This is the thread to discuss all things Voyager (TV, comics, books, games) as you log them on the new TrekLog site.
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Voyager is my comfort Trek. Itās what I watched the most of back in my teens. We had some VHS tapes (with two episodes each) for a little while, and then it was on Spike TV in the afternoons. As of the characters are a comfort crew for me. I look forward to rewatching, catching up on what I havenāt seen, and rating all of it.
Iām currently, only a couple episodes in, but Iām really enjoying revisiting these characters again. Already, the first two non-pilot episodes have to do with temporal phenomana. I think the reason why I enjoyed Voyager over TNG at the time, was because it had the series arc of getting home, whereas TNG didnāt really seem have an arc of any kind[1].
I of course am now aware of a few of the looser character arcs in the series, but at the time (mid-teens) Iād only seen random episodes here and there ā©ļø
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Iām slowly working my way through the series now, and would love to discuss it with anyone else whoās working their way through Voyager.
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I like Voyager quite a bit. It starts a little shaky, but finds itās way when Seven comes aboard. Out of those OG series I rank it at the bottom, but still thinks itās good.
For me it would probably rank higher if it had come before DS9. Once I had ST in the more gritty, B5-esq style, I couldnāt go back.
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Voyager. Iāll preface saying that it is still Star Trek, and there is no Star Trek series I truly dislike. But Voyager is easily my least favorite of the bunch. Classic and new. I donāt want to base my reasons entirely in comparison with other Trek series I like better, since thatās a little unfair, but what others of the time do better is relevant to my reasons in many ways.
Lots of text about Voyager's shortcomings in my eyes, intended as constructive criticism rather than negativity, but it's not exactly a glowing review
When The Next Generation started, it was very much āletās bring back Star Trek,ā pretty much doing the same sort of formula as the original series before it. Crew on a ship called Enterprise, on an exploratory and scientific mission, all just very standalone episodes, kind of everything the Original Series was doing before it, just with a different crew, roughly a hundred years later. And for restarting, or rather continuing the franchise, that makes sense, probably the right call. Rick Berman takes over from Roddenberry, TNG then able to reach new heights, some of the most popular Trek had ever been. Good enough that by the sixth season they were able to start on a spinoff running in parallel. This spin-off pretty much made it its mission to not do the same thing a third time. Itās mainly on a space station instead of a ship, itās kind of on the frontier, not a luxurious, flagship of the Federation kind of post, and the crew werenāt just the perfect, best of the best of Starfleet like the shows before it had featured. It started having an overarching story that a lot of the episodes connected to, all the characters had clear development and arcs of their own to an extent that TOS and TNG never had. Of course, by the time TNG ended along with DS9ās second season, DS9 wasnāt nearly as popular, so they decided to give it a hero ship which they hoped would help ratings, and that the next spinoff will be at least in style, kind of a return to the more TNG-esque formula. I understand the motivation to do that considering the business side of things, however DS9 was starting to take the franchise to another level in its storytelling, which in turn makes Voyagerās approach to me really feel like a step backwards.
And yes, Voyager does have an overarching story, an end goal for the series, but that brings me to my second reason. And thatās that it in my eyes never committed to its own premise. There were so many great ideas in Voyagerās creation. A Starfleet ship stranded far from home and it would take decades to get back even at maximum speed. Their resources would be limited, the ability to fix things on the ship would be limited. Its crew a mix of people on opposite sides of a conflict over a treaty. Thereās so much potential there on paper. But the Maquis crew members pretty much fell right in line under Janewayās command very quickly and any conflict there for the most part snuffed out by the end of the first few episodes. They quickly ignore the limited resource thing with all the shuttles they can apparently make and waste, the torpedo limit was ignored and exceeded by about the third season, they can apparently afford to have the holodeck running at all times, and stuff like replicator rationing became pretty much an occasional joke. Every episode ends up perfectly fine by the following week, no matter how bad it got by the end of that current episode. If they didnāt occasionally remind me that they were on a desperate generational mission to get back home, Iād have probably forgotten because the crew hardly acts like it and its own continuity often seems to not care. It ends up episodic in style to the point where it feels really unfocused in terms of living up to its own premise.
The third reason is closely related, but it feels like there arenāt lasting consequences for anything in this show. (Spoilers for Season 2, Episode 21, Deadlock) They even kill off one of their main characters, and I mean the original Harry Kim is dead (and Naomi Wildman, yes), and replace him with an alternate timeline version of himself and thatās never even mentioned again. As I mentioned about limited resources and repairs. They canāt just go to a nearby Federation Starbase to get fixed up between episodes, and yet itās all fine next time. How? It happens so often to the point that it really takes me out of the overall narrative. Thereās so much stuff like this.
This one is probably more a me problem, but I donāt find most of the episodes particularly memorable, most of Voyager is a blur, where you could give me a TNG episode, maybe a little description of it, and Iād go āoh yeah, that one,ā DS9 often from just the title. Voyager, Iād have to look it up in detail, and I might remember a scene. And I also find the final episode a little anticlimactic, which doesnāt help for ending the series on a strong note.
And the last major issue I have with Voyager is the characters. I find, especially for a show happening alongside another Trek show that has a perfect handle on its characters, that the crew of Voyager are mostly generic, static, and donāt interest me much. Where with DS9 you can see how every character has developed and changed over the course of it, (Spoilers for DS9: Tears of the Prophets) quite literally in the case of one of them,, for the most part I couldnāt tell you in what way most of the characters of Voyager are different people by the time I get to Endgame. And of course, characters donāt have to be dynamic to be good, but when Iām already not particularly invested in any of them, I donāt find them to be as good of static characters that I do the TNG crew, who also donāt change and grow all that much over the course of the show (they do to an extent, but not nearly as much as DS9ās do). And also Neelix exists.
And even beyond the main characters, most of the original races we encounter I donāt find to be all that memorable. Like the Kazon, the Hirogen, the Heirarchy, and most of the others feel like concepts that other Trek races have covered before, not finding them all that interesting, with a couple notable exceptions.
So those are the big reasons why Voyager just doesnāt work for me like other Treks. Admittedly, I didnāt grow up with it, I was in my 20s before Iād even seen Voyager, and Iād already seen TNG twice, and DS9 was on second viewing alongside my first Voyager viewing (I did the full chronological watch). So I didnāt have any nostalgia for it going in. And of course even if it wasnāt always conscious, I was seeing it through the lens of comparing it to the other Treks that Iāve liked better. So I do intend to at some point rewatch Voyager properly on its own to try and judge it on its own merits rather than what it doesnāt or what I believe it should do. This will probably will after I finally get through my relatively newly acquired TNG Blu-Rays.
All of that said, to my memory, there were definitely a lot of episodes and things I did enjoy like Year of Hell (my favorite Voyager), the Vidiians, Death Wish, the stuff with Lon Suder, The Thaw, Flashback, Futureās End, Real Life, Scorpion, Species 8472, Living Witness, Bride of Chaotica!, Equinox, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Blink of an Eye, Reg Barclay doing his thing to help bring Voyager home, and probably a good few others that Iām not remembering just by looking at the list of episodes on the Log.
So in short, I find Voyager flawed, more so than the other Trek series, bringing it to the bottom of my rankings, but there is still a lot in there to enjoy.
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Oh. And I like Janeway, Seven, Tuvok, and the Doctor when heās not written weird.
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Well put. For me, my love of Voyager is the nostalgia that I donāt have for the other series.
TOS was one Iāve only seen a handful of episodes (my knowledge is more what has permeated pop culture than the episodes themselves). TNG I saw more of. The library had VHS copies (two episodes to a tape), there were reruns here and there, I remember bits of it but not so much specific episodes.
DS9 is one I never saw on TV as a kid/teen so all my DS9 watching was the DVD season sets from the library (I made it through the first two seasons and I think a little bit of the third before other interests and obsessions distracted me). I like the characters, especially Quark and Odo, and Bashir and Garak, and do plan on re-watching/finish watching it some day.
Enterprise, I again watched on DVD. More accurately, I watched the pilot, and part of the second episode. But I had a hard time telling a few members of the crew apart and gave up.
The modern Trek, I havenāt delved into at all. Iāve heard SNW is worth watching, but none of the others. So Iāll get to that eventually. But thereās 28 seasons of classic era Trek to get through first.
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Trip and Malcolm?
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I will say anyone who says nothing of modern Trek other than Strange New Worlds is worth watching is full of it. Unless you just mean youāve heard very little about the others.
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Possibly?
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Bit of both. Iāve heard some things (political and stuff), and very little as well.
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Honestly, besides being aimed at kids, Prodigy is aimed at Voyager and TNG fans. Lower Decks also had its origins in a TNG episode, and had an episode entirely filled with Voyager referencesā¦
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Finished S1 of Voyager! My favourite episodes are Jetrel, Heroes and Demons and Time and Again, Iām in LOVE with The Doctor, BāElanna and Harry, and I like Janeway more than Picard. I will say, if weāre talking about first seasons - TNG S1 is probably better than Voyager S1, but I somehow think Voyager is moreā¦ homely? I feel that I like characters here a lot more than in Next Generation
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I like the Doctor, and quite enjoy Tom Paris.
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Just watched Dreadnought. BāElanna is probably my favourite Voyager member rn (I mean, she is my TrekLog profile picture), and seeing episode with her in the centre was very pleasing. Especially because it shows how wrong she could be lol. Tense thriller about the dangers of AI and thoughtlessly striving for perfection without considering possible consequences. Also now Iām afraid of the word āunlikelyā
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Theres also Seven being a main character in Picard and The Doctor being a main one in Academy
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Having BāElanna in somewhat of a mad scientist role was definitely something I enjoyed, and that was one I liked!
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Yeah, just havenāt seen either of those, mostly. Think Prodigy had the most Voyager callbacks of the ones I was mentioningā¦
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Lower Decks is very worth it, to me. Voyager references are there, yes.
Iām doing Voyager through the game before the show, (if ever). Itās alright. Iāve gotten to the time portal. I know, not very far in.
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I canāt help but think of the Pakled repeatedly calling Captain Freeman Janeway. ^_^
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