Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
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?
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
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
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.
Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I like her voice, though...
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
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
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.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Hey, I like Janeway's voice *because* it's raspy. Maybe I've been exposed to too many chainsmoking women...
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
"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.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
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
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Now there's a threat race.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
