Oh please.
Should Voyager have been more like Stargate: Universe?
- Thread starter Enterprise1981
- Start date
Am I the only one that remembers the entire crew in Stirrups in the pilot?
Massrape is a little dark.
Massrape is a little dark.
You know what would have really brought the darkness of that home, if we had seen the main crew in hours of therapy with Deanna afterwards.
The Point of the Flag ship is that you show up, survive, get promoted two grades, and transferred some place safe to enjoy that rank.
Part of "surviving" Picard's Enterprise is about learning to ignore how full of shit Dee is.
Part of "surviving" Picard's Enterprise is about learning to ignore how full of shit Dee is.
This
It just wasn't in the DNA of Star Trek as it was generated, molded, and crafted to a fine burnish by the administration(s) in charge for the first forty years of the franchise. Putting aside the gauzy speculation of the what if's of YOH's potential, let's look rather at Equinox. Here were Starfleet personnel faced with extreme privation (at least as represented by smudgy faces and wrinkled uniforms), dictated essentially by their vessel's class and resources compared with Voyager, and who they had the random misfortune of running into early on. Of course, we only had the chance to meet a few of the crew, but I think it safe to say that sympathetic feeling could have been evinced for the plight of these Federation representatives, especially perhaps because their mission was true research unencumbered by diplomacy, martial exercises, or other Starfleet hijinks.
But, no. Though maintained as being discovered by accidental happenstance, this bunch decided to go the distance on nullifying as many of a species as possible to save their own skins. They could have instead tried to barter or beg their way to a bare subsistence in the hope of being able to find a planet that they could use as a respite until working through some other strategies or even as a longer term home while still trying to discover friends through long range communication efforts. Their choice though was to turn their back on the tradition of respect, enlightenment, and honor that they had been steeped and trained in and were pledged to uphold, mortgaging the integrity of their moral lives in the process. Hell, who knows, maybe they offed some of their comrades who protested going down this path.
A lot of kindling for the Janeway as psychotic argument, or at least the paradigm of wildly inconsistent Janeway is drawn from this episode. The course that Ransom took was an affront to her and rankled far beyond a sober recounting of the evidence of protocols and precepts broken and discarded would reasonably have engendered. Was this reaction meant to suggest someone whose long absence from the reassurance of contact with a command structure was so emboldening that all rational caution or checks and balances could be recklessly discarded? Did Chakotay's stance represent the light of balance, restraint, and judicious pursuit by contrast?
I think that one can make the argument that Janeway's unwavering zealousness was not the writers taking a flyer on how far of an outlier we can make of her behavior, albeit in the crucible of an incredibly pressurized set of stimuli. Or not that the impression trying to be communicated was that her second in command was actually the one who possessed the true winning qualities of calm and clear eyed discernment in such perilous circumstances and not just as more fodder for another iteration of the tired toothless conflict between the two that always saw the same victor.
I think that Janeway's fury simply functioned to speak for the revulsion, anger, and pitiless eye that the Trek audience would be presumed to have felt when presented with the insult of what the Equinox crew brought to the face and concept of what the Federation and Starfleet stood for. Her own actions not meant to be reviled or blanched at, but supported as defensible and perhaps even essential when faced with the kind of threat to faith, convention, and orthodoxy that Ransom and his rabble brought into sharp relief.
The above exegesis to point out that the reality of what a day in, day out portrayal of Trek protagonists, at least those on "our" side, that was replete with manifest expressions of uncertainty, fear, strife aka known as the messiness and irresolution of our actual lives, just did not conform to how the spirit of Trek was so rigourously codified over a long period of time and for which a substantive reset likely seemed an unbridgeable and undesired divide to the ruling regime. Some dust, shipboard damage from a confrontation, or even Borg enhancement garbage detracting from the aesthetics, sticking around for more than a reel or two? Sure, they could have done it. A one-off where Janeway has a mendable existential crisis? OK. A raggedly worn down B'Elanna suicidely tempting fate in an attempt to feel something but snapping back to form with a little sympathetic talking to? Eh, if you must, even without any plausible buttressing of medication or therapy. A reprobate crew, even if rating two parts, getting pretty much wiped out for its sins against the culture (hey, how about seeing Gilmore or Lessing in a later episode working through their conflicted consciences)? Absolutely.
Suder was nothing if not dark impulses writ large, even nihilistically so. Well, he did good in the end and got the hero treatment. But, needless to say, he was going to have to buy the farm in the process and was non-Starfleet Maquis anyway, so technically outside the pale. But a disordered and chaotic set of primary characters or basic condition they were obliged to confront, bespeaking a similarly broken worldview?
Not hardly!!!
Mentally ill.
Miracle cure.
Ordered to murder dozen's of Kazon by a lightbulb.
Saves the ship.
Dead.
Miracle cure.
Ordered to murder dozen's of Kazon by a lightbulb.
Saves the ship.
Dead.
Anytime they were separated from home it was only for an episode, this was an entire series where--in reality--the chances of getting home in one piece were slim to nil (of course being a TV series it had to end happily). Despite that they just never felt all that in peril, but more just another day another sector of space to explore and fire on hostile alien ships which, aside from some dry ice and flickering consoles, won't leave much of a mark on the pristine ship. Then next week, reset, just another day another sector...
Despite some misgivings, I'm really happy that Voyager turned out to be what it was, rather than become a "doom and gloom" series like NuBSG and Stargate Universe.
When the characters are so lousy that I rather cheer for the "bad guys" and when people fall asleep watchig a certain series, then we have reached the definite bottom when it comes to storytelling and characterization.
When the characters are so lousy that I rather cheer for the "bad guys" and when people fall asleep watchig a certain series, then we have reached the definite bottom when it comes to storytelling and characterization.
Isn't this all a matter of perspective? The same argument could be used against VOY.
Yes of course it is a matter of perspective.
Sometimes you are over a certain kind of tv after years of absorbing it and newness is refreshing, I know I've met people who LOVED SG'U's first season because it was such a different style than the 15 seasons of Stargates that had preceded it.
Sometimes you are over a certain kind of tv after years of absorbing it and newness is refreshing, I know I've met people who LOVED SG'U's first season because it was such a different style than the 15 seasons of Stargates that had preceded it.
VOY is Trek, which is about optimism and hope for a bright future. I'd rather have watched a "darker, grittier" VOY in which that optimism was their guiding light, that no matter how bad things got for the crew they were on the path to something better.
That's just me though.
That's just me though.
UPN: "Mission accomplished."
I don't recall anyone specifically saying it had to be one person per cryopod. I figure eventually Eli just crawled in to snuggle with Chloe for a year.
I want to make this entire post my new sig.
It can be a difficult balancing act for the studios/networks. Some want more of the same others want something different.
So in the case of ENT and perhaps VOY
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItstheSameNowItSucks
And perhaps for SG:U
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks
Of course as I said earlier it's a matter of perspective.
I choose to respond to all universes I love with overwhelming positivity if not flat out adoration. Except when I don't.
Just because you chose not to brand yourself with a Venus sigil, you don't have to keep saying things like that just to prove to the noobz that you are a lady.
Are you saying men can't love?
Well.
Well.
The common gender symbols are old timey astrological symbols from the middle ages.
♂ is Mars.
♀ is Venus.
On wikipedia, there's a dozen gender symbols if you want to get surgical and carve up what god gave you, not that there's anything wrong with that, but on Facebook there's 58 classifications of gender for your profile.
You might have noticed that a lot of people here do chose to express their gender in the bottom left corner of every post with one of these sigils.
At least half of them are lying.
♂ is Mars.
♀ is Venus.
On wikipedia, there's a dozen gender symbols if you want to get surgical and carve up what god gave you, not that there's anything wrong with that, but on Facebook there's 58 classifications of gender for your profile.
You might have noticed that a lot of people here do chose to express their gender in the bottom left corner of every post with one of these sigils.
At least half of them are lying.
Facebook has male, female and "custom" where you can write.. ANYTHING you please!!
I just found this out after looking up what the 58 classifications were. I'm excited.
EDIT: bleh. It does not work. I changed my gender to custom and then filled in the box with 'Janeway' and it says
I just found this out after looking up what the 58 classifications were. I'm excited.
EDIT: bleh. It does not work. I changed my gender to custom and then filled in the box with 'Janeway' and it says
But there are no options! There is just an empty box you can write in!
So, you're too good for "other"?
There is no other. There is male, female and "custom" which is a lying trick.
