• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

When did voyager go wrong?

W

WesleysDisciple

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Specificaly where did it seem to become TNG with a very mild twist. and new charachters.


Look im not saying Choakotay should have been perpetualy shouting at JAneway, but id have liked to see more of "Your not making it easy for me!" from the 2nd edpisode.


or some follow up to the Resentment between chakotay and Paris in the first episode.

one Act might be enough to cause him to decide he should grudiginlgy reconsider his opinion of the man, but it wont simply sweep it under the rug.

I've heard this was due to executive meddling but I'd have liked seeing more conflict.

So anyone have ideas on where voyager truly deviated from its potential and descended into the depths of mediocrity?
 
It went wrong the moment they had enough energy too keep the ship in perfect shape, build everything they need, torpedo's shuttle's, food, etc.
In my opinion it felt all too save.
 
When Kes was kicked out and Voyager was turned into a three-character show.
 
I've been rewatching VOY on Hulu and it's not as bad as I remember. That being said, I think VOY went wrong when it put the Maquis in Starfleet uniforms at the end of Caretaker. I wish that had taken longer-a season or two, or that some people never got to that point where they felt comfortable putting on a Starfleet uniform. I don't mean the traitors like Seska or Jonas (?), but just some people who were willing to compromise yet not go easily back into the chain of command.

I also think the show erred when it made the Kazon the main heavies early on instead of the Vidiians.
 
I have to admit... 7 has some good episodes, but I have to agree with the assesment she takes over the show.

not particularly averse to her romance with chakotay, though.
 
Lynx said:
When Kes was kicked out and Voyager was turned into a three-character show.
Click to expand...
And the way she was kicked to the curb was awful. When they picked to keep Wang over her because he gained some notoriety in a magazine for looking good and then replaced her with a bonafide beauty queen, the producers were essentially telling her "We're letting you go because you're not beautiful enough."

What a shitty thing to do, and I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't have some residual psychological effects from the experience.
 
Well, I'll give a serious answer.

When Voyager debuted, it seemed like an interesting concept. Trek was returning to exploration, but with the heroes stranded on the other side of the galaxy. I had no problem with that. It just seemed to scream "serialization" to me, though. Each episode would build on the previous, with the heroes scraping by, surviving but not easily, with problems stemming from being alone, being under-supplied, being under-manned (what with having to use the Maquis and all). It seemed like a great idea.

Then, during the actual run, they drop most of these potential plots pretty quickly. The Maquis are buddy-buddy with Starfleet, since most of them seemed to be former Starfleet anyway. The ship was easily repaired all the time. Well, ok, they have some ability to repair away from spacedock facilities, that's expected, but for multiple years? It should've gotten harder and harder to make perfect repairs all the time.

One thing that struck me was that they did try to grow some of their own food. I thought that was a cool idea. But their hydroponic garden was a joke - a couple racks of potted plants doesn't add up to much. I expected, at some point, to see an overflowing greenhouse, with stalks of wheat and corn and vegetables. We never really got to see that, though. All in all, the episodic nature of the show during its initial run left me disappointed with a series that should, to my mind, have been as serialized as much as DS9 was. However, in re-runs, I can enjoy it far more than I did in the first run.

I guess the TPTB were right in the end. The episodic nature of Voyager left it with longer legs for reruns. I love DS9, but you can't just watch one episode out of order - it's too serialized for that. When I do watch DS9, I watch it from start to finish. But with Voyager, I'll watch any old episode at any time without worrying (much) about plot arcs. And that's what the producers wanted.
 
I think it would have been better serialized too.

DS9 does the opposite. it is episodic in its first season then it becomes increasingly serial.
 
I think people sometimes over emphasize the "serialness" of DS9. It really wasn't as extreme as people make it out to be. People like to throw around the "It was ahead of its time," excuse. But even that's somewhat hyperbole.

Seasons 1-2 were totally episodic. Seasons 3,4 & 5 were mostly episodic with an increasing amount of serialization each year. Season 6 was half and half, and with season 7 finally swung to mostly serialized.

The thing is, even by '94/95, there were plenty of shows on television that were more serialized than DS9 ever was. And buy '97/98, the pendulum had fully started to swing.

Voyager was fine episodic. And I think Enterprise would have been fine if it had stayed episodic.

I'd even argue that nowadays the pendulum has swung too far (especially with genre shows) and some episodic sci-fi might be a breath of fresh air.
 
In terms of external threats, it would have been fine if Voyager remained episodic. After all, given their single-minded course, it makes sense that they would enter alien territory at the beginning of an episode and then leave it by the end. Internally, though, there's no reason the show didn't become more serialized. The vessel had a smaller crew than any previous Trek series, and yet we rarely got to know any of the characters outside of those in the main credits. (And even a few of them remained, or eventually became, ciphers.)

The Maquis/Starfleet tension quickly evaporated (as did later, Equinox/Voyager tension). This was replaced with a vague sense of the ship's crew becoming a "family," but this concept wasn't really developed, either, and given how little we knew the characters onboard the ship, often seemed false. It's hard to believe how unexplored the psychological consequences of being cut off from home (and cut off from much relaxation) were on the series. (Then again, despite some weak gestures about holodeck rations, the fact that the crew was small and getting smaller didn't seem to have an effect on the proceedings).

Most of the time, it was TNG with the names changed. This was fine, I suppose, but a waste of the initial premise.
 
VOY had the best premise of all the Trek shows, a ship alone on the other side of the galaxy, but it never lived up to its potential.
 
The Voyager and equinox people tension didnt evaporate, it was never the in the first place.


sighs had to say that.


PErsonally I'd have enjoyed seeing the "Year of hell" Story arc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
Fanfiction for 30 years of Voyager
Replies
0
Views
427
BohandiAnsoid
B
xenotaris
STAR TREK: THAT TIME WHEN HINATA WAS REINCARNATED AS A ROMULAN
Replies
1
Views
673
xenotaris
xenotaris
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top