Star Trek Voyager - Is It That Bad?

helimachoptor

i'd give it a pass purely for the armored voyager.

tbh what would have been great to see if a real risk during the series to VOY from the Borg and then VOY get upgraded and kicks ass in the finale.

the fact that voy was regularly beating the borg meant the finale lost some credit with me

IvySlayer

She didn't save everyone, Carey was shot and killed a few episodes before Endgame and Janeway didnt care :P

Myrddin

IvySlayer wrote: »

She didn't save everyone, Carey was shot and killed a few episodes before Endgame

I meant she saved everyone who was still alive at that point

and Janeway didnt care :P

Ah she did, watch it again

Rawr

Myrddin wrote: »

So yeah, Star Trek Voyager...a show that gets a bad wrap, but in reality, is nowhere near as bad as is made out. It can be disappointing at times given how safe the writing is, but bad, truly, actually, bad? Rarely.

Thank you for the run-down of the series Myrddin. It has been a fun trip down Trek memory lane

Agreed on Season 7. By far the weakest of the lot, and back in the day after watching Season 6 my patience with the show had already been heavily eroded. For the first time after many years of watching the new Trek episode on Sky One every week, I began to give the show a miss and many Season 7 episodes were only watched by me when the show was re-aired later.

There was stuff I liked, but mostly it was very 'meh'.

Prophecy
This episode annoyed me. It wasn't a horrible episode at all, but by this time I had really gotten the impression of a show that had been 'phoned-in' due to a lack of ideas. Rather than go for something original, they seemed to have just leaned back on the TNG stalwart of just 'doing a Klingon episode'.

So, for a pretty thin reason, a Klingon ship turns up one day with a bunch of pilgrims. Cue all of your favourite stock Klingon characters, lines, sets and mythology while Klingon religion decides that Torres' baby is Klingon-Jesus. Swing a Bath'leth and chug some Blood-wine folks!

I'm being harsh on the episode, but it just pisses me off when writers do this...

Homestead
An OK episode, but as soon as we saw Talaxians it became very clear that this was a 'Neelix finale'. I always found it odd that they were several cheat-codes away from Talax (not to mention Borg-space), and were conveniently placed in the path of Voyager only 2 episodes before the series finale.

It was all a little too damned tidy, which just bugged me. Neelix should have a gotten good finale, sure, but something about it seemed a bit off.

Endgame
Again, not a bad episode, and a fairly ok finale too. However, some things again bugged me.

Harry Kim's speech although fitting, felt like a violation of the 4th Wall. It was almost as if he somehow knew that this was the finale, which shouldn't have been the case. They've had similar situations before when they were possibly getting home, and yet Harry didn't tell us about how 'its about the journey, not the destination'. It was a little too on-the-nose for Kim to telling this stuff now.

There was some attempt to make the Borg menacing in this episode, which just came across as silly. After Unimatrix Zero, there was no question of Voyager winning.

The whole Seven / Chakotay relationship. Which seemed very wooden, and although I can't think of another character to ship her with, I would have never figured Chakotay. Just seemed weird.

Finally, yes..I too was disappointed that we didn't see the actual homecoming. Hell, you could have had Reg there going nuts with excitement while Troi tried to talk him down from the tree he suddenly climbed, or something like that

So Voyager...it was alright. I've always felt that it was better than ENT, however it did have 2 Fair Haven episodes, which is just plain despicable.

It was a good idea for a Trek show, but it could have been so much more...

nyarlothothep

The Klingon episode, was that the one where they're wandering around Voyager being stock Klingon cliches? I hated that episode, it was like, here you go fans, we will condescend you with dumbed down Klingon tropes, so dumbed down that they will irritate you. Also another problem with Voyager was the overuse of music, I remember non stop wall to wall music in these episodes which got annoying and tedious very quickly. 7 was quite dominant and would have been better off with The Doctor or Harry Kim. Pairing her with Chakotay was just going the conventional, confident jock dude paired with boob machine route, her personality was too weird for her to simply go with the cardboard cut out guy.

_Kaiser_

nyarlothothep wrote: »

The Klingon episode, was that the one where they're wandering around Voyager being stock Klingon cliches? I hated that episode, it was like, here you go fans, we will condescend you with dumbed down Klingon tropes, so dumbed down that they will irritate you. Also another problem with Voyager was the overuse of music, I remember non stop wall to wall music in these episodes which got annoying and tedious very quickly. 7 was quite dominant and would have been better off with The Doctor or Harry Kim. Pairing her with Chakotay was just going the conventional, confident jock dude paired with boob machine route, her personality was too weird for her to simply go with the cardboard cut out guy.

The Doctor and Seven would have been good - in fact the director/writers deliberately set it up at the start of Endgame when Future Doc arrives to the party with a blonde on his arm that we all immediately assume must be Seven until the camera pans around.

Rawr

nyarlothothep wrote: »

The Klingon episode, was that the one where they're wandering around Voyager being stock Klingon cliches? I hated that episode, it was like, here you go fans, we will condescend you with dumbed down Klingon tropes, so dumbed down that they will irritate you.

It was that episode. You pretty much summed up the whole episode there. I would be very surprised if this wasn't an intentional 'filler' episode. I believe they may have found themselves one episode short of the season then thought:

Taylor: Crap! We're short an episode, and we've used up all of our stories.

Berman: Meh...just do a Klingon episode that usually tests well.

Taylor: Wrong quadrant. We're supposed to use Hirogen for that.

Berman: Then magic them over there somehow. They're space-hippies, or pilgrims, or something....any excuse to re-use the Klingon sets.

Taylor: Hmm...still I don't have a lot of lines to play with. Can't really say "Ka'pla!" 20 times in an episode to fill air-time.

Berman: Then make up a new Klingon word and have them say that 20 times.

Taylor: Yea...that should work. Should we get back to working on Star Trek: Enterprise?

Berman: Yeaaaa....you don't need to worry about that...

Taylor: What does that mean?

Berman: Ohhh.....nothing....

Riskymove

Run through of Voyager begins on Monday on Syfy

squonk

I dipped into an early episode of Voyager last night just to see what the quality on Netflix was like. I only had time to watch about 10 minutes of the episode. It was, I think, episode 8 or one of those very early episodes. It started out with Janeway and Chakotay talking about rations only to discover that Neelix had turned the Captain's private dining room into a galley. There main theme of the episode was a dilithium rich planet but I stopped at the point they beamed down.

I'd forgotten quite how unlikable Janeway is/was. She seemed overly concerned about the loss of her private diningroom and Chakotay just came across as a very dull character. They, honestly, were a crew I didn't want to spend a lot of time with.

I remember being incensed when Picard had to take orders from 'Admiral Janeway' (how the hell did that happen?) in Insurrection or Nemesis. I'm not saying Picard wouldn't have been pissed also about his private diningroom but in 7 years of TNG I hadn't heard about a private diningroom, but he'd have handled it better.

I also had a quick look at Enterprise and the difference was huge. This was another early episode where they discover an M class planet to explore with inhabitants but it probably isn't all it's cracked up to be judging by the looks the Vulcan officer is giving them. Archer strolls into the situation room, greets his team and asks them what's happening today. Real nice guy. Smiley, happy crew and just a nice place to be.

Rawr

squonk wrote: »

I'd forgotten quite how unlikable Janeway is/was. She seemed overly concerned about the loss of her private diningroom and Chakotay just came across as a very dull character. They, honestly, were a crew I didn't want to spend a lot of time with.

Very much agree. I had always felt that the crew was a but of a 2-dimensional waist of time in terms of character development. Here's how I've always saw them:

Janeway: Should have been more haunted by the fact that she was alone and fleet-less on the other side of the galaxy. Spends the rest of the show reminding us why the TNG-era Federation has become such a boring-as-hell place, where your main external concerns revolve around the housing of puppies and replicator coffee. Angry Janeway was sometimes good, but that was often destroyed by her hammy speeches. A wasted chance to show her slowly crumbling under the pressure of everything, and then being built up by a new *more interesting* crew dynamic.

Chakotay: "I'm a hard-core rebel leader who hates Starfleet!" (Janeway flips switch) "I'm a totally loyal Starfleet officer! Always follow the rules!"
Honestly, I know the actor himself was never happy with this car-crash of a character, but come on...what was he supposed to be about? Token minority? Was someone on staff having some Native American guilt/background? The whole Marquis thing (you know, that passionate struggle against the authorities), seems brushed away and replaced with the dullest first officer in Fleet History. He should have had a much harder time with the adjustment.

Tuvok: I actually kind of liked him. A Spock who dealt in the logical pursuit of lobbing Photons at the enemy. His friendship with Janeway was one of the few relationships on the show I took seriously.

Kim: The *newbie* straight out of school and right into career hell. I don't know how he coped with being stuck as an Ensign after spending 7 years as a bridge officer. (Especially after best-buddy Paris kept getting promoted over him). The whole point of him seemed the be Paris's friend, and little else until the later seasons when he was used to randomly blurt out the word "Sex!" whenever the plot needed (VOY seemed to need that...you know...to be 'edgy'). Horribly wasted chance to see a new officer grow from one of the toughest baptisms of fire in Fleet history.

Paris: AKA, Wesley's roommate, AKA that token 80's kid who helped He-man defeat Skeletor in 'Masters of the Universe'. Default 'Lovable Bad-Boy' of the ship. Just think Han Solo....minus all of the charm....actually minus a lot of stuff really. He's a our token fan of the 20th Century (because the future is so damned boring, people love to live in the past.) To the their credit, he loves *all* of the 20th Century, and not just the 90's. However all of that degrades into a silly fandom for a Flash Gordon clone, which makes for even sillier holodeck episodes. Nothing much happening here beyond his "romance" with Torres.

Torres: "I'm an angry Klingon girl! Grrrr!!!" ..that's....well....about it really. Tom fancies her.

The Doctor: An ancient Timelord from the planet Galifrey who travels in his....(wait what? oh....) A hologram...who also doesn't have a name...but was actually one of the few good characters there.

Neelix: Quark...but furry and generally nice to people. Kind of annoying at times, especially with children. They could have done more with him, and the episodes related to the Talaxian War were actually kind of interesting.

Kes: Meh! Just.....meh....she was there far too long.

Seven: On the whole not bad, and was developed a bit. She wasn't helped by repetitive script ticks ("When I was in the collective...") and all-round bad writing for her. With a better writing staff she could have been a truly epic character. Sort of also relegated to the "Figure-hugging Cat-Suit Brigade" where she was there to provide visual diversity to the show (Fanservice).

Naomi Wildman: *Smashes head through keyboard*

So yea....crew was a major weakness of the show. Far more misses than hits.

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.