Star Trek:Voyager was a good concept for a Trek series, that was unfortunately ahead of its time. Back when it came out, TV was a lot more episodic, which I always thought hurt Voyager.
In today’s television world, a sci-fi show wouldn’t survive as an episodic show. This would work wonders for a Trek show about a starship lost on the other side of the galaxy. I always thought it was silly that they had a never-ending supply of torpedoes and shuttlecraft, and the ship was always in pristine condition.
Anyone agree with me that the show would have been better if it had come out in today’s television?
They did try it on today’s television (for certain values of “today”) and it was GREAT. They called it Battlestar Galactica. (Seriously, Ron Moore was a producer on Star Trek and one of his goals AIUI with BG was to do Voyager right. I think he succeeded.)
But the problem wasn’t that they were doing episodic tv, it’s that they did it so poorly!
I actually was expecting them to a modern series, with episodes having continuity and consequences. That’s what I thought they were promising.
Instead, we got Gilligan’s Planet. But they could have done a “modern” show back then. Shows like what you are describing go back as far as Hill Street Blues. It isn’t a new thing.
Are you saying that *Voyager *was more multi-episode arc than other shows? Because I don’t agree. I think it was mostly stand-alone episodes. *DS9 *relied heavily on arcs. So much so I’m amazed it kept enough fans to sustain a full 7-year run. Didn’t hurt that it was a much, *much *better show than Voyager…
I think Gretchion means that it should have been–that it would have worked better had it had more continuity and been more arc-driven, like DS9 or Babylon 5. (Both far superior shows, though I prefer B5, personally.) The concept was better suited for an arc show, but they went with the episodic formula from TNG.
Yeah, sorry. I tend to type my thoughts too fast without editing to make sure what I type makes as much sense as what’s bouncing around in my head…
Voyager had a problem with hitting the reset button way too often. I didn’t mind that so much for TNG or the original series, but Voyager’s concept just begged for story arcs.
It was a REALLY weakly written cast of characters, aside from the doctor and 7 and maybe B’lanna the most memorable characters were early season villains like Seska and that sociopath crew member.
They just really dropped the ball on the character writing, they had a chance to introduce some very un-Federation like characters with the Maquis and they didn’t really. The Maquis also folded into Voyager’s crew virtually painlessly, when there could have been a lot of drama to be wrung out of the fact half the crew HATED the Federation and there could have been mutiny attempts.
When you start thinking about Voyager’s failures it just gets worse and worse.
There’s a lot that could have gone better if they’d done things, not just differently, but simply better. But I don’t think keeping the show “as is” but moving the premiere date forward twenty years was one of them.
*Oddest legitimate sentence construction since “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo…”?
Robert Beltran, who played Chakotay just in case anyone here doesn’t know that already, seemed to really dislike Voyager. He complained about the lack of Chakotay’s character development stating that we never even learn what tribe he’s in and says something to the effect of “I figured out the writers didn’t care about the character so I stopped caring about him.” I think Voyager just became a paycheck to him at some point rather than something he wanted to do.
And I can’t argue with calling Voyager the show where potential goes to die. I was really looking forward to it but in the pilot episode I’m thinking “Wait a minute, these people have access to warp technology and they don’t know how to make water?” Following that up over the first three seasons with weak characterizations, crappy episodes, and piss poor writing that resulted in the magical reset button being pushed on a regular basis and I was driven away from the show. The only episode I can remember liking was “Think Tank” though “Year of Hell” gets a nod even for the magical reset button. I only watched the series because my roommates watched it. Once I moved out I quit watching it.
Voyager deliberately avoided having story arcs. They weren’t anything new in TV: Hill Street Blues had shown they could work ten years earlier, and by 1992 all the Emmy nominated best dramas had story arcs. Babylon 5 had shown that even longer arcs were possible, and possible in a science fiction context (and for a syndicated show like Star Trek).
It was a decision – probably by the executives at Paramount – not to use arcs. They were worried about being able to put out episodes in the correct order; if there were a technical problem with the special effects for one episode, it might not be ready for the scheduled air date.
In any case, it wouldn’t have helped. The show had weak writing, dull characters, and uninteresting plots.
And as far as it goes, let’s not forget that Depp Space 9 was built on long-term story and character arcs, which covered entire seasons.
Just as an aside, the entire Maquis concept was built up in TNG and DS9, both of which handled it better and more fully than Voyager, despite it being supposedly a major element. The implications of Starfleet’s policy, questioning whether certain Federation ideals (Hence Gene Roddenberry’s ideals) were right or wrong, and the struggle to overcome cultural barriers to achieve peace with other civilizations - these were all thoroughly explored in the original series through DS9.
However, they weren’t explored in Voyager or the later Enterprise series, except in the most trivial and shallow ways. The reason comes down to the writing staff, which was simply not, as a general rule, up to the standard necessary. As concepts, these two shows had great recipes. I would go so far as to say that conceptually, they’re extremely strong. But almost immediately, both shows decided to drop the concept’s strong points. This left them void of meaningful character conflict.
Not at first. The first two seasons were more episodic. Once Voyager started and Rick Berman began to concentrate on that show, the writers were free to start peppering light arcs into DS9.
Even when they did start doing real dedicated arcs, they had to fight TPTB in order to do that. In season 6 the writers wanted to do a season long arc, but were only allowed to do six episodes. That turned out to be successful enough that they were allowed to do the season 7 arc.
I blame Berman and Bragga, like I always do when something Trek goes wrong, regardless of their actual involvement level.
Save the Vulcan, save the world. HUZZAH!
Though at the end of the day, in all incarnations (at least, that I saw), the Maquis never seemed to amount to more than Canadian Terrorists, too polite and whitebread to ever actually amount to any sort of threat to anyone (or interest the viewer).