wearetheborg

I'm rewatching the series, and enjoying it immensely.
I gather the series isn't regarded highly here, but whatever.

S02E08: Persistence of Vision
This was an engrossing episode.
The ending was a bit of a mindfuck.


S02E13: Prototype
A compelling episode. Really highlighted the rationale behind the prime directive.
The reveal was chilling.

PatD

Star Trek: Voyager has always been the most frustrating of all the Star Trek series to watch. It was the last Trek series I watched from beginning to end. It could have been as brilliant as TOS, TNG, and DS9, but it didn't have a clear vision of where it was going and frankly the creative staff wasn't as dedicated to putting out a quality product the show runners of the aforementioned Trek shows. The cast of characters are terrifically realized and the casting of those characters are all divinely inspired. It's also just the writing was so often mediocre to terrible. They should have been more like Star Trek: Enteprise's third season rather than a dumbed down TNG.

That said, here are my favorite episodes of the series (and it had some real gems) And this is a controversial opinion about the series, but the first two seasons are the strongest of the series. When the Borg come in, the show takes a serious drop in relative quality.

Living Witness (season 4)--my favorite Trek episode of the entire Trek canon
Pathfinder (season 6)
Projections (season 2) -- the episode is absolute genius
Deadlock (season 2)
Death Wish (season 2) -- the last great Q episode of Trek
Eye of the Needle (season 1)
Prime Factors (season 1)
State of Flux (season 1)
Scorpion parts I and II (season 3 and 4)
Before and After (season 3)
Phage (season 1)
Faces (seasons 1)
Lifesigns (season 2) -- The Vidiians were the best aliens of Voyager hands down, but they were another wasted opportunity for the show.
Meld (season 2)
Timeless (season 5)
Critical Care (season 7)
Lineage (season 7)

lisadoris

I agree with PatD in that the word I'd use to describe Voyager is frustrating. It had all the potential and just didn't deliver. I think sfdebris commented on one of his reviews that the difference between DS9 and VOY is that given the choice 9 times out of 10, DS9 would take a chance and 9 times out of 10, VOY would play it safe. That sounded about right to me.

If you're re-watching now, you should listen to Garrett Wang and Robbie Duncan McNeil's re-watch podcast The Delta Flyers. They are pretty honest about the issues with the series.

That said, I am finishing up a re-watch of the entire franchise and some of my top 10 were:

One Small Step (S6)
Eye of the Needle (S1)
Death Wish (S2 - Delta Flyers just discussed this one)
Timeless (S5)
Message in a Bottle (S4)
Time and Again (S1)
One (S4)
Blink of an Eye S6
Relativity (S5)
Living Witness (S4)

wearetheborg

I guess I'm not with the crowd as I really liked Voyager


S02E16: Meld
What I especially liked about this episode is the "villain" not being evil evil. He was just someone with his brain wired wrong.


Will check out The Delta Flyers. Thanks for the pointer

PatD

True, Voyager rarely took chances, but in fairness, when they did, like say in "Tuvix", they got reamed pretty heavily.

Mike86

Voyager was my least favorite classic Star Trek show, but then CBS All Access came along. Now it doesn’t look so bad.

I never really liked Janeway. Just not the most likable of characters. Not having a strong Captain makes it hard to get on board with the series right off the bat in my opinion. I do like The Doctor, Neelix, Tuvok, and Seven. The design of Voyager itself is pretty good. I really like the 90s era Trek aesthetic.

I should watch more episodes of it, but I need to make my way through the other shows first.

devilshalo

I look back on my time on the show as a writer's intern in the first half of the second season. There was a lot of potential, but somehow it became less about going home and more about learning to live with being in the Delta Quadrant and continuing with study and exploration. I didn't follow the show past season 2 once I had left the show. I spent more time on the sets of DS9 than I did on VOY. I had pitched a few ideas, and some parts of my spec script to get into the program were lifted for an episode.

I really wished I could have pitched my VOY/DS9 crossover. After watching the dailies for DS9's "Rejoined". I thought that could be a way to connect with Voyager through the wormholes created by Kahn.

Count Dooku

I like Voyager, but when I did a rewatch a couple years ago, I skipped through the early seasons picking out episodes I remembered or that sounded interesting from the description and only did a full every episode rewatch when Seven came on.

Seven had interesting and different chemistries with The Doctor, Tuvok, and B'Ellana that makes the show fun to watch.

An episode I really like is the one with Janeway's ancestor and the Millennium Gate. It's just an enjoyable story, and by Die Hard logic can even claim to be a Christmas episode. (Trek's only one?)

PatD

Over the years, I have played a game with myself to think of what specifically would have made Voyager work better. A few things IMHO:

• It should have been more like Star Trek: Enterprise's 3rd season: the characters are in a dire situation and getting more desperate as time goes on--but not abandoning their principles. (Or stretch out "Year of Hell" to a season long situation)
• Have the Federation starship they find in "Equinox" be the USS Hera from TNG's "Interface". Have Janeway square off against Geordi's mother.
• Have "Death Wish" be the only Q episode.
• Have The Doctor and Kes be the ones who cure the Vidiians of The Phage. (rather than their cure be a throwaway line in the episode, "Think Tank")
• Keep Kes. Just add Seven amongst the cast without replacing anyone.
• Or if they just had to get rid of Kes, leave it at "The Gift". "Fury" is abominable. Also, pepper the remaining part of the series with a few Kes references like they did with Tasha Year on TNG.
• Cool it with the Borg and the Borg references. One of the biggest reasons I rarely revisit seasons 4-7 of Voyager is the NON-STOP Borg appearances and references. It's annoying and it also smacks of a lack of imagination.
• Give them a new villain to square off against, like The Xindi from Star Trek: Enterprise. They would have been a much more interesting foil for Janeway and Co.
• Keep Seska and Lon Suder. They were two of the most interesting reoccurring characters who were both unceremoniously dispatched in "Basics, Part II".
• Have the the future time-traveling Federation be a time-in to Star Trek: Enterprise. (That was one of trillions of wasted opportunities between the two shows)
• Cool it with the Holodeck. It was another crutch of the series.
• Fix the episodes, "Message in a Bottle" and "Hunters". "Message in a Bottle" should have been treated as a MAJOR event for the series and not a goofball comedy with Andy Dick. "Hunters" should have made a much bigger reference to The Dominion War. It should have been a front and center plot point in the episode (or indeed both episodes). Janeway should have solemnly informed the crew that the Federation was at war and express a sense of helplessness at not being able to do anything. That would have been a plum avenue for drama.
• Set up a reason that there's a back-up module for The Doctor before the episode "Living Witness". It's such an egregious continuity error.
• Mention Barclay's connection to The Doctor (from "Projections") at the end of "Pathfinder". That is such a lazy omission.
• Give The Doctor a name--even a last name like Zimmerman! (Also they should have given him some rank pips on his collar at the end of "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy")
• Actually DO SOMETHING with The Maquis.
• Have a better series finale than "Endgame". Really. Even ENT's "These Are the Voyages..." is more compelling than "Endgame".
• Lastly: promote Harry! There's no excuse for them not to.

Count Dooku

Me too.

• Nudity and graphic sexual content
• End of list

lisadoris

I can get behind all of those suggestions! "Endgame" is such a letdown (though I won't go as far as to say "These Are the Voyages" is more compelling; I didn't even watch that abomination in my re-watch). After seven seasons I need to see that crew literally set foot on Earth. I wanted to see Harry hug is parents. While we're thankfully erasing the Q episodes, I need Janeway to negotiate with Q and Quinn to get Voyager closer to home in exchange for adjudicating their dispute. In addition to Q getting progressively more sexist as the episodes went on, it bugged me to no end that Janeway didn't ask Q to help getting home until the last episode he was in.

Anyway, I think the main problem was that this show went through four show runners and they all seemed to have very different ideas about who the characters were and what the series should be. That led to some frustrating inconsistencies and plots threads that were either left hanging or unceremoniously dropped.

I like Voyager; it just could have been way better than what it was. Let's take "Tuvik" which was an example of them taking a chance, yes, but also an example of them not thinking through what they were doing (or forgetting what they had already established).

Since this is a revisiting thread, we don't need spoiler tags right?

So Tuvok and Neelix get merged and Janeway makes the decision to kill Tuvik to get her original crew members back. Okay, this is a difficult one and was primed to be an amazing episode but it was a missed opportunity.

Did the writers forget that in "Phage" Janeway was willing to let Neelix die rather than take the lungs from the Vidiian who stole them from Neelix in the first place? Then in "Meld" Janeway rejects capital punishment for Suder after he murdered a crew member. So we've established that even in circumstances that would warrant it, Janeway is against taking a life. In "Tuvix" even after the Doctor declines to perform the execution, Janeway does so. The writers could have and really should have gone full on "In the Pale Moonlight" and had Janeway talk through her what led her to this decision and have her own up to what she did. It also would have been a good idea in the next episode, to have Tuvok or Neelix reflect on the fact that an innocent man was murdered so that they could live. That's character development for three folks but we got nothing. I always found this to be an annoying episode for those reasons but it hit different when I watched it this summer. Seeing Tuvix beg for his life while the bridge crew didn't say or do anything, caused me to flash to George Floyd and it just made me so angry. And people talk about DS9 being dark, really? That was the episode where I lost all respect for the Voyager crew.

wearetheborg

It isn't so simple.
The ending scene where Janeway is walking away, distraught, makes it clear she knows she has just executed Tuvix. I actually liked that the writers did not present what happened after, and left it to the viewers imagination; and that they did have that bridge scene where Tuvix is begging for his life to hammer home the fact that the procedure was his execution.
What's the rationale behind Janeway's decision? The trolley problem comes to mind. But I agree that there wasn't any good choice, and that's what makes this episode great!

wearetheborg

S02E17: Dreadnought
Enjoyed this episode. Bellona vs AI Bellona was an interesting dynamic.

milo bloom

PatD put it best - this show is the most frustrating Trek show because they had an amazing premise and sometimes they leaned into it pretty hard and when they did they made some great episodes, but the rest of the time they're just putzing around in space complaining about the cooking.

And Tuvix was another great example of tackling a tough subject without having the writing chops to make it really work. There's so many things at play here. This essentially made them down 1 crew member, and being far from home they couldn't just pick up more ensigns* and the other is that Janeway wanted her friend Tuvok back, plain and simple.

Over the years the fan community has done a far greater job hashing out these issues than the writers did, and to a degree that's the mark of a good show, but in the end it's still unsatisfying because we know there should have been more discussion among the senior staff.




*there's another missed opportunity: why didn't they pick up more tagalongs along the way?

Count Dooku

cuz it's a tv show with nine credited and salaried cast members already

BearFan

DS9 did a good job of bringing on recurring cast members .. and it made the show much better (Gakar, Dukat, various Ferengi, etc. They never really got a good Bajoran recurring character, but it ads depth to the show. They did not need to be main cast, but could pop up here and there (or even just more Starfleet recurring)

PatD

JMS likes this Freudian slip!

Count Dooku

Given the premise of the show, there could be no recurring characters who were not living on Voyager, and it wasn't a passenger ship. Any person who got on Voyager had to be committed to a one way trip going farther and farther from where they started and almost certainly never returning.

With regard to featuring recurring Star Fleet, every plot action being carried out by a non-cast member means that a salaried cast member is not working.

Go back watch TNG and start noticing how often the bridge officers suddenly become engineers when the plot requires that the action happen down in engineering.

PatD

Voyager even failed with the characters on the ship. We had the quartet from "Learning Curve" and only one of them returns (Ensign Chell) and he only comes back once--6 YEARS LATER! Suder
and Seska are killed. Ensign Wildman just disappears in and we rarely see her with her daughter. They could have shown what happened to the surviving members of the Equinox. They could have had Denara Pel (the Vidiian woman) could have stayed on the ship. Or Quinn, the ex-Q, staying for a while. It's just bizarre how Voyager went out of its way to have little continuity for a show premise that demands it.

Josh-da-man

You'd love the Starfleet Academy series I want to pitch.

It's basically Euphoria set in the Star Trek universe: Sex, drugs, alien sex, and alien drugs.

Count Dooku

So they produced an episodic TV series, very much in the tradition of TOS and TNG, and most hour-long dramas in television history at the time.

The truth is watching what a train wreck Discovery is with its season-long serialization, I could go for a good old fashioned episodic Star Trek show.

If people want to consider the premise of the show, then really consider it.

A starship full of mostly humans finds themselves in such a distant part of the galaxy that the journey back home will take 75 years. That means someone like Harry Kim can expect to live his entire life on this ship. And if he wants to marry and have children, his children will live most of their lives on the ship, and his grandchildren will grow up on the ship. That's even if they don't get killed along the way.
Where's the part of the show where large numbers of the crew say, "Fuck this! Set us down on some M-class planet we can colonize and let us live out our lives in peace."

Star Trek likes to present us with people like Kirk and Spock and Picard and Janeway, who are completely committed to the Federation and so forego normal things like family. But wouldn't 90% of Voyager's crew just be people who joined Star Fleet as a career?
How does Janeway get away with making the decision for those hundreds of people that serving her ship will be their lives 24/7 for as long as they live? That's a fucked up premise!!

milo bloom

Exactly, they wouldn't have to show up every episode, just say they've been learning down in engineering or a science lab, and when the plot calls for it, they pop up. DS9 was really helped by all the extra characters, even the Ferengi.

Yeah, the very first thing they should have done upon learning it's a 75 year trip is to immediately tell people to cancel their birth control medicine and hit the sheets. Even Janeway was young enough she could have taken an anonymous sperm sample (to avoid allegations of favoritism) and popped a few out. But I do think there's also folks who are like the big stars that join Starfleet to be part of something bigger, that it's not just a "job" for them. So, they would be okay with taking the long way home. There is a lot to be learned along the way.

Mike86

Or Ensign Kim who never is promoted during his entire time serving on board Voyager.

wearetheborg

There was some hope that some technology would come along that would speed up their journey.
Eventually the crew would have resigned themselves to make a home for themselves.
Janeway does give the crew this choice in S02E01: The 37s to settle down. Optimistically, all of the crew decide to stay on board.

PatD

One of Voyager's biggest mistakes was trying to be a carbon copy of TNG instead of being its own thing. It should have stuck with more episodes like "Prime Factors", "State of Flux", and "Pathfinder" that really drove home their plight. And the show should have been more like Star Trek: Enteprise season 3--but it didn't. The ship came back to Earth in the same pristine condition in "Endgame" as when they left in "Caretaker" with Harry Kim having the same rank! There's a reason Ronald D. Moore quit the show shortly after he started there during the show's 6th season.