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

[Akiraprise]

Lone starship far from home with an on going story arc and lasting repercussions was quickly nixed in favor of the TNG stand alone episode model. Hence the shiny new ship every week. Little crew dissension. The Maquis had such a build up as terrorist freedom fighters yet they folded into pretty much the model Starfleet crew by episode 3. Just a couple examples.

 

[LJones41]

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.

You should post this as an article on a blog.

Lone starship far from home with an on going story arc and lasting repercussions was quickly nixed in favor of the TNG stand alone episode model. Hence the shiny new ship every week. Little crew dissension. The Maquis had such a build up as terrorist freedom fighters yet they folded into pretty much the model Starfleet crew by episode 3. Just a couple examples.

Considering that I saw more than what you had described, I find your argument impossible to accept.

 

[Wildflowers]

Thanks for the encouragement LJones

 

[fireproof78]

I have to wonder too if there isn't a hindsight distortion. In reality when you watch an episode in a series you don't sum it up as a whole or are ready to compare it with other series also in their entirety. I also call bullshit on some of these criticisms.. not the viewers right to have one, but the context that it has been recreated in. Example, it is sheer nonsense Voyager did not replenish and repair. I never thought it was a problem when I watched an episode and when I finished watching the entire series, or now.

The glass can be half full and half empty sort of works but I tend to think of filtering. When you take in Voyager if you see if for what it has become in relation to other shows, or as a failing, then that is what you will mostly see. The devil's advocate not to criticise just an aspect here and there but to view it as 'worst' will be what you get from it. Goes the other way for someone who enjoyed it. Mostly a fan is not going to become a hater though and the disappointed can enjoy that, lol.

Let me be very clear about my perspective:
1. I don't hate Voyager.
2. I don't compare Voyager to other Trek series. I won't sit there and say "Well, DS9 did X so VOY should have done X too." I take each show on its own merits, how it bears out its premise.
3. I watched VOY, read about VOY, TV guides, kids magazines, etc. when it first aired. I tried DS9 and found it lacking and didn't reengage until "Trials and Tribbleations."

I can enjoy VOY on some levels, but its entertainer value is hit and miss, with mostly misses for me. I certainly don't think it is the worst, as ENT falls in that category for me, with only two episodes that I like to revisit and find entertaining.

 

[Sakonna]

Plus the addition of Seven in season 4 didn't hurt either. Like or hate the character there is no disputing that she got more of the general tv watching audiences attention. Show people a picture of Seven and they'll likely be able to tell you she was on Trek in some form. Try that with Kira or Jadzia out of uniform.

This is really true. In my informal survey of my non-Trek-viewing friends, there's 6 characters that they all know: Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Picard, Data, and Seven. The three things about that I find most interesting:

1. Seven is the only woman on the list
2. The (arguably) least loved Trek should also spawn one of it's few truly iconic characters
3. Spock, Data, and Seven are all part of the same character "line" -- that sort-of-human "outsider" archetype really resonates with the mass audience

For me, Voyager has always been my personal least favorite Trek (which is not to say I think it's objectively the worst, just the one least to my taste -- though I've been rewatching eps here and there based off of recommendations from this board to see if I can get into it more -- just saw "Flesh And Blood" for the first time, that was great!)

But anyway, I really don't think sexism is the cause of this perception -- if anything, I feel most viewers who don't love the show as a whole will praise it's female characters as the best thing about it. That's certainly what I feel... Janeway, Seven, B'Elanna, Kes, they're all fantastic.

 

[fireproof78]

This is really true. In my informal survey of my non-Trek-viewing friends, there's 6 characters that they all know: Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Picard, Data, and Seven. The three things about that I find most interesting:

1. Seven is the only woman on the list
2. The (arguably) least loved Trek should also spawn one of it's few truly iconic characters
3. Spock, Data, and Seven are all part of the same character "line" -- that sort-of-human "outsider" archetype really resonates with the mass audience

For me, Voyager has always been my personal least favorite Trek (which is not to say I think it's objectively the worst, just the one least to my taste -- though I've been rewatching eps here and there based off of recommendations from this board to see if I can get into it more -- just saw "Flesh And Blood" for the first time, that was great!)

But anyway, I really don't think sexism is the cause of this perception -- if anything, I feel most viewers who don't love the show as a whole will praise it's female characters as the best thing about it. That's certainly what I feel... Janeway, Seven, B'Elanna, Kes, they're all fantastic.

Well said. And, I hadn't thought about Seven on that list of the outsider type characters.

 

[Wildflowers]

There have been some great points made in this thread but now I'd like to add this and round out my original post. Anyone who reads this first might like to read that as well, it's the first post in this thread.

So, some people make bold statements like:
"So very few star trek fans like voyager" or "other than Enterprise, Voyager it is the most hated of the Star Trek series"


This is nothing but an utter myth. I will here inject some more facts and truth into the matter.

There are four major measures of popularity that I have come across that rank the star trek series. All have Voyager coming in second or maybe/sort of first with a couple. Now if I was the manager of a baseball team and some player was always the second best hitter, I'd want them on my team.

Likes at the official facebook pages (as of yesterday Wednesday(here) May 3 2017)

1. The Next Generation 1,512,314
2. Voyager 454,864
3. The Original 404,995
4. Enterprise 387,118
5. Deep Space Nine 328,051


Youtube. This was a little tricky to look into because there are many different combinations that could be entered into the search box. For instance with the series Enterprise only: "Star Trek Enterprise", could be entered and not: "Star Trek" Enterprise, because of course it could include the orignal series and the modern movies. Nor could just Enterprise be entered. And then there is the complication of say Deep space nine also being able to be entered as DS9 and not being able to just put "Star Trek" for the original series.

Only two search queries could be entered for Voyager: "Star Trek Voyager" and: "Star Trek" Voyager. These came up with 95,300 and 191,000 respectively. And so these are the two figures that need to be compared to those of the others.

All in brackets:

1. "Star Trek Voyager" 95,300

2. "Star Trek TNG" 81,800
"Star Trek The Next Generation" 19,000

3. "Star Trek Enterprise" 67,200

4. "Star Trek TOS" 22,700
"Star Trek The Original Series" 6,210

5. "Star Trek DS9" 15,300
"Star Trek Deep Space Nine" 4,390

Seperated:

1. "Star Trek" TNG 295,000
"Star Trek" "The Next Generation" 113,000

2. "Star Trek" Voyager 191,000

3. "Star Trek" DS9 111,000

(I've already talked about the complications with TOS and Enterprise)


Because of the 295,000 of TNG, that beats all the other figures, I'm alloting winning position to TNG on youtube, even though Voyager won in the "all in brackets" section. So Voyager is second on youtube.



The poll done four years ago by the official Star Trek website, startrek.com: fans were asked 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%

Now for the fourth measure. Calvin Huang in August last year wrote a short article in which he included the figures of the the number of likes that each series had on facebook: TNG had 1.5M, Voyager had 447k, TOS had 400k, ENT had 384k and DS9 had 326k. Looking at how many more likes each has got since those likes were posted: TNG (if 1.5M is rounded to 1,500,000) 12,000, Voyager 8,000, TOS 5,000, Enterprise 3,000 and DS9 2,000. Given that I don't know how rounded the 1.5M figure actually was, then in terms of rate of increase in popularity/popularity shown, Voyager is actaully strongly in second place if not outright leading.

Akiraprise said:
"I've found over the years that VOY often comes in 2nd behind TNG in many polls relating to the "best" modern Trek series in many online and print publications I've read. This bothers people on this board who generally lean towards DS9 being the best. It's not as universally despised as so many posters on this board like to imply."


Voyager is the second most popular of the Star Trek series as shown by Youtube, Facebook, and the official Star Trek site, startrek.com.

And according to that measure of increasing popularity it is second if not first.


So, THE FACT IS, THE TRUTH IS THAT VOYAGER IS NOT WIDELY DISLIKED, IT IS NOT SEEN AS THE PARIAH, ALSO-RAN SERIES OF THE FRANCHISE, IT IS IN FACT WIDELY LIKED, AND MUCH OF IT IS HELD IN HIGH REGARD.


"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." And others have probably come to the same conclusion.


So people have come to recognise, even without polls and in the face of the myth of voyager being widely despised; that infact voyager is very popular.

Something that got me to be bothered enough to write this and the other post is that star trek is so huge and this seemingly sexist elephant in the room hasn't been addressed as far as I can tell. I am not talking about pointing out sexist bits from TOS or TNG. I've seen that done, but rather what I'm talking about is what has been addressed in these posts. However if I had known how long it would take I wouldn't have bothered.

So, you have a tv programe that is very popular but with a myth that it is in fact unpopular. A programe that is obviously overall highly regarded but with a myth that it is just a pile of horse dung.

So the question arises: How did this myth start and how did it get so widely propagated?

Well seeing as I have had no-one come up to me and tell me the answer I'll go off the facts available.

Firstly as is obvious from my first post I am not looking at Enterprise, which is another kettle of fish, but rather the first four series because it was a matter of having three series with three male captains and obvious sexism in them (not so much in DS9?) and then along comes a forth series with a female captain and two other strong female characters and boom, it's declared terrible and horrendous.

My hypothesis is that some sexist men (whether the sexism with them is conscious or unconscious I don't know) started spreading it around that it was the worst of the series and added some points of logic to back it up and that's where it started from. I mean look at it, it is 'common knowledge' that voyager is the worst of the series. So many people who prefer and/or have a strong emotional attachment to DS9 or TNG or TOS when they have heard these 'voyager facts' seem to have gone "yeah I knew it". And the myth just got stronger and stronger. This is what the facts suggest.

If somebody gets entertainment and enjoyment from Voyager then that is pleasing. However on the other hand I personally don't care if somebody doesn't get much out of Voyager, if someone prefers say DS9 then I think they are missing out but hey, each to their own.
Nor do I particularly care too much if people on the internet say:

"such and such a show sucked" instead of "such and such in this particular aspect sucked in my opinion"

or if they say:
"this show is pretty much hated by everyone" (without any proof to back it up) when what would be more accurate to say is "I hate this show". (It would however be nice if people would keep in mind what is inflammatory and what is not and where it is inflammatory).

I haven't bothered lifting a finger to type out one sentence before in response to such statements. What got me spending my time on this and the last post was the obvious probable sexist slant with the issue of Voyager. And star trek is so huge and it hasn't seemed to have been addressed.

On the one hand I am not surprised that probable sexism hasn't been addressed because so many people seem to have bought into the myth that voyager is considered the worst of series by star trek fans because of such and such. And so because it is considered the worst for 'logical reasons' then there is no sexism involved.

However, on the other hand I am very surprised that the probable sexism hasn't been addressed because as soon as I got into Voyager again and found out that it was 'widely despised and looked down on' I was like "Oh come on!!!!!!!!!! The first series with a female captain and other strong female characters and it's declared shite and the others are just fantastic." That's just Buuuuullllllllllshit!!!!! or Baloney as I wrote in the title to this thread. I knew the quality that Voyager could deliver from when I saw it during it's first run. And I thought I remembered my Dad getting much entertainment from the show (and I've confirmed that he did) and he happens to be a male.....so I suspected that males could be fans of the show.

In my original post I made it clear that voyager is widely liked, including widely liked by men. So some of the posts by people against my original post made no sense when they were proclaiming that males liked the show or that they being males liked the show or whatever when I already said Voyager was popular with men. I did however refer to a vocal minority who get great pleasure in shitting all over Voyager, whom I suspect to probably be men (or mostly). And from my original post it is clear that I consider that there is a clear distinction between those who take great delight in shitting all over voyager and those who merely mention that they don't like it, I mean seriously shitting all over something is different from just saying you don't like it. And it so happens that I read that in 2008 60% of the voters with startrek.com were men and so a guess can reasonably be had that the 2013 poll that had Voyager in second place was with a majority of male voters. So for the love of common decency, PLEASE READ A POST BEFORE COMMENTING AGAINST IT!!!!!

"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 recently saw a "prime suspect" episode starring Helen Mirran. From what I thought I knew of it I thought it should be reasonable entertainment. It was from about 95/96. Boy was I wrong! At the start of the episode the character herself admitted that she was known as/or her boss said she was known as a ball buster. Actually ball buster is my term, and believe me it is a lot more PG than what was said. And in this case I mean a lot more complimentary to women than the term that was actually said in that f##king script. I don't know why she acted that script. Maybe she needed the money or maybe she thought I'll 'pay my dues' by acting this terrible part and then I'll demand non BS scripts for women in this series. Because that part that I saw had her acting as anything but a ball buster. The only ball buster thing about was that she was the boss over some people but her character was to her subordinate males 'if you would please, just possibly, maybe oh male" "thankyou so very much, when can I kiss your feet for letting me be boss", without actually saying that. It was so utterly FUCKING GROSS!!!!! Any decent person needs a shower. Now I love most of the way that Kate Mulgrew played the captain. But sometimes I feel that it would have been better if she hadn't played it so warm and friendly. But we are talking from that era and as I think Bry Sinclair said from another thread, if she had of played it like Picard, she would have been labled a Bitch, and that is so so utterly true.

Even though it is true that some women have a problem with 'cultural sexism', I doubt, or would truly hope that given the thousands of years of sexism, and the shit that came from that, that even those women would not have been the ones to have shat all over voyager, a programe that was helping to advance the circumstances of women.

The following is what the facts suggest:

1. Voyager is the second most popular of the Star Trek series.
2. Voyager is widely liked, including by men.
3. The myth that Voyager is the pariah and ran-also of the series was probably started by a
small number of sexist men.
4. The people who take great pleasure in shitting all over Voyager are probably men.

Ok, that's annoying, it is reading 12:07 in the am over here and I was wanting to post it before midnight. Oh well.

All this has probably been a big waste of my time. But anyway what I want from these posts is not for men in general to say "oh we're wrong about voyager", for from my fist post I have contended that Voyager is widely liked, including by men. What I would like is for:

1. It to be acknowledged that Voyager is actually the second most popular of the star trek series, because that would lead onto the fact of what I most want from all this wasted time and that is for it to be acknowledged that the 'fact of voyager being the most hated of the star trek series is a myth' and that
2. The facts strongly suggest that the series of Voyager in this hugely popular franchise, has been maligned, probably because of vocal minority, a sexist few.

Am I still making sense, it's late, or early and I still want to go through and edit?

I actually wanted to respond to a couple of posts where people didn't agree with my contention in my original post that it was a sexist thing and they offered other logical alternatives. However I read through the thread and couldn't find them again. I guess I was reading too fast.

Well you have layed out before you many facts and my logic. If anyone has another reason for the over the top agro against Voyager please mention it. My two posts have been fact filled and logical but some of the posts that were opposed to my original post were merely from an angry or other emotion filled base. So please if you are going to post against what I have written, use logic and facts and not emotion filled vomit. Thanks.

 

[Wildflowers]

It's very annoying, I think it has something to do with the operating system that I am using but not only can I not seem to be able to readily quote people but I can't go back and edit anything on my post. I don't actually really want to edit anything on this or my first post but I did want to put my name to this and the other post because I am proud of both.

Michelle.

 

[Tracy Trek]

There are four major measures of popularity that I have come across that rank the star trek series. All have Voyager coming in second or maybe/sort of first with a couple.

Here's another statistic for your collection. I'm not sure how relevant it is or what your views are on fanfiction. But on Fanfiction.net, Voyager has the most stories in it's category by far. The breakdown is this:

Voyager- 9.3 K
Original- 6.6 K
Enterprise-4.5 K
Next Generation- 4.3 K
Deep Space 9- 1.8 K
Other-1.7 K

This seems to me like a lot of people liked Voyager. Some other's might see it different.

It's very annoying, I think it has something to do with the operating system that I am using but not only can I not seem to be able to readily quote people but I can't go back and edit anything on my post.

If you highlight a section in someone's quote, a box should appear underneath which will say quote+ or reply. Click on that, the quote+ is for multi-quote. It's how I got quotes from 2 of your different posts. To just quote one message, you can use reply.

 

[Wildflowers]

Here's another statistic for your collection. I'm not sure how relevant it is or what your views are on fanfiction. But on Fanfiction.net, Voyager has the most stories in it's category by far. The breakdown is this:

Voyager- 9.3 K
Original- 6.6 K
Enterprise-4.5 K
Next Generation- 4.3 K
Deep Space 9- 1.8 K
Other-1.7 K

This seems to me like a lot of people liked Voyager. Some other's might see it different.

Well it certainly seems relevant to me. And the case just gets stronger. Thanks Tracey.

Also, thanks for the info about quoting, but sadly it didn't work for me. When I did what you said and highlighted a part of your post a box/option thing didn't come up, so I clicked on a word and then the box/option came up but it would only quote that one word. Sigh! I got your post to quote by clicking on quote at the bottom of your post and then deleting the bottom bit.

 

[MacLeod]

Popularity isn't the same as best. One can easily argue that show A is more popular than B based on things like TV ratings. That doesn't equate to he quality of show.

But here is another set of figures from IMDB each shows user ratings

TNG 8.6
TOS 8.4
DSN 7.9
VOY 7.7
ENT 7.5

We tend to use facts/polls etc.. that support our view point and ignore ones that don't. But i refer back to my earlier point about popularity not being the same as best. Or to put it another way

What is the most popular film of all time?
What is the best film of all time?

Now for some the answer to both questions will be the same and for others they will give two different answers.

And the end of the day it boils down to personnal taste, some like VOY for what it is, some dislike it and everywhere in between.

Isn't the whole point of these boards to debate topics, what we like, dislike? How we feel a show/film could have done something different that we think may have made it better?

 

[Prax]

I don't get the impression that Wildflowers is attempting to prove what is the most popular, but rather arguing against misperceptions or "common wisdom" about what is the "best" or most popular.

It's reactionary, but I think justified. People do in fact go around effectively spreading negative P.R. about a show. It's much more vitriolic on other forums than here, though.

 

[Tosk]

My hypothesis is that some sexist men

That seems like a bit of a leap. Your figures don't indicate any reason to assume sexist men are to blame for spreading the idea that Voyager is a lesser series. It may very well be true, but at the moment it's as baseless as the "Voyager sucks because X" thing that you're trying to argue against.

What if I said that DS9 would be much more popular than Voyager if it weren't for racism? Almost half the cast is non-white, so it must be so...?

 

[Trekfan12]

I happen to like Voyager. Especially when Seven of Nine joined the crew.

 

[Trekkin]

It's very annoying, I think it has something to do with the operating system that I am using but not only can I not seem to be able to readily quote people but I can't go back and edit anything on my post. I don't actually really want to edit anything on this or my first post but I did want to put my name to this and the other post because I am proud of both.

Michelle.

Used to be that you couldn't edit until you'd reached a certain number of posts. Anyone know if that particular restriction survived the transfer from vBulletin?

That seems like a bit of a leap. Your figures don't indicate any reason to assume sexist men are to blame for spreading the idea that Voyager is a lesser series. It may very well be true, but at the moment it's as baseless as the "Voyager sucks because X" thing that you're trying to argue against.

What if I said that DS9 would be much more popular than Voyager if it weren't for racism? Almost half the cast is non-white, so it must be so...?

TOS wouldn't have been cancelled if it weren't for all the darn, dirty, Canadians!

 

[fireproof78]

Used to be that you couldn't edit until you'd reached a certain number of posts. Anyone know if that particular restriction survived the transfer from vBulletin?

I think so.

 

[Trekkin]

You also can't 'quote' without JavaScript. 'Reply' will still quote a post, but I dont think you can multiquote without typing the tags and then copy/pasting.

 

[Prax]

It's true. As a newbie myself, I couldn't edit for the first few weeks.

 

[Wildflowers]

Hela, Fireproof78 and Prax, thanks for the info folks.

 

[SaturnVuk]

I think Voyager is the best for one simple reason, it is the easiest to watch, its nice to the eye the way the ship and interfaces are designed...the most "smooth" and "slick" looking by far! ! ! ! Easy on the eye ! ! !