At which point did ST:Voy go down the tubes?

[Nonamer]

I'm just wondering about this myself lately. It was actually pretty decent and well laid out in the first season or so. Only in the later episodes did it stop making any sense. I guess it must have been the Scorpion episodes, the one that introduced species 8472 and all the stupidity that lead out of it.

[AFT]

Actually, the Scorpion episodes were quite good, but yes, all other episodes with Species 8472 were kind of silly, the episodes involving the Hirogen weren’t any better, but if you ask me, the turning point were the Unimatrix Zero episodes, just what were they thinking when they made those? The last nail was the overuse of the characters of Seven of Nine and the Doctor the last season, but the way they handled holographic characters was specially appalling.

After saying that, I must clarify that I don’t despise the series as many others apparently do, sure as hell is far from perfect but all the other ST series have moments I wish I could forgotten. For the most part the special effects were great and as a whole the series has a good deal of episodes ranging from good to excellent.

[CrippledVulture]

Most of Voyager is a blur to me. I wasn't watching it religiously and I was more interested in that week's episode of DS9 anyway. I don't remember liking much of what I saw.

I recently re-watched the last three seasons of DS9. It was awesome. After it was over, I resolved to give Voyager another shot. My friend has the whole thing. I haven't started yet, but I'm going to approach it with an open mind.

Also, a friend recently told me that seasons 3 and 4 of Enterprise were the best Star Trek he'd ever seen. I haven't seen more than a few minutes of the show. Is my friend crazy?

[l33telboi]

Story-arcs. That's the name of the game these days. For instance, instead of just having the Scorpion two-parter, imagine it being the backdrop for an entire season. There's so many more chances for plot when you don't continuosly work with alien and plot of the week.

Plus, have it be a lot grittier. It worked in DS9, so why jettison it in Voyager?

[2046]

Some recent blog comments on what might've happened had there been more than 7 seasons of TNG led me to ponder the following sacrilege/opinion, which applies quite well in this thread:

Voyager's shark-jumping was inevitable. (Note: This is not the sacrilege.) And while it had some good episodes throughout its run, it was never going to be as good as TNG had been.

But TNG itself was no stranger to shark-jumping. (Now here we go.) Good as it was and good as it is almost universally regarded, TNG's later years featured more than a few goofball stories with little redeeming value, often penned by Braga.

Had TNG gone on for 8 or 9 or 10 seasons, this would only have gotten worse.

Instead, it was decided to end it for various backstage reasons. Its replacement was Voyager.

It was only the fact that Voyager was a new series in the beginning that kept it semi-stable at first, its TNG Season-8 shark-jumpings appearing more like the missteps that plague any series in search of its footing.

But let's face it . . . as a whole, Voyager was simply never great, and most of the time not even that good. Infusions of fresh blood among the writers helped, but the head honchos were still there. (Hence ENT4's grandness, once the detritus of ENT3 was bypassed via "Storm Front".)

And the people running Voyager . . . even despite the awesome presence of Michael Piller . . . were largely the same crew that brought us the TNG cast slurping Riker's head through a straw. Or "Masks". Even "Identity Crisis" early on.

The folks who still "got it" were at DS9. Behr, Wolfe, and of course Moore still had plenty left in them. And while there were certainly moments when Voyager could out-do DS9 . . . moments in "Year of Hell" and the Equinox eps come to mind . . . the simple fact is that Voyager as more properly done comes to us now in the form of a show called Battlestar Galactica (though even that's certainly done some hopping and practice jumps).

But then, what do I know? I loathe almost all commercial fiction TV.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Quite logical, considering all the griefs Moore listed about Voyager, and the liberties BSG gave him.

Now, I've been watching a few episodes of Voyager, and since I'm not that much into Trek, that much concerned about continuity, I like the sets, the VFX and, well... some of the characters. Well, I hate the hairdos, but some stories about the holocharacters were nice (like the one where the woman captain got fond of that irish barman or whatever...).

[AFT]

I recently re-watched the last three seasons of DS9. It was awesome. After it was over, I resolved to give Voyager another shot. My friend has the whole thing. I haven't started yet, but I'm going to approach it with an open mind.

May I suggest a little selection of some good Voyager episodes, at least for yours truly:

Season 1
Caretaker
State of Flux
Season 2
The 37's
Projections
Maneuvers
Prototype
Alliances
Dreadnought
Deadlock
Season 3
Flashback
Before and After
Scorpion I/II
Season 4
The Year of Hell I/II
Message in a Bottle
Living Witness
Hope and Fear
Season 5
Timeless
Relativity
Warhead
Season 6
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy
Blink of an Eye
Season 7
Endgame

Also, a friend recently told me that seasons 3 and 4 of Enterprise were the best Star Trek he'd ever seen. I haven't seen more than a few minutes of the show. Is my friend crazy?

No, he is not. He is exaggerating a little too much, but he is definitely not crazy. Well, season 3 is…odd, has some good moments but the whole premise is…never mind, you better see it yourself. Season 4 has some fine episodes, with United as the best Enterprise episode ever, once you get past the awful space Nazi episodes, the first three, and I suggest that you also avoid the season finale too.

[Mike DiCenso]

AFT wrote:
Season 4 has some fine episodes, with United as the best Enterprise episode ever, once you get past the awful space Nazi episodes, the first three, and I suggest that you also avoid the season finale too.

Actually, "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II" would likely be voted as the best two episodes of ST:ENT. Hell, they're probably among the top Trek episodes of all time.
-Mike

[sonofccn]

AFT wrote:
Season 4 has some fine episodes, with United as the best Enterprise episode ever, once you get past the awful space Nazi episodes, the first three, and I suggest that you also avoid the season finale too.

Actually, "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II" would likely be voted as the best two episodes of ST:ENT. Hell, they're probably among the top Trek episodes of all time.
-Mike

They are in my book, I loved those two. Definatly part II, I just loved seeing a connie drop kicking all those 22nd century starships.

[AFT]

Actually, "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II" would likely be voted as the best two episodes of ST:ENT. Hell, they're probably among the top Trek episodes of all time.
-Mike

Yeah, those two are awesome, a very close second to United, but the later has some special elements and a very remarkable historical moment, so IMHO is better, albeit slightly, but when choosing the best out of some of the best episodes around it’s purely a question of personal taste, don’t you think?

[2046]

ENT3 gave us "Twilight", so it can't be all bad.

Good call on "Living Witness", AFT . . . that's Voyager's own "The Inner Light" or "The Visitor" . . . or "Twilight" for that matter.

But, I do have to protest telling anyone to watch "The 37's" . . . that episode was one of my mental examples for early Voyager shark-jumping.

But honestly, in reviewing an episode list . . . many people (and earlier, myself included) are often too harsh on Voyager, as many episodes were at least as good in concept as any average or above-average TNG episode. They just didn't have the same strength of characters.

[GStone]

One of the best from Voyager I remember is the one where Be'Lanna reprograms the Doctor, so he says there's something wrong with her baby, so it has to be genetically reengineered. With the characters, they tried to make many of them 3D, like Harry or Tuvok, but it came off more like they were 1 1/2 D.

I've been watching most of the reruns of ENT they've been showing on scifi and they're into the Xindi arc now and the first 2 season weren't as good as 3 and 4. The numbers may have dwindled, but they were at levels you'd see with cult shows that may not make the money themselves to stay around, but the other shows on the network generic cult show would be on would make money to help support the cult show. The story of ENT could have gone on for another 3 years. You just ran into backtage problems. The ones unhappy could have been written out of the show (death/transfere/quit starfleet/etc.) and new people could have been brought in. It would have been kinda like TOS was, where the ship has a history. I forget if the guy that played Mayweather was unhappy, but his character is the only one I think should have been written out of the show. When he got his own episode, this actor demonstrated that the computer of the E-D had more personality than what he could show as an actor for the role of Mayweather. After 3 more years, some of the lost viewers may have come back with the way the stories were being handled in S3 and 4.

[AFT]

But, I do have to protest telling anyone to watch "The 37's" . . . that episode was one of my mental examples for early Voyager shark-jumping.

May I ask why exactly? But before we continue, just what do you mean with “shark-jumping”? I mean the concept not the literal meaning of the words.

But honestly, in reviewing an episode list . . . many people (and earlier, myself included) are often too harsh on Voyager, as many episodes were at least as good in concept as any average or above-average TNG episode. They just didn't have the same strength of characters.

Yes, I noticed. As you said before, the series was never great but at the very least it was average or even above average, some even might say that it was good, your mileage may vary of course. However, it is clearly not the catastrophe many people thinks it is, so I keep wondering why seemingly everybody is too harsh on Voyager?

TOS gave us the great concept of ST but many of the episodes were bad, some of them like The Omega Glory were worst than anything that came out of Voyager including Threshold. TNG, the best series IMHO by the way, has also its share of awful episodes, especially on seasons 1,2 and 7. With very few exceptions the first two seasons of DS9 were plain boring while as much as half the episodes of seasons 6 and 7 seemed to forgot that a war was going on, you could interchange them with episodes from earlier seasons and hardly tell the difference. And who could forget Statistical Probabilities and Chrysalis? I wish I could.

So, I keep wondering why seemingly everybody is too harsh on Voyager or Enterprise, for that matter. Nothing justify the level of hostility that is deployed against Voyager.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II" would likely be voted as the best two episodes of ST:ENT. Hell, they're probably among the top Trek episodes of all time.
-Mike

Yeah, those two are awesome, a very close second to United, but the later has some special elements and a very remarkable historical moment, so IMHO is better, albeit slightly, but when choosing the best out of some of the best episodes around it’s purely a question of personal taste, don’t you think?

I wasn't phrasing it in terms of individual taste so much as general acceptence among fans. Individually anyone can pick any episode they like. But overall in the fan votes it seems that the IaMD episodes get picked consistently over all other ST:ENT episodes, except maybe "Similitude", "Proving Grounds", and "Azati Prime".
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

AFT wrote:
May I ask why exactly? But before we continue, just what do you mean with “shark-jumping”? I mean the concept not the literal meaning of the words.

For what the term means in detail with regards to a TV series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark


Simply speaking, the term originated from a Happy Days episode where the character of Fonzie quite literally jumps over a shark on water skis while wearing his iconic leather jacket because the writers had simply run out of ideas for stories. The term is used to describe when a series has passed it's peak, and is on a (generally) downward slide in story quality.
-Mike