Revisiting Star Trek [Part 4 of 7]: Voyager
[NOTE: This is the fourth essay in Pete Tzinski's 7-part series leading up to the premiere of the new Star Trek film. See also: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]
(The new movie is so close, it’s just a couple of days away. Isn’t it maddening? Well, maybe not for you, you might have other hobbies and things. It’s driving me up the wall, though. I can’t wait. And like a junkie waiting for his next dose of heroin to arrive, I am making do with…old episodes of Star Trek. And I’m not sure that metaphor worked very well.)
Star Trek was not abating, even with The Next Generation now off the air. We had Deep Space Nine showing. In 1994, we also had the first Next Generation movie, Star Trek: Generations, appear. And then, in 1995, Star Trek: Voyager appeared, the anchor show on Paramount’s new network, UPN.
The Star Trek universe was getting awfully crowded right about now. I don’t know that anyone was complaining, though. I certainly wasn’t. Voyager left from Deep Space Nine in their first episode. And then, in an effort not to bang into Deep Space Nine, or The Next Generation movie stories, Voyager fired the ship off 75,000 Light years from home, to the Delta Quadrant. New space, new aliens, and the overall series story of them trying to get home (which was supposed to be, in theory, a 75 year journey at their best speeds).
The crew is a mixture of Starfleet officers, and Maquis rebel-pirate sorts, who have to band together for the voyage home. And of course, there’s the couple of Delta Quadrant aliens they pick up early on (Neelex and Kes, although Kes eventually goes all quantum). And most notably, we get The Doctor, who is an Emergency Medical Hologram, and is all Voyager has as a doctor, in the absence of a medical staff. Later on, we add Seven of Nine, played by Jeri Ryan, and they added her and her skintight costume for pure storytelling and literary purposes, obviously, and don’t you think anything else.
Voyager ran for seven seasons, just like Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation both had done. Despite a lot of publicity for it, Voyager never did as well as DS9 or TNG did.
I watched Voyager every week, because I was in love with Star Trek, and so I couldn’t deny it. I remember at the time that the internet and Star Trek forums tended to divide up, in a gentle sort of way, into people who loved Deep Space Nine, and people who loved Voyager. They all watched both series, just preferred the one over the other. As we’ve already seen, my allegiance was with DS9, but I found Voyager to be a respectable way to spend my time.
The early seasons seemed very rough, to me. It takes any show some time to find its footing, but a lot of early Voyager scripts felt like lackluster, or rejected, The Next Generation scripts. And then there were the Alien-a-week episodes, and they were rarely of any interest. The characters were flat. The recurring threat, the Kazhon were boring and took head-make-up to a whole new level.
Eventually, the show picked up, mostly as it got more hostile and a little more willing to go beyond its initial format. I can’t think of any one-off episodes that I really fell in love with the way earlier series had had things like “The Inner Light”, for example.
But then we got into Borg storylines, and that helped the series immeasurably. Borg fleets and great bases, Borg invasions and battles. It was a lot of fun. It led to the introduction of Seven of Nine, and she helped refocus a crew of characters who were otherwise sort of ambling and boring.
I don’t especially remember individual episodes anymore, except for the episode “Omega”, which was a fine one that I’ve seen just recently. Mostly, I just realized, what I remember about Voyager are the alien species.
I remember the Borg, surely. But I was much, much more interested in the Hirogen, towering warriors with gigantic guns and armor. And I remember Species 8472, strange CGI monsters in ships that looked an awful lot like the Vorlon ships from Babylon 5. Species 8472 was a species that even the Borg were terrified of. When they turned up, it tended to be a lot of fun. As for the Hirogen, all I remember about them was a two-parter in which they imprisoned the Voyager crew in a holodeck, recreating World War II. That was very fine.
But even these are not detailed remembrances. I remember enjoying Voyager at the time, but not in such a strong light that any real solid memories have formed.
I was willing to consider that this was my own fault, and I just hadn’t given the series the attention I should have done. And so, recently, I’ve been watching old episodes of Voyager, from all across the different seasons. One-a-day for a couple of weeks.
So how did it hold up?
Truthfully, for me, it held up not at all. While I watched episodes of The Next Generation and The Original Series and came away impressed by the writing and the acting…re-watching Voyager, I mostly found myself re-writing the dialogue in my head, or grumbling as scenes were cut too short and there was never a chance for the characters to open up and talk. The plots just didn’t compel me, not in the way that other series did. I mentioned the episode “Omega” above, because of all the ones I’ve watched, that was the only one which really stood out. And even it had a lot of problems, in that it never seemed to open up and go anywhere, either with its storyline ideas, or with its characters. And so, even coming into the series with a wide-open mind and really trying to like it (I prefer liking things than disliking them, which someone will probably tell me is just a lack of discerning taste on my part.)
If you’ve never seen Voyager, I suggest you give it a shot, despite my own lackluster experience with the series. It may catch your interest in a way that it failed to do with me. It stays in re-runs pretty consistently and shouldn’t be too hard to find. I’m sorry I can’t recommend any particular episode, but since they stand on their own for the most part, you can jump in anywhere.
I recommend jumping in after Seven of Nine has joined the crew, in that the writing sharpens up and the characters start interacting by that point. (And Jeri Ryan is always lovely enough to take away the sting of bad writing, so you can’t really lose).
Related posts:
- Revisiting Star Trek [Part 2 of 7]: The Next Generation
- Revisiting Star Trek [Part 3 of 7]: Deep Space Nine
- Revisiting Star Trek [Part 1 of 7]: The Original Series
- Friday YouTube: The Cast of Frasier Does Star Trek Voyager
- Friday YouTube: 4 Reasons I’m Glad I Never Watched Star Trek Voyager
Filed under: Star Trek
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I wish Voyager had taken a different tack and shown some entropy. After seven years I want to see all the carpets worn full of holes, and Janeway slouching around in slippers and robe with her hair in curlers even on duty, and taking her coffee mug along on away missions, and not really paying attention to what anyone says because she’s heard it all before. I want to see the replicators producing nothing but Klingon cuisine because B’elanna Torres decided she has a thing for it and no one else can reprogram them. And she wanders the ship with a wad of chewing gum in her mouth all the time because she uses it to fix everything –
“There’s a plasma leak in the EPS manifold! We’re all going to die!”
*grunt* *spit* *splat*
– except the warp drive, which is held together with duct tape. And those aren’t pajama-style uniforms everyone’s wearing, they’re pajamas, because nobody can be bothered to dress for duty any more, except for Paris, and he’s dressed as Captain Proton. (No one notices.) And the Doctor, whose portable emitter has lost its vertical hold, has taken to starting conversations with “What fresh hell is this?”
That would have been awesome.
Voyager was originally going to be focused also on the conflicts between the Starfleet officers and the Maquis, but this was pretty much abandoned after a few episodes.
It’s noteworthy that this is a review of a ‘Trek’ show with not a single mention of the Captain. The reason for that is pretty obvious, Kate Mulgrew really didn’t cut it. Genevieve Bujold was the original Captain and quit after a single day of filming saying, ‘I can’t do this’. I’ve always wondered, did she mean she couldn’t bring that character to life, or she couldn’t lower herself to do television?
Casting and character concepts on Voyager were spotty across the board. Tuvok? Kess? B’lanna? Too bad, it had great potential.
And they chickened out a lot. Remember the episode where the found ‘heaven’ for a species and it turned out to just be an asteroid where dead bodies got beamed to? That could have been Voyagers ‘Who Watches the Watchers’, but they had Janeway do a ‘well, maybe the asteroid really is heaven’ talk at the end. Really lost the point of the episode.
The lil’ woman and I watched Voyager for a while, and I was struggling to remember why we stopped. The writing was shaky, but there were more than a few character concepts that showed promise.
I remembered giving up before the catsuited Seven of Nine, but I couldn’t quite place it… until I was reminded by the comment above.
The reason we stopped watching Voyager can be stated in one word: Tuvix.
I’m one of those people who loved Voyager. And all those Kazon episodes were great. I loved the Kazon. Their wild hair and their sexist attitude that always undermined them with Janeway were fantastic.
The relationship between Janeway and Chakotay is always interesting, and Chakotay is a great male lead character. And who can’t love Tom Paris?
Anyway I thought a lot of the episodes had depth. There was the recurring theme about enslavement of holographic lifeforms. B’elanna’s issues with being bi-racial. The tensions between the Starfleet crewmembers and the Maquis rebels who had to join the crew. The loss of Janeway’s chance to marry her fiance and possibly have a family. This was very hard on her, but she had to buck up and be the leader every day. And I loved how she negotiated with the Borg and battled species 8472.
I admit that there were some rough patches in the series but every Star Trek series is riddled with imperfections. I consider Voyager the best series since the Original, and Janeway was as tough a captain as you could hope to find. I wanted this series to move into making movies for the big screen instead of them actually getting back to Earth in the series finale.
I guess I didn’t really mention characters, did I? None of them stood out for me, not strongly. And of course, that’s probably just a matter of taste, but they never interested me. They never MOVED. Or Evolved. And if they did, things settled back down a little while later.
But if I had to mention a character, I’d mention The Doctor, played by Robert Picardo. He was a brilliant actor, and the character was fantastic. He conveyed arrogance and lonliness and frustration very well. He had real emotion and really fine moments. Remember that Holodeck program that dumped him into Beowulf? That was terrific. Or that later-on episode in which he worked with Reginald Barclay? That was a lot of fun.
And second-runner to him would be Tim Russ’s Tuvok. He was very good, in a very quiet way. But the rest just never got anywhere, for my tastes. But it *IS* a matter of opinion, really. As I mentioned, the Trekkies I knew were always split between “love DS9, hate Voyager,” and “Love Voyager, hate DS9″ and “kinda okay with both really.” And of course, everyone in all parties watched all three, because we were Trekkies, damnit, what else were we going to watch?
And Forrest…we need to find a way to get you the money to make that Star Trek series. Because THAT version of Voyager sounds hilarious. And very, very British.
The only thing I recall about Voyager (having watched what would total, maybe, one episode worth) is that this is the one with Nipples of Nine. There was a drinking game set to how many times phasers were aimed directly at her lady bits.
I would watch the version Forrest described, though
I think the biggest mistake made with Star Trek Voyager was putting it on UPN. There were areas of the US which did not get UPN. There are cable/satellite coverage areas which didn’t provide programming for UPN or WB. Fox, of course, was splashed all over the place.
I watched Voyager when I could find it, but like you, didn’t find much memorable about it. I don’t remember having any negative feelings about it though. Maybe we had had just too much Star Trek by that time and Voyager was doomed before it even began.
This was actually my favorite series.
I loved that they were “alone” and had to survive on their own. I also liked the time travel storylines in this series, especailly the one where they go back the modern day Earth.
And I felt the characters were pretty well drawn out. Janeway and Chakotay’s relationship. Harry and Tom’s friendship. Tom and B’lanna, and even Harry and Seven. It would have been great to see them play on that relationship more.
The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. The resoltuion was just awkward (especailly putting Chakotay with Seven together).
I have to say I loved Star Trek:Voyager and still do , mostly because it was the series that seriously got me to be a fan of Star Trek.
I started watching it when I was 11 and it was in it’s final season so naturally I was intrigued about a variety of things such as; How did they end up in the Delta Quadrant anyways? What the hell is Neelix’s species (I remember thinking that the moment I saw him on the show) who exactly were the Marquis? How did a borg end up on a federation ship?
I know these are all simple questions which were in time answered through re-runs. But what you need to understand is a person’s prospective can be very different by watching a show in it’s final season and seeing how it is and the characters and then going back to re-runs and experiencing the whole runthrough starting with episode 1.
Right off the bat I liked that they had a female captain, I’d never known star trek to have a female lead so it was pretty interesting and it made me proud that writers of today were willing to take on challenges of putting a female in command and setting aside rediculous fears about women in control. It was especially liberating I bet because in the original series in the first pilot the studio airing it had them get rid of Majel Barett as a first officer because the studio didn’t think the audience would take kindly to a woman as second in command.
Believe it or not I loved Neelix (who most people hate it seems) I saw a lot of myself in the character to be honest. I identified with B’elanna’s character but not until I saw re-runs of some of her best episodes “Faces” being my favourite. I was born with a cleft lip and in that episode her klingon half is removed and she says how she was always trying to hide her ridges as a child and now she finally got her wish but she realizes she’s incomplete without that and it was a turning point for me realizing I’d be a very different person if I didn’t have a cleft. I kind of didn’t like that Seven and B’elanna didn’t get along for the most part, I honestly thought they had a lot in common eventually. Seven eventually loathing the borg and of course B’elanna starting out and through most of the show disliking her klingon side. I like the relationship that occured between Janeway and Tuvok and even though they didn’t really show much of that relationship or friendship in the show it wasn’t diminished by lack of screen time when they had scenes that showed that friendship between them, it was powerful and heartwarming enough so that you knew it was there even when it wasn’t shown a lot.
I gotta say Harry was not my favourite and unfortunately it was fueled more so when I learned about the character of Kes and how harry had been slated to be killed off in Scorpion then he was rated as a beautiful person so they booted Kes out of the show and it was goodbye Jennifer Lien. The stupid Harry Kim I hated him so much, I felt the actor was given a lot of breaks at the exspense of Jennifer Lien and her character. He was treated so well for a person who showed up late and then complained about not having a lot of character development. Well sorry, maybe if you’d respected the job you’d be given a lot more freedom to work with Harry Kim. And to be honest he had some fantastic episodes, particularily “Timeless” but I believe it was an episode better suited to Tom Paris and actually Captain Janeway would of been nice to see in that position and even an aged more humanized Seven of Nine. But back to Kes.
I loved Kes a lot and for a while she was my absolute favourite. she was kind,caring, sweet and childlike yet mature and a well-rounded character. I was of course curious as to why she wasn’t in the show later because remember I’d seen it from season seven and then somehow skipped the last episode and then started on season 1. I digress I actually remember “Renaissance Man” was the first episode I saw.
Anyways…I wish Kes didn’t have to go but, I must admit it was an amazing scene between her and Captain Janeway in “The Gift” when she says goodbye. I wish they’d given a goodbye scene to her and the doctor I loved their relationship and how that kind of relationship shifted into the one the doctor and Seven had. I’ll have to side track to something else about Kes (I’m what I like to call Obkessed lol Kes obsessed right now)
I didn’t like her bitterness in her return in “Fury” (I thought the premise was great thought but it didn’t fit her character) I felt it was very unkes like…It was not a road I saw her character taking, I wish they’d of found another way to bring her back. I heard in a novel they explain the aged Kes is not the real Kes but a Nacene (Caretaker’s species) so I like that someone was thinking my way and made it so it wasn’t Kes LOL Maybe if they’d done a future version of Seven who turns out to of not taken to humanity the way Janeway had attempted and had her come back to try and destroy Voyager. That’d be a good way of showing a possible outcome of the liberated drone which we all know would never of been seen unless an alternate reality episode or an episode like fury occured for her.
I liked the rivalry between Paris and Neelix, I think it should of lasted longer than it did. Also although I like Neelix I think it’d of been funny to see Tom and Kes get together and rub it in the jealous talaxian’s face rather than him an B’elanna but I did like the Tom and B’elanna relationship anyways.
One thing that bothered me as far as relationships go is the one between Chakotay and Tuvok which is understandably rough in the first few episodes because Tuvok betrayed them. But I didn’t like that in the episode “Night” Chakotay says I know we’re not friends or we’ve never been close. I was like what five years and you can’t set your differences aside with the easy going calm vulcan yet you can embrace Tom Paris as a friend who also betrayed you within a few days?
I know it seems like I’ve said a lot to bash Voyager but I truly do like it so now I’m going to mention a little more of what I love about it.
I liked the realism of the first officer and captain having disagreements a lot of the time but also having a calm understanding of each other. I have to say I thought of them like brother and sister, the captain being the older bossy sister and chakotay being the middle child and Tuvok being the younger child (although he out ages the both of them) who the older one sides with a lot kinda sounds like my brother and my sister and our relationship LOL. dispite that being said about the sister brother type relationship , I know that they show had at one point implied romance between Janeway and Chakotay which I thought was fabulous! I want to clarify I think that there were different aspects of the chakotay kathryn relationship not that I thought they had a insestuous relationship LOL at some points when they disagreed they were bro and sis and when they were united they were very much a couple.
I totally liked the romance idea, was thrown for a loop with the Seven Chakotay <3 romance. But I agree with Robbie Beltran about needing something to do. He was a diverse character and I liked the fatherly aura he had over B’elanna. I was hoping for a ask permission to marry her scene between him and Tom. I think that would of been funny since he initially hated Tom so it would be reminiscent of the boyfriend meeting the father LOL
I have to say “Year of Hell” 1 and 2 were by far my most cherished episodes. I loved the heart, and the strife and the hardened Janeway (similar to the war ridden Picard in Yesterday’s Enterprise) I enjoyed the human bond that was formed between Seven and Tuvok after he sacrificed himself to save her and became blind. She (As subtle as it was) showed a guilt which made her human even more so, but the subtlness was perfect for her borg nature. So it suted her. She certainly wasn’t going to be exaggerating her guilt over his loss of sight. B’elanna and the doctor and even tom and harry seemed unaffected by this episode, just kind of went with the plasma flow (I’m so punny. Chakotay’s obsession was great! I think he was turned to Annorax’s side to easily though. it also would be nice to see if this episode didn’t end with the timeline being reset and the next season being about Voyager rebuilding but with Janeway alive. I did enjoy the scene where Janeway does go down with the ship, it was heroic, the last scene of her with the crew before the battle was epic particularily with the Tuvok goodbye part. the music just before the last cut to commercial until the episode ended. where Janeway is alone on the bridge and walks to her command chair and sits down was so perfect. One of those doesn’t need words to be perfection scenes. It was very world war kind of scene. Overall an Epic episode.
I liked the doctor a lot he was one of my favourites, I understood his feeling of being treated like an inferior person, being the youngest sibling I can relate to domineering well your just this so we’ll treat you like that attitude. He had so many great episodes, and I could go on and on about his character but I’ve taken up a lot of space, so I’ll just say Tinker Tenor Doctor spy was a brilliant episode (which originally I was bored by …weird eh?) I also liked the one where he thinks he is real and it was all because of a holodeck malfunction. That episode’s elements are present sort of in “One” where Seven is alone on Voyager and she starts seeing things and believing other things. My favourite Seven episodes were One(Also another episode I initially disliked) and Drone.
My favourite Janeway Episode was Coda, no explanation required I think. I enjoyed Robert Beltran’s acting in that in one of the death scenes of Janeway. Mulgrew blew me away in that. Another Janeway episode I liked was “Scientific method” Mulgrew’s acting was once again superb. “Tuvix” was so great I wished they’d of devised a way to keep that actor on and bring Tuvok and Neelix back. I liked that it showed Janeway could make the hard decisions, she did this again in “Equinox” which was nice.
I already mentioned my favourite B’elanna episode “Faces” but I also enjoyed “Lineage” another kind of faced with your genetics and accepting it episode and those kinds are ones I will always be fond of I think. “Day of Honour” Sticks out. I loved the repetition of meanings in the Torres shows they may of been repeated a lot but they always touched my heart and had a place with me.
Once again the only Harry Kim episode I liked was “Timeless” but I still think it was better suited to Tom,Janeway or Seven
Best Chakotay Episode was “The Fight” I dunno why I just liked it, “Natural Law” was good because it stepped back into where the Chakotay character began in the series in the first few episodes, with that meaning he respected cultures and was patient and just had a unique understanding without knowing what species were saying like in “Basics” part 2, “emanations” with the dead aliens on the asteroid. Another reason “Natural Law” is a fav is because I think it minorly dwells on Seven learning to appreciate and maybe although not mentioned she starts to feel for Chakotay although doesn’t realize it yet. Plus I liked her development in that episode.
Best Tom Episode was “Alice” just amazing amazing acting by Robert Duncan McNiel he out did himself again in “Vis a Vis”
My favourite Tuvok Episode was “Meld” I liked the emotion displayed after the effect of the mindmeld with Sudor causes the doctor to remove Tuvok’s ability to supress the emotions. “Gravity” was a good episode between him and the Noss Character.
Obviously my favourite Naomi episode has to be “Once upon a time” because well she’s just so cute in it and it’s one of her her only prominent episodes. But actually my favourite scene was in Unimatrix Zero where she proposes a plane to rescue Seven. I dunno I just think scenes between Janeway and Naomi and even Seven and Naomi are cute. I also really liked the episode “Bliss” which heavily featured Naomi.
Finally Icheb, didn’t like him at first I dunno why. But gradually he grew on me and instantly after the episode Imperfection I was in love with that character. I thought he did more character development in that single episode than he did in the whole time he was on the show, he developed very quickly for a character who was on a short while. I liked it.
Well that concludes my opinion of Voyager I really liked the show, probably because it was my first hardcore exposure to Star Trek, although as a young child I was privy to TNG. Everyone knew Picard and the gang and even to this day Worf is my favourite Star trek character above all else. LOL but Voyager is my favourite trek series. If it weren’t for Voyager I’d never of made an effort to watch DS9 because my dad constantly said it was all talk and no action dispite a war happening during the show (shows what my dad knew) and also I’d never of watched TNG more thoroughly. I owe Voyager especially the B’elanna episodes a lot of my confidence I know it can sound silly that a TV show inspired me and helped shape me but…well that’s how my life played out. I love Star Trek Voyager
Thank you, sorry I wrote so much but even all that doesn’t begin to pay tribute to what Voyager means to me.
Will
Wow! And the winner of the award for The Longest, Most Detailed Star Trek Remembrance goes to Will!
(Sorry, Pete…)
I could go and defend VOYAGER, but I won’t bother. I realize that I should not really care what other TREK fans thought of the show. I KNOW that VOYAGER is my favorite TREK series and there is nothing anyone can say that would change my mind. I had avoided VOYAGER for years, because many fans were claiming it as the worst TREK show ever. And if I must be frank, I had great difficulty maintaining interest in both NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE. But my sister had convinced me to watch a few shows during its Season 5. And after episodes like “Disease”, “Timeless” and “Course: Oblivion”, I became a fan of the series. Then my family and I started watching the reruns of older episodes and I became an even bigger fan. After becoming a regular viewer of VOYAGER, I started watching NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE. Although, both series failed to usurp VOYAGER as my favorite TREK series, I finally learned to appreciate them. But VOYAGER remained my favorite and it still is, to this day.