Why do people think Voyager isn't very good?

[JME2]

I'm reminded of that interview Ron Moore did with IGN around 2000 regarding the double-edged sword of a prequel series under the then-current management:

"The STAR TREK past—it’s challenging; it sounds like it’s fun on one level, and I thought that was an interesting way to go for a long time. But it has a lot of pitfalls to it. You have a very complex future mapped out. If you are going to go into STAR TREK’s past, say, pre-Kirk, you better have an iron-clad commitment to maintaining the continuity that’s been established, or I think you are just going to lose everybody. Because if you go back before Kirk, and you start screwing around, and you just don’t care what NEXT GEN or DS9 or VOYAGER established, or the movies, or even the original series, you just try to make it up as you go along, I think you just lost everyone. The whole franchise will just collapse, because it will have no validity whatsoever. If you are going to go there, you really better be prepared to truly put on the STAR TREK mantle and be the keeper of the flame. I think that is really hard for Rick and Brannon. It’s hard for them to do that, because they don’t like the original show. Let’s not mince words. They don’t like the original show. They have never liked the original show. They’ll bob and weave a bit here and there in public. But they don’t like it; they don’t want to have anything to do with it. If you are going to go before the original series and do something, you better have a change of attitude. You better have an epiphany about how much you love the original series. It’s all going to be about leading up to that."

He called the bullshit before it happened and he was right.

[Big Orange]

Enterprise got more bearable when the creatively burned out B&B stepped back a bit and Manny Cotto was introduced, but as entertaining as "In a Mirror, Darkly" was it felt a bit like TOS fanfiction although it was still preferable to earlier ENT episodes that felt like the 24th century imposed onto the 22nd century, it seemed to want to grind on with the TNG style formula that was getting dated with Voyager in the mid to late 90s.

A good example of how Voyager was partially good and how it sucked is a S5 episode, "Latent Image", a episode I've watched recently that focuses on the popular EMH character - he has mysterious flashbacks featuring a female ensign who dies in a incident, it is then revealed Janeway has done an unethical thing by erasing the EMH's memory banks that logged the incident with the dead ensign. Although the EMH is legitimately shocked and appalled by this, Janeway reveals that it had to be done otherwise the EMH would have another emotional meltdown over letting the female ensign (Ahni Jetal) die in the sickbay so he could save Harry Kim instead, and Janeway doesn't want a mentally broken down EMH on her ship to everybody else's detriment. However Seven of Nine calls out on Janeway's questionable action and persuades Janeway to let the EMH live with the memory of the terrible incident so he could grow as a person like she has, and so the EMH's memories of Ahni Jetal and her death are kept as they were, with the EMH coming to accept it by the end of the episode.

As very good as "Latent Image" was in terms of acting, writing, and directing, I can understand the general complaint of the infamous, debilitating Reset Button and how somewhat self-contained "Latent Image" was - what if the character of Ahni Jetal was a series regular for several years before "Latent Image" so there was more emotional impact with her death and what about the EMH himself afterwards? I shouldn't think he would see Janeway in quite the same way ever again, leading to more ship conflict that doesn't involve the Maquis.

Speaking of the Maquis, they never seemed to be the true enemies of the Federation and included renegade Starfleet personnel, so them co-operating with still serving Starfleet officers was not hard to swallow, but I agree with it was done too quickly and smoothly (with only one Maquis operative causing serious damage, but is then revealed to be a Cardassian operative). And even on DS9 the Maquis were not quite used to their full story potential (though they fared better than on VOY), with most of the Maquis anti-climatically enslaved and massacred off screen by the Cardassians and Dominion.

[JME2]

Enterprise got more bearable when the creatively burned out B&B stepped back a bit and Manny Cotto was introduced, but as entertaining as "In a Mirror, Darkly" was it felt a bit like TOS fanfiction although it was still preferable to earlier ENT episodes that felt like the 24th century imposed onto the 22nd century, it seemed to want to grind on with the TNG style formula that was getting dated with Voyager in the mid to late 90s.

A good example of how Voyager was partially good and how it sucked is a S5 episode, "Latent Image", a episode I've watched recently that focuses on the popular EMH character - he has mysterious flashbacks featuring a female ensign who dies in a incident, it is then revealed Janeway has done an unethical thing by erasing the EMH's memory banks that logged the incident with the dead ensign. Although the EMH is legitimately shocked and appalled by this, Janeway reveals that it had to be done otherwise the EMH would have another emotional meltdown over letting the female ensign (Ahni Jetal) die in the sickbay so he could save Harry Kim instead, and Janeway doesn't want a mentally broken down EMH on her ship to everybody else's detriment. However Seven of Nine calls out on Janeway's questionable action and persuades Janeway to let the EMH live with the memory of the terrible incident so he could grow as a person like she has, and so the EMH's memories of Ahni Jetal and her death are kept as they were, with the EMH coming to accept it by the end of the episode.

As very good as "Latent Image" was in terms of acting, writing, and directing, I can understand the general complaint of the infamous, debilitating Reset Button and how somewhat self-contained "Latent Image" was - what if the character of Ahni Jetal was a series regular for several years before "Latent Image" so there was more emotional impact with her death and what about the EMH himself afterwards? I shouldn't think he would see Janeway in quite the same way ever again, leading to more ship conflict that doesn't involve the Maquis.

"Latent Image" is my favorite VGR episode, but I agree with your thoughts.

[Skylon]

As far as I am concerned, that's fanboy bullshit. Out in the real world where casual fans watched "the new Star Trek", nobody gave three quaters of a fuck that the ship's interior didn't look like a 1960s cardboard set and nobody had heard of the aliens in an earlier series; we had bits and pieces of classic Trek coming together but still wrapped up in ball caps, jumpsuit pockets, and polarized hull plating. You really think the series would be better if it spent every second trying to be the bitch of the shows that came before instead of going it's own way, even if it meant the first two seasons dragged a bit? Season four wasn't good because it was non-stop masturbation to the previous series; it was good because it was well written and well executed, it just happens to be more impressive because they had one hand in their pants over TOS the whole time.

Its a fine line between focusing on what came before and establishing your own feel.

Trek 2009 was able to hand-wave a bit with the "alternate time line" bit, to write off the visual differences. Meanwhile, little details, not shit that was jammed in my face, made me feel like I was....well, watching Star Trek. The first sound effect heard is the "chirping" sound heard constantly on the bridge of the TOS Enterprise. That, in an odd way put me at home from the get-go.

When ENT tried to focus on the "we're pre-TOS" angle, they shoved it in our face. Season 1 had the, "The transporter doesn't work right" episode, where there was an accident. They did the "We don't have a universal translator episode"....shit, I remember Archer giving some hack speech about "One day we'll have a DIRECTIVE" (showcasing how they didn't have the Prime Directive). That's shit writing. Fanfic level bad. We didn't need episodes to focus on those...they should have been cold facts, used to establish setting, not whole fucking plot points for episodes.

Further, my point about season 4 was, maybe it was better (it was, just not enough to get me into the show)...but four seasons is a terribly long time for a show to find its footing. If it wasn't a Star Trek show, it never would have gotten that much time to try and find itself.

[Coalition]

One Voyager episode that I did enjoy was The Cloud. They needed the energy resources within the cloud, so they gather a few, and get out via photon torpedo. The Cloud turns out to be a living creature, so they go back in to repair the damage. They follow their Starfleet protocols to aiding the injured creature, but it leaves them worse off afterwards. They made a choice, stuck to their principles, and recognized the cost of it.

[Kythnos]

As very good as "Latent Image" was in terms of acting, writing, and directing, I can understand the general complaint of the infamous, debilitating Reset Button and how somewhat self-contained "Latent Image" was - what if the character of Ahni Jetal was a series regular for several years before "Latent Image" so there was more emotional impact with her death and what about the EMH himself afterwards? I shouldn't think he would see Janeway in quite the same way ever again, leading to more ship conflict that doesn't involve the Maquis.

This reminds me of another problem I had with Voyager how many characters other than the mains can you name? For me Icheb, Naomi Wildman, her mother because I remember the child and the Delany sisters which I am not sure I can count because I don’t remember seeing them but Tom talked about them for a season or two. Of those 5 two of them came in very late in the show and would not count as crew to me. According to MA Intrepid crew 150 crew and for Voyager there could be no replacements. Every death should have been a tragedy but because they where for the most part nameless extras it carried no impact at all. One of the main reasons I HATE the episode “Good Shepherd” was the wasted concept behind it, the episode would have carried much more impact if they where the last 3 “new” crew members we where introduced to. But sadly in season 6 they where about the 20th, I don’t remember others but I know that names where given to others. (while writing this I remembered the murder on board so 6 members of the crew)

One Voyager episode that I did enjoy was The Cloud. They needed the energy resources within the cloud, so they gather a few, and get out via photon torpedo. The Cloud turns out to be a living creature, so they go back in to repair the damage. They follow their Starfleet protocols to aiding the injured creature, but it leaves them worse off afterwards. They made a choice, stuck to their principles, and recognized the cost of it.

That episode would have been so much better if they had to deal with the cost for more than 10 minutes, but instead by the next episode all was forgotten. (but is just my opinion)

[Baffalo]

The reset button is common among certain television shows because by hitting reset at the end of the episode, it lets people jump in who have never seen a single episode before. It sounds like a good idea in certain situations, such as comedy programs, but when you have an entire series based on a single goal, hitting reset is retarded. The writers should have done something very simple, such as put a giant map of the galaxy up on a wall, draw a circle from A to B, draw a line in between, and then draw circles and just subdivide them according to species, season, etc. It's a very simple method and it lets you realize you're dealing with a linear storyline, where people must change and evolve. Some places would deal with desperation, others would be fairly smooth sailing allowing character growth.

DS9 managed to get the Dominion War going, and we were almost 100% certain the Federation would win in the end. But the story was dark and, like war, uncertain at times. If DS9 had hit the reset button each time, the episode would start with the Dominion attacking, DS9 crew saving the day, wash rinse repeat until you go long enough to write up a new reset button.

The Maquis showed the average citizenry or disgruntled officers fighting for their homes, and they would no doubt feel some resentment towards Starfleet that would take time to heal. Most of the hostility could've been handled in the background, focusing entirely on the relationship between Janeway and Chakote as authority figures, and Torres and Paris, two collegues who start off mistrusting each other but eventually falling in love.

The Khazon were just too weak as enemies. Their ships were made of styrofoam, and the few times they got the upper hand, things went to shit for them. I'm sorry, but when you get your ass handed to you by a single ship you outnumber 5 to 1, 20 to 1 if you count tonnage, and you all die while only messing up Janeway's hair, then you should just give up the chase before Janeway decides to start shooting her phasers off and blowing your entire race into primates.

The Borg seemed a threat, until it turns out the Borg are little bitches who get their asses handed to them only slightly less than Harry Kim. Seriously, did the Borg assimilate Wesley Crusher after Wolf 359 and get plagued with cosmic bad kharma?

[OmegaChief]

The Borg seemed a threat, until it turns out the Borg are little bitches who get their asses handed to them only slightly less than Harry Kim. Seriously, did the Borg assimilate Wesley Crusher after Wolf 359 and get plagued with cosmic bad kharma?

No, they failed to do so, which is why the universe punished them by making them appear on Voyager to suffer villian decay.

[JME2]

DS9 managed to get the Dominion War going, and we were almost 100% certain the Federation would win in the end.

Yeah, we knew they'd win if for no other reason that there had to be a UFP for future projects.

The destruction of the Cardassian Union was the closest we got to the long-term repercussions of the war past DS9's end.

[Patrick Degan]

I think the biggest thing is that the show ignored its own premises after a few token attempts to honor it. Neither does it feel as if they're far away from home

Sadly, Space:1999 did a far better job with that theme.

[Big Orange]

Arguably for about a season or two and it's more convincing that an entire planatoid is more self-sufficient instead of a medium sized Starfleet vessel, then it got very camp in the third season by the same producer who camped up TOS in its same year.

[Batman]

Um-that entire planetoid had exactly zero means to provide for its crew outside Alpha base proper. We're talking the moon you know. VOY, for all its failings, had replicator technology, regular replenishment opportunities...
Alpha base had at its disposal lots and lots of ...rock.

[OmegaChief]

Maybe the Clangers shared thier food supply with the moonbase crew?

Man, that'd be hilarious a Space:1999/Clangers cross-over.

[Patrick Degan]

Arguably for about a season or two and it's more convincing that an entire planatoid is more self-sufficient instead of a medium sized Starfleet vessel, then it got very camp in the third season by the same producer who camped up TOS in its same year.

Actually, the series lasted only two years. Year two was when Fred Freiberger just junked nearly everything that Year One was all about.

Um-that entire planetoid had exactly zero means to provide for its crew outside Alpha base proper. We're talking the moon you know. VOY, for all its failings, had replicator technology, regular replenishment opportunities...
Alpha base had at its disposal lots and lots of ...rock.

The actual point: ST:V'ger failed to convey a sense of a crew who were totally alone, cut off from aid of any sort, and who had to go it on their own in an unfamiliar and largely hostile universe. It became the TNG-reheat show with just a different group of faces. Their "struggle for survival" became a game about replicator rations and holodeck time which was also forgotten about in short order. Federationist arrogance, especially in the form of Janeway, became the rule in the show's apprehension of the universe around the Voyager crew and in their dealings with the peoples they met. After a while, the Delta Quadrant began to seem little different from the Alpha Quadrant. And as the show wore on, more and more the audience really knew that it wouldn't be taking all of 70 years for the crew to get home.

By contrast, the crew of Moonbase Alpha are totally alone; cast out into a completely unknown and potentially very hostile universe which they barely understand and in which one significant mistake, one wrong decision, will get them all killed. That theme was put forward in several episodes, as was the theme that they were, at best, living on borrowed time. They have no chance to get home again, and even if they somehow did manage the trick, after all the time that had passed the people they left behind on Earth would all be long gone. In Year One, the producers did a rather good job at least in conveying those themes even for their failures in other areas.

[Big Orange]

Arguably for about a season or two and it's more convincing that an entire planatoid is more self-sufficient instead of a medium sized Starfleet vessel, then it got very camp in the third season by the same producer who camped up TOS in its same year.

Actually, the series lasted only two years. Year two was when Fred Freiberger just junked nearly everything that Year One was all about.

Hmmmm, in the context of Gerry Anderson shows it seems that Space: 1999 is Voyager, sporadically entertaining but with a too loaded premise, while the slightly darker and more internally consistant/ongoing UFO is DS9, with the all popular and influencial Thunderbirds being of course TNG.

And Space: 1999's silly science of a travelling moon nudged by a nuclear explosion could be seen as daft as Warp 10 Newts. Then halfway through, the show is "pepped up" by a lady character (Maya/Seven).

[Stark]

That's pretty tenuous. I'd hardly call UFO 'ongoing' anyway; have you even watched these shows? Captain Scarlet has the strongest attempt and ongoing storytelling of the GA shows I've seen.

[Interlord1]

I just watched sfdebris' Threshold intro and now I feel bad for making this post.

[Chris OFarrell]

Its funny, just looking at the Memory Alpha page for Equinox, mostly because I was watching the episode recently and noted how it was almost the perfect Voyager episode; Interesting premise, the Doctor shines as a Character and Picardo as an Actor, gratuous Seven scenes, reset buttons, plot points completly forgotten forever and a quick resoloution that satisfies no-one with a huge amount of wasted possibilities.


And I found in it, an extract of an interview RDM gave about the episode, as it was one of his first (if not his first) after crossing over from DS9 when it ended to the Voyager staff, and he makes an interesting rant about it...

"We sat down and approached ‘Equinox II' and tried to find what the show was about. What was the point of meeting this ship and this crew and this captain, and what did it mean? We finally landed on this idea that the two captains were going to go in opposite directions. Janeway was going to really feel the same kind of pressures and stresses that Ransom felt, and watch how it could turn a good, by-the-book Starfleet captain into what he had become. At the same time, his interaction with the Doctor and Seven of Nine would rekindle his humanity. It was this nice, double track approach, but it just got lost in the translation. It has no coherence. You're not sure what's really going on. You've got some potentially good scenes. The scenes between Janeway and Chakotay had some real fire to them, and you kind of felt like she is going off the deep end, a bit. Then she relieves him of duty, and there is this crisis of command between the two of them. But at the end of the episode, it's just a shrug and a smile and off to the next. I just hit the ceiling. I remember writing in the margins, ‘This is a total betrayal of the audience. This is wrong. You can't end the show like this. If you are going to do all this other stuff, you can't end the show like this, because it's not fair, because it's not true, and it just wouldn't happen.'"

Moore continued his criticisms of the episode: "The things that Janeway does in ‘Equinox' don't work, because it's not about anything. She's not really grappling with her inner demons. She's not truly under the gun and suffering to the point where you can understand the decisions that she's made. She just gets kind of cranky and bitchy. She's having a bad day; these things keep popping around on the bridge, and we just keep cutting to shots of people grabbing phaser rifles and shooting, and hitting the red alert sign, over and over again. It doesn't signify anything. It's kind of emblematic of the show. There is a lot of potential, and there is a lot of surface sizzle going on in a lot of episodes, but to what end? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to touch in the audience? What are we trying to say? What are the things we are trying to explore? Why are we doing this episode? That was my fundamental question. When I would say, ‘What was the point of doing the first part?' there was never a good answer for that. As a consequence, it was hard to come up with the ending to the show that has no beginning. You just start throwing things around. ‘Two captains on different courses' at least sounds like an episode. At least there is something in it. Janeway will take something away from that experience, but not in the current version. What does she learn from that experience? I don't know how it's affected her. Chakotay, for all his trouble, he just goes back to work. There is no lingering problem with Janeway; there is no deeper issue coming to the fore."

There are other extracts from the interview which are amusing, like RDM recouting when he decided to join the Voyager team, his friends on the DS9 team just giving him looks that said "You're going to regret this Ron...".

[Isolder74]

The problem with the reset button was that it only really existed in order to make the show syndicated. It came from the writers of the show being afraid that if there were any heavily over-arcing story elements that it would make the show hard to air on reruns which usually just re air episodes at usually random. So rather then take the effort to have needed information, even if minimal, worked into an episode to get a new watcher up to speed they went with the lazy approach and just have every episode tie up the show to the status quo hence the fans referring it to the reset button in that it was rarely done very well and even sometimes as an afterthought. One of the best examples of this is from Threshold. Paris and Janeway turned into Newts and well....they got better.

There are kids shows that have done stuff that Voyager could have done, over arcing story lines, better such as Ducktales, Superman The Animated Series and Batman The Animated Series. So it shows just a simple lack of effort on their part. Rather then take the effort they would just employ the reset button.

[blahface]

The thing that really bugged me about Voyager is that they are always on the move to get home and yet they still frequently encountering the same people. Is everyone just chasing voyager?

DS9 managed to get the Dominion War going, and we were almost 100% certain the Federation would win in the end. But the story was dark and, like war, uncertain at times. If DS9 had hit the reset button each time, the episode would start with the Dominion attacking, DS9 crew saving the day, wash rinse repeat until you go long enough to write up a new reset button.

A little off topic, but I think It would have been interesting if the Federation lost the war to the Dominion, but soon after the war, the dominion would get attacked by the Borg. After the Dominion-Borg war, the Federation would have the chance to rise back from the ashes and rebuild.

[Eternal_Freedom]

^That would certainly have been unexpected. I remember watching re-runs of DS9 when I was younger, and no matter how "oh shit we're gonna lose" the episode was ("Call to Arms" and "Statistical Probablities" come to mind) I always knew that Starfleet was going to win and the Feddies would be able to smile smugly. Why were they going to win? Because that's what happens.

So I definitely think that a Dominion victory would have been different, interesting and probably much more enjoyable to watch.

Back on topic though, Voyager was bad because of the endless reset button, plotlines brought up and discarded casually and the really annoying captain. But what reallt irritated me was taking the Borg and turning them into space vampires.

[Crazedwraith]

Which you know, was done by First Contact.

[Eternal_Freedom]

^Yeah I know. But Voyager took that and made it even worse. STFC Borg assimilation could have been rationalised by them being cut off and alone and needing reinforcements. It was hardly a normal situation. But Voyager took this emergency situation and made it the norm

[DaveJB]

The "Space Vampires" thing wasn't a huge problem in of itself to me - the faster assimilation method was actually a fairly logical evolution of the assimilation process that we had previously seen (even if it did feel like it had come out of nowhere), and if we're going to rag on STFC for changing the Borg, let's not forget that BoBW had already altered them from how they were depicted in Q Who.

For me, the problem was how easy it was to defeat the Borg in Voyager. The "Scorpion" two-parter wasn't too bad, since it was made pretty clear that Voyager would probably have been destroyed or assimilated if it hadn't been for Kes pushing them away from danger. Where the Borg really went off the rails was "Dark Frontier" - the sight of the Delta Flyer casually sauntering into the Borg's biggest and most fortified installation, rescuing Seven of Nine without a hitch, and then Voyager destroying the Borg Queen's craft with the power of technobabble was IMO where the Borg threat curled up and died.

[Todeswind]

I think the biggest issue I had with Voyager is that they couldn't pick a logical flow of plot elements. There's no logical flow from one episode to the next and major plot decisions made in some of the "do we interfere with X race" conflict entirely with their decisions about "do we interfere with Y race" type decisions. Star Trek almost always resolved situations with some technobabble or another but technobabble alone is not enough to carry a series. If you want me to believe that they won in "Dark Frontier" by the power of technobabble you must at least have presented me with some progressively more credible technobabble leading up to the "Deus Ex Technobabble" ending of the series.

TNG and DS9 is are equally technobabble prone series but the technobabble is rarely overpowering enough to overwhelm the plot development in the rest of the series. When things happen to the characters you actually care about it. Voyager did not.