Star Trek Voyager - Is It That Bad?

squonk

Great sum up! I really didn't watch enough VOY to get properly into it. It seemed like a great premise very badly executed. I've discovered from Orange is the New Black that I'm not a fan of Kate Mulgrew anyway and I can't help but think she was the wrong choice as lead for a new Trek show. Mind you, I never warmed to Sisko either but I'm due a DS9 rewatch as I never caught the full series due to the vagueries of terrestrial TV at the time.

For someone though who was leading a mixed crew (bad enough in itself) through an unknown quadrant Janeway seemed to be mainly concerned with the small picture. Box ticking and pencil pushing. In Federation space I'd have sought a transfer if I was on that ship. In uncharted territory with a low chance of getting home I'd probably have thrown myself out the nearest airlock eventually.

Kurn

In the 'Endgame' episode, I just watched...

At the start Voyager passes a borg cube, - the drones are going to assimilate it, but the queen is like 'nah let them go i'll keep an eye on them' (also are they not supposed to be "we" - never mind).

So, aside from bad writing, why did they just not assimilate Voyager then? Keeping in mind in the last encounter with the borg Janeway started a civil war of sorts.

I guess what I'm asking, is within the storyline is there a reason, or theory?

Thargor

The Borg queen wrecked one of the best enemies in science fiction, it was a crazy decision to introduce her in First Contact, would be interested if anyone had ever seen the writers responding to that kind of criticism?

Kurn

I agree what with what you say, but I still loved First Contact

Rawr

Kurn wrote: »

In the 'Endgame' episode, I just watched...

At the start Voyager passes a borg cube, - the drones are going to assimilate it, but the queen is like 'nah let them go i'll keep an eye on them' (also are they not supposed to be "we" - never mind).

So, aside from bad writing, why did they just not assimilate Voyager then? Keeping in mind in the last encounter with the borg Janeway started a civil war of sorts.

I guess what I'm asking, is within the storyline is there a reason, or theory?

Plot necessity; pure and simple. The established canon be damned! They wanted an easy-out.

Despite the Borg's origins in TNG as an unstoppable and nearly invincible force of nature, the VOY writing staff had the knack of forgetting a lot of this in favor of a flawed and vain nemesis as personified by the Borg Queen herself.

Had the Classic Borg of 'Q-Who' or 'Best of Both Worlds' been present here, there would be have been none of this 'wait and see' nonsense. The cubes would simply attach Voyager en-masse and begin slicing her up while assimilating everyone there. No Queen, no silly plans, just "We are the Borg, Resistance is Futile"...Bang!

As mentioned just now, we've got First Contact to thank of all of this. I am a bit torn with this film. While it did introduce the Borg Queen, it also probably showed us the Borg at their most horrifying while reminding us how haunted Picard has been by his time as a Borg (he forgot to take his anti-Borg hypo that day :rolleyes: ). The Borg Queen did however feel like a foolish move, and it was most likely driven by Berman going into 'Hollywood mode' with his feature films. The (mistaken) concern may have been that the concept of the Borg might have been too tricky for general audiences to pick up, and thus a single person was needed as the primary antagonist. So we get a Queen to represent the entire Borg's will. Alas this totally destroys the idea of a collective singular conciseness and also destroys their emotionless drive to upgrade the universe.

The Borg are now just the playthings of their Queen, and she makes mistakes (far too damn often).

IvySlayer

In Dark Frontier they blow up a Borg shuttle, then they get some logs of Borg movement in the area, there's 3 Borg cubes and damaged sphere.

So Janeway raids the sphere to steal a transwarp coil, but the Queen knows this and tells Seven to rejoin the collective or else she will assimilate Voyager. She wants Seven because of her understanding of Humans and to assimilate Earth.

Why not just assimilate Voyager with those Cubes and use your transwarp hubs and send more than one Cube to conquer the Federation you dumb robot bitch

The Queen made things personal, I mean she should be the smartest and most powerful being in the galaxy and she assimilates 1% of the Delta Quadrant and she doesn't have basic anti-virus protection.

She's not that threatening considering she was 'killed' 3 times!

Rawr

IvySlayer wrote: »

Why not just assimilate Voyager with those Cubes and use your transwarp hubs and send more than one Cube to conquer the Federation you dumb robot bitch

That made my day
Pretty much sums up the stupidity of Voyager's Borg in one beautiful sentence. Thank you Ivy

Kiith

Giving the Borg Transwarp did kind of make it impossible to explain why they haven't just assimilated every single species in the galaxy. Want to assimilate Earth? Boom, 30 Cubes. Qo'Nos? Boom, 30 Cubes. Pretty much any resistance would actually be futile if they can appear directly at your home planet.

It also doesn't explain why one Cube was sent to assimilate Earth on two different occasions. The first was just a probe maybe, but the 2nd should have had far more backup.

Myrddin

The Borg were royally ****ed up through overuse, bad writing, and needless development. Such a shame, Q Who & BoBW were stunningly good episodes of Star Trek, only for it to all go downhill after that.

Kurn

IvySlayer wrote: »

The Queen made things personal, I mean she should be the smartest and most powerful being in the galaxy and she assimilates 1% of the Delta Quadrant and she doesn't have basic anti-virus protection.

LMAO

syklops

She wants Seven because of her understanding of Humans and to assimilate Earth.

How many thousands of fecking humans have the Borg asiimilated? Surely they have all the understanding of human nature they need? And why do they even need and understanding of humanity. Just assimilate as normal.

Myrddin

syklops wrote: »

How many thousands of fecking humans have the Borg asiimilated? Surely they have all the understanding of human nature they need? And why do they even need and understanding of humanity. Just assimilate as normal.

Exactly, you can probably thank Berman & co for the cluster**** the Borg became.

Thargor

That is a cut scene from Flashback in your avatar isn't it Myrridin? Sorry for o/t but it's annoying me...

Myrddin

Thargor wrote: »

That is a cut scene from Flashback in your avatar isn't it Myrridin? Sorry for o/t but it's annoying me...

It's from Snatcher CD on the Sega mega cd

The_Valeyard

syklops wrote: »

How many thousands of fecking humans have the Borg asiimilated? Surely they have all the understanding of human nature they need? And why do they even need and understanding of humanity. Just assimilate as normal.

If the novels were canon it could be the Borg waiting for events to take place from humanities future, to the past that would create The Borg.

Thargor

The_Valeyard wrote: »

If the novels were canon it could be the Borg waiting for events to take place from humanities future, to the past that would create The Borg.

I hated that origin story, glad its not canon. I always thought the Borg would just be a random species that got corrupted by their implants/nanotech and started spreading like a virus.

Rawr

Thargor wrote: »

I hated that origin story, glad its not canon. I always thought the Borg would just be a random species that got corrupted by their implants/nanotech and started spreading like a virus.

I had often hoped that the Borg Queen was the origin of the Borg herself. Originally a normal girl who needed a life-saving operation with nano-technology....which went horribly wrong.

Alas the chosen cannon p*ssed all over that possibility by stating that she was just another assimilated person from a random race.

Boo-urns...

DubTony

I just watched all 7 seasons over the last 6 weeks culminating in a 3 episode binge last night. (Loved that Neelix departure - there was a tear).

I have to say, it was better than I remembered despite only actually remembering a handful of episodes in any detail. Like any series with an ensemble cast, it started off pretty dodgy, but I think it got into its stride pretty quickly.

I'll agree that there were a lot of silly resets, and the ship really should have been a broken mess by the time it all ended (that was one of my bugbears back then). I'd have liked the finale to have been dragged out over at least 3 episodes, but that wasn't the way of any TV show back then, so it's not really surprising they rushed it. The characters, for me, are all quite memorable. The only one I was never fully on board with was Kes, and I remember that Mulgrew's shifty-eye acting in the earlier seasons was quite painful at times, but she definitely got better. The Chakotay character wasn't quite how I remembered him. Definitely a lot more wimpish.

Still 3rd in the list for me after DS9 and TNG.

learn_more

Well I've been watching Voyager over the last few weeks myself too. This time round on a large TV with a surround sound system. Always a good reason to watch again as it's a much better viewing experience. I love the sound of the rumbling of the ship through the subwoofer, it's somewhat therapeutic to me, but then I am a bit of a quality audio nut. I love the opening credits too, such a lovely piece of music that I don't usually skip when binge watching.

It strikes me they must have had a huge budget for this show when you consider all the costumes and set pieces, and all the stuff that went on in the holodeck etc.

I must say I love Kate Mulgrew as Janeway and Robert Picardo as The Doctor. Two fine actors. When you take all the techo babble that had to spout , they did it so convincingly. The writers also did a very good job with all the jargon too to make it seem plausibly realistic. Nothing like a bit of 'temporal flux' to create an exciting episode. Whenever the doctor was treating a patient with some whacky problem it never seemed completely daft, the technical dialogue or the situation.

I found Kez an irrelevant character although the one where she returned in a state of 'Fury' was a good episode. Harry Kim I simply didn't like. Nelix didn't bother me as much as other have said. I think he was 'meant' to be irritating, rather than he was just a bad character. His acting was quite good actually even if the character himself was annoying.

I though all the double episodes were really good apart from the first 'Caretaker' episode. And I did actually like the finale but I do wish they strung it out over a few of the final episodes as the end just seemed a bit 'sudden'.

All in all , even though I think DS9 was excellent, Voyager remains my favourite pure Star Trek series.

robyntmorton

It's been a while since I watched a full run through of Voyager, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading through this. On it's original run it would have been my favourite, but with maturity I find the twisting, multi season story arcs of DS9 much more satisfying. That said, while there are quite a few WTF episodes (as rightly pointed out many times in thread) it is not all bad (for reference, I don't think I've ever watched more than 10 minutes of Enterprise)

IvySlayer wrote: »

I mean she should be the smartest and most powerful being in the galaxy and she assimilates 1% of the Delta Quadrant and she doesn't have basic anti-virus protection.

You mean Borg cubes don't come with AVG installed? Very short sighted. They probably run on Windows Vista too.

Rawr wrote: »

Fair Haven & Spirit Folk

Few things make me want to throw heavy items at my TV screen. Few things make be scream in anger towards that screen with a vitriol that would make a docker blush. Those few things...are these two episodes. I am at a loss at what they were thinking. Had any of them ever spoken with Colm Meaney during this to get his input, or indeed anyone else on set who were from Ireland?

Back when Voyager was originally aired, that heavy item would have been the TV. That's an interesting paradox, throwing something at itself. Someone should pass it on to the Trek writers if they ever need to half ass a filler episode.

helimachoptor

In the Sunkatse (no idea on the spelling) the guy in the first fight against the Hirogen.. it looks very very like Marc Alaimo

robyntmorton

helimachoptor wrote: »

In the Sunkatse (no idea on the spelling) the guy in the first fight against the Hirogen.. it looks very very like Marc Alaimo

Reading through the episode, Alaimo is not mentioned, but JG Hertzler (Martok) and Jeffrey Combs (Brunt FCA, and Weyoun) were both involved as guest stars.

helimachoptor

robyntmorton wrote: »

Reading through the episode, Alaimo is not mentioned, but JG Hertzler (Martok) and Jeffrey Combs (Brunt FCA, and Weyoun) were both involved as guest stars.

Yep, and maybe its because he was in it for 30 seconds.. but i cant find it anywhere

robyntmorton

helimachoptor wrote: »

Yep, and maybe its because he was in it for 30 seconds.. but i cant find it anywhere

I'm after watching the opening, and you are right that the resemblance is there. I can't find anything online about an uncredited appearance, but the filming dates would quite probably overlap on the end of DS9, and it would be easy enough for the producers to rope him in for that little bit.