Hello STEPhon IT,
There are some episodes of Voyager were descent, for me most of the episodes centered on Tuvok, B'Elanna, & Kes were the ones I appreciated but the one I loved the most was "Distant Origins". As for Voyager being crap? I never said that.
My mistake, sorry if it felt like I was putting words in your mouth.
"Distant Origins" was good, I also liked "Blink of an Eye" (almost wrote "Wink of an Eye" because it sounded similar. Wrong series however)
My favorite thing Voyager added to Star Trek lore is the Hirogen, how cliche they may be to some people.
I liked their initial concept, a race that sees other space faring species as nothing else but prey to test themselves against and which diplomacy in general is impossible with.
They might not be as deep as Gul Dukat or the Cardassians but not every protagonist needs to be. Sometimes you just need antagonists for the protagonists to test themselves against that don't have deep motivations.
These are the dangers of making so called prequels because the writers are not doing their homework and what's more shocking which I discovered were the showrunners (ENT and now DISCO) are encouraging them not to research or rewatch TOS or TNG episodes. So what's the point of making a prequel??? To rewrite what was and claim they did it first! Now we have an Enterprise on Disco where everyone on that forum is highly praising and making excuses of how it's right, but negate the fact that it alters the history of the original Starship Enterprise. Feh! I've come to the conclusion Disco and ENT are not prequels of TOS, as a matter of fact they're from another universe entirely. Remember TNG episode "Parallels"?
That is one of the reasons why I dislike prequels in general, people who make them and claim that they respect continuity/sequence of appearances and events so often get them wrong, either by coincidence or even deliberately.
The most fanatic fans start making excuses (their name wasn't mentioned. It was all covered up) and eventually the producers and writers need to play damage control in order to make the prequel tie into the preceding show that chronologically takes place after it.
You want to do a prequel? Then stick to the continuity and don't start playing loose and cute to get all kinds of lore breaking stuff past the radar.
And don't start dissing on the fans for being such sticklers for continuity or claim that continuity prevents the writers from telling new stories.
That last one is often an excuse to bring back favorite characters and plot devices and pretend its all new or try to up the original instead of creating something new of their own.
Producers and writers knew that limitations would come with making a prequel and now they complain that they don't like these because they want to play with the fan favorites.
Edit; and like you said, sometimes they want to do it to claim that they did it first. It is so damn childish and arrogant.
You are not the first who brings up the theory that Discovery takes place in its own timeline. It is something that is being debated on the internet and Youtube. Several popular Youtube channels bring up that Prime not necessarily means "original timeline", simply a new one called Prime and that it was given this name to make Star Trek fans think that this was the timeline with Shatner's Kirk and Nimoy's Spock, Patrick Stewart's Picard etc. (I have no interest in debating this with people, if you think Prime is the original timeline fine but you do not need to contact me about it)
And yeah I also bring up the example of "Parallels". Heck Kurtzman has brought it up in the past.
There is one person on a Discovery dislike group who keeps bringing up that every after Enterprise and Discovery was changed/overwritten because Section 31 got their hands on a Borg corpse from First Contact and reverse engineered the technology. When I bring up "Parallels" or the Paradox issue (if First Contact no longer happens the Borg do not go back in time, thus there is no corpse in the past for Section 31 to reverse engineering. Therefore the original timeline must still exist) I don't get an answer or he keeps bringing up some fan theory video.
He doesn't even answer when I ask where it is mentioned on television when Section 31 got that Borg corpse.
Insurrection was a terrible movie but I imagined what if the Borg was interjected into the story? To me the Borg are game changers, the character has to have their full attention on them. The Borg should've been tired of trying to attack Earth, just not very interesting. Also, attempting the prevention of humans to go into space is not a high concept for a species like the Borg.
Earth and the Federation is pretty much a backwater for the Borg as otherwise they would have send multiple ships. And preventing First Contact would not benefit the Borg, they want the Federation to come into existence to assimilate its technologies and resources.
Regarding story ideas, yeah I would also not bring back Earth as it has been done to death.
Still don't have a good idea for a final TNG-Borg story to share with you. Only thoughts that I would like the Enterprise crew and the Titan crew to team up.
Edit: almost forgot this, STEPhon IT, if you like or don't mind comics, look up a series called Star Trek New Visions that was made by John Byrne, in particular issue 6 in which Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew face a Borg ship.
And don't worry if it sounds it would break continuity, Byrne actually pulled it off without it affecting the Enterprise D's crew encounter with them.
This is a rather non standard comic however. Instead of being drawn it is made up of still from episodes combined with new background and 3D models.
