Yeppers.
Why Voyager was a Disappointment
- Thread starter Borough 31
- Start date
I actually enjoyed the show when first watching it. I watched all of the episodes in around six weeks. Although I was entertained, only 30% of the episodes have a high rate of "rewatchability." I wouldn't say I was disappointed, because I had not seen it when it aired. I watched it all on Netflix.
Totally agree. I re-watched the "Descent" two parter recently and the depiction of the Borg in that was completely bogus. They were just nerfed as a menace.
It's like I said above though, this is the classic dilemma when it comes to depicting returning 'bad-guys' in drama: of course if a villain is popular then the producers will want to capitalize on that popularity, but eventually it becomes a series of ever diminishing returns, because once you've established something like the Borg as being an all-conquering force, the only place left for them to go is down, coz you can't just keep having them beat our heroes, and neither can you keep having our heroes defeating them; in the end both the heroes and the villains end up looking bad for not being able to overcome each other.
Star Trek painted itself into a corner with the Borg. They were too good an enemy for them not to come back, but on the other hand every time they were brought back they were just made worse and worse.
I meant as in individual moments and certain episodes, not necessarily as a whole.
A fair point, but the Locutus arc was what cemented TNG as a solid show, was it not?
I do see your point, though. The other borg threads were kind of weak in comparison.
IMHO, the borg should have remained a force that you had to flee from. They could have driven some great plots that way.
There was continuity, they just weren't interested in telling an overly convoluted 200 part mess where you couldn't miss 10 minutes or you were screwed for the series.
And "Year of Hell"' storytelling is only good for 2 seasons or less. Anymore and it gets ridiculous.
Eh, TOS and TNG did similar stuff.
Every Trek series had omnipotent beings in it.
The Borg Collective were only ever shown attacking in force ONCE in all of TNG. In Q Who? Q saved them, in I, Borg and Descent the Borg there had lost their powers and weren't that much of a threat. It was only in BOBW they really showed their strength.
VOY didn't have that option of showing them only once since they were in the Core of Borg Space.
If showing there was at least one species out there that can annihilated the Borg easily "neuters" them so much it just shows what a poorly thought out enemy they were.
Future Janeway waited until Voyager had done all the really important stuff that was necessary before altering history. Nothing they did after the time period she interfered in was important, that's why she chose to go there.
I certainly can agree with some stand alone episodes being good or iconic, but I struggled with the whole continuity aspect of it.
I don't think everything needs to be called back to in the next episode, but, there are several instances of where it feels like the show forgot that something had happened and the crew is bemoaning something that might have been informed by a few episodes prior, but act like it is a new situation. It's important details like that that bother me in terms of continuity.
Another aspect of VOY that reduces my interest is characters. I just have a tough time identifying with any of the VOY characters, and did not always feel like they were people, in the sense of being well fleshed out.
Finally, the Borg were not crippled in VOY originally, but the repeated use of them, and having defeat after defeat presents the Borg as little more a villain of the week, easily defeated without much in the way of effort or sacrifice on the part of our heroes.
VOY was more a feeling of frustration and wasted potential than anything else. It really could have been very good, and had episodes that demonstrated that fact. Just wasn't all that consistent...
I certainly can agree with some stand alone episodes being good or iconic, but I struggled with the whole continuity aspect of it.
I don't think everything needs to be called back to in the next episode, but, there are several instances of where it feels like the show forgot that something had happened and the crew is bemoaning something that might have been informed by a few episodes prior, but act like it is a new situation. It's important details like that that bother me in terms of continuity.
Another aspect of VOY that reduces my interest is characters. I just have a tough time identifying with any of the VOY characters, and did not always feel like they were people, in the sense of being well fleshed out.
Finally, the Borg were not crippled in VOY originally, but the repeated use of them, and having defeat after defeat presents the Borg as little more a villain of the week, easily defeated without much in the way of effort or sacrifice on the part of our heroes.
VOY was more a feeling of frustration and wasted potential than anything else. It really could have been very good, and had episodes that demonstrated that fact. Just wasn't all that consistent...
Sure, in the sense that every show with a plot has continuity. What I mean is that almost every time something major happened, they used the reset button. The latter seasons of DS9 had continuity, and that's what I mean.
BSG didn't start to suck until the last season, and that wasn't because of its continuity. Dark, realistic sci fi often does quite well. I guarantee you if a Star Trek show were to ever air on say AMC or HBO, it would be dark and gritty, and it would be incredible.
That doesn't mean they had to turn them into an enemy of the week. They could have come up with quite a few more plots that were driven by the fact that they were running from the Borg. That would have been great entertainment. Species 8472 didn't ruin the borg, the emo borg queen did.
I know. But Q was used in Voyager as comic relief only. It just seems a waste. A good use of him would have been for him to take Voyager to the alpha quadrant and plop it down in front of some anomaly of the week. Said anomaly will pull them back into the D quadrant unless they can figure out how to escape it. They don't. So sad. That would have been more in line with his character. Had that been one of the only reset buttons in the series, it would have been great.
Wow. She deleted billions of people's life histories. If what makes up a person is their memories, she committed genocide to favorably alter the timeline of ~160 people. She might as well have let the Ocompan's die—the offspring of those she saved ceased to exist quite literally since Ocompan's only live 9 years.
Last edited:
Well, it's not like they kept Kes around and forgot Seven existed after "Scorpion". That wasn't forgotten.
NuBSG fell apart after 2 seasons, because that's all that type of plot is good for. And if the show was on HBO or AMC it would only get 10-13 episodes per season instead of 22. Which would help.
A season that much shorter means you don't need filler and it's easier to tell a continuous story.
Well...it kind of did.
The Dominion started off as just an enemy of the week, due to DS9 being next door to them.
Yes, they had their big war story but that was only possible because DS9 had access to the rest of the Trekverse to give the good guys plenty of cannon fodder to sacrifice to keep the bad guys threatening. VOY had no such luxury or cannon fodder to sacrifice to the Borg.
BOBW had a lot of the same flaws and plot holes that VOY's Borg episodes did, it's just that in TNG's case the audience wasn't out to rip BOBW to pieces before it aired.
Those billions' lives were unaffected by what she did. All she did was improve the lives of those 160 people. It's no different than whenever any other Trek story has some relatively minor temporal change.
Going back in time 30 years with tech from the future is going to massively change the timelines of everyone in the galaxy, I would think. I mean, I won't argue it, since it's a fictional TV show..but I'm pretty sure that there's no escaping the butterfly effect here.
Star Fleet would have been in the Delta Quadrant officially decades earlier than they were supposed to, most likely.
As for continuity, Babylon 5 only fell apart because of bad management. It had scores of fans at its peak. That show had some pretty crappy writing, but the story telling was great. Furthermore, Firefly was a show with great continuity, and that wasn't what killed it either. Gail Berman claims it was poor ratings, but then glazes over the fact that they aired the series out of order. Serenity, the movie that arose out of all of that continuity, is one of the best science fiction films of all time—and I am not unanimous in that.
The Borg wouldn't have killed 60 billion in 2381 if Janway hadn't frakked their Transwarp network.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Borg_Invasion_of_2381
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Borg_Invasion_of_2381
True, there was continuity in VOY, minimal continuity. VOY was also airing at a time when audiances shifts had begun to shift towards a more serialised format. As for a ~170 part mess where you couldn't miss 10 minutes or you were screwed for the series. B5 generally had great continuity and it wasn't a mess (for the most part), true if you missed an episode you might miss some detail, but whose fault is that? A show shouldn't have to be written in a way because someone might miss an episode. Beside that's what the last time/previously on segment at the start of the episode is for to remind viewers details that are relevant to this episode that they might have missed or forgotten about.
Just because an idea might only be good for a sesaon or two, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. If I remember correctly "Year of Hell" was originally planned to last a season until the suits nixed the idea. i.e Play it safe approach
The Borg rot really set in in TNG's "Descent", FC was perhaps a slight return to form and perhaps they might have gotton away with a few appearances in VOY but they simply overused them, and they weren't in the core of Borg space, didn't Kes gift to them of some 9 500 ly throw them through Borg space to the other end of it?
"Endgame" implies that she went back in time to save the lifes of Seven and Chakotay and the sanity of Tuvok. Even "Timeless" did it better with Harry wanting to undo what he percieved as his mistake that had been haunting him for years. And you've got to remember in "Eye of the Needle" only a few months into Voyager's journey Janeway basically says to the Romulan you can't tell them not to launch our mission because of the impact we've made in the DQ. So who knows what impact they would have made in the 16 years longer it should have taken VOY to get back.
How about a thread?
Voyager is tastier than other stuff.
I always find this criticism of Janeway interesting. She lost loved ones, she watched another slowly lose their mind - many people who are grieving the loss of loved ones would do anything to be able to go back and change what happened. Especially when they see the events as completely avoidable and pointless.
Yes, it is very selfish. I also find it very human.
But then I've often been confused by some common criticisms of Janeway. Apparently she's inconsistent. Which I also thought was a very human trait.
In regards to the continuity 'debate', I feel compelled to interject with the mild observation that in the minds of us, the viewing public, conditioned as we have become by the long-form serialized storytelling favored by TV these days, have I fear become somewhat lax in our definition of the terms.
As far as I am concerned, many people seem to have come to understand the word 'continuity' as being synonymous, if you will, to the word 'serialized'. When in actuality they exist as two different concepts that can in fact work together or independently, as required.
"Continuity" is the basic act of ensuring that something established in one episode matches up to things established in other episodes. It's a basic tenement of any drama series, and yes, VOYAGER did exhibit some occasions where continuity was lacking. But in the basic definition of the word I think it's a very broad church. In any TV show, continuity is as simple as remembering that such-and-such a character celebrates their birthday on such-and-such a day.
"Serialization" is the act of long-form storytelling. It's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, it's BABYLON 5, it's DEEP SPACE NINE, it's HEROES, it's GAME OF THRONES. In essence, it's using an episodic series to tell a much larger story that breaks the canvas of each individual episode. The whole is more important than the sum parts.
"Serialization", by definition requires continuity, but "Continuity" is just good house-keeping, and is not necessarily beholden to the idea of a long-form narrative that gets told over multiple episodes. Any show, including those like VOYAGER where a "Planet Of The Week" format is prevelant as opposed to a long-form narrative, should have continuity. That's a basic requirement.
So yeah. I just fear that the word 'continuity' has become commonly (and somewhat eroneously) used these days to describe 'serialization'. I think we need to remember to delineate the two words from each other.
VOYAGER, in my humble opinion, definitely had continuity. It wasn't always adhered to, and it wasn't always front-and-center. We've all enjoyed picking holes in the old chestnuts about exactly how many shuttles Voyager has and so on. But continuity, more broadly, was there nonetheless.
As far as I am concerned, many people seem to have come to understand the word 'continuity' as being synonymous, if you will, to the word 'serialized'. When in actuality they exist as two different concepts that can in fact work together or independently, as required.
"Continuity" is the basic act of ensuring that something established in one episode matches up to things established in other episodes. It's a basic tenement of any drama series, and yes, VOYAGER did exhibit some occasions where continuity was lacking. But in the basic definition of the word I think it's a very broad church. In any TV show, continuity is as simple as remembering that such-and-such a character celebrates their birthday on such-and-such a day.
"Serialization" is the act of long-form storytelling. It's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, it's BABYLON 5, it's DEEP SPACE NINE, it's HEROES, it's GAME OF THRONES. In essence, it's using an episodic series to tell a much larger story that breaks the canvas of each individual episode. The whole is more important than the sum parts.
"Serialization", by definition requires continuity, but "Continuity" is just good house-keeping, and is not necessarily beholden to the idea of a long-form narrative that gets told over multiple episodes. Any show, including those like VOYAGER where a "Planet Of The Week" format is prevelant as opposed to a long-form narrative, should have continuity. That's a basic requirement.
So yeah. I just fear that the word 'continuity' has become commonly (and somewhat eroneously) used these days to describe 'serialization'. I think we need to remember to delineate the two words from each other.
VOYAGER, in my humble opinion, definitely had continuity. It wasn't always adhered to, and it wasn't always front-and-center. We've all enjoyed picking holes in the old chestnuts about exactly how many shuttles Voyager has and so on. But continuity, more broadly, was there nonetheless.
Babylon 5 only had like 90 episodes, practically only half of Voyager's Episode Run. And even then, a lot of S1 wasn't serialized so much as standalones that paid off later. And S5 was a mess, so even then it was just 3 seasons of real serialization.
If that idea is the core concept of the entire series, then that means that after 2 seasons you need to come up with a new core concept.
The complaints came in as soon as we saw the freaking Borg corpse in "Blood Fever", Borg who had left the Collective in "Unity" (despite TNG doing the same damn thing) and then outright hated in "Scorpion" due to the Borg not being portrayed as utterly invincible.
She knew. That's why she did what she did: She knew that from that point she went back to, they had no impact that was noticeable.
^B5 had 110 episodes plus 6 TV movies. And whilst it is true S1 wasn't as heavily serialised as the later seasons the serialisation was there just the pay off was a bit later. And yes S5 of B5 was a bit of a mess but that was more down to the eleventh hour renewel than any lack of real planning as S4 would have ended with "Intersections in Real Time".
Yes VOY might have done episodes similar to what previous ST shows have done, but that isn't really the issue, it's what you do with it. Do you try and put a new spin on an old idea or keep it closer in tone t what has been done before?
How could Janeway possible know what impact VOY's encounters would have had a week,month a year after VOY had moved on to the next encounter?
I don't really remember seeing many complaints about the Borg corpse in "Blood Fever" It was always inevitable that we would see the Borg sooner or later in VOY.
Yes VOY might have done episodes similar to what previous ST shows have done, but that isn't really the issue, it's what you do with it. Do you try and put a new spin on an old idea or keep it closer in tone t what has been done before?
How could Janeway possible know what impact VOY's encounters would have had a week,month a year after VOY had moved on to the next encounter?
I don't really remember seeing many complaints about the Borg corpse in "Blood Fever" It was always inevitable that we would see the Borg sooner or later in VOY.
1. I'm happy that they didn't give it the darkness of DS9 but I agree about continuity.
2. If you're referring to "Distant Origin", I actually like that episode. A good one!
3. Q is one of my favorites. OK, he was better in TNG but still a good character in Voyager.
4. The Borg was already neutered in TNG when Hugh showed up and later on when the Wimp Queen was chasing Picard like a lovesick schoolgirl in "First Contact". The destruction of the Borg only continued in Voyager. It didn't start there.
5. "Endshame" was horrible. Here I agree.
6. I like Neelix. I like Chakotay and Kim too. Good characters all of them even if Kim could have been used better.
7. Seven didn't save the show but I agree about the catsuit. Too obvious that it was used as "playing the sex card" to get viewers. But it was a long time since I watched the seasons after Kes was kicked out so I might get a different opinion about Seven if I watched them now. Obviously her popularity wasn't only because of the catsuit.
As for me, I like the characters and the premise of the show. I guess it could have been better and I'm still very dissapointed about some hings in the show. But for some strange reasons, it's still one of my favorite shows and some episodes are for me as good as when I watched them the first time.
Similar threads
