I disliked the final ep of Voyager

[Jeri]

"Endgame" is another word for checkmate, which makes perfect sense considering the main part was the showdown between Janeway & the Borg Queen.

To me, the endgame is what happens as the clock winds down and two basketball teams are tied.

They stop the clock every few seconds for fouls and free throws, and it goes on a lot longer than the time on the clock. It's nerve-wrackingly unpredictable, who will win. It's about time and using time, as "Endgame" was.

 

[TheGodBen]

^^Come on seriously, you're really going to nit-pick the use of a title because it's only one word?

No, I'm nitpicking about a title because it shows a lack of imagination that the episode itself displayed. I'm not nitpicking about the title of Scorpion of Equinox because those episodes were good.

 

[exodus]

^^Come on seriously, you're really going to nit-pick the use of a title because it's only one word?

No, I'm nitpicking about a title because it shows a lack of imagination that the episode itself displayed. I'm not nitpicking about the title of Scorpion of Equinox because those episodes were good.

The title is bad because the ep. was bad, the title is good because the ep. was good?

I'm sorry but that makes little sense too me same as the "play".

I doubt very much that there is any person or parent that wouldn't go back in time to save a loved one or child they knew that was going to die if they had the means too. Adm. Janeway being self centered was the entire point. In loosing Seven, she lost all her morals & ethics and what it means to be in Starfleet. Saving Seven would also save herself from becoming that person so that "Capt." Janeway wouldn't have to face those consequences you described.

Families of Starfleet Officers accept the fact that Officers die in the line of duty, so you can blame Janeway for Lt.Carey dying while doing what he was trained for. That's the price you pay as a soldier. Besides, how can you blame Capt. Janeway for what Adm. Janeway did if Adm. Janeway is from a alternate timeline that no longer exists?

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

I can just imagine Janeway going to speak with Carey's widow using that argument.

Janeway: I'm so sorry for your loss. It's so ironic that after ignoring him for six years I finally decided to include him in a mission, and he ended up dying.
Widow: You said a future you came back to help you get home. Why didn't she come back a few weeks earlier to save my husband?
Janeway: Well my future self said that only dark things would happen after the point where she decided to help us.
Widow: Why didn't she go back to the very start of your mission and help you get home right away?
Janeway: Well there is this Borg woman we rescued from the collective...
Widow: So this Borg woman is more important to you than my husband?
Janeway: Weeeeell...
Widow: Does this Borg woman have a husband or kids?
Janeway: Nope, all her immediate family are dead or assimilated.
Widow: So you thought it was more important to rescue this woman with no family than it was for my kids to see their father again?! Do you have any idea what you put us through? We thought he was dead for years! Do you have any idea what it is like having to tell your children that their father isn't coming home? And then he shows up alive. It was the happiest I've ever seen my kids! They missed their father so much! And now you tell me that he's dead because of an arbitrary decision that you made?!!
Janeway: To be fair, you haven't seen this Borg chick in a cat-suit!
Widow: You are a horrible person!!
Janeway:And yet I've been promoted to Admiral.

Read my play above. If that was Janeway's motivation then she was completely self-centred.

This play focuses entirely on Seven of Nine. Don't forget that by going back to that specific point in time, Voyager was able to deal a significant blow to the Borg by blowing up one of their transwarp hubs, theoretically saving thousands of UFP citizens. Not only that, but Lt. Carey died in a mission that restored a dying planet/civilization from a nuclear winter, which humans were somewhat responsible for. I'd say that the needs of an entire civilization outweigh Lt. Carey's life -- even though his death seemed meaningless in the episode. I agree he should've died in a heroic fashion instead of just the Redshirt fashion, but irregardless his mission was important.

Let's not also forget that Voyager saved Equinox crewmen that would've surely died otherwise. Janeway also saved the Ocampa and prevented the Kazon from going hog-wild with Caretaker technology. She saved the entire universe by destroying Omega particles. She stopped an invasion from fluidic space by helping the Borg against Species 8472. She played a pivotal role in stopping Annorax and the Krenim Imperium from constantly changing the timeline. She stopped the Malon from polluting the Void and in the "other Void" she helped several ships escape. Etc. etc.

My impression was that all of Voyager's losses up until Endgame were acceptable because of all the billions that Voyager helped. Had Admiral Janeway not come back, then Voyager would've just gotten hammered the rest of the way back and may have had little to no influence except to be a target. If Admiral Janeway had gone all the way back to the beginning, then the galaxy would've been screwed.

 

[exodus]

Many say how "Endgame" sucks but clearly it's more complex that it's given credit for.

 

[TheGodBen]

If they had one line in the episode where Admiral Janeway gave a reason why she chose to save Voyager now rather than at the time of Caretaker, then I wouldn't have quite a big a problem with this mess of an episode as I do. If there is such a line then please tell me because I can't remember it.

The one line that I do remember is "Seven of Nine is going to die." That seemed to be Admiral Janeway's motivation. I'm working with what they gave me, and what they gave me seems to suggest that Seven and Tuvok are more important to Janeway than other members of her crew. Which I can understand, there are people in my life that I care about more than others. The difference is that I'm not a starship captain, I'm not responsible for the lives of 150 people under my command. Personal feelings should not influence the choice of who she lets live and who she lets die.

There should have been one line in the episode that explained why Janeway chose to save the ship now rather than at the beginning. In the episode I saw Janeway's motivation was self-centred.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

There's was a line that went like "16 more years Voyager will be in the DQ. And there will be casualties" indicating that a lot of people would die (even main cast! ahhh!) and Voyager can hardly function with a skeleton crew. Therefore, it cannot do much except stay low and hobble back to the AQ

 

[exodus]

If they had one line in the episode where Admiral Janeway gave a reason why she chose to save Voyager now rather than at the time of Caretaker, then I wouldn't have quite a big a problem with this mess of an episode as I do. If there is such a line then please tell me because I can't remember it.

The one line that I do remember is "Seven of Nine is going to die." That seemed to be Admiral Janeway's motivation. I'm working with what they gave me, and what they gave me seems to suggest that Seven and Tuvok are more important to Janeway than other members of her crew. Which I can understand, there are people in my life that I care about more than others. The difference is that I'm not a starship captain, I'm not responsible for the lives of 150 people under my command. Personal feelings should not influence the choice of who she lets live and who she lets die.

There should have been one line in the episode that explained why Janeway chose to save the ship now rather than at the beginning. In the episode I saw Janeway's motivation was self-centred.

Tell that to Picard in "First Contact" when he only went to save Data.
Tell it to Sulu when he risked himself and his crew to save Kirk in Undiscovered Country.

Plus, I believe someone here already explained that it was mentioned in the ep. that the transwarp hub was the best and fastest way to get them home and still save who was left of the crew. Going back to Caretaker wouldn't help because they still didn;t know how to use the arrays technology and the Caretaker was too busy dying to teach them.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

What I don't understand is why Admiral Janeway didn't just use the same device to get them home as she did to get there in the first place. I mean, Admiral Janeway used some blue thingy to open a rift through time and space to get back to DQ Voyager. Why was the option of using it again to get Voyager back to the AQ in the current time not an option? Why did Admiral Janeway insist on using the Borg conduit hub? (surely not to destroy it since she objected to that)

 

[exodus]

What I don't understand is why Admiral Janeway didn't just use the same device to get them home as she did to get there in the first place. I mean, Admiral Janeway used some blue thingy to open a rift through time and space to get back to DQ Voyager. Why was the option of using it again to get Voyager back to the AQ in the current time not an option? Why did Admiral Janeway insist on using the Borg conduit hub? (surely not to destroy it since she objected to that)

Because they said it burnt out getting her there and couldn't be used to take them back.

 

[TheGodBen]

Tell that to Picard in "First Contact" when he only went to save Data.

The point in that movie was that Picard was letting personal feelings cloud his judgement and he had to stop and destroy the ship. When Picard then went to rescue Data, he didn't order anybody else to go, he went himself. Had he ordered a dozen men to go on a suicide mission while he snuck in around the back in order to save Data, then he would have been in the wrong.

Tell it to Sulu when he risked himself and his crew to save Kirk in Undiscovered Country.

His initial lie to Starfleet did not risk his crew, all he was risking was his own career. When he rushed to Khitomer to help Kirk he wasn't doing it to save Kirk's life, he was doing it to stop an assassination that would plunge the Galaxy back into war.

Besides, Sulu hates Kirk, we all realise that now.

Wouldn't it have been better to spend a few days at the array figuring out how it worked in order to send the ship back home rather than letting them meander around the Delta Quadrant for seven years getting unnamed redshirts killed? Couldn't Admiral Janeway have gone to the array about a month before Voyager and Chakotay's ship were taken there in order to inform the Caretaker that he's not going to find what he's looking for on those two ships, thus making sure Voyager never went to the Delta Quadrant? Couldn't she have gone back and told Chakotay not to enter the badlands that day?

The way they used time-travel in this episode opened a huge can of worms. They could have come up with something far better. They could have come up with a real moral situation, perhaps something which echoed Caretaker. Then they could have allowed the audience 20 minutes at the end to see what happened after they arrived home. There is no reason they couldn't do this other than the fact that they weren't willing to.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

I doubt the writers expected the average viewer to remember anything about Caretaker. And even if Janeway did go all the way back there, that would make all seven seasons of Voyager worthless since it didn't happen! The characters would be back to square one... sounds like a bad way to end a series

 

[TheGodBen]

I'm not suggesting that they should have done that, that would have been almost as bad. My point was that by using time travel as a plot device the way they did the writers open themselves up to these questions.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

well I agree about that. But it is consistent with Voyager's lack of continuity and the ongoing theme of "if you think about it too hard your brain will explode"

i can name numerous canon explanations for how Voyager could've gotten back before Endgame

 

[TheGodBen]

well I agree about that. But it is consistent with Voyager's lack of continuity and the ongoing theme of "if you think about it too hard your brain will explode"

i can name numerous canon explanations for how Voyager could've gotten back before Endgame

And that's why my first post in this thread said that Endgame was a good finale for Voyager.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

haha good. Looks like we're back at the beginning of the circle. shall we start again?

 

[Quagmire58]

3. Voyager returning home - Bad decision. Would have been much more striking if it was made clear at the end that the ship never got back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Maybe it should have blown up at the end, then Janeway could have done a voice over saying that's how it ended in this reality, but in 47 other realities we made it home safely. (fade to black), (roll credits)

 

[exodus]

Tell that to Picard in "First Contact" when he only went to save Data.

The point in that movie was that Picard was letting personal feelings cloud his judgement and he had to stop and destroy the ship. When Picard then went to rescue Data, he didn't order anybody else to go, he went himself. Had he ordered a dozen men to go on a suicide mission while he snuck in around the back in order to save Data, then he would have been in the wrong.

Tell it to Sulu when he risked himself and his crew to save Kirk in Undiscovered Country.

His initial lie to Starfleet did not risk his crew, all he was risking was his own career. When he rushed to Khitomer to help Kirk he wasn't doing it to save Kirk's life, he was doing it to stop an assassination that would plunge the Galaxy back into war.

Besides, Sulu hates Kirk, we all realise that now.

Wouldn't it have been better to spend a few days at the array figuring out how it worked in order to send the ship back home rather than letting them meander around the Delta Quadrant for seven years getting unnamed redshirts killed? Couldn't Admiral Janeway have gone to the array about a month before Voyager and Chakotay's ship were taken there in order to inform the Caretaker that he's not going to find what he's looking for on those two ships, thus making sure Voyager never went to the Delta Quadrant? Couldn't she have gone back and told Chakotay not to enter the badlands that day?

The way they used time-travel in this episode opened a huge can of worms. They could have come up with something far better. They could have come up with a real moral situation, perhaps something which echoed Caretaker. Then they could have allowed the audience 20 minutes at the end to see what happened after they arrived home. There is no reason they couldn't do this other than the fact that they weren't willing to.

So instead of not getting a reunion in the finale, we get an ending where all of the 7 years we watched never happened.

Seriously, that's your answer for a better ending?

 

[Akiraprise]

It would have been in keeping with the rest of the show I suppose.
Whenever something monumental happened to the crew in an episode, to shake up the status quo, BAM! reset.

 

[exodus]

It would have been in keeping with the rest of the show I suppose.
Whenever something monumental happened to the crew in an episode, to shake up the status quo, BAM! reset.

If that did happen, as a MOD you'd have your job cut out for you then.


Just think of how this forum would be with the disgruntled masses after having a reset back to the beginning finale.