Ya know what, I take that back - ONE episode, the one where Neelix died and Seven brought him back, and Neelix was forced to examine his belief system in light of his experience. THAT was a great story, well told. One. One episode I actually thought worthwhile.
Oh, hell no. "Timeless", "year of hell", or "course oblivion", would easily blow away something like "suddenly human", or "Aquiel".
I liked those eps too (except Course Oblivion, too silly) but damn, Voy did love the use of reset a lot!
Tomorrow is yesterday, resolved with reset button, city on the edge of forever, resolved with reset button.
Voyager is a textbook example of the following things: 1) Don't produce a tv series that the producers themselves don't like. Brannon Braga, in one of his more candid moments, admitted in a magazine article (Starlog or Sci-Fi Universe) years ago that the Voyager producers did not even like the premise of the show. Braga said that aside from Jeri Taylor (who loved Voyager no matter what because it had a woman captain), none of the producers (including Berman and Piller) and very few of the writers liked Voyager's premise. He said they basically wanted to "produce The Next Generation with a different cast" but were overruled by Paramount. 2) Star Trek doesn't do well with story arcs so huge they cast a shadow over the series. DS9 I'm convinced made a similar mistake with the way they handled the Dominion War. Voyager had "how do we get home" as the story arc hanging over the whole series. When they inevitably had scores of episodes not at all related to that it made it look a bit ridiculous. To me, DS9 had a similar disconnect when they went literally from an episode where the Jem'hadar were murdering Starfleet cadets in escape pods to the next episode featuring Quark in a dress. 3) Don't ever let Michael Piller be your "idea man". The late Michael Piller wrote "The Best of Both Worlds I & II" and then preceded to come up with some of the most ridiculous and lamest ideas ever seen in Star Trek. Including though not limited to a) Basing some of the DS9 ideas on the LA Riots. b) Basing Voyagers Kazon on LA street gangs (the man really needed out of SoCal) c) Basing the entire concept behind Insurrection on his use of Rogaine (I'm not kidding. Piller himself told the story about how he came up with Insurrection while he was trying to treat his hair one morning)
BSG was a reset button. That whole human make Cylons, Cylons become humans, kill original humans, make Cyclons, etc, etc, deal.
I dunno about that. "reset" implies to me that at the end of the episode the effect is "these events never really happened" (at least in the current timeline) In both the episodes you cite, the events the crew experienced did not "go away"
City On the Edge of Forever was vastly overrated. I believe it was Cinescape magazine that labeled it as the most overrated original Trek episode. It didn't soar in popularity until the revival of Joan Collins career as the super vixen on Dynasty.
The only problem with those episodes is that they were reset and therefore didn't actually matter to the story. Well, the first two are the only ones I know by name, so those are more what I'm referring to. Year of Hell is nice in that it partially lived up to the actual premise of the series. Speaking of, if VOY had actually lived up to its premise instead of just being an even blander version of TNG, it might have actually been pretty good.
Wow....I didn't know Piller was dead...... Learn something new...... Anyway Voyager was ok. They should have made life a little harder for the crew and ship and kept the tension between the Starfleet and Maquis groups for a whole lot longer then the first episode. Oh and the person who decided that the Kazon can't make water but can build and fly warp capable ships? That fucker should be killed. I sure hope it wasn't Piller.....
I remember Brannon Braga commenting on why Voyager did not focus more on the crew being marooned on the other side of the galaxy and their difficulties in finding a way home. Braga said that "the premise was already depressing enough without having to write about it" or to that effect. Like I said, not even the producers liked the premise of the show. And after the first episode, the producers never wanted to bring up the Maquis angle. It was just supposed to be a kind of "hook" to justify getting the Voyager there in the first place. Piller himself once said that "the Maquis story has no future in Voyager".
Keeler was dead BEFORE the intervention. Reset within the context of a Trek conversation means, it seems to me, that you have some bad shit happen to them and the fix it and the whole experience goes away. I suppose you can argue that McCoy's original contamination initiated the "bad shit" (no Federation) and fixing the time line reset that bad shit - I'm gonna grant you that. To me when I think of "reset" I'm thinking about situations when at the end of the episode no one remembers what happened. Still, your logic doesn't apply to "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
