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Star Trek - Voyager

Started by dr_christian_troy, October 05, 2020, 01:52:46 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

PlanktonSideburns

I like how tuvix can be read as a 'some times there are no moral choices, and yet you have to make one' situation, there's no neat solution to please everyone, which is always a tempting way to end a story

petril



that pattern on Tuvix's top always unsettled me watching the episode. proper creeped me out. the way the orchid imprinted the image of it's flower in there like that

Blumf

If Tuvix had stayed around, would he have suffered from that degenerative neural condition Tuvok has?

mothman

Yes but combined with Neelix's lolrandomness, nobody would have noticed the symptoms.

purlieu

Resolutions. Although every single beat of the story was familiar, borderline predictable, it was told with enough confidence and heart to make it compelling.

Basics, Part 1. It's taken two seasons, but finally the Crap Klingons actually provide some sort of genuine threat. A mixture of very good and tedious. Not looking forward to The Planet That Time Forgot up next.

Two seasons in, I would say I'm finding it solid but rarely exciting. There have been a few genuine standouts and a couple of stinkers, but it's mostly just 7/10 basic Star Trek ideas executed fairly well. My girlfriend's already given up, as she's more drawn to characters and there are still quite a lot of fairly two dimensional people in it at the minute.

Basics, Part 2. I enjoyed the planet stuff being the kind of story that Star Trek doesn't really do, although I could have done without the b-movie cavemen and terrible CG dinosaur. I thought the Suder plot was really good. Although with at least two more down there and a few redshirts in the past, there's barely going to be any crew left by the time they get back to the Alpha Quadrant. I'm thankful the Seska plot has resolved, even if we're still in Crap Klingon territory.

Wonderful Butternut

Spoiler:
Spoiler alert
No more Crap Klingons
[close]

Mobbd

Quite like the Basics two-partner. I remember that when it was on TV, I figured out approximately what would happen (re:
Spoiler alert
Paris, Suder and the Doctor
[close]
) in Part 2 before it aired, so I guess it was all too predictable but it was a fun ride all the same.

Genuine question: why is Voyager so weak compared to its predecessors? And please understand that I like Voyager; it just happens to be my fourth favourite Trek generation. I just can't work out what happened to make it a sort-of "TNG Lite" after the universe-expanding triumph of DS9.

People tend to say "Trek was running out of steam" but what is really meant by that? And Voyager was on-air while DS9 was still rocking pretty hard, no?

(I don't want this to become a Voyager-bashing thread after so much positivity here; I would just love to know why it is probably the fourth-best Trek despite coming hot on the heels of what was either the third, second, or best-ever Trek depending on one's point of view).

Poobum

Voyager just didn't have the characters to carry weaker plotlines. I'd lay the blame at the writing more than the actors, but Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan always lifted weak material in away that no one else could. The greater strength of the Next Gen and especially DS9 is the greater quality and dearth of secondary and tertiary characters that could do that consistently. For me anyway.

Lemming

Opinion might change after rewatching both series in full, but I don't think Voyager is weaker than the previous series. On the whole, I think it's got the edge over TNG - TNG has some incredible high points, mostly in the third and fourth seasons, which Voyager never quite matches. But Voyager is just straightforward consistent fun all the way to the end, largely getting better as it goes along, whereas TNG starts to get very rote and low-energy later on. Seasons four through six of Voyager are really high quality most of the way through with only one or two missteps. It also takes itself less seriously than TNG tends to, which is a massive bonus.

Voyager also brings up more interesting dilemmas than TNG, IMO - Tuvix is an obvious one, but there's also stuff like whether or not to kill the Vidiians to retrieve Neelix's lungs,
Spoiler alert
B'Elanna wanting to alter her baby's DNA to remove the Klingon heritage
[close]
,
Spoiler alert
what to do about the beacon that broadcasts memories of a holocaust into your mind against your will
[close]
,
Spoiler alert
what to do about the murderer who is suddenly able to feel guilt for the first time
[close]
,
Spoiler alert
whether or not it's a good idea for the EMH to remove painful memories from his mind
[close]
, stuff like that. They all tended to be explored quite organically and with varying degrees of nuance, whereas TNG has a tendency to lean towards "here's a dilemma with an obvious solution, here's a strawman to argue why the obvious solution is wrong, here's Picard telling you why you should agree with the obvious solution, okay, thanks for watching". There are some exceptions of course - Half a Life and I, Borg being the ones that spring to mind.

DS9 is one I've never quite gotten on with properly, the first four seasons are great but the Dominion War and Section 31 and all that really took me out of it. Some of it was well-written, but it just really wasn't what I like in Star Trek. Nog's gotten his leg blown off, Betazed has been nuked, Section 31 are planning a genocide, and worst of all, we've got to go to Vic's fucking bar, oh god. The relatively low-key Cardassian/Bajor situation in the early seasons was always a lot more interesting and made for much more engaging stories, I thought. Also fuck Quark, I've got nothing but total respect for Armin Shimerman but fuck I hate Quark episodes.

TOS is always the tricky one to try and place against the others. It was my favourite for years when I was a kid, and I still think stuff like The Doomsday Machine, A Taste of Armageddon, Errand of Mercy, City on the Edge of Forever etc beat the shit out of almost anything the Berman-era produced. But at the same time, it's so inconsistent, a good 30% of it is genuinely just shit, and the recurrent sexism is repulsive enough to undermine the whole show. Tough to rate.

JamesTC

Voyager was forced by the network to be purely episodic. I imagine even the mild serialised storytelling in Season 1 and 2 (which wasn't too dissimilar in style to DS9 Season 3 and 4) was too much for the network and they were forced to reign things in.

For a long time, this has been considered a mistake by the network which harmed the show but I think the success that Voyager is seeing these days on streaming platforms (often the most popular of all Treks) shows it did have a logic to it.

I just wish the success that Voyager has these days would translate into an HD upgrade but that doesn't seem like it will ever happen.

Wonderful Butternut

Quote from: Mobbd on July 25, 2021, 04:05:37 PM
Quite like the Basics two-partner. I remember that when it was on TV, I figured out approximately what would happen (re:
Spoiler alert
Paris, Suder and the Doctor
[close]
) in Part 2 before it aired, so I guess it was all too predictable but it was a fun ride all the same.

Genuine question: why is Voyager so weak compared to its predecessors? And please understand that I like Voyager; it just happens to be my fourth favourite Trek generation. I just can't work out what happened to make it a sort-of "TNG Lite" after the universe-expanding triumph of DS9.

People tend to say "Trek was running out of steam" but what is really meant by that? And Voyager was on-air while DS9 was still rocking pretty hard, no?

(I don't want this to become a Voyager-bashing thread after so much positivity here; I would just love to know why it is probably the fourth-best Trek despite coming hot on the heels of what was either the third, second, or best-ever Trek depending on one's point of view).

Since DS9 was sort of it's own thing to a degree, with it's longer arcs and more stationary setting, and ran alongside both TNG & VOY it makes sense that VOY was made into TNG's direct successor. And it doesn't work as well as TNG, because a) we've already seen TNG and b) the characters overall aren't as strong and a lot of them were left underdeveloped, imo.

I also get the impression that the writing staff were more invested in DS9, and maybe worked harder to make it what they wanted it to be, resisting things like Berman's desire to end the Dominion War in 6 episodes. Like it was their baby whilst TNG was Rodenberry's baby, and VOY was still sort of Roddenberry's baby because it was aboard a starship.

Back to Voyager, character development, to my recollection, comes in awkward lumps. You only see little snippets of Harry Kim going from a green ensign to an experienced bridge officer before suddenly he's telling Janeway he'd be a Lt. or Lt. Commander if they were still in the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway and Tuvok leaving Chakotay out of the loop their plan to have Paris leave the ship to expose Jonas should've had some follow up or consequences vis-a-vis Janeway and Chakotay's relationship. And the less said about
Spoiler alert
her carry on in Equinox
[close]
, the better. How on earth would you just quietly forget about that?

Starfleet/Maquis interaction got fuck all use too. And season 4
Spoiler alert
is the Janeway and Seven show. Most of the rest don't do that much.
[close]

Quote from: Lemming on July 25, 2021, 04:45:40 PM
TOS is always the tricky one to try and place against the others. It was my favourite for years when I was a kid, and I still think stuff like The Doomsday Machine, A Taste of Armageddon, Errand of Mercy, City on the Edge of Forever etc beat the shit out of almost anything the Berman-era produced. But at the same time, it's so inconsistent, a good 30% of it is genuinely just shit, and the recurrent sexism is repulsive enough to undermine the whole show. Tough to rate.

Agree with this, I usually leave it off to the side if I'm assessing them against each other. The good episodes are great, but there's some serious rubbish in it. Mudd's Women (oh look, slavery is legal in the 23rd century), The Alternative Factor, Spock's BRAAAAAAIINNN, Catspaw, so forth.

My favourite one is where Scotty visits the brothel planet because a woman making a mistake left him with an irrational hatred of all women and he has to go fuck his frustrations away. That's regressive even for the 60s.

purlieu

TOS is absolutely wonderful when it goes all out psychedelic and weird and attempting to be mind-blowing, but the more pedestrian episodes I really struggle with. I remember watching an episode a day and the third season was an absolute chore, checking the folder on my computer for how many episodes were left and cringing every time that it wasn't like, three or something. Some proper b-movie schlock in those later episodes.

Only being two seasons into VOY, all I can do is compare those with the first two of TNG and DS9, and interestingly, TNG comes out lowest when it comes to my episode-by-episode averages:
TNG1: 6.88
TNG2: 7.36
DS91: 7.57894737
DS92: 7.46153846
VOY1: 7.25
VOY2: 7.46153846

The first two TNGs have so many mediocre episodes in them, but they're definitely elevated by some character stuff, even in its infancy. DS9 comes top for me, almost entirely because the first two seasons feel like a sitcom. That said, 4-7 are my four highest ranked Star Trek series. TOS3 is lowest, unsurprisingly.

purlieu

Sacred Ground. Ehhhh.

False Profits. Haha, I knew exactly who that was going to be about from the title and the presence of a wormhole alone. Loved it.

Flashback. Not quite the bundle of just that Trials and Tribble-ations was, but I still really enjoyed that.

purlieu

The Chute. Christ, what a bunch of uninspired, predictable guff.

Remember. About halfway through I was almost willing to give up, it seeming like a tedious TNG retread (interesting to read that it was initially intended for TNG). Thankfully the second half redeemed it somewhat, with a decent story in there.

Lemming

Always loved the rampant homoeroticism of The Chute. I mean, it's even called "The Chute", doesn't get much more explicit than that. The implant thing that makes you go crazy is so funny, they clearly wanted to do a classic prison movie where the heroes would become frayed and unstuck over time, but they couldn't let more than a day or two elapse because this is Star Trek, so here you go, brain implant that sends you crazy. I always liked Janeway just sliding in and wide-beam stunning absolutely everyone too.

Sacred Ground is a weird one. Janeway's trust in rationality and science is tested, but ultimately vindicated, and yet the ending still tries to have it both ways by suggesting she's had her worldview seriously shaken. I could never really figure out what they were going for with that one.

purlieu

Quote from: Lemming on July 26, 2021, 11:15:40 PMI always liked Janeway just sliding in and wide-beam stunning absolutely everyone too.
Yes, she's an unlikely action hero but managed it superbly in that scene.
QuoteSacred Ground is a weird one. Janeway's trust in rationality and science is tested, but ultimately vindicated, and yet the ending still tries to have it both ways by suggesting she's had her worldview seriously shaken. I could never really figure out what they were going for with that one.
It was all so wishy-washy, trying to make multiple points but not sticking to any of them, and using a lot of pretty unoriginal ideas in the process.

The Swarm. The Doctor's story was a wonderfully emotional one, but annoyingly it meant that the titular aliens were given less screen time than they deserved. It could have been a Q Who style showdown but lacked the tension. Ultimately felt like less than the sum of its parts.

Future's End. Starring Sarah Silverman as A Nerd. There's something quite quaint about the naffness of '90s Earth-based sci-fi pre-Matrix. It's like The Voyage Home with all the charm of Stargate. I love the totally inaccurate computer stuff - a PC with more than 3TB of storage in 1996! Downloading files meaning they're deleted from their original location. There are so many continuity errors: a limo driver accelerating with doors opening followed by a shot of the car driving off with doors closed; Chronowerx and Chronowerks logos in consecutive shots. The Doctor is an absolute hoot. And good to see the Eugenics Wars plot was incorporated seamlessly into the continuity. Lovely stuff. Chakotay and Torres in the shuttle was a really lovely intimate conversation of the kind I wish Voyager had more of. I had a lot of fun watching it, but probably not in the way it was intended.

Lemming


Deanjam

Future's End is one of my favourite Treks. Everyone seems to be having a little bit more fun out and about in civvies, and Silverman & Ed Begley Jr are both terrific guest stars. I think the Voyage Home comparison is spot on, I like that for similar reasons. The Doctor's assault on the redknecks is a lot of fun "Divine intervention is unlikely." No wonder he gets the best lines, he nails them every time.

purlieu

Warlord. Started in a fairly underwhelming way, but Jennifer Lien's increasingly strong performance won me over by the end.

The Q and the Grey. Can't go wrong with a Q episode. All the usual nonsense with some really interesting continuum plotting. The civil war stuff got a bit much by the end, but overall, lovely. Suzie Plakson managed to up John Lancie in the smugness stakes.

Macrocosm. Voyager does Alien, and Janeway makes a brilliant Ripley. Lots of fun, and the kind of story that Voyager hasn't really done yet. Shame about the CG - it's something that Farscape will always have over its contemporaries.

purlieu

Fair Trade. The opening line was Neelix saying "Mr. Tuvok" instead of "Mr. Vulcan" so this episode was immediately dead to me.

Alter Ego. The final ten minutes saved this. The bulk of it was some really fucking terrible Fatal Attraction In Space bollocks, but the denouement had some great ideas and featured more character growth for Tuvok than the series has had to date.


Lemming

Amazed by how little I remember a couple of these recent ones. Warlord and Macrocosm are the only ones from your last two posts that stick in my mind, Warlord because of Lien's great chaotic evil performance and Macrocosm because it's fucking wicked.

Glancing over the episode list, there's a batch of good stuff towards the end of this season (albeit still with one or two notably shite ones to get through).

Malcy

Purlieu, are you watching these in order? Noticed since S3 that it isn't the same order I've been watching in.

Just hit S4. This and beyond is where I rewatched episodes most over the years. A lot I really enjoyed in the first 3. Episodes I had such little memory of and others from the early episodes that I've watched countless times.

I remember buying Caretaker for £13.99 on VHS and not seeing anymore until the local video shop randomly got Eye Of The Needle, one of my favourite Voyager episodes. Fuck paying that for 2 episodes regularly! I still have a box full of Trek VHS.

Wonderful Butternut

There are a good few differences between Voyager S3's production order and the order they originally aired in. idk if that causes differences in the order between different streaming services.

Purlieu seems to be watching them in production order. With the exception of Basics part 2, which was made after Flashback, False Profits and Sacred Ground, but obviously has to be watched after Basics part 1.

Malcy

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on July 30, 2021, 07:36:18 PM
There are a good few differences between Voyager S3's production order and the order they originally aired in. idk if that causes differences in the order between different streaming services.

Purlieu seems to be watching them in production order. With the exception of Basics part 2, which was made after Flashback, False Profits and Sacred Ground, but obviously has to be watched after Basics part 1.

Yeah I'm working off downloads which was the same as the Wikipedia episode guide.

Malcy

Quote from: purlieu on July 26, 2021, 10:21:44 PM

Remember. About halfway through I was almost willing to give up, it seeming like a tedious TNG retread (interesting to read that it was initially intended for TNG). Thankfully the second half redeemed it somewhat, with a decent story in there.

Funnily enough I didn't really remember 'Remember'. Was quite bored early on but it really picked up and I thought it was quite good.

I think Voyager had a missed opportunity on not building a recurring cast by having people they met along the way join the crew. Amelia Earhart, Arridor & Kol etc. Could have made an alternative version of a later episode and think it could really have added to the story. Unfortunately, I suppose the studio's need for it to be episodic for syndication restricted it a lot. You miss a few episodes and suddenly Earhart is living on the ship!

I wonder what it would have been like if Sarah Silverman had joined permanently like planned.

purlieu

Quote from: Malcy on July 30, 2021, 07:22:04 PM
Purlieu, are you watching these in order? Noticed since S3 that it isn't the same order I've been watching in.
I'm using the Star Trek Chronology Project. Was originally planning to actually interlink TNG, DS9 and VOY, but decided against it as it might have been a bit much for my partner. Next time I do a run through in a few years I'll probably try and follow that entire thing, though.

Malcy

Quote from: purlieu on July 30, 2021, 09:38:15 PM
I'm using the Star Trek Chronology Project. Was originally planning to actually interlink TNG, DS9 and VOY, but decided against it as it might have been a bit much for my partner. Next time I do a run through in a few years I'll probably try and follow that entire thing, though.

Ah yeah I forgot you were using that.

purlieu

Coda. Ah, I love a story that keeps you second guessing all the way through. Nicely twisty turny, although I do question how easily Janeway accepted the afterlife idea.

Blood Fever. The violent horniness was always my least favourite aspect of Vulcan culture, so this really didn't do much for me. I enjoyed the much needed development of Paris and Torres's chemistry, and Paris as a character in general, but otherwise a lot of meh. Nice cliffhanger though.

Unity. Kind of wish there was more of a gap between the last episode and this, would have made it less contrived. Anyway, that's the most interesting Borg episode since The Best of Both Worlds, really good stuff.

Lemming

Two great episodes in Coda and Unity, and one decent one in Blood Fever.

Agree with you about pon farr, I never liked the concept either. Amok Time in general just doesn't make any sense to me, and it's got a lot to answer for. Vulcans, the logic pacifist people, can force each other to fight to the death with bladed weapons just to cancel their marriages? Yeah right. I like that Blood Fever is basically a story about consent, which, despite its flaws, is probably the most interesting thing that can really be done with the idea of pon farr.

Glad to hear you liked Unity. Voyager has by far the most interesting development of the Borg IMO, since they're mainly treated like a life-destroying cult, which you often get to see the human(oid) cost of. When Seven shows up later, there one or two really outstanding Borg episodes featuring her.

purlieu

Darkling. Great performance by Robert Picardo, but eh, it's just
Spoiler alert
Jekyll & Hyde in Space
[close]
. I find any tale that tries to philosophise by breaking things down to fairly black and white good vs. evil really tiresome.