Oh, on the contrary. The premise of Voyager was designed to be episodic. Voyager's journey toward home was merely an excuse to give the ship a mission that kept it moving continuously from world to world, episode to episode, in the same way that Richard Kimble being on the run from the law in The Fugitive compelled him to move to a new town every week. It's the same kind of setup as many episodic shows like Lost in Space or Battlestar Galactica, where the characters have a specific goal that keeps driving them but is unlikely to be achieved in the lifetime of the series, so it's more a MacGuffin than anything else. If anything, it lent itself to a lack of plot continuity, because Voyager kept leaving behind the people and places they encountered. When characters or hostile species did recur, like Seska or the Vidiians, audiences complained, "Shouldn't they have been left behind by now?"
As for DS9, its basic premises -- Sisko's mission to bring Bajor into the Federation and the opportunity to explore the Gamma Quadrant through the wormhole -- were the kind of open-ended setups that work for an episodic series, because they can generate numerous separate plots in pursuit of the same long-term goal.
Granted, both shows had the inbuilt potential for continuity in their character arcs, but as I've said, that's not the same thing as serialization. Serialization doesn't just mean that storylines advance and characters grow and change over the course of a series. That's just continuity. A serial is specifically a story structure where a single continuous story spans multiple episodes -- where episodes are chapters in a single volume, rather than complete volumes in a series. DS9's premise encouraged continuity in that the characters stayed in the same place and could experience the consequences of their actions, but those consequences could be months or years down the road, not in the immediately following episode.
No, the reason VGR didn't have much continuity is because UPN wouldn't let them. The network wanted a traditional episodic show like TNG, something where they could have flexibility in choosing the airdate order, and where casual viewers could drop in on an episode without being confused if they didn't see previous ones. After all, they were a new network still trying to expand their viewer base, so much of the audience would be expected to come aboard in the middle.
Also, serialization in non-soap opera prime time dramas was still a novelty at the time, and UPN wanted something conventional, something that didn't take chances, because VGR was the anchor for their whole nascent network and they wanted it to be safe and reliable rather than taking creative risks. By contrast, DS9 was a syndicated show, so it didn't have network restrictions and was freer to take chances.
Another main difference is that Rick Berman was more hands-on with VGR and the TNG movies, while he pretty much let Ira Behr have free rein with DS9. People focus on the showrunners, but one factor that gets overlooked, I gather, is how effective the showrunners were at standing up to Berman and convincing him to change his mind. I think Behr was the best at that, while Braga was the least effective at it. After all, the one consistent thing about Braga's later career as a showrunner is its lack of a unifying voice or vision. Pretty much everything he's done was created by someone else or co-created with someone else. Braga's strength is in helping other creators express their voices and visions.
I agree with you about the UPN interference, and I have said so in the past. I said that there was a lot of inconsistency with the characters, Janeway being a stark example, and I said I attributed
part of that to the changing of head writers, not the whole reason. Because you can be episodic and
still be consistent with your characters.
And both might have been designed as episodic, but they very much had serialization as something that's baked in. DS9, for example... Bajor finding out what it means to be free and trying to get Federation membership, Jake growing up, Sisko rebuilding his life again, etc. DS9, because it was not set primarily on a ship, can do things and actions and see the consequences of them later that season, every other season, or even years later. TOS and TNG almost never did that. It's one of the things that help give DS9 a sense of grounding... actions can have consequences down the road, just like in real life. And DS9 had over
20 recurring characters, all fleshed out, along with 9 main cast.
VOYAGER's premise also had a similar setup... limited resources, two different crews with different philosophies having to work together, etc. Both the limited resources and the two crews having to work together were basically dropped quickly. And with
Voyager being the ONLY Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant, with no way to get more officers, they should have had a lot more recurring characters on the ship. How many did we get? Carey, who was completely forgotten after season 1 (unless it was a time travel episode to further show it was the past) and killed off right before the finale; Michael Jonas, who only appeared in those 5 episodes 'Kazon traitor' arc in season 2; Seska, killed at the end of season 2 ('"BASICS, PART II" was filmed as the final episode of season 2, so I count it as such); Hogan, the same; Suder, only appeared in 3 episodes (all produced in season 2); Vorik, who had 3 episodes in season 3 (who was played by Jeri Taylor's son... coincidence that it was also the only season she was sole head writer?) and appeared, barely, about once per season afterward; Samantha Wildman, who appeared only a few times and completely disappeared after early season 5, despite having a growing daughter on board; Naomi Wildman; the Borg kids, who all left barely half a season later after only appwaring a couple times, except for Icheb; and Icheb. So from season 3 onward, they really had only 3 recurring people (Vorik, Naomi, Icheb), and 2 of them were really the last couple seasons? On a ship of only 150 people?
And they basically ignored 1/3 of their lead cast from season 4 onward. There's just no excuse for that.
They did take quite a while to get through Kazon space, but given that they made significant detours
and backtracked a couple times, like in
"JETREL" and "RESOLUTIONS", I can see them taking longer to get out of the area.
We never see them take long to get past vast territories ever again, even though it sounded like it should have, like the Devore supposedly had a large empire and Krenim space. (The Hirogen didn't have territory because they completely nomadic. But they really should not have encountered them in season 7, given how far they traveled in those jumps from "NIGHT", "TIMELESS", "DARK FRONTIER", and "THE VOYAGER CONSPIRACY". Same with the Malon in "JUGGERNAUT".)
About the only real arcs they did was Tom and B'Elanna, which I felt they handled organically and well (from just shipmates to friends to dating to marriage), and later the Pathfinder Project. The Doctor and Seven both had character arcs, too, but they very much dominated the series from season 4 onward.
