Voyager DID do those kinds of stories, and to a greater degree than people think. The series might not have done said kinds of stories to the degree that people think they should have, but it did do said kinds of stories throughout its run.
The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager
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Voyager DID do those kinds of stories, and to a greater degree than people think. The series might not have done said kinds of stories to the degree that people think they should have, but it did do said kinds of stories throughout its run.
Have to disagree with you there. By NEM we know that the Federation spans 8 000ly. The milky Way Galaxy is some 100 0000ly across.
So I would hazard a guess that the majority of the Milky Way Galaxy hadn't been visited by a manned Federation space. At best it had been mapped by various probes or long range sensors such as the Argus Array.
They were in pristine condition because the CGI tech to make the ship constantly damaged every episode didn't exist back then on a TV budget, that's why by ENT they could do that kind of storyline: The cheap CGI existed.
Also, they shot themselves in the foot with their "No Support" part of the premise.
"No Support" means that they'll never make any friends, they'll never trade or find repair stations, they'll never be able to create a power base for themselves, they'll never be able to get involved with local politics, it just means they'll be flying through everything and never get involved.
So basically, you've lost nearly half of the dramatic and creative potential thanks to the constraints of a the premise.
Also, knowing how to get back to the Alpha Quadrant also undercut a lot of the potential as well.
Also, they shot themselves in the foot with their "No Support" part of the premise.
"No Support" means that they'll never make any friends, they'll never trade or find repair stations, they'll never be able to create a power base for themselves, they'll never be able to get involved with local politics, it just means they'll be flying through everything and never get involved.
So basically, you've lost nearly half of the dramatic and creative potential thanks to the constraints of a the premise.
Also, knowing how to get back to the Alpha Quadrant also undercut a lot of the potential as well.
Yes, it did, but in the most perfunctory manner possible. Often it was reduced to grumbling about the leola root cuisine. Other times, it was hijacked by other stories, which allowed significant entanglements to be cast aside. Alliances had an excellent premise that on the one hand, could contribute to the overall goal of getting Voyager home, and on the other, would have made the material conditions of Voyager more acceptable. Instead, the canned inter-racial strife allowed Voyager to sever its connections, the reasons for its condition unexplained. Upthread, Arwan claims that Voyager would not have survived the Year of Hell without the reset. That's true. However, that's only because of the writers' and producers' choices: making the strength of the combatants so asymmetrical and the stakes so high. Dialing back Voyager's damage, even a little, might have made for interesting stories in diplomacy as Janeway sought to fix the ship and bring the crew back together. Four or five episode could have fixed Voyager and made the series more credible.
I'd go so far as to say that DS9 and ENT were the only shows to truly live up, by and large, to their basic premises, so if you're going to criticize VOY for not truly living up to its premise, TOS and TNG need to be subjected to the same criticism.
^DS9 did fail to defend the wormhole and protect Bajor from Cardassia.
Nah, I liked the note it ended on. Things were different, but the future held great things. Glossing over Bajor's entry into the Federation... and they'd have to with all the other crap going on in that finale... would've been a disservice. Not to mention we would've missed out on some great novels.
DS9's basic premise was "The Rifleman in space", and, for all the storyline twists and turns that the PTBs added over the years, none of said things altered that basic idea.
Everybody cites Firefly as being a Space Western, but at its core, DS9 was too. It didn't have the obvious Western visual motifs the way Firefly did, but the tropes and conceptual trappings of your classic Western were all very much present in the show from beginning to end.
Everybody cites Firefly as being a Space Western, but at its core, DS9 was too. It didn't have the obvious Western visual motifs the way Firefly did, but the tropes and conceptual trappings of your classic Western were all very much present in the show from beginning to end.
The Rifelman was the model, not the premise.
^ Okay, what do you consider DS9's basic premise to be, then? If it's not "The Rifleman in space", what is it?
The reason was that Jeri Taylor, who was in charge at the time, didn't want to keep the Kazon around and wanted to get rid of all recurring aliens and for the ship to be more standalone.
Voyager also suffered from 50% of their production staff not wanting to do the show in the first place and never believing in the Premise.
Do that, and then the complaints will just be "Voyager should've been more damaged and this should've been the rest of the series!" and that 5 episodes was too short.
They'd have to keep making more and more models to show the state of repair, which would've cost a ton of money.
And if they'd just switched from the damaged model back to the pristine one and said "We've been here for 6 months fixing it" then there'd just be complaints that we didn't see the repair process over 10 episodes.
I don't really want this thread to turn into an argument over what Voyager "should've been" so once I get an answer to my query about what Bad Thoughts considers DS9's basic premise to be, I'm respectfully asking that the subject of 'premise' be dropped.
Dude! The structure, presentation, characters, concepts, and indeed, the premise, are all aspects that determine how much actual serialization and continuity actually took place (as well as how much was appropriate). Dismissing those concerns oversimplifies the question, if not attempts to stifle some criticism.
This thread is not living up to it's premise?
Not really.
At any rate, it's my thread, and I'm asking that we move on from arguing about 'premise' because it's turning into a "what this show should've been" thread rather than a thread about what the show was and the level of continuity and serialization that it had for being what it was.
I'm still waiting for an answer from you re: DS9's basic premise, BTW.
^You set the terms. Why are you surprised that you aren't getting an answer?
^ If you don't want to answer the question, fine. We're still moving on, or I'm going to contact a Mod and ask them to lock the thread because I'd prefer that things not degenerate into pointless bickering over a topic that isn't really relevant to the subject of this thread or the spirit of why I created it.
