What if Voyager was a different class of ship?

[Farscape One]

OVERUSE of the Borg. You do understand the meaning of the word 'overuse', right? If not, let me help you: it's using something more often than is needed or necessary.

"UNITY" was a fairly fresh take on the Borg with a planet of ex-Borgs. "SCORPION" was the first time the Borg got beat immediately by a legitimately stronger, better opponent.

If VOY kept the Borg encounters to just those two occasions, no one could accuse them of overuse. Which was the fundamental problem of the Borg on VOY.

 

[Ragitsu]

Even at its strongest, the Dominion would have been steamrolled by The Borg.

 

[Anwar]

If VOY kept the Borg encounters to just those two occasions, no one could accuse them of overuse. Which was the fundamental problem of the Borg on VOY.

Those two encounters were also considered to be part of the "Borg Decay", the audience felt every appearance mishandled them and both of these stories damaged the Borg's image. Especially Scorpion.

There wasn't one Borg story VOY did that the audience felt was "done right".

Of course, Farscape does the same thing by having the Scarrans be introduced as nigh unbeatable and yet the Moya crew keep defeating them.

It didn't help that VOY was never able to make its own series-specific enemies partly due to audience reception making them give up on trying to make their own antagonists

 

[Farscape One]

Those two encounters were also considered to be part of the "Borg Decay", the audience felt every appearance mishandled them and both of these stories damaged the Borg's image. Especially Scorpion.

There wasn't one Borg story VOY did that the audience felt was "done right".

Of course, Farscape does the same thing by having the Scarrans be introduced as nigh unbeatable and yet the Moya crew keep defeating them.

It didn't help that VOY was never able to make its own series-specific enemies partly due to audience reception making them give up on trying to make their own antagonists

Moya didn't beat the Scarrans again and again. A single soldier, okay. Like "Look at the Princess, Part 3: The Maltese Crichton" or "Won't Get Fooled Again", but they were beaten by numbers (D'Argo, Scorpius, AND Crichton in one instance) or sheer luck (Scorpy neural clone helping Crichton in the other instance).

Crichton on Talyn used a wormhole to destroy a carrier, but that was certainly not the norm. Toward the end, they scored a victory, too.

But two Scarran group encounters across 4 seasons? Compare that against VOY encountering and defeating the Borg at least two times PER SEASON after Seven was brought on. That's a minimum of 8 times. Definitely overused. The Scarrans were not.


And VOY would not have a single adversary for too long, just by virtue of constantly heading AWAY from that region. Of course they would be going through a bunch of villains throughout its run.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I always wondered why after 7 years over in the DQ the ship came back in more or less the same form it had left Earth. I'm thinking that given the time over there the ship should have returned to Earth vastly different from all the technology or repairs that they should have made / done over that time.