Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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I wouldn't say "consistently bad". Voyager had some good episodes.

Like the Doctor/Seven episodes, which basically carried the entire show.

Ok, I admit it might be just my own extremely rose-coloured glasses here, growing up when it was mainly Voyager on TV, and thus Voyager being the first Star Trek show I watched regularly. I didn't know better :(
Still, I remember Voyager more fondly than some here, I guess. It had a lot of flaws, but I did like the concept and the characters. It had some good chemistry going on and it had some good episodes, too. The aforementioned "Body and Soul" was just funny. Doctor-focused episodes tended to be good because, well, it's fuckin' Robert Picardo and that man is a beacon of light. "Latent Image" and "Tinker, Tailor, Doctor, Spy" were also great. "Year of Hell" was great simply because Kurtwood Smith shoving his foot up dumbass Janeway's ass. And "Mortal Coil" wasn't as dark as DS9's "Hard Time", but it was pretty hard. Even gave the ever annoying Neelix some depth and non-shitty screentime.

Voyager could have made much better use of its setting. The premise of being stranded in a strange part of the galaxy and having to limp home with limited resources should have been reflected in the set design and some more permanent writing choices. The ship always looks pristine and like it came straight from the shipyard, and while they tried to bring in some stuff like the hydroponics and such, there's just not enough proper change in the ship and the crew. Some jury-rigging, improvisation, and general repurposing would have been interesting to see. Show more of the hydroponics, maybe show that as much space as possible has been reused for food production. Make resources a bigger issue. As such there are few visual cues that the Voyager is on an almost impossible trek home.

I also liked ENT more than most would care to admit, I guess. Likewise it was flawed and suffered from baffling writing decisions and I really dislike shoving in timetravel and stuff that canonically would have only been seen later in the timeline, but I enjoyed some of the character chemistry and the general frontier atmosphere and lower tech feel of the show. The set design was great imo. Should have been more about humans being crazy reckless idiots and still getting shit done. Get more of that Cochrane spirit, slapping together a warp ship while the world is still in ruins from a nuclear war and decades of genocide, because why the fuck not.

In the end I can't really decide wether I prefer TNG or DS9. The latter has some outrageously good episodes so I guess DS9 has to win out for me. TNG might have been peak noblebright Star Trek, but DS9 took that and added some grit to it, but not too much as to make it not-Star-Trek anymore.

So, speaking of actually good Star Trek instead of the garbage that has been produced the past decade, I'm really, REALLY looking forward to another season of The Orville, and I'll be very cross indeed if it never comes.
See I grew up on TNG. Actually disliked DS9 at first but got hooked with that Garak fellow then was REALLY into it when Worf came aboard.

I was actually super hyped for Voyager. I read EVERYTHING I could on it. I may still have many of the TVGuides that previewed it. (All of which claimed the Doctor's name was "Zimmerman.")

Then it came out and it was just.... meh. I just drifted away from the show. Came back when the Borg were talked about and stayed around for awhile because of that super gorgeous 7. Then drifted away again.

At the start, DS9 got me to care about characters I didn't at first. Voyager got me to be apathetic towards characters I did care about at first. They just ended up making everything on that show so vanilla it was too boring to bother with. A show they had every set up and reason to make exciting week after week!
 
Fair point.

I don't care if Seven is desirable or not. The point is, you could remove Seven & Raffi from Season One, and lose nothing. It's fitting that you bring up Uhura, since her tryst with Scotty was quickly forgotten.


Nice gal, but every time she's onscreen, I want to shove a hamburger down her throat.


Speaking of the Uhura dance: Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome talking. But Star Trek 5 is honestly better than the TNG movies. 🤔

If it has faults, it's the proto-Orville comedy. The tonal shift in this movie needs Adderall. Also, I love how Sha Ka Ree looks exactly the same as Nimbus III (with a purple filter added).
Finally, someone else gets The Final Frontier!!!
 
Yeah. It's getting dunked on because it could have been so much more. It probably has a worse winner to stinker ratio than all the other shows, but damnit, the good episodes were still good. And most importantly, while ENT and VOY were not as good as they could have been, they were still recognizably and thoroughly Star Trek, which is much more than can be said about the modern shows.
Although I guess Janeway, who when she had her good moments really shone as a captain, also was one of the biggest points of criticism with Voyager, being one of the more inconsistent characters.
Voyager's pretty much like if in TNG's "Tapestry", Picard had been shown his life as "Lt. Picard" and decided "Eh, fuck it. I'm still alive, and I've got a better job than 98% of everyone else in Starfleet. I'll settle for this".
 
I wouldn't say "consistently bad". Voyager had some good episodes.

Like the Doctor/Seven episodes, which basically carried the entire show.

Ok, I admit it might be just my own extremely rose-coloured glasses here, growing up when it was mainly Voyager on TV, and thus Voyager being the first Star Trek show I watched regularly. I didn't know better :(
Still, I remember Voyager more fondly than some here, I guess. It had a lot of flaws, but I did like the concept and the characters. It had some good chemistry going on and it had some good episodes, too. The aforementioned "Body and Soul" was just funny. Doctor-focused episodes tended to be good because, well, it's fuckin' Robert Picardo and that man is a beacon of light. "Latent Image" and "Tinker, Tailor, Doctor, Spy" were also great. "Year of Hell" was great simply because Kurtwood Smith shoving his foot up dumbass Janeway's ass. And "Mortal Coil" wasn't as dark as DS9's "Hard Time", but it was pretty hard. Even gave the ever annoying Neelix some depth and non-shitty screentime.

Voyager could have made much better use of its setting. The premise of being stranded in a strange part of the galaxy and having to limp home with limited resources should have been reflected in the set design and some more permanent writing choices. The ship always looks pristine and like it came straight from the shipyard, and while they tried to bring in some stuff like the hydroponics and such, there's just not enough proper change in the ship and the crew. Some jury-rigging, improvisation, and general repurposing would have been interesting to see. Show more of the hydroponics, maybe show that as much space as possible has been reused for food production. Make resources a bigger issue. As such there are few visual cues that the Voyager is on an almost impossible trek home.

I also liked ENT more than most would care to admit, I guess. Likewise it was flawed and suffered from baffling writing decisions and I really dislike shoving in timetravel and stuff that canonically would have only been seen later in the timeline, but I enjoyed some of the character chemistry and the general frontier atmosphere and lower tech feel of the show. The set design was great imo. Should have been more about humans being crazy reckless idiots and still getting shit done. Get more of that Cochrane spirit, slapping together a warp ship while the world is still in ruins from a nuclear war and decades of genocide, because why the fuck not.

In the end I can't really decide wether I prefer TNG or DS9. The latter has some outrageously good episodes so I guess DS9 has to win out for me. TNG might have been peak noblebright Star Trek, but DS9 took that and added some grit to it, but not too much as to make it not-Star-Trek anymore.

So, speaking of actually good Star Trek instead of the garbage that has been produced the past decade, I'm really, REALLY looking forward to another season of The Orville, and I'll be very cross indeed if it never comes.
Voyager is my favorite, for a lot of reasons you name. I grew up on it too, and Kate Mulgrew is amazing in it. It has flaws but is definitely Trek. My favorites are The Thaw and Death Wish. Some of the finest Trek ever depicted. Interestingly, Q in Death Wish is Jay Sherman's dad on The Critic.
We dunk on VOY because we love VOY.

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If nothing else, it had some of the best female leads, which really resonated.
Kate Mulgrew has the best voice. She's a phenomenal actress.
Yeah. It's getting dunked on because it could have been so much more. It probably has a worse winner to stinker ratio than all the other shows, but damnit, the good episodes were still good. And most importantly, while ENT and VOY were not as good as they could have been, they were still recognizably and thoroughly Star Trek, which is much more than can be said about the modern shows.
Although I guess Janeway, who when she had her good moments really shone as a captain, also was one of the biggest points of criticism with Voyager, being one of the more inconsistent characters.
I never saw Janeway as inconsistent. I saw her as a fierce mother repeatedly backed into a corner. Early early in the series, Janeway is recording a captains log talking about how she has to be more than just a captain to her crew, which begin to become a family and community. She did.

The common example of her supposed mercurial nature is where she flies through a binary system in Scientific Method, but if you really watch the episode, the alternative was horrifying, with no guarantee they'd let them live afterward.

Janeway is a tiger mother to her people. The finale wasn't over the top, it was just Janeway. When she doesn't save enough people, Admiral Janeway obsesses over what and who she lost and went back in time in a blaze of glory. All of Voyager was traveling through space and time, to when Admiral Janeway decided to intervene at the most strategic opportunity in the timeline of their journey home.

If you remember the future starfleet time 'police' episodes, Janeway is infamous for fucking with the timestream. However she successfully broke the Year of Hell timeloop so they probably view her positively, and if you'll pardon the pun, ahead of her time.

Janeway conned the borg queen on her pride. My one criticism is she should told her future shuttle to destruct in ten seconds if separated from her, to keep the tech from assimilation.

Anyway Voyager was amazing, warts and all.
shit I wrote in some bullshit about Elon Musk
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Everyone treats the ship as their home, whereas in real life, I can't imagine petty officers growing attached to their naval carrier.

It sticks out in Star Trek because no one is ever in any great hurry to leave the ship. I believe it is Tom who points out (in Season 4) that life has never been better since they got lost in the Delta Quadrant.

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Functionally, Janeway juggled all of the Trek stereotypes (ex: curious cat who investigates every nebula), on top of saving the Earth from Borg on a yearly basis. Had Voyager been in contact with the Federation from the beginning, it would have smoothed over the show's internal logic.
 
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Kate Mulgrew has the best voice. She's a phenomenal actress.

Hey now lets not forget about Tim Russ.

I've always pictured Voyager as being a balanced scale with 3 quality characters (Tuvok, 7 of 9, and the Doctor) balanced by 3 terrible characters (Kes, Chakotay, and Kim), and everyone else floats somewhere in the middle since the quality of the characters' writing changes depending on the episode.
 
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everyone else floats somewhere in the middle since the quality of the characters' writing changes depending on the episode.
True. I was just thinking: the reason why Janeway, Tom etc. wear so many "hats" throughout the series is that the senior staff have no real depth. Viewers don't really notice or care when Chakotay expresses an interest in boxing.
 
Beltran was at a convention once, and he mentioned how weird it was that Mexicans never made it into space. "eyy, you shot our ship! And you didn't bring any beer!"

As per usual on VOY, he's not a bad actor. He was straitjacketed by the writing.
B'Elanna TORRES.

Apparently Mexicans aren't spicy enough in the future, so one decided to fuck a Klingon.
 
Truth be told, the atmosphere in the movies is frothy, as well: everyone treats the ship as their home, whereas in real life, I can't imagine petty officers growing attached to their carrier.

It sticks out in Star Trek and VOY especially, since no one is ever in any great hurry to go to Earth. I believe it is Tom who points out (in Season 4) that life has never been better since they got lost in the Delta Quadrant.

View attachment 2465576

Functionally, Janeway juggled all of the Trek stereotypes (ex: curious cat who investigates every nebula), on top of saving the Earth from Borg on a yearly basis.
I agree, but Janeway ascended through the science division, switching to command division to captain Voyager. It's in character for her to explore everything. Under her leadership the crew invented a ton of stuff. I don't know why she didn't outfit Voyager with tons of weapons. Apparently she focuses on weapons development in the long way home timeline before Admiral Janeway goes back in time.
Had Voyager been in contact with the Federation from the beginning, it would have smoothed over the show's internal logic.
I agree, the show improves when broccoli makes contact in Pathfinder. The characters then have their lives in the Alpha Quadrant to interact with. You figure out a lot about someone when you see then interact with their parents. Neelix had a pleasant role during that time as mail deliverer, instead of being centered on silliness or on some madeuppian festival / tradition. He even encouraged crewmen who weren't looking forward to letters from home, filling his role as morale officer.
True. I was just thinking: the reason why Janeway, Tom etc. wear so many "hats" throughout the series is that the senior staff have no real depth. Viewers don't really notice or care when Chakotay expresses an interest in boxing.
Tom Paris was supposed to be an everyman white American, sort of cool uncle type. They write a lot of Americana into his character.

Chakotay's character exploration was apparently caused by bad advice from a shyster who claimed to be Native American. I think they didn't know what to do with him after they toned down the wrong Native American stuff they depicted. I wish they would've written him out and given us a new first officer, maybe finally betraying everyone by joining Seska in a Season 2 finale or something. He wasn't terrible, and I don't dislike him, but if they're not going to do anything with a character, they should switch out for a character they would write well for.
 
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Neelix had a pleasant role during that time as mail deliverer, instead of being centered on silliness or on some madeuppian festival / tradition. He even encouraged crewmen who weren't looking forward to letters from home, filling his role as morale officer.
They stopped pretending that Neelix is worth anything... besides butting in on more-interesting characters in the Mess Hall.

In "Imperfection" Seven asks Neelix if he doesn’t have more important duties to attend to, and he answers "nothing that can’t wait" when the real answer should have been "no."
 
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They stopped pretending that Neelix is worth anything more than butting in when more interesting characters frequent the Mess Hall.

In "Imperfection" Seven asks Neelix if he doesn’t have more important duties to attend to, and he answers "nothing that can’t wait" when the real answer should have been "no."
I still don't understand how everyone on Voyager was perfectly fine with having a pedophile that was banging a 1 year old on their ship.
 
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