My poor husband.

[exodus]

He hates football.

That's just UnAmerican!!!!

Let me guess, his face was almost like Seven's in your avatar?

More like Janeway's when the replicator ruined her coffee.

However, I do understand why they chose to make Species 8472 misunderstood aliens and not the next big new bad guy besides budget. In Trek as hopefully within our own one day, that if you're educated and take time to learn about others and their culture understanding happens. When that takes place, it becomes easier to make peace rather than create more enemies. Does it make for great continued drama, no but the hope was for us the audience to get the message of understanding diversity and finding common ground with everyone we encounter.

Kinda ironic considering Chakotay hacked up culture.

 

[kes7]

But dressed up like Boothby? Where's the diversity in that?

 

[exodus]

But dressed up like Boothby? Where's the diversity in that?

Frankly, I don't understand how he went from being Picards personal friend to nearly everybodys.

However Boothby was the happy medium. 8472 were pretending to be the people they were disguised as. To a few officers, Boothby was someone that had an open ear and would listen. Getting the 8472 of him to listen was key.

Still if you listen closely to the end of the ep. 8472 are still our enemy. Boothby says: "I'll take your perposal of peace to my superiors and see what they think." That's the end of it, so we never know for sure if 8472 agreed on peace or not. They could still be mounting an invasion.

Never forget Seven's warning in "Prey": "8472 are highly devoius and will seek the quickest way to defeating their enemy.".........what if calling truce is a trick?
The Romulans do it all the time.

 

[kes7]

But dressed up like Boothby? Where's the diversity in that?

Frankly, I don't understand how he went from being Picards personal friend to nearly everybodys.

However Boothby was the happy medium. 8472 were pretending to be the people they were disguised as. To a few officers, Boothby was someone that had an open ear and would listen. Getting the 8472 of him to listen was key.

Still if you listen closely to the end of the ep. 8472 are still our enemy. Boothby says: "I'll take your perposal of peace to my superiors and see what they think." That's the end of it, so we never know for sure if 8472 agreed on peace or not. They could still be mounting an invasion.

Never forget Seven's warning in "Prey": "8472 are highly devoius and will seek the quickest way to defeating their enemy.".........what if calling truce is a trick?
The Romulans do it all the time.

These are good points which I will share with my husband in an attempt to ease his pain.

 

[Thestral]

Still if you listen closely to the end of the ep. 8472 are still our enemy. Boothby says: "I'll take your perposal of peace to my superiors and see what they think." That's the end of it, so we never know for sure if 8472 agreed on peace or not. They could still be mounting an invasion.

I know you're not the biggest fan of novelized Trek, but you really ought to check out "Places of Exile" from the Myriad Universes tales for a great 8472 story that follows up on this.

 

[RyuRoots]

Another thing that gets me is that this personification of Boothby is completely off from what we saw in "The First Duty". There, he was certainly a good guy, thoughtful, maybe a little short with people at times. Here he's the wonderful talkative happy old guy. I would just say that it's because 8472 didn't know that, but Janeway corroborates this version. Blehg. I liked Boothby 1.0 better.

And frankly, I LOVED the almost demon-like "You're next." aliens from "Scorpion". To destroy them like this makes me extremely sad. To figure out ways to counter them in further engagements or smaller forces could've made some really good episodes. But no. Instead, any sense of power or grandeur is completely sucked away by this painfully bad episode. As much as I hear about it, is this the beginning of the end? The end of Voyager having any badass villains, I mean. Between this and "Drone", I don't feel very hopeful...

 

[kes7]

Another thing that gets me is that this personification of Boothby is completely off from what we saw in "The First Duty". There, he was certainly a good guy, thoughtful, maybe a little short with people at times. Here he's the wonderful talkative happy old guy. I would just say that it's because 8472 didn't know that, but Janeway corroborates this version. Blehg. I liked Boothby 1.0 better.

And frankly, I LOVED the almost demon-like "You're next." aliens from "Scorpion". To destroy them like this makes me extremely sad. To figure out ways to counter them in further engagements or smaller forces could've made some really good episodes. But no. Instead, any sense of power or grandeur is completely sucked away by this painfully bad episode. As much as I hear about it, is this the beginning of the end? The end of Voyager having any badass villains, I mean. Between this and "Drone", I don't feel very hopeful...

Voyager is worth watching for feeding your imagination. It gives you just enough to get your mind and expectations working overtime, without ever actually delivering. Its character stuff is so close to good it's painful -- but ultimately falls short. Its villains serve no other purpose beyond helping the characters develop. Keep your expectations low, and you'll find plenty to enjoy, but if you're expecting tight drama, continuity, and tons of intrigue, you're going to be disappointed.

(I call VOY "the show that launched a thousand fanfics" because it was just a giant, seven-year tease. Some people like to be teased, and I suppose I'm one of them. But if you're looking for quality resolution to the issues raised in the show, you'll have to actually read fanfic to get it. )

 

[RyuRoots]

Oh, I'll definitely keep watching. I watch Voyager for more than the Borg and 8472, after all. The first four eps have been....underwhelming (to say the least), but S5 can't be this bad the whole season. At least I hope not. It just saddens me so to see such a brilliantly-executed villain be reduced to...this. Partially because my expectations WERE so high. 8472 as seen in "Scorpion" was a high water mark. And "Prey" didn't really make them any less fearsome...hell, even moreso if you consider how much hell a single on of them is capable of causing on their own. Injured, no less. But blah. By now, I should be used to Voyager not doing so well on revisiting things.

 

[TheGodBen]

The first four eps have been....underwhelming (to say the least), but S5 can't be this bad the whole season.

I'm not a fan of season 5, I found it very "meh", but Once Upon a Time is good, and Timeless is excellent.

 

[Anwar]

I just don't buy into the concept that 8472 had to be written out of the show due to cost and that's why we got In the Flesh. The story of 8472 was already wrapped up in Scorpion; Voyager found a way to fight them, they made an alliance with the Borg, they fought them off back to their own dimension (or the beta quadrant if you choose to listen to Unimatrix Zero). Then end. If the producers decided that they shouldn't use them again due to cost then they didn't have to do anything, their arc was finished and it could have been left that way so that 8472 could be used in the future once the cost of CGI characters was reduced. They could have been spared for one episode a season, just like the Borg in TNG. Instead we were given In the Flesh, one of the most offensively absurd episodes of the show.

As for 8472 being unpopular because they could beat the Borg, that's utter tosh. All my friends that watched Trek loved 8472 when they were introduced because the concept of an alien more powerful than the Borg was amazing at that point in time. Even my friends that didn't watch Star Trek thought it sounded cool when we told them what was happening on Voyager (the Borg were well known around that time due to the success of FC). And Scorpion is one of the most popular episodes of Star Trek ever made, even a Voyager "hater" such as myself loves that episode.

8472 was a very popular race, which is why we're still talking about them 11 years after their last appearance.

If they had been a well-received race, they'd have been brought back in greater capacity. Negative fan reactions to all of VOY's alien races is what got rid of them.

They hated the Kazon for looking silly, they hated the concept of the Vidiians and thought they were too ugly, they hated the Hirogen for being Predators, they hated the Krenim for their bizarre weaponry, they hated the 8472 aliens for being too powerful and CGI.

And we all know the truth: If all of these guys had been on TNG or DS9 the fans would've had no problem with them.

 

[RyuRoots]

For looking silly? Me, I hated the Kazon because they were Klingon-lites whose intelligence was generally on par with Wile E. Cyote on a good day. They were about as intimidating as him, too. The only other Voyager race I've really hated was the Ocampa. I'm just glad they shelved them as soon as Kes went away.

 

[TheGodBen]

They hated the Kazon for looking silly, they hated the concept of the Vidiians and thought they were too ugly, they hated the Hirogen for being Predators, they hated the Krenim for their bizarre weaponry, they hated the 8472 aliens for being too powerful and CGI.

You and I have been through that list before and suffice it to say that it is utter, utter nonsense. The only people that set out to dislike Voyager were the same TOSsers that set out to dislike TNG and DS9 because it wasn't the original show, the vast majority of us set out to enjoy Voyager and just didn't for a variety of reasons. If you want to know the reasons why I didn't like Voyager then there's a 2,000 post thread you can go and read, if you don't want to know then stop spewing out the same garbage over and over again.

 

[Anwar]

And suffice to say, those "variety of reasons" are the utter, utter nonsense. And I'm very familiar with the flimsy justifications the haters give for why they hate VOY, including the silliness in your thread. It's blatantly clear that if they'd made all those changes to every last little nitpick you grasp at you'd still hate the show. And yes, I can safely say that the fandom gave VOY a hard time from the getgo as I was there when it started happening.

 

[Anwar]

For looking silly? Me, I hated the Kazon because they were Klingon-lites whose intelligence was generally on par with Wile E. Cyote on a good day. They were about as intimidating as him, too. The only other Voyager race I've really hated was the Ocampa. I'm just glad they shelved them as soon as Kes went away.

And if the Kazon had been portrayed as uber-competent overlords of the Delta Quadrant, the show would be over in 30 seconds. The nature of VOY meant that it would have to be able to defeat or escape every alien race they encountered.

So what do you want, weaker aliens they can survive, or tough aliens they can't survive?

 

[kes7]

For looking silly? Me, I hated the Kazon because they were Klingon-lites whose intelligence was generally on par with Wile E. Cyote on a good day. They were about as intimidating as him, too. The only other Voyager race I've really hated was the Ocampa. I'm just glad they shelved them as soon as Kes went away.

And if the Kazon had been portrayed as uber-competent overlords of the Delta Quadrant, the show would be over in 30 seconds. The nature of VOY meant that it would have to be able to defeat or escape every alien race they encountered.

So what do you want, weaker aliens they can survive, or tough aliens they can't survive?

Tough aliens they can survive only by building interesting alliances would have been good. Kind of like they did in Scorpion I and II.

 

[Anwar]

Considering the complaints over how Scorpion irrevocably ruined the Borg because 8472 could fight back, all doing "alliance" arcs would have done is just have the critics complain over how the formerly powerful aliens they were fighting were no longer cool because VOY now had the means to fight back.

Heck, if VOY had early on in the series formed a Delta Federation and the Dominion was THEIR main enemy instead and they spent the majority of the series fighting the Dominion War the fans would have hated it. If "Pale Moonlight" had been a VOY episode and everything was exactly the same as it was in that episode, fans would have hated it.

 

[kes7]

I think you're a little oversensitive. I've never heard anyone say that Scorpion ruined the Borg. "I, Borg," yes. "Descent I and II," yes. "Dark Frontier," yes. The Borg children arc, yes. But the Borg in Scorpion were plenty scary (note the lack of Queen -- this is the key to terrifying Borg) and 8472 didn't diminish that.

 

[Anwar]

They just complain that the Borg weren't able to fight off the 8472 on their own, or how dumb it was to even entertain the idea of them working with VOY, or how it should have been some kind of series long arc with the Borg fighting them all the time and being more tactical and stuff.

And like I said, the prejudice against VOY meant that if "Pale Moonlight" had been a VOY episode and everything about it was the same they'd still hate it.

 

[kes7]

They just complain that the Borg weren't able to fight off the 8472 on their own, or how dumb it was to even entertain the idea of them working with VOY, or how it should have been some kind of series long arc with the Borg fighting them all the time and being more tactical and stuff.

And like I said, the prejudice against VOY meant that if "Pale Moonlight" had been a VOY episode and everything about it was the same they'd still hate it.

When you say "they," I'm guessing you're referring to hard-core Niners?

 

[Anwar]

Niners, VOY-haters, ENT-haters, TNG-haters. They're all basically the same thing. NuBSGers are a part of the equation as well.

There's the TOSers as well, but they hate everything.