Topic: Star Trek: Voyager. Series Review.

[Khushrenada]

Well, even though my Futurama Review Project didn't quite pan out as expected, what the heck, I'll try something like this again and see how far I get.

Why? 

Recently, I just finished watching Deep Space Nine a couple weekends ago on July 1. It was a long journey of 176(!!!) episodes over the course of 4 - 5 months. I had some breaks in it and watched other stuff from time to time but overall, it was an interesting journey with a Trek show quite different from the others. I may do a similar run through of that show in a separate thread despite making a bunch of comments on it in the TV review thread already. For now, I'd like to try tackle something while it is still fresh from my viewing experiences.

I made the comment in the TV review thead that DS9 "has got me fired about Trek again that [I'm] thinking about watching Voyager again and finally going through that series to get more of my Trek fix." Now, it wasn't really my intention to start watching this series. I've never had a high opinion of it but the idea of maybe just watching a couple random episodes of it to remind me what the flavor of the series was like again as a comparison to all the DS9 might be interesting but I had no definite plans to watch it. However, when I stopped in at my local library (literacy, bitch!) to browse through the selection, I was surprised to see Season 1 of Star Trek Voyager on the shelf. I had seen Season 4 of it at one time as I was stopping by to borrow the DS9 series but I often forgot they even had the Voyager stuff because it is hardly ever on the shelf. (I think it goes to other branches mainly.) I wondered if I really wanted to bother taking it out or trying to start watch the series all the way through like DS9. It just seemed like such a favorable coincidence that a few days after finishing DS9, Season 1 would be waiting for me that I decided to at least watch some of the first season again. (Who knows? Maybe I'm following some other library users trail who is always a season ahead of me as they return the season they just watched to move on to the next, it is perfect timing for me to then pick up that season they've dropped off.)

As I was watching DS9, I got curious about some of the people on it and some Trek lore which invariably lead me to Voyager articles on Wikipedia. It was actually reading the main page entry of Voyager that got me interested in giving the series a 3rd chance. (More on that in a moment.) Especially when skimming through the summery and then reading some of the plot elements like Getting Home and Body Count. It got me thinking of how the show had a really great premise/narrative hook. My curiosity of watching the show again for these elements helped sway me in checking out this show once more.

[Khushrenada]

First Contact / Initial Reception of the Show

My history of this show is one where I remember watching the occasional episode of it here and there on a Saturday afternoon. (Alongside other tremendous contributions to the TV medium like Sinbad the Sailor, Viper or V.I.P. which would air around that time, IIRC.) However, Next Generation was the Trek series I'd see more of because a local station would air an episode late afternoon every weekday like 5 or 6 pm. As such, my view early on was that Voyager just seemed a bit off / weird because the characters were different from the TNG ones who stood out more / were instantly memorable.

Even in to high school, I remember sometimes watching a new Voyager episode when it aired here and there if there was much else on in the evening but among some of my geekier friends in Electronics class, we often dismissed the show as just not being as good as the entries that came before. Even for a lot of episodes I never watched, I'd hear them talk about the latest dumb thing that had happened like Tom Paris surfing some galactic wave which would make laugh at how stupid it sounded. (If I really do follow through on watching this whole series now, I am kind of looking forward to seeing this surfing episode after having just imagined it for all this time and, almost 20 years later, finally seeing what it is actually like.)

I had a spare period and I'd often go to the library to read the newspaper (or other books, I was such a wild guy in high school!). It was actually from reading the paper and the sports section that pushed me over the edge and started making me a hockey fan and begin watching hockey games in the playoffs so it goes to show what can happen when you start to inform yourself on things but that's a whole other story. I bring up this factoid because I remember reading something in the entertainment section one time talking about Voyager as it was getting near the end of its run and there was a comment in an article that there were only two main reasons for anyone to watch Voyager and they were both on Jeri Ryan's chest.

That comment stuck with me at the time and still does because I kind of agreed with it. Not being a huge fan of the show and characters, Jeri Ryan really was a big force in why'd I even bother to watch it at the time. At least she played a former Borg member which made her kind of cool since I still thought the Borg were the best but it also led to me disliking Voyager even more because the show seemed to ruin the Borg mythos that TNG had created. As such, I'm kind of curious as to whether I'd still agree with my 18 year old hot take of the series treatment of the Borg or not. I remember watching the finale of the show when it aired and being so upset at the state of the Borg in the end. At the same time, coming into this and knowing how the show will end keeps my expectations in check and from creating scenarios of what might play out instead like I was doing at times when watching DS9 and wondering where it was all headed.

[Khushrenada]

Latent Interest

At some point in the early 2000's, like 2002 - 2004, when the internet was full of fan sites thanks to Geocities, I use to look up various TV shows I'd start to get into or were into and read all the episode guides for them and other people's ratings/rankings of them. If I saw episode descriptions that looked neat, couldn't remember or an episode I'd missed, I'd check for that show on satellite TV and look ahead on the guide to see what order a channel was airing the episodes and make sure to wait and mark down when it would air so I could record it later. When I got into something like a new TV show or movie or game, I used to obsess over it so much back then.

This led to me going through Next Generation and realizing there was stuff I didn't remember or hadn't seen. At this point, the Space Channel was now in existence and Star Trek series was its main bread and butter. I wanted to see that series completely and was now able to pick up on more details and things I had missed or half-remembered when watching the series as a kid playing at the same time it was on so I wasn't fully paying attention. I also checked out some Voyager sites and guides because I was now curious what it had to offer and there were episodes I read about that sounded really great and amazing.

The one thing that stood out back then was that there were aliens even more powerful than the Borg called Species 7482 (or something like that). I know there was other stuff that also sounded neat at the time but that was the detail that most set my imagination on fire. So, from time to time, I'd check out the upcoming Voyager episodes on the Guide menu to keep an eye for when some of these episodes might air and would watch them. At some point, I did finally see the episode introducing this species but all I remember of it is a green lizard thing coming through some breach in a wall and the camera zooming up to it's eye where you see a reflection of the crew staring at it. I've been trying to rack my brain as to what else happened but I just can't remember anything else. I just know that I ended up not being as impressed at the reality compared to my imagined expectations.

Again, the idea of watching Voyager now to get another take on what it has to offer with better context, like I gave Next Generation by watching it with more attention to details all the way through, does intrigue me. If I had watched DS9 haphazardly of what were the "best" episodes, would I have really enjoyed it or gotten the reason as to why they were considered the best without the context of what had come before in establishing the characters and moments that made these great episodes? (As for why I never obsessed over DS9, I had no history or any connection to the series at that point [I don't even think I knew Worf had even been a main part of that show yet] and the clips and bits I had seen for it never looked that interesting to me. It always looked like the most boring of all the Trek shows compared to the others.) At the same time, Enterprise was on the air and I liked that series a whole lot more so Voyager continued to disappoint me when it's "great" episodes didn't impress me much and it's cast seemed to be so much lesser than the characters I liked on TNG and Enterprise.

[Khushrenada]

The Second Chance

Well, about 7 or 8 years ago, I thought I would give Voyager a real chance. A lot of time had passed since I'd watched much Trek. I was interested in revisiting Enterprise because I was forgetting things about the series and there were some episodes of it that I never did get to see in the later 3rd and 4th seasons which had bummed me out at the time with it getting more serialized so missing an episode could mean missing out on some details of the plot. I watched that series through again and thought it held up quite well. I do get some of the complaints against it but I'm not going to start a discussion on that. This intro is long enough. Suffice to say, I still think it was a shame it ended when it did because it was showing how it could really integrate well into the Trek mythos and create a great legacy for itself. When I finished watching that series through to the end, I was looking into where Deep Space Nine and Voyager were at on their run-throughs on the space Channel. By this point, I'd begun to hear a lot of positive opinions about Deep Space Nine and the phrase "Dominion Storyline" to be interested in checking out but wanted to do so from the beginning. It was not close to it's pilot episode though but Voyager was in a couple weeks. So, I decided to start recording that series to check out. I don't think I ever saw the Voyager Pilot in all that time that I had seen various episodes of the show.

Well, I watched the pilot and I HATED it! I just couldn't believe what seemed to be dumb idea after dumb idea and execution. It boggled my mind as to what was going through the creators of the show when they were putting this together. Right away, I was already on the Voyager hate train. But then, the next couple episodes seemed to be way better to the point that I thought they maybe should have served as the first episodes to somehow introduce the series. Yet, the quality soon seemed to dip again and I just became uninterested in pursuing the idea of watching the series through and gave up a bit into Season 1.

Thus, Voyager has remained the Trek series I have disliked the most. From time to time, I've seen some people talk positively about it but the general consensus seems to be negative. A few years ago, I remember seeing an article that theorized the reason Voyager was so hated by a lot of Star Trek fans is that it is the most feminist Trek which meant most of the male fans would have hated it for it's female perspective. In my mind, my response was that no, it is hated because it had incredibly dumb plots with uninteresting characters and didn't compare to other series with a good cast and better material. Seeing weird support for Voyager like that further added to the viewpoint that the series was terrible if it inspired that kind of defense for it.

[Khushrenada]

Recent Opinions

The biggest thing that changed to make me check in on Voyager again came from the AV Club. I may have mentioned this before when I hosted the Star Trek Mafia but in a news article of how there wouldn't be Blu-Ray or upgraded HD editions of DS9 and Voyager like TNG received, I was reading through the reader comments made in which people began discussing the different series. It had been a long time since I'd really thought much about Trek aside from seeing the recent films when they came out but it was interesting to see the opinions of others again on these series. DS9 seemed to have a lot of popularity among the commenters with Voyager getting a less than positive response. However, it wasn't all negative against Voyager and there were some positive comments made about it that got me kind of interested in the show again.

Here are some snippets of them:

Shields - "Voyager's strongest episodes were always the 2-parters which would be visually striking, have memorable plot lines and character moments & rewatch value. the single story eps varied wildly in quality & depended upon which character was featured in the episode: Generally Good: 7 of 9, The Dr, Tom/Kim paired together, Variant in quality: Tuvok, Janeway, Tom solo stories, Belanna, Neelix. Bad: Harry Kim solo stories, Chakkotay stories, Kes stories (excluding her season 3 arc/departure which only happened because of the actress's allergy to ear glue & her being chosen as the actress to get the boot to keep a cast of 9 when 7 of 9 joined), Janeway solo stories that involved a dress & the holodeck, Naomi Wildman."


Edmund Fitzgerald - "Voyager would have benefited strongly from serialization. It would have better complemented their original story of being trapped in the Delta Quadrant, and it would have let them explore stories like the Maquis and Starfleet crews having to work together. Plus like you said, the two parters tended to be the best.

But honestly, I think that some of the real hidden gems of the series were actually single episodes. Off the top of my head, Latent Image, The Raven, Counterpoint, The Omega Directive."

Prole Hole - "Voyager does two-parters better than any other branch of the franchise. In it's entire run there's only one two-parter that's actively bad (Unimatrix Zero), and when it did them well (Scorpion, Year Of Hell, Flesh and Blood... actually basically all the other ones) it absolutely knocked it out of the park."

Actually, Prole Hole had other comments including:

"Season One: Decent, though fairly unremarkable for a first season.
Season Two: Godawful. Miserable runarounds with Seska and the Kason, failed story arcs, and very little of real interest.
Season Three: Big, bright primary coloured action in the TOS mould.
Season Four: One of the best overall seasons in Star Trek history, an oftentimes dark rumination on responsibility, history and trauma.
Season Five: Good character work in the first half, surprisingly experimental in the second half.
Season Six: Mostly obvious and predictable, and just flat
Season Seven: Way better than its reputation. Not flawless but actually a really good ending for the series."

And

"I've published two books defending the series.

https://www.amazon.com/Thin...

https://www.amazon.com/Thin...

Those are the links for the Kindle editions, Vol 2 is also available in paperback from Amazon. It's an episode-by-episode redemptive review, pretty much in the style of AV Club reviews."

Which seems odd considering his breakdown of each season that he would defend it so much so in book form but obviously there was something there he liked.

Source of the quotes: http://www.avclub.com/article/star-trek-deep-space-nine-and-voyager-might-never--249744 (I'll probably pull a few more from there yet.)

[Khushrenada]

Current Mindset

These comments have stayed in the back of my mind as I've watched DS9 and read some stuff about Voyager again on Wikipedia to sway me to try once more to look into this series. Voyager is 172 episodes long (4 less than DS9). I can't say I was really looking to jump back into watching a show with that many episodes after just doing it and it may be that Voyager poisons my goodwill towards it again. Prole Hole does make it sound like Season 2 is gonna suck. 

But a funny thing happened. I watched the Pilot episode thinking I might write-up a scathing criticism of the episode and all it did wrong since I remembered it being a total disaster 7 or 8 years ago. Instead, I mostly enjoyed it. There are still some bad choices in it but I was more impressed by it this time around than I was the first viewing and appreciated what it was trying to do in setting its premise. The other surprising thing is how easy it has been to binge watch these episodes. I had a hard time watching a lot of DS9. There were occasions with some multipart episodes or serialized moments where I was more eager to start up the next episode and keep going but, in general, a couple episodes a day was enough for me and sometimes I'd go a few days without watching anything. With Voyager, since I watched the Pilot on Friday evening, I'm now halfway through episode 13 of the 16 episode first season. It's about 3 episodes a day I'm watching of this show and when one episode ends, I'm pretty much ready for the next and that's pretty rare for me in my TV viewing habits. So, for the first time in my history of checking out this show, it's actually been compelling enough to keep me watching.

[Khushrenada]

Wrap-up of this Introduction

If I do end up covering this thing all the ways through then I might as well take the time to post about here since it's going to be on my mind a lot compared to other stuff. In my attempt to keep providing some compelling content for you lovely forum users, I'm afraid this is what you will be getting from me for awhile. Feel free to join in with your own comments as I proceed along this series. I'm always interested in what many of you have to say or I wouldn't still be coming here and reading your comments. 

With that long introduction to give you a sense of my history with this series and how I've appraised this series and why up to this point, I'll now start giving my current opinions on the episodes it contains. Whether I want to say a little or a lot will depend on the episodes I suppose but this isn't meant to be an exhaustive critique. Just some things I really feel like commenting on about the episode after have watched it.

[Khushrenada]

Before getting into the individual episodes, one thing I want to take a moment to acknowledge and praise is the Voyager theme song and opening credits. The creatives behind that completely nailed what the tone and nature of this show could and should be like. Referring back to that AV Club article I referenced, there were two comments I liked regarding the theme and I'll post them here.

Puppet's Puppet - I would also say that one of the reasons fans are so frustrated with Voyager is because it is so damn disappointing. What it could have been, this story about an undersized vessel half staffed by the domestic terrorists its half-dead crew was tasked with hunting down, limping its way home across the unknown galaxy, it makes you cry. And they would repeat this disappointment in microcosm so many times, over and over, as they pissed away opportunities throughout the show. And each week, you'd be reminded afresh of the Voyager that could have been when you heard that kickass theme song--the best in all of Trek; TNG's was a better piece of music, but Voyager's was the better theme song; it sounded like what Voyager was supposed to be, and for a little moment you were taken back to that, and excited once again--and then it was over, and you were sad.

Fancyarcher - That's basically it for me. Voyager starts up with that Goldsmith theme, and then proceeds to disappoint.


Hearing it again as I watch through these episodes, I completely agree. I've had this song humming around in my head at various times the past 4 - 5 days and I'm not sick of it yet. A lot of times when watching TV series, I'll want to fast forward or skip ahead through the theme song because I've heard it enough the first couple times I let it play. Voyager has been the rare case where I've let the credits play more than I've skipped through them just because I really do like that theme.

My quick ranking of the Trek themes is as follows:

Voyager
The Next Generation
Star Trek (Original series)
Enterprise
Deep Space Nine

Of course, a theme song does not a good show make but it sure is nice after the dull and bland, wheel-spinning theme of DS9 and might be a part of what's been keeping my enthused with my current Voyager watching. Well done, Mr. Goldsmith. He'd already proven himself a great composer with his movie work like Chinatown, for example, and here he was still putting out great gems.

[azeke]

It was a long journey

Voyager is pretty great in my opinion. It is also the longest ST show so by sheer mass alone it has quite a lot of great episodes.

The hate it gets was because it came right after DS9 which dared to do some elements of linear storytelling and it was hailed for it (ignoring a MUCH better space opera with extremely hard linear storytelling airing contemporary to DS9 at the time), while Voyager almost aggressively stayed true to episodic format.

But i liked Voyager for how "out there" it it got sometimes and staying true to original ST premise, unlike DS9 which eventually turned into blind worship of space gods who will do everything (which in my opinion a blasphemy [lol] in atheistic by design universe).

[Khushrenada]

It was a long journey

It's been a long road, getting from there to here. (I don't even have to click on the video. I know the song from watching Enterprise as it aired and in reruns. Is that good or bad? I'm not sure.)

Voyager is pretty great in my opinion. It is also the longest ST show so by sheer mass alone it has quite a lot of great episodes.

Actually, just to be accurate, TNG has 178 episodes (26 episodes in every season except only 22 episodes in Season 2), DS9 has 176 episodes (26 episodes in every season except only 20 in Season 1) and Voyager has 172 episodes (26 episodes in every season except only 16 in Season 1). So, Voyager isn't quite the longest Trek show but that's still a lot of episodes and quite equal to the other series before it.

The hate it gets was because it came right after DS9 which dared to do some elements of linear storytelling and it was hailed for it

To be fair, I think it was seen more as the sort of successor to Next Generation by being the series to air after it ended. At least, that was my take growing up. DS9 was already airing during the last couple season of TNG and then was airing at the same time as Voyager but had a 2 season lead to establish itself more. However, since DS9 was on a space station kept it from being seen as the replacement of TNG whereas Voyager was a crew travelling through space encountering new life and new civilizations. Thus, replacing TNG would be tough for any Star Trek series as it is pretty beloved and quite popular.

(ignoring a MUCH better space opera with extremely hard linear storytelling airing contemporary to DS9 at the time),

Babylon 5?

while Voyager almost aggressively stayed true to episodic format.

But i liked Voyager for how "out there" it it got sometimes and staying true to original ST premise, unlike DS9 which eventually turned into blind worship of space gods who will do everything (which in my opinion a blasphemy [lol] in atheistic by design universe).

Yeah, in a way, sending Voyager into uncharted territory allows the show to get closer to the original series since most encounters are going to be new and unfamiliar whereas TNG and DS9 could lean into the created lore and have plenty of encounters with familiar species like Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans. Of course, Voyager did lean into incorporating and using the Borg in the latter half of the series but I'm enjoying it's early attempts to create new species in the start.

The biggest problem I see is that some of the plots feel similar and familiar to past Star Trek episodes. Voyager does offer a new twist or take on some of these concepts but because of that feeling of retreading on previous ideas, that makes it seem like the Star Trek series may be running out of ideas and Voyager is getting the remaining scraps. Or, at least, that was my take when I would watch it from time to time in the past.

[NWR_insanolord]

Voyager's problem is it wastes the premise. They had a chance to do something new and different, but largely played it safe. Part of it was the writing staff just wasn't good enough, and the producers held them back even further.

[azeke]

Voyager's problem is it wastes the premise. They had a chance to do something new and different, but largely played it safe.

Yes, but here's the thing. One of the Star Trek writers Ronald D. Moore who was frustrated with constraints on Voyager left the staff and later created his own take on "Ship with depleting resources trekking through uncharted hostile universe", and technically his "Battlestar Galactica" is a better show than Voyager.

However the ending of that show perfectly illustrates dangers of the other end of extreme -- where you have a linear plot but no proper planning ahead ("cylons have a plan" my ass). Last 2 seasons felt extremely pointless and the botched ending completely soured me on the show which started great.

While Voyager kept safe and didn't do too many risky stuff and i have better lasting impression of that show overall.

[NWR_insanolord]

I didn't need Voyager to be Battlestar Galactica, I just wish it had been more than TNG 2.0. I don't have a problem with a more episodic show, especially in the early years when it was running concurrently with the best and most serialized seasons of Deep Space 9, but it just felt like the show lacked ambition. And when it did start to show up, it got slapped down by the higher-ups.

Voyager really marks the start of the era of Rick Berman doing his best job of killing Star Trek. DS9 had a certain amount of autonomy (though it had some things slapped down as well, such as the whole side-plot of Vulcan seceding from the Federation in the wake of Admiral Leyton's failed coup in season 3), but Voyager and Enterprise both suffered a lot from Berman's intervention. The big example in Voyager was the case of Year of Hell. It's one of the best episodes of the series, but in the original draft it was supposed to be a season long arc instead of the two-parter with a reset button we got.

[Khushrenada]

Caretaker

This episode cost $23 million to make, according to Wikipedia, and so it is one of the costliest pilots ever made but it doesn't look like it when you watch the show. Part of that, though, is probably because of the reshooting they had to do. Watching the extras for Season 1, there was a different person cast as Janeway who quit (or there may have been "mutual parting") requiring reshoots as well as the fact that the network didn't like Mulgrew's hair style in a lot of the footage they shot with her requiring all of those shoots to be redone in her bun hairdo that was kept for the beginning of the show. I'm sure there was a lot more behind Micheal Pillar's words that there was a lot of issues/troubles to work out in the beginning of the show but the extras don't really elaborate. Replacing Bujold with Mulgrew definitely seems like the better choice based on the footage shown with Bujold in the part. I can't imagine what tone the series may have had with her as the lead.

Bit let's talk about the actual episode since that's what I'm here for (and hopefully what you're here to read about also). As mentioned in my intro of my history on this series, I hated this episode when it came out. I recall thinking to myself how it was one weird/bad decision after another and couldn't believe there wasn't anyone on the crew looking at this and questioning what they were doing. Watching it again all these years later, I wasn't as bothered by it as I was the first time. Maybe it helped that I knew what to expect but it's definitely a mixed bag of good and bad.

The first thing I thought was terrible about it was the opening seemed like a poor man's Star Wars with its opening crawl briefly informing viewers of the current political situation in Star Trek involving the Maquis. Years ago, I wondered why they would start the show by making people think of that other famous "Star" series and cause people to think of it in comparison to what they were watching or how it didn't occur to anyone that it might remind viewers of Star Wars with how it was done. Having read a bit about the episode on Wikipedia today, it seems it may have been intentional since after the crawl you have a small ship being chased by a bigger ship further alluding to the opening of Star Wars. I guess the writers / producers thought it was a clever reference but I've never liked it and I still don't. It just feels wrong. I've come to watch Star Trek and instead I'm thinking about Star Wars instead as the show begins.

The opening hook of the ship being overwhelmed by a mysterious energy force isn't really new. The Motion Picture began with ships encountering a mysterious energy phenomenon and disappearing as well. It's serviceable but not really a big hook as a mystery to keep people interested.

[Khushrenada]

Anyways, moving on to what else sucks in this episode, that would be the hillbilly party. Again, who thought this was a good idea? Is there anyone who has watched this show and ever liked any of these farm scenes? It boggles my mind that it was kept in and put to air. I get that when writing the script it may have been visualized differently in the writer's head. The ship and crew are suddenly 70,000 light years away and yet, on this alien space station, it is like they are in the heartland of America. How can this be? But that should have had a rethink once people on the show saw the actual execution of it.

The other weird visual choice that I thought was terrible (but was just a minor disappointment this time) is near the end of the episode when Janeway and some crew members have beamed into the Okampa colony. Around this point, there is an emergency as the caretaker's beams are now trying to seal the entrance to the Okampa colony and Janeway is trying to find some crew members. Unfortunately, it just looks like they are all walking around in a mall instead of some fantastical alien complex. There's the thrilling shot of her, Tuvak and some others standing on an escalator and talking. It comes across as an amateur or fan made production. Again, it's baffling about how this episode was shot and produced.

[Khushrenada]

On the plus side, I really did like how the show brought about the construction of this crew. While it's true that there's a lot of potential that was laid out here for the series that I don't think it really did much with, it still did set it up well enough to give the writers the chance to use it. I think what changed the most, though, between this viewing and my first is that I was a dispassionate viewer. I didn't care for a lot of stuff early on and so I was actively questioning and criticising everything from a producer or creative standpoint. This time around, for whatever reason, I was more focused on Janeway and her reactions to everything. I'd say this put me more in the character's mindset and seeing the events from her perspective a bit more.

For instance, her bemusement towards Neelix. Neelix is a character that I've always thought annoying. I understood his importance, in a way, as a ship's cook but just his look and personality always seemed like his character was a mistake further contributing to why Voyager wasn't that great. However, seeing Janeway's acceptance of him seemed to make me accept him as well and recognize the benefit/potential he could provide to her and the crew. Plus Neelix seemed to actually have useful information so it's not like he was just some random idiot brought aboard for the heck of it. Perhaps it is also a combination of what I will call the Quark effect. Despite not thinking much of the Ferengi, thanks to Quark and others on DS9, I enjoyed the world-building they did with that species and appreciated the light and more comedic tone that they could bring to this universe. Neelix seemed to represent that spirit now (although Tuvuk's reactions of having a hard time tolerating Neelix also added to that feeling. It's Quark and Odo 2.0!)

Likewise, too, Janeway's reactions at the conflict she faces of having to destroy their way home further impressed on me the consequences of the situation and added some good emotional weight to the episode. The episode does give a pretty good introduction to what will basically be the main character in Janeway. It may not be as dominating a focus as it was with Sisko in DS9's opening but it's enough to give a favorable impression that she's been a captain for awhile and can definitely handle the various crises that arise making her a leader you'd be willing to follow if you were on that ship. However, she comes off a bit more cheery than Picard or Sisko and a bit closer to the Kirk and Archer vibe of enjoying the job and shows some patience towards them. It may not sound that different from other captains on the show but having watched a bunch of episodes since this one, I've got a more clear description I could give yet I'm just trying to limit it to what was actually in this episode for now. Regardless, there is nuance there that helps separate and make her a bit more distinct from the other captains featured beyond just the fact that she's a woman and the others have been men.

[Khushrenada]

While I do have a lot of thoughts about this, I don't want to keep writing about it forever so I'm just going to bullet point some other stuff.

- I take it Tom Paris is supposed to be a Han Solo roguish figure due to his jail time and recent history. I was surprised at how much focus he got in this opening coming off as almost the second main character after Janeway in it. When I think of Tom Paris, I often just think "good pilot" and that he came across as a bit too sure of himself as a description of him. He never seemed to have much for defining character traits to really stand out or be worthy of attention. Yet, he's quite well-written in this pilot and there are bits and pieces of some possible potential with the character that you can see.

-Unfortunately, one of those bits of potential was being hated by both crews since he betrayed Star Fleet and the Maquis. However, the two Star Fleet crew members we see who show they resent Tom Paris end up dead very fast and no one else seems to know or care who he is. Nowadays, I think if you took this show and applied it with the techniques of today's "prestige TV", the smart choice would have been to have a few of those characters hang around for some time and explore that dramatic potential instead of just immediately shutting the door on it.

- After mentioning the Quark effect for Neelix, I did want to say it was a treat to see Quark show up briefly at the start to pull his little scam on Harry. Having now become acquainted with the character through DS9, that scene was appreciated much more than the first time I saw it.

- Despite the terrible southern farm festivity that had just proceeded it, the episode suddenly changes tone to something closer to sci-fi horror with its sudden The Matrix like reveal of bodies in stasis. Weird tonal whiplash but at least it made the show engaging again all of sudden.

- One other thing that bugged me at times was the show would cut to Voyager flying above the Ocampa world and a single shot from the Caretaker would zoom by. However, when cutting back to the planet or some other area, you would hear constant shots being fired in the background and the speeding up of the shots was even a plot point mentioned so that single shot and the lengthy pause after it was inconstant with everything else going on. C'mon!

[Khushrenada]

- I didn't get the purpose of the Kazon. Why are they living on the planet's surface and what are they trying to do there when they can just get in spaceships and leave anytime? Maybe it was mentioned but as I think back on this episode now, I can't recall any reason for their existence on the surface.

- At the same time, I did love Neelix's sudden screw you to the Kazon by bringing them all this water and then blasting the water tanks to empty it all while the Voyager crew takes the whole encounter in bewilderment. It further won me over to Neelix's side. On the whole, I actually thought the Kazon scene on the surface was one of the standout scenes in the pilot.

- Like the detective at the end of a murder mystery revealing what all the clues mean, Tuvuk is ready to deduce and offer the likely explanation of what has been going on.

- The caretaker's true form is interesting though it makes me wonder how it built and operates that space station.

- The ending Kazon battle and decision of whether to use the station or destroy it was also well done.

- "Because she's the captain." Man, Chakotay is ready to serve under Janeway already and he hasn't even been made an officer of the crew yet. There could have been a whole bit of drama built around the Maquis disagreeing with the decision and fighting the Voyager crew over it.

- "We've made some friends and we've made some enemies". Clunky bit of dialogue to summarize what we can expect from this show in the future.

- Reading about this episode on Wikipedia pointed out that the subplot of Harry and B'Elanna being infected with an illness is forgotten about and never resolved. Watching the episode, I forgot all about it myself so that shows how interesting it was but there was plenty of other stuff happening to distract one from remembering about it. Guess The Doctor could cure them or something.

Guess I had a lot to say on the episode after all.

3.5/5 Stars.

[Khushrenada]

As an added bonus, I'll give a quick little ranking of how I think the various Star Trek pilots compare to each other.

1. Star Trek: Enterprise
2. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
3. Star Trek: The Next Generation
4. Star Trek: Voyager
5. Star Trek: Original Series

[Khushrenada]

Parallax

"She's not just out of control, she's out of her mind!"

Now this is a good episode but not great. It's got a lot of interesting material to work with which keeps the episode moving at a fast pace but it's got too much that it's trying to do that resolutions feel rushed.

First off, it's an odd way to open the episode considering how things ended and we left off from the Pilot. Maquis members are already in uniforms and working on the ship although the integration process is still occurring. You'd think we might have spent some time showing their initial joining of the crew and maybe signs from other Federation members showing distrust at their new allies but instead we jump in to an incident already in progress with Chakotay having to put out fires on both sides because of B'Elanna's actions in Engineering.

This is a B'Elanna episode as we get time to learn more about her background and see her in action winning over Janeway in the process. She definitely stands out from previous engineering chiefs and I'd say the episode succeeds in giving the viewer a positive impression of B'Elanna as a character you want to see more of. It helps that they make Lt. Carey a bit of a dick. Of course, that makes the resolution of him and her letting bygones be bygones feel forced and a bit unbelievable. It further deflates the possible Maquis/Federation tension that the series bothered to set-up with Federation officers being so willing to be buddy-buddy and accept the Maquis members.

I especially liked the moment where Chakotay recommends Maquis members that could be used as officers and Janeway is surprised to see B'Elanna's name on the list and that Chakotay thinks she should be Chief of Engineering. The expression on her face is one of surprise and puzzlement and maybe a questioning of Chakotay's judgement. That right there could have been an interesting point in their early relationship as Janeway questions or wonders about Chakotay's capabilities as her first officer. The building of trust. While there is some push and pull between them this episode, and she will ultimately agree with his assessment by episode end, it's another case of missed opportunity of what could have been done with two crews of strangers now being made to work together and having to learn to trust one another. As it stands, Janeway and Chakotay would pretty much be in sync from here on to the point you'd think they'd been working together for years. This is the only episode that I recall has any tension between them in the handling of the crew.

The other plot point of the anomaly and trapped ship was also interesting. A typical Star Trek anomaly plot even involving some time travel involving a lot of technobabble but it was an engaging mystery with interesting turns along the way. The best twist, I found, was at the end when Janeway and B'Elanna have to make a choice of where to go in their Shuttlecraft. Although I'm not sure why Janeway had to be in the shuttlecraft. That doesn't seem like the right place for the Captain to be in this situation. I understand it was done in further building the bond of Janeway with B'Elanna but I did question that decision.

Some other points:

- The Doctor is shrinking minor subplot was rather pointless and could have been cut.

- The problem with watching a bunch of episodes and now writing about them is some of the smaller moments blend together but I do think this episode had a moment with Neelix and Kes interrupting a staff meeting because they felt they should be a part of it. Once again, Janeway seems bemused by Neelix and is ready to accommodate him. At least they proved their worth by contributing and Kes makes the smart suggestion of converting a cargo bay to grow food so they rely less on the replicators.

- Janeway and B'Elanna getting on an engineering riff to the point that they are almost finishing one another's sentences was a bit too much and clumsy way of showing Janeway recognizing Torres worth. Congrats to the actors on spewing out that technical info but Janeway just seemed way too excited in that moment.

-  "I have no intention of being your token Maquis officer." Ok, well, how about settling for Star Trek's token Native American officer?

- Tom Paris: Not so good at understanding time anomalies.

- Tom Paris: Back-up doctor. Another thing that could have been interesting was back-up positions. Since the crew can't get replacements from Starfleet if something happens then you'd think there would be more cross-training so that if someone is injured or killed there would be a replacement who could step in. It would also give the writers an easy way to pair people together as they may have to train with a different crew member to learn those duties from time to time. Ah, well. More harping on missed opportunites, I suppose.

- Janeway doesn't want to answer Chakotay's question of whether she'd have served under him if the situation were reversed. I'm going to take that as a no. First Star Fleet takes your land in the demilitarized zone and now they take your command. You got hosed, Chakotay!

4/5 stars.

[Khushrenada]

Time And Again

"It seems I've found myself on the voyage of the damned."

That line by The Doctor is probably my favorite part of the episode. It's just an average episode. Not much I really want to talk about with this one. The child bugged me. Not a great actor and just kept hampering Tom and Janeway. The Prime Directive applies.... until it doesn't. I did like Tom's reaction to that. Tuvuk seems to keep disagreeing with the other crew suggestions and seems to keep ending up wrong. We see the idea that Kes the Ocampa seems to have curious mental abilities. That flash scene at the end with various crew members reacting and being thrown backwards... oy.

Spoiler space: The idea of being trapped back in time before a devastating event is about to occur is a solid narrative idea yet it never develops much tension in this episode. Perhaps it comes from expecting Tom and Janeway to be rescued or that the crew trying to bring them back constantly seems to be on the right track so it is just a matter of time. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we don't really get much opportunity to care about the alien civilization will be affected. The kid is annoying and then Tom and Janeway get interrogated by a rebel protest group so you aren't really meeting "nice" people. I did like the twist at the end that it is the rescue attempt by Voyager which will doom the planet but, in order not to have the crew responsible for a planet's death, we get a paradox resolution and the whole thing never happened. And with that, the crew moves on.

- I'd like to say Tom Paris: Not so good at understanding time anomalies again but I don't think he had much issue handling it this time around.

- I did like the scene of the crew members standing and watching a green beam get activated in Engineering to create a warp hole to the past. Something about the image just appealed to me there.

- Alternate Timelines created by Voyager: 1. I wonder how things are going in the possible alternate timeline with no Janeway or Paris right now....

2.5/5 stars.

[oohhboy]

The Kazon are easily Treks worse villains by volume and utterly pointless due to how absurdly incompetent they were. They were clearly trying to angle them to be new Klingons but they turned out to be red neck warlord wannabes. They were a plague for season 1 and 2 making any episode they turn up on automatically terrible.

The greatest sin Voyager commits is the constant pressing of the reset button. Almost nothing sticks or carries over, even the arc episodes. Losing crewmen or using the "Limited" torpedos has absolutely no consequence.

I don't mind stand-alone episodes but that doesn't mean you can't include them into the arc. Take Person of Interest where every episode no matter how detached it seemed had a nugget of information, gadget or characterisation that tied it to the greater arcs.

The later seasons get much better as they finally get around to using with it's premise by acknowledging the distance they have travelled and how they actually need to find a way to get home.

Can't believe the pilot cost $23 Million dollars. It looked like it was worth $2 million tops.

[oohhboy]

Since STD is out and I found this thread again I would like to say I appreciate Voyager alot more now.

Its Trek. You don't wish death on the crew except maybe Nelix. Its cheesy instead of being insultingly stupid. There isn't a singular person who is super special who can solve all problems, everything must revolve around or is hyper-competent. It does try to stick to best practises when it comes to story telling so every episode no matter how Warp 10 it might be is fairly cohesive. They aren't actively destructive to the franchise by breaking canon to get out of a hole they put themselves in or doing it because for shits and giggles.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'd take Discovery over Voyager any day. It's not perfect (though I think it's way the hell better than you do) but Voyager is just so bland and boring with very little character development and really inconsistent writing.

[oohhboy]

Voyager is very lukewarm most of the time. They just didn't use their premise much which lead to it having very little serialisation.

When they did link episodes Janeway's actions had some pretty nasty consequences like inadvertently destroying an advanced civilisation with the borg, straight up murder, developing weapons of mass destruction, breaking time and leaving people to die.

There is a lot of talk of Lorcia being some tough badass who is willing to do anything to win the war but if Janeway was there you are sure as hell she would have vaporised Mudd or at least mind wiped his ass.

STD is insulting out of the gate and that first impression is more important than ever as we have near infinite amount of entertainment choices.