Voyager revisited - this time it’s Neelixy

Neelix was the worst character by far imo. Tom Paris is okay, he matures a lot as the seasons progress and is generally inoffensive imo.

Kazons were probably the weakest part of early Voyager. Bad Klingon knockoffs, not very interesting and hung around for way too long. I liked the Vidians, would have preferred to see more of them. "Eye of the needle" was my favourite episode of the first season.

"I remember the start being much weaker, but I actually think season 1 of Voyager is stronger than season 1 of DS9."

Completely agree, and I say that as a DS9 zealot. Voyager had a VERY strong start when compared with its peers. Overall, it is outclassed by the writing and characters of DS9, but again, it's a very good Trek show with a few limitations around character development and recycling of plots.

It's a Shakespearean masterpiece compared to Discovery though, which lowered the bar through the floor.

Do feel Voyager nerfed the Borg though

The Hirogen also started off cool (and really tall) then also got nerfed.

I watched Voyager when it first came out. Never rewatched it until about a year ago, as my recollections were ...not positive.

As far as the first season goes, I have to say I still consider it to be pretty woeful. DS9 season one is a masterpiece in comparison; in seven years, Voyager never had a single episode as good as Duet, to give a single example.

But overall, it's not as bad as I remember. The toe-curling Native American obsession of the 90s (panpipes and dreamcatchers, anyone?) aside, it hasn't dated too badly.

The Kazon were shite and were around too long. Chakotay and Harry Kim were boring. Torres was a drama queen. Neelix, jesus wept.

But Janeway was a complicated captain; human, imperfect but consistent in her actions.

Paris was interesting and morally ambivalent enough, at least early on, to make you invested in his redemption.

Tuvok, while a bit bland intitially, actually progressed as a character and gave us some bold new insights into the stereotypical Vulcan mindset in ways that were thought-provoking and not always complimentary.

Seven was, let's be honest, cheesecake brought in to boost the ratings. Jeri Ryan is a decent actor but you can absolutely understand why Kate Mulgrew was so pissed off at what happened.

The Doctor was probably the character that saw the most organic (pardon the phrase) development in his character over the series' run and became one of, if not the, most interesting of the regulars.

All in all, for someone who watches several TOS and TNG episodes every week and does a full DS9 rewatch every year or two, I very much doubt I will watch Voyager again soon. It'll probably be as long a break as last time, 25 years or so :)

Edit: The Vidians were a properly scary villain-concept. I don't know Vivian so I don't want to say how scary she is or isn't.

Oh yeah, Kes. Yawn.

Certainly wish it was turned off before Tom Paris's "authentic" Fair Haven. Had to switch off at that point.

Fairhaven is worth it for the scene where Janeway is adjusting various "parameters" for the hologram she's attracted to and Mulgrew excellently delivers the line "one more thing: Delete the wife"

Voyager got off to a terrible start with a big plot whole.... Scarcity of water in the pilot.

Like if you can travel faster than light how can water be scarce? It's not possible.

Some of the species were great. Vidiian harvesters were brilliant concept. Malon dump ships were a good concept too, but again space is fast, there's load of places to dump. Hirogen were an interesting flavour of Klingonism. The Kazon was a rip off Klingon. Krenim Imperium was a good concept too.

The characters were lacking though. Borg were beaten, species 8472 was beaten to easily.

Overall I enjoyed it I suppose and going forward in the trek universe there is potential to revisit some of the species encountered with newer stories.

I liked the idea that the Kazon were basically medieval people with starships, they have no clue how any of it works since they were a slave race to the Trabe until relatively recently when Caretaker took place.

Also while just double checking MA I only just realised we never see a Kazon woman closely on screen.

I've just finished a S1 rewatch of Voyager and this tallies pretty much with my reaction right down to "Eye of the Needle" being the standout episode of S1. I think Voyager had the most consistent first season of Trek shows. It avoids the "dud" episodes that plague most other first season Trek but by the same token it doesn't reach the same heights. Compare DS9's "Duet" with Voyager's "Jetrel" - both have a similar premise (legacy of war crimes) and both have primarily a two character performance. But Duet leaves Jetrel in the dust quality wise imho. I think one of Voyager's biggest flaws is the character concepts just aren't that interesting - going back to the Jetrel example Major Kira vs Neelix is a no-contest comparison about which character has more story potential.

Mulgrew just isn't, none of the captains since have had that gravitas

I disagree

Pike has.

I think they retconned it to if she didn't have one now she never could but if she had one now she could have more in the future.

I thought Mulgrew had plenty of gravitas tbh. Not quite Picard level but far closer to the likes of Sisko than the likes of Archer/Burnham imo.

YES! I remember Voyager being touted as being "The ship of conflict", with fed and maquis having to work together, 70,000 light years from home. Weekly tensions as resources dwindled ... yada yada yada ...

Then we got

😒

I was disappointed with how the Seska played out after a promising start.

I thought there was more mileage to the concept of - well she's a Cardassian but we need her on the ship to do X and she plays along. Could have brought an alternative view, similar to Seven of Nine later.

I don't think Voyager had a skeleton crew just not enough for a long duration mission.

I read a comment few years ago that having Janeway start off as the first officer and the captain being killed might have made things more interesting. Especially if Chakotay was much more experienced before leaving Starfleet. But then if the execution was the same it wouldn't have made any difference.

The scarcity of resources thing could have been done a lot better too. The only real scarcity should have been non replicatable things, like gel packs, and antimatter which would have to.be traded for.

I would have preferred the 'evil' Janeway (with the black leather gloves) and the 'warship Voyager' throughout the series to the actual character we got . 😁

Yeah. Some of the officers we saw on screen before their deaths (First officer, Helm, CMO) but I don't think we ever saw the original Chief Engineer.

They cruise at a pretty low warp factor, 3 or 4 IIRC, so they haven't really gone that far. 70,000 ly in 70 years is 1000 ly per year so by now they've gone 500 or so, the Federation is about 8,000 ly across at this time. Logarithmic speed scales are hard to visualise.

EDIT: If Voyager could sustain its top speed as given by Tom in the 37's it would only take about 3 years to get home.

Plus Janeway had to stop to investigate every little anomaly and coffee filled Nebula. Putting a scene in Caretaker about not being able to run the engines at high warp a lot and having to stop to let them cool down, for lack of a better term, would have done a lot to answer why they're always stopping and why it would take so long to get home.

I think so but coffee nebula aside it was mostly "hey look, that's weird. Let's stop for a week to look at it."

You're closer. In Pathfinder it's stated as warp 6.2 is their average. But I'm not sure if or how they accounted for the skips they got between Message in a Bottle and Pathfinder (Timeless, Night, and Dragon's Teeth.)

It's actually pretty logical imo. Just following the brute force approach of keep heading in the direction of Federation space and don't look around, most of the crew would have died of old age by the time they got there. They needed to look around for interesting anomalies/species etc. in order to find shortcuts.