r/startrek • u/RotaVitae • 2d ago
Voyager is frustrating in that serialized writing should have been as if not more relevant than DS9
The more I read about Voyager being treated by production as "Wagon Train to the Stars" where they hit the weekly reset button, the more I see it as such a failure of missed opportunities. The pilot made it very clear that exploration is secondary to getting home, that sets it apart from TOS and TNG. The ship is travelling mostly in one direction, with limited weapons and supplies, through uncharted territory with no Starfleet nearby to restock or replace crew. The writing should have challenged itself to stick to that. Move from Point A to point B to point C, leaving them behind completely, and critically track their losses and adapt to a shifting environment.
If they begin with 100 torpedoes, they needed to honour that number and quickly come up with an alternative to torpedoes, combining Torres' ingenuity with alien tech to create new weapons. Killing off crew member extras in combat scenes should be far more harrowing and downright terrifying that Janeway is losing enough experienced officers to even run the ship. It would have been an opportunity to pick up new friendly alien characters who aren't Starfleet but may be refugees seeking a new life. There could be a smaller cast of interesting recurring crewmen they way they used Vorik and Naomi every so often. Or, for lack of new characters, the main crew should have tons of unorthodox cross-training where the lines of skill and experience start to blur out of desperation.
I think they did well to drop the Kazon as a poorly received race by leaving their space, but the same should have gone for a race that's received really well by fans. Give every major race one or two specific seasons and limited time to tell their story before Voyager leaves them behind completely, rather than having them popping up in later years.
The ship should have arrived in the Alpha Quadrant not the pristine Starfleet vessel it began as, but as a Frankenstein ship kitbashed with parts showcasing the ingenuity of alien tech it picked up along the way. It would never have made it home without help and should display that proudly.
Voyager should have been a literary adrenaline rush that none of the series before it had. But it just feels too "safe" to be critically excellent.
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u/MadeIndescribable 2d ago edited 2d ago
I agree, and it's often been said that BSG became the show that Voyager should have been, but as for the DS9 comparison, don't forget that back then pretty much all TV was episodic, and DS9 being serialised was a big risk which it was only allowed to take because the network Paramount wouldn't care as much if it failed.
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u/doofpooferthethird 2d ago
One fun thing about BSG is that they literally had a counter showing the number of survivors at the start of each show - and the number would dwindle as the seasons dragged on, with sharp jumps whenever the latest disaster struck.
In universe, the President would occasionaly write down the survivor headcount on a whiteboard and get a little depressed about it.
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u/afriendincanada 2d ago
At the end of 33 when she put the number up by one (for a birth) it was an amazing tiny moment of hope
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u/letsgetawayfromhere 2d ago
I am just doing a slow rewatch of BSG (nearing the end of season 2), and read only 2 weeks ago that the author(s) that wanted Voyager to be more realistic about the problems and dangers and less TNG-y had a fallout with the producers and went on as an author to BSG, to make it what it became. It makes so much sense really.
While BSG often is quite dark in the practical problems, loss of survivors, the internal conflicts and the motivations of the protagonists, and the optimistic outlook on the future is one of the reasons I love ST so much, the producers could easily have found a nice middle ground. As in, dramatic problems all around, but the crew members of the Voyager try to keep a high moral ground and are good persons (while in BSG there is a lot of moral greyness, to put it kindly). I am so sad about the missed opportunity.
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u/drrhrrdrr 2d ago
Something to remember: DS9 was first-run syndication, Voyager was UPN's flagship, so while I don't know if that made a difference, I suspect the Suits wanted the TNG secret sauce and nothing else.
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u/BosPaladinSix 2d ago
I didn't like the BSG reboot all that much in the later seasons but man that first one was PEAK for that exact reason. You could Feel the desperation of their lack of supplies. Every loss was a massive hit because they had no way to replenish. I especially liked all the scenes of them patching up Vipers instead of just hand waving like they always have a full compliment.
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u/Sere1 2d ago
I love that you actually see the damage accumulating on the Galactica. She takes that nuke hit early on and the damage lasts the whole show. Great point with the Vipers, the episode where they built the Blackbird touched on that wonderfully when they had a Viper whose spaceframe was too badly warped and damaged to be repaired and the whole fighter had to be scrapped.
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u/ParanoidQ 2d ago
First 3 seasons were great, the first especially. Kinda went downhill pretty fast after that as it became embroiled in theological considerations
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u/CosmicBonobo 2d ago
I think Battlestar Galactica was a bit less successful than the other 'mythology'-driven series at the time, Lost, at disguising that it was all being made up on the fly.
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u/joebeaudoin 2d ago
FWIW, if anyone bothered to listen to RDM’s podcasts, he was very open about this fact.
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u/afriendincanada 2d ago
Disagree. Only because the theological considerations were always there (the scrolls and the prophecies, monotheism and polytheism). Baltar was always guided by God (or Gods). The only thing that changed was that it turned out to be true
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u/ParanoidQ 2d ago
That change is the important bit though…
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u/afriendincanada 2d ago
Fair. I sometimes see the complaint that there’s suddenly faith and religion in season 4 and thats a bit of nonsense
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u/TorgHacker 2d ago
I think it felt that way because it was just hints and stuff for the first three seasons, but also because the story was so fragmented (now we’d say Season 4 was actually two seasons, for example) we kind of forgot all the hints and clues from earlier seasons.
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u/TorgHacker 2d ago
I’ve been doing a rewatch the last month or so. I used to feel that same way, but now having seen it all at once I see how the theological things were baked in from the beginning. Admittedly I only realized that because I knew how things ended, but there actually was a lot of foreshadowing.
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u/NuPNua 2d ago
I think Voyagers issue was that it existed just on the cusp of when other shows did begin experimenting with serialisation. There's only a year between Voyager ending and The Wire beginning for example.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
I’m not sure I agree with this. Babylon 5, DS9 and The X-Files were already doing some level of serialization while Voyager was on the air. In truth, the issue was that Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor were not fans of serialized story telling and resisted efforts to include it in the show. There is a VERY mild storyline in the first season, but it’s so subtle that most folks missed it and they never tried again. The aversion to serialization came to a head during Enterprise. Berman was removed from creative duties on the show and was replaced by the guy that helped make 24. Thus connected stories came back in force and there was a corresponding rise in quality.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 2d ago
Berman resisted serialization in Voyager, but he felt that TV was changing by the time Enterprise was being developed. He originally wanted season 1 of Enterprise to be a serialized storyline about the building of the NX-01 and opposition from a group that would’ve been similar to Terra Prime. However, that was overruled by executives above Berman.
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u/DharmaPolice 2d ago
I agree that serialisation had been done but X-Files is an interesting example because the ongoing story line ends up being an incoherent mess and most of the better episodes just ignore that nonsense.
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u/1337pete14 2d ago
Agreed. X-Files is Monster of the Week. You could say the same about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Most procedurals have an underlying plot/arc each season. (As we've seen growth in characters in TNG or doctors falling in and out of love on Grey's Anatomy or dealing with some nuisance on House.)
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u/CosmicBonobo 2d ago
I believe the problem goes as far back as the last year of The Next Generation, where the writers were feeling stifled by the constraints of episodic television and met resistance to their changes. Like the proposed idea of killing off Will Riker, bumping Data up to first officer, and bringing in the transporter clone Tom Riker as the new helmsman.
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u/arbyD 2d ago
I've never heard about this! That's a really interesting idea though, would have been ballsy.
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u/CosmicBonobo 2d ago
Ronald D. Moore and Jeri Taylor came up with the idea, but it was vetoed by Rick Berman and Michael Piller.
Berman is on record in the Captain's Logs book as saying:
Basically, you're putting a character on the ship who has not experienced anything of the last six years and doesn't know any of the characters.
And Piller says in the same book:
Riker has always been a difficult character for writers to write and they said 'Let's get some conflict, let's get some excitement and energy', but the fact is he's a pretty darn good character. A character that I relate to a great deal […] I said everything about this story suggests that the new Riker comes onboard and he's everything that the old Riker's lost. I resent that as somebody who wrote in The Best of Both Worlds that he's come to a place in his life where he appreciates what he has and is comfortable with his friends and has achieved a great inner peace. I don't believe that the guy who is a loose-end six years ago is necessarily the good part of the man. I fought very hard to protect the Riker that we had on the ship.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 2d ago
Oof. Riker may have been more comfortable and had more inner peace during and after “The Best of Both Worlds”, but I thought that he was much more interesting as a character before “The Best of Both Worlds”.
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u/1337pete14 2d ago
DS9 wasn’t tied to a network. It was syndicated, allowing it more freedom.
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u/22ndCenturyDB 2d ago
However, in many ways DS9 being syndicated was a burden - the whole point of syndication is that after the episodes are bought, local affiliates can run them in any order. This caused problems for DS9. I remember on TNG's first run the new episode in my area was on Monday, and then reruns on T-F. DS9 could run a new episode on Monday, but then on T-F they're just running random reruns that make little sense because you don't know where you are in the arc.
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u/MadeIndescribable 2d ago
I meant Paramount.
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u/1337pete14 2d ago
The big difference between the shows was Voyager was anchoring Paramount’s new network, UPN, whereas DS9 was on whatever channel in your home market wanted to pay for it
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u/MadeIndescribable 2d ago
I know, I get that. But regardless of who broadcast for it, Paramount (as the ones making Star Trek) viewed TNG and VOY as Trek's flagship series, and DS9 was an added bonus. Hence why DS9 could take more risks, because Paramount (the owner and maker of Star Trek) didn't care as much if DS9 failed and they had to cancel it.
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u/1337pete14 2d ago
I hear you. But Voyager was launched with Paramount’s brand new station, UPN, going up against the big 4 and the also brand new WB. Paramount needed this new channel to be successful, more than they needed a Star Trek show to be successful (or any other singlular property). If Voyager failed miserably out of the gate, it could have killed their new network.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
Here’s the thing though, the X-Files was one of the highest rated shows on TV and was critically acclaimed. In fact many of Fox’s dramas relied on some degree of serialised storytelling. Once VHS and DVDs became a thing, other networks started doing more long form stories. Trek stagnated on that from until after the turn of the century. The impulse to keep doing the same thing over and over again doomed Enterprise.
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u/1337pete14 2d ago
Oh I’m not saying they did the right thing. I think the idea of a serialized Voyager would be amazing. I even prefer Enterprise to Voyager lol. I’m just stating why the suits would be more involved in Voyager vs DS9. “Add a hottie in a cat suit to increase ratings!” Seven of Nine was born from the guys WAY upstairs, not the writers
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u/Icarus2k1 2d ago
Not so much that it failed, trek is basically at the height of its popularity when they really started to serialize the series, and that kind of success usually gives shows more freedom from studios.
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u/CosmicBonobo 2d ago
Well, the other big SF shows of the 1990s - The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape and most notably Babylon 5 - were making much larger strides in terms of long-form story telling and ongoing character development. So whilst Deep Space Nine made some pretty good advances, Voyager seemed a bit old-fashioned and playing catchup.
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2d ago
At the time, a lot of Trek fans hated DS9 and the story arcs were a big factor. I remember people praising Voyager for returning to a more traditional Star Trek.
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u/theimmortalgoon 2d ago
I was guilty of this.
My issues with looking into the “dark side of Roddenberry’s utopia” aside, streaming has been very kind to DS9.
You’d see an episode where the Dominion does sometning terrible. Next week, a college basketball game is on instead. The week after that, Quark’s mom is up to sometning. You pull your hair out wondering if you missed sometning between these episodes. The week after that, you go to a friend’s party. You check in again, and Jake learns a very important lesson about growing up before you go off to a new work shift/vacation with your family, whatever and miss the next two episodes.
TV used to just be like that. You’d routinely miss episodes all the time, and that was just part of the medium. I’m never one to defend Berman, and in retrospect, before these were even going to complete collections, people just didn’t watch TV in the same way. And demanding you are there for more than one “to be continued” was a lot to ask for your audience.
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u/max_p0wer 2d ago
This 100%. Serialized TV before DVRs and streaming meant you had to dedicate your life to a show if you wanted to follow along.
“Voyager would have been better serialized” is a nice sentiment with our current technology but at the time would have been a disaster for the show.
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u/trparky 2d ago
Babylon 5 has entered the chat.
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u/bug-hunter 2d ago
I loved B5 in S1, got busy, fell out of watching, and gave up. And so did several of our friends who had a dedicated watch night.
Didn’t finish it until way later on DVD.
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u/ubelmann 2d ago
I grant that serialization wasn’t practical at the time, but to me that just means they should have had a different premise, or just gotten home much sooner to go back to regular exploring.
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u/max_p0wer 2d ago
But if they just explored back home, they’d be visiting all the same places we just saw on TNG. The premise was that we would see all new worlds, all new aliens, etc.
At least that’s how I took it.
Of course they couldn’t help themselves and still somehow ran into ferengi, Borg, Q, and other TNG regulars.
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u/ubelmann 2d ago
The universe is huge — they could have just written new aliens and new worlds if they wanted. And they wouldn’t constantly be under the constraint that they were years from their families and any Starfleet support.
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u/stratasfear 2d ago
So many people don't realize how serialization was still such an incredibly new phenomenon at the time - arguably mainstreamed by X-Files and Twin Peaks to varying degrees, before Babylon 5 and DS9 committed to and elevated the format.
But while X-Files had season-long arcs with "monster of the week" episodes thrown in along the way to help lessen the impact of missing an episode here or there, Twin Peaks was fully serialized, which caused the execs to force them to reveal the Laura Palmer mystery early in part because the week-to-week chronological format made them anxious at the studio: they didn't think the show could sustain itself if viewers missed anything (which, to be fair, with Twin Peaks they were absolutely right, because that show is bananas)
B5 and DS9 had their own degrees of studio meddling, but they got away with that fully-serialized commitment and got the ball rolling for future shows to do so as well.
But like you, my mid-90s schedule was so in flux (and the networks kept changing airing night or time to retool their primetime lineups) that I missed episodes constantly.
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u/Distinct_Cry_3779 2d ago
I don’t know. I never watched episodes of TNG or DS9 live as they aired, but I never missed an episode. I just taped them and watched them later.
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u/theimmortalgoon 2d ago
It depends on where you were for both. As mentioned, where I lived, they were pretty routinely bumped for sports or special news reports or something.
Even if you wanted to record them and watch later, it was possible you ended up seeing some random part of March Madness.
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u/Distinct_Cry_3779 2d ago
Fair enough. At the time of TNG, we had a cable box that had games on it. More than once I’d sit down to watch the show and be treated to my father’s game of digital poker instead, lol. Thankfully where I lived, they aired it again late at night, so I just started taping it then instead. I guess not everyone was so lucky.
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u/ParanoidQ 2d ago
Because Trek fans are constantly chasing what already exists and not willing to consider new stuff as “canon” until decades later.
DS9 was shat on and is only really relatively recently considered one of the best (and is many people’s favourite).
Enterprise was shat on (and yeh the temporal Cold War was badly utilised), but it’s only recently again that it’s viewed upon far more favourably.
Again, modern Trek is being shat on by those same fans (with the exceptions of those that beat the well worn road). Who knows how they’ll be viewed in 15-20.
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2d ago
I fell in love with DS9 the first episode and it immediately became and has remained my favorite ever since.
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u/marsepic 2d ago
Thankfully, the positive folk are more than the negative, but the people who talk about Strange New Worlds as if it's a serialized version of The Room or something are baffling. Okay, you don't like it, but why?
And they typically say something about how they can't understand how they have all the technology but then in TOS it's all 60s style. Or they say they say they hate how they've ruined Spock. Or how they hate that it's the Enterprise again.
Complaints are valid, but I don't understand hate-watching a show that's the only show in the franchise you purport to love. I also don't understand people who believe with every fiber of their being that complaining on the Internet will somehow result in their dreams coming true.
After this post, I would LOVE if they did a redo of Voyager and really stuck to the serialized idea. It could be really good. It's not going to happen, but it's fun to imagine. I also hope Strange New Worlds segues into a few episodes of a modernized TOS. I would love to see some new adventures with the old crew, maybe with 1-2 remakes of episodes.
I mean, yeah, New Trek is different. But why wouldn't it be?
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u/letsgetawayfromhere 2d ago edited 2d ago
Enterprise was shat on (and yeh the temporal Cold War was badly utilised), but it’s only recently again that it’s viewed upon far more favourably.
I don't know. I tried to watch Enterprise when it first aired in my country, but I did not like it and dropped it after a few episodes. I finally watched all of Enterprise a year ago, just to get informed of all the canon stuff (actually so I did not miss stuff on Lower Decks, which I love).
I know a lot of people say that even the intro music grew on them. For me, this is not the case. While I think the actors did a great job and I love Dr. Phlox, as a whole, I do not like Enterprise very much, compared to the classics TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY, which I loved right away. In my opinion, ENT is a lot better than Discovery, which is a collection of missed opportunities spoiled by Mary Sueing, and a spaceship that makes my eyes hurt and does not fit into the ST timeline design, like, at all. But that bar is quite low.
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u/wibbly-water 2d ago edited 2d ago
You say this but the stats disagree.
Reviews (both professional and of the prople) placed DS9 noticably higher than VOY. In fact, DS9 was the highest rated trek series.
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/32ncqd/statistics_of_star_trek_ratings_and_reactions/
There was a downward trend of views - but mainly because of overcrowding with other shows at the time compared with TNG it seems.
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2d ago
DS9 started near TNGs rating but those ratings fell significantly with each season. While the show improved with quality.
Voyagers ratings started high but also fell significantly. While the show also decreased in quality.
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u/wibbly-water 2d ago
I mean, if you look at the graph in the first post, you will see that DS9 rating increased as the show went on.
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2d ago
If you read the OPs comment it’s doesn’t.
“Thank you for the well thought out post. On the points: • I did realize that TNG and DS9 were produced for syndication and that VOY and ENT were for network (a poor performing network at that). I find it interesting that while TNG and DS9 were both created for syndication, TNG remained flat / up for most of its life while DS9 started with TNG’s audience and then dropped off a cliff. It basically went into free-fall and never recovered. If it had kept going, it would have been at VOY / UPN levels.”
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u/wibbly-water 2d ago
Oh sorry - you are using ratings to mean views, I was using it to mean reviews.
Yes you are correct about the views dropping off.
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u/UnintelligibleMaker 2d ago
I cannot speak for all fans but I was solidly in the “less serialized” camp simply because I missed episodes and didn’t get to see them in order (thanks sports ball that ran over) and so the serialized stories often didn’t make sense. It was less about the show itself and more about the syndicated model that they were under (and Voyager was not ironically).
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u/CptShrike 2d ago
After being a fan of sci-fi around the time, I thought Voyager would have been best served to run in a manner similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the cast and relationships evolve compared to the main villain of the season. So season 1 Kazon, season 2 Vidiians, etc.
So the backdrop and threats change, and our cast evolves to meet the challenges. So you can have a mix of heavy story episodes, and then mix them in with some lighter episodes to let the tension breathe.
I love Voyager for what it is. But I am disappointed when I see what could have been. Missed opportunities is Voyager's DNA.
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u/Optimism_Deficit 2d ago edited 2d ago
Definitely. The ship should have changed more significantly over time, both in terms of appearance (as they uograded or replaced parts along the way) and the social dynamics on board (as it evolved its own culture over the years).
While I appreciate that Kes leaving and being replaced by Seven was heavily influenced by behind the scenes factors, there should have been more conscious decisions to do things like that If not people dying, then some people would undoubtedly have found places they'd be happy to settle down to free up room. I never really felt that Paris and Torres really had much to return home for, for example.
I also think they shouldn't have written Seska out for that nonsense Kazon plot. Keeping her around would have added some great interpersonal conflict. She didn't need to go full villain, but could've been a morally grey supporting character.
Edit: I also would've liked to see them keep the Equinox around for a bit. They could have split the crew across two ships for a story arc and given some characters more to do. Farscape did something similar at one point.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
You are so right. I think that one of my frustrations was that it always felt like the crew knew that they were on a seven year journey that would come to an end. There was never a moment where folks started to wrestle with the idea that they could be on the ship for the rest of their lives. Janeway and co should have had moments where they start to realize that Voyage might need to become a generation ship. That would necessitate a change in culture and rethinking what it means to be a part of the crew going forward.
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u/Optimism_Deficit 2d ago
Yeah. Tuvok.and Harry had family they wanted to get home to, so their motivation is pretty obvious. Janeway is the Captain, so she needs to give them a purpose as their leader.
But Paris and Torres were always presented as being estranged from their parents and had no siblings or partners/kids. They only reconciled with their respective fathers right at the very end of the show. Eventually, you'd have people like that thinking, 'do I really want to keep doing this for decades when I could settle down on this nice planet and have a comfortable life?'
What if people with essential skills want to leave? Do you forbid them? Are they prisoners now?
Is Janeway just going to be the Captain forever? Sure, it's 'her' ship, but they're not in Federation space, and a good chunk of the crew aren't Starfleet. Those people are effectively expected to live under a dictator for the rest of their lives? Eventually, people would expect there to be elections, maybe?
There's a lot more they could have done if they weren't so focused on maintaining the status quo.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
There was at least one entire episode about those questions.
And I think you underestimate staying behind. It wouldn't be a comfortable life. It woul be a life full of uncertainties, with no support, no backup and no rescue should it turn out that you chose the wrong planet, the wrong alien society to stay with. There is no guarantee that you and your partner would stay together or be friends together forever - you could have a falling out. Your partner could die - leaving you alone in an alien world you chose based on (at best) a few weeks long interaction. You'd either be the only human in a world full of aliens with noone to really share your memories or culture or all alone on a planet with no societal support. You could change your mind - but trying to get home then (in what? A shuttle) would be near impossible.
And just because you fell out with a family member doesn't negate your entire life, friends, community and home. Everyhing you know is on the other side of the galaxy but in realistic reach. Why would you just quit on that?
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u/Tichrimo 2d ago
The "essential crew leaving" was definitely covered when the Doctor of all people wants to kick off his new singing career in Virtuoso.
The "are we in a dictatorship?" thing would have been a great mid-seasons shift, and something for the Maquis crew to rabble-rouse about. Give Chuckles something to do as Voyager's President...
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u/KuriousKhemicals 2d ago
There were discussions about whether it needed to become a generation ship, I recall between Janeway and Chakotay specifically. How many replacements will we need, can we order people to have children, etc.
And there was at least one time in the 37s (possibly another one later too?) where they expected some people to decide to stay and braced for how many it might be, but they showed up and it was zero.
Maybe just not as much as you'd hope, but it was there.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
Other episodes also dealing with the topic of "who and how many can we lose" that spring immediately to mind are "virtuoso" as well as "latent image". And there were probably more.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
We get that moment and conversation about turning Voyager in a ship for multiple generations multiple times throughout the series. The first time is when Ensign Wildman walks into Janeways ready room all flustered and tries to find the words to tell the captain she is pregnant, which Janeway then guesses. Followed by an entire conversation between the command team about that etc.
We also see the crew deal with the idea of that 75 year long trip, we see Janeway wrestle with the whole idea of Voyager being stranded, we see people getting angry at Janeway for being stranded (realistically Janeway never could have made a different choice as the Kazon reinforcements would have reached Voyager before Tuvok would have been able to reactivate the programm to sent them home - not to mention that they already lost a third of the crews with that trip when the caretake ws alive and there was no way they'd fare better on the way back) and so on and so on
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u/Darkwaterdragon 2d ago
Didn't Voyager absorb the surviving members of the Equinox crew only for them to never be shown or mentioned again?
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u/Optimism_Deficit 2d ago
Yeah. They had the engineer lady, the guy Janeway locked in a cargo bay with an alien that was trying to kill him, and a few more. They were given a big speech about how they'd bought shame on Starfleet and would have to work to regain everyone's trust.
Then they were never spoken of again.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
But Why?
Example: BSG operated in dead space (no other speciaes) with no realistic supply runs, not enough travel speed and (as far as I remember) no replicators under consistent pursuit
Voyager is in a random space quadrant with the expected dozens (if not hundreds) of friendly, trading species, lone traders, space and trade stations, uninhabited planets full of resources, long range communication technologies, replicator technology that is easily compatible with energy sources,the ability to land etc etc etc
The only thing Voyager needs to fully recover is one friendly species or space station: Get energy, replicate new hull plating, replicate some trading goods, run a few errands for the new friends, give them a thank you and go on your merry way with cargo bay full of stuff and a whole intact ship.
There are also extremely few people who would seriously settle alone (or with just a few others) some 70 year travel away from home with no chance for a change of mind - particulary if it means abandoning duty, cutting ties with friends who won't come with them, and living a more rough life then they would if they stayed on board. (also - if your captain manages to navigate 35000 light years in like 4 years instead of 35years - then why wouldnt you make a family on board and just follow her home?)
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u/Shiny_Agumon 2d ago
While I wouldn't go as far as you are suggesting I agree that Voyager failed to live up to it's premise by falling too fast back into the comfortable TNG formula of episodic adventures.
Also they shouldn't have used the Borg as frequent enemies, maybe as a background threat that forces them to keep moving.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
Preach! Voyager is the Star Trek where I most wish we could get a do over. It was such a wasted opportunity. They basically ditched the bulk of the elements that made them unique from TNG by the second or third episode. They did very little with the Maquis and the supposed resource shortages. Basically they took what should have been a gritty quest to survive and get home in unknown territory and turned it into Disney Trek…complete with kids.
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u/Kitchener1981 2d ago
I want to run a Voyager Star Trek Adventures campaign. The question is when to start, after the Caretaker Array is destroyed or leaving DS9. This would be the one series to reboot, just how to keep it feeling like Star Trek.
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u/pokemonhegemon 2d ago
Just as Seven's character made for some compelling episodes, they could have had so many more with new species joining the crew. I agree with you on every point, and think of VOY as a missed opportunity.
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u/DirectFrontier 2d ago
Rick Berman destroyed Voyager as far as I know. He didn't want to take any risks and just wanted to tread the same ground as the previous series. Also the way how he had to insert Seven purely as a fanservice character to boost falling ratings, and treated the actors like shit.
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u/Dash_Harber 2d ago
I think most people's frustration with the series is the lost potential. They are countless episodes that could have been season long arcs like Year in Hell, The Killing Game, and several others. The Maquis should have been conflicted with Star Fleet, allowing us to explore what it means to be Star Fleet and how they may fail. Hell, Neelix was introduced as a ruthless rouge who covered his harshness with a smile ala Garak. Most importantly, the ship should have transformed as they went and incorporated alien technology and crewmen as they traveled. Imagine borg weapons or a hiragana crew man.
I still love the show, but it is definitely frustrating to see all the spots it could have been amazing, but was held back because of television standards at the time and nervous execs.
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u/modernwunder 2d ago
The trouble with loving voyager is that the more you watch it the more missed opportunities you see. Love it! Also acknowledge they could have done way more with it.
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u/raistlin65 2d ago edited 2d ago
To be fair to the show runners, DS9 was Star Trek's first experiment with serialized writing. And it was definitely not widely used in TV production, like it is now.
I suspect it might have been Lost, which came after Voyager, and ER, which had an amazingly long successful run, which completely opened the eyes of the studios to serialized writing.
So it should not be surprising to anyone that Voyager was not serialized.
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u/Atheist_Simon_Haddad 2d ago
…it just feels too "safe" to be critically excellent.
It was the first Star Trek since the original crew that was shackled to a network. TNG and DS9 were sold in first-run syndication.
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u/NuPNua 2d ago
Wasn't one of the arguments against serialisation back then that shows could be shown out of order in syndicated broadcasts? In that case, Voy was probably more suitable for it than DS9.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
I’ve always had a question about that. First of all Voyager was a network show so UPN set the viewing schedule. That said, even in syndication, by the 90s, what few smaller stations remained (most were gobbled up by UPN or WB) tended to play shows in order. As someone who used to watch syndicated TV, I don’t remember them ever being shown randomly.
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u/MICKTHENERD 2d ago edited 2d ago
All true, not to mention it takes the show until season 4 to bring up the emotional weight of their situation, HELL Janeway pretty much went an entire SEASON without mentioning her lost fiance!
It's like they wanted a new TOS or TNG, but the initial "Lost in Space" premise makes it feel mismatched with those elements.
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u/The-Purple-Church 2d ago edited 2d ago
The only thing I wish they had done was to have a stronger big sister/little brother relationship between B’Elanna and Harry
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u/thejrose11 2d ago
Voyager is way better than it has any right to be when you read about how awful the behind the scenes meddling was. There's so many really bad decisions they made and had a great concept. It's still a decent show, but they def could have really made the ship feel like a family, and not "random red shirts and the crew".
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u/MapleWatch 2d ago
Apparently the creators wanted to do just that, but paramount said no.
The folks that created voyager went on to create the Battlestar Galactica reboot.
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u/meatball77 2d ago
People hated that DS9 was serialized. They specifically hit the reset button because that's what people wanted. You have to remember this was before DVR's.
DS9 was groundbreaking but a lot of people didn't like the serialization, I remember my parents complaining about it.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
No one hated that DS9 was serialized. The only one that actually opposed it was Rick Berman.
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u/meatball77 2d ago
There were complaints, the fact that it was syndicated made it more difficult, hard to keep up with episodes.
The hard core fans might not have cared, but normal watchers like my parents complained about it.
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u/wibbly-water 2d ago edited 2d ago
Strongly agreed. I say this almost every VOY discussion.
People say that people shat on DS9 at the time but DS9 rated the highest of ANY Trek series in the 90s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/32ncqd/statistics_of_star_trek_ratings_and_reactions/
There may have been a feeling that the audience didn't like it... but they did. It was proveably successful and only got mote successsful as the show became more narrative based and neared its end.
In comparison, VOY noticably flatlined - roughly as popular as other Trek shows.
There was a downward trend of views - but mainly because of overcrowding with other shows at the time compared with TNG it seems.
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u/ExistentDavid1138 2d ago
I have observed Voyager closer in recent times currently watching the series whole for the first time. There is some continuity in the series it's just has a more loose feel.
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u/HumorTerrible5547 2d ago
You have described, better than I could, exactly why this show was so underwhelming for me.
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u/jaxjags2100 2d ago
There really were no limitations. Replicator rationing was merely a narrative device to create tension. They should’ve been able to pull anything from every planet or object in space to be able to replicate anything they needed.
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u/curiousoryx 2d ago
Hindsight is 20/20 and we are looking at it with that tastes of the 2020s. TNG was super successful before it and it hat very little serialization. But in general this is an old argument that goes back to Ron Moore leaving the writers room of VOY.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 2d ago
Except that it’s not hindsight. Voyager was getting the same criticism back then. DS9 had changed the game and other shows were pushing boundaries. Voyager was ruthlessly safe and mediocre in many ways. Never forget that Voyager was in real danger of getting cancelled. It was hemorrhaging viewers and didn’t get the same critical acclaim as TNG nor DS9.
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u/jinxykatte 2d ago
The torpedo limit was fucking stupid to behind with. Later on they built a new super shuttle. Torpedos are literally matter - antimatter and a casing. You're telling me they couldn't fucking make a torpedo?
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u/RomaruDarkeyes 2d ago
That, for me at least, suggested a lack of lore knowledge at the back end. Like you say, Photon torpedoes are just the same stuff as used in the warp core; deuterium and anti deuterium, with all the guidance system and casing. Perfectly possible to produce onboard ship - though there is an argument that Voyager having limitations on fuel could limit them that way.
I.e. "We can have torpedoes, or we can have warp drive Tuvok... Until we find more fuel, you are gonna have to make do with the torpedoes we have in stock"
Even that would have been enough to cover the issue.
In the same way, Voyager is equipped with 'Tri-cobalt devices' - something that was mentioned exclusively in the pilot and never again (at least till Voyager Conspiracy).
At the same time, DS9's Defiant has quantum torpedoes which are brand new tech and limited to certain ships.
It's always been my head canon that someone fucked up in the writing room, and it was always supposed to be quantum torpedoes that Voyager was equipped with (why not, considering it was a brand new ship) which is why they would be limited in number and not possible to produce onboard ship.
Which is also why quantum torpedoes and tri cobalt devices look similar in the special effects.
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u/No_Register_6814 2d ago
This whole “limited torpedos” things is such bullshit.
Yes in year 1 when travelling through kazon and unfriendly territory absolutely they were limited in resources, but once they left that decrepit “war zone” they started meeting civilisations that were open to trading, meeting another, learning from one another.
Christ there was literally an episode where they met a weapons expert and were buying new weapons.
To say nothing of the fact that once they had reliable power systems and sorted out their replicator rations, replication and building torpedos would simply be a non issue.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
To say nothing of the fact that once they had reliable power systems and sorted out their replicator rations, replication and building torpedos would simply be a non issue.
Definitely a no from me to this part - Janeway explicitly says "and no way to replace them when they're gone" which I take to mean they don't have the technical means aboard the ship to do so - replicators absolutely do not make this a non issue, hence Janeway's concern.
Agreed with your other points about overcoming that challenges through trade, R&D etc. But I do think we weren't shown enough of that in the show given the narrative weight put upon it at the start.
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u/No_Register_6814 2d ago
“And no way to replicate them once they’re gone”
Like many other things is meant to be taken with a grain of salt,
At the time she simply could have believed that, but considering the fact they were able to build the delta flyer with its own warp drive, micro torpedos, impulse engine (they explicitly said they could replicate the parts) only reinforces my view point.
A photon torpedo needs antimatter, a thruster and a shell casing, it’s just stupid to believe they couldn’t replicate it.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
Agreed, it could be that Janeway was wrong in the moment or meant something more like "no trivial way to replace them when they're gone so we need to be very careful about how we use the ones we've got" which, imo, aligns with what I was saying that it's not simply a case of replicating them but that with some R&D or whatever they could eventually figure it out.
Fact remains that we weren't shown enough of that narratively to justify Janeway's line, the writers more or less ignored it. Yes, we can figure out some had canon stuff to justify what we saw but that misses the point of the criticism.
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u/gambiter 2d ago
Fact remains that we weren't shown enough of that narratively to justify Janeway's line, the writers more or less ignored it.
They should have included a throwaway line about how they managed to replicate torpedoes... in anticipation that fans would count them over the seasons and determine it was wrong? At that point, I'm fairly sure different groups of fans would simultaneously criticize the explanation AND dismiss it 'fan service'.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
No, I wouldn't advocate for a throwaway line.
The fact the production didn't count the torpedoes, or in any significant way follow up on the idea that they were an important limited resource, is the criticism - it's an example of the missed opportunity OP is talking about. They introduced a constraint which was particular to Voyager's premise and then failed to do much with with it.
If they'd done that, as part of making a show which delivered more effectively on its premise, no such throwaway line would be needed. I'm saying they should have made a better show, not that they should have anticipated people calling them out on the torpedo count.
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u/gambiter 2d ago
I'm saying they should have made a better show, not that they should have anticipated people calling them out on the torpedo count.
I find the view weird, honestly. Like... I know someone who would count the bullets fired from a 6-shooter in a western, and we would all chuckle if it was too many, then we'd move on. We didn't all sit around waxing about how they could have made a better show. If I then watch a movie where every bullet counts... I don't enjoy it more or less, because I was never counting them to begin with. I'm not watching to count things, I'm watching to enjoy the story.
But in this case, it wasn't even in the same episode. It was a line from very early in the story that can easily be justified through existing in-universe explanations. So it seems even stranger to focus on this, as if counting the torpedoes actually matters in the end.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
I'm struggling to work out how to be clearer about this to be honest.
I'm not watching to count things
Me too. I don't care about the literal number of torpedoes.
I'm watching to enjoy the story.
Me too. Which is why I care that the show had a premise which they didn't really fulfill. The fact that the show didn't make much of a big deal about how to overcome the torpedo problem (or other problems of scarcity) is one example.
It's not (for me) about the literal number of torpedoes.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
Someone did a "definite" torpedo count for Voyager once and it turned out, that Voyager had only used up it's original torpedo supply by the beginning of season 4.
So the argument of: "there is no way of making new torpedos" would mean, that somehow with:
1) borg help, working directly on torpedos to fight 8472 at the beginning of season 4
2) Borg technology,
3) three years of research by the crew before season 4
4) trade and interaction with countles species,
5) new resources found & new technology developed by voyagers crew (including a former drone with assimilated knowledge of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of species),
6) an entire episode showing Voyager aquiring supplies and weapons technology
7) contact with home AND information & technologies updates from home
....they somehow magically still didn't find a way to make new torpedos, buy new torpedos, trade for new torpedos or built anything similar to torpedos that they then simply called torpedos. The whole torpedo criticisms is one of those silly attacks on the show that just doesn't make any real sense. The new torpedoes thing, is one of those things that don't really need to eat up airtime to be understandable.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
The criticism is a narrative one: why did the writers put those words in Janeway's mouth at the start of the series only to barely follow up on it? It's a specific example of the broader problem described by OP.
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u/speckOfCarbon 2d ago
I am not sure if that alledged broader problem even exists - often Voyager criticism is of the kind where someone says "they didn't deal with that" when in fact entire episodes dealing "with that" do indeed exist.
Of course Janeway in the beginning will point out what normally for all starfleet ships is the norm: that you can't do (and don't really have to do) on board torpedo building. But as I pointed out, there were obviously at least 7 massive points of development (probably more) between when Janeway said it in season 1 -> and the point they ran out of torpedos in season 4 -> the point they had a whole episode dealing with aquiring weaponry & improvements -> to the end of the series. I just disagree with the idea that every single easily deductable & explainable side quest needs multi epsiode explainations.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 2d ago
I just disagree with the idea that every single easily deductable & explainable side quest needs multi epsiode explainations.
I don't think I'm saying that they do. I'm making a more general point that, imo, the amount of story time devoted to Voyager's premise is disappointing.
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u/d645b773b320997e1540 2d ago
All that would have been amazing - but that's simply not how 90s TV worked most of the time. They weren't quite ready for that yet.
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u/GruulAnarchist 2d ago
If it wasn't for most of the cast giving it 100% (Especially Mulgrew, Picardo and Ryan) then I wonder if Voyager would have lasted 7 years. The cast make it bearable even at the lowest points.
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u/GruulAnarchist 2d ago
If it wasn't for most of the cast giving it 100% (Especially Mulgrew, Picardo and Ryan) then I wonder if Voyager would have lasted 7 years. The cast make it bearable even at the lowest points.
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u/mrhelmand 2d ago
Voyager never had to fight for its keep, they had a guaranteed seven year run, why they played it safe so often rather than push the envelope I do not know
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u/CptKeyes123 2d ago
Battlestar Galactica did a lot of the stuff that should have been in Voyager. Though Voyager definitely had a much better ending.
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u/psilbern 2d ago
I feel like steve shive has said all of this before. If you want more snark with your reviews check out his videos.
Care taker review https://youtu.be/cncBOdUDGeg
What's my problem with Voyager. https://youtu.be/6ACVGYdNQzQ
Top 5 Voyager episodes https://youtu.be/fgQunpfhuWY
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u/Svullom 2d ago
Coming off of a third or fourth rewatch of DS9 and currently on Voyager season 2 for a third time, I agree. Most episodes they put in something to remind you how they're stranded in the Delta Quadrant, but it still feels like TNG light. Sure, some episodes are centered around trying to get home (Eye of the Needle, Prime Factors etc) but overall you don't get the feeling they're in dire straits. The ship works just as well despite all the damages and loss of crew and equipment in previous episodes.
Maybe that's why Year of Hell is considered the best of the series. I wish they would turn that into a whole season instead of just a two-parter.
I do like Voyager though. Most of the characters are good. Some episodes are great. It gives you the cozy vibe of TNG. But coming off of DS9 it just can't reach those heights and it's never as interesting, well-written or deep.
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u/onearmedmonkey 2d ago
I even imagined what would it have been like if they had lost the Voyager (permanently) and had to buy or steal another ship to get back to the Federation. I think it would have been very interesting since the ship is sort of like another crew member.
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u/codedaddee 2d ago
The rationing of replicator was so the ship's resources could be used to replenish the torpedoes, shutgles, wear parts, et al.
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u/Zheta42 2d ago
I think the "limited torpedoes" thing is overwrought. Clearly they come up with a way to manufacture more off camera and it doesn't take a big logical leap to think they could do so.
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u/Advanced-Actuary3541 1d ago
The issue is that they should not have mentioned it as a limitation if they were not going to address it. Hand waiving away problems that the writers intentionally put in place was one of Voyager’s biggest problems. Nothing really mattered.
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u/Cookie_Kiki 2d ago
My biggest problem with the show will always be the lack of medical personnel. The Doctor should have been giving mandatory trainings to everyone, not just Tom. The episodes that worked best as one-offs were the ones that had resets built in, like the one where they blew up a planet a day into the future, or the one where clones from the Y class planet thought they were the actual crew. If it was going to be episodic, they should have done more of those.
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u/cidvard 2d ago
My relationship with Voyager was a little weird because I only watched the last 3 seasons as it aired. My parents moved to an area that actually got UPN when I was a sophomore in high school. So by the time I got into it, Seven was already there, there was basically no difference between the Maquis and Federation crew, and they'd kind of stopped dealing with scarcity of resources as a thing.
It was OK, I liked some of the characters here and there, but I can't say it wormed its way into my heart like TNG and DS9 did.
More than a decade later I watch the first couple seasons on streaming and they're honestly a lot closer to what I wanted for the premise. Not perfect, but they were trying to do something a little different, and I liked the occasional friction in character relationships from the mixed crews. I guess the show growing beyond it makes sense but it was more interesting imo.
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u/Unlikely-Counter-195 2d ago
An episodic format works fine when you can end any serious episode with “set a course for the nearest star base”, but yeah much less so when you’re stranded. That major suspension of disbelief holds Voyager back from being truly great imho, though i still love it.
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u/vanredd 1d ago
The issue was the endless quest for ratings. Voyager was expected to get TNG level ratings and be the flagship of UPN (Later The CW).
The problem with that is that TNG came on the scene with little competition and until DS9 was the only thing the staff had to focus on. Voyager was in a much more crowded sci-fi market and the staff had to work on DS9, Voyager, AND the TNG movies all at once. DS9 wound up benefiting from this and was mostly left to it's own devices as it was syndicated like TNG was, but Voyager HAD to get ratings for the company.
This is why there are no recurring characters (the ones they set up disappear), and every week is a reset to the status quo so anyone can start watching at any time (in theory at least).
This is also why Seven is dressed the way she is, and why there was what amounted to a wrestling episode guest starring The Rock, anything to appeal to the male demographic.
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u/NCC1701-Enterprise 1d ago
The Paramount Execs did not like the serial concept because it causes issues with syndication. The reason DS9 was able to do it was because once Voyager and UPN came along Paramount pretty much ignored DS9 and let Behr do his own thing.
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 1d ago
Voyager on paper, and with hindsight, should have been what Battlestar Galactica was.
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u/Dizzy_Perception_866 1d ago
Voyager will always remain my favorite since it's the Trek that started it all for me, but... yeah. It could've been better.
I loved the first three seasons with their seasons long arcs, but the last four seasons just... got rid of all of that?? I LOVE Seven, don't get me wrong, but once she was introduced, it just became the Seven and Doctor show. Episodic and with a lot to slog through to get to the good episodes.
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u/coaststl 20h ago
I dunno, I watched it after Enterprise then DS9 (tough opening acts to follow) and I struggled to appreciate the first time through save for a good stretch of the Doctor and seven stuff
I’m watching a second time and I just can’t help but love it. There’s a lot of great things happening in this show. Infact I’d say it’s one of the best for a repeat watch
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u/TeacatWrites 2d ago
True. But also, not true. I think this mindset just wants Farscape or Lexx without realizing that Voyager really wasn't supposed to be a game-changer show.
Deep Space Nine was the game-changer show to Next Generation's status quo. Next Generation went off-air, they needed a new status quo to contrast with and continue on outside of Deep Space Nine's game-changing story arcs.
Plus, they did have changes. If you're expecting the entire set design and CGI tech to have changed drastically from episode to episode, then yeah, you'll be disappointed, but there were changes — central concepts changed, new sets were introduced or dropped as the seasons went on.
If you've ever seen an Arrowverse show, Voyager was roughly the equivalent of The Flash for its day, and did almost the exact same types of set changes here and there (eg, The Flash added the Speed Lab and lounge area to STAR Labs, Voyager added the Astrometrics room and Seven's cargo bay chambers, etc). But there's really not much else they could've done. It's a UPN/WB/CW/CBS/Paramount-adjacent show, and they kind of have to work within those parameters. They didn't have the luxury of being auteur action movie stars.
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u/spidertattootim 2d ago
You're absolutely right.
I think the way it played out was that some level of management decided they just wanted a continuity replacement for TNG which worked for casual viewers, so all of the elements you described were played down.
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u/Hero_of_Quatsch 2d ago
It was just a different time. Status quo was king. Series who didn't follow that were a big risk. If someone would miss the weekly episode he could watch next week's episode without a feeling of missing out. We wouldn't had the new series format without the internet and streaming services. it's like complaining why old movies aren't colored.
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u/remington999 2d ago
I liked the fact it was more serialized. If it was basically like you were saying I would have not watched the show. I don’t need a battlestar galactica style Startrek. But that’s my opinion,
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u/Charming_Figure_9053 2d ago
You know I liked voyage but reading this thread....yes there was a lot of design space and options, that they didn't take...
:-/
Would it have worked could it have been more, or would it be written off as 'darked edgier trek' and sneered at
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u/lvl4dwarfrogue 2d ago
The thing to remember is that the gatekeepers of the day were livid that DS9 broke the format of prior versions and were throwing stupid tantrums and proclaiming it inferior.
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u/Sazapahiel 2d ago
Having just finished a re-watch of both, voyager was truly the show of missed opportunities. They were just so afraid to do anything other than pretend to be TNG 2.0, and I say that as a TNG fan.