Why is the Trek community so negative about Voyager?

[Guy Gardener]

I'm a misogynist.

But I'm also a misandrist.

I dislike both genders with an equal verve.

What's more insulting?

When I call Kim a little girl or when I call Janeway an old man?

 

[Anwar]

It was said that the torpedoes were irreplacable, and yet they appear to keep using starfleet torpedoes. Considering the premise of the show was being lost in space with no backup or Starfleet to reply on, it was KINDA important to show us these details. Ignoring it just isn't on.

That's like saying we needed to see every last second of repair and resupplying done when they would come across a commerce hub. Other aliens species use the equivalent of photon torpedoes, it's not hard to conceive that they could just go barter for restocking or siphon off anti-matter from the warp core to make more while replicating the casings.

I don't think anyone can deny Voyager often ran into hostile aliens.

But not always, and a lot of the time it was isolated encounters that could be easily won or escaped from.

Episodes in Voyager don't revolve around "every little thing" in the characters' lives, otherwise they wouldTn't be episodes. Character episodes in VOY deal with important events and emotions- they are the kind of events that change a person.

Not really, the folks in DS9 TNG and TOS go through character-changing stuff and they didn't change every single episode. No one complained there.

And I was also referring to events affecting Voyager.
I'd say the entire ship being captured and everyone made to act in scenarios of wars killing each other is a FAIRLY important event. Would it have killed the writers to refer to it, and to show us how the characters dealt with the trauma or with the massive ship damage?

No more than the DS9 characters forgetting they were turned into James Bond characters in "Our Man Bashir".

On all the great shows of the last...let's say decade, one show flows organically into the next. Characters have real lives and real issues that affect them that just don't go away at the end of an episode.

If the VOY crews problems just went away at the end of each episode then they wouldn't be trapped in the DQ or fighting hostile aliens. Their problems didn't just "go away", they just didn't waste time ruminating on minor self-contained events. They just got over them and moved on instead of constantly dwelling on them.

Neelix appeared bothered she'd left and his first mention of his one time partner since "The Gift" was in "The Voyager Conspiracy" - 59 episodes later! There just wasn't the sense there that these characters existed or had real feelings or connections.
That's just bad writing.

It's not like Kes was some well-known member of the crew. She was closest to Neelix and Paris, and being trapped away from home for as long as they have would tend to harden a person to the point they don't get all blubbery over someone leaving.

Hmm, who said anything about becoming a "totally different person"? You're using hyperbole again, tut tut.
Also, it doesn't take years to change a person, aspects of a person can be irrevocably changed by one event, its called "a life changing event".

"Life changing events" are more or less a fictional creation, people really aren't of such weak character they let some random experience radically alter who they are. Picard didn't let the Borg irrevocably change who he was on the fundamental level, Spock didn't let his death/rebirth fundamentally change who he was, Kirk didn't let his son's death irrevocably change who he was. Whenever anyone talks about how VOY's chars never changed, they mean that they wanted them to all becoming people who had absolutely nothing in common with who they were a month ago.

I'd love to know how much money it must cost to writer a few lines in a script referring to changing course because of the sensors picking up borg ships. Do they have to pay $500, 000 each time they use the word "borg", hmmm?
Now, that's just silly, no excuse.

The audience would never accept mere mention of the Borg, they'd demand they be seen on screen. And they wouldn't tolerate VOY just avoiding them, they'd want some massive epic battle no matter how silly that would seem. The audience were just totally unpleasable whenever it came to VOY and the Borg since they wanted them to fight the Borg but then turned on a heel and said it was dumb immediately after it happened.

 

[SRFX]

I had no problem with the amount of Borg encounters in Voyager. If anything, I was anticipating it quite highly once Caretaker aired, since I remember the Borg were referenced in TNG as coming from the Delta Quadrant.

My issue was that with each successive encounter, the Borg seemed less and less powerful, until Voyager was able to walk all over them. It was disappointing to see the greatest threat to the Federation reduced to a mere inconvenience.

 

[vas2009]

Seriously? Okay, I'm game.

An opinion about someone is valid no matter what someone else says in reply. If I have the opinion that Janeway was selfish due to some of her poor choices, that's my opinion, and not something anyone needs to prove nor disprove.


Was Tuvix ever mentioned again in the entire series? Because we're talking about lasting consequences here.

We're not talking about common *sense, we're talking about what is shown on TV. It's all very well guessing what a character is going through but my guess that she is secretly a Gorn in disguise would just be as valid as your guess that there were lasting repercussions.


Evidently so, as you don't seem to understand this discussion at all. Nobody needs a CSI team to hold an opinion about a character and nobody needs a Judge and Jury to have a discussion about the show.

You are right, your opinions are your own and you are entitled to them and do not need to have any reason for them however...
If you wanna have a constructive conversation with people who don't agree with you it is worth the effort to supply them with a situation "evidence" to back up your end of the discussion. I find it annoying how the "prosecutors" here are so quick to jump down the throats of the "deffence"

As for Tuvix I'm sure it would have made the show so much better by beating a dead horse... just like this discussion.

Eventually the rest of the "cheerleaders" who have stuck around this thread for far too long (like me) will get sick of this senseless bickering and go back to blind idol worship.

The rest of you can enjoy knowing you're not alone with you opinions and share them with one another.

I understand perfectly.

 

[Anwar]

It's half inevitability, half double standard.

In TNG we had Crusher manage to destroy a Borg Cruiser with a skeleton crew and a damaged ENT-D in "Descent" and no one cared. If VOY had done the same thing there'd have been Hell to pay.

Also, VOY had no cannon fodder to sacrifice to the Borg. In TNG they were able to get away with having the ENT-D defeat the Borg in BOBW because they already sacrificed 40 starships to them, and DS9 kept the Dominion powerful by always having a steady supply of Federation/Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian ships to have the Dominion rip through to keep their threat level up (plus the Dominion weren't THAT more powerful than the Feds).

You need cannon fodder for the Borg to kill without harming the ship or main characters if you want their threat level kept up. Without it, their decay is inevitable since destroying the Borg is the only way to resolve the story. VOY couldn't just run because the Borg can outrun them and track them anywhere, they had to destroy them.

 

[SRFX]

It's half inevitability, half double standard.

In TNG we had Crusher manage to destroy a Borg Cruiser with a skeleton crew and a damaged ENT-D in "Descent" and no one cared. If VOY had done the same thing there'd have been Hell to pay.

That's true, although I always assumed this was because it wasn't a true Borg vessel, but something pieced together and assimilated into a reasonable ship. It wasn't like the D took down a Borg cube.

And even then, technically it was a solar flare that took out the ship, not the Enterprise's own weaponry (which was depicted as inadequate anyway).

Also, VOY had no cannon fodder to sacrifice to the Borg. In TNG they were able to get away with having the ENT-D defeat the Borg in BOBW because they already sacrificed 40 starships to them, and DS9 kept the Dominion powerful by always having a steady supply of Federation/Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian ships to have the Dominion rip through to keep their threat level up (plus the Dominion weren't THAT more powerful than the Feds).

You need cannon fodder for the Borg to kill without harming the ship or main characters if you want their threat level kept up. Without it, their decay is inevitable since destroying the Borg is the only way to resolve the story. VOY couldn't just run because the Borg can outrun them and track them anywhere, they had to destroy them.

The Dominion had those enormous battleships which only really the Klingons had an answer to in size and armament (Negh'var class). The Federation had nothing (canon) equivalent to those.

As for the Borg's villain decay. Yes, I realise this was an inevitability, but I guess I would've preferred that they remained a consistently imposing threat right up until the last episode, and the land them a death blow.

And that death blow should've involved an entire Starfleet taskforce, not just a beefed up Voyager firing the proverbial proton torpedo down the exhaust port to maintain any sort of weight to the drama.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

That's like saying we needed to see every last second of repair and resupplying done when they would come across a commerce hub.

No, that would be you exaggerating.
I just wanted to be shown some sort of continuity regarding
-Replacing torpedoes
-The ship being repaired after MAJOR damage - especially "Deadlock" and "The Killing Game".

Other aliens species use the equivalent of photon torpedoes, it's not hard to conceive that they could just go barter for restocking or siphon off anti-matter from the warp core to make more while replicating the casings.

The torpedo they used in "Dark Frontier" was a standard Starfleet torpedo. I wanted a show that showed how Voyager survived in the Delta Quadrant alone, an occassional mention of how they kept their weapons restocked would have added to the fulfillment of the premise.

No more than the DS9 characters forgetting they were turned into James Bond characters in "Our Man Bashir".

"Our Man Bashir" was about the crew getting stuck in a holomatrix for a few hours, "The Killing Game" was about Voyager actually being captured by the enemy, several crewmembers dying and giant chunks of the ship being completely taken apart.
Wasn't Voyager one ship alone in the DQ? Is it realistic that the giant ship alterations really would have had no impact on even the NEXT episode? Not to mention the trauma experienced by all the crewmen.
Its true that all Trek writers drop the ball on occassions but the sheer lack of connection between one episode and the next in Voyager was laughable on occassion. I'm glad you can be content with laziness.

If the VOY crews problems just went away at the end of each episode then they wouldn't be trapped in the DQ or fighting hostile aliens. Their problems didn't just "go away", they just didn't waste time ruminating on minor self-contained events. They just got over them and moved on instead of constantly dwelling on them.

This isn't about getting over problems, this is about the characters being real people and being concerned or occupied with the same issues for a realistically long amount of time.
People battle with problems for very long periods of time, and build relationships over long periods of time, or mourn and miss people for long periods of time.
Besides Tom and B'Ellana, none of the Voyager crew appeared to have any romantic interests never mind friends.
A Star Trek show should be just as much about the crew and their lives as it is about the weeks's sci-fi story. Voyager just didn't give us that, characters like Harry, Tuvok, Neelix and often Tom Paris just appeared to live in some sort of stasis when away from the screen. They didn't seem textured or real.

And of course, some ship problems shouldn't have simply gone away between episodes or within episodes. A reference to the damage done in "Deadlock" or "The Killing Game" in the subsequent episode would have made the show feel more real and organic.
I'm glad you can be content with lazy writing and lack of attention to continuity, but I can't

It's not like Kes was some well-known member of the crew.

She was a regular cast member and in show, she was one of only two medics on board Voyager as well as sitting in on most meetings of the senior crew.

She was closest to Neelix and Paris, and being trapped away from home for as long as they have would tend to harden a person to the point they don't get all blubbery over someone leaving.

Geez, that's your excuse? Data was as hardened as any being ever and he still remembered Tasha Yar and kept a holoprojection of her.
Neelix was a big emotional softie who was with Kes for two years and the writers never bothered to show his reaction to her leaving, never mind Tom or Janeway who was like a surrogate mother to her.

"Life changing events" are more or less a fictional creation, people really aren't of such weak character they let some random experience radically alter who they are.

You can't characterise the entire human race, plenty of people are changed by one event.
-Near death experiences
-Family dying
-Being tortured
Are some major events which can change a person - change their outlooks, change their disposition, change their opinions. I mean are you taking the piss?
If you think "life changing events" don't exist, then I'd like to know if you're ever even stepped out your front door and talked to another person. Hell, turn on the TV and you'll find a documentary or two about them.

Picard didn't let the Borg irrevocably change who he was on the fundamental level.

Picard did change.

Spock didn't let his death/rebirth fundamentally change who he was, Kirk didn't let his son's death irrevocably change who he was.

This happened after the tv show was over, all we got were films that could hardly delve into the after effects of those two events. But at least Kirk's son was remembered.

Whenever anyone talks about how VOY's chars never changed, they mean that they wanted them to all becoming people who had absolutely nothing in common with who they were a month ago.

Ah yes, because you're psychic and know what everyone really thinks even if they think otherwise, you just know better!
Oh and everyone wanted the Voyager crew to turn into space pirates with no morals right? HYPERBOLE AND EXAGGERATION FTW!

The audience would never accept mere mention of the Borg, they'd demand they be seen on screen.

Because you know what every audience member is thinking?
What a ludicrous thing to say, they WOULD see it on screen -in "Dark Frontier"! Keep up!
You're painting Voyager viewers as morons as well as claiming you know everything they think, which I find insulting as a Voyager fan.

And they wouldn't tolerate VOY just avoiding them, they'd want some massive epic battle

Have you got your own collective going on with Voyager fandom or are you so conceited you really believe you can speak for all Voyager viewers ever?


If you're going to continue using the tactics of 1. Exaggeration and 2. Speaking for all Voyager fans based on nothing - then save your rebutall, because I can't argue with someone so illogical.
Besides, it appears you're already known around these parts for trolling regarding Voyager criticism, and I don't have the energy for that.

 

[Greg Cox]

Not when it's on a network oppressed show, it's not.

.

Network interference is an explanation for why a show falls short. It doesn't change the fact that the show didn't fully live up to its potential.

Umpteen years later, who cares whose fault it was? All that matters in the long run is the finished product.

 

[TheGodBen]

Back to Janeway I'm not saying people think "Since Janeway is a woman I'm going to criticize her." It's more like the same behaviors that are okay with Picard or Kirk are not okay with Janeway. An example of this is the often discussed "Equinox" scene where Chakotay prevented Janeway from allowing an alien to attack a member of the Equinox crew. There was much discussion when a similar incident with Archer (don't know the episode, stopped watching when I realized Porthos was my favorite character) drew little criticism.

Anomaly.

To be honest, the two situations aren't comparable for various reasons. Archer did torture a man by putting him in an airlock and slowly dropping the atmosphere, but Archer's motivation and subsequent character arc were different from Janeway's. Archer was desperate, 7 million people had been killed on Earth and the rest of the human race was about to be killed if he couldn't find the weapon, so he tortured a guy to get the information he needed. Later in the season, Archer decided to sacrifice himself because of the remorse he felt for that action, and the others he took in order to find the weapon. He didn't forget about the torture, he felt that he had to die because of it. And when he got back to Earth and people labelled him as a hero, he had trouble reconciling people's opinions of him with the actions he knew he took.

Archer crossed a line that he felt he had to cross and he struggled to live with that guilt for a long time.

In comparison, Janeway tortured a man, relieved her first officer for stopping her, pursued a vendetta against a captain that crossed the line... all of which I don't have a major problem with. What I have a problem with is how she was left off the hook by Chakotay at the end of the episode; rather than acknowledging that she crossed a line in order to find Ransom, Chakotay backs down and claims that he was the one that crossed the line by challenging her.

Janeway never had to deal with what she did, it wasn't followed up on in future episodes, which is insane when you consider that the guy she tortured is now a member of her crew! How must she feel when she walks past him in the corridor? We don't know because the writers decided to ignore this fascinating scenario they had set up in order to do Irish holodeck episodes.

I hold the opinion that any good writer/showrunner can work with what they have and make it something special. So many shows have had network pressure before and still managed to pull it out of the hat. I don't think Star Trek as a whole should be any different.

Sadly, Star Trek is different because Star Trek isn't a TV show, it's an entertainment and merchandising franchise. Paramount probably made more money from selling collectable mouse-mats than they made from the entirety of DS9 (insane exaggeration), so I can imagine they were more protective of Star Trek than other shows.

Christ on a crutch!

He broke his leg for our sins.

I grew to dislike Janeway once she became erratic over the course of the series, starting with Season 5. They did the same thing with Archer, they just did it better with him, growing that over the course of the series. It was a natural progression, not randomness.

I agree with this. Janeway started out as a good captain, but erratic writing turned her into a frustrating captain that you want to like, but then she does something that seems out of character and leaves you feeling confused. Archer started out as a bad, erratic captain, but he slowly became a good captain, and if the series had continued he could have become a great captain.

So we can't criticise women in power because women need role models? So basically, we're allowed to criticise men but not women because we need to protect women from reality and just blindly assume all female role models are perfect and beyond reproach?

So the Democrats really should have nominated Hillary.

HILLARY: John McCain's tax plan will make it harder for poor people in this country to get by.
MODERATOR: How do you respond to that, Mr McCain?
MCCAIN: I want to make it clear that my opponent is a bright and intelligent person, and it would be great if she was the President.
EVERYONE:

I'm in the process of watching all of VOY and am currently nearly finished with season 3. From what I've seen so far, you're right in that later episodes don't seem to address past events. However, they do make the effort to setup events that will take place in future episodes.

Voyager does okay in this regard in the first four seasons, it's not great but it is acceptable. But in season 5, the bottom falls out and the whole thing becomes a big mess. They'll jump 30,000 light-years and come across the same aliens as before. People will apparently have habits that we never see before or since (comm-badge twiddling). They'll be in Borg space one week, then they're out of it for several months, then they're back. Babies will disappear.

The right of the individual is of paramount importance.

The problem with Tuvix is that Star Trek fans feel Janeway's decision is a-ok because they've had "the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few" drummed into them for decades as a positive and virtuous mantra.

That's only half of the Trek mantra, the other half is "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." The first half represents Spock's logical point of view, the second half represents McCoy's emotional point of view, and when you put them together you get Kirk trying to do the best he can. To accept one but not both is to miss the point.

Yes I would have liked more serial stories but that's not the same as the straw man of wanting Janeway doing smack and Kim raping pandas.

What about holo-pandas? No real pandas would be harmed.

 

[stj]

Network interference is an explanation for why a show falls short. It doesn't change the fact that the show didn't fully live up to its potential.

Umpteen years later, who cares whose fault it was? All that matters in the long run is the finished product.

Not to pick an individual out as such, but this stands out because it's produced by a professional writer, who would be expected to have some judgment. The finished product Voyager in the long run has some excellent episodes that show why there should be a place in drama for something besides realism, some episodes that are entertaining adventure stories and some episodes that are rollicking comedies.

On the other hand, there is a finished product dedicated to living up to that alleged squandered potential, the new BattleStar Galactica. That finished product was a big serial that was as artistically successful as the Voyager episode Threshold, with much the same failings: wallowing in angst, no meaningful dramatic choices, over the top sensationalism, sleazy sexuality, thematic emptiness and, out of the blue at the end, a dump of metaphysical garbage. While still failing to come to grips with the alleged trauma of the situation or the hardships, except on an even grander scale, without the handwaving Treknology!

Prattling about the wasted potential when it has been proven that there was no potential there, shows there's something seriously wrong with the argument. Either it is mindless groupthink, or the proponents can't understand themselves well enough to articulate what they don't like or it's a cover for what they know they don't like. In any case, it's an embarrassment to the people to write this stuff. It's like drooling on yourself.

PS This crossed with another post that characterizes Janeway in Equinox as pursuing a "vendetta against a captain that crossed the line," which falsifies the comparison. Ransom was murdering people. That's not crossing the line, that's evil.

As one of the murderers, if Janeway had let Lessing die at the hands of one of the aliens whose friends and relatives he had helped murder, it would have been justice done. As it was, the script flinched and explicitly stated that Janeway had no intention of letting him die, believing he would confess.

It was Chakotay who crossed the line. He wanted to help a murderer escape justice only because he was one of "us," without a thought for saving the prospective victims of Ransom's band of murderers. The script conveniently excused Chakotay from the consequences of his crime by suddenly producing the same aliens where you shouldn't expect them (something this poster explicitly criticizes!)

The stupidity of all this is quite sympotmatic of the negativity about Voyager on this bbs.

 

[Greg Cox]

Network interference is an explanation for why a show falls short. It doesn't change the fact that the show didn't fully live up to its potential.

Umpteen years later, who cares whose fault it was? All that matters in the long run is the finished product.

Not to pick an individual out as such, but this stands out because it's produced by a professional writer, who would be expected to have some judgment. The finished product Voyager in the long run has some excellent episodes that show why there should be a place in drama for something besides realism, some episodes that are entertaining adventure stories and some episodes that are rollicking comedies.

On the other hand, there is a finished product dedicated to living up to that alleged squandered potential, the new BattleStar Galactica. That finished product was a big serial that was as artistically successful as the Voyager episode Threshold, with much the same failings: wallowing in angst, no meaningful dramatic choices, over the top sensationalism, sleazy sexuality, thematic emptiness and, out of the blue at the end, a dump of metaphysical garbage. While still failing to come to grips with the alleged trauma of the situation or the hardships, except on an even grander scale, without the handwaving Treknology!

.

Er, when did this become about BSG?

 

[Admiral Shran]

I had no problem with the amount of Borg encounters in Voyager. If anything, I was anticipating it quite highly once Caretaker aired, since I remember the Borg were referenced in TNG as coming from the Delta Quadrant.

Actually, the very first reference to the Borg being from the Delta Quadrant was in Star Trek: First Contact - which aired during Voyager's third season, between Warlord and The Q and the Grey.

Before that we had only seen the Borg seven times (Q Who, The Best of Both Worlds I and II, I Borg, Descent I and II, and Emissary).

In Q Who we only find out that the Borg are in system J-25 and that Guinan is familiar with the system. There's no reference to the Delta Quadrant (since the whole concept of dividing the galaxy into four quadrants wasn't introduced until the next season of TNG.) In fact, J-25 was only 7,000 light-years from Federation space.

In The Best of Both Worlds, I Borg, Descent, and Emissary, there is no reference at all to where the Borg come from.

At the time Voyager premiered, I seem to remember hearing that Voyager might encounter the Borg at some point since the Borg were from the Delta Quadrant. However, I have absolutely no idea where this information came from. I also think that the Delta Quadrant in First Contact, which is a simple throwaway line spoken by Crusher, was inserted to prepare the way for the Borg's introduction on Voyager, which would happen only a few months later.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I don't think I look like the typical Trekkie because I don't wear glasses, I'm not obese or sickly thin, but I'm muscular, with large arms and a large chest as I'm a competitive weight lifter.

 

[Anwar]

That's true, although I always assumed this was because it wasn't a true Borg vessel, but something pieced together and assimilated into a reasonable ship. It wasn't like the D took down a Borg cube.

It was a Borg ship, we see it later on in VOY on a screen in a Borg vessel as one of their ship types.

And even then, technically it was a solar flare that took out the ship, not the Enterprise's own weaponry (which was depicted as inadequate anyway).

And I'm saying that even if it was a creatively done way, like using an artificially created wormhole to warp a Borg ship into a star or a black hole, no one would like it and criticize it.

The Dominion had those enormous battleships which only really the Klingons had an answer to in size and armament (Negh'var class). The Federation had nothing (canon) equivalent to those.

They didn't need to outright counter them because they had other ships to sacrifice to the Dominion while damaging their larger ships enough that the smaller weaker ships could still destroy them. Cannon fodder.

As for the Borg's villain decay. Yes, I realise this was an inevitability, but I guess I would've preferred that they remained a consistently imposing threat right up until the last episode, and the land them a death blow.

And that death blow should've involved an entire Starfleet taskforce, not just a beefed up Voyager firing the proverbial proton torpedo down the exhaust port to maintain any sort of weight to the drama.

If they stayed nigh-invincible all the way to the end, VOY would've been destroyed in the first Borg episode. Ships like VOY are shown getting blasted apart in a single shot in First Contact, so why wouldn't VOY?

You want the Borg to stay tough, always have a steady supply of cannon fodder to keep them busy and away from VOY. And the 8472 wouldn't work because they were too expensive to keep using.

 

[Anwar]

No, that would be you exaggerating.
I just wanted to be shown some sort of continuity regarding
-Replacing torpedoes
-The ship being repaired after MAJOR damage - especially "Deadlock" and "The Killing Game".

Like I said, it's mentioned that the DQ is full of alien species that aren't hostile and repair bases/commerce hubs. It would have cost a ton of cash extra to have to bother creating new starbase sets and models as well as the FX showing the repairs so they just settled for off-screen mentions. They didn't need to spoonfeed us information of how every single time they get a scratch they have to go to an alien base.

The torpedo they used in "Dark Frontier" was a standard Starfleet torpedo. I wanted a show that showed how Voyager survived in the Delta Quadrant alone, an occassional mention of how they kept their weapons restocked would have added to the fulfillment of the premise.

So they could just make more or replicate the casings while getting the materials for the internal work, it doesn't exactly boggle the mind.

"Our Man Bashir" was about the crew getting stuck in a holomatrix for a few hours, "The Killing Game" was about Voyager actually being captured by the enemy, several crewmembers dying and giant chunks of the ship being completely taken apart.
Wasn't Voyager one ship alone in the DQ? Is it realistic that the giant ship alterations really would have had no impact on even the NEXT episode? Not to mention the trauma experienced by all the crewmen.
Its true that all Trek writers drop the ball on occassions but the sheer lack of connection between one episode and the next in Voyager was laughable on occassion. I'm glad you can be content with laziness.

So you'd rather they made the show a continuity porno where you couldn't miss 5 minutes or the show would be irrevocably ruined even on re-watches?

Besides Tom and B'Ellana, none of the Voyager crew appeared to have any romantic interests never mind friends.
A Star Trek show should be just as much about the crew and their lives as it is about the weeks's sci-fi story. Voyager just didn't give us that, characters like Harry, Tuvok, Neelix and often Tom Paris just appeared to live in some sort of stasis when away from the screen. They didn't seem textured or real.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy were okay with one another and the bridge crew/medical staff. It never bothered anyone that they didn't know every single last member of the crew or dealt with all their issues all the time.

Picard did change.

Not fundamentally into a totally different man.

This happened after the tv show was over, all we got were films that could hardly delve into the after effects of those two events. But at least Kirk's son was remembered.

Being movies set one after the other actually makes it MORE likely that the aftereffects would be dealt with. But they weren't.

Oh and everyone wanted the Voyager crew to turn into space pirates with no morals right?

They wanted it to be worse than Equinox, same deal.

Because you know what every audience member is thinking?
What a ludicrous thing to say, they WOULD see it on screen -in "Dark Frontier"! Keep up!

No, I mean they'd expect to see VOY evading a Borg ship every episode until they battle them head on.

Have you got your own collective going on with Voyager fandom or are you so conceited you really believe you can speak for all Voyager viewers ever?

I've been dealing with anti-VOY complainers for 15 years. I understand the complaints quite well. They NEVER would have been satisfied with anything less than a head-on battle with VOY against the Collective. Period.

Besides, it appears you're already known around these parts for trolling regarding Voyager criticism, and I don't have the energy for that.

If by "trolling" you mean deflating silly complaints, then yes.

 

[kimc]

I think what this attitude does is inoculate against any criticism. If anyone dislikes Janeway, or criticizes her characterization, then you can just say "Oh, they're prejudiced because Janeway is a woman."

I disagree. There's a difference between saying "I hate Janeway because she's a know-it-all" (omg, the nerve of the woman!) vs "she was inconsistently written".

Back to Janeway I'm not saying people think "Since Janeway is a woman I'm going to criticize her." It's more like the same behaviors that are okay with Picard or Kirk are not okay with Janeway. An example of this is the often discussed "Equinox" scene where Chakotay prevented Janeway from allowing an alien to attack a member of the Equinox crew. There was much discussion when a similar incident with Archer (don't know the episode, stopped watching when I realized Porthos was my favorite character) drew little criticism.

Anomaly.

To be honest, the two situations aren't comparable for various reasons. Archer did torture a man by putting him in an airlock and slowly dropping the atmosphere, but Archer's motivation and subsequent character arc were different from Janeway's. Archer was desperate, 7 million people had been killed on Earth and the rest of the human race was about to be killed if he couldn't find the weapon, so he tortured a guy to get the information he needed. Later in the season, Archer decided to sacrifice himself because of the remorse he felt for that action, and the others he took in order to find the weapon. He didn't forget about the torture, he felt that he had to die because of it. And when he got back to Earth and people labelled him as a hero, he had trouble reconciling people's opinions of him with the actions he knew he took.

Archer crossed a line that he felt he had to cross and he struggled to live with that guilt for a long time.

In comparison, Janeway tortured a man, relieved her first officer for stopping her, pursued a vendetta against a captain that crossed the line... all of which I don't have a major problem with. What I have a problem with is how she was left off the hook by Chakotay at the end of the episode; rather than acknowledging that she crossed a line in order to find Ransom, Chakotay backs down and claims that he was the one that crossed the line by challenging her.

Janeway never had to deal with what she did, it wasn't followed up on in future episodes, which is insane when you consider that the guy she tortured is now a member of her crew! How must she feel when she walks past him in the corridor? We don't know because the writers decided to ignore this fascinating scenario they had set up in order to do Irish holodeck episodes.

Well I think we all know continuity is not one of Voyager's strong suits. Shown repercussions or not I find it interesting that what Janeway did is called "torture" when some may say it's just a threat. Would she have gone thru with it? Hard to say since Chakotay stopped her. Also, this crewman had participated in a genocide. If you're going to go for continuity it would have been interesting to see how the Equinoz crew deal with the aftermath of that. However, the whole episode was never referred to again.

 

[Anwar]

Precisely, the Equinox crew weren't just random hostiles. They were traitors and participants of willful genocide of sentient lifeforms.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Voyager had its high points.

Then again, it did also have Tom Paris and Janeway turning into newts (salamanders? I don't know, something like that) and producing offspring.

I'd say that's a low point, wouldn't you?

 

[Anwar]

Meh, TNG turned Picard into a kid and an energy cloud, TOS removed Spock's brain and put it back in with no harm, DS9 turned its chars in Bond movie folks, what's the harm in Lizard sex?

 

[TheGodBen]

Well I think we all know continuity is not one of Voyager's strong suits. Shown repercussions or not I find it interesting that what Janeway did is called "torture" when some may say it's just a threat. Would she have gone thru with it? Hard to say since Chakotay stopped her.

How is it not torture? She put a man in a room and exposed him to aliens that wanted to kill him unless he told her what she wanted to know. The mental stress of sitting in that room, trapped, hearing those noises, knowing that death could swoop from behind before you know it... that's torture, and it was crossing a moral line that Starfleet officers aren't supposed to cross. Whether she was willing to let him die is a different question, and we don't know if Archer would have been willing to let the alien die either, he could have backed down at the last second. The difference in Archer's case is that the alien confessed.

Also, this crewman had participated in a genocide.

And that justifies murder? The alien Archer tortured was part of a group of pirates that probably killed dozens, including one of Archer's crew, and doomed hundreds of others to their deaths. Does that make Archer torturing him right?


My problem the the torture scene in Equinox isn't Janeway, my problem with that scene is Chakotay, how he ultimately decides that he was wrong, and how he returns to the status quo and acts like nothing happened. This is a man whose principles caused him to resign from Starfleet and join a guerilla movement, the fact that he would back down and accept Janeway's action doesn't feel natural in any way.