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There sure is a lot of earth-related crap floating around in the Delta Quadrant.

Bad Thoughts said:
My point was that they didn't need feature episodes to do development. All that are needed are a few scenes every now and then that show the characters engaged in new problems.
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I should just have quoted only the very first sentence of your post 'Those characters still had their feature episodes, just not as many as Janeway, EMH, and Seven of Nine. ' because that was the one I was really responding to. But I agree with your main point that you don't need feature episode in the first place with a bit of diligent writing. On the other hand, as I argued, with writing that's only interested in getting a one-off episode, you'll get feature episodes that don't develop the character.

Lynx said:
Well, that really confirms my many statements about sloppy writing. I bet that they weren't even thinking when they wrote that comment for Neelix.
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I think they just wanted to go for a quick 'life is hard in this neighbourhood of the DQ' vibe and didn't think beyond that. But I agree, water should be one of the easiest resources to procure if you are warp capable.
 
at Quark's said:
I think they just wanted to go for a quick 'life is hard in this neighbourhood of the DQ' vibe and didn't think beyond that. But I agree, water should be one of the easiest resources to procure if you are warp capable.
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That's exactly what was typical for much of their way of writing. They did go for something without even thinking and then it was "Ah, don't bother. The viewers won't notice".
 
One thing that VOYAGER did early but ignored in later seasons was the lack of resources and materials to keep going. I get that they can find new ways of making things work, but it seems like it was abandoned completely after season 2... definitely season 3.

And it was something that was done as side conversation, even though it was necessary to the plot. Like in "TATTOO", they were looking for a mineral for their warp coils that was needed, but it was only mentioned a couple times in the episode. Yet it was what drove that story forward because they still kept searching.

Or "THE CLOUD", when they were trying to augment their power reserves. Or "PARTURITION" and "STATE OF FLUX", when they are just getting food, something they need on a regular basis, and we only saw that in the first few years.

It would have been nice to see some more scenes of that nature in the later years.
 
Swedish Borg said:
They did hit that reset button a little too hard at the end of (practically) each episode.
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Arguably its biggest flaw. There was no scope for character development. Some characters managed it anyway: the Doctor, Seven, even Tom managed some. But Janeway, Chakotay, and Harry Kim were almost painfully static.
 
Well, it makes sense that things would get better, especially when the heroes are shown striving to make things better during the early seasons. And if the early seasons establish that the sorry state of the ship and the lack of resources are a threat to the heroes making it all the way back home, then the plot becomes more plausible if the threat is alleviated: the heroes then are excused for making the progress in their quest, despite the early doomsaying.

It's sort of clear-cut, too: before the Nekrit Expanse, there are shortages and breakdowns and desperate searches for resources, and a constant fear of the Kazon. After the Nekrit Expanse, the ship has what she needs, Neelix gathers stuff mainly for variety, and there is no looming threat. Basically, the ship got out of the ghetto and over the wire fence and now can pull in at gas stations that provide reliable service, even if at a price.

Sure, the show could have done a nuBSG and somehow refreshed the desperation with new threats and shortages in mid-run, plus finally (and somewhat suddenly and jarringly) showed the ship falling apart when the goal is already in sight. But it chose to have our heroes face the mid-run threats with a starship repaired to standard trim, for better or worse.

Timo Saloniemi
 
The Nekrit Expanse was a turning point for Voyager. That was when they stopped being essentially the most powerful, technologically advanced ship around to everyone having pretty much the same level of technology. Transporters, for instance, were almost unheard of before the Nekrit Expanse. Afterward, just about everyone had it.

I missed that, actually... it was a nice way of setting the Delta Quadrant apart from the supremely advanced Gamma Quadrant.
 
Yup. It would have been cool for the heroes to reach a bubble of the reverse sort at some point, with a general level of tech so advanced that they would be the constantly disadvantaged primitives even when at the very top of their game...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well, they met a few species that treated them as inferiors, like the "scientists" who experimented on the crew until Janeway "solved the problem" with a Kamikaze run.
 
Moral: Whatever you do, don't make Janeway crazy unless you have a serious death wish. Half those scientists found that out the hard way.
 
I feel the same way about Futurama’s constant reliance on the preserved heads of 2000s celebrities.

Even if humans have been heavily abducted, assimilated, whatever the proportion shouldn’t be so huge. Not that many humans have even been assimilated compared to the species who lost their entire planets.

So the answer is “We were still in the era of promo-driven scripting”.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
I feel the same way about Futurama’s constant reliance on the preserved heads of 2000s celebrities.

Even if humans have been heavily abducted, assimilated, whatever the proportion shouldn’t be so huge. Not that many humans have even been assimilated compared to the species who lost their entire planets.

So the answer is “We were still in the era of promo-driven scripting”.
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You're right, at most only a few hundred humans have ever been assimilated which is like one drone in hundreds of millions!!! The odds of meeting one somewhere like in a borg cube are close to zero!!
 
Farscape One said:
One thing that VOYAGER did early but ignored in later seasons was the lack of resources and materials to keep going. I get that they can find new ways of making things work, but it seems like it was abandoned completely after season 2... definitely season 3.

And it was something that was done as side conversation, even though it was necessary to the plot. Like in "TATTOO", they were looking for a mineral for their warp coils that was needed, but it was only mentioned a couple times in the episode. Yet it was what drove that story forward because they still kept searching.

Or "THE CLOUD", when they were trying to augment their power reserves. Or "PARTURITION" and "STATE OF FLUX", when they are just getting food, something they need on a regular basis, and we only saw that in the first few years.

It would have been nice to see some more scenes of that nature in the later years.
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I agree here.

It strikes me that the food problem, which was haunting Voyager in the first seasons became non-existing in later seasons.

They actually transformed the Hydroponics Bay to a Dracula's Den for The Borg. Didn't they grow food anymore?
 
Lynx said:
I agree here.

It strikes me that the food problem, which was haunting Voyager in the first seasons became non-existing in later seasons.

They actually transformed the Hydroponics Bay to a Dracula's Den for The Borg. Didn't they grow food anymore?
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Did you notice that the "hydroponics" use dirt? Someone on the writing staff doesn't know what "hydroponics" means.
 
at Quark's said:
I suppose it depends upon how loosely you'd interpret the 'around here'. Are we talking about this system only, or are we talking about everywhere where Neelix had traveled in his life? The fact that he doesn't even seem to recognise the word 'bath' (see here), or at the very least his reaction is one of utmost astonishment when Tuvok asks him whether he would care for one would direct me to think in the latter direction. (Then again, of course you can interpret the material differently).
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I have made an entire thread about this once in the past. If you are judging things on Caretaker alone, it seems that this wide region of DQ is simply giant post-apocalyptic Space Western wastelend. But then confy aliens-of-the-week planets started to pop out.
 
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Oddish said:
Arguably its biggest feature. There was no scope for character development. Some characters managed it anyway: the Doctor, Seven, even Tom managed some. But Janeway, Chakotay, and Harry Kim were almost painfully static.
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FTFY
 
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