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Why the hatred for Voyager?

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Santalan said:
Kegek Kringle said:
You should have seen the VOY forum in its heyday. It was open warfare.
Having been there I usually describe the forum as it was back then as a complete and utter cesspit, but whatever works for you. :D
Worse than the Enterprise forum? That was pretty bad!
 
Voyager was the first Trek show I watched and I didn't watch any other Trek until I had finished Voyager. I had nothing else to compare with and I thought that Voyager had great character development and great storylines. As well as a good feeling I got from watching it.
Many people probably can't accept Voyager for what it is because they kept expecting something else all the time in the same way I have trouble accepting ENT because it's too different from the things I like about threk. I had a penpal in the US when Voy started airing that told me that some people that he knew had been watching trek before, refused to watch Voy because it had a female captain. I guess that may be a factor for some viewers as well.

So, because I started out with Voyager and DS9 after that, I have a problem with TNG and ENT, I find the characters in those two shows badly developed as well as kinda dull, probably because I compare them to Voyager and DS9. Anyway, expectations that can't be met, is my long-winded theory. ;)
 
Apogeal Alpha01 said:
Worse than the Enterprise forum? That was pretty bad!
I'm aware that the Enterprise forum was an extremely unpleasant place at times...but the level of vitriol, contempt and outright loathing expressed toward Voyager fans in this forum in the bad old days was worse again. If I hadn't been there, I'd have trouble believing it. As it was, I was there and I still have trouble believing that some of the crap I saw actually happened. That's how bad it was. ;)
 
"Hate" is too strong a word, but basically I felt it was a massive wasted opportunity. It was a good chance to show Starfleet principles breaking down in extreme circumstances but ended up being bland and dull. A beautiful pristine starship on a cruise every week. Undamaged with a seemingly endless supply of shuttlecraft and energy. Undeveloped characters too. Utterly pointless inclusion of the Maquis who did absolutely nothing different to typical cookie-cutter Starfleet officers. Massive overuse of the Borg. The inclusion of the gratutious "babe" (later repeated in the abysmal ENT) What was the point of even setting the show in the Delta Quadrant? It was just a weaker version of TNG.

Awful, just awful.
 
Like it's been said many times before: Most of this stuff you wish VOY had done was forbidden by UPN, who wanted a TNG clone, and didn't want to spend the money on altering the sets always, or changing the CGI model of the ship a lot (cost more money back then to do so).
 
I think the TNG's line of mediocre movies did more damage than either Voyager and Enterprise, although both shows were losing viewers and being creatively stagnant by being on UPN (a bad network that went belly up not so long after ENT's cancellation). But wasn't Voyager getting proportionately better ratings overseas?
 
Dac said:
Ive noticed for quite some time now, that Voyager is by far the most meticulously hated Trek show out there, and, for all its faults, I cannot understand why.

One sentence in and I already disagree with you :)

I would think that the most hated series, or at least the most polarizing series, would be Enterprise. One thing I've noticed on this board is that Voyager haters still watch Voyager. They've still got story knowledge to back up their arguments. If they hated Voyager as much as they hated Enterprise, they wouldn't know so much about Voyager's continuity and such.
 
Why does Year of Hell get so much praise? The scene where the nebula leaks into the ship is insanely hilarious, except not in the good way. Voyager ramming the timeship is less and less believable each time I've seen it. Such things go ignored. People will even claim a desire to see hours and hours of this nonsense! But the saving grace of the episode where Annorax finally, ironically, regains his lost wife by Voyager undoing all his work is blasted!

PS To speak on topic, the rationales for hating Voyager either boil down to not being some other show or outright nonsense. I could understand stuff like hating Kate Mulgrew's voice or Kes is a Mary Sue, but mostly Voyager hating just seems a bbs clique thing.
 
I like the show & its characters. Haven't seen much of it yet, though, probably two seasons worth of random episodes. So it's a treasure trove to me. Year of Hell I have on the Time Travel collection. Though I kept wishing Captain Whatshisname would call someone a "dumbass" for some reason :)
I think the basic idea of Voyager would make the single best space exploration/RPG computer game ever.
 
HRHTheKING said:
"Hate" is too strong a word, but basically I felt it was a massive wasted opportunity. It was a good chance to show Starfleet principles breaking down in extreme circumstances but ended up being bland and dull. A beautiful pristine starship on a cruise every week. Undamaged with a seemingly endless supply of shuttlecraft and energy. Undeveloped characters too. Utterly pointless inclusion of the Maquis who did absolutely nothing different to typical cookie-cutter Starfleet officers. Massive overuse of the Borg. The inclusion of the gratutious "babe" (later repeated in the abysmal ENT) What was the point of even setting the show in the Delta Quadrant? It was just a weaker version of TNG.

Awful, just awful.

I agree to an extent. But keep in mind that DS9 had been Treks foray into darker, gritter material and it was met with limited success. Voyager was probably going to be more like this, but because DS9 didn't exactly set the world on fire ratings wise, it's understandable that Berman and Paramount would want to go back to something that was more successful. I.e. The Next Gen model.

The problem was that the concept of the show didn't fit in with the formula that was presented. Where logically character conflict should be prevalent, barely any existed. Where serialization was all but called for, the formula made damn sure it didn't happen. It almost felt like the show was censoring itself and depriving itself of something new and innovative.

Voyager was the attempt to get the Next Gen and probably some TOS fans back that just didn't like DS9. But by that point TV had changed and Star Trek was not the only dog in the yard. Shows like DS9, Farscape, and Babylon 5 helped pave the way for the more adult-themed, serialized shows of today like NuBSG, Lost, Buffy, and Heroes. Basicly, the The Next Gen formula was 10 years out of date and it made people realize how ahead of it's time DS9 was. Which is probably why it's so well remembered.

And honestly, I just didn't care for the writing. I thought the characters were inconistant and derivative. The formula was tired and out of date. The dialoge was by the numbers. And the stories were very uneven. Some were excellent. Most were passable but derivative and unoriginal. And the rest were just terrible, but strangely watchable for some reason. Maybe one of those "So bad it's good" type things. Who knows.
 
^ It's usually down the list of my favorite Trek shows, but I don't hate it. I generally agree with TheKing and Thrall, it just wasn't as good as it could have been because the writers had to avoid some of the obvious, natural evolution of the theme. Which may have been a wise decision on the networks part. Look at the viewership of BSG. Despite excellent writing, it's a show that is wearing, and wearing thin the viewers, IMO.

Perhaps it is that the average Star Trek viewer wants a series to challenge us, not feed us easy fodder from week to week, and this show did that, by and large.
 
Voyager was just plain fun.

TNG & DS9 are great but they're often bogged down in intellectual debate or dark drama. While they do have their place in Trek, with Voyager you don't have to worry about any of that. You can take any episode from any season and you don't have to worry about where it fits in in the over all scheme of the show or any real deep message behind it. It's sci-fi for pure entertainments sake and it wasn't pretentious in trying to be a show it wasn't.
 
I don't hate any Star Trek series. I've hated some things they've done, and Voyager probably more than most in that regard, but the good outweighs the bad. Voyager certainly did comedy best of any Trek series, with episodes like Message in a Bottle, Bride of Chaotica and co, had some terrific character episodes (Someone to Watch Over Me was brilliant, for instance) and some strong two-parters.

Still, it made some mistakes, and none more so than the final line of Friendship One, which was just an insult to everything Trek stands for. I nearly stopped watching the show just for that.
 
I don't despise any Star Trek series..that's not being a true trek fan. A TRUE Trek fan (even if they don't like a series) should respect each and every one of them. But people don't. They see Voyager and it's faults and then make accusations constantly and then cricitize others for liking the show so much. Anyway, Voyager did have it's faults..and also did have some royal stinker episodes..*cough* "Threshold" *cough* but I loved the cast, and the plot of the series as a whole.
 
As much as I like a little boy on boy now and than, I think Jesus should have kicked Judas in the nuts at Gethsemane, does that make me a bad Christian?

Besides G'Kar went into this when the fantics tried to tell him that the book G'Kar had written was more holy and perfect and than G'Kar himself... :)
 
I maintain that Voyager was remarkably upfront about what it was (and wasn't). For evidence of this, look no further than the ending of Caretaker.

I get why people were frustrated, but mostly that's their own fault for not paying attention. :thumbsup:
 
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