Quoth Chimera:
For a moment, I misread that as “frak”.
shudder
To the OP’s question, while bad delivery of lines might be blamed on either, bad plots can only be blamed on the writers (or possibly someone higher up). Let’s not forget that the whole reason they were stranded to begin with is because going home in the first episode would have meant they’d have to follow the Prime Directive, and goodness golly, we can’t have that.
You are correct. Even Brannon Braga won’t defend it, and the episode was his idea (and he’s just generally terrible).
My favourite lines was from the first season. I can’t remember it verbatim, but it was Janeway, staring down the evil aliens on the viewscreen and trying to sound threatening: “Give my crewman’s lungs back!”
There were only a handful of good VGR episodes IMHO.
two Voyagers in parallel dimensions overlap slightly; one is destroyed, and Kim and an infant baby (Naomi Wildman?) go over to the other ship (although it would’ve been nice if they’d mentioned that sometime later instead of instantly forgetting about it).
Tuvok’s holoprogram of a Maquis mutiny gets a little out of hand.
the ship is orbiting a very-quickly-spinning planet and becomes a inspirational “star” to its civilization, which eventually catches up to the crew in its development, and sends astronauts to visit.
Janeway & Co. fight against an alien timeship which keeps rewriting the history of the quadrant.
they free the few survivors of an alien civilization from an evil clown holoprogram, trapping the clown in the end with a virtual Janeway.
when Seven of Nine first comes aboard and is mad at Janeway for removing her from the Collective.
Voyager crash-lands on an icy planet and Kim comes back from the future to put things aright.
The series finale, when Adm. Janeway wreaks havoc with the Borg and the ship finally makes it home.
Just about all the rest suck to one degree or another.
Totally agree. I also feel the cast had almost zero chemistry. They didn’t jive well together on and (apparently) off-screen.
Garrett Wang also had some choice things to say about the series, although that was probably his own fault as he supposedly often arrived on the set late and was slated to be killed off (saved by his appearance in People’s 50 most beautiful people edition so the lore goes).
The characters were bland and uninteresting. Quick! Think of all the characters! Now, who did you forget? I’ll be you either didn’t list Chakotay or Kim.
Other than that, while every TV show to some extent has a reset button to put everything back to default between episodes, it was particularly blatant on Voyager. They may as well have ended each episode with Janeway slapping a big R.E.S.E.T. button every episode.
And instead of turning it into an interesting opportunity for character development it became…A THREAT TO THE ENTIRE SHIP AND IT’S GOING TO BLOW UP! OMG!!!
-Joe
It was definitely the writing, or perhaps executive meddling. The show had an excellent premise, but the creators refused to stay with the logical implications of their premise. The show starting going off the rails as early as the second or third episode, when the senior staff was discussing ways to conserve power and they had Kim or Torres say that they could not conserve power by cutting off the holodeck, because the holodeck’s power grid’s weren’t compatible with the rest of the ship. On top of being ridiculous and clearly contradicting what had been established earlier in the universe, it showed that the writers were either unwilling or unable to lose that storytelling crutch–that they wanted the show to be Star Trek: The Next Generation, only with a Female Captain.
So the original series premise was never followed through. Judged in relation to that, the whole thing is obviously a failure.
What if we just forget that premise, and accept Voyager as a series of typically standalone Star Trek episodes? Which ones are worth salvaging?
…and before anyone goes ahead and submits any episodes I’d like to point out that any episode that consists of “THE HOLODECK IS MALFUNCTIONING AND SOMEONE/EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE!!!” automatically sucks.
“I’m sorry sir. I know NORAD gets down to DEFCON 2 once a week, but the guys just refuse to turn off the Playstation”.
Gah.
-Joe
The episode “Deadlock,” in which two identical Voyagers exist (neither with any real claim to being the original) and one is ultimately destroyed by the Vidians, is wonderful. That said, it is also emblematic of the show’s failure to stand by its premise. The ship is horribly damaged to in the course of the episode, but a week later all is peachy again. That would be okay if it had happened to the Enterprise-D and there was some reference in dialogue to there having been weeks spent at a spacedock for repairs. For this show it was horrible.
The episode with Michael McKean as the incarnation of Fear (as a murderous clown) is also great and far better than any brief description can convey.
There’s also a wonderful episode that begins with Torres in the shower. I don’t remember anything else about it, but Torres in the shower pretty much covers it. 
Janeway made a lot of stupid decisions.
Well, the others did too, but it counted more when she did it.
Bland characters such as the whiny puppy dog Kim, Chutokay giving his idiotic Indian advice (going into a trance and finding your avatar or whatever it was), Tom what’sisface, the unappealing rebel but oh-so genius pilot with the fixation on the 1960s (because it is so easy to find people nowadays fixated on the 1660s), Janeway’s fantasies is to be a Jane Eyreish governess to a couple of brats and moody widower nobleman, finding Amelia Earhart in suspended animation, the spectacularly uninteresting initial enemy the Kazan (bringing in the Borg later on was a better idea), little tension between two crews…you could easily have Federation people look at the Maquis as traitors and Maquis see the Feds are aiding oppressors with all kinds of tension and distrust but nooo. Too lovey-dovey. “My Three Sons” had more conflict.
There were a few good episodes. The Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers tribute of “Captain Proton” was fun.
Leaving aside Archer, I think the other captain’s foolish decisions were, at least, consistent. Kirk erred on the side of risking his own life too much, for instance. Janeway is vexsome because she was written so inconsistently.
Or uncovers it.
If you happen to remember which one that was, let me know.
And then she let them go with a warning… and the lungs. :smack:
No, bad Janeway! If you find an entire civilisation that regards all other sapient life as a consumable source of either food or spare parts, you do not let them off with a warning, unless said warning involves taking the lungs back and giving them… however long it takes their species to asphyxiate to get the hell off your ship.
Juggernaut - Series 5, Episode 21.
Seems like every Trek series starts out badly. TNG came pretty close to dying. That first season had only a handful of decent episodes. Gates McFadden was so disgusted with her limited role that she left and didn’t appear in season 2. Denise Crosby left too. The writers had to work hard season 2 to try and save the show. It slowly got better. Gates McFadden returned season 3 and somehow this cast clicked. The writers had several good seasons before it started slipping towards the end.
DS9 had a lot of issues season 1. Terry Farrell was a huge, huge liability. They managed to create some great character moments. The friendship of Miles O’Brien and Doctor Bashir. Odo and Kira’s friendship. Sisko and Dax (Avery Brooks deserves a medal for carrying Farrell in those scenes). My favorite was Garak and Bashir’s weekly lunch. Those scenes made the space station come alive. There were people living there. Later those personal bonds were important in the War they have to fight. I thought adding Worf really helped.
Voyager never gelled. It was always hit or miss. A great episode very rare. A few so so episodes. Lots of barely watchable ones. It got a little better when they added Seven of 9. I liked her story of relearning how to live as a human and not a Brog drone.
Enterprise is the first Trek series I gave up on. Half way through season 2, I stopped watching. Those years of Voyager wore me down. I couldn’t watch another crap series.
From some of what I’ve read or heard, this was exactly what happened during Voyager’s production—though I can’t come up with an exact cite, off the top of my head. It might have been from the sfdebris video review series (which is a hoot).
In my current sleepy-headed state, I first thought of Sterling Archer instead of Jonathan. Now that might well be a Star Trek vehicle worth watching. 
/hijack
I liked “The Voyager Conspiracy” episode, and I do have to say I liked most of the episodes centered around the Doctor.