I expected that to be a link to Vogon Poetry.
Yep!
The main problem I had with Voyager is that other than Janeway, Doctor, and Seven of Nine, all the characters are completely forgettable and have no notable, interesting qualities.
[/QUOTE]
Yep!
But these three were very good. They carried the show. The idea of a Borg drone joining the crew was inspired. Wikipedia says, “After the addition of the former Borg drone to the starship’s crew at the start of the fourth season of Voyager, the shows’ weekly viewer ratings increased by more than 60%.” (But as Wikipeida goes on to note, it might have been the ultra tight costume, not the concept which did that.
But as I mentioned upthread, Wikipedia’s own article detailing each episode, with a plot summary and other data including total viewership, does not show this to be true at all. Assuming those numbers are correct, before the 7 of 9 character was introduced the show had never had a single episode with fewer than four million viewers (and in its first season, it averaged more than *ten *million). But then in that fourth season when she joined the show, there were ten episodes that failed to clear four million viewers, including one with only 3.1 million.
In Season 5, her second season, 17 episodes had viewership below four million. In the back half of the season, they dipped below three million for the first time; two weeks later they plunged even further to a paltry 1.7 million.
Season 6’s episodes all registered less than four million viewers, except for one that got exactly 4.0 million and another with a whopping 4.1 million.
So what gives? Has Jeri Ryan’s PR team gotten ahold of Hyno-Toad to make everyone believe she rode in and raised the ratings instead of lowering them? Is this fake news? I really don’t understand what’s up here.
This time I’m the one who gets to say “reported.”
(But I’m wondering if the midget penis is small even on the scale of a midget,or only on the scale of a normal adult.)
Ya beat me to it.
Are you angry, little creature?
Comic Book Guy and he’s stuck in 1991.
Sorry, I skipped a bunch of people’s posts to get to the end to avoid the shit-storm.
I just had a quick dig around, and while I see plenty of bald statements on the internet that ratings went up upon the character’s introduction, I can find nothing concrete. So, a nod to you, sir.
Voyager was quite a good show. Imho
There always was a handful of terrible episodes every season. But the majority were pretty good. A few even great.
DS9 and TNG were consistently better every season. Except for their first seasons.
I have no problem watching Voyager. I just change the channel if it’s one of their crap episodes.
I found Seven of Nine’s story quite interesting. A young child assimilated by the Borg. She had to learn to be human again. Her struggle to do that was quite compelling.
I semi-agree, although “majority” might be pushing it. I estimate about 40% were “pretty good” or better. But since it was not serialized, that is still a lot of episodes of good Trek to not overlook.
Thanks. I’m really impressed by the PR job Ryan seems to have pulled off, to have a reputation of a wildly overrated positive impact, especially on such an underrated show. I do think her character was interesting, even if the costume was ridiculous. But I hated to see Kes go.
By contrast, if Jennifer Lien had been more savvy about PR, she could have made sure everyone noticed the audience shrank significantly after her departure. But as we’ve seen her struggling with mental illness subsequently, she may have had other things on her mind and into that vacuum the Ryan camp was able to insert their own narrative.
I wonder if it’s as simple as hardcore Trekkers liking Seven and therefore telling a tale that makes sense to them. Meanwhile, the millions of viewers they lost were the opposite: not the sort of people who would turn up on a Trek board or blog to speak their truth, which is that to the vast majority of people who casually watched the show at some point, Kes is the one they saw, much moreso than Seven.
Have you checked the demographic data? Remember, shows really only care about their particular demo. Star Trek probably goes for the that young adult male demo, I think 17-35, but I can’t remember.
I attempt to watch Voyager on Netlfix. I had previously only seen a few scattered episodes.
I didn’t make it through the first scene. The acting was just absolutely terrible. Sure, Tim Russ had to be playing someone who was in some sense acting, but the other two people in the scene just were completely unconvincing. I couldn’t imagine sitting through hours upon hours of these people, and decided I had better things to do.
Was that a big thing in the '90s? I thought they were more interested in mass audiences then, or at least in everyone under 50.
Anyway: no, I haven’t looked at any more data than what I linked to. I’d love to see it if it’s available, but I don’t think TV By the Numbers existed then. Even if the demo was factored in, it’s hard to imagine that the post-Seven numbers were actually an *improvement *over the earlier ones, as opposed to being simply not as great a decline in the demo as they appeared to represent. For that to be the case, they would have had to have practically no viewers in their demo the previous season, which seems unlikely at best.
Not since around 1975. IINM, the first show to be guaranteed a long, long life on the basis of demographics was Saturday Night Live (Lorne Michael’s show, not Howard Cosell’s). Not coincidentally, it was around this time that work on STAR TREK: PHASE II began (yes, even before Star Wars came out).
Raw numbers were never so important again.
Sacrilege! :eek: :mad: