Somewhere in the lost archives of OMNI magazine is a picture of me on the bridge of the Defiant… (Got to visit the DS9 sets in '94!)
Followed by a punch to the junk. ;-) Respectfully, of course.
Hey, in the last season, once they knew it was over and started doing fan service episodes like the Mirror Universe two-parter, Enterprise got good…
Though the theme song can never be forgiven.
Agree completely–that’s why I made my snarky “to boldy sit where no one has sat before” comment earlier in this thread when explaining why I quit watching.
Would you mind posting that list here? I already posted a suggestion of my own, but would be interested in a different take.
I think what I like about it is the way it revels in the goofiness of it all. Other Star Treks (at least to me) seem to frequently ask you to take them seriously for this or that story, with varying results–some of those are among the best Trek stories ever if you go along for the ride, but a lot of them come off as overserious nonsense. Voyager is just so brazen about how silly a lot of the events are, how crazy some of the plot holes are, and how reliable the reset button waiting for them at the end of every episode is that I just can’t help but love it in spite of myself.
Besides that, it has arguably the best overall cast of characters of any Trek series. Most people would probably say TNG, but TNG’s characters (like everything else about it) were very, very uneven, and upon closer inspection, there’s at least one Guinan for every Picard. Voyager is a more direct comparison to DS9, cast-wise, but I think it has slightly more good characters, one of whom is the captain, which counts for a lot. Also, being in a place where The Federation is meaningless is a great change-up, because there’s a real sense of danger every time they encounter a new civilization, since they don’t necessarily outgun it by default and there’s also no massive military society around to provide backup.
Plus, how many times do they find a way back to Earth, but in the wrong time period? How can you not love that?
One of the other interesting things about Voyager is the hypocritical way the follow the prime directive, and how Voyager is percieved by other species as a result.
And yeah, like extarbags said, it’s batshit crazy! Who doesn’t love batshit crazy?
I wish I could view Voyager through that type of Lens, but although I thought it was by-and-large awful, it wasn’t awful enough to be good-in-a-bad-way or bad-in-a-good-way. It always seemed to want you to take it seriously enough not to devolve into camp, and not care enough about continuity or filling-in plot holes enough to take itself seriously.
I think most of the actors were good, but the characters were terrible. Only Seven-of-Nine had much development over the arc of the series, though I’ll grant you that The Doctor got some good episodes here and there.
Voyager also suffered from coming on-line during DS9’s heyday and nerds like myself were often watching the episodes of both on the same night – it was jarring to go from the rich stuff of DS9’s fourth season to the relative crap of Voyager’s second. For example, May 6 1996 had the pretty dark DS9 episode “For the Cause” and also Voyager’s “Tuvix”. No real comparison there.
But I think for me, the reason I disliked Voyager so much can be summed up in two words : Brannon Braga. Unlike others, I don’t think that he was a terrible show-runner, but I never really liked his “high concept” plots and writing… and he was the writer on a good quarter of the episodes. As an example “Threshold” where Tom Parris and Janeway evolve/devole into space-salamanders was one of his.
I’ve been pointing the finger of blame at him for years for Star Trek’s devolution into bland, tedious, yet preachy, mush.
I also blame him for why Terra Nova is pretty crappy. And yet I keep watching that.
Back to Voyager for a second: Even though I didn’t enjoy the show much originally, when I watched re-runs on a local TV station in Seattle that was showing them all out of order, I actually really dug the show. When taken as completely independent episodes it’s a great little show. It’s only when you start watching them in order that you get really glaring things like “hey wait a minute, 7 of 9 just basically learned this exact same lesson about humanity a few episodes ago this season!” or “I can’t believe they are having this conversation between these two characters, it’s as if Tuvix never happened!”, etc. Watching the episodes in a random order (while still preserving multiple-part episodes, of course) solves the problem of the show not caring about continuity and character growth and makes it a good weekly romp.
We are in the best timeline!
I’ve met that guy in person. What a fucking douchebag. Hit on my girlfriend right in front of me.
This is my friend’s list for the only season one eps to watch, with his notes:
Ep. 1 - “Emissary” (duh)
Ep. 7 - “Dax”
Ep. 10 - “The Nagus” (might be a bit annoying, but it’s mostly for establishing Ferengi culture and hierarchy, which play a pretty big role in the show)
Ep. 12 - “Battle Lines”
Ep. 17 - “Dramatis Personae”
Ep. 18 - “Duet”
Ep. 19 - “In the Hands of the Prophets”
Season two episodes to skip are:
Melora
Sanctuary
Armageddon Game
Hope that helps!
Or do what I do and simply read the Netflix description and skip episodes that are about Nelix (This policy officially started with Tuvix, which I only bothered to watch 10 min of).
To be fair though, I definitely skipped 15 or so episodes of TNG when I went through those, since they were simply unwatchable.
While there are certainly some real gems, Star Trek as a whole is a pretty uneven experience across the board.
Voyager would be more effective at being ridiculous and over the top if Red Dwarf hadn’t done it first, and better. (Warning: mild Red Dwarf spoilers ahead.) Eighty-five years from Earth? Please. Try three million years from Earth! And what does he say? “Turn the ship around; we’re going home!” Also, a man who never gives up on the woman he loves, even though she’s been dead for three million years. And don’t even get me started on which show had a holographic crewmember first…
THX-1138?
Wow, that can’t be real, can it? It’s terrible for so many reasons, not the least of which that is has absolutely nothing to do with the show’s premise, which is a single starship far from home. In this, Voyager is part of a huge fleet. Hell, it’s leading said fleet. Plus the fact that so much of it is recycled footage.
Also, might as well put this here. Just pre-ordered this. I can’t say no to a lit Enterprise D model that looks that good.
From what I can tell its just various clips from the show strung together, starting from the departure from DS9 to head off into parts unknown, then various scenes on its own. - Wasn’t Voyager the first Starfleet ship to be able to land on a planet? BTW That fleet at the end is probably just from the last episode where they finally reach earth.
That’s a nice model. Where’d you order it from?
Scott Bakula, the wonderful Exile episode, and of course Peter Weller near the end. Fantastic show. It modernised the franchise and threw away a lot of the chaff.
I went to a Star Trek convention as a joke with friends, and Bakula did a great job up on stage. Malcolm McDowell got a little confused and became rude and hostile. Jolene Blalock was painful to listen to not having the capability to handle herself up there, but of course easy on the eye.