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What's truly sad, imho, is that one of the finest episodes of Voyager was its series finale, Endgame. Why? Because it so neatly underlines the show's biggest problem(s)... and then it ends!
1) they always took Janeway up to a certain point and 99% of the time backed down. Janeway would always threaten to blow away the Vidiians or the Kazon if they did such and such, and when the villian o' the week did the unforgivable she would rant, rave & speechify until she was blue in the face but not act on her threat.
2) hitting the freakin' RESET button after each episode. Even if you manage to take the characters over the drama cliff, there is no running ARC. After their season 2 experiment didn't go quite in the direction they were hoping, the producers took it in the other direction to the extreme, making continuity a bad word. This was the reason that so much of the cast was so very unhappy with their roles (paging Robert Beltran to the white courtesy phone).
3) as almost everyone has already mentioned: the science deus ex machina. Sometimes it worked ('Dreadnought', 'Timeless'), more often it didn't. It gets very annoying when 7 of 9 becomes your Wesley Crusher every week.
4) the starship Voyager: wussy vessel of the universe! How many times did it get the shit kicked out of it in Seasons 1 - 3? I lost count... it became totally ridiculous with Janeway threatening something she so couldn't back up. Janeway (by way of the writers) should have been more concerned with protecting her crew by stopping and trading with groups to get offensive and defensive technology (while holding true to Starfleet & Federation principles). Endgame really underlines this by having Future Janeway ram the Armor (the coolest Trek thing I've seen in some time!) down Capt. Janeway's throat.
I really agree with you guys.... Voyager had serious potential and as a result of playing it safe was all over the place. It's really sad when you can do an episode like Lifesigns (which is in my personal top 5 Trek eps) and still be completely mediocre.
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