STARTREK: VOYAGER; Where is the Love? (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

there's a difference between "hitting the reset button" and "maintaining the status quo".

I disagree: for much of Star Trek, maintaining the status quo is effectively undoing prior events.

Consider all the episodes where the a character loses their identity, brainwashed to become someone else, and then is brought back home. There are no emotional consequences from these events. But if a person were to endure these things, they'd be stark raving mad! The events weren't truly undone, but they might as well have been, since they ultimately didn't matter.

On a smaller scale: Nog, on DS9, lost his leg in an off-station battle. There was one episode dealing with his emotional crisis. Then it's back to normal. I appreciate the need to move the story along, but again, this is not something that is just accepted and forgotten in a few weeks.

So perhaps "reset" is too strong; but there are very few consequences to actions in Voyager (and the rest of Star Trek, or even most TV, for that matter).

 

[John Berggren]

No consequences does generally suck on TV. I know whenever a significant topic comes up on a sitcom, it has to be resolved in 30 minutes. Won a million dollars? Hmm methinks you'll lose your ticket or perhaps you missed a number... It's BORING.

 

[Dan Paolozza]

I'd say that DS9 was the closest to "balance" in this regard, and that Voyager is untouchable when it came to "reset buttons," either direct-plot-reversals, or forgotten-events, or the two combined.
And be careful what you wish for - the trap of extended consequences leads you to Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Ok, jibes aside: the point is that I feel Voyager was almost completely devoid of even the consequence-dealing character development that you imply is "minimal" among the other ST shows, and other TV shows in general.

 

[Mike Monti]

Wasn't the ship supposed to be "alive" in some way (no I'm not confused with Moya)? I seem to recall early episodes that dealt with gel packs and the ship "catching a cold" of sorts. The fact that the completely dropped that idea always cheesed me off. Of course if I am wrong then I've been unfairly rating the show and it raises from "Dear God what is that Thing!" to "Gosh, does that suck!"

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Yup, the biomemetic gel packs were a huge thing. By season 3 no one cared

And be careful what you wish for - the trap of extended consequences leads you to Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You mean a perfect culmination of the prior 3 years of storyline into a dark and twisting story of death, life, and redemption (with musical numbers!)?

If so, then I guess it would be an accurate description

 

[Dave Barth]

While no one has named this as a cause of the problem -- and I wouldn't be first on my list -- I always thought a wonderful symptom in the last couple years was that, in the middle of unexplored territory, decades from home, major time and effort were spent developing the Irish holodeck world and the cheesy holodeck SF serials rather than the world the characters were actually in.

 

[Jason Seaver]

but there are very few consequences to actions in ... most TV, for that matter

I don't know as that's really the case any more; even three-camera sitcoms seem to have a more serial feel to them these days. "Voyager" was really something of a throwback in the way that most episodes seemed fairly isolated.

 

[Will_B]

I think the audience developed the same feelings that the crew was supposed to have - namely, that they did not want to be there. Voyager was not a ship anyone wanted to be on, they were stuck there, like a waiting room in space, without even any good magazines.

The only characters who were enjoyable to me were the ones who actually liked being on the ship - 7 of 9 liked it because it sheltered her as she caught up with things, the Doctor liked it because he has nothing else, and Neelix liked it because he was just along for fun anyway (perhaps I liked Neelix because he annoyed the rest of the crew, and thus acted like an ombudsman on my behalf). Everyone else was on the verge of crushing depression from being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

Situation aside, the characters were mostly bland, and those that were not bland (7 of 9, the Doctor) were overused and their growth so stretched out so that they were no longer interesting.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jeff Pryor wrote:

terrible[/I]]Quote:

Note bad Voyager (Voyager "turn-offs") above:
"Paris playing 20th-century games including holographic episodes with Dr. Chaotica . . ."
"Janeway's holonovel adventures . . ." (which was meant to include her Irish village, Leonardo DaVinci, and her 19th(?)-century British nanny holodeck programs)
The Holodeck adventures in every iteration of Trek are, to my mind, the writers and producers' cop-out to dealing with the sf surroundings the various crews have found themselves in. Either they're playing 20th-century earthbound spy games ("Our Man Bashir"), "visiting" cheesy Vegas casinos with equally cheesy lounge-lizard singers "burdened" by ersatz-problems, reliving Sherlock Holmes or "Dixon Hill" detective stories, or, as here, indulging in Anglo-American literary pretenses or in "retro-pop-cultural" imaginings of the American middle class. I consider them all to be boring evasions to good weird (as in UNfamiliar!!!) plots, stories, and surroundings.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

GordonL wrote:

Star Trek's dictum: "We're all human under the skin." This is stated most baldly, I think, by James T. Kirk in ST VI: The Undiscovered Country in his senior staff's discussion of "inalienable human rights" with the Klingons. That message must be hammered into the audience over and over and over (and over) again across the decades, lest we, the audience, not "appreciate" otherness. If they're really like us, that means we can negotiate a solution to our differences. If they're not and have their own agenda, . . . .
The Hirogen were to me always too "Star Trek", that is, they seemed to be set up (like the Ferengi before them) specifically to establish a "principle" or ideology (whether "greed" or "bloodlust") that the Federationists could counter and knock down. They were also always too interested in what humans were doing for my taste, which made them too much like the Klingons, Romulans, etc. (i.e., the standard Trek villain fare).

 

[Jason Seaver]

Kes and the Ocampa were one of the more creative alien species Trek ever came up with.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And/or one of the silliest, all depending on one's point of view.

Probably both. The basic idea is sound - Ocampa only live about eight years, so they'll have a different perspective on situations than us guys who live up to a century. It's an interesting idea, unfortunately in the hands of people who wouldn't know what to do with one.

So we see Kes get psi abilities, or be buddies with the doctor when no-one else is; stuff that can happen to any character. Berman/Piller/Taylor/Braga never explored any non-cliched ideas with her; like just about everything else of interest introduced in "Caretaker", it was shoved off to the side in order to shoot scripts that probably have been sitting around since they first started working on TNG.

 

[John Berggren]

If I'm not mistaken, his name was Joe. It was incredibly simple and average. He only took the name in the version of the future that future-Janeway eradicated.

He may have had a last name. I don't remember. If he had one it was Smith, Jones, Brown, or some other exciting name.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Vic Fontaine- awful. A singing hologram?! WTF?

I actually liked the Voyager episode where Kes thought she was in heat and wanted a baby. It was the one episode I liked Neelix, and I thought it made good use of Kes' uniqueness.

 

[Jack Briggs]

The Holodeck adventures in every iteration of Trek are, to my mind, the writers and producers' cop-out to dealing with the sf surroundings the various crews have found themselves in. Either they're playing 20th-century earthbound spy games ("Our Man Bashir"), "visiting" cheesy Vegas casinos with equally cheesy lounge-lizard singers "burdened" by ersatz-problems, reliving Sherlock Holmes or "Dixon Hill" detective stories, or, as here, indulging in Anglo-American literary pretenses or in "retro-pop-cultural" imaginings of the American middle class. I consider them all to be boring evasions to good weird (as in UNfamiliar!!!) plots, stories, and surroundings.

I completely agree, Rex. Completely. And it's all due to an imagination deficit. If the Trek mavens would simply ask a group of eight or nine established SF authors to join them on a weeklong retreat to discuss ways of re-engergizing (pun intended) the franchise, we could return to the all-too-alien concept of science fiction.

However, I must confess to a strong fondness for the Holodek-based TNG episodes "Elementary Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle."

 

[Andrew Beacom]

I actually thought the show started off in promising fashion but went downhill once continuity was cast aside. Seska was a good concept and the Marquis had tonnes of potential that was never used. You just don't take waring factions and have them working together in 1 episode and a perfect crew in 2.

The main problem was the writing. It made the show eminently forgetable. Nearly every episode came and went with me never being interested like I had been with TOS or TNG.

The finale was a good example of the shows problems. A terrible idea played out by actors who didn't care. And more importantly characters that didn't care. Not even a "We got home, Yay" after how many years away? I'm still bitter that they finished that way. What a disgrace.

I liked Janeway initially but there was something about her that I didn't like. Jason was right when he said she was a science officer that got over promoted. She never convinced me that she knew what a captain was.

I liked Chakotay when he wasn't giving speeches. All too soon he became Janeways trusty pet. If he had been captain things could have been alot better.

7 of 9 and the Dr were 2 of my favourite characters but they were overused and some of the more interesting aspects of their isolation/immaturity was never fleshed out.

I liked Tuvok. He reminded me of Spock.

Torres the half Klingon was interesting, Torres the Paris doting doltard was not. Paris was house trained much too easily. Kim had growth potential but in Wesley Crusher style it never happened.

Kes was the most annoying character ever. Neelix started out interesting and the got handcuffed as the comic relief.

The 3 things abused the most were technology in general, the holodeck crap and time travel. Janeway should have been in irons for what Voyager did to the timeline. Most of my gripes stem from B&B being in control. In 1 season they seem to be making Enterprise Voyager part 2.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jason Seaver wrote:

Well, it certainly would be "interesting", I guess, to see how they could have been made believable. I have serious doubts as to how a race with such individual short lifespans could achieve their level of technological advancement. One of the hallmarks of human development---even contrasting humans with apes---is the length of time for the development of the young from conception through infancy and childhood. By (earthbound) animal standards, it takes a loooong time, and if the Ocampa are supposed to be evolutionarily equivalent to the Federationists, it would take some mighty good (and convincing) explaining to win me over.

Now, how long does it take good scientific research---much less advanced scientific research---to bear fruit? I just don't see them (by their nature, as described) and their "civilization" being scientifically compatible.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Mike Broadman wrote:

You know, this sort of thing has been discussed in the literature. And with respect to Voyager, Mr. Broadman's idea is the closest anyone in this thread has come to mentioning it.
In Daniel Bernardi's UCLA (or USC?) dissertation (mid '90s, which I have a copy of somewhere in storage and which is now published as a book entitled Star Trek and History: Race-ing toward a White Future) (1998)), the author---if I remember correctly---speculates on the hostitlity aimed at Voyager due to the composition of its senior crew.
With the exception of Tom Paris, there is, effectively, no white male lead (we won't include the Talaxian), no standard traditional focal point for the identification of audiences who've come to expect a James Kirk or a Jean-Luc Picard (or a Henry Fonda or James Stewart, for that matter). (They might accept a Benjamin Sisko, but they didn't expect him.)
What we have, instead, are three strong females (or two-and-half with Kes), a young Asian male, a black Vulcan, a rebellious Amerindian, a clownish-looking (and -acting) Talaxian, and a hologram (hardly leadership material). Tom Paris himself is a rogue who's been specially recruited for his piloting skills (if I remember correctly). It's rather clear he probably won't be rising to head anything. (And, in fact, during the course of the series, he's reduced in rank for violating orders or Star Fleet procedures. I can't remember the specific episode.)
The book (or the dissertation it's based on, at least) presents a number of contemporary Internet exchanges of the by now standard so-called "angry-white-male" (AWM) type, complaining about the "political correctness" of the Voyager crew make-up.
Of course, by now there's probably enough evidence and consensus on how poor a show overall Voyager was that any hint of a racial or gender bias in the discontent with the program will be dismissed off-hand. Nevertheless, I throw it out there because of its possible, even if miniscule, role in the sort of visceral dislike that this show engenders in so many.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Who DOESN'T like Vic Fontaine?

Me! I hated that friggin' character - he was jump the shark material. Nothing more than a cheesy gimmick.

And I've only watched one season of Voyager, but I must admit I like Janeway so far. If nothing else, I think she's the best-ACTED captain of the lot. Shatner... 'nuff said. Stewart and Brooks both invested too much pseudo-Shakespearean drama into their parts - they usually came across as not very realistic. Despite the fact she cultivates a Kate Hepburn impression much of the time, Mulgrew - during the first season, at least - makes Janeway seem natural and believable...

 

[Colin Jacobson]

The Holodeck adventures in every iteration of Trek are, to my mind, the writers and producers' cop-out to dealing with the sf surroundings the various crews have found themselves in.

With a few exceptions, I friggin' HATE holodeck episodes. They're indeed a cop-out and a cheap vehicle to expand the series' settings without expanding the series' settings.

And BTW, one thing I couldn't understand as I watched S1 of Voyager: if they're so desperate to save energy all the time, shouldn't they cut back on the holodeck time? Does that experience somehow not use energy?

 

[David Williams]

And BTW, one thing I couldn't understand as I watched S1 of Voyager: if they're so desperate to save energy all the time, shouldn't they cut back on the holodeck time? Does that experience somehow not use energy?

They got around this by stating that the Holodeck's power grid was incompatible with the ship's main power. The Holodeck has its own separate power supply which is of a type that can't be transformed for use with the main EPS... How lame is that plot device?