Wow, Kirsten Beyer made VOY not suck!

[Tropical_Night]

And Kes was potentially a fantastic character, but the writers rarely made use of the possibilities. I'll grant that it was a missed opportunity, but I disagree completely that she was "hardly... interesting."

I thought she was really boring right up until a few episodes before they got rid of her, they finally started developing her character than BOOM , suddenly she's gone.
They way they brought her back was horrible, I wish they'd left that alone.

I agree Warlord was a great episode for her character though, I think she was better operating as a separate character rather than a Neelix accessory.


The only really dull as dishwater character was Chuckles, but again, they could have done far more with him than they did, in the episode Learning Curve we saw him be very unorthadox with the crew in his discipline ha I would have liked to have seen more of that side, not punching them every time obviously though.

One of the things that makes "Emissary" special as a pilot is that it actually tells a complete story, rather than just being the beginning of one. Most pilots just set up a situation and leave it open-ended. "Emissary" did that to a degree, sure. But its core story was a drama about Ben Sisko coming to terms with the death of his wife and starting to move forward with his life again. So what was just a setup from a plot standpoint was a resolution from a character standpoint. And it's not just a resolution, it's a major transformative event in its protagonist's life, as the resolution of a movie or novel would ideally be. And that's good writing. Even a story that's part of a larger series should be able to stand on its own as a complete narrative work -- something that's increasingly forgotten in our serial-obsessed times. And "Emissary" has more completeness and closure than most pilots.

It's also a classic Star Trek story, a tale of first contact and mutual discovery between wildly different life forms, giving its protagonist the opportunity to philosophize about the human condition. And Piller conveys this in a very atypical, almost poetic way through Sisko's extended baseball metaphor, so it isn't as heavyhanded as such things often are in Trek. That scene has always been one of my favorites.

It was only re-watching Emmisary that I really got how good it was, years later, the double meaning of the first contact v the prophets helping Sisko with his own personal issue through their own lack of understanding, encountering a species that far from being human clones with a dot on their head like nearly every TNG species, didn't even understand linear time.
Its one of the many examples from DS9 that destroy the oversimplification that "DS9 destroyed the trek vision", it didn't, it did plenty of exploration, even TNG style "how we've moved on" stories like "Past Tense" and at the same time it went further by exploring what happens when those ideals are tested under threat of total annihilation.

 

[flemm]

It was only re-watching Emmisary that I really got how good it was...

I agree it's an excellent story and extremely well-written, but ironically, I do think it has its problems as a pilot episode.

The encounter with the Prophets is very cerebral, high-concept, slow-moving and other-worldy. It's a lot to digest along with the new setting on DS9, the whole political situation and all the new characters. The episode is extremely ambitious and asks a lot of the audience, probably a bit too much for an introductory episode.

It's still the best pilot of the modern Trek shows by a wide margin, but that's not saying all that much, since Encounter, Caretaker and Broken Bow are pretty weak, so much so that Broken Bow would probably come in second.

So, I think it's a great episode, but perhaps somewhat flawed as a pilot.

How would I change it, hypothetically speaking? Well, I don't think it would be absolutely necessary to resolve Sisko's initial character arc (sorrow following the loss of his wife/frustration with his current assignment ===> moving on with his life/enthusiam about the task at hand) over the course of a single episode. The pilot could have focused on the end of the occupation/arrival of the Federation/withdrawal of the Cardassians, leaving the encounter with the Prophets to a later episode. There's plenty of room for this type of change in season 1, which is weighed down with quite a few weak TNG scripts, and the writers don't figure out what they want to do next with Sisko until late season 2 or arguably season 3 in any event.

 

[label]

The problem with Voyager, as I see it, more than anything else is that it should have been a truly serialized series. It had serial elements, but it really didn't truly tell a serialized story.

This is it exactly! This incarnation of Trek more than any others, including my favorite DS9 was the most suited to the long-haul serial story telling approach and would have benefited the most from following this crew on their one mission: Trying to get home.

It wasn't like TNG where it was clearly an episodic show with some light serial elements because that's exactly what fit the story.......or DS9 where they tried to find a nice half-way point between long term story-lines and stand-alone's because that's what made sense for that story......Voyager, at it's core, was about 1 thing.....the crew getting home. By it's very definition.....this show, much like nuBSG would become, was all about telling THE story about the crew getting home and had they stuck with that framework like Lost or nuBSG did, it could have easily been an incredible series, even with the actors in place.

 

[Johnhead99]

^Actually it was the UPN network that discouraged serialization (and other aspects of continuity like cumulative damage to the ship) on VGR. They wanted to be free to show the episodes in whatever order they wanted (and there are some significant differences between production and airing order).

And yet, despite the "significant differences between production and airing order", countless shows pull it off.

Serialization in Star Trek would be excellent in my opinion. In fact, it is one of the reasons why I love the new Trek Lit so much. Enterprise and DS9 were at it's best when it was "last time on Enterprise" or "last time on DS9" in my opinion.

 

[Christopher]

And yet, despite the "significant differences between production and airing order", countless shows pull it off.

Don't expect network executives to base their decisions on logic. They've been making shows worse through their interference for decades.

 

[TheAlmanac]

One of the things that makes "Emissary" special as a pilot is that it actually tells a complete story, rather than just being the beginning of one. Most pilots just set up a situation and leave it open-ended.

And "Emissary" has more completeness and closure than most pilots.

I do like "Emissary," particularly the way first contact with the Prophets was handled, but I agree with the previous comments that it has some problems--perhaps because I feel that achieving closure is at odds with the goals of a pilot.

From that perspective, I think of "Caretaker" as the best (modern) Star Trek pilot, despite how Voyager ultimately turned out, because it demonstrated the greatest amount of potential for the series to come. The tragedy is that (IMHO) we never learned much about the main characters that we didn't already know about them at the end of "Caretaker," and it's that lack of growth and three-dimensionality that people are ultimately complaining about when it comes to the show.

Back on the thread's actual topic, isn't that why people liked Full Circle so much? It offers a better "pilot" for a new series of Voyager novels than what we've gotten before...

 

[Christopher]

I do like "Emissary," particularly the way first contact with the Prophets was handled, but I agree with the previous comments that it has some problems--perhaps because I feel that achieving closure is at odds with the goals of a pilot.

Maybe, but it is a goal of a story, and my point is that it's rare to see a pilot that works so well as a self-contained story rather than merely the beginning of one. As I said, I think it's important for a story to be complete within itself even if it is part of a larger series.

Another example is the Caprica pilot movie. That worked so well as a complete standalone story that it would've been satisfying as a movie even if the show had never gone to series. Which, admittedly, is more important for something like that, a movie made as a backdoor pilot with no guarantee of a series, than for something like DS9, where the show was guaranteed a full season up front. But it's just that I've seen so many unsuccessful backdoor-pilot movies that just felt so incomplete and open-ended. So it's refreshing to see a pilot movie that has closure.

As it happens, another backdoor-pilot movie that feels very complete as a movie is Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes. The title character's journey in the movie is to discover his origins, and rather than just finding an initial clue and having the whole series be about his quest for answers, Questor actually gets his answer at the end of the pilot and is charged with a new mission thereafter. And there's rather definite closure to the main conflict in the pilot movie as well. Since Questor never did go to series, it's good that its pilot has enough closure to work well as a self-contained story.

 

[label]

From that perspective, I think of "Caretaker" as the best (modern) Star Trek pilot, despite how Voyager ultimately turned out, because it demonstrated the greatest amount of potential for the series to come.

While I still like Emissary better as a pilot and self-contained piece or art, I will agree that Caretaker was indeed a strong pilot, one I enjoyed quited a bit. It was that pilot and a few other strong episodes early that kept me tuned in to Voyager almost 3 full seasons till I finally gave up.

It took me like 5 episodes of Enterprise to give up on it.

 

[flemm]

^I've always thought that Voyager had a great premise and enormous potential to be a great series, which is of course one of the frustrating things about the show. So, perhaps Caretaker is better than I remember. I'll have to watch it again at some point.

 

[Bishop76]

Caretaker kind of falls apart around the whole Kazon thing and the ending. And I agree - Voyager had huge potential that it failed to live up to in every way possible.

 

[captcalhoun]

another good pilot movie for telling a whole story is the nu Knight Rider one. Michael and the new KITT save the scientists dad, stop the bad guys getting away with the nanotech and protect KITT. job done. THEN they get charged with going after the bad guy the bad guys were working for and scoot out of the C-130 to bomb around Prague.

it's a good movie, and i've not seen the series and doubt i'll even bother with it, given what i've heard of it.

 

[craig keith]

^Actually it was the UPN network that discouraged serialization (and other aspects of continuity like cumulative damage to the ship) on VGR. They wanted to be free to show the episodes in whatever order they wanted (and there are some significant differences between production and airing order).

And yet, despite the "significant differences between production and airing order", countless shows pull it off.

Serialization in Star Trek would be excellent in my opinion. In fact, it is one of the reasons why I love the new Trek Lit so much. Enterprise and DS9 were at it's best when it was "last time on Enterprise" or "last time on DS9" in my opinion.

Forgive my ignorance but im from the UK so would no nothing about this, What channel did DS9 broadcast on then, beacuse from season 5 it was serialized ( albiet not to the extent of BSG ) The network could not have been too chuffed about that

 

[captcalhoun]

it was syndicated. local networks aired it, not the big ones like NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox or UPN (which it predated).

same with TNG, that was syndicated too.

so there was no network interference.

 

[craig keith]

it was syndicated. local networks aired it, not the big ones like NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox or UPN (which it predated).

same with TNG, that was syndicated too.

so there was no network interference.

Ooo fair enough, learn a new thing everyday lol