For me personally, Voyager was the point where Star Trek 'jumped the shark'. I was extremely tolerant of Star Trek in general, but after the warp X salamander babies, I could not longer watch. I will admit to in later years watching reruns, and a few were stand outs. Year of Hell seems singularly interesting as decent scifi.
But in all honesty, Voyager wasn't 'my' Star Trek. I was raised on Classic Trek, found my own love of TNG. DS9 was a guilty pleasure.
Enterprise had a great last season, but it was too little, too late.
Well said. I have pretty much the same mindset/experiences.
With VOY, hindsight is 20/20. We can talk about all of the things that did/didn't work. I want to share this, though...
A couple of friends of mine pitched in-person for VOY. (There were instances where the production staff invited writers to pitch directly to them, sans agents.) Coincidentally, two of the pitched spec script ideas became episodes. And I understand this happened to others who pitched, too. But that's not the main point of this...
In the writer's room, there was a copy of Leonard Maltin's movie guide book on the main conference table. It was a regular practice, according to one of the production team members, to randomly open a page, get a plot idea and form an episode from it.
The obvious questions are: "Which episodes?" "That had to be a joke." And "Surely they weren't THAT lazy?" Needless to say, there was proof presented at the time (which my memory has forgotten). It really happened. Some writers needed inspiration; that's where they go it. Keep in mind: the writers on VOY weren't treated very well, whereas the DS9 writers mostly got along and functioned as a team.
VOY, like so many sci-fi shows, had a LOT of potential. And the lack of vision, solid character development, too many voices pulling the show in different directions, well... it KILLED the show. There's an occasional nugget of gold within the VOY episodes. But even then, it's not pure gold, just pyrite (fool's gold). The show could have been so much, much better, even during the "best" episodes.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,449Community Moderator
edited May 2014
Then how did Voyager get 7 seasons and Enterprise only got 4?
Then how did Voyager get 7 seasons and Enterprise only got 4?
I think we really wanted a Startrek show, but after VOY, we kinda got tired by the bad stories they told.
Enterprise basically suffered from the same problem Voyager did - it didn't take its own premise seriously.
Voyager was a Starfleet ship alone in the wilderness, needing to fend for itself, no support. Yet, after it's voyage, it must have -20 shuttles and -200 torpedoes in storage. The ship recovered from damage after each episode.
Enterprise was a show set where everything got started - humanity's exploration of the galaxy, te Federation, Starfleet. And they come up with some dumb temporal cold war, instead of really giving us the chance to see how all this happens. The final season is the one where they took it serious, but it was too late.
There are of course also plenty of detail problems. Voyager's technobabble, bad plots, inconsistent characters.
Of course, Enterprise problem was also that it was a prequel - people wanted a continuation of the story.
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Half the viewing audience dropped the show after it aired.
yep, in their minds, archer never left sickbay and his dog never survived.... then star trek 2009 comes along and they find out archer's new dog gets beamed to oblivion
Comments
Well said. I have pretty much the same mindset/experiences.
With VOY, hindsight is 20/20. We can talk about all of the things that did/didn't work. I want to share this, though...
A couple of friends of mine pitched in-person for VOY. (There were instances where the production staff invited writers to pitch directly to them, sans agents.) Coincidentally, two of the pitched spec script ideas became episodes. And I understand this happened to others who pitched, too. But that's not the main point of this...
In the writer's room, there was a copy of Leonard Maltin's movie guide book on the main conference table. It was a regular practice, according to one of the production team members, to randomly open a page, get a plot idea and form an episode from it.
The obvious questions are: "Which episodes?" "That had to be a joke." And "Surely they weren't THAT lazy?" Needless to say, there was proof presented at the time (which my memory has forgotten). It really happened. Some writers needed inspiration; that's where they go it. Keep in mind: the writers on VOY weren't treated very well, whereas the DS9 writers mostly got along and functioned as a team.
VOY, like so many sci-fi shows, had a LOT of potential. And the lack of vision, solid character development, too many voices pulling the show in different directions, well... it KILLED the show. There's an occasional nugget of gold within the VOY episodes. But even then, it's not pure gold, just pyrite (fool's gold). The show could have been so much, much better, even during the "best" episodes.
I think we really wanted a Startrek show, but after VOY, we kinda got tired by the bad stories they told.
Enterprise basically suffered from the same problem Voyager did - it didn't take its own premise seriously.
Voyager was a Starfleet ship alone in the wilderness, needing to fend for itself, no support. Yet, after it's voyage, it must have -20 shuttles and -200 torpedoes in storage. The ship recovered from damage after each episode.
Enterprise was a show set where everything got started - humanity's exploration of the galaxy, te Federation, Starfleet. And they come up with some dumb temporal cold war, instead of really giving us the chance to see how all this happens. The final season is the one where they took it serious, but it was too late.
There are of course also plenty of detail problems. Voyager's technobabble, bad plots, inconsistent characters.
Of course, Enterprise problem was also that it was a prequel - people wanted a continuation of the story.
"A night in Sickbay"
Half the viewing audience dropped the show after it aired.
yep, in their minds, archer never left sickbay and his dog never survived.... then star trek 2009 comes along and they find out archer's new dog gets beamed to oblivion