[ozark1]

25 messages in on a thread about Voyager - and noone has mentioned the abomination that is the Holodeck. Remember Fair Haven, Nazi occupied France, Beowulf, Leonardo da Vinci and more Fair Haven.

[Margo Channing]

I liked it. The only episodes I didn't really care for where Chakotay centric episodes.

[Duncan_Styles]

Oh yeah, the holodeck episodes....Theres a problem with the holodeck but we cant just switch it off as the episode will be over and we need to drag it out to 45 mins.

Did nobody on that show think we wouldnt realise that Fair Haven and Nazi occupied France were the same places.

[Tiexen]

Originally Posted by LaurelandHardy

Fireball XL5 was my first Sci-Fi show so think yourself lucky!

Cracking opening sequence though

Dan Da Dah!


http://youtu.be/pi6JruBYSYQ

[DariaM]

The presence of Harry Kim within Voyager was as superfluous as Jonathon Frakes and Will Wheaton within ST TNG, and the crazy thing is that Kim was killed off within one edition (Season 2) but brought back within the same episode.

Sadly, Rick Berman was never the most innovative of hams associated with the Star Trek Franchise.

[Margo Channing]

Originally Posted by DariaM

The presence of Harry Kim within Voyager was as superfluous as Jonathon Frakes and Will Wheaton within ST TNG, and the crazy thing is that Kim was killed off within one edition (Season 2) but brought back within the same episode.

Sadly, Rick Berman was never the most innovative of hams associated with the Star Trek Franchise.

Poor Harry. 7 years on a ship and he was still only an Ensign.

Not sure how true this story is but I heard that gareth wang the actor that plays harry was supposed to be killed off in season 2 due to his reputation for being late on set etc but then people magazine had them in their '50 most beautiful people' list so the axe fell on Kes instead much to the behest of Jane Mulgrew & Robert Picardo.

[Margo Channing]

I do have a soft spot for Voyager & I always will. I won't even try to defend it as well whats the point? If you don't like the show then there really is no point in trying to convince you otherwise.

I respect other posters opinions of course but I did enjoy the show in spite of some god awful episodes but there are & I'm sure other fans will agree here some really knock out episodes as well.

[Chickens hit]

Originally Posted by Margo Channing

Poor Harry. 7 years on a ship and he was still only an Ensign.

Not sure how true this story is but I heard that gareth wang the actor that plays harry was supposed to be killed off in season 2 due to his reputation for being late on set etc but then people magazine had them in their '50 most beautiful people' list so the axe fell on Kes instead much to the behest of Jane Mulgrew & Robert Picardo.

I've not heard that before, but I do remember that Garret Wang was suspended due to his lateness at one point and doesn't make an appearance in one of the episodes, although I can't remember which episode it was.

Voyager had so much potential but it was just never fulfilled sadly.

[Chickens hit]

Originally Posted by Margo Channing

I do have a soft spot for Voyager & I always will. I won't even try to defend it as well whats the point? If you don't like the show then there really is no point in trying to convince you otherwise.

I respect other posters opinions of course but I did enjoy the show in spite of some god awful episodes but there are & I'm sure other fans will agree here some really knock out episodes as well.

I agree.......Year Of Hell is almost great, it's the reset at the end that gets my goat, especially considering that the plan was supposedly for the damage to Voyager to remain and become part of the crew's struggle for the remainder of Season 4, but TPTB put the kibosh on that one so we were back to the brand spanking new straight out of the dishwasher ship by story's end.

Prey would have to be my personal fave along with Timeless and Someone To Watch Over Me.

[Duncan_Styles]

I was under the impression that Kim was kept as an Ensign to be the everyman on the bridge.

[Gordie1]

Originally Posted by Duncan_Styles

I was under the impression that Kim was kept as an Ensign to be the everyman on the bridge.

Surely pretty much everyone on the ship would remain in their current rank excluding where someone of senior rank dies?
Otherwise everyone would end up being Lt, Lt commander, or even captain.

you cant have the entire staff all being on equal footing, no one could make a decision.

[Margo Channing]

Originally Posted by Chickens hit

I agree.......Year Of Hell is almost great, it's the reset at the end that gets my goat, especially considering that the plan was supposedly for the damage to Voyager to remain and become part of the crew's struggle for the remainder of Season 4, but TPTB put the kibosh on that one so we were back to the brand spanking new straight out of the dishwasher ship by story's end.

Prey would have to be my personal fave along with Timeless and Someone To Watch Over Me.

My faves would be:

Jetrel, Meld, Death Wish, Deadlock, Tuvix, Flashback, Futures End, Coda, Before & After, Scorpion, Revulsion, Mortal Coil, Message In A Bottle, Prey, Retrospect, The Omega Directive, Living Witness, One, Timeless, Infinite Regress, Latent Image, Bliss, Dark Frontier, Someone To Watch Over Me, 11:59, Relativity, Equinox, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Virtuoso, Fury, Body & Soul, Homestead.

Yeah I've been watching it too much

Originally Posted by Duncan_Styles

I was under the impression that Kim was kept as an Ensign to be the everyman on the bridge.

That would explain it

[Listentome]

Originally Posted by LaurelandHardy

I actually loved Voyager, it is my favourite Star trek series.
With the exception of one stupid episode where Paris and Janeway went faster than Warp 10 (?) and turned into Lizards! Plus the final episode was a bit of a let-down.
Apart from those two episodes I really enjoyed Voyager and would watch the whole series over again any time.

The turning into lizards was bad, but Bride of Chaotica has to be the worst episode of any part of the Star Trek franchise.

I enjoyed Voyager despite having my eyes open to its faults and on rewatching some of the moralising is so in your face. But I think it's fair to say all versions of Trek have some really crap stories, it's just they had better characters to get away with it.

[Margo Channing]

Originally Posted by Listentome

The turning into lizards was bad, but Bride of Chaotica has to be the worst episode of any part of the Star Trek franchise.

I enjoyed Voyager despite having my eyes open to its faults and on rewatching some of the moralising is so in your face. But I think it's fair to say all versions of Trek have some really crap stories, it's just they had better characters to get away with it.

I thought Bride Of Chaotica was a funny episode, especially Janeway camping it up big time as Arachnia.

It just looks like they had a lot of fun making that episode

[PencilBreath]

I think the OP's a tad harsh, it wasn't that bad. It did last for 7 seasons after all so it must have had some viewers.

I liked some of the episodes, blink of an eye, haunting of deck 12, scorpion etc. There were a few hidden gems but TNG was better.

Chakotay was like Riker, I think they are deliberately understated so they don't steal the limelight from the captains.

6/10.

[RebelScum]

Surely pretty much everyone on the ship would remain in their current rank excluding where someone of senior rank dies?
Otherwise everyone would end up being Lt, Lt commander, or even captain.

you cant have the entire staff all being on equal footing, no one could make a decision.

It's Voyager so I cant get too excited about it, but as a general point, there's a good argument for the occasional promotion. It would have remind them that despite being light years away from home, they were still part of a larger structured organisation. A promotion now and then would have reinforced the connection to that organisation - to home. Morale and motivation were just about as important as food (...although coffee beans toped the list of priorities of course)

[Blackhorse47]

Originally Posted by Margo Channing

Not sure how true this story is but I heard that gareth wang the actor that plays harry was supposed to be killed off in season 2 due to his reputation for being late on set etc but then people magazine had them in their '50 most beautiful people' list so the axe fell on Kes instead much to the behest of Jane Mulgrew & Robert Picardo.

I don't think the full story has ever been revealed, but that sounds like a mixture of two stories. I think Wang did get a warning early on in the series, but he was due to get sacked purely because he was an awful actor, although he was of course right at home playing against the likes of Kes and Janeway. There's even the episode that shows what might have been where he's killed off by species 8472 at the end of season 3. He was supposed to die leaving room for 7 of 9, but then he appeared in a magazine as a face of tomorrow and in a poor decision they chucked Kes instead, just as she was starting to become an interesting character rather than being Neelix's somewhat dodgy very young love interest.

It's that sort of thing that irritates me about Voyager. The makers appear as if they were trying to make a bad series and every time it threatened to be interesting they insulted viewers by steering it towards nonsense. Nobody had a real character; they just did what the plot told them to do. Every time an interesting supporting character appeared, such as the other vulcan, or Brad Dourif, or Seska, or that bloke down in engineering who I'm sure got killed but then appeared in the final series to get killed again, they just get marginalised or forgotten about. Even potentially good things like the whole Barclay and Troi joining forces to get them home is a waste of time as they got home another way. The year of hell as mentioned drops a hint of what could have been as does the one with the Equinox, where they find a ship that's abandoned Federation principles to survive. I think if they'd filmed the adventures of that Equinox instead, it'd been a good series.

My favourite episodes usually involved the Doctor, such as the one where he's an author. The worst one has to be the one where Neelix is killed, lies dead for a week, and then 7 of 9 casually brings him back to life with a nanobot, which they then conveniently forget about whenever anyone else dies. Or perhaps it's the one where everyone casually volunteers to get assimilated in a cunning plan to fool the Borg, ignoring that being assimilated is the worst thing imaginable. Or perhaps it is the fact you turn into a lizard if you go over Warp 10, or Fair Haven, or the one where Chakotay is a boxer... There's just too many to choose from!

The contempt they had for viewers is perhaps summed up by the shoehorning in of the Chakotay and 7 of 9 romance at the end purely because the actor dared the producers to do it. The only interesting thing about the whole series was I read recently that Janeway and 7 of 9 (forgotten the actresses' names) hated each other and spent every scene either feuding or not speaking to each other. I gather plenty of the other actors have admitted that the series was the worst environment they've ever worked in, unlike the other Trek series where eveyone usually looks back fondly on their time and what their character got to do.

[Bester]

Originally Posted by Chickens hit

I agree.......Year Of Hell is almost great, it's the reset at the end that gets my goat, especially considering that the plan was supposedly for the damage to Voyager to remain and become part of the crew's struggle for the remainder of Season 4, but TPTB put the kibosh on that one so we were back to the brand spanking new straight out of the dishwasher ship by story's end.

Yeah, you can thank Jeri Taylor for that one. Braga, in one of his rare flashes of brilliance pitched the Year of Hell storyline as being a season-spanning arc - much like the Xindi arc in Enterprise was. Jeri Taylor didn't like the idea of such a dark theme and tone permeating the whole season though so argued to the contrary, and won.

[srhDS]

Yet another Voyager bashing thread

It was poor, but I did make it all the way through to the (even poorer) end which is more than I did with Andromeda.
Although I'm considering going back and finishing that purely due to a lack of sci fi on telly these days.

Pity Enterprise didn't get another year or two to show its potential. None of the Trek were that good in the first two or three seasons and they all improved in season 3 or 4 (even Voyager got better).
Voyager is the weakest Trek but like how even bad pizza is good, even bad Trek is ok tv...

[Margo Channing]

Originally Posted by Blackhorse47

I don't think the full story has ever been revealed, but that sounds like a mixture of two stories. I think Wang did get a warning early on in the series, but he was due to get sacked purely because he was an awful actor, although he was of course right at home playing against the likes of Kes and Janeway. There's even the episode that shows what might have been where he's killed off by species 8472 at the end of season 3. He was supposed to die leaving room for 7 of 9, but then he appeared in a magazine as a face of tomorrow and in a poor decision they chucked Kes instead, just as she was starting to become an interesting character rather than being Neelix's somewhat dodgy very young love interest.

It's that sort of thing that irritates me about Voyager. The makers appear as if they were trying to make a bad series and every time it threatened to be interesting they insulted viewers by steering it towards nonsense. Nobody had a real character; they just did what the plot told them to do. Every time an interesting supporting character appeared, such as the other vulcan, or Brad Dourif, or Seska, or that bloke down in engineering who I'm sure got killed but then appeared in the final series to get killed again, they just get marginalised or forgotten about. Even potentially good things like the whole Barclay and Troi joining forces to get them home is a waste of time as they got home another way. The year of hell as mentioned drops a hint of what could have been as does the one with the Equinox, where they find a ship that's abandoned Federation principles to survive. I think if they'd filmed the adventures of that Equinox instead, it'd been a good series.

My favourite episodes usually involved the Doctor, such as the one where he's an author. The worst one has to be the one where Neelix is killed, lies dead for a week, and then 7 of 9 casually brings him back to life with a nanobot, which they then conveniently forget about whenever anyone else dies. Or perhaps it's the one where everyone casually volunteers to get assimilated in a cunning plan to fool the Borg, ignoring that being assimilated is the worst thing imaginable. Or perhaps it is the fact you turn into a lizard if you go over Warp 10, or Fair Haven, or the one where Chakotay is a boxer... There's just too many to choose from!

The contempt they had for viewers is perhaps summed up by the shoehorning in of the Chakotay and 7 of 9 romance at the end purely because the actor dared the producers to do it. The only interesting thing about the whole series was I read recently that Janeway and 7 of 9 (forgotten the actresses' names) hated each other and spent every scene either feuding or not speaking to each other. I gather plenty of the other actors have admitted that the series was the worst environment they've ever worked in, unlike the other Trek series where eveyone usually looks back fondly on their time and what their character got to do.

Yeah I heard that when Jeri Ryan (7of9) joined she arrived to a frosty reception which I can understand to an extent as it would have been tough for anyone to come into an established show on the heels of someone who had just been sacked.

Kate Mulgrew is always happy to talk about Star Trek & appreciates the fans etc. From what I know of her I doubt she'd drop to the level of bitchy comments on set.

[farscape]

Originally Posted by starsailor

Which was a) pointless, and b) cool for about 5 seconds.

Never mentioned on the show itself but the series Bible did have a point to the foldy nacelles. That they had some technobabble device which didn't destroy subspace as one of the later TNG episodes decided in an ill concieved pollution parable but this meant they could go to full warp with no harmful side effects.

Originally Posted by soulboy77

- The fact that a particular enemy could turn up again in a future episode, seeing that Voyager had in the meantime travelled at warp speed, on a straightish course towards home, seemed improbable.
- How the ship could receive massive damage and be repaired good as new, contradicted the resources they had at hand.
- As mentioned in a previous post, the Borg suddenly became pussies compared to the Borg in TNG. How come?

These were problems. Particularly as writers would forget the big jumps they had like Kes's 10,000 lightyear gift and so on and yet still see the same species cropping up when it's unlikely the had empires spanning so much space. Equinix part 2 was the worst offender with the finding a ship with Ankari which were supposed to be 10,000 lightyears away not to mention the Hirogen showing up in the last season.

I can imagine that reprairing ship damage isn't too interesting and they felt it was better left off screen but ironicaly Enterprise walked that tightrope fairly well and even made a good story out of more than once as did BSG and SGU.

I still stand by Scorpion to be one of the best depictions of the Borg in all of Trek but after that it all went to hell. Overuse of the Borg was a major problem but even then a single shuttle against a Borg fleet in Dark Frontier takes this piss.

- Having the annoying Nelix character in the series....why?

Confession time. I like Neelix. He started off annoying in the early episodes but it was Jetrel that turned him around for me and I thought he was became well defined as a character generaly put to good use throughout and most episodes that focused on him were good. I'd look forward to a Neelix episode much more than I'd look forward to a Chakotay or Kim episode.

Originally Posted by starsailor

One of the problems with any Star Trek is that the drama is always focused on the main bridge 'senior' crew. Lower ranking crew members are only there to either 1) be killed, or 2) be a 'special guest' for that episode.

Recent Sci-fi dramas have broken that down a bit, like BSG and Stargate Universe, where lower ranking individuals get their fair share as well.

TNG's Lower Decks which and SG-1's The Other Guys to name a few that did it before Voyager.

Originally Posted by Blackhorse47

There's even the episode that shows what might have been where he's killed off by species 8472 at the end of season 3. He was supposed to die leaving room for 7 of 9, but then he appeared in a magazine as a face of tomorrow and in a poor decision they chucked Kes instead, just as she was starting to become an interesting character rather than being Neelix's somewhat dodgy very young love interest.

It was People Magazines 50 most Beatiful People list which saved Garrett Wang as they thought young girls would like him.

Then again Star Trek has weird ideas of male heart throbs. William Shatner, Jonathan Frakes? Maybe the fact I'm not a woman or gay I don't get it but these don't strike me as eye candy males.

[Margo Channing]

I agree. It was also the Jetrel episode that made me start liking Neelix as a character.

Especially for that scene where Janeway is asking him what happened and he starts to break down.

[Big Boy Barry]

Awful show, that had an occasionally decent episode, but nothing that wasn't done better on TOS, TNG and DS9.

Could have been an deconstruction of Federation principles and a dark and complex show, but instead if was cookie-cutter "Starfleet is always awesome" material. Way too many problems solved by technobabble, usually by re-routing the phase compensator through the secondary bypass via the deflector control blah blah blah....Not to mention the ship being supposedly alone with no support on the other side of the galaxy yet appearing absolutely pristine in virtually every single episode.

Characters were largely abysmal. Janeway was a disaster. Pointlessly stranded them in the Delta Quadrant in the first instance, merely because she liked the Ocampa pixies. Never mind that silly Prime Directive right? Chakotay may as well have been a wooden stump. All the Maquis were treated like crap. Chakotay was a wimp. Torres was a Worf re-hash and seemed to have permanent PMS. Seska was evil. Jonas was evil. Suder was insane. The rest of Chakotay's crew (who miraculously managed to fit inside his tiny Maquis ship) were inept losers. Thankfully DS9 and TNG depicted the Maquis as being more capable.

Tuvok was a crap Spock rehash. Kes was boring and pointless. Neelix was obnoxious and clownish. Tom and the EMH were the only good characters. Harry Kim barely qualified as a character, and Seven of Nine was Paramount's way of admitting "this show is crap, so here's some tits to look at".

[Duncan_Styles]

Whenever Voyager goes to warp it raises its nacelles which begs the question why not just leave the bloody things up? Its not for protection as they are just as exposed down as they are up, its not for flight control as the shape of the ship makes no difference in space. Still, it was a cool feature as was the ability to park up on a planet. It was always fun to see the ship on the surface with people walking around, gave it some size.

One issue I did think of was where the heck did they store all their shuttles? Whenever you saw one launched from the shuttle bay (there is only 1 so far as I know) I would think, where are the other shuttles?

I liked Neelix, he was the light relief of the show I suppose but that made it more dramatic when he was involved in something ...errr..dramatic, kind of miffed that he didn't get to see Earth. I wasn't so keen on little miss goody goody Kes, I got the impression that she would skip around telling tales on people to get them into trouble.

[varsas]

Originally Posted by Gulftastic

The ignoring of this aspect was the biggest wasted chance of the show.

It's a shame that the show was made when it was. If it had come after Battlestar had shown that gritty sci-fi was allowed, it could have been an epic tale. They'd have had to have the courage to kill people off every so often, and the conflict between the Maquis and the Federation crew members should have been ramped up, with at least one mutiny occurring. As it was, they arrived back home in pretty much the same state they left, with little or no effects of 7 years in unknown space. It was all too squeaky clean.

Indeed, this was the main reason I started watching it at the time; I stopped renting the episodes (no Sky) soon after 7 joined the crew and have only watched the some of the episodes for the later seasons.

Originally Posted by Chickens hit

I agree.......Year Of Hell is almost great, it's the reset at the end that gets my goat, especially considering that the plan was supposedly for the damage to Voyager to remain and become part of the crew's struggle for the remainder of Season 4, but TPTB put the kibosh on that one so we were back to the brand spanking new straight out of the dishwasher ship by story's end.

Prey would have to be my personal fave along with Timeless and Someone To Watch Over Me.

Year of Hell gave us a hint of what Voyager could have been; the fact that they were on their own without anyway to easily repair a ship that was not designed for long missions should have played more into the series, as should hostile races and empires. They made enemies in the series but they weren't a persistent enough threat.

The fact the Voyager didn't fulfil the initial promise is one reason I like Stargate Universe; it generally played on the idea of being alone in the vast universe very well.