Voyager is the worst series.....Baloney!

[Wildflowers]

I watched voyager during it's original run and got lot's of enjoyment and entertainment from it. But back then I didn't go online and look into it much. Late last year I got into the series again and this time got more involved with reading about it online. I was dismayed to find people making statements along the lines of "why trek fans hate voyager" or "why voyager is the worst star trek series".

I bit my tongue and decided to wait a while and look into it a bit more. Well I have and now I'd like to say something about it.


- A fact of the matter is that sometimes people make judgements about something BASED ON EMOTION and then cast about for some points of LOGIC TO BACK IT UP.

- The above point nicely leads me into the second:

Having a female captain and two other strong female characters
or
Having female star trek characters who aren't stupid, useless and just pretty girlfriend/wife adornments.

I saw a short doco many years ago about leadership. In it they had two people in leadership roles. One male and the other female. They both did the same thing and acted the same way. The male was perceived as being fine, he was doing his job, he was a decent boss. However the female who was doing the same things and saying the same things was perceived as a bitch. Bitch being my sumarising of what they said. A disturbing thing about it, well that is to say another disturbing thing about it is that not all of the respondents who thought she was this b**** were male.

I don't know if it is a term or not but I am going to use it. There is an obvious CULTURAL SEXISM in society. Some of the people who don't like Janeway BASED ON EMOTION and through CULTURAL SEXISM may well be women.

I remember some guy who thought women were weak because they were physically weaker but his son knew this was wrong and ridiculous. We've come a long way from where policemen let men rape and beat their wives without lifting a finger because hey she was his wife..... i.e. she was his property and only a woman and it's only a domestic situation and not a real crime.

OK so obviously last year when I tuned into star trek voyager comments online and found these bold judgements about voyager the obvious thing that pops to mind is it's a sexist thing. They have three previous male captains and then with the next captain being female the series is declared terrible and horrendous. Now I haven't specifically searched online about sexism and voyager but with all my time online since December I haven't come across anything discussing this possibility, so who knows there may be stuff about it out there but from what I've seen or not seen it's like the elephant in the room that shall not be discussed.

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a male bashing post. There are men who are more into women's rights than some women and men who like to see strong women characters portrayed on tv and my uncle was a cop in the 60's, 70's and 80's, throwing wife bashers in jail when it wasn't the regular thing to do and it was still fine to rape the wife. But as is well known the majority of star trek fans are males and I have no idea what the ratio of female to male fans of voyager is, but I do suspect that the great majority of people who take great delight in shitting all over voyager are males. But in saying that I have found and I know it to be true that voyager is liked by gay men, straight men, lesbians, straight women, old people, younger people and probably wet behind the ear people.

- Don't like the captain, don't like the series.

See above two points. Some people may have genuine dislikes of Janeway that aren't based on CULTURAL SEXISM or EMOTION BASED dislike followed up with logic.

Me personally, I'm pretty fond of Captain Kathryn Janeway. Mulgrew portrayed her as warm, humorous, kind and caring. She was smart and quick. I liked her spunk and she carried herself in a way that commanded respect.

Looking at the captains from a purely logical point of view:

Presumably the producers of the four series wanted all their captains to be pretty nice folk, as well as intelligent, quick and with a moral compass that most people would say about "yeah, that's not too bad". So that means that when the captains did something ridiculous then it was down to poor writing, over enthusiasm in manufacturing drama or a director (see Xena killing Gabrielle with her chakrum). So seeing as all the captains are meant to be competent and pretty nice, the ridiculous stuff is obviously down to the writing and sometimes directing and so that leaves two related things:
- what the captain is like from 'a most of the time' perspective and
- how the actor portrays the captain
And many of us like much of Janeway, and how Mulgrew portrayed her minus the above mentioned writer/directing ridiculousness.

Television and the movies are meant to be entertainment. So as such we viewers need to give the production teams a bit of leeway. Every medical procedure doesn't need to be absolutely accurate and every decision a character makes doesn't have to be one that every viewer would make if it improves the entertainment value. And sometimes members within a production staff will stuff up and sometimes they will just be plain lazy. But whatever the case, it is entertainment and so to get the most entertainment value out of it a person needs to take as much cool stuff out of it as they can and just chuck the junk in the trash.....and so my main perspective about Janeway is of her being, as said before: warm, humorous, kind, caring, smart, quick, with spunk and of carrying herself in a way that commands respect.

- Preference and ranking.

You may like dark and so DS9 may be more your thing, but that doesn't mean that just because "year of hell" didn't last for the entire 7 seasons that the series sucked. Dark is merely your preference. Some of us prefer the opposite and so hence the preference for some of us for Janeway and Voyager.

You may love Jean-Luc Picard, or Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty etc, you may love their friendships, the looks of the old style star trek or the fond memories it brings forth but that does not make Voyager shite. It merely means that TOS and/or TNG is your preference.

- Literal, actual, factual

I saw a poll result, with about 27 voters where I think they were voting for favorite or best series and all the others got votes, TOS, TNG, DS9 but Voyager got none. But it means nothing what with birds of a feather flocking together and the small number in the poll. I saw another poll from a site that had voyager coming in poorly but that poll was only with a few hundred voters. Then the same site had voyager doing well when it counted clicks to certain places rather than votes.

But the grandaddy poll of them all though (as far as I can tell) was done four years ago by startrek.com where they asked fans what their most watched series was and the RESULTS FROM OVER 25,000 PEOPLE was:

- The Next Generation 43%
- Voyager 20%
- The Original Series 19%
- Deep Space Nine 13%
- Enterprise 5%
- The Animated Series 0%

No this poll wasn't conducted scientifically but it is the best that there is to go off. And according to that poll, the only series that beat voyager in popularity was TNG, not TOS or DS9.

In my wandering around the internet I have found voyager to have quite the following and concluded that it was merely a vocal minority who was shitting all over voyager. I saw a post which I can't find now but their username was Alex I think and this person was saying that voyager is widely liked but that TOS and TNG fans are more vocal. So this person basically came to the same conclusion as I had.

Personally there are things that I hate about voyager that I would love to take out, but I just take the rest and run with it.


So the conclusion of all this is, THE FACT IS, THAT VOYAGER DOES NOT SUCK SIMPLY BECAUSE A VOCAL MINORITY HAVE A PREFERENCE OR STRONG EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO ANOTHER STAR TREK SERIES. AND ANY PERSON WHO MAINTAINS THAT OVERALL VOYAGER DOES INDEED SUCK WOULD HAVE A VERY, VERY DIFFICULT TIME BACKING THAT UP WITH LOGIC.

I don't think that it is so common on this site, but maybe people could stop shitting all over different series because it is just inflammatory. However of course, genuine grievances based on genuine faults put forth in a non inflammatory way can sometimes be educational and interesting.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Another fun fact about Voyager: It has its own forum.

 

[Wildflowers]

I realize this, however I posted it in the general discussion section and not the voyager section for a reason. That being that those in the general discussion section are more likely to be ones who may be inflammatory about voyager and thus more the ones that I wanted to reach through my post.

 

[marlboro]

If people hate Voyager because the captain is a female, then why do so many of the same people hate Archer on Enterprise?

I like both Voyager and Enterprise, but they are both deeply flawed. There are plenty of good episodes of both imo, andI think Star Trek fans who enjoy the other series would do well to stick with both shows to find those diamonds in the rough.

Instead of haranguing these potential new fans, why not offer an olive branch by talking up some of your favorite episodes in the hopes that they might give the series another chance?

 

[somebuddyX]

Threshold was the bomb yo!

 

[MacLeod]

What has the gender of the cast got to do with anything, as a male I've watched shows with a female lead and so long as it's well written.. It doesn't bother me. Good acting on top of writing also helps

As for polls, go to a different site and poll the same number of people and you'll get a different result. So a site such as StarTrek.com might tend to favour a TNG/VOY crowd whilst a site such as trekbbs might favour a DSN crowd. As for the question most watched show, I could say TOS is the show I've watched most because i grew up on re-runs because it was the only ST show doesn't mean it's my favourite. I might have watched more VOY then DSN on TV simply because DSN isn't re-run as often. Once again doesn't mean VOY is my favourite show.

You picked up on the writing and that is by and large is where a lot of the critisim against VOY is directed. As for Dark vs light isn't it about getting the balance right for some perhaps VOY was just to much to the light side, not saying we need to go the levels of say nBSG dark.

But I rarely if eve got the impression from any of the characters that they might never see home again, which was a distict possibility.

As for Leadership a Leader has people who follow them whilst a manager has people who work for them. I've worked with both female and male bosses and some of each gender have swung more to one way or the other.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Sometimes I think TV writers don't necessarily find the right balance for writing strong female characters. Sometimes (and it's not just Janeway in Voyager), certain female characters can come off as bitchy or unstable.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

1) Accusing people of only disagreeing with you because they are sexist is extremely rude. That is a straw man argument that doesn't apply to anybody on this forum. Having a female captain is one of the big positives of the series.
2) You discount the importance of one poll with a self-selected group then point to the importance of another poll with a different self selected group? You can't have it both ways, one poll can't count where the other does not.
3) You don't need polls to know most people don't like Voyager. Just talk to people you meet and ask what they think about Voyager. I've never met a person off this board who thought Voyager was better than 'Okay', most think it's awful. It is not a 'vocal minority' who dislike Voyager.
4) Voyager can never be the worst series when Enterprise exists.

Voyager is a mediocre series because it had weak, derivative writing and bland characterization, and not at all because of the gender of the captain.

 

[MacLeod]

Think of VOY as for lack of a better term the "popcorn flick" of the ST TV series.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I realize this, however I posted it in the general discussion section and not the voyager section for a reason. That being that those in the general discussion section are more likely to be ones who may be inflammatory about voyager and thus more the ones that I wanted to reach through my post.

On whether or not a thread belongs in GTD, the proof is in the post. This one was squarely focused on one show.

 

[Voth commando1]

Trek fans seem rather nasty to those who don't abide by the current consensus-DS9 was amaazing and Voyager sucked.

I for one don't abide by that consensus.

 

[Relayer1]

I watched voyager during it's original run and got lot's of enjoyment and entertainment from it.

Me too. I've watched and enjoyed (and purchased) all of the Trek series.

There's more I dislike about Voyager though. There's been a lot of debate elsewhere about continuity, glossing over Marquis/Starfleet friction, repairs, shortages etc. and I have no intention of rehashing all of that, so I'll focus on three things :

Writing - there were good episodes, but I don't think that overall the show it was as well written as TNG and DS9.

Crew - of all the Trek shows, it had the least likeable/interesting. I thought Janeway was rather inconsistently written, Kes and Neelix were hard to like and Chakotay terribly dull and underused. Many of the rest fared little better.

Cast - with most Trek shows, there have been cast I have been slow to warm to. I never did warm at all to Mulgrew and Russ, Beltran and Dawson only somewhat (incidentally, I thought Phillips did a great job with dire material).

I thought a female captain was a fine idea. I just wish she had been better written and played by a different actress. I'd have settled for a different actress...

 

[marlboro]

I have to admit to not really ever warming up to most of the Voyager crew as well. B'elanna and 7 being two notable exceptions.

I can't really say why though. Were the actors worse than most of the TNG and ENT cast? No. Were the characters on TNG and ENT fleshed out more? I'm not sure. But there is just something that keeps them from clicking with me.

 

[marlboro]

Think of VOY as for lack of a better term the "popcorn flick" of the ST TV series.

I think there was a definite trend toward action over creativity in VOY. Even more so in ENT. Unlike ENT though, VOY still had some creative juice and created some clever sci-fi stories like Blink of an Eye, and some meta stuff like Muse.

 

[fireproof78]

Better characters at the start could have helped. By the end, the only ones I was really invested in was Tom and B'elanna. Contrast that with TOS, TNG and DS9, were multiple characters are interesting and invested in their different stories.

 

[Greg Cox]

Trek fans seem rather nasty to those who don't abide by the current consensus-DS9 was amaazing and Voyager sucked.

I for one don't abide by that consensus.

There are, of course, options between "amazing" and "sucked," even though the internet often seems to forget that.

 

[Refuge]

I don't know where the myth arose about Voyager not being the best when it clearly is in every way.

 

[somebuddyX]

All these opinion based threads need to be nuked into the sun. All the Trek shows have great episodes and shit episodes.

 

[Wildflowers]

So how many other fact filled posts have you relegated as opinion based and stated that they need to be nuked. Hmm, not many? Just this one? I wonder why that is.....that's a toughy!!!!!

 

[somebuddyX]

So how many other fact filled posts have you relegated as opinion based and stated that they need to be nuked. Hmm, not many? Just this one? I wonder why that is.....that's a toughy!!!!!

Actually this is the second time I've said something like this.
ETA: My point is ALL the shows have good and bad points. I like watching them all equally for different reasons. Sometimes you want to see stuff build up over six seasons, sometimes you want a good one and done. Sometimes you want a good philosophical story from TNG or a weird sci-fi thing from Voyager and a good action story from Enterprise. I'm just sick of fans accentuating the positives of one series and the negatives from another series, without also seeing they both have good and bad points.