Why Star Trek: Voyager Failed
TMC
"Forget the premise"
Each Star Trek series has brought something different to the table.
The Next Generation was the true expression of Star Trek creator Gene
Roddenberry's enlightened future. Deep Space Nine dealt with evolving
issues as its action focused on a stationary space station, not a
roving starship. Voyager's main driving force was a crew stranded on
the other side of the galaxy, trying to get home. What rules would
they break? How would they interact with those they were formerly at
odds with? This last point involves the Maquis, basically an anti-
Federation resistance cell. The USS Voyager was sent to find a Maquis
vessel and both ships ended up 70000 light years from home. To get
back, the two crews would have to work together. With a Maquis as
first officer and another as chief engineer, the Voyager's captain
would have to balance her Federation ideals against a group who would
be willing to do anything to get home.
An intriguing premise, which the writers promptly seemed to ignore.
Chakotay, the Maquis first officer, never really played up any sort of
discontent about being under a Starfleet officer, where he had
previously been a captain of his own ship. He should harbor some sort
of resentment against the characters of Tuvok and Tom Paris, who
betrayed the Maquis. He has to deal with his own crew who feels like
the Starfleet way isn't cutting it--would a mutiny break out? Yet by
the end of the first episode Chakotay's grudges with Tuvok and Paris
are solved, and by the end of the first season Chakotay is often
championing Captain Janeway's plans, even when he disagrees with them.
What?
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Short and sweet, the writers killed a central conflict of the show.
The Maquis and Starfleet crews pretty much became best buds overnight,
save for a few inexplicable episodes where the writers suddenly
decided to dredge up the old hostilities again (for example,
"Repression"). Sorry, but if you kill a concept, you can't lamely try
to bring it back for one episode and not expect it to seemed forced.
Speaking of forced characters...
Not everyone got the attention they deserved
Voyager's characters never really worked out properly. Some became
well-rounded and dimensional, more or less, while others simply
remained hazily sketched-out caricatures. Chakotay got some early
season face time, but for much of the rest of the series he only got
real meaty lines when talking with Janeway or when he's crashed a
shuttle, again. (Literally, he does this all the time. I can think of
"Future's End", "Initiations", "Coda", and "Nemesis" as such occasions
off the top of my head. It's a good thing the crew built the Delta
Flyer, because it seemed to be Chakotay-proof. That's not to say the
rest of the crew didn't knock their own fair number of shuttles out of
the sky, they just didn't seem to have the flair Chakotay did.)
Even more troubling than the lack of characterization was the sudden
contrivances to serve plot. For instance, a character might profess
that they loved archeology (Chakotay again) when no previous
indication had ever been given. It became painfully obvious that there
were strings pulling the characters about. If crewmen weren't suddenly
gaining another hobby, they were acting remarkably out of character.
The only people who seemed internally consistent were Tom Paris and
Harry Kim, who didn't get to do much besides act like Stooges. Part of
the reason was that the later seasons (Season 4 onward) became
dominated by a newcomer to the show, Seven of Nine (played by Jeri
Ryan.) Acting as a cold and passionless ex-Borg drone wasn't a tough
acting job, so I can't criticize her acting, but she was way overused.
It seemed every three episodes had her getting into another jam, or
else focusing on her well-nigh exclusively. Was she occasionally a
compelling character? Sure. But the main reasons she got so much
screen-time was her figure and the skintight bodysuit and heels she
ran around with (how could she run around in those?) Speaking of
ridiculous costumes, that leads us to...
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Lazy Trek conventions
Most of Star Trek: Voyager's writers were alums from other shows, and
the producers (Berman and Braga) had worked on the show since The Next
Generation. Apparently after a while the creative well went dry for
these chaps, because Voyager kept on running into spatial anomalies on
a frighteningly usual basis. If it wasn't an anomaly that provided the
conflict, it was generally hostile or stupid aliens. To make this
cliche even worse, they all happened to look the same (one reviewer
refers to them as generic "bumpy forehead aliens", due to the forehead
designs being the only major difference between species) courtesy of
rather uninspired makeup (especially in later seasons) by Michael
Westmore. After a while, if you'd seen a few episodes, it seemed like
you'd seen them all. What was even worse was that this lazy
conventions hurt otherwise good episodes. For example, in "Shattered",
the ship is broken up into different time periods, and Chakotay
actually has to do something--that is, bring the ship back together.
But the fact that there were evil forehead aliens, a spacial anomaly,
etc., turned what could have been a special event into a "seen this
premise iteration before"-type episode. Resistance to really shaking
it up resulted in intriguing premises turning into half-baked
rehashes. But perhaps the most egregious issue was the...
Big, Giant Reset Button.
This is undoubtedly the worst offense. I'm not going to even list
episodes, it's such a common occurrence, but the main thrust of the
issue is that nobody learns. Ever. Watching too many Voyager episodes
back-to-back and you'll cause severe whiplash from watching characters
act the same. Consistent and believable character growth was largely
killed because at the end of each episode, there was the "reset";
everyone survived, or else there was a slight moment of touchy-
feeling. But by the next episode there's no reference to what happened
and no tangible effects to be felt. While some might have disliked the
serial nature of, say, Deep Space Nine, at least things didn't
magically go away. Deus ex machina endings were often the nature
tendency of the writers. Voyager would keep throwing themselves at
harmful anomalies, Harry Kim wouldn't learn anything about
relationships, and the Doctor would do something incredibly stupid,
Janeway would give a speech about how he let her down, and then
everyone would forget about it. This didn't just kill continuity, it
stretched the incredulity of the series already bonkered by poor plots
and technobabble to new lows.