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

[AFT]

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

Ahh! OK, I got it. Thanks, I understand now what do you mean when saying that. But applying that metaphor to The 37's is, as noted before a bit too harsh, that point appears more like around the fifth season and that happens to be more or less the same point for TNG and DS9. Extract all the Dominion War related episodes (not that many actually) and surprise, the last two seasons of DS9 would have being…difficult to watch.

[2046]

some of them like The Omega Glory were worst than anything that came out of Voyager including Threshold.

[... and] who could forget Statistical Probabilities

Wow, dude.

I guess this goes to show . . . one of Trek's great strengths is that has a wide appeal to different tastes. :)

[2046]

. . . speaking of which, Voyager appeals to some people to an astonishing, if not disturbing, degree:

http://www.star-trek-voyager.fsnet.co.uk/

(Now with 29,900 screenshots . . . back in the day when I used to use that site to research Voyager info ('cause I hadn't really seen most of it at that point) she was just hitting 10k.)

[GStone]

She's a closet pro-trek debater. :-P

[watchdog]

I have no clue as to when Voyager 'jumped the shark', From my point of view Voyager had many fine episodes that they could have built upon but didnt. Equinox was the one I held out hope for, I would have loved to have seen an entire season where Voyager had to chase down a rogue federation ship. A friend of mine once comlained that all the potential enemies seen in Star Trek were never as smart or clever as the main characters who just pull out some techno-resource to easily defeat them. thats why the idea of a rogue captain with all the same training as the main characters would have been great if carried through a whole season, I've heard that 'Year of hell' was supposed to have been a whole season long but someone got scared at the thought and condensed it down to two episodes with the usuall reset button at the end. personally I'm sick of Trek time travel stories, this is Star Trek not Back to the future. Thats one of the reasons why I was not interested in the temporal cold war arc of Ent, it was poorly thought out and even more poorly done, I scarcely remember any details about it now.
But Voyager did mark the final downturn of Trek as far as I'm concerned, they had plenty of great stories but did not build upon them deciding they would rather continue with the same style of episodes they had always done, the style that allowed networks to play episodes in any order they wanted to. I think DS9 was the first to truly attempt to do season-spanning story arcs, it was a little clumsy but I was happy with the outcome. The grittier style took some getting used to (and I was extreamly happy when they switched to the movie uniforms), and the series end could have been done much better but I think it was the best Trek I had seen in quite some time, a new direction that was abandoned by B&B in order to follow the same old direction.

[AFT]

Wow, dude.

I guess this goes to show . . . one of Trek's great strengths is that has a wide appeal to different tastes. :)

If by that you mean total nonsense and mental institutions then be my guest. But seriously I just wanted to illustrate that silly, incongruent, awful, boring and utterly nonsense episodes are not an exclusive of Voyager and neither good, thoughtful, moving and great episodes are an exclusive of the other ST series. All of them have its share of embarrassing moments and more. So, is people justified to be that harsh on Voyager? On my opinion, no. Everybody is entitled to their opinions and tastes but they seem to be exaggerating a little too much about Voyager. Is it the greatest series ever to exist? Sure as hell it isn’t. Is it the best ST series? More than probably, it is not. Is it utter trash that doesn’t even deserve to exist? Well, that is simply a bit too much. So, why don’t we simply say that is not the best ST series but that is not the monumental failure many people seem to think it is and give it a rest?

And what about the site? It's not that friendly user by the way.

[SailorSaturn13]

I, personally liked Voyager seasons 4-7 very much. It's just that sometimes, the writers forgot about what goes, and what not.

Viruses 1m big are Not possible, no matter what...

[2046]

Oooh, a whole season of "Equinox" . . . that's a really cool idea. A pity that was well before the arc format gained enough traction. They could've TCW'ified it for Archer, even . . . imagine a Ransom-esque figure wreaking havoc in the 22nd Century, when there was just enough tech for him to play with but not so much that his tricks would be known.

Ah, the lost opportunities of the Temporal Cold War . . .

Oops . . . pardon my non-Voyager tangent.

[watchdog]

That would have made Ent better in my opinion, I never liked the temporal cold war, dumb idea to me. For Ent I would have had two ships on test runs instead of just the one, you could have had starfleet going up against rivals for the contract to build the next gen of starships. Each ship could have recognizable trek features; one could have a design style like Ent, the other could have a more TOS-like design. one could have a transporter and the other not, and you could maybe expand upon the animosity between the Andorians and the Vulcans, maybe have one ship side with the other. They could have bought in the organization we saw at the series end that was trying to get all aliens off earth and made several intelligent story arcs off of that.
B&B said they wanted there to be a bridge between Kirks era and ours and the last racists could have been an interesting tale indeed

[Nonamer]

I, personally liked Voyager seasons 4-7 very much. It's just that sometimes, the writers forgot about what goes, and what not.

Viruses 1m big are Not possible, no matter what...

Plus the stunning lack of continuity in the later episodes. It just felt off sometimes when you watched ST:Voy.

[AFT]

I, personally liked Voyager seasons 4-7 very much. It's just that sometimes, the writers forgot about what goes, and what not.

Viruses 1m big are Not possible, no matter what...

Plus the stunning lack of continuity in the later episodes. It just felt off sometimes when you watched ST:Voy.

I always heard about this lack of continuity…May I ask you for some of the more blatant ones? The more obvious on your eyes…

[SailorSaturn13]

Yes, especially sometimes we have GREAT continuity. The "infect Borg with a virus" plan of "Endgame" was first introduced in TNG, for example. Though how Janeway got to be an admiral I don't understand...

[Nonamer]

I, personally liked Voyager seasons 4-7 very much. It's just that sometimes, the writers forgot about what goes, and what not.

Viruses 1m big are Not possible, no matter what...

Plus the stunning lack of continuity in the later episodes. It just felt off sometimes when you watched ST:Voy.

I always heard about this lack of continuity…May I ask you for some of the more blatant ones? The more obvious on your eyes…

They always seem to have "Yet Another Shuttle", even though they should be having a shortage of supplies of all sorts, just for starters. In fact, Voyager never seemed to have any shortages whatsoever, and breathlessly blew away the Borg and every other Alien of the week with overwhelming power. Nearly all later events were regularly reset. At least in the beginning characters died, yet in the later episodes hardly anyone died, and when someone did die they reset the plot some how (time traveling usually, though Harry Kim's replacement with another Harry Kim is unique). It was just terrible all around to be a serious fan of Voyager. Yes, sure it was pretty good quality sci-fi, and casual sci-fi watchers could get into with realizing anything, but they would notice if they kept on watching.

[Nonamer]

Yes, especially sometimes we have GREAT continuity. The "infect Borg with a virus" plan of "Endgame" was first introduced in TNG, for example. Though how Janeway got to be an admiral I don't understand...

Are you sure this isn't sarcasm? Future Janeway destroyed the Borg with a virus, in order to save about 3 or 4 crew members from death, even though easily twice that many had died earlier. Why didn't she go to the beginning of the whole ordeal and end it before it started? Plus the whole batmobile armor and magic transphasic torpedoes that kills anything breaks general ST continuity.

[AFT]

They always seem to have "Yet Another Shuttle", even though they should be having a shortage of supplies of all sorts, just for starters.

That by itself is not a lack of continuity, as they never said that they cannot build shuttles on board, at best you can say that it stretches credibility but not really since as a ship designed for deep space exploration it should come equipped with industrial replicators by design.

In fact, Voyager never seemed to have any shortages whatsoever

Then you didn’t watch close enough, especially on the first seasons they did have to deal with shortages of several kinds, to the point that replicators had to be rationed, at some point they ran out of deuterium and they had to search for dilithium more than once, in fact it was only because Voyager was designed for long range exploration that they were able to manage the situation they were in, the Equinox is the perfect example of the opposite, just in case that you don’t know she was an Starfleet science vessel meant for short range planetary survey and was dragged to the DQ just as Voyager, but unlike them they were on a very bad shape when they ran into Voyager at the end of the Sixth Season, which it’s not very surprising since that ship class was no meant for deep space exploration.

and breathlessly blew away the Borg and every other Alien of the week with overwhelming power. Nearly all later events were regularly reset. At least in the beginning characters died, yet in the later episodes hardly anyone died, and when someone did die they reset the plot some how (time traveling usually, though Harry Kim's replacement with another Harry Kim is unique). It was just terrible all around to be a serious fan of Voyager. Yes, sure it was pretty good quality sci-fi, and casual sci-fi watchers could get into with realizing anything, but they would notice if they kept on watching.

Are you sure that you watched Voyager or you just jumped on the general wagon of Voyager lack of continuity? With the exception of Endgame, Voyager never “breathlessly blew away the Borg”, as a matter of fact they always barely escaped the few encounters they had with them and only because that suited the Borg queen intentions but mostly because of sheer dumb luck, and a bit of determination and resourcefulness from her crew I should add. As for the other Aliens of the week, the DQ was described as a relatively primitive region of space, therefore most of the time Voyager had superior technology and ergo superior firepower and even though they got their ass kicked more than once. As the other examples you mentioned, they maybe are stretches of credibility, plot resets, whatever, but they are not breaches of continuity as they didn’t contradict a previous event or established background.