What if Voyager only had 13 episodes per season?

[Newspaper Taxi]

Voyager really had some entertaining and fantastic episodes in it's midst but is more often thought of for it's middling or sub-par episodes. What if Voyager only had 13 episodes a season? I tried to pare down the episodes into 13 episode seasons, and this is what I got:

Voy: Season 1:
Since Voyager season one was a mini season of 16 episodes in our reality I thought it would be poetic justice if Season 1 was a mega-season in this alternate reality. All episodes remained; for good and for ill.

Voy: Season 2:
1.The 37's
2.Initiations
3.Cold Fire
4.Twisted
5.Prototype
6.Meld
7.Manuevers
8.Deathwish
9.The Thaw
10.Alliances
11.Tuvix
12.Investigations
13.Basics, Pt. 1

Voy Season 3:
1. Basics, Pt. II
2. Flashback
3. The Swarm
4. Unity
5. Fair Trade
6. Future's End, Pt. I
7. Future's End, Pt. II
8.The Q and the Grey
9. Coda
10.Before and After
11. Worst Case Scenario
12. Distant Origin
13. Scorpion, Pt. I

Voy Season 4:
1.Scorpion, Pt. II
2. The Gift
3. The Raven
4. Year of Hell, Pt. I
5. Year of Hell, Pt. II
6.Random Thoughts
7.Mortal Coil
8. Message in a Bottle
9. Hunters
10. Prey
11. The Killing Game, Pt. I
12. The Killing Game, Pt. II
13. Living Witness

Voy Season 5:
1.Night
2.Drone
3.Timeless
4.Infinite Regress
5.Thirty Days
6.Latent Image
7. Dark Frontier
8.Bliss
9. Someone to Watch Over Me
10. 11:59
11. Relativity
12. Bride of Chaotica!
13. Equinox, Part I

Voy Season 6
1. Equinox, Pt. II
2.Survival Instinct
3.Barge of the Dead
4. Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy
5. One Small Step
6. Pathfinder
7, Blink of an Eye
8. Virtuoso
9.Child's Play
10. Good Shepherd
11. Muse
12.Lifeline
13. Unimatrix Zero, Pt. I

Voy Season 7
1. Unimatrix Zero, Pt. II
2.Imperfection
3. Critical Care
4.Flesh and Blood
5. Lineage
6. Workforce, Pt. I
7. Workforce, Pt. II
8.Author, Author
9. Homestead
10. The Void
11.Repentance
12. Endgame, Pt. I
13. Endgame, Pt. II


Would you be more or less impressed with Voyager if it had shorter seasons? Would it make a difference?

 

[Guy Gardener]

I thought the question was going to be: "What if Voyager only had 13 Torpedoes?"

 

[Destructor]

Would you be more or less impressed with Voyager if it had shorter seasons? Would it make a difference?

In short: Yes, it would have made a huge difference and that difference would have been extremely positive. The series described above is nothing but excellence. Half of all VOY episodes were either mediocre or outright crummy. The other half were, as demonstrated above, pretty good! So I think it would have been a net positive, but still, the Voyager we have is the Voyager we have- sometimes you need the texture the in-between episodes provide.

 

[Anwar]

Also, it's easier to maintain continuity and character consistency (to say nothing or story arcs) when there's fewer episodes.

Just look at how short British Seasons tend to be.

 

[exodus]

I think it would still be 50/50 regardless.
Nobody in any production company has the foresight to know which eps. will be hits or misses when its in production no matter how many eps it has. There have been tons of better written and produced shows on in the last decade that only ran 13 eps a season and still got cancelled.

13 eps. doesnt mean shit if you cant be creative and consistant in telling a story. If not, then you've still given the audience a bad show just shorter. You're not fixing anything , you're continuing to make same mistakes already made by ignoring writing quality.

13 eps. still doesnt fix where the Borg baby is or how they're getting more torpedos. Those issues will still exist.

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

That's what I was going to say- it's a big assumption to assume by cutting season size in half, we would get only the best episodes. Some people seem to abhor mediocre or average or even slightly below average episodes, but they forget the advantage to 26 episode seasons is a lot of new episodes, few reruns during the season and aired once weekly, it would mean only 1 rerun per ep per year.

From having been a tv viewer in the '90s, believe me, those 26 episode seasons in Star Trek were much appreciated compared to the multitude of 22 episode seasons in syndication. 22 episodes results in multiple large gaps during the season. 22 episodes only extends with 1 rerun to 44 weeks, still leaving 8 weeks of double reruns. 22 eps means new ep clusters in Oct+Nov, Feb, May, with some leftovers to sprinkle in the place of their choice, usually late Jan, early March or late April. 26 eps means a full month more of new eps and it removes 4 weeks of reruns too, meaning less space for reruns to get 2nd or 3rd airings.

Don't let purity lead to butchering a series or leaving not much of it left. It's like saying what good are the pinky fingers. They're weak and besides, the other fingers do all the holding. Slice, slice.

Of course, going into some horrid episodes, they had to have known ("Profit and Lace" for DS9), but in many, they don't know until enough people see it and go "Bleh!".

 

[Destructor]

13 eps. still doesnt fix where the Borg baby is or how they're getting more torpedos. Those issues will still exist.

Was that really the problem with Voyager, the torpedo question? I tend to think that was more of a symptom of the fact that the writers had reset button mentality.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

So what if it had 13 episodes a season? Taking the best 13 episodes out of each season and saying "Voyager could have been *this* consistent" means nothing. Its not like they would have made 26 episodes a season, picked the ones that worked best and then thrown the rest in the trash.

 

[exodus]

13 eps. still doesnt fix where the Borg baby is or how they're getting more torpedos. Those issues will still exist.

Was that really the problem with Voyager, the torpedo question? I tend to think that was more of a symptom of the fact that the writers had reset button mentality.

It's called an example.