Forgive me and quietly chastise me if this has been talked about to death before, but I've never seen an episode of Voyager all the way through until I abruptly decided to watch Season 7, and two things out of all the other bad things really bugged me:
1) Hologram rights - Isn't Data a precedent to any of this?? And if the Doctor does turn out to be a person...doesn't that make a case for starship computers as well, being as they're the ones that run the Doctor's program?
2) Friendship One - It was out in the Delta Quadrant, 30,000 lightyears from Federation space, 300 years after launch. This equates to an (approximate) TOS/ENT warp factor of 4.5... I'm assuming it'd really have to go even faster to get there before Voyager did and so on. So, Cochrane had a warp 5 engine only 4 years after First Contact and then...bumped his head and forgot? And burned all his notes?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Those were the least of Voyager's problems, though they are symptoms of the greater problems. That is a tendency for this to be superficially "cool" without the thought to make it belivable or superficially "topical", again without the will to really look into it the issies.
Actually the hologram rights thing is a good example since there are several problems with that story. First, as you say, it's old terratory that's already been covered with Data, second the idea of holograms being used for mining operations is patently silly and thirdly, the idea that they'd be using Zimmerman's image is ridiculous and probably a violation of his human rights.
Instead, what they probably should have explored is the very nature of artificial intellegence, as the fact that they're holograms is neither here nor there since they are the same no matter what computer they are stored/processed through. That leads you into areas of thought like the seperation of mind and body, the ability to exist as an individual consiousness without a physical precence....but then perhaps it'd turn into an episode of Ghost in the Shell.
Something else that bothered me about Voyager after watching my DS9 DVDs is that in seven seasons, they could never stick with or follow through with anything. The rate at which they went through bad guys aside (they were on the move after all) out of all the crew, I don't think we got to know anyone's backstory in any detail. The characters themselves changed like the wind, with Janeway swinging from one extreme to the next...ok, I better stop now before I get into full ranting mode. I suppose if I had only one thing to say about Voyager is that it was a missed oppertunity.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I saw Parallax for the first time and I was disturbed by how excited Janeway seemed to be about being trapped in the anomaly. I thought she was gonna start high fiving people. It was Horrible.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I like her voice, though...
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Oh god, Janeway's voice is so horrible.... Thankfully Kate Mulgrew got smart and quit smoking eventually so her voice lightened up a bit... but still so raspy. Ugh.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Their total unwillingness to admit that surely at a certain point they were no longer in the Delta Quadrant but in Beta also niggled.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Not to mention the fact that they couldn't even keep continuity with DS9. Starfleet Command and the Golden Gate were destroyed by the Breen, yet magically rejuvenated itself on Voyager. (I read somewhere that they didn't want to confuse the apparently moronic Voyager audience who might not also be watching DS9. If they didn't want to confuse them, then why didn't they just set the Starfleet stuff on a space station somewhere?)
And speaking of rejuvenation, how about the magically rebuilt Delta Flyer that was blown into microscopic smithereens in one episode, only to reappear without a scratch in the next.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Don't forget the fact that they forgot that had Kes turned into a being of energy only to return as some embittered old lady. And that it was okay to bring back Neelix from death using nanoprobes, but no attempt was made to do the same with dead crew members in future episodes. And what ever happened to that Borg baby? And why did future Admiral Janeway choose the most retarded moment in Voyager's journey to give them a shortcut home? Why not travel to time period of the 1st episode and prevent the whole thing from ever happening? But no, she to satisfy her weird 7-of-9 obsession. Jesus I used to like this show, but now that I think about it, the show had some major logic hiccups.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Actually, I can think of a good answer for that last one - Miral Paris. If they got home in season 1 then Miral would never have existed, Seven would still be kicking around unimatrix 01 and about 50 people would still be alive...uh...well, I stand by my Miral argument anyway.
I think one of the worst offenders in terms of illogical plot threads was "The Voyager Conspiracy", in which a bunch of startling revelations are made then promptly swept under the carpet, never to be heard of again, because the writers or producers didn't know where to go with it.
I suppose that's true for the series as a whole, they had no idea where they were going, just that they would get there by the end of season 7. With Deep Space Nine, while I won't pretend everything was planned from day one, at least when they had a major story thread they stuck with it and really too the time to exploit it.
Case in point, I think I read somewhere that Berman wanted the "whole Dominion War thing" tied up in three episodes and that "War was too depressing". Thank goodness he wasn't paying too close attention to what RDM & co were really up to.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Frankly, I don't think the differences between Voyager and DS9 are all that great, objectively.
("Don't you think one is awesome and the other less so?")
Well, OK, yeah. But, it's just, people are all "they didn't follow up on plotline X or had an episode with time travel that was unsatisfying." And, like, nobody ever had an amazing shrinking adventure on Voyager.
Maybe it is just my contrarianism. But I'd be interested to come at the shows now, with some space, and see what my attitudes were like.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
The differences might not be that great on an individual episode basis. But they're vast on an overall series basis. The DS9 characters made decisions that made sense, and were affected by what happened from one episode to the next. Most of them were distinctly different people at the end of the series than they were at the beginning. (Especially Dax.) On Voyager there was no character development to speak of, except the Doctor for the first few years. Even Seven of Nine, who seemed to have a new step in exploring her humanity every three weeks, hardly changed at all.
Of course, the same complaint could be leveled at TNG. But TNG came first, and was unique for its time, and probably handled its subject matter better. Oh, and Patrick Stewart. Really, Voyager and Enterprise were just been copying TNG, which followed a writing style that has since been mostly surpassed. The anthology-with-continuing-characters approach can still work, of course, but you have to a) have a setting that supports it, and b) have characters and actors that can hold your attention even when the story doesn't. Voyager had none of a, and little of b. DS9 was a completely different animal.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Hey, I like Janeway's voice *because* it's raspy. Maybe I've been exposed to too many chainsmoking women...
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
I'd say so. *shudder*
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Not to mention the fact that they couldn't even keep continuity with DS9. Starfleet Command and the Golden Gate were destroyed by the Breen, yet magically rejuvenated itself on Voyager."
Not to defend "Voyager" or anything, but the episodes in question were set more than two years apart. In an era of replicators and such, I think they could probably rebuild a bridge and some buildings within that time.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
The lack of character on Voyager was a conscious thing. The producers passed down word that the crew should be generally "perfect". Ideal (mostly) humans, in order to provide a blank control for the alien races they encountered to play off of. What they didn't realize was that this resulted in extremely wooden charicatures that no one gave two shits about. Garrett Wang was pretty pissed about that. Bob Beltran almost quit the show a few times. Jennifer Lien did quit the show. And so forth.
Add to that the "Gilligans Island Syndrome" of the first couple seasons. We know they're not going to get home right off the bat, so a string of "hey! we found a way home -- oops, didn't work" episodes really have no place. A couple of that type slipped into the fifth or sixth season, maybe.
The whole Borg thing was a tremendous letdown, especially after the coda of "Blood Fever" and the teaser of "Scorpion" set things up so sinisterly.
The Delta Flyer had no point. It was too big for the shuttlebay, and they already had the damned aeroshuttle. It would have been so easy to have Tom ask about it and have Janeway say it was only a flight-test article to maintain structural integrity, that they had left dock on their mission before key systems could be installed, and have Tom and Seven and B'elanna finish and customize that instead.
Neelix was wasted. I loved the "Year of Hell" storyline for no other reason than that Neelix was wearing a uniform.
Ongoing nit. Picard had his Security Chief doubling as his Tactical Officer, so she (and later he) wore Operations gold. When Worf was still the Assistant Tactical Officer, he wore red, ditto when he returned ot the command track as DS9's Strategic Operations Officer. I don't like the "doubling-up" of shipboard roles. Related to the above, if Tuvok had been the Tactical officer, and been forced to double as Security Chief by pilot episode's casualties, and then trained Neelix to be the new Security Chief... *heavy sigh* Wasted potential.
The Kazon would have been okay for the first few episodes -- until we saw that they were so scattered and primitive from years of being used as prey by the Hirogen... Now there's a threat race.
And a million other nits, too
--Jonah
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Jennifer Lien did quit the show. And so forth.
That's not what I heard/read.
I can't remember where I read it at, but Lien was shocked when she read over the script where she transformed into an energy being.
Here are links to other websites discussing her departure.
Pfft, cocaine's not a reason to fire an actress, especially when the writers use it to get inspiration for scripts. Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Not to defend "Voyager" or anything, but the episodes in question were set more than two years apart. In an era of replicators and such, I think they could probably rebuild a bridge and some buildings within that time.
True, but the scene was *exactly* the same...you would think that there'd be a little difference in structure, even after a rebuild.
On another note, the Kazon were originally conceived as space pirates. That would have been significantly more interesting than the faux-Klingons we actually got.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Plus, what ever happened to the Vaudwaar. I mean the ending of Dragon's Teeth left open the potential for them to be recurring baddies, but unfortunately that idea never materialized.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Just like the tension between the Maquis and the Starfleet crew.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
They didn't have enough replicator power to feed the entire crew, yet they had enough replicator power to repair the ship week after week?
Voyager's first fault was not working within the confines the writers established with the first episode. Stranded from home with no chance of relief or resupply.
One of the overriding themes of Voyager should have been reduce, reuse and recycle. Except for a few stray lines here and there, the crew never did any of this. Everything was as if they were in the Alpha Quadrant.
That ship should have at the least looked scarred and battered after 7 years and 70,000 light years. At the most there should have been major structural differences and "after-market" components added.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The last being technically and financially unfeasible at the time.
And also, who in the world cares? I am coming off, I think, as pretty pro-Voyager, I think, and I'm not, really, but any complaint that isn't story-related strikes me as being, well, unsatisfying. Had there been stories about the ship being battered and worn down, I don't think not having the FX to back it up would matter, particularly.
I don't know. We should have some sort of Giant Nerd Star Trek Retrospective.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Oh, and speaking of season 7 of Voyager...What's that, Natural Law, where there are pretty obvious stand-ins for native Americans stuck behind a forcefield? Protected from the advanced beings who occupy the planet - protected from the ravages of modern medicine, the horror of infinite food, the danger of serene coexistence? I mean OK, maybe they want to retain their tribal culture - but did Seven or Chakotay (or the people who *set up the damn field in the first place*) even ask them?!? The show 'reads' ('watches' would be appropriate but sounds funny...) like it was written by a Luddite who thought everyone just automatically wanted to live in freezing-cold conditions with no food or medicine or scientific knowledge. Dude, maybe those poor guys would love to move in with their starfaring neighbors. But they can't now, can they?
And yeah, I just read the DITL review and it sounds almost exactly like what I'm saying...apparently I'm not the only one who feels that way lol
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
OK, so it looks like this thread is turning out to be "Let's all pick a random point from each episode to preach to the choir about how bad Voyager was." Hey, I'm even guilty of it. But like Sol said, what are we really accomplishing here? If we want to have a civilized discussion about the show, fine. But we can leave the nitpicking to Phil Farrand.
Here's my civilized take:
Voyager's premise was a good one: Take a Starfleet ship and transfer it so far away from the known Trek galaxy that the show would take place in a universe far different than what we've heretofore been used to in Trek shows, while at the same time having that said crew have to make sacrifices and decisions that would possibly bring out the ugliness in the previously "perfect" 24th century man. There'd be no Klingons, Romulans, Federation, etc. A totally blank state to work with.
With me so far? Good.
The first few seasons of the show were not bad, although it was obvious TPTB were still trying to figure out where it was going. The most annoying thing about the show was Ethan Phillips. But the characters were being developed pretty well, especially Chakotay, whose spirituality was a unique change for the ST universe. It almost seemed that the the idea was that the use of superior technology would be abandoned in favor of a spiritual way of solving problems (at least to me).
Then after the third season, almost everyone responsible for the creation of the show left, and for the rest of the series, the show went to shit. The "lost" premise was essentially dropped (to the point that Janeway would introduce herself to an alien as captain of the Federation starship Voyager, and said alien would act as if he knew what she was talking about. Shouldn't he have retorted with something of the likes of "Huh? What Federation? What the hell are you talking about, lady?") Character development dropped to zero, except for 7 of 9 and the stupid Paris/Torres marriage. Then came the Beebs, the Borg, big boobs, and Barclay/Troi, and that was the end of that...
Oh, drat, I've become uncivilized again.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Voyager tends to do that to people, I've noticed.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
They can fix those continuty gripes when they get around to doing Voyager-Remastered...
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
With a CGI Neelix.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
And a different camera angle on Jeri Ryan in that one where Q Junior makes her clothes disappear.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Or just generally a naked Jeri Ryan next to every episode. It could be a split-screen affair where you choose which side you want to watch.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Enduring Voyager just for a naked Jeri Ryan is inefficient. They should just distribute videos of Jeri Ryan naked.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Now there's a threat race.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Shouldn't he have retorted with something of the likes of "Huh? What Federation? What the hell are you talking about, lady?") Character development dropped to zero, except for 7 of 9 and the stupid Paris/Torres marriage. Then came the Beebs, the Borg, big boobs, and Barclay/Troi, and that was the end of that...