (or trade for more). Always be repairing shuttles that crashed. Instead of building the Delta Flyer from scratch, have its origin be like Alice: Tom finds it at a junkyard and restores it like an old Dodge Charger. And maybe make the occasional remark about conserving energy.

This is one of the problems, the Maquis. And it's not the lack of conflict, it's that the Maquis aren't a good choice for it. Their big beef with the Feds was a political dispute that was no longer present in the Delta Quadrant...

Indeed, that explains why they were willing to work together. It doesn't explain why the Maquis quickly became indistinguishable from the Starfleet crew: military-looking men, women with hair in perfect buns, no men with beards or ponytails or women with green hair and tattoos. They could be Voyager crew but still be renegades.

 

[fireproof78]

Every other show that VOY gets compared to had their own usage of the reset button.

Sometimes but not in the same way or as often.

So then the fault lay with TNG with creating an unsustainable premise. If they'd introduced them more like DS9 did with the Dominion, showing they were powerful but could still be killed, things would've worked out better.

I mean, it's the partial fault of TNG but the Voyager writers were under no obligation to keep to it.

Yes, VOY as a premise was something better suited to coming out in 2000 or after. In 1995 on a Conservative Network that wanted a TNG clone, it wasn't a good idea.

No, it wasn't. But, that's on the Voyager writers, not on any of the audience members, not on people for daring to not like the show, not on unrealistic expectations. The plot that Voyager chose to use was not sustainable without planning and plotting that was not done.

 

[Sci]

A lot of VOY's issues can be classified as decisions made with the intent of keeping the show running. For instance, the audience seems to want a TNG clone rather than "Gillian's Island" in space.

I mean, that attitude is part of the problem. Star Trek: Voyager should not have been seem as "Gilligan's Island in space." It should have been seen as "The Odyssey in space." But the writers didn't believe in their own premise; they saw it more as the former than the latter.

That's a symptom of a greater issue with VOY... the fact that the crew had the 10 mains, a couple of recurring kids, two or three junior officers who showed up now and then... and 130 nonentities.

Beh, that's every Trek.

VOY should not have been like every other Trek. They should have done that differently. It is completely unbelievable that 150 people who believe they are trapped in a tin can for the next seven decades of their lives are gonna be so insular with one-another.

Probably more, Voyager's problem was that it was an incomplete show to begin with. "Lost Ship" stories aren't good for more than 2 seasons worth of stories in the first place, it's not sustainable.

Sure they are! There's nothing inherent to the premise that makes it unsustainable. It's about how you execute the premise.

This is one of the problems, the Maquis. And it's not the lack of conflict, it's that the Maquis aren't a good choice for it. Their big beef with the Feds was a political dispute that was no longer present in the Delta Quadrant, meaning real conflict over that couldn't last.

Except it really could, because the fundamental issue the Maquis had with the Federation was not merely a territorial dispute unique to the DMZ along the Cardassian/UFP border. The Maquis' fundamental beef with the Federation was their objection to Federation nationalism, Federation expansionism, and Federation universalism. All of these things could have been mined for conflict! Again, the most obvious example of that would be Chakotay and the Maquis saying, "We don't believe in your chain of command's legitimacy, and you need us to keep your ship running. Voyager will run with a democratically-elected legislature with the power to veto or replace the commanding officer, or it won't run at all."

Now, if the other crew had been Romulans then the conflict would have made more sense and been more long lasting. REAL Ancient enemies having to work together.

That, too, would have been fascinating!

Though preferably, Voyager shouldn't have been a Starfleet ship to start with. It should've been an alien ship they find on the Array and the crew should've been a small group of Fleeters and the rest being random Delta Quadrant aliens trapped on the Array when the Fleeters free them.

So would this!

They were thinking of that, it's why the Female Caretaker was brought in so early and wasted. Instead of being the main villain of the show, she showed up once and that was it. It's because the writers had no faith in the Lost Ship premise.

Now, they were partly right because "Lost Ship" isn't sustainable. But they still wasted the Female Caretaker.

Like I said, I don't agree that "Lost ship" is an unsustainable premise. But yeah, writers who don't have faith in the premise but aren't also willing to fundamentally re-tool the show into one they do have faith in are doing their show no favors.

 

[Oddish]

VOY should not have been like every other Trek. They should have done that differently. It is completely unbelievable that 150 people who believe they are trapped in a tin can for the next seven decades of their lives are gonna be so insular with one-another.

This. Remember the scene in "Scientific Method". One of the bridge crew is killed by the experiments, which causes Janeway to nearly lose it. When the dust settles, Voyager is free, one of the scientists' ships is gone, and Janeway shows no sign of remorse despite having effectively killed 25-30 people.

In the context of the show as it should have been, where Janeway had lived on the same ship as this young woman for years, gotten to know her... this would make perfect sense. A cub was attacked, and mama bear goes on a killing rampage. But it's a lot harder for us to emotionally identify with the loss of a nameless crew member.

 

[Farscape One]

What makes it worse is that it was a nameless crewman. There have been many names used where we don't know what they look like, so at least throw the audience a bone and give her a name used before that was never cast or seen.

Still doesn't excuse what happened, but at least it's an improvement.

 

[Anwar]

Theoretically, Enterprise's deflector dish blast could have killed them; the Borg just sidestepped this by assimilating Picard. And of course, the Borg WERE killed at the end of BoBW.

They were killed by their own ship undergoing a malfunction. It should've been wholly possible to destroy them in normal combat.

1 Borg Ship shouldn't be able to destroy 40 Starfleet ships, that's too OP.

I believe you. But it was well explained: 8472's weapons were biological instead of technological, and could not be adapted to. A perfect Achilles heel for a technological terror like the Borg.

The explanation given wasn't good enough for the audience. They hated that anything could harm the Borg, let alone kill them.

I am only one, but I have a topic full of perfectly satisfactory technobabble solutions to VOY issues that would have taken minutes to pop out. Point is, they didn't even try.

What's the point of trying when you know it won't go over well regardless?

Tell that to Weyoun, Nog, Rom, Dukat, Damar, Winn, Bareil, Keiko, Kassidy, Martok, Ross, Garak, the female Changeling, and all the other wonderfully developed DS9 characters.

They needed the Big Galactic War storyline to be developed, as well as some of them being holdovers from TNG. VOY's premise meant they couldn't do that kind of story.

Indeed, but Voyager could have still had TNG type storylines without changing its overall premise. Fire fewer photon torpedoes (or trade for more). Always be repairing shuttles that crashed. Instead of building the Delta Flyer from scratch, have its origin be like Alice: Tom finds it at a junkyard and restores it like an old Dodge Charger. And maybe make the occasional remark about conserving energy.

The easier solution would be to have never stated how many torpedoes they had to begin with and never say how many crew they had.

Indeed, that explains why they were willing to work together. It doesn't explain why the Maquis quickly became indistinguishable from the Starfleet crew: military-looking men, women with hair in perfect buns, no men with beards or ponytails or women with green hair and tattoos. They could be Voyager crew but still be renegades.

Yeah, but even then that's only enough for 2 years of conflict. After that, if they were still willing to keep clashing, they weren't going to survive.

I mean, it's the partial fault of TNG but the Voyager writers were under no obligation to keep to it.

It was a no-win scenario, like nearly everything else they did.

No, it wasn't. But, that's on the Voyager writers, not on any of the audience members, not on people for daring to not like the show, not on unrealistic expectations. The plot that Voyager chose to use was not sustainable without planning and plotting that was not done.

It's non sustainable, period. Every other "Lost Ship" show knew to change things up after 1 or 2 seasons and leave the "Lost Ship" plot behind.

Difference is, everytime VOY tried something new all it got was negative backlash. Meaning they couldn't do anything new.

I mean, that attitude is part of the problem. Star Trek: Voyager should not have been seem as "Gilligan's Island in space." It should have been seen as "The Odyssey in space." But the writers didn't believe in their own premise; they saw it more as the former than the latter.

The Odyssey isn't the kind of story that lends itself to more than a miniseries.

VOY should not have been like every other Trek. They should have done that differently. It is completely unbelievable that 150 people who believe they are trapped in a tin can for the next seven decades of their lives are gonna be so insular with one-another.

They were never going to be trapped out there for 7 years, that's another thing.

Sure they are! There's nothing inherent to the premise that makes it unsustainable

Farscape, LEXX, NuBSG, they all dropped the "Lost Ship" thing after 2 seasons or so. Because it's not interesting enough to keep doing stories about.

The Maquis' fundamental beef with the Federation was their objection to Federation nationalism, Federation expansionism, and Federation universalism.

That didn't happen till Eddington....AFTER VOY was lost.

See, without the DMZ and Cardassian presence the Maquis aren't terribly interesting.

That, too, would have been fascinating!

Which is why they should have used Romulans, or DQ aliens. That's a long lasting conflict with real differences. And VOY being an alien ship with unknown capabilities also solves a lot of problems. Have it being an AI run ship that didn't need real maintenance.

Like I said, I don't agree that "Lost ship" is an unsustainable premise.

Farscape, LEXX and NuBSG all thought it was unsustainable.

 

[Sci]

The Odyssey isn't the kind of story that lends itself to more than a miniseries.

The Odyssey is 24 books long. It can lend itself to more than a miniseries.

They were never going to be trapped out there for 7 years, that's another thing.

But they were. Voyager did not get home until the series finale.

Farscape, LEXX, NuBSG, they all dropped the "Lost Ship" thing after 2 seasons or so. Because it's not interesting enough to keep doing stories about.

I can't speak to Farscape or Lexx, having never really watched them. But Battlestar Galactica did not drop the "lost ship" premise. They never discovered Earth or a permanent home until the series finale.

That didn't happen till Eddington

It wasn't made explicit until "For the Cause" but an objection to Federation nationalism is built into the premise of the Maquis, and good writers would have sensed this and brought it to the forefront at the start of VOY.

 

[Farscape One]

They were killed by their own ship undergoing a malfunction. It should've been wholly possible to destroy them in normal combat.

1 Borg Ship shouldn't be able to destroy 40 Starfleet ships, that's too OP.



The explanation given wasn't good enough for the audience. They hated that anything could harm the Borg, let alone kill them.



What's the point of trying when you know it won't go over well regardless?



They needed the Big Galactic War storyline to be developed, as well as some of them being holdovers from TNG. VOY's premise meant they couldn't do that kind of story.



The easier solution would be to have never stated how many torpedoes they had to begin with and never say how many crew they had.



Yeah, but even then that's only enough for 2 years of conflict. After that, if they were still willing to keep clashing, they weren't going to survive.



It was a no-win scenario, like nearly everything else they did.



It's non sustainable, period. Every other "Lost Ship" show knew to change things up after 1 or 2 seasons and leave the "Lost Ship" plot behind.

Difference is, everytime VOY tried something new all it got was negative backlash. Meaning they couldn't do anything new.



The Odyssey isn't the kind of story that lends itself to more than a miniseries.



They were never going to be trapped out there for 7 years, that's another thing.



Farscape, LEXX, NuBSG, they all dropped the "Lost Ship" thing after 2 seasons or so. Because it's not interesting enough to keep doing stories about.



That didn't happen till Eddington....AFTER VOY was lost.

See, without the DMZ and Cardassian presence the Maquis aren't terribly interesting.



Which is why they should have used Romulans, or DQ aliens. That's a long lasting conflict with real differences. And VOY being an alien ship with unknown capabilities also solves a lot of problems. Have it being an AI run ship that didn't need real maintenance.



Farscape, LEXX and NuBSG all thought it was unsustainable.

I am only going to correct two things, because I have stopped arguing with you about the 'VOYAGER never doing anything right' or 'FARSCAPE using reset buttons a lot'.

First off, of the character examples you listed, 'some' were NOT holdovers from TNG. Only ONE was, and that was Keiko. And she only appeared twice in the final 2 seasons... "TIME'S ORPHAN" and the finale. NONE of the other recurring characters (and except for O'Brien and Worf, none of the leads) were from TNG. The premise of VOYAGER actually lent MORE ability to create and develop recurring characters, not less.

(Also worth noting, many of the recurring characters had nothing or extremely little to do with the Dominion War... of the examples listed, Bareil died before it even occured, and Winn, Keiko, Kasidy, and Rom were not really involved in the war.)

Second, LEXX was not a 'lost in space show. They were fugitives on the run. They didn't have a destination in mind, just a cozy planet they could call home. 'Lost in space' implies you have a destination in mind for the endgame.... FARSCAPE had it (until season the back half of season 4), BSG, and... dare I say it... LOST IN SPACE.

 

[Oddish]

They were killed by their own ship undergoing a malfunction. It should've been wholly possible to destroy them in normal combat.

By "First Contact", it apparently was. Picard might have provided the point of aim, but it was pasers and torpedoes that did the job.

The explanation given wasn't good enough for the audience. They hated that anything could harm the Borg, let alone kill them.

Well, I can't speak for everyone. I liked it fine.

They needed the Big Galactic War storyline to be developed, as well as some of them being holdovers from TNG. VOY's premise meant they couldn't do that kind of story.

No, they could do a story about the community of Voyager. Develop multiple characters on the ship. Make us feel like this is a real community, not nine people and a bunch of faceless drones.

The easier solution would be to have never stated how many torpedoes they had to begin with and never say how many crew they had.

Would have worked with torpedoes, given that Enterprise had 250+, certainly Voyager could pack 90 or so. Not so sure about crew.

It was a no-win scenario, like nearly everything else they did.

At least Voyager got to go it's full seven seasons... I'd say they got ample chance to succeed.

 

[fireproof78]

It's non sustainable, period. Every other "Lost Ship" show knew to change things up after 1 or 2 seasons and leave the "Lost Ship" plot behind.

Difference is, everytime VOY tried something new all it got was negative backlash. Meaning they couldn't do anything new.

That's on the writers. Period. The audience isn't some monolithic boogeyman but a customer to be appealed to. Voyager did a bait and switch. Poor business.

 

[Oddish]

Unless it's what the viewers wanted.

 

[DigificWriter]

Voyager set up a serialized premise

Voyager's premise is not in and of itself inherently serialized.

Also, claims that Voyager didn't have serialization are just factually inaccurate. The PtBs behind the show took all of the lessons about serialized storytelling that were learned on DS9 and applied them to an Episodic format (emulating The X-Files) and the reasons for the perception to the contrary can be laid squarely on UPN's schedule-makers believing that they could just air the series in whatever order they felt like.

 

[Oddish]

Voyager's premise is not in and of itself inherently serialized.

But eminently serializable.