I think people were objecting to you rating Wesley so high, not so low.
But I’ll say that I don’t actually share the hate for him. He was a decent character for what he was supposed to be: Someone for younger viewers to identify with (which naturally gives him a significant dose of Mary Sue-ness). His only real problem is that his target demographic inevitably outgrew him.
I somewhat like the character, but I think that’s going too far. You can have someone who is appealing to a certain age group without alienating another. There are little things here and there they could have handled differently. Wil Wheaton loved to point them out in those reviews he did.
And, despite being old I would like to attempt an answer to the OP, before seeing if everyone agrees with me. Based on the people who say they hate Voyager, it boils down to the following:
a higher disregard of science
being misled about the basic premise (two crews neeing to work together never happened),
a severe dislike for one or more characters–usually Janeway for being stupid, immoral, inconsistent and an all around asshole, and Neelix for being highly annoying,
Less than believable scripting and/or acting, particularly by Robert Beltran (actor, Chakotay) and Brandon Braga (writer and producer)
That many episodes were rehashes from TNG done less well
And, finally, that it led to Enterprise–which had even more problems and essentially shut down the Trek franchise, only to have it rebooted into an action series.
I look in the thread, and I see I did add the faulty premise one, but missed the deus machina treknobable fixes. Not bad for someone who actually liked the show. My only complaint was that the local network aired them much too dark and blurry, looking like an overly compressed satellite feed.
Yes, he can get beat up on Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.
Obviously, I deleted a bunch. Just wanted to point out that there’s a rather famous Doctor who’s been avoiding that “name” issue for much longer…
See, when you say things like this, you remove all my interest in taking you seriously. Jeri Ryan was one of the few people on that show who could act.
Take the first episode of Voyager where it sets up the premise for the series.
You have two ships, the Voyager and the Maquis ship. The Maquis were a group of people sick of the rules of the Federation and looking to go their own way. They’re described as a terrorist organization.
Then they get cast 70,000 light years from Earth and have to merge together as one crew. The ONLY reason they fall under Starfleet rule is because it happened that Voyager survived and the other ship didn’t.
So they’ve set up a premise where two crews, one military and one terrorist fighting against that specific military, have to merge together away from any hope of rescue, and try to work together to find their way home. The military says “our ship, our rules” and you even have Tuvok who was a covert spy for Starfleet on the Maquis ship for an unknown period of time to add even more distrust into the mix.
And there never was a problem. Ever. Ever ever ever. The two crews got along like bestest buds with peas in a pod and flowers and rainbows. After the pilot episode I don’t know if they even mentioned the Maquis again!
Imagine this series but replace Starfleet and Maquis with Israelis and Palestinians. Let’s see how happy happy everyone is after episode 3.
Imagine this series as created within the Battlestar Galactica universe where actions and choices have consequences and the characters have real emotions and unique goals. You wouldn’t have a season of “just kidding! RESET!”
A great premise whitewashed into oblivion.
Yea, it was really bizarre how quickly the abandoned the Marquis thing. I mean, if they didn’t want to do anything with it, then why set it up that way in the first place. It did come into play in a few episodes after the pilot, but it was scrapped pretty quickly.
I think it was just another symptom of the writing being lazy. To keep a bunch of inter-crew conflicts going, you have to plan it out across episodes, and work it into the “monster of the week” episodes. The writing staff at Voyager just wasn’t up to the challenge.
Which I guess was the main good thing about Voyager. It seemed to have absorbed all the bad writers working in the franchise, and presumably saved DS9 from them.
Proverbial for it, in fact.
:eek:
You just gave me an astoundingly strong reason to thank the gods for the existence of Star Trek: Voyager. Holy shit.
It’s the oldest question of all, hidden in plain sight.
+1
VOY relied on Treknobabble solutions, had episodes that neatly resolved themselves and left the crew exactly where they started in every way except where they physically are in space, had incredibly inconsistent characterizations varying solely according to the needs of the plot, utterly abandoned the desperate situation they were supposedly in, and totally lacked stories that lead to actual, lasting consequences for the people aboard ship.
It also suffers in comparison for having shared much of its run with DS9, which (after an admittedly bumpy first two seasons) was very much superior to VOY in all those areas. The characters on DS9 suffered consequences for their actions and grew as people from those experiences. DS9 had a rich and varied cast of characters, and plot lines that served to advance the characters through their journeys as opposed to just moving them around to make the plot happen. In addition, after the first year or so, DS9 kept the Treknobabble to a minimum and kept the focus on the characters, not the technology.
On top of that, VOY had an unlimited supply of crew and shuttlecraft, and actually managed to design and build a brand new class of ship (and then replace it when it was destroyed) and rarely seemed to want for supplies and fuel. They’d bring it up when it was necessary to move the plot along, but there was never the true exploration of hunger and desperation you got in BSG.
Also, they posited that the dinosaurs traveled clear across the galaxy, that you could escape a singularity through a crack in a mathematical construct, they cured the Paris/Janeway salamanders by injecting them with anti-protons, they had Neelix breathing with holographic lungs, and a number of other crazy things that just didn’t make any sense.
I think originally the producers want to play out the conflict but got overridden by the suits who want something that is more TNG. If I recall correctly, one of the producers went on to produce BSG, which was something that he intends Voyager to resemble more.
That was Ronald D. Moore, who was a producer on DS9. He joined the production team of Voyager after DS9 ended, but only stuck around a couple weeks before departing.
Haters of Voyager might find the reviews at sfdebris amusing.
http://sfdebris.com/startrek.asp
You gotta love how the OP ten years ago was attempting to defend Voyager by claiming that Enterprise was heavily influenced by it. God, Enterprise was almost as bad as Voyager.
Oh, yeah, that’s another thing. I was very excited when they said how many photon torpedoes they had, in the pilot episode (24, or some such), because every so often they’d have to use one, and watching that number count down would be a good source of drama. Well, it would have been, if we had ever, in fact, seen that number count down.
I would shorten that sentence to…
“Neelix”
Enterprise did exactly what TNG and DS9 did - but Voyager did not. It took a few seasons to find its feet but once it did it was great. Unfortunately in Entrprise’s case it came too late.
The first two seasons of Enterprise, with the temporal cold war, were an utter disaster. Season 3 improved with at least an interesting story line and showed the humans utterly out of their depth. Then season 4 did exactly what Enterprise should have done in the first place, play with a modern take on the original series, bringing in a lot of the concepts and showing how the humans encountered them. Unfortunately by that time it was too late, the viewers had left and just weren’t coming back.
ya enterprise looked great but the writing season one was just awful, acting was fine, sets looked great, but all the campy scenes in the decontamination chamber and whatnot just annoyed the heck out of me. I finally watched the whole show on netflix this year and it actually turned out to be a great show. Voyager just sucked all the way through though. How did they not realize Janeway and Neelix had to go or be seriously rewritten to work?
Folks who hate Admiral Janeway have issues with their Mothers.
Issues? Issues? I have whole frakking subscriptions with Janeway.
The only redeeming feature of Voyager is that it isn’t on any more, and therefore can’t pollute the universe further.