Just because they don't show whole episodes of the crew repairing the ship, or hunting for food, doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means who the hell wants to watch that?
I think we can reasonably extrapolate these things take place when we're not looking.
I meant much more than just those repairing the ship/replacing the shuttles issues. I find it most disappointing in terms of character development. There are drastic character events that happen in an episode but are completely forgotten after that episode ends.
Like the Tuvix episode, or the other one where Tuvok loses his memory and Neelix becomes his best friend. Both episodes should have had a profound impact on the relationship between the two, and it would've been worth being explored beyond that. But after either of those episodes, it's completely forgotten again and their relationship is back to "normal" as if nothing ever happened. Any Tuvok+Neelix encounter in later episodes could have happened before those and there'd be no difference.
Take ENT season 4. In the beginning, Archer at least mentions that he resorted to torture earlier and doubted himself if he had gone too far. It wasn't exactly dealt with in a meaningful way, but at least
it wasn't forgotten entirely. In a Voyager episode, Janeway tries to murder a prisoner who refuses to disclose information, and Chakotay saves his life against her will. That should have had consequences for the relationship between the two, and Janeway's inner struggle should have been explored further. But after the end of the episode, it's entirely forgotten. It's as if none of it ever happened.
B'Elanna is another case. There's the episode that gives her severe depression (or something similar). She's so troubled that she more or less seeks death. After the episode, she's just the same as she was before again, and there's no episode afterwards that wouldn't have been the same before. It just never happened. Same with her afterlife experience, no impact whatsoever. As usual, an issue appears
There were a few things that separate "eras" within VOY, as Seska, the Kazon, the (lame) departure of Kes, the arrival of Seven, the encounter with the Borg. I'm not saying there was no serialisation at all. But for the most part, you could randomly reshuffle episodes and it would make virtually no difference. I'm also not saying previous Trek wasn't guilty of it too, but I think it's not been as extreme as in VOY since the days of TOS.
Of all Trek series, I think DS9 did it best by far. It had a great mix of episodic and serialised nature, and imo the best character development by a mile.
