@lefthandedguitarist I would love to watch that alternate version of Voyager, though I have to imagine with the middling execution, it still wouldn't have solved the show's many problems. BSG is absolutely the show Voyager should have been.
That said, full disclosure, I totally liked Neelix when I watched the show as a kid (and even cheered a bit when Ethan Philips showed up briefly in Inside Llewyn Davis).
@andrewbloom Agreed, given the writing staff involved it probably wouldn't have fixed many problems, but it would have at least addressed some of the deep flaws that the show was born with.
@lefthandedguitarist Be sure to check out the one 'deep flaw' this show did dodge -- the expressionless depiction of Capt. Janeway by Genevieve Bujold: https://youtu.be/8SIZcDWKyw0
@abstractals That's painful to watch! She was clearly deeply uncomfortable with the role.
@lefthandedguitarist Bujold has always been an enigma to me. Some of her affect comes from her French-Canadianness, but she always seems somewhat out of phase. Even her role in Cronenberg's 'Dead Ringers' is slightly... off. Which kind of fits that film, now I think about it.
Review by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2017-09-07T13:16:42Z— updated 2017-09-09T10:18:37Z
Ah, Voyager.
I set myself a task of watching through the Star Trek franchise in chronological order, using the Star Trek Chronology Project as a guide. Since there is so much of it, I figured I would reach a point where I would struggle. So far, so good, but now I have to begin Star Trek: Voyager and from the off I'm feeling despondent.
I just don't like this show. It had a great concept - a Starfleet vessel lost on the other side of the galaxy, trying to get home - but was consistently a let down in every way. The potential was squandered at every opportunity, the writing always weak (especially compared to the incredible stuff happening on DS9 at the same time) and the characters incredibly bland. There was no sense of continuity or struggle. Do I even need to mention the heavy use of the reset button at the end of each episode?
I've never been able to get all the way through it before. When it was originally airing I stayed with it up until season 4 or maybe 5, then lost interest. I tuned in for the finale and don't remember much about it other than being underwhelmed. But I'm going to give it another chance here and see if I can make it all the way through.
'Caretaker' is a pretty weak beginning to the series. It sets up the initial concept and immediately makes everything feel very safe and ordered. Fortunately, it does have a pretty good cast but many of these good actors are given terrible characters to play. Captain Janeway is good, embodying many of the noble traits we'd expect of someone in charge and having a likeable command style. The holographic doctor is fun from the first moment we meet him. That's pretty much where the good stuff ends.
The characters we meet here are, more or less, exactly the same people they are going to be at the end of the show. Harry Kim will forever feel like an inexperienced kid on his first mission, Paris will attempt to be a cocky bad boy and never pull it off, Tuvok is a Vulcan and that's it, and Chakotay is pretty much the blandest man you'll ever meet. Torres has a bit of spark in her and will hopefully make her mark, but then there's Neelix who will remain the most annoying character ever to grace Star Trek. I guess Kes is there, too.
From the moment the crew are transported to the awful "farm" sequence on board the array, the episode just begins to fall flat and sit comfortably among the most basic of Star Trek tropes. All of the danger is manufactured and the aliens have uninspired designs. The Ocampa especially suck. There's a requisite scene where a rickety staircase begins to collapse. It's wrong to just blame everyone working on the show for these problems, by this point the franchise had done so much and it was following immediately on the heels of TNG, and they wanted to draw in fans of that series and let them feel some sense of familiarity. By the end of the episode we get a completely unbelievable situation as the renegade Maquis terrorists join the Starfleet crew, put on the uniforms and live happily together. Janeway makes Chakotay the bloody first officer... it's insane.
I read a fantastic idea online somewhere: the first season of this should have been about the original Voyager crew hunting down Chakotay and his Maquis crew. We would have gotten to know him as a villain and formed an attachment to everyone. Then, towards the end of the season, the Voyager crew who died here are killed and THEN Chakotay et al are forced through circumstances to join together. How much better, and so much more powerful, would that have been?
I will say one thing, though: the show has a gorgeous title sequence and theme tune.