Voyager, taken as a whole, isn't as bad as some people claim. There were quite a few very good episodes, along with the usual Berman & Braga travesties. Jeri Ryan did a good job with Seven of Nine, managing to take what potential the character had and maximizing it. Dumping Kes pissed off a lot of fans, but the truth was that her character was going nowhere (just like most of Voyager's characters), and the Kes/Neelix romance was enough to make your blood curdle.
Voyager = Good idea for a dark and gritty show with a good set-up.....that went straight downhill after the pilot. All the set-up for future storylines were tossed in the trash to be replaced with TNG-lite garbage. - What happened to the tension between Starfleet and the Maquis? - Neelix could have been a great character, sleazy but willing to help out to fulfill his own needs. He could have acted as a real guide to the Gamma Quadrant, but instead was wasted as a stupid cook. Even his relationship with Kes could have been fleshed out by better writers with half a brain. - 7 of 9 could have been a great character if played by a normal person, male or female. Instead Braga hires a sex-bot and puts her in a catsuit (with Borg-issues high heels no less), then turns her into a stupid Data clone. - Psychotic Janeway......'nuff said! - De-balled Chakotay......'nuff said! -Harry Kim....................'nuff said! I would have loved to have seen Voyager as written by the Farscape writers. Real aliens, real conflicts, real characterization.....and real chances being taken!
Janeway hears voices in her head, kills billions, and tries to sleep with everyone. Has an angry face whenever someone tells her the truth, but then bitches and gets all emotional over her "family". Shuttles and ammo are created in secret rooms every week, robots (blonde, big breasted) show up and by the end of the show, aren't that much of a threat. Not seeing much of a difference.
I gotta say, neither Voyager or Enterprise had bad premises, but both were horribly realized. Voyager never had a sense of danger or desperation that they often claimed. Shuttles, torpedoes, and fuel were easy to come by. Crew members dropped like flies, but then were magically replaced each week. Nevermind that Janeway was an erratic sociopath who violated and upheld whatever laws she felt like (Remember Tuvix?), or that the show turned to borderline slash fiction whenever her and Seven shared time on the screen. The forced romance between Dominatrix and Chuckles was hard to stomach (of course, any bit of personality was a hard to believe, not that Beltran didn't try!), and the series finale was a huge testament to the delusional mindset of the writing staff of the time (Wait, so Janeway gets promoted for her crimes, and then violates their most sacrosanct laws so she can make life easier for a few of her friends? I mean, fuck all the kids born and knowledge learned from their trip, right? Oh, look! Explosions! Who's afraid of anybody, the Federation has godmode enabled!). Nevermind they fuck with the audience, promising danger and surprise by killing off... Joe Carey? Poor guy. (Where's your time machine bullshit now, Janeway?) Enterprise? I always felt like this show had potential, at least, in the concept phase. Using the name "Enterprise" was a slap in the face. Then they casted Bakula as the captain and wrote him to be a spoiled, childish brat. The whole show just seemed to smear it's shit all over the "franchise" (God, I hate using that word) by diminishing the accomplishments of TOS and TNG, while praising itself and constantly shoving it down our throats that the Enterprise is EPIC and its mission is EPIC and Archer is EPIC (PRESIDENT?! DID HE GIVE THE FUCKING GAZELLE SPEECH?!). The cast was never used properly. Linda Park and Anthony Montgomery were little more than glorified extras. Bakula did a great job in the Mirror Universe show, so I believe he had potential and that the writers really were bottom of the barrel quality.
I agree. Year of Hell was the writers' answer to this criticism. Of course, at the end of that 2-parter, they hit the reset button so none of it meant anything. Holodeck privileges were also supposed to be rationed to conserve energy. That got forgotten when they decided to have Janeway waste time making out with imaginary boyfriends at Fair Haven, or Oak Haven, or whatever the hell it was called. I think it would have been interesting to have kept Seska as a part of the crew, even after revealing her as a secret Cardassian. She was a strong character that could have provided some direct conflict with Janeway. The writing for the Janeway character was wildly inconsistent. She was, however, consistently written as an emasculating bitch. An exaggeration. Endgame was a testament to the fact that the folks behind the show had lost interest in it, and Star Trek in general, years before it aired. It was the result of people who no longer wanted to be there, and who weren't motivated to give 110% toward producing the best product possible. Scott Bakula is a good actor, and it was a coup for Trek to sign him to play Archer. He brought with him a built-in fanbase left over from Quantum Leap, and his presence immediately lent credibility to the show. But you're right, his talents were wasted, and his character was horribly written. "A Night In Sickbay" effectively destroyed the character. Enterprise was a miscalculation from the very beginning, spawned by the very same people who had let Voyager flounder and ultimately die with a whimper. It never had a chance. Only when they realized the show was doomed and headed for cancellation did they allow Coto to attempt a last-ditch overhaul.
I feel the same way. I liked VOY, but it wasn't that great. The first 5 seasons were quite enjoyable. 7 did raise the quality of the show. S6 and S7 are pretty much unwatchable for me. S6 had 1 episode I liked called One Small Step that was pretty good.
Voyager is certainly the weakest of the four shows, about half-way through Voyagers run I was starting to get bored of it but stuck to it hoping it would get better. Then endgame came along with its anti-climatic ending and absurd storyline and frankly I don't want to see any episode of it again. I'd still call it trek, just about but very bad trek. For me the best of Trek died when DS9 ended, I felt hungry for more from that show but satisfied.
BSG started off very, very well but is by no means the be-all and end-all of science-fiction television. I will reserve my final judgment until I have seen the entire series but I am not a fan of the direction that the show has taken over last season or so.
I can't believe there are people that like Enterprise over Voyager. Must one like every singe ep to like a series?
Why? I would say that Enterprise's lows (A Night in Sickbay and These Are the Voyages, for instance) were probably lower than Voyager's (Threshold, Fair Haven, Spirit Folk and Endgame), but they were fewer in number. I'd also say ENT's highs (Similtude, Twilight, the Mirror Universe Ep and a few others) were probably better than VOY's highs (Year of Hell, Scorpion). The characters are roughly IMO equal. That is, Archer and Janeway are about as likeable as each other. Same with T'Pol and Seven, Trip and Chakotay, Phlox and the EMH, Reed and Tuvok, Hoshi and Belanna, Mayweather and Kim (or however you want to juggle the comparision). I think the overall comparison is close enough for it to be reasonable for someone to like ENT over VOY.
^I rather enjoyed the cast of Voyager, even if they never developed Kim or Chakotay, and Tuvok was a walking cliche. Tom Paris was a great character (especially if you believe he used the alias "Nick Locarno" to get into the Academy), along with B'Elanna and The Doctor.
Tuvok was the best Vulcan after Spock, just criminally underused - like most of the rest - after Barbie Borg came on board.
Tim Ross is a good actor, but the lines he got were awful. They gave him corny replies for "humor" and completely dropped the ball when it came to logic.
Never developed Kim??? He was the center of many eps. Maybe I don't understand. Gimme someone who was 'devoloped' on Voyager and how so.
What Tim Russ needed to do was go home and drink himself silly every night while filming. Something I learned about Leonard Nimoy from the Shatner bio.
Not really. Kim eps include "The Chute" (a good one), "The Disease" (in which there's invented a Starfleet protocol for first sexual contact ), and "Timeless" (which was pretty good). But none of them really made him into a flesh-and-blood character IMO. Tom Paris started off as a cynical, joking, semi-Casanova, insubordinate flyboy who had friction with his admiral father. His character grew so that it retained some of those traits, but he also developed background traits like his love of 20th century pop culture and autos that was featured prominently in several episodes. He also became more responsible, settled down and became ready to be a dad, got over his own daddy issues, found a fit in the command structure. All this happened over time so it was semi-realistic. If you put Tom Paris from a sixth or seventh season episode and put him in the first or second season, chances are it wouldn't be all that good a fit. The EMH started off being thought of by Janeway and others as just a thing. Gradually he -- and the crew -- began to recognize his rights and the rights of other holograms. The EMH started off brusque and arrogant. He ended up developing friendships and a little bit of a bedside manner. He added subroutines to let him experience opera, command a starship. He developed a whole virtual family, at least temporarily, got married, and in various other ways surpassed his initial design. If you took the EMH from a sixth or seventh season episode and put it in the first or second season, it would again seem strange. Kim started as a green, gung-ho cadet, and even though he had seven years of experience under his belt, including bridge experience, he's still a friggin' ensign at the end of things. He doesn't really have much in the way of hobbies or personalities that come to mind, except he plays the clarinet and is unlucky in love. If you took Harry Kim from the sixth or seventh season and put him in a first season episode, there'd be nothing odd about the result.
I re-watched season one this summer, and the direction the show is taking makes PERFECT sense. IMO, it's clear they've been planning it since the beginning. Leoben's role in season 1 carries through to season 4 pretty much flawlessly.
