More rewatchability: Voyager or Enterprise?
- Thread starter BlueStuff
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The Kazons are about the worst Villains that ST ever had. I mean even the Ferengi were more interesting (and I am talking of the TNG Ferengi, the really inept ones!!).
Enterprise, watched it 3 or 4 times I don't even get the hate for S1 and S2, it's legitimately a great throwback to TOS. S3 is a slog though and S4 is fantastic.
Voyager I've only ever watched like the first 3 seasons through before fatigue set in and then just did a dozen "notable episodes" for the rest. Honestly for me it's a hard choice between what is worse, Voyager or Discovery. Without 7of9 and The Doctor I think it would be an easy place for even worse but then there is Neelix. I can't tell who is my most hated Trek character, Neelix or Burnham.
Voyager I've only ever watched like the first 3 seasons through before fatigue set in and then just did a dozen "notable episodes" for the rest. Honestly for me it's a hard choice between what is worse, Voyager or Discovery. Without 7of9 and The Doctor I think it would be an easy place for even worse but then there is Neelix. I can't tell who is my most hated Trek character, Neelix or Burnham.
For me, and I love both shows, it's Voyager by a nose. Any series will have a range from blech to brilliant with most naturally falling in the average/good area so it comes down to characters for me. I like most of the characters in Voyager. I like just over half in Enterprise.
It depends on what you're going for. If you just want an episode or two to chill out on, than Voyager's the answer. If you want to watch a continuing storyline, then it's Enterprise for you.
I choose root canal seasons 3-9.
Enterprise for the win.
Voyager was way too episodic, bland and not what the producers promissed when the show was announced.
So much lost potential
Voyager was way too episodic, bland and not what the producers promissed when the show was announced.
So much lost potential
I never watched Enterprise beyond season one so can't really comment on that.
I did recently watch all seasons of Voyager and other than an episode here and there, I don't think I never need to watch it again. There's something about Voyager that just doesn't sit right with me. I don't know why. VOY, as opposed to TNG, just doesn't give me the warm fuzzies when I watch it. However, I don't think it was intended to do that. Some of the episodes and themes would never have been done on TNG. Can you imagine Tuvix being done in TNG? I can't. Maybe that's why it bothers me. I don't know and I may not be communicating it very well.
I did recently watch all seasons of Voyager and other than an episode here and there, I don't think I never need to watch it again. There's something about Voyager that just doesn't sit right with me. I don't know why. VOY, as opposed to TNG, just doesn't give me the warm fuzzies when I watch it. However, I don't think it was intended to do that. Some of the episodes and themes would never have been done on TNG. Can you imagine Tuvix being done in TNG? I can't. Maybe that's why it bothers me. I don't know and I may not be communicating it very well.
Well, in the case of Tuvix the captain would have been overruled by the high command as he was for Lal for example. The matter would have been out of his hands.
Remember that when he made the decision not to use Hugh to implant the virus he was later berated for that by Netchaev.
VOY for me. It's uneven with missed potential, but its greatest episodes stand up with the rest of Trek's best with ease. "Blink of an Eye" is criminally underrated, for example.
I tried ENT's mirror episode and despite the attentive detail to set design, it didn't hold up as well, but still liked the improve production and story quality brought in by Manny Coto. If only he was brought in during season one.
The bigger problem is inevitable: Prequels rarely work for me (YMMV) because we know how it all ends up in the end. And what they do before then has to fall in line with established lore reasonably well. Not perfectly, that's never going to happen due to technological advancements (think Star Wars prequel trilogy and Rogue One and both of those do a respectable job at coming close enough to fit in -- despite their flaws, some of which are inevitable - which numerous reviewers have pointed out over the centuries so they don't really bear repeating right now. And I suspect DSC might be
still, it's a prequel, the main reason for these is to fill gaps that the original saga wasn't able to tell and if such a need exists. The originals usually tell enough exposition but someone often gets an idea for gaps that may or may not work and nobody knows until long after it's scripted and produced. It's a gamble, which is also why studios don't always take big risks given how expensive some genres are. I'm amazed the original Start Trek took off in any form, but Lucille Ball also didn't want to lose all that money (which was huge back then) put into it hence it being given another chance. Color TV was also new and Trek was a good show to sell color TV with. As with the 80s movies and TNG, Roddenberry was at the right place at the right time and with the right people. Without them, lack of sci-fi competition, etc, TMP would have been a fizzle (it instead had hyper fans and a 10 year gap and Star Wars just came out) and TNG was riding TOS's theatrical success. Season 1 isn't the most lauded by fans but it improved, as most Trek shows need 2 to 4 years to find their footing as we've already seen for TNG, VOY, ENT, and DSC. Or TOS if you consider the pilot was in 1964 and retooling was done to get it out two years later, and TOS season 1 was pretty solid overall.
I tried ENT's mirror episode and despite the attentive detail to set design, it didn't hold up as well, but still liked the improve production and story quality brought in by Manny Coto. If only he was brought in during season one.
The bigger problem is inevitable: Prequels rarely work for me (YMMV) because we know how it all ends up in the end. And what they do before then has to fall in line with established lore reasonably well. Not perfectly, that's never going to happen due to technological advancements (think Star Wars prequel trilogy and Rogue One and both of those do a respectable job at coming close enough to fit in -- despite their flaws, some of which are inevitable - which numerous reviewers have pointed out over the centuries so they don't really bear repeating right now. And I suspect DSC might be
attempting a new way to do it, but as much as I already opined Spock's killing of his doctors but it's way too plausible there's a germane reason, since at face value Spock would never be allowed on the Federation flagship ion the future if he's a callous murderer. Unless this is mirror universe Spock...
still, it's a prequel, the main reason for these is to fill gaps that the original saga wasn't able to tell and if such a need exists. The originals usually tell enough exposition but someone often gets an idea for gaps that may or may not work and nobody knows until long after it's scripted and produced. It's a gamble, which is also why studios don't always take big risks given how expensive some genres are. I'm amazed the original Start Trek took off in any form, but Lucille Ball also didn't want to lose all that money (which was huge back then) put into it hence it being given another chance. Color TV was also new and Trek was a good show to sell color TV with. As with the 80s movies and TNG, Roddenberry was at the right place at the right time and with the right people. Without them, lack of sci-fi competition, etc, TMP would have been a fizzle (it instead had hyper fans and a 10 year gap and Star Wars just came out) and TNG was riding TOS's theatrical success. Season 1 isn't the most lauded by fans but it improved, as most Trek shows need 2 to 4 years to find their footing as we've already seen for TNG, VOY, ENT, and DSC. Or TOS if you consider the pilot was in 1964 and retooling was done to get it out two years later, and TOS season 1 was pretty solid overall.
I rewatched both a few years back. I pick Enterprise.
First, there's less of it - only four seasons versus seven. Thus it's a smaller commitment to watch the whole darn thing.
Second, Enterprise experimented more with serialization. Everyone knows that the third season was one long arc, and the fourth season was mostly a series of mini-arcs. But even as early as the first season they were making an attempt (even if it often failed) to have some sense of forward motion, with events in earlier episodes referenced in later ones.
In contrast, the utterly disconnected way that Voyager is written makes it almost physically painful when i try and binge watch it on Netflix. I can handle one, maybe two episodes a night. But I often needed to mix in other shows in order to not lose interest entirely. Voyager basically only had three plots:
1. We found a way home! Oh, wait, we didn't!
2. Some sort of conflict endangers the ship and/or members of the crew, which is resolved three minutes before the closing credits.
3. We'll have a slow-paced, focus episode on one character (invariably the best episodes, but sadly infrequent).
The formulaic nature of the writing becomes very, very clear if you try and watch a lot of Voyager in one sitting. It probably played a lot better when it was first broadcast. But considering how little forward momentum there is for any characters in the series, there just isn't any sort of payoff for sitting down in a weekend and binging a season.
First, there's less of it - only four seasons versus seven. Thus it's a smaller commitment to watch the whole darn thing.
Second, Enterprise experimented more with serialization. Everyone knows that the third season was one long arc, and the fourth season was mostly a series of mini-arcs. But even as early as the first season they were making an attempt (even if it often failed) to have some sense of forward motion, with events in earlier episodes referenced in later ones.
In contrast, the utterly disconnected way that Voyager is written makes it almost physically painful when i try and binge watch it on Netflix. I can handle one, maybe two episodes a night. But I often needed to mix in other shows in order to not lose interest entirely. Voyager basically only had three plots:
1. We found a way home! Oh, wait, we didn't!
2. Some sort of conflict endangers the ship and/or members of the crew, which is resolved three minutes before the closing credits.
3. We'll have a slow-paced, focus episode on one character (invariably the best episodes, but sadly infrequent).
The formulaic nature of the writing becomes very, very clear if you try and watch a lot of Voyager in one sitting. It probably played a lot better when it was first broadcast. But considering how little forward momentum there is for any characters in the series, there just isn't any sort of payoff for sitting down in a weekend and binging a season.
No forward momentum?
Let's see... the Doctor becomes a sentient, legal person, Tom Paris develops from a cocky screwup to a responsible officer and dedicated husband and father, B'Elanna sheds a ton of chips on her shoulders and takes on the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, Seven takes significant steps to regaining her lost humanity, Kes becomes a deus-ex-machina whatever the hell she turns into, Neelix develops from a dishonest rogue to a valuable member of the crew who also takes on marriage and fatherhood, and even Harry (while always an ensign) does mature a little by the end of the series.
Notice, however, that Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok aren't on my list above? They're the ones who never change during that 7 years. Don't judge the rest of the main characters by those three.
As for rewatching... the Space Channel shows hours of various Star Trek series every day. The only one that I usually rewatch now is Voyager. Most of the Enterprise episodes I saw just bored me and to this day I still haven't bothered watching the entire series.
I think this is an extraordinarily sound assessment. I feel almost exactly the same way.
No forward momentum?
Let's see... the Doctor becomes a sentient, legal person, Tom Paris develops from a cocky screwup to a responsible officer and dedicated husband and father, B'Elanna sheds a ton of chips on her shoulders and takes on the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, Seven takes significant steps to regaining her lost humanity, Kes becomes a deus-ex-machina whatever the hell she turns into, Neelix develops from a dishonest rogue to a valuable member of the crew who also takes on marriage and fatherhood, and even Harry (while always an ensign) does mature a little by the end of the series.
Tom Paris had a real arc, albeit an understated one. The rest of them periodically had episodes which seemingly deepened their characters, only to be completely ignored in the future.
Take Torres for example. Barge of the Dead from Season 6 is one of my ten favorite Voyager episodes. The end of the episode basically establishes her as being "born again" in the Klingon religion. The series not only ignores this, it actively tramples all over it in the Season 7 episode Prophecy, where she meets the religious Klingons and tells them outright she is a non-believer.
More broadly, while Seven and The Doctor are - by far, the best developed characters in Voyager, they are also inconsistently developed. Both of them will become more human or less human as the plot requires. The writers even admitted that they did this - feeling like they made a mistake with Seven having her "integrate" into the crew too rapidly, potentially destroying what was interesting regarding her character - and then they purposefully regressed her a bit so her climb to normalcy would never be finished.
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None of these hold a candle to Harry Kim who remains strictly identical to himself throughout the series. I mean he sounds even more like a rookie in the last episodes than he does earlier! You could picture him leaving Voyager after the last episode and get swindled by the first Ferengi he meets.
1. I thought the real Harry Kim died.
2. Even though she loves the boy, he's obviously not good Starfleet material or Janeway would have given him an acting field promotion (it's in her power as Captain; Picard did it for Wesley).
3. Later in the series, they have regular contact with Earth, so, any field promotion could be confirmed by Starfleet.
4. Harry needs to take the hint after he returns to Earth.
P.S. Enterprise over Voyager, but I like both. Porthos tilted the scale for me.
He was treated better than Harry.
Same. I find even the "good" seasons of Enterprise to be awful. (Two words: Klingon. Foreheads.) And I hate all of the characters. Every single one, barring maybe Phlox. Sometimes.
Voyager, for all its flaws, at least made plenty of fun, adventureful episodes with characters I didn't hate. Also, no overtones of destiny and fate to ruin the experience, which was something I didn't realize Berman-era Trek tended to fall into until eschaton pointed it out.
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