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Is Voyager really Star Trek?

Sharr Khan said:
Having the skeleton of Star Trek isn't enough. Voyager was drifting from Star Trek, sort of inbetween being faithful and "just TV".

Star Trek, in whatever form is "just tv", or in some cases, "just a movie" - Star Trek in and of itself is nothing special often being less then special - particularly when GR remade it in a new image. But in the end Trek is just television and like all shows can have highs and lows.

Sharr

"Star Trek" itself is barely science fiction.
 
exalted one said:
Voyager is not Star Trek. Voyager is warp-propelled Melrose Place: a bunch of mentally unstable nutcases who are forced to live in the same house, and the house owner is the most crazy bitch of them all. :)

You've just described DS9 and New BSG!

Or none of them--not Voyager, not DS9, and not NBSG. There's a place and an audience for all these shows. All 5 Trek series are Star Trek--exploring strange new worlds and like that.
 
Starship Polaris said:
Sharr Khan said:
Having the skeleton of Star Trek isn't enough. Voyager was drifting from Star Trek, sort of inbetween being faithful and "just TV".

Star Trek, in whatever form is "just tv", or in some cases, "just a movie" - Star Trek in and of itself is nothing special often being less then special - particularly when GR remade it in a new image. But in the end Trek is just television and like all shows can have highs and lows.

Sharr

"Star Trek" itself is barely science fiction.

Well that also, the funny thing it never really was science fiction and really am taken back some assert it was the embodiment of science fiction and "fell from grace".

At the extreme Star Trek was simply a skeleton to engage in allegory and metaphor (at times that's been a strength but sometimes also a weakness regarding its dramatic aspects) neither of which in exclusive to science fiction.


More and more, as the years went by, Star Trek became less about science-fiction (posing important questions about how technology might affect us in the future, etc.), and became about itself... its own internal history.

Umm... Star Trek was never about how technology effected people. It was often about allegory or morals but it at no time fit the (limited and myopic) definition that you assert here. Kirk wasn't cowboying about the Galaxy testing how man and tech fit together. Usually the theme was the opposite and it was about exploring aspects of human nature. Its an extended work of FICTION of course its own history mattered to it.

Sharr :brickwall:
 
I'm not a big fan of it, but yes it was Star Trek. It was just a different story in the Star Trek universe, which is very vast. There have been three shows aboute a ship named Enterprise exploring space. One show was set on a space station near a wormhole and the other was Voyager about a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant. All were star trek. Some were of course better written than others.
 
Starship Polaris said:
Sharr Khan said:
Having the skeleton of Star Trek isn't enough. Voyager was drifting from Star Trek, sort of inbetween being faithful and "just TV".

Star Trek, in whatever form is "just tv", or in some cases, "just a movie" - Star Trek in and of itself is nothing special often being less then special - particularly when GR remade it in a new image. But in the end Trek is just television and like all shows can have highs and lows.

Sharr

"Star Trek" itself is barely science fiction.

I wanted to agree with this but I can't. Surely, Trek was never hard SF but TOS thru TMP was SF in the Vonnegut/Bradbury/Ellison/Dick vein, where scientific accuracy took a back seat to moral and philosophical musings and story telling. When Twilight Zone did SF (rather than fantasy or horror), it was in much the same mode.

After TWoK, however, Trek became too familiar to really be SF anymore and--despite TNG's attempt to strike out in new directions and VOY's attempt to do the same--it never really shook that familiarity. Every now and again, we may get a new concept for an alien menace--Vidians and Borg--but, before long, they are domesticated into another part of Star Trek's comfortable quilt. Other times, we get new takes on old ideas: Klingons get a LA gang makeover and go from noble to ignoble savage and we get Kazon. Every week, we get either a new forehead or a new swirly-gassy spatial anomaly. While these ideas--space aliens and new astronomical phenomena--are SF by definition, they've become so familiar that it may as well be a high school production of Our Town. We blame Bermaga for all this but really, it's just a function of Trek being so damn old, with so many hours of story already committed.
 
^
I think the issue isn't there of whether it's SF... just it becoming bland SF. Take almost any science-fiction episode of DS9, for example. The good ones generally are those that subordinate the science-fiction idea to character drama - "The Visitor", et cetera. Those that focus on the science-fiction idea... are boring.

After a while, the sci-fi component became bland and familiar. Aliens weren't weird; mind-bending confrontations with reality - like in "If Wishes Were Horses" - became trite. Wonder became forced, and each alien/energy-beam of the week became mundane and interchangable, like perps in a cop drama. This is basically similar to the question of whether Voyager is Star Trek: Star Trek is sci-fi, but it's not always good sci-fi. It may not always have those things that make sci-fi interesting, but at least it's got the external components.
 
I think its best to ask someone who's less than a casual viewer an episode without showing the "Star Trek: Voyager" in the opening credits. If he thinks its star trek, you guys have your answer :).
 
We were listening to mp3's at a friends house, and suddenly the credits for B5 season 2 started playing. And I say "O cool, season two!" and some girl who was more interested in listening to actual musics says "What? Huh. Season 2 of what? How do you know it's season two?"

We need to dig a trench in the ocean to dump "casual viewers" who try to kill my buzz.
 
Brutal Strudel said:
The less-than-casuals think Babylon 5 is Star Trek. ;)
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them thought that after watching Deep Space Nine ;)
 
The only thing casual viewers are indicative of is, well, how successful Star Trek has been in the mainstream. So you'll probably find more who know who Mr. Spock is then who know who Tuvok is.

Does this mean Tuvok isn't a Vulcan? Nope. Just that he's not as popular or as well known as Mr. Spock. The same applies to series.
 
Malcom said:
jimbtnp2 said:
Wath TOS, watch VOY,

VOY ain't trek, its closer to a parody

You're new here. If you can be nice, act nice.

i'm not sure what you mean?? :confused: I said nothing personal, however I do find Voyager to be almost a parody of Trek, certainly TOS, its IMHO bad on so many levels I view it as an ST abomination -for example the holodeck episodes

Can you imagine GR putting out episodes like that? :wtf:
 
jimbtnp2 said:
Malcom said:
jimbtnp2 said:
Wath TOS, watch VOY,

VOY ain't trek, its closer to a parody

You're new here. If you can be nice, act nice.

i'm not sure what you mean?? :confused: I said nothing personal, however I do find Voyager to be almost a parody of Trek, certainly TOS, its IMHO bad on so many levels I view it as an ST abomination -for example the holodeck episodes

Can you imagine GR putting out episodes like that? :wtf:
He put out quite a few shitty TOS and TNG episodes that make the worst Voyager episode seem like Shakespeare.
 
And the holodeck episodes aren't any different from any other "false reality" or "hallucination" bits in other shows, like how nuBSG has its chars having those "headflashes". Those are pretty much the same as holodecks.
 
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