"Prey," VOY, and TOS

[david g]

I find PREY to be one of VOY's great episodes. Many aspects of it are interesting, but I specifically want to call our attention to the scene in which Tuvok telepathically communicates with the Species 8472. I think that here, truly, VOY connects with the legacy of TOS, the Vulcan telepathy/mind-meld with the alien here recalling Spock and the Horta. Indeed, "Prey" is very much an homage to "The Devil in the Dark."

VOY and TOS are my favorite of the Trek series, and I see a lot of overlaps between the two. Anyone else feel especially drawn to these two series?

 

[Akiraprise]

VOY did end up being more TOS like than the other shows. In both series the crews had minimal contact with Starfleet, both ships were essentially on their own, both captains bent the rules on a frequent basis and would have moved heaven and earth for their crews. Most of the episodes were stand alone with few arcs. I'm sure there were other similarities.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

This is a great topic, similarities between VOY and TOS. I'm going to come back to this and post lots of inspiring stuffs but right not I'm watching Buffy and drinking beer. However..

I have always said Janeway is the captain most like Kirk. They are both lateral thinkers, seat of your pants, intuitive and at times they look reckless.

 

[bbjeg]

^I used to watched Buffy but switched to Angel when it came out.

I think what made Voyager so much like TOS was Tuvok's character, especially during those scenes when he disagrees with Janeway using Vulcan logic.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Yes that's a good point, Spock had that argumentative way with Kirk, in fact Kirk used that argumentative style to sharpen his own ideas. Which I think you saw, to a lesser extent, with Tuvok and Janeway.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I would say season 1 TNG is the most like TOS, but that's a rather unflattering comparison.

The biggest similarity between Voyager and TOS that no other series can say is that the ship had no hope of reinforcements. It was in deep space, on its own. And when they had an opportunity to help someone they did it just because they felt like it, damn the regulations.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I have always said Janeway is the captain most like Kirk. They are both lateral thinkers, seat of your pants, intuitive and at times they look reckless.

Agreed. Unfortunately, whereas Kirk has Spock to keep him from going completely over the edge some times, Janeway was stuck with the rather useless Chakotay.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

But but.. his people! And his dead father! And! And!

 

[Captain Kathryn]

I have always said Janeway is the captain most like Kirk. They are both lateral thinkers, seat of your pants, intuitive and at times they look reckless.

Agreed. Unfortunately, whereas Kirk has Spock to keep him from going completely over the edge some times, Janeway was stuck with the rather useless Chakotay.

Yeah...as much as Janeway is similar to Kirk...Chakotay doesn't hold a candle to Spock.

 

[Lance]

This is a great topic, similarities between VOY and TOS. I'm going to come back to this and post lots of inspiring stuffs but right not I'm watching Buffy and drinking beer. However..

I have always said Janeway is the captain most like Kirk. They are both lateral thinkers, seat of your pants, intuitive and at times they look reckless.

Totally agree, and I'm sure a lot of interesting comparisons can be made for both shows. VOY on the whole reminded me the most of TOS out of any of the spin-offs.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

It's intersting, TOS is easily my number 1 Trek, but VOY has been in second spot for many years. It certainly has many similarities and often just "feels" like TOS. I've often read VOY was envisaged as a TNG clone, but it definitely didn't pan out that way if true IMO.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Voyager had Vest Janeway running around the ship fighting giant mutant viruses. It's the kind of nutty stuff TOS did all the time (admittedly though, TNG did have Spider Barclay, Trout Troi and Neanderthal Riker)

Voyager seemed to have that sense of fun about it, not taking themselves as seriously as TNG. Even the one time Janeway starts spewing Picard-style "people of the 24th century are better than you primitives" nonsense the 20th century guy immediately gets away.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Voyager had premises most like TOS but characterization and storytelling style were very much like late run TNG. I suppose Janeway is more like Kirk than Picard or Sisko just because she's similarly emotional, fiercely loyal and impulsive. But I'd much rather play poker with Janeway than Kirk because she brings emotional intensity where Kirk brings composure and wits.

For the logic of story resolution and the manner characters relate to each other there's no other comparison than TNG.

 

[david g]

I like TNG, but I find VOY much more emotionally affecting and also a lot more fun, generally. These are the reasons I find it to be so similar to TOS. While I admire DS9, I have never felt connected to it emotionally. VOY is full of poignant moments that directly engage the viewer in a character's personal conflicts, usually centered in some deep-seated pain, flaw, or memory. (True of DS9, too, of course, but as I say I find VOY more affecting.) On TOS, Spock's difficulties with his identity were similarly painful and poignant.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I couldn't connect to the emotions of the Voyager crew much at all. Their emotional dilemmas tended to be sitcom-style dilemmas, contrived problems derived from their core gimmicks that they have an exaggerated reaction to out of nowhere then resolve completely in the space of one pointed conversation. Voyager emotions were way too canned and artificial to relate to.

TOS emotions come across much more viscerally and sincerely than in any of the other Trek series. I suppose TNG isn't much better than Voyager in that regard though.

I would consider Odo the most emotionally relatable character outside of TOS, by a long shot.

 

[david g]

Jirin, it all comes down to which characters you respond to and why, and which characters you care about. Certainly, there were episodes of VOY that were less "authentic" than others. "Vis-a-Vis," for example. But when I think about episodes like "Faces," "Jetrel," "The Gift," "YOH," "Latent Image," "Dark Frontier," "Imperfection," or "Lineage," I certainly would call such episodes extremely meaningful and the farthest thing from "sitcom-like."

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I would agree some of those, but I would include Faces as just being a canned reflection of the character's core gimmick. And I would include Course: Oblivion as another example on the 'good' side.

The right way to write a character flaw is to have it interact naturally with the story you're writing. Create a scenario around just showing the audience something interesting, then decide how each character is going to respond to it. Don't contrive a scenario specifically around it, only to end the episode by reducing it to one speech that leads to a life changing personal revelation that is somehow completely forgotten the next time an episode addresses said flaw.

Latent Image is another case where the personal revelation is completely forgotten at the end of the episode, like in a sitcom.

Even in the episodes that weren't written lazily around directly exploiting character gimmicks, in most cases the characters come off as one dimensional, as if their only major personality trait is that one flaw they have.

 

[F. King Daniel]

But weren't the personal revelations reset at the end of every single TOS and TNG episode too?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I dunno, Riker revealed himself to be an asshole in season 1 and that was never reset.

 

[bbjeg]

^It reset every now and then, he just became an asshole again but I can't blame him. He couldn't be the crews commander and their friends all the time, it was his job to be an asshole at times.