SIX REASONS ‘STAR TREK: VOYAGER’ NEVER REALLY WORKED

[TMC]

http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/television/6-reasons-star-trek-voyage%20%20r-worked.html


The next Star Trek movie is about to begin filming, and all
indications are that it’s probably going to be a reboot of the classic
Khan storyline. That makes it the perfect time to take a step back,
and examine just how we got here, to a place where a franchise which
used to be all about going forward is now suddenly throwing it in
reverse and instead revisiting the past. Pinpointing the place where
Star Trek first started to go wrong is easy, as any serious Trek fan
will tell you, things began to go south with Voyager.

Voyager was the fourth Star Trek series to arrive on television. The
three which preceded it were all, in their own way, resoundingly
successful. Even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, though it never quite got
the ratings of Next Generation, proved to be a solid critical, award
winning success. Then came Voyager.

It’s not that Star Trek: Voyager was a disaster. The show lasted the
Star Trek requisite seven seasons and among those seasons had a few
truly inspired moments. Voyager didn’t kill Star Trek but it was the
beginning of a trend which would kill it. It was in Voyager that we
all started to sense something might be going wrong with Gene
Rodenberry’s vision, and it only got worse after Voyager went off the
air. The next Trek series was cancelled early in its run. Almost none
of the Next Generation movies were any good and what’s worse, by the
end no one was even showing up to see them. Voyager didn’t kill Star
Trek but it signified the beginning of the end. The things which did
kill the franchise, putting it in a tailspin which could only be
solved with the current reboot, all started here.

Here are the six biggest reasons Voyager never truly lived up to its
Star Trek potential.

Janeway Should Have Been A Fem Captain Kirk, Not A Fem Captain Picard
In a recent interview Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Katherine
Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager admitted that she never really gave the
role her all. It wasn’t that she was disinterested, but her home life
was in turmoil, and according to the actress she was struggling to
find a balance between raising a family and having a career. But Kate
Mulgrew wasn’t the problem. It’s the character they came up with for
her to play, that never worked. In creating Star Trek’s first female
Captain it seems clear that Voyager’s producers went out looking for a
female Picard, when what they should have done is cast a female
Captain Kirk.

Picard worked so brilliantly because he subverted the traditional,
Captain Kirk, alpha male stereotype. But a female Picard, well she
mostly plays into them. What they needed was a take charge, dynamic
female Captain, what they gave us was a moralizing, overly-liberal
pushover all too willing to throw her crew’s life away for no reason
at all if it made her seem superior and at least as interested in
prancing around in frilly dresses on the holodeck as she is in leading
her crew. Janeway had her moments, and Mulgrew’s performance was
passable, but the entire idea behind the kind of Captain Star Trek:
Voyager was saddled with, was simply wrongheaded from the start. It’s
not Mulgrew’s fault, it’s not even really most of the writers’ fault.
They were stuck with a really bad idea, a bad idea which was
unfortunately the most central character on the show, and no one ever
really figured out a way to do anything good with her.

B’Elanna Torres Is Meg Griffin
When the Voyager team came up with B’Elanna Torres I imagine they
expected her to be the strong, fiery, balls to the wall, take no
prisoners female character Janeway should have been. The show’s
written as though that’s what everyone expects from her. Characters
reference her legendary Klingon temper, her unbelievable Klingon
toughness, and her intimidating demeanor. But it’s all talk. None of
the things Voyager seems to think Torres is actually ever turn out to
be true. Instead, what they got, thanks at least in part to
consistently horrible performances from Roxann Dawson, was Meg
Griffin. Meg Griffin is the worst character on Family Guy. She exists
primarily as a running joke, in which everyone acknowledges how awful
she is. That’s B’Elanna.

Her legendary Klingon temper never really moves beyond the realm of
“bitchy”. Her legendary Klingon toughness is actually just a lot of
pouting. If her crewmates are intimidated by her it’s only because
they’re afraid she might start whining before they can get out of the
room. B’Elanna has the uncanny ability to walk into any situation and
make it utterly depressing. She takes a dump on any plot she’s
involved in, and turns the smiles of everyone around her into frowns.
Tom Paris excited about an awesome space race? Don’t worry, B’Elanna
will force her way into the episode to make sure it turns into a
discussion of their relationship and none of that fun racing stuff
ever happens. Everyone happy because she’s having a baby? Don’t worry,
B’Elanna’s not and it’s only a matter of time before she starts
bitching about how much she hates her unborn kid. Putting B’Elanna
Torres in the engine room was like giving Star Trek cancer. It was
only a matter of time before she killed it off.

Chakotay Is A Racist Character
Chakotay is Voyager’s Native American first officer. I’ve described
him that way because it’s literally the only thing I know about him,
even after watching all seven seasons. It’s not just that they don’t
develop him as a human being. The problem here is that when the show
tries, they only seem interested in playing up the Native American
angle. Tune in to any one of the show’s all too rare Chakotay episodes
and you’re sure to hear the beating of vaguely tribal sounding Native
American drums in the background. Odds are that episode’s plot will
involve some sort of vision quest, or an obsession with the beauty and
majesty of some primitive alien species that’s really in touch with
the land. Maybe you’re thinking that this is great, this is a fine
example of Voyager including all kinds of different ethnicities and
cultures in the Star Trek universe. Isn’t that what Gene Roddenberry
wanted? Not really.

While the original Trek included characters based on their share of
racial stereotypes, Scotty’s obsession with drinking Scotch for
instance, it didn’t entirely rely on them. Scotty didn’t wear a kilt
in the engine room and Chekov, despite a tendency to credit Russia
with every great advancement in human history, didn’t wander around
trying to convince everyone to become communists. Sulu didn’t subsist
entirely on a diet of Sushi, instead he was really into the Three
Musketeers and euro-style swashbuckling. And that was in the 60s.
Voyager was on the air in 2001 and yet it contained a character whose
only reason for existing was to wander around the ship espousing the
benefits of using high-tech, electronic peyote. It’s amazing he didn’t
find a way to convert one of the cargo bays into a casino, or make a
uniform out of buffalo.

Lowest Ranked Supporting Characters Are The Most Interesting
And now we’re coming to the root of the problem. The thing is,
Voyager’s most interesting characters are the ones they haven’t put in
charge of anything. The Captain’s a bleeding heart, borderline
incompetent, the first officer is probably high, and their chief
engineer is a space faring Debbie Downer. The rest of the bridge crew
isn’t much better. Garret Wang’s Ensign Kim eventually turns into a
passably interesting member of the ensemble, but Tom Paris’s receding
hairline isn’t very convincing as some sort of devil-may care bad boy.
Plus, Paris is romantically interested in B’Elanna Torres, so
something is clearly wrong with this guy. I’m not even sure the ship’s
security officer Tuvok, despite the pointed ears, is actually a
Vulcan.

The show’s best characters are a holographic Doctor who spends most of
his time confined to sickbay and probably isn’t real anyway, an alien
explorer who they’ve decided to stick behind a stove in their kitchen,
and a recently liberated, super-hot Borg who spends all her time
standing around in a cargo bay or sitting in front of a map somewhere
in the bowels of the ship. The show of course, realized how great
those characters were quickly, resulting in a steady diet of episodes
centered around The Doctor, Neelix, and later on Seven of Nine. But
since they aren’t really in charge of anything, it’s kind of hard to
keep inventing excuses for the ship’s cook to go on away missions.

Voyager Doesn’t Fully Utilize Its Premise
Really though, the show’s inconsistent cast of characters is a side
effect of a much larger problem, and it’s this: They never really knew
what to do with their premise. It’s actually a really good premise,
one which could have revitalized the entire Star Trek universe by
standing it on its head. A by the numbers Starfleet vessel is stranded
so far away from home it’ll take them seventy years to get back. They
don’t have any resources, they don’t know where they are, and when
half their crew is killed they’re forced to replace them with bunch of
rebellious, borderline space-pirates and make them their bunkmates.
How does Voyager respond to this predicament? They decide to pretend
they’re still in Starfleet and keep doing everything by the book.

Oh and those rebel marauders the Maquis? By episode two they’re
virtually indistinguishable from every other Starfleet officer on the
ship. They put on the uniform, follow the rules, and aside from the
occasional plotline involving the holodeck, the differences between
them and the actual Starfleet crew are almost never mentioned again.
The really frustrating thing about Voyager is that they used a show
about a stranded ship in desperate circumstances to tell stories that
could have been told on almost any old episode of Star Trek. Rather
than being a staple of the stories they chose to tell, the Voyager
crew’s predicament is more like a sidebar that the show’s writers stop
to revisit whenever they don’t seem to have anything better to do.

Technology Is Overused Until It Loses All Meaning
Among the list of things Voyager’s writers would rather do than
actually address the show’s premise is spend time on the holodeck. In
fact Voyager spent more time on the holodeck than almost any other
Star Trek had before. Rather than dealing with the real world, a large
percentage of the show’s episodes involve dealing with holographic
worlds where the crew battles B-movie sci-fi villains, engages in
Klingon rituals, or occasionally has sex with holographic Irish
bartenders. Hey, she may be a captain but Katherine Janeway still a
woman with needs, needs which she meets with a futuristic sex doll
while wearing a variety of frilly dresses. It’s not just the show’s
overuse of the holodeck that’s the problem, it’s their overuse of
nearly ever technological marvel they think fans might love.

All too often the show feels more like fan service than an actual
storytelling venue. Replicators are used so much they become less
technology than magic, they’re the instant solution to any problem,
problems which might have been a lot more interesting if they couldn’t
be solved by simply pushing a button. Running out of shuttles? No
problem, we’ll just replicate a dozen more so you can blow them up
again. Need something to eat? Replicate it! Running out of replacement
parts? Replicate them! Other Trek technological staples get overused
too, whether it’s the transporters or the turbolift or the warp
engine, or the ship’s sensors… at some point all that once marvelous
technology becomes so overused that it loses any and all meaning. It
stops becoming technology and becomes a series of magic MacGuffins the
writers use whenever they get lazy.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/13/daily-call-sheet%20%20-bane-said-what-dragon-tattoo-review-and-why-voyager-blows/

Wow. This nails it. Back in 2001, I gave “Voyager” two seasons before
giving up. The political correctness was beyond undermining to the
show’s plots, it was stifling and insulting.

Political correctness is a cancer on storytelling. Something that
makes programs like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Sons of Anarchy,”
“The Closer,” and “Breaking Bad” so brilliant is that this PC crap
isn’t allowed anywhere near the plot.

Something that damaged the whole of the “Next Generation” for me was
an episode where Picard refuses to launch a computer virus that would
exterminate the Borg. In a fit of sanctimony, he likens it to
genocide. Ever after, whether it was the show itself or the film
“First Contact,” I blamed Picard for every innocent life lost to the
Borg.

Picard’s decision might have made for interesting drama had the
character been forced to grapple with the fallout. This would’ve made
perfect sense in “First Contact” when he goes a little mad in pursuit
of vengeance. But the producers never brought it up again.

The real problem with political correctness is that it makes decision-
making too easy for our protagonist, which makes for boring,
uncomplicated drama. I could’ve lived with Picard making that decision
had it been presented as an impossible choice he would’ve been forced
to live and deal and struggle with ever after. But the series was more
interested in making a statement and, at least in my mind, suffered
for it.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=152923

1.) Excessive use of techno-babble. Now, I'm one of those people who
would get pissed at season 7 of DS9 when they would throw in a whole
song by Vic Fontaine - made me feel like the writers couldn't be arsed
to write another scene so they threw a song in. What's even worse than
that, IMO, is throwing in technobabble exposition to pad the episode
or for whatever other unfathomable reason. I'm not even one of those
people who cares if the technobabble explanation is remotely
scientifically plausible or not - I don't watch Trek for scientific
accuracy, I watch it for the same reason I watch any other show - to
be entertained by a good story. I have no interest in seeing the
characters technobabble their way out of a situation every damn week.
I'm not saying that this was the only Trek show guilty of this, but it
seems to be most prominent on Voyager, and it just smacks of lazy
writing.

2.) Wasted opportunities: Mainly the ST crew and the Maquis. The
tension between these two groups pretty much disappeared in like, two
episodes, and they were pretty much one big happy crew after that. I
wanted more of a struggle to integrate. Heck, we saw more tension
between the Bajorans and the Feds on DS9, and the Feds were INVITED
their to HELP them. I'm not saying the two crews had to be at each
other's throats every episode, but a more bumpy integration, a gradual
dissolving of tensions and slow progress to mutual trust and respect
would have been more compelling to watch than the insta-integration
that happened. Why bother making half the crew Maquis if you're not
going to use it as a plot point for more than five seconds?

3.) Poor character development. This is not to say all the characters
were poorly developed - I'd say it was mostly Chakotay and Harry who
got the bum rush when it came to character development. Chakotay never
got much to besides his "Spritual Indian" shtick, and Harry ... wow,
what can I say? About the only Harry-centric episode I can say where
we ever saw any potential for character growth was when he was in that
prison with Tom - and even then, the focus wasn't so much on Harry,
but on the Harry/Tom dynamic, a friendship in the vein of Bashir/
O'Brien - which was about the only part of Harry's underdeveloped
character that I find interesting.

4.) Little to no character growth. Strongly related to above. Even
those character on VOY who were given character development remained
rather static through the course of the series. I can't help once
again comparing it to my favorite Trek series, DS9, where even a
recurring character like Nog went through more growth than a supposed
"main" character like Harry Kim. I'm not saying there was no character
growth at all - Seven was good example of successful character
evolution - but there should have been a lot more.

5.) Imbalance of characters (seeing a theme here? A lot of my
complaints have to do with character stuff, heh). Example: When Jeri
Ryan came on, VOY became the Seven of Nine show. Now, this is not to
say I dislike the character. I know she was pretty much brought on
because the powers that be believe the stereotype that the typical
trek fan is a droolin hormone-fueled adolescent fanboy, and she
provided the T and A. And heck, maybe that's true. But aside from her
obvious ... assets ... Seven was an intriguing, complex character and
I actually think she was one of the best-written, best-developed
characters on the show. I just wish her character development did not
have to come at the expense of other characters. Again comparing to
DS9, we see a show that managed to develop main and recurring
characters and maintain a balance between them (though arguably Jake
sort of fell by the wayside towards the end). And they even managed to
screw Seven up, by putting in her an out-of-nowhere romance with
Chakotay. These two character had nothing in common and, despite the
fact that they were both portrayed by attractive actors, have zero
chemistry IMO. Yawn.

6.) Overabundance of supplies/happiness for a ship stuck however many
billion light years from home. I didn't want VOY to be all doom and
gloom, with them barely surviving, but it seems they could've been
more of show of struggle, some scarcity aboard the ship, the ship
itself showing more wear and tear than looking all magically shiny and
new every episode. Look writers, if you want to do another TNG, just
does do another TNG damn it! The premise was certainly successful
enough. But no, you deliberately stranded them decades away from home,
and half the time it's like they forgot they were trying to get back
to the Delta Quandrant and were just exploring the galaxy, TNG-style.
And they have all that time (and power!) to waste on the holodeck!
Which leads us too ...

7.) Excessive and cringe-worthy use of the holodeck. I say "excessive"
because unlike other Trek series, Voyager was supposed to have limited
resources. I don't care if they gave a technobabble solution about
Voyager's holodeck having a different power source than the rest of
the ship (which - WTF? Who designs a ship that way?!). Holodeck
episodes tend to be hit or miss when it comes to Trek, and Voyager is
no exception. The only time I enjoyed holodeck eps on this show is
when the did the Captain Proton episodes, because it was such cheesy,
scene-chewery good fun (in black and white!) and a homage to the sci-
fi days of yore. As for the rest ... well, Fairhaven. Enough said.

8.) Character inconsistency. Yes, another character complaint. Even
when characters got significant development, it was hard to tell,
because it often felt like they were written differently from one
episode to the next. Janeway is the most egregrious example of this.
One week, the writers have her cleaving the Prime Directive like it's
the most sacred, sacrosanct rule in her universe, the next week, she's
throwing it out the window. Come on, people. Even if you didn't it
write it, would it at least kill you to glance over last week's
script! Yeesh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCRFXgcY4I&feature=channel_video_title

Sarah and Captain Logan discuss their biggest issues with Star Trek:
Voyager and what they think should have been done differently with it.

Join the Geekvolution at wearegeeksnotnerds.com!

[Ron]

Voyager and what they think should have been done differently with it.
>
> Join the Geekvolution at wearegeeksnotnerds.com!

I agree with ya on just about all points. But Voyager had one thing
going for it: some really great guest stars! Sulu, Q, Jason Alexander,
Brad Dourif, Dwight Shultz, and many many more. It's a pity that the
guest stars got the better stories while the rest of the tim Voyager
was mostly bland.

Ron


“Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. “

— Richard Tyler (The 4400) ––

[Professor Bubba]

In article
<9575143a-d973-4561...@t36g2000prj.googlegroups.com>,

Ron <or...@dslnorthwest.net> wrote:

> Voyager and what they think should have been done differently with it.
> >
> > Join the Geekvolution at wearegeeksnotnerds.com!
>
>
> I agree with ya on just about all points. But Voyager had one thing
> going for it: some really great guest stars! Sulu, Q, Jason Alexander,
> Brad Dourif, Dwight Shultz, and many many more. It's a pity that the
> guest stars got the better stories while the rest of the tim Voyager
> was mostly bland.

One of the series' writers told me around the time of the show's
premiere that the original intent was to show Voyager scarred and
broken as it slowly made its way back to the Alpha Quadrant. If
somebody blew a hole in the ship, the hole would stay there until
somebody could patch it, and then it would look patched. If a
shuttlecraft was destroyed, they would be short that shuttlecraft from
then on. The ship would scrounge supplies where and when it could.
The captain and crew would get a little scruffy as time went on.

The only bit of this that remained after the series was sanitized was
Neelix as the cook. Even after we saw endless expenditures of ship's
energy on nonsense such as holodeck fantasies, the series insisted that
food preparation was hampered by the ship's energy deficit, and so it
had to be harvested and prepared the old-fashioned way.

They did get into some of the originally-promised grit and grimacing
during the Year of Hell mini-arc, but at the end of it everything was
magically reset, and all was well again. That was around the time I
stopped watching Voyager, although I did come back to catch the
completely unrewarding finale.

BTW I did notice that recent episodes of Warehouse 13 featured the
Voyager captain and the captain from USS Kelvin in the 2009 film as
guest stars in the same episodes. That tickled my inner nerd.

[RichA]

I liked the show, much better than DS9 because (aside from one who
was a Vulcan) we didn't have to suffer with a wise, FAG negro, a group
of disgusting aliens as main characters and loads of non-entities.
The only good thing about DS9 was the security chief who wore a
perpetual stocking mask, Odo.

[Brian Thorn]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:13:15 -0800 (PST), TMC <tmc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/television/6-reasons-star-trek-voyage%20%20r-worked.html

>

>The show’s best characters are a holographic Doctor who spends most of
>his time confined to sickbay and probably isn’t real anyway, an alien
>explorer who they’ve decided to stick behind a stove in their kitchen,
>and a recently liberated, super-hot Borg who spends all her time
>standing around in a cargo bay or sitting in front of a map somewhere
>in the bowels of the ship. The show of course, realized how great
>those characters were quickly, resulting in a steady diet of episodes
>centered around The Doctor, Neelix, and later on Seven of Nine. But
>since they aren’t really in charge of anything, it’s kind of hard to
>keep inventing excuses for the ship’s cook to go on away missions.

Funny, as I recall, almost nobody liked Neelix.
I sure didn't. I felt sorry for Ethan Phillips, who is a decent actor
(leaps and bounds better than Robert Beltran or Garrett Wang), but the
writers didn't know what to do with Neelix, especially after Kes was
written out.


Brian

[Marcovaldo]

On Dec 15, 12:13 am, TMC <tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/television/6-reasons-star-trek-voyag...

> Picard worked so brilliantly

I almost gagged at this line.

[Jim G.]

TMC sent the following on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:13:15 -0800 (PST):

> all
> indications are that it’s probably going to be a reboot of the classic
> Khan storyline.

Really? I'm still seeing denials and we-don't-knows, so what's your
basis for this?

--
Jim G. | Waukesha, WI
NoCLoDS Founding Member (No Cop, Lawyer or Doctor Shows)

[Marcovaldo]

On Dec 15, 2:52 am, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:
> In article
> <9575143a-d973-4561-ac2a-aae462312...@t36g2000prj.googlegroups.com>,

>

>
> One of the series' writers told me around the time of the show's
> premiere that the original intent was to show Voyager scarred and
> broken as it slowly made its way back to the Alpha Quadrant.  If
> somebody blew a hole in the ship, the hole would stay there until
> somebody could patch it, and then it would look patched.  If a
> shuttlecraft was destroyed, they would be short that shuttlecraft from
> then on.  The ship would scrounge supplies where and when it could.
> The captain and crew would get a little scruffy as time went on.
>
> The only bit of this that remained after the series was sanitized was
> Neelix as the cook.  Even after we saw endless expenditures of ship's
> energy on nonsense such as holodeck fantasies, the series insisted that
> food preparation was hampered by the ship's energy deficit, and so it
> had to be harvested and prepared the old-fashioned way.

Battlestar Galactica did a very good job depicting a fleet of ships
cut off from their homes, scrounging for food and raw materials,
developing their own assembly lines to resupply the fleet, etc.

[Frosty]

First whats with the cross posting? Anyway I'll make it quick.

Having watched ST:VOY over the summer I would rate it higher then TNG. With
TNG you get really sick of 2 storylines every ep(1 major, 1 minor). Yes VOY
did not every score every season (3,7,final ep especially) but it had a
solid 5/7 from my vantage.

The writer says Janeway was a failed Captain yet Janeway consistently has at
times rated higher then Kirk!

I wonder if its a case of people who grew up dissing TOS because TNG was
newer and the same people dissing DS9/VOY because it aired after TNG.

[Frosty]

>> indications are that it's probably going to be a reboot of the classic
>> Khan storyline.
>
> Really? I'm still seeing denials and we-don't-knows, so what's your
> basis for this?

It was the rumour of the day when Benecio Del Toro was said to be no longer
in the movie. It would go against what the writers had said a year ago which
was "It's definitely a character that will make fans of TOS excited. Think
along the lines of Harry Mudd or Trelane or Gary Mitchell or the Talosians
or the Horta. Actually it's one of those that I named."

[David Johnston]

I think Voyager would have worked better if they hadn't cheated.
Instead of shortcuts, have an estimated 4 to 10 years travel time, and
have them drive all the way back honestly, having to stop regularly to
trade with people, prospect for raw materials, negotiate for passage
rights, and make repairs of damage. Xenophon didn't get to take shortcuts!

[Ron]

solid 5/7 from my vantage.
>
> The writer says Janeway was a failed Captain yet Janeway consistently has at
> times rated higher then Kirk!

Huh? With who--- nine to twelve year-old girls? She may have had more
first contact situations than Kirk, but Janeway was in no way *better*
than Kirk.

Ron

[Rik P]

> I think Voyager would have worked better if they hadn't cheated.
> Instead of shortcuts, have an estimated 4 to 10 years travel time, and
> have them drive all the way back honestly, having to stop regularly to

The other Trek shows semi-regularly traversed large distances faster
than warp could go, whether natural (wormholes) or artificial (alien
meddling), so shortcuts were already built in to the Star Trek
universe and couldn't be ignored -- Voyager traveled 70-odd years away
in an instant in the pilot!

I'd always assumed that the last episode of the seventh season would
be a return to the alpha quadrant and that they'd be exactly seven
years older, regardless of how much distance they claimed they'd have
to cover. I didn't watch for very long, but (IIRC) even early on
things happened that reduced their travel time by years or decades.

Rik

[David Johnston]

On 12/16/2011 9:24 AM, Rik P wrote:
>> I think Voyager would have worked better if they hadn't cheated.
>> Instead of shortcuts, have an estimated 4 to 10 years travel time, and
>> have them drive all the way back honestly, having to stop regularly to
>
> The other Trek shows semi-regularly traversed large distances faster
> than warp could go, whether natural (wormholes) or artificial (alien
> meddling), so shortcuts were already built in to the Star Trek
> universe and couldn't be ignored --

No need to ignore them. Just say that apart from the one that took them
out there, they don't happen or don't take the ship in the right
direction. But the prospect of a short cut home that doesn't pan out
certainly could have appeared in various episodes. The problem with the
way they actually did it, is that it rendered their progress
meaningless. They literally could have gone in any direction and had
just as much chance of getting home.

[Marcovaldo]

I was going to say, who did the rating, Moody's?

[Jim G.]

Frosty sent the following on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:05:26 -0600:

If, after getting so far behind schedule on the writing of this thing,
we find out that it actually *is* a Khan outing, it will only add to my
conviction that JJ and company are way more sizzle than steak, along
with being out of new ideas.

[Graeme]

On Dec 15, 1:13 am, TMC <tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Voyager was the fourth Star Trek series to arrive on television.

It was the fifth.

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

Star Trek
Star Trek:Next Generation
Star Trek:Deep Space Nine
Star Trek:Voyager

1, 2, 3, 4.....sure seems to be fourth series to me!

Or are you suggesting that as Star Trek:Enterprise was a "pre-quel" it
actually came first in line??

Daniel

[Martin Phipps]

On Dec 17, 8:35 pm, "Danie...@teranews.com"

I think he means the Animated Series.

Martin

[Professor Bubba]

In article
<ab70e5e4-b062-4d68...@c16g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,

He does, and he's right. Not only did the original cast and many of
the creatives participate, but any series that included "Yesteryear"
deserves to be remembered.

[Steven L.]

"Marcovaldo" <tana...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
news:ced5bb7e-9831-4194...@32g2000yqp.googlegroups.com:

I'll bet the reason that VOY got "sanitized" was that it would have
started to look like a serial. And the problem with serials is that
reruns of episodes that are interspersed among first-run episodes tend
to look really out of place, since you're seeing the characters as they
were once before. That turns off the audience and depresses ratings for
reruns of serialized episodes.

That problem plagued the ABC-TV serial "Lost."



-- Steven L.

[Professor Bubba]

In article <C8mdncx2uJQIJHHT...@earthlink.com>, Steven L.

<sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> I'll bet the reason that VOY got "sanitized" was that it would have
> started to look like a serial. And the problem with serials is that
> reruns of episodes that are interspersed among first-run episodes tend
> to look really out of place, since you're seeing the characters as they
> were once before. That turns off the audience and depresses ratings for
> reruns of serialized episodes.

I think you may have something there. Whatever the reason they did it,
sanitizing the show resulted in a much duller series than it should
have been. They can't have sanitized it for creative reasons.

Now I see a quote from Kate Mulgrew that she was pretty much phoning it
in because she was trying to be a mother and homeowner, or whatever it
was. I never noticed, to tell you the truth. The material she was
given to work with wasn't challenging enough to involve me at all.
There was no sense of adventure anywhere in that series.

One more thing: One of the last episodes I bothered to watch was set on
the holodeck. The crew was trapped in WW2 France for some reason. At
one point some Klingons show up, and all of a sudden there's the
prospect of an exciting battle between Klingons and Nazis, which could
have been enormous fun. Well, they blew it. The Klingons and Nazis
are on screen for only several seconds, and the camera pans right past
them, on its way to -- well, I forget just what, because it doesn't
matter. Voyager turned out to be a complete waste of time, and
Enterprise was done by the same people. The result was utterly
predictable.

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

Oh!! Sorry, forgot all about the animated series, even though I have the
DVD box set!

Daniel

[Ubiquitous]

In article <L00Hq.24642$Q83....@newsfe17.iad>, dx...@albury.nospam.net.au
wrote:

>Graeme wrote:
>> On Dec 15, 1:13 am, TMC<tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> Voyager was the fourth Star Trek series to arrive on television.
>>
>> It was the fifth.
>
>Star Trek
>Star Trek:Next Generation
>Star Trek:Deep Space Nine
>Star Trek:Voyager
>
>1, 2, 3, 4.....sure seems to be fourth series to me!

Plus the cartoon...

--
"If Barack Obama isn't careful, he will become the Jimmy Carter of the
21st century."

[Ubiquitous]

[Karl Johanson]

On Dec 17, 8:02 am, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:
>  Voyager turned out to be a complete waste of time,

Was not... Was a quite effective cure for my Trek addiction.

Karl Johanson

[GeneK]

The biggest problem for me was the LIS aspect of the series. In all the
other Treks the ship could get itself into dangerous and Prime
Directive-questionable situations week after week after week, all plausibly
explained by the simple phrase, "Starfleet Command has ordered us to..."
But throw the same ship into a situation where they're out of touch with
home and their "ongoing mission" should have been to get home as quickly as
possible with as little alien interaction as possible to avoid having to
blow up the ship rather than violating the PD, and the only reasonable
explanation for what happened to them every week was that the captain and
crew were incompetent idiots.

GeneK

[Graeme]

On Dec 21, 10:11 pm, "GeneK" <gene@genek_hates_spammers.com> wrote:
> the only reasonable
> explanation for what happened to them every week was that the captain and
> crew were incompetent idiots.
>
> GeneK

A show about a ship of fools could be interesting (Red Dwarf, for
example). The problem with Voyager is that the writers didn't know
they were fools, and so didn't see to it that they got the comeuppance
they deserve.

[Dusty]

Hi,all....
My 5 cents worth...
In late `70`s/early `80`s,only ever saw a handful of TOS(which I
liked),later on a few random TNG( which did not appeal to me)...but in the
last 10-12 months,I acquired Enterprise(I liked the idea of
teleports/weapons/other technology in it`s earliest stages and not
trusted-finding it`s way etc.) and all TOS,VOY,TNG ,DS9 eps..Was OK with all
movies up to/inc. `undiscovered country`...the others are ok-ish.
Also,didn`t think VOY would be any good,after seeing a couple 1/2 eps 15+
years ago.but recently it grew on me...as did the other various series.....
Some points I`m trying to make are....
:it is all up to the individual viewers tastes,as to what is/is not
appreciated..I have grown to like ALL the series`...(although DS9 is
probably last on my list)
Among all of the various series/movies...the bits I don`t really
like/understand are...
-Seven and Chakotay getting it on....simply did not make sense.
- Any ep. that revolved around the Ferengi...as side characters they are
OK,but not as main storyline...get`s a bit boring seeing greed-greed-greed
all the time.
My view (one of them...)is `Enterprise` should have gone a bit longer....but
I have read newsgroups (this one or others/other internet sites) as to why
it failed...
These are simply my views-thoughts...
Who really cares if a tv show/series is a waste,as long as we get enjoyment
from it....(... hey,I like Blakes 7,but many people would not...due to it
being made `cheaply`.)
Am watching TNG now(finished season 5)and it is appealing,also..
I like to see the `positive`,if possible....
cheers
Dusty

.
"TMC" <tmc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3675d1e4-2f49-4ac4...@t36g2000prt.googlegroups.com...
http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/television/6-reasons-star-trek-voyage%20%20r-worked.html


The next Star Trek movie is about to begin filming, and all

indications are that it’s probably going to be a reboot of the classic

Khan storyline. That makes it the perfect time to take a step back,
and examine just how we got here, to a place where a franchise which
used to be all about going forward is now suddenly throwing it in
reverse and instead revisiting the past. Pinpointing the place where
Star Trek first started to go wrong is easy, as any serious Trek fan
will tell you, things began to go south with Voyager.

Voyager was the fourth Star Trek series to arrive on television. The
three which preceded it were all, in their own way, resoundingly
successful. Even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, though it never quite got
the ratings of Next Generation, proved to be a solid critical, award
winning success. Then came Voyager.

It’s not that Star Trek: Voyager was a disaster. The show lasted the
Star Trek requisite seven seasons and among those seasons had a few
truly inspired moments. Voyager didn’t kill Star Trek but it was the
beginning of a trend which would kill it. It was in Voyager that we
all started to sense something might be going wrong with Gene
Rodenberry’s vision, and it only got worse after Voyager went off the
air. The next Trek series was cancelled early in its run. Almost none
of the Next Generation movies were any good and what’s worse, by the
end no one was even showing up to see them. Voyager didn’t kill Star
Trek but it signified the beginning of the end. The things which did
kill the franchise, putting it in a tailspin which could only be
solved with the current reboot, all started here.

Here are the six biggest reasons Voyager never truly lived up to its
Star Trek potential.

Janeway Should Have Been A Fem Captain Kirk, Not A Fem Captain Picard
In a recent interview Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Katherine
Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager admitted that she never really gave the
role her all. It wasn’t that she was disinterested, but her home life
was in turmoil, and according to the actress she was struggling to
find a balance between raising a family and having a career. But Kate
Mulgrew wasn’t the problem. It’s the character they came up with for
her to play, that never worked. In creating Star Trek’s first female
Captain it seems clear that Voyager’s producers went out looking for a
female Picard, when what they should have done is cast a female
Captain Kirk.

Picard worked so brilliantly because he subverted the traditional,
Captain Kirk, alpha male stereotype. But a female Picard, well she
mostly plays into them. What they needed was a take charge, dynamic
female Captain, what they gave us was a moralizing, overly-liberal
pushover all too willing to throw her crew’s life away for no reason
at all if it made her seem superior and at least as interested in
prancing around in frilly dresses on the holodeck as she is in leading
her crew. Janeway had her moments, and Mulgrew’s performance was
passable, but the entire idea behind the kind of Captain Star Trek:
Voyager was saddled with, was simply wrongheaded from the start. It’s
not Mulgrew’s fault, it’s not even really most of the writers’ fault.
They were stuck with a really bad idea, a bad idea which was
unfortunately the most central character on the show, and no one ever
really figured out a way to do anything good with her.

B’Elanna Torres Is Meg Griffin
When the Voyager team came up with B’Elanna Torres I imagine they
expected her to be the strong, fiery, balls to the wall, take no
prisoners female character Janeway should have been. The show’s
written as though that’s what everyone expects from her. Characters
reference her legendary Klingon temper, her unbelievable Klingon
toughness, and her intimidating demeanor. But it’s all talk. None of
the things Voyager seems to think Torres is actually ever turn out to
be true. Instead, what they got, thanks at least in part to
consistently horrible performances from Roxann Dawson, was Meg
Griffin. Meg Griffin is the worst character on Family Guy. She exists
primarily as a running joke, in which everyone acknowledges how awful
she is. That’s B’Elanna.

Her legendary Klingon temper never really moves beyond the realm of
“bitchy”. Her legendary Klingon toughness is actually just a lot of
pouting. If her crewmates are intimidated by her it’s only because
they’re afraid she might start whining before they can get out of the
room. B’Elanna has the uncanny ability to walk into any situation and
make it utterly depressing. She takes a dump on any plot she’s
involved in, and turns the smiles of everyone around her into frowns.
Tom Paris excited about an awesome space race? Don’t worry, B’Elanna
will force her way into the episode to make sure it turns into a
discussion of their relationship and none of that fun racing stuff
ever happens. Everyone happy because she’s having a baby? Don’t worry,
B’Elanna’s not and it’s only a matter of time before she starts
bitching about how much she hates her unborn kid. Putting B’Elanna
Torres in the engine room was like giving Star Trek cancer. It was
only a matter of time before she killed it off.

Chakotay Is A Racist Character
Chakotay is Voyager’s Native American first officer. I’ve described
him that way because it’s literally the only thing I know about him,
even after watching all seven seasons. It’s not just that they don’t
develop him as a human being. The problem here is that when the show
tries, they only seem interested in playing up the Native American
angle. Tune in to any one of the show’s all too rare Chakotay episodes
and you’re sure to hear the beating of vaguely tribal sounding Native
American drums in the background. Odds are that episode’s plot will
involve some sort of vision quest, or an obsession with the beauty and
majesty of some primitive alien species that’s really in touch with
the land. Maybe you’re thinking that this is great, this is a fine
example of Voyager including all kinds of different ethnicities and
cultures in the Star Trek universe. Isn’t that what Gene Roddenberry
wanted? Not really.

While the original Trek included characters based on their share of
racial stereotypes, Scotty’s obsession with drinking Scotch for
instance, it didn’t entirely rely on them. Scotty didn’t wear a kilt
in the engine room and Chekov, despite a tendency to credit Russia
with every great advancement in human history, didn’t wander around
trying to convince everyone to become communists. Sulu didn’t subsist
entirely on a diet of Sushi, instead he was really into the Three
Musketeers and euro-style swashbuckling. And that was in the 60s.
Voyager was on the air in 2001 and yet it contained a character whose
only reason for existing was to wander around the ship espousing the
benefits of using high-tech, electronic peyote. It’s amazing he didn’t
find a way to convert one of the cargo bays into a casino, or make a
uniform out of buffalo.

Lowest Ranked Supporting Characters Are The Most Interesting
And now we’re coming to the root of the problem. The thing is,
Voyager’s most interesting characters are the ones they haven’t put in
charge of anything. The Captain’s a bleeding heart, borderline
incompetent, the first officer is probably high, and their chief
engineer is a space faring Debbie Downer. The rest of the bridge crew
isn’t much better. Garret Wang’s Ensign Kim eventually turns into a
passably interesting member of the ensemble, but Tom Paris’s receding
hairline isn’t very convincing as some sort of devil-may care bad boy.
Plus, Paris is romantically interested in B’Elanna Torres, so
something is clearly wrong with this guy. I’m not even sure the ship’s
security officer Tuvok, despite the pointed ears, is actually a
Vulcan.

The show’s best characters are a holographic Doctor who spends most of
his time confined to sickbay and probably isn’t real anyway, an alien
explorer who they’ve decided to stick behind a stove in their kitchen,
and a recently liberated, super-hot Borg who spends all her time
standing around in a cargo bay or sitting in front of a map somewhere
in the bowels of the ship. The show of course, realized how great
those characters were quickly, resulting in a steady diet of episodes
centered around The Doctor, Neelix, and later on Seven of Nine. But
since they aren’t really in charge of anything, it’s kind of hard to
keep inventing excuses for the ship’s cook to go on away missions.

Voyager Doesn’t Fully Utilize Its Premise
Really though, the show’s inconsistent cast of characters is a side
effect of a much larger problem, and it’s this: They never really knew
what to do with their premise. It’s actually a really good premise,
one which could have revitalized the entire Star Trek universe by
standing it on its head. A by the numbers Starfleet vessel is stranded
so far away from home it’ll take them seventy years to get back. They
don’t have any resources, they don’t know where they are, and when
half their crew is killed they’re forced to replace them with bunch of
rebellious, borderline space-pirates and make them their bunkmates.
How does Voyager respond to this predicament? They decide to pretend
they’re still in Starfleet and keep doing everything by the book.

Oh and those rebel marauders the Maquis? By episode two they’re
virtually indistinguishable from every other Starfleet officer on the
ship. They put on the uniform, follow the rules, and aside from the
occasional plotline involving the holodeck, the differences between
them and the actual Starfleet crew are almost never mentioned again.
The really frustrating thing about Voyager is that they used a show
about a stranded ship in desperate circumstances to tell stories that
could have been told on almost any old episode of Star Trek. Rather
than being a staple of the stories they chose to tell, the Voyager
crew’s predicament is more like a sidebar that the show’s writers stop
to revisit whenever they don’t seem to have anything better to do.

Technology Is Overused Until It Loses All Meaning
Among the list of things Voyager’s writers would rather do than
actually address the show’s premise is spend time on the holodeck. In
fact Voyager spent more time on the holodeck than almost any other
Star Trek had before. Rather than dealing with the real world, a large
percentage of the show’s episodes involve dealing with holographic
worlds where the crew battles B-movie sci-fi villains, engages in
Klingon rituals, or occasionally has sex with holographic Irish
bartenders. Hey, she may be a captain but Katherine Janeway still a
woman with needs, needs which she meets with a futuristic sex doll
while wearing a variety of frilly dresses. It’s not just the show’s
overuse of the holodeck that’s the problem, it’s their overuse of
nearly ever technological marvel they think fans might love.

All too often the show feels more like fan service than an actual
storytelling venue. Replicators are used so much they become less
technology than magic, they’re the instant solution to any problem,
problems which might have been a lot more interesting if they couldn’t
be solved by simply pushing a button. Running out of shuttles? No
problem, we’ll just replicate a dozen more so you can blow them up
again. Need something to eat? Replicate it! Running out of replacement
parts? Replicate them! Other Trek technological staples get overused
too, whether it’s the transporters or the turbolift or the warp
engine, or the ship’s sensors… at some point all that once marvelous
technology becomes so overused that it loses any and all meaning. It
stops becoming technology and becomes a series of magic MacGuffins the
writers use whenever they get lazy.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/13/daily-call-sheet%20%20-bane-said-what-dragon-tattoo-review-and-why-voyager-blows/

Wow. This nails it. Back in 2001, I gave “Voyager” two seasons before
giving up. The political correctness was beyond undermining to the
show’s plots, it was stifling and insulting.

Political correctness is a cancer on storytelling. Something that
makes programs like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Sons of Anarchy,”
“The Closer,” and “Breaking Bad” so brilliant is that this PC crap
isn’t allowed anywhere near the plot.

Something that damaged the whole of the “Next Generation” for me was
an episode where Picard refuses to launch a computer virus that would
exterminate the Borg. In a fit of sanctimony, he likens it to
genocide. Ever after, whether it was the show itself or the film
“First Contact,” I blamed Picard for every innocent life lost to the
Borg.

Picard’s decision might have made for interesting drama had the
character been forced to grapple with the fallout. This would’ve made
perfect sense in “First Contact” when he goes a little mad in pursuit
of vengeance. But the producers never brought it up again.

The real problem with political correctness is that it makes decision-
making too easy for our protagonist, which makes for boring,
uncomplicated drama. I could’ve lived with Picard making that decision
had it been presented as an impossible choice he would’ve been forced
to live and deal and struggle with ever after. But the series was more
interested in making a statement and, at least in my mind, suffered
for it.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=152923

1.) Excessive use of techno-babble. Now, I'm one of those people who
would get pissed at season 7 of DS9 when they would throw in a whole
song by Vic Fontaine - made me feel like the writers couldn't be arsed
to write another scene so they threw a song in. What's even worse than
that, IMO, is throwing in technobabble exposition to pad the episode
or for whatever other unfathomable reason. I'm not even one of those
people who cares if the technobabble explanation is remotely
scientifically plausible or not - I don't watch Trek for scientific
accuracy, I watch it for the same reason I watch any other show - to
be entertained by a good story. I have no interest in seeing the
characters technobabble their way out of a situation every damn week.
I'm not saying that this was the only Trek show guilty of this, but it
seems to be most prominent on Voyager, and it just smacks of lazy
writing.

2.) Wasted opportunities: Mainly the ST crew and the Maquis. The
tension between these two groups pretty much disappeared in like, two
episodes, and they were pretty much one big happy crew after that. I
wanted more of a struggle to integrate. Heck, we saw more tension
between the Bajorans and the Feds on DS9, and the Feds were INVITED
their to HELP them. I'm not saying the two crews had to be at each
other's throats every episode, but a more bumpy integration, a gradual
dissolving of tensions and slow progress to mutual trust and respect
would have been more compelling to watch than the insta-integration
that happened. Why bother making half the crew Maquis if you're not
going to use it as a plot point for more than five seconds?

3.) Poor character development. This is not to say all the characters
were poorly developed - I'd say it was mostly Chakotay and Harry who
got the bum rush when it came to character development. Chakotay never
got much to besides his "Spritual Indian" shtick, and Harry ... wow,
what can I say? About the only Harry-centric episode I can say where
we ever saw any potential for character growth was when he was in that
prison with Tom - and even then, the focus wasn't so much on Harry,
but on the Harry/Tom dynamic, a friendship in the vein of Bashir/
O'Brien - which was about the only part of Harry's underdeveloped
character that I find interesting.

4.) Little to no character growth. Strongly related to above. Even
those character on VOY who were given character development remained
rather static through the course of the series. I can't help once
again comparing it to my favorite Trek series, DS9, where even a
recurring character like Nog went through more growth than a supposed
"main" character like Harry Kim. I'm not saying there was no character
growth at all - Seven was good example of successful character
evolution - but there should have been a lot more.

5.) Imbalance of characters (seeing a theme here? A lot of my
complaints have to do with character stuff, heh). Example: When Jeri
Ryan came on, VOY became the Seven of Nine show. Now, this is not to
say I dislike the character. I know she was pretty much brought on
because the powers that be believe the stereotype that the typical
trek fan is a droolin hormone-fueled adolescent fanboy, and she
provided the T and A. And heck, maybe that's true. But aside from her
obvious ... assets ... Seven was an intriguing, complex character and
I actually think she was one of the best-written, best-developed
characters on the show. I just wish her character development did not
have to come at the expense of other characters. Again comparing to
DS9, we see a show that managed to develop main and recurring
characters and maintain a balance between them (though arguably Jake
sort of fell by the wayside towards the end). And they even managed to
screw Seven up, by putting in her an out-of-nowhere romance with
Chakotay. These two character had nothing in common and, despite the
fact that they were both portrayed by attractive actors, have zero
chemistry IMO. Yawn.

6.) Overabundance of supplies/happiness for a ship stuck however many
billion light years from home. I didn't want VOY to be all doom and
gloom, with them barely surviving, but it seems they could've been
more of show of struggle, some scarcity aboard the ship, the ship
itself showing more wear and tear than looking all magically shiny and
new every episode. Look writers, if you want to do another TNG, just
does do another TNG damn it! The premise was certainly successful
enough. But no, you deliberately stranded them decades away from home,
and half the time it's like they forgot they were trying to get back
to the Delta Quandrant and were just exploring the galaxy, TNG-style.
And they have all that time (and power!) to waste on the holodeck!
Which leads us too ...

7.) Excessive and cringe-worthy use of the holodeck. I say "excessive"
because unlike other Trek series, Voyager was supposed to have limited
resources. I don't care if they gave a technobabble solution about
Voyager's holodeck having a different power source than the rest of
the ship (which - WTF? Who designs a ship that way?!). Holodeck
episodes tend to be hit or miss when it comes to Trek, and Voyager is
no exception. The only time I enjoyed holodeck eps on this show is
when the did the Captain Proton episodes, because it was such cheesy,
scene-chewery good fun (in black and white!) and a homage to the sci-
fi days of yore. As for the rest ... well, Fairhaven. Enough said.

8.) Character inconsistency. Yes, another character complaint. Even
when characters got significant development, it was hard to tell,
because it often felt like they were written differently from one
episode to the next. Janeway is the most egregrious example of this.
One week, the writers have her cleaving the Prime Directive like it's
the most sacred, sacrosanct rule in her universe, the next week, she's
throwing it out the window. Come on, people. Even if you didn't it
write it, would it at least kill you to glance over last week's
script! Yeesh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCRFXgcY4I&feature=channel_video_title

Sarah and Captain Logan discuss their biggest issues with Star Trek:
Voyager and what they think should have been done differently with it.

Join the Geekvolution at wearegeeksnotnerds.com!