Voyager's main problems

[Anwar]

But the problem was that the Maquis really weren't that different from the Fleeters, their own leader was Ex-Fleet himself and logically would've used his Fleet experience in his Cell! They just weren't different enough for it to work.

Why would folks in the DQ help out VOY? Same reason GQ folks were okay meeting with the Feds in DS9 and making deals with them.

 

[asp7485]

I just generally disagree that the stand-alone approach to story telling was a weakness of the show. I think it made Voyager a valuable addition to the franchise.

Voyager pushed the envelope of very high-concept, complex sci-fi stories that were unlike ones we'd seen on TNG. This approach was important as it served the part of the Star Trek audience that wasn't interested in the heavy continuity and story arc format of DS9. It was a good thing for the overall franchise that there was diversity in tone between the two shows. Voyager is also closer in spirit to the Original Series, where the crew is portrayed as having great affection for each other and works together to solve new problems each week.

There are definitely characters that are better explored than others, but this was the case for many of the Star Trek shows. Seven of Nine steals a lot of focus when she's introduced, but there are several episodes where she hardly appears. Leading characters do emerge from the ensemble, but everyone gets a turn to shine eventually. This too was true of the Original Series.

Overall, I find Voyager to be entertaining, funny, exciting, and sometimes very heartfelt. From re-watching it over the course of 2011, I can really tell how much effort went into making each episode and how much the actors put into their roles. I really enjoy Voyager for what it is, not what I was hoping it would be.

 

[exodus]

But the problem was that the Maquis really weren't that different from the Fleeters, their own leader was Ex-Fleet himself and logically would've used his Fleet experience in his Cell! They just weren't different enough for it to work.

..but unlike Starfleet, the Maquis knew the art of guerilla fighting which they learned from the Bajorians. The Maquis knew how to survive without luxury. Had Voyager kept it's premise of struggling to get supplies, the Maquis and Neelix would have become the most valued members on the crew.

The point of a Starfleet/Maquis crew was to teach the Maquis disapline but for the Maquis to teach Starfleet old school survival.

However, I'd like to know why many think the Maquis/Starfleet conflict ends with "Learning Curve" as if Suder and Michael Jonas weren't due to it? They killed Suder because they was no job or duty on a Starship for an unstable element like him.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

The Starfleet/Maquis thing could never last more than 2 seasons or so, unless they were truly mentally unbalanced people.

Yeah, but the Starfleet/Maquis conflict didn't even last, like, two episodes, to say nothing of two seasons. Hell, there was more tension between the Bajoran militia and the Starfleet crew in DS9 than there ever was between the two crews in Voyager.

Voyager pushed the envelope of very high-concept, complex sci-fi stories that were unlike ones we'd seen on TNG.

If by "high-concept and complex" you mean "techno-babbling their way out of problems practically every week," then I agree. Sorry, not trying to bash on you, I just don't see what you're saying here. Voyager's stories were very much in the vein of TNG, and I didn't see anything that distinguished them from TNG episodes, with a few notable exceptions. Which is not entirely a bad thing - I enjoyed TNG after all. But Voyager's premise was supposed to be different. Instead, the things that made it distinct from TNG - the Maquis crew, scarce resources, being lost in the Delta Quadrant - were largely ignored, and it became TNG-lite. Now to be fair, there were a few times in the first season where DS9 did TNG-lite episodes (often with actual cast-off TNG scripts), but early on the show found its groove, stopped imitating its predecessor and did it's own thing. IMO, Voyager never did.

Now for all my complaints, I actually did enjoy Voyager for the most part. I watched it for all seven seasons after all. Looking back on the series with a more critical eye, it's easier to see the flaws I ignored or missed when it was on the air. It's still better than Enterpise though, heh. I mean, I was pretty much born a Trekkie, and even I couldn't sit through more than a few episodes of Enterpise before giving up ...

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Why would folks in the DQ help out VOY? Same reason GQ folks were okay meeting with the Feds in DS9 and making deals with them.

They made deals because the Federation has something to offer the people in the Gamma Quadrant natives whether it just be diplomatic relations or trade. Voyager was one fairly small ship alone, it shouldn't have really been able to offer anyone very much. And if it did have something to offer aliens in return for help with supplies and repairs - then that's exactly what I would have wanted. Not for the ship to magically fix itself between episodes.

Voyager pushed the envelope of very high-concept, complex sci-fi stories that were unlike ones we'd seen on TNG. This approach was important as it served the part of the Star Trek audience that wasn't interested in the heavy continuity and story arc format of DS9. It was a good thing for the overall franchise that there was diversity in tone between the two shows.

I agree in some respects. I definitely value "Voyager" for some of the fantastic hi-concept stuff we got with it, although I don't think they were that unlike season 6/7 of TNG.
As for Voyager being an option for those who weren't interested in the format of DS9....yes, but TNG already had that base covered. Voyager should have done SOMETHING with its format to separate itself from TNG so it wouldn't get called "TNG-lite" by so many people.

If by "high-concept and complex" you mean "techno-babbling their way out of problems practically every week," then I agree.

That is true to an extent that there was a lot of technobabble although I feel that definitely waned after the first few seasons.
Overall though I think of Voyager almost like a continuation of TNG season 6/7 which could be considered "TNG-lite" too in a way since in those seasons they moved towards more kerazy high-concept stories rather than the political intrigue and commentary of the earlier seasons.

Voyager wasn't that interested in injecting much depth into its stories a la TNG season 3 or DS9, it just wanted to entertain us with whatever fantastic science-fiction concept had been thought up that week, not unlike many episodes in TNG season 6 and 7 except I think Voyager really refined it to an artform mosty starting around season 4.

Voyager really did come up with a lot of single episode story ideas that impressed me in their originality and make me appreciate the show in many ways when I look at it on an episode by episode basis. If I look at DS9 on an episode by episode basis, the creativity in the stories don't necessarily impress me very much. Its only when I look at the show as a whole and the feeling of reality, continuity, character and story progression and ambition that it becomes clear its my favorite trek show. But when I'm looking at Voyager on an episode by episode basis, the creativity of the single episodes ideas really do impress me a lot more than when I look at it as a whole show.

The concepts found in episodes like Faces, Meld, Deadlock, Tuvix, Before and After, Year of Hell, Mortal Coil, Retrospect, Living Witness, The Killing Game, Night, Latent Image, Bliss, Barge of the Dead, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Ashes to Ashes, Blink of an Eye, Child's Play, Muse, Critical Care, The Void (and really many more) shows me that even though Voyager did not succeed in living up to its premise and undoubtedly had a lot of trouble with underambitious show runners, the creative cylinders were still firing very hot in the Voyager's writing room.

 

[Caliburn24]

All the stuff already mentioned is valid.

But for me the biggest structural problem with Voyager was that they never truly sold the premise of family and being cut off from home.

I'll start with "family", I was in the Army, in a unit of about 130 soldiers(Voyager was 140ish if memory serves). You know everybody within a few months, you know everybody really well after a year or two. Voyager's crew is together for seven years, and yet they feel as loosely knit as any other Starfleet crew. Heck, TNG's crew felt much closer and tighter than Voyager's, and that was with people transferring in and out. The secondary characters on TNG(and even more so on DS9) were developed more than almost any we saw on Voyager. Which is very sad, since Voyager had the opportunity to create some really memorable lower deck characters, but instead wasted almost every opportunity. Carey, Sudor, Seska, even Naomi could have all been so much more interesting and more fleshed out.

They also wasted the opportunity to recruit new crew for the ship. Yes, they picked up Neelix, Kes, Seven, and a few others for a handful of episodes. But so much more could have been done with that idea.

Second, the crew of Voyager never really had to sacrifice anything or really felt cut off from home. They also had time and energy to waste in the holodeck. They always had food, their uniforms always looked pristine. Why have a premise of being stranded on the far side of the galaxy, and then do nothing with it(other than have aliens with slightly different sets of bumps on their face)?

"Year of Hell" is a perfect illustration of what Voyager could have been. Fighting to survive, having to make alliances, sacrifices, losing people along the way. The ship getting torn apart and progressively more battered. The reset button ruined it all of course, it was like the producers were saying, "Here is what we could have done, this show could have been great. Naw, lets go back to the bland, no stakes, no drama, pristine Voyager everyone loves."

 

[Anwar]

Voyager was one fairly small ship alone, it shouldn't have really been able to offer anyone very much. And if it did have something to offer aliens in return for help with supplies and repairs - then that's exactly what I would have wanted. Not for the ship to magically fix itself between episodes.

This, I agree on. They pretty much stopped caring about what advantages VOY had it could use in its dealings with other DQ species and just made everyone the same as the AQ tech-wise.

This is a big problem with the "Run Away" premise: It meant VOY couldn't really flesh out any area of the DQ to any real extent so the writers never bothered (and why should they? Nothing they made would ever stick around) really defining the DQ.

YoH was what Braga and Piller wanted the series to be like (at times, it really wouldn't make any sense for it to be like that always) but UPN wouldn't let them due to expense (always changing the sets and altering the ship model, more money to costuming to alter uniforms) and because it would've been too hard for the casual viewer to follow.

That, and they made VOY too weak and dependent on its crew. If it ever took the damage it got in YOH, they'd never be able to fix it and the show would be over and if they ever lost that much of the crew the ship couldn't function and the show would be over.

If the ship was tougher, and it didn't need that much maintenance, then they might have been less afraid of damaging it or killing crew because it wouldn't affect the ship all that much.

Look at Galactica, was it a single ship on its own? No, it had a fleet to defend. They could afford to destroy other ships in the fleet and kill people because they had no direct impact on Galactica itself.

 

[stj]

Yes, there were many, many excellent episodes in Voyager's run.

No, there were not a lot of episodes that were resolved with technobabble. This is just a cliche uttered by people determined to dislike Voyager more than other Trek shows and want some literary sounding "reason" for claiming it was somehow worse.

As to the notion that the premise wasn't lived up to, Year of Hell is in fact an excellent example of how silly the idea truly was. There was no sensible way that the battered Voyager somehow won against Annorax' timeship, even in a kamikaze run. Some lame dialogue about the defenses being surprisingly weak doesn't cut it. The crew abandoning ship shows how truly irrelevant the bulk of the crew really is to a character driven drama about the ship, instead of what it faces.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

All the stuff already mentioned is valid.

But for me the biggest structural problem with Voyager was that they never truly sold the premise of family and being cut off from home.

I'll start with "family", I was in the Army, in a unit of about 130 soldiers(Voyager was 140ish if memory serves). You know everybody within a few months, you know everybody really well after a year or two. Voyager's crew is together for seven years, and yet they feel as loosely knit as any other Starfleet crew. Heck, TNG's crew felt much closer and tighter than Voyager's, and that was with people transferring in and out. The secondary characters on TNG(and even more so on DS9) were developed more than almost any we saw on Voyager. Which is very sad, since Voyager had the opportunity to create some really memorable lower deck characters, but instead wasted almost every opportunity. Carey, Sudor, Seska, even Naomi could have all been so much more interesting and more fleshed out.

Oh I totally agree, one of the biggest failings and that ties into the lack of continuity. There was very little feeling of family or community aboard Voyager. It was just like any other Starfleet ship full of crewman who had their loved ones off ship or were only on temporary assignment. We didn't get to see any sign the ship was being changed by its circumstances.

As to the notion that the premise wasn't lived up to, Year of Hell is in fact an excellent example of how silly the idea truly was. There was no sensible way that the battered Voyager somehow won against Annorax' timeship, even in a kamikaze run. Some lame dialogue about the defenses being surprisingly weak doesn't cut it. The crew abandoning ship shows how truly irrelevant the bulk of the crew really is to a character driven drama about the ship, instead of what it faces.

When people say it didn't live up to its premise, it doesn't mean they wanted the ship to be half destroyed most of the time. The whole failing to live up to the premise thing covers many bases already discussed in this thread and that does indeed include the fact that there were never any consequences for damage Voyager took. Like literally none..EVER.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

No, there were not a lot of episodes that were resolved with technobabble. This is just a cliche uttered by people determined to dislike Voyager more than other Trek shows and want some literary sounding "reason" for claiming it was somehow worse.

I beg to differ. There was a TON of techno-babble in Voyager. It's not a cliche, it's a fact. I'm not "determined to dislike Voyager," either - I can admit to enjoying the show while still pointing out its failings. I challenge you to find an episode where they don't rely on techo-babble, seriously.

As for people's reasons for disliking or critizing Voyager ... people are entitled to their opinions. For you to belittle their opinions because they happen to disparrage the show is rather rude. You are entitled to like Voyager, and others are entitled to find fault with it. Challenging another person's opinion with your own argument is one thing, dismissing someone else's opinion as invalid for no good reason is another.

 

[jpch]

voy gets picked apart by haters again yet strek.com listed it as second best trek ever created. the fans voted the polls so whatever you say wont change the fact that Voy was successful and amazing. you people just forget the episode that explained all your annoying useless questions.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

^Oh great, another person who bashes on the opinions of others and labels all oppposing arguments as stupid! You do realize it's possible to legitimately criticize a show and not be a "hater," right? Yeesh, and I thought we had an intelligent discussion going on here....

 

[stj]

If by "high-concept and complex" you mean "techno-babbling their way out of problems practically every week," then I agree. Sorry, not trying to bash on you, I just don't see what you're saying here...

From one post.

There was a TON of techno-babble in Voyager. It's not a cliche, it's a fact....I challenge you to find an episode where they don't rely on techo-babble, seriously.

From a later post.

An alert observer would conclude that the second post surreptitiously changes the criticism made, from using technobabble to solve problems, to using big words. In the latter case, a limited vocabulary is not anybody else's problem, much less a legitimate criticism. But I will generously assume that in fact the same criticism is being made. Because redefining terms to win a debate would be dishonest debate and certainly displays a determination to bash someone's opinions (on false grounds no less!) and therefore wouldn't be part of an intelligent discussion, would it?

So, some episodes that don't rely on technobabble to solve the problem. The Caretaker, where blowing up the array saves the Ocampa at the cost of stranding Voyager. Prime Factors, where they don't solve the problem of making the supertransporter work at all. Eye of the Needle, where once again they don't solve the problem of escaping through the wormhole or even in getting a message home. Emanations, where Kim gets back to Voyager by letting himself be killed where the bodies are sent back to the asteroid.

There are many epidosdes of Voyagerwhere a problem is set up by technobabble, or fake jeopardy is created by technobabble. And, like every Trek series, including Star Trek, there is lots of bad science, although a lot of it is unaccompanied by big words. but the simple fact is that there are very few if any where the drama is resolved by technobabble. And saying so just because you feel like repeating a cliche is in itself rather rude.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

An alert observer would conclude that the second post surreptitiously changes the criticism made, from using technobabble to solve problems, to using big words. In the latter case, a limited vocabulary is not anybody else's problem, much less a legitimate criticism. But I will generously assume that in fact the same criticism is being made. Because redefining terms to win a debate would be dishonest debate and certainly displays a determination to bash someone's opinions (on false grounds no less!) and therefore wouldn't be part of an intelligent discussion, would it?

Can you just stop with all this crap? Everytime I see you reply like this, I want to bang my head off the wall in the hope I can forget I ever wasted my time reading your verbose concoctions of absolute pointless nonsense.

Regarding the techno-babble issue. I don't think VOY really had any more technobabble than TNG. It had a lot less than DS9 because the writers made a clear effort to focus more on character episodes and larger story arcs, and less on standalone episodes like TNG did and VOY continued to do. I do feel however the technobabble became much less intrusive as the show continued. We went from technobabble filled bores of episodes like "The Cloud" (now that WAS an episode solved by technobabble nonsense), "Prototype" and "Threshold" to episodes like "The Void", "Blink of an Eye" and "Drone" that did have very high concept ideas but didn't have me rolling my eyes because they did focus on technobabble less. And they even gave us one of modern Trek's least techno-babblish episodes ever in "11:59" haha. Episodes like "Muse", "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "Author, Author" also strike me as fantastic A grade episodes that avoided techno-babble.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Because redefining terms to win a debate would be dishonest debate and certainly displays a determination to bash someone's opinions (on false grounds no less!) and therefore wouldn't be part of an intelligent discussion, would it?

I don't need your generosity, thanks. Both posts you quote made the point that my opinion is Voyager overused and over-relied on technobabble. I was not "redefining terms" to win a debate, nor do I have "determination to bash someone's opinions." I'm not saying that Voyager was the only Trek show that overdid technobabble (TNG certainly had its moments). Heck, it's quite possible that TNG had more techno-babble; I may be mistaken that VOY was the most techo-babble heavy series. But even if that's the case, I still contend that overuse of techno-babble was one of the show's main problems. I would have the same criticism of TNG if we were in that forum.

And no, I don't have a "limited vocabulary." I was an English major, honey. Please don't condescend to me. The technobabble words they typically use in Voyager (or any trek show) are basically a bunch of scientific terms they string together. Most scientifically-minded people who can pick the terms apart find they make no logical sense (I have friends who have done this). There is a big difference between having a large vocabulary and stringing a bunch of scientific-sounding words together in an effort to convince the audience that the characters are smart and futuristic.... while boring said audience to tears.

 

[stj]

Can you just stop with all this crap? Everytime I see you reply like this, I want to bang my head off the wall in the hope I can forget I ever wasted my time reading your verbose concoctions of absolute pointless nonsense.

The point is that it would be more nuanced and more diplomatic. But I most certainly can stop with the crap.

The word "technobabble" is bullshit. It's bullshit because it's used at various times to mean unnatural sounding exposition; nonsense words that can't even fake jargon in a technical setting; plain old big words, and using fake science to resolve a dramatic dilemma. These meanings are incompatible, and anyone who doesn't know this can't tell bullshit from Shinola. Anyone who wants to babble about technobabble wants to bullshit all over us and then expect us to pretend their opinions are worthwhile.

For (your best!) example, The Cloud had a sapient space cloud with grotesque properties solely to provide physical jeopardy in order to examine the reactions of the characters. Something as nonsensical as that more or less had to have a nonsense escape. I believe that the episode would have been better with a good SFnal jeopardy and escape but the writers of modern Trek have always excused themselves with the nonsense word "technobabble." The Cloud is generally regarded as dull because people aren't much interested in seeing character revealed. Neelix appointing himself moreal officer in response, for example, doesn't count because Neelix isn't cool. The episode would have been regarded as dull even if they hadn't used big words in the dialogue for that reason.

Talking about technobabble is always pointless nonsense.

 

[DWF]

Voyager wasn't different enough in my mind, it needed to look and be as different from TNG as possible. And they needed to cut back on the reliance on Janeway this would've improved on the general character development and allowed Mulgrew more time at home making it better for her to act with some freedom, she was a single mother at the time.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Voyager wasn't different enough in my mind, it needed to look and be as different from TNG as possible.

That's the main issue right there. I enjoyed TNG, but a show like DS9 offered us a new spin on the Trek universe, which was quite refreshing. VOY had the opportunity to offer us another different spin on the Trek universe ... but it largely ignored that opportunity and wound up being TNG-lite. It certainly had its shining moments, but I never felt like it was groundbreaking for Trek, the way that DS9 was.

 

[DWF]

Voyager wasn't different enough in my mind, it needed to look and be as different from TNG as possible.

That's the main issue right there. I enjoyed TNG, but a show like DS9 offered us a new spin on the Trek universe, which was quite refreshing. VOY had the opportunity to offer us another different spin on the Trek universe ... but it largely ignored that opportunity and wound up being TNG-lite. It certainly had its shining moments, but I never felt like it was groundbreaking for Trek, the way that DS9 was.

I didn't think DS9 was all that groundbreaking either for that matter as the comparisons with Babylon 5 proved. I can't imagine that DS9 turned out the way that Michael Piller wanted it too. But when Piller returned to Voyager after Legend failed he wanted to make a number of stylistic changes that nobody on the writing or producing staff wanted. Both DS9 and Voyager needed new writers, new composers, new artists and new production designers as well as new directors. Rick Berman knew how to make a good show but in the end he produced them into the ground, at least Enterprise tried to show some originality in at times in those areas.

 

[Athena28]

While I really liked Voyager, I realize the limited development of the Maquis story, the characters of Chakotay & of Harry really hurt the show.

However, one thing I felt Voyager had that made it special was the female hierarchy. I didn't care for the 7of9/Janeway show it became in its later years. But I did like a woman leading the way and the fact that they were on their own. No Starfleet looking over Janeway's shoulder.

Does it make me a feminist? I don't think so. I also liked that a Black man headed the crew of DS9. I just like to see something different & I think that was the case, here.