Spoilers VOY DOC: To The Journey | Rating and Review

[Akiraprise]

It's been awhile since we've had a new rating and review thread in the VOY forum but with the digital release of To the Journey this evening for backers that time has come. Spoilers from this point forward.

​

"It's been over 25 years since Voyager first got lost in the Delta Quadrant and took us all on an incredible seven-year journey. It is now time to revisit, celebrate, and fully explore To The Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager the most crowdfunded documentary film to date."

The Star Trek Voyager Documentary

The production team of the DS9 documentary and For the Love of Spock now bring you the Voyager Doc! | Check out 'The Star Trek Voyager Documentary' on Indiegogo.

www.indiegogo.com

To The Journey: Looking Back at Star Trek: Voyager

voyagerdocumentary.com

 

[tomalak301]

Well, the long awaited Documentary is finally here. I'm glad I finally got to see it and we are at the "endgame" of this whole thing, so now we can talk about the quality and if it is good or not.

I think for me, the thought process of this documentary could have been thought better. There were parts of this documentary I enjoyed, and I thought it ended really strong with the toast, but there was a lot of this where I felt like it was left on the cutting room floor of special features that if Voyager ever got a Blu Ray set, stuff from here would appear on. I think for me, my one complaint about it was there wasn't really a narrative in which things could grow off from. It was like a check list of items to talk about, but there wasn't really a theme to bring this documentary together. I think they tried with the To the Journey toast, but I feel like a mention of "To the Journey" at the beginning would have helped, and having someone like Garrett Wang be the main narrator would have added gravitas.

There were also things I wish they had delved into further. For example, at the beginning we got to see archive footage of the launch of UPN, yet that only lasted for 3 minutes. It would have been nice to go back in time to 1995 and maybe see what else was on that helped launch the network. Also, they could have done something about the Introduction to Voyager hosted by Bob Picardo that aired the Saturday before Caretaker. They even could have talked about the network as a whole, and why it failed and turned into the CW.

There were also a lot of missed opportunities to talk about episodes and guest stars themselves. How awesome would it have been to interview The Rock, or the actors who played Ransom and Chaotica, or Ed Bigley Jr? I think they could have focused more on the writing aspects of the series and the decisions they made or didn't make. Ever since the show ended, I would have loved the writers room to address one of the common complaints about the ending, which was what happened to the crew after they got home. We got a taste with Seven and Tuvok thanks to Picard, but what about the Maquis, or Tom and B'Elanna, or 7 trying to adjust on earth (Before Picard). That sometimes it part of the Journey too. I also think the Aerospace stuff should have been cut entirely. That didn't bring anything to the table. Also, as a fan of Prodigy, if they had not mentioned Prodigy, it would have dropped another point, so I'm glad they did.

I hate to sound negative so some things I did like. I appreciated they talked about Kes, and I appreciated Robbie McNeil bringing up Kes at the end. Evidently it was more of a mental health thing for the actress but where did this whole thing with Wang and Time Person of the Year come in? I also liked they showed more archival footage of Bujold, and yeah that part didn't work. I also appreciated more from Michael Pillar, and Jeri Taylor having a big presence here talking about the legacy of Janeway was probably the best part of the entire thing.

I gave the Documentary a 6. I feel like they should have gone in an entirely different, more writing focused, direction with it, but it was nice to finally see it.

 

[Tosk]

It was okay. I think/hope I'll enjoy it more on rewatch, I won't be distracted by the negatives next time.

I'll keep the majority of my complaints about it to myself, except for two...

There's so much upscaled footage in this. I know it can't really be avoided for some of it, but worth noting as a minor gripe. The DS9 doc went back to film elements for most of the footage and on a much smaller budget. The same goes for many of the photos. As with the footage, some of the AI upscaling was okay, and some of it was quite poor. One photo of the co-creator trio had Berman's face altered so much he looked like a different person.

My second note is very minor in the grand scheme, but I did not enjoy spending so much time on Garrett's little zero-g adventure. I found it kind of a poor substitute for the writer's room material in the DS9 doc. (I'm not saying they are remotely the same, but it does feel like it's trying to function similarly within the structure of the doc itself; some now/new material to cut away to periodically.) I personally wish that time could have been devoted to other things. ...though the shots of the Eaglemoss ships in zero-g was fun.

The recreations of VFX shots were all very good, and we even get the bonus of seeing the aeroshuttle disengage.

I also liked they showed more archival footage of Bujold

Did they? It seemed like it was all the stuff already released on DVD...but admittedly I haven't gone back to it in a while.