Voyager's main problems

[Guy Gardener]

What were the most popular shows in 1994?

1. Seinfeld (NBC)
2. E.R. (NBC)
3. Home Improvement (ABC)
4. Grace Under Fire (ABC)
5. NYPD Blue (ABC)
6. Murder, She Wrote (CBS)
7. Friends (NBC)
8. Roseanne (ABC)
9. Mad About You (NBC)
10. Madman of the People (NBC)

What the fuck was madman of the people?

They could have brought in Angela Lansbury as the Sexy Borg (The exact same costume) after Murder She Wrote finished in 1996.

Then you set up Andy Griffith up as the Borg King, and he's trying to get into Seven of Nine's pants every week with some mischievous scampy plan?

That's 90 million old people tuning in to watch Voyager every week that have not given a shit about Star Trek since they had their own teeth.

Meanwhile, if Voyager had some how gone Bollywood, that's a billion new viewers.

Hasselhoff could have brought Germany on Board, but Star Trek I feel never had a problem signing up Germany. No slight. Just a fact.

The above most popular shows in America the year before Voyager (mostly) began airing seems to be imperatively about horrible, vain, sarcastic people hard pressed to eek out a poourpers existence as downtrodden subclasses of the community.

Voyager on the other hand was about the best people in the universe who were always happy and positive about the most dire situations.

No wonder it was fucked.

 

[exodus]

Angela Landsbury as a sexy Borg.

 

[Guy Gardener]

In the 40s she was a pin up queen. That means that she was a masturbatory aid for the entire US Military industrial sueprcomplex when ever it was taking a breather from trying to punch Hitler in the nose.

Odds are that (in the nineties) everyone's grandpa at least shot one load off to her in their youth. Previagra old men would get misty eyed thinking about the days their meat and potatoes could still go to market.

Jeri was never a thousandth the sex symbol Angela was in her prime, even if that prime was from before the Voth left Earth.

 

[MacLeod]

Each and every show has flaws, but as this topic relates to Voyager. I'll go through with the ones I think stand out.

1.>Characters inconsistantly written. One episode Starfleet regulations are sacrosanct, next episode screw the regs.

2.>VOY just like DSN had the opportunity to flesh out secondary characters. i.e. Carey but we seemed to get new crew members every week. For example before he moved over to DSN, O'Brien was usually the Transporter Chief on duty, similar with Kyle in TOS.

3.>The ship shouldn't look like it had just left Utopia in each episode. From memory Starfleet uses technology that only it posses in the AQ/BQ. Yet the DQ initaially was portrayed as being less advanced. So whilst it might have been possible to repair the ship in a DQ dry dock, we should have seen some indication that non starfleet parts were being used. We didn't even have to see the ship in dry dock a simple log entry would have done.

4.>Crew numbers went up and down from one episode to the next, as did number of torpedeos

5.>The number of shuttlecraft they had onboard seemed high for a ship of that size.

6.>There never seemed to be any progress towards home. i.e by at least the 6th season they should have been in the BQ. We were told almost once a season they were x years closer to home. It seemed as if no one knew/cared about such things. Based on such things as Earth's location within the Milkway galaxy and the stated 70 000ly from home.

 

[Guy Gardener]

In season 5 or so, they showed a map over seven of nines shoulder that inverted the alpha and beta quadrants.

Berman and braga (Others) must have spent the first 5 or 6 years thinking that the Alpha quadrant and Delta Quadrant were top and bottom, and not diagonal from each other.

Sad but true.

When I showed up here a clever clot was explaining that on screen canon declared that the map in my encyclopaedia was rubbish.

However...

Janeway... The Doctor disguised as Janeway in Renaissance Man, mentiones the "Border tot he beta Quadrant" being close enough to talk about. That some fictional bad guy The Doctor was describing's empire was so vast that it extended that far.

So, canon changed, or was in conflict.

 

[indolover]

Janeway said that she didn't believe in fraternizing with crewmates, and since the only long-running love interest she could have would be from the crew this meant no love interest for Janeway.

That further demonstrates poor writing and characterisation by the production staff.

 

[Guy Gardener]

After 5 years of reearened Virginity?

Her clamped cooch needed to be explained.

It's unhealthy to go that long without sex.

(I should know.)

That was the fairhaven episode in which she boffed the bartender.

She was pleading with a peer possessing a forthright stable of ethics to justify her salty lust for basically a thug made out of photons, which half way though coitus could be removed by a powercut or transformed into horse by some jape of Tom Paris.

I'm not sure which made Janeway feel like she was slumming it more, the hologram part or the 19th century uneducated bartender bit?

Funny enough, after some murder, it wasn't the "already married" bit.

Just a thought.

You know how sperm donations work?

There's got to be some white or black market where humans sell their own, other identities, or even the identities of dead family (which they have rights to) members to holoprogrammers trying to flesh out crowds for the sake of realism.

Not that there's money in the 24th century, but they could even be buying fame, like how youtube does now.

The characteristics, the shape and sound of Michael O'Sullivan which made Janeways knees buckle and boots knock might actually be walking around the Federation at this point in time selling his personality over and over again for some intangible remuneration, possessions, larger housing, or possibly drugs?

Considering the human philosophy of self enhancement, that's got to be a little sickening and you'd have to wonder how any human of those beliefs can use a holodeck without a standards and practices policy demonstrated that all personalities recreated therein are benevolently volunteered for the good of all, or computer generated randomly.

 

[exodus]

Janeway said that she didn't believe in fraternizing with crewmates, and since the only long-running love interest she could have would be from the crew this meant no love interest for Janeway.

That further demonstrates poor writing and characterisation by the production staff.

Not really, this was done at the suggestion of Kate Mulgrew herself. She felt Janeway having a love interest would be a distraction. Her first priority was to her crew before her own selfish needs. Secondly, it's never wise to anger Kate Mulgrew and go against her ideas. Seriously!

However, instead of a love interest, they gave us the next best thing. The mother/daughter relationship she had with Seven. There is no doubt that Janeway had strong emotional ties to Seven. She was the only one that liked Neeix right off the bat.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

She was the only one that liked Neeix right off the bat.

You say that like it should count in her favor or something ...

 

[exodus]

She was the only one that liked Neeix right off the bat.

You say that like it should count in her favor or something ...

I have absolutely no come back for that.

 

[Anwar]

What could have saved the series was to ditch the TNG formula and go for a heavily serialized plotline that actually makes use of the premise, and allows for significant character growth. But I doubt UPN would have much cared to take a risk like that at the time. That's the sort of thing that even today is mainly relegated to cable.

Never mind UPN, Paramount wouldn't've gone for it.

I cite (as I did in a different thread) Ron Moore's interview where he shows Berman as the "studio guy", whose mantra was always "pull it back, tone it down, play it safe".

The biggest (and ultimately insurmountable) obstacle creatively was Berman and his pet writer Braga who put all his edicts into effect on VOY.

Right, that's why Braga's ideas (before they were shot down by UPN) were all things that most folks on this board would've loved (no replicators/holodecks, year long "Year of Hell", etc). Because he wanted to marginalize the show, naturally...

 

[Amaris]

She was the only one that liked Neeix right off the bat.

You say that like it should count in her favor or something ...

I have absolutely no come back for that.

I rather like Neelix. I tend to like the upbeat alien presences on each series. For example, when it comes to ENT, I simply adore Doctor Phlox.

 

[Amasov]

What the fuck was madman of the people?

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRRGiLs5WKw[/yt]

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Not really, this was done at the suggestion of Kate Mulgrew herself. She felt Janeway having a love interest would be a distraction. Her first priority was to her crew before her own selfish needs. Secondly, it's never wise to anger Kate Mulgrew and go against her ideas. Seriously!

Yeah I've read about Janeway nixxing any Chakotay/Janeway relationship too and it was possibly due to how awkward it would be given they were an item for a while. I think it was pretty unprofessional of Mulgrew and plain idiotic of the writers to be following what the actress wanted instead of thinking what would have the most dramatic potential for the show.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Is there a reason why with words like Awkwardity, it just seems like I made them up?

That's what I liked about News Radio.

The Love interest between Lisa and Dave climaxed in the second or third episode and the next 5 seasons were about how they were awful together, broke and and got back together and broke again.

I always liked this...

"There's no point marrying a beautiful woman who you love. Save some time, and give half your money to some bitch you hate."

But the collapse of a relationship and the aftermath thereafter is often more exciting than building a relationship...

Though after Seska raped him, I think he was off "strong women" for good.

 

[exodus]

Not really, this was done at the suggestion of Kate Mulgrew herself. She felt Janeway having a love interest would be a distraction. Her first priority was to her crew before her own selfish needs. Secondly, it's never wise to anger Kate Mulgrew and go against her ideas. Seriously!

Yeah I've read about Janeway nixxing any Chakotay/Janeway relationship too and it was possibly due to how awkward it would be given they were an item for a while. I think it was pretty unprofessional of Mulgrew and plain idiotic of the writers to be following what the actress wanted instead of thinking what would have the most dramatic potential for the show.

This is a business aspect of which you said you had no interest in, so .......

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Wait ... Beltran and Mulgrew were an item? Am I read that right?

 

[Ian Keldon]

What could have saved the series was to ditch the TNG formula and go for a heavily serialized plotline that actually makes use of the premise, and allows for significant character growth. But I doubt UPN would have much cared to take a risk like that at the time. That's the sort of thing that even today is mainly relegated to cable.

Never mind UPN, Paramount wouldn't've gone for it.

I cite (as I did in a different thread) Ron Moore's interview where he shows Berman as the "studio guy", whose mantra was always "pull it back, tone it down, play it safe".

The biggest (and ultimately insurmountable) obstacle creatively was Berman and his pet writer Braga who put all his edicts into effect on VOY.

Right, that's why Braga's ideas (before they were shot down by UPN) were all things that most folks on this board would've loved (no replicators/holodecks, year long "Year of Hell", etc). Because he wanted to marginalize the show, naturally...

Did he or did he not do the studio's bidding (as formulated and transmitted by Berman)?

Braga never showed the stones that Behr and Moore did in doing end runs around Berman's edicts.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Not really, this was done at the suggestion of Kate Mulgrew herself. She felt Janeway having a love interest would be a distraction. Her first priority was to her crew before her own selfish needs. Secondly, it's never wise to anger Kate Mulgrew and go against her ideas. Seriously!

Yeah I've read about Janeway nixxing any Chakotay/Janeway relationship too and it was possibly due to how awkward it would be given they were an item for a while. I think it was pretty unprofessional of Mulgrew and plain idiotic of the writers to be following what the actress wanted instead of thinking what would have the most dramatic potential for the show.

This is a business aspect of which you said you had no interest in, so .......

Sigh...what on earth are you talking about now? You're exhausting.
Besides, this was clearly the creative aspect, you're just trying to be confrontational and argumentative as usual.

 

[Anwar]

Never mind UPN, Paramount wouldn't've gone for it.

I cite (as I did in a different thread) Ron Moore's interview where he shows Berman as the "studio guy", whose mantra was always "pull it back, tone it down, play it safe".

The biggest (and ultimately insurmountable) obstacle creatively was Berman and his pet writer Braga who put all his edicts into effect on VOY.

Right, that's why Braga's ideas (before they were shot down by UPN) were all things that most folks on this board would've loved (no replicators/holodecks, year long "Year of Hell", etc). Because he wanted to marginalize the show, naturally...

Did he or did he not do the studio's bidding (as formulated and transmitted by Berman)?

Braga never showed the stones that Behr and Moore did in doing end runs around Berman's edicts.

Behr and Moore weren't on a network show, they actually COULD get around edicts. Not so with the VOY staff.