Star Trek Voyager - A Thread for Fans

Scott-S · 05-08-2005, 10:18 AM

There seems to be a few threads here that are about how much people (fans) disliked Star Trek Voyager. I want to post a thread for those of us that actually liked the series.

I was unable to watch most of this series when it was being aired because I didn’t have UPN. Because of this, and the negative things I have heard, I didn’t plan on buying the series on DVD. After all, $100 per season is a lot of money.

One day I happened to notice that a certain e-tailer had the entire series on sale for $385. This was about half of what the other series cost (They have since raised the price to $485 – guess it was a mistake). I went ahead and ordered it, and I have been pleasantly surprised, and glad that I did.

To me, this series was very different than the sterile, rigid, Next Generation series. I think a lot of the negative opinions of Voyager were because it was different. The fans didn’t like change. I was getting tired of the same old villains and rules, and was in the mood for the Star Trek world to expand. Voyager allowed this to be possible.

Right now I am a few discs in to Season 6. I have enjoyed the ride so far and am looking forward to them getting home. I did see the finale few episodes when they aired, so I know the ending, but now that I will have watched the whole series, I will be able to enjoy the finale even more I hope.

Are there any other people here that liked this series?

Davin D · 05-08-2005, 02:17 PM

Count me in. I really enjoyed this series as well.

Kevin M · 05-08-2005, 06:39 PM

I will admit that I only started watching the series because I caught a pic of Jeri Ryan in a magazine and after I put my eyes back in my head I began watching, I thought it was a pretty good show personally.
If I had one complaint with the first three seasons or so it was that their message episodes (and that was a few) were quite often laborious, they would play out with some modern day moral parallel that was rather easy to understand but they would just bash you over the head with said message as if the viewer was a moron and couldn't understand...like "DO YOU GET IT!?!?! IT'S A MODERN DAY PARALLEL!! DO YOU GET IT?!?!? HUH!?!?"

Apart from that when they were on their game it was a very enjoyable show with good characters.

Britton · 05-08-2005, 07:30 PM

Quote:

I was getting tired of the same old villains and rules, and was in the mood for the Star Trek world to expand.

If I just read that statement by itself, I would swear you were talking about DS9.

The funny thing is that a common complaint people had with Voyager was that it was more of the same old, same old. I might be among the minority here, but I actually preferred the first 2 or 3 seasons to the rest of the show's run.

Joseph Bolus · 05-08-2005, 08:28 PM

I thought that Voyager was (mostly) entertaining for the average Star Trek fan; it's main problem was that its character development suffered mightily compared to Deep Space Nine.

Every character on the DS9 series changed radically between its opening season and its concluding episode. The same could not be said of Voyager. Except for "the Doctor", and Seven of Nine, there just wasn't all that much character development for the principal cast members.

The series also suffered from some inconsistency. In most of the seasons we got 5 or 6 really tremendous episodes, about 10 average episodes, and around 10 below-average-to-poor episodes. That's a total of 20 episodes per season that were between poor-to-just a little above average. (I will say that the number of really poor episodes went steadily down each season, and that the seventh season was, by far, its most consistently entertaining season with not a single below-average ep the entire year. Had it not been for the "Borg Children" eps in the Sixth season, I would probably have enjoyed that season more.)

The other thing about Voyager was when it got it right, it was really good!

Here's a list of some of the episodes that I really enjoyed:

Season 1:
Caretaker ***
Faces ***1/2

Season 2:
Death Wish ***
Lifesigns **** (In my Top 25 for all Star Trek series combined.)
Tuvix ***1/2

Season 3:
Flashback (Sulu!) ***1/2
Future's End, Parts I and II ***1/2
Blood Fever ***1/2
Distant Origin ***
Scorpion Part I ****

Season 4:
Scorpion Part II ****
Day of Honor ***
Message in a Bottle **** (Top 25)
Living Witness ****

Season 5:
Drone ****
Timeless **** (In my personal Top Ten for all Star Trek series.)
Gravity ***1/2
Dark Frontier Parts One and Two ***
11:59 ****
Equinox Part One ***

Season 6:
Equinox Part Two ***
Barge of the Dead ****
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy ****
One Small Step **** (In my Top Ten)
Pathfinder ****
Virtuoso ***
Muse ***
Life Line ****

Season 7: The Entire Season, but especially
Imperfection ***
Critical Care ***
Body and Soul ***
Shattered ***
Prophecy ***
The Void ***
Author, Author ****
Homestead ****
Endgame Parts One and Two ***

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Jeff*S*C* · 05-08-2005, 09:53 PM

I also liked the series. I only got to see the first few seasons back then because my station stopped showing it or something. I can't exactly remember. Thanks to Spike TV I watched the enire series last year.

I guess the writing gets criticized alot but for some reason, when it comes to TV, I just don't get that deep. I just need to be entertained. Call me dumb. I just enjoy watching the world of Trek. I liked Voyager because to me it was more like TNG with a ship out uuhh..voyaging unlike DS9 which I stopped watching because it got too boring for me just being on a space station (of course after I stopped watching they brought in the Defiant). I gave DS9 another shot last year thanks again to Spike and enjoyed it more this time although I still think the first few seasons were blah.

Scott-S · 05-08-2005, 10:46 PM

Good to see others liked this show.

I do have a question for any Star Trek Geeks out there. Why is it that the crew of Voyager had to have replicator rations, and eat cooked food yet they had enough energy for the holodeck? Seems to me it would take less energy to make food than to run a holodeck.

LOL, leave it to me to ponder the details on a fictional world.

Britton · 05-08-2005, 11:10 PM

Quote:

I do have a question for any Star Trek Geeks out there. Why is it that the crew of Voyager had to have replicator rations, and eat cooked food yet they had enough energy for the holodeck? Seems to me it would take less energy to make food than to run a holodeck.

The same reasons why:
1) the ship was in perfect condition at the start of each new story, despite there not being any maintainence facilities or the fact that the ship might have suffered damage in the previous episode/storyline

2) they never had to trade or scavenge for supplies

3) they seemed to have an infinite number of photon torpedos and shuttlecrafts

David Williams · 05-09-2005, 02:22 AM

Quote:

I do have a question for any Star Trek Geeks out there. Why is it that the crew of Voyager had to have replicator rations, and eat cooked food yet they had enough energy for the holodeck? Seems to me it would take less energy to make food than to run a holodeck.

The non-sarcasm answer

: Would you believe the holodeck had its own power supply? Totally independent of and incompatible with the ship's other systems. I think they tried messing with it around Episode 4 but decided they couldn't siphon power because the energy signatures were just too different.

I cared very little for Voyager but it was entertaining. Like a chocolate bon bon, it was an easy enough guilty pleasure. Lifesigns was the best episode of the series, imho, and one of the ten best episodes of Trek ever. The show had promise, potential and some really cool ideas that were totally squandered. I sometimes wonder what Voyager would have been like had the DS9 folks gotten ahold of it. Talk about tension between the Maquis and the Federation!