Star Trek: Voyager Seventh Season
Original air dates: October 2000 – May 2001
Executive Producers: Rick Berman, Kenneth Biller
Captain’s log. As with both TNG and DS9, Voyager went into its seventh season fully aware that it would be their last year on the air. To that end, several episodes were done with the notion that the show was ending in mind.
Like the two show-runners before him (Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller), Brannon Braga stepped back to the role of consulting producer, with Kenneth Biller taking over the show-running duties. One thing Biller tried to do was address certain outstanding issues, or at least revisit themes that hadn’t been dealt with in a while.
Characters such as Q, Joe Carey, Vorik, the Borg Queen, and the Hirogen were all brought back. Neelix was given closure in the antepenultimate episode, being unconvincingly reunited with a bunch of Talaxian refugees in “Homestead.” Torres and Paris got married in “Drive” and had a kid in “Endgame.” Three of the Borg kids found homes while the fourth, Icheb, got to give up his cortical node to help Seven and also become a long-distance Starfleet cadet in “Imperfection”; Icheb’s studies would continue throughout the season. The Emergency Command Hologram makes a couple of return appearances in the “Workforce” two-parter and “Renaissance Man.”
The Maquis-Starfleet tension that was supposed to be the spine of the show was revisited one last time in “Repression.” The contact with the Alpha Quadrant that started in the sixth season’s “Pathfinder” continued throughout the seventh, most notably seen in “Inside Man,” “Author, Author,” and “Friendship One.” Several moments from the show’s past are revisited in “Shattered.” And there are a couple of encounters with other AQ folks, including Ferengi, Klingons, and an old probe—not to mention some holographic versions of familiar species in “Flesh and Blood.”
And then the ship finally gets home thanks to time-travel shenanigans in “Endgame.”
Highest-rated episode: a tie among “Critical Care,” “The Void,” and both parts of “Workforce,” all with a 9.
Lowest-rated episode: “Endgame” with a 1. Dishonorable mention to “Unimatrix Zero, Part II,” “Repression,” “Nightingale,” and “Q2,” which all received 2s
Most comments (as of this writing): “Endgame” with more than 120—it’s still getting comments, so a precise number isn’t possible, but it’s also the only one of the seventh-season episodes to break three figures in comments. Not surprising, really.
Fewest comments (as of this writing): “Inside Man” with 22. Nobody wants to talk about poor holo-Barclay…
Favorite Can’t we just reverse the polarity? From “The Void”: Paris is confused as to why their deuterium is stolen, as it’s incredibly common and can be found anywhere. He says this is a “duh” tone of voice, as if it should be obvious to anyone. This is the show’s way of apologizing for the abject stupidity of “Demon” with Voyager struggling to find deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe.
Favorite There’s coffee in that nebula!: From “Imperfection”: After being completely willing to kill Tuvix to restore Tuvok and Neelix, after being completely willing to disregard Torres’ very explicit instructions not to allow herself to be treated by Crell Moset, Janeway is inexplicably absolutely unwilling to go against Seven’s wishes to receive a cortical node transplant from Icheb.
Favorite Mr. Vulcan: From “Body and Soul“: Tuvok refuses to even admit that he is suffering from the pon farr until Paris comes out and guesses it. He does the stubborn-ass Vulcan stoic thing to the very end.
Favorite Half and half: From “Author, Author”: The single greatest (and funniest) moment in the entire episode is when Torres is doing the holo-novel and Lieutenant Marseilles walks into sickbay, and she gets a look at her husband’s face with a mustache on it, and she cracks an amused smile for just a second before getting back into character. It’s a beautiful moment, played perfectly by Roxann Dawson and director David Livingston.
Torres also speaks to her father for the first time since he walked out on her and her mother. It’s a magnificent combination of awkward and sweet.
Favorite Forever an ensign: From “Endgame”: In 2404, Kim finally got promoted, all the way to captain! In 2377, he goes from whining about not checking out the nebula—even trying to inveigle Paris to go with him in the Delta Flyer to investigate more covertly—to giving a speech how it doesn’t matter when they get home, as long as the family stays together.
Favorite Everybody comes to Neelix’s: From “Q2”: Neelix, claiming to be good with children, tries to talk to q, who rewards him by sealing his mouth shut and removing his vocal cords, thus thrilling a subset of fandom who hates Neelix. Later, after Q restores him, Neelix makes it a point to babble even more than usual whenever he’s in Q’s presence, which is actually quite delightful.
Favorite Please state the nature of the medical emergency: From “Renaissance Man”: The EMH waxes rhapsodic at the top of the episode about how awesome it is to be a hologram because of all the cool things he can do, and then he spends much of the episode doing some of those cool things.
Then at the end, he confesses to Tuvok that he violated doctor-patient confidentiality by telling Neelix about a delicate medical issue the Vulcan had; to Kim that he once said mean things about his saxophone playing; to Seven that he loves her; and to Janeway that when he was first activated, he compiled a list of what he felt were questionable command decisions of hers.
Favorite Resistance is futile. From “Nightingale”: Seven, who has absolutely no command experience whatsoever, lectures Kim repeatedly about how to be a better commander. Maybe she stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night…
Favorite Rules of Acquisition: From “Inside Man”: We get a new Rule in #74, which is “Knowledge equals profit.”
Favorite What happens on the holodeck, stays on the holodeck: From “Human Error“: The holodeck has already proven able to make Torres into a pregnant woman, so I guess it makes sense that it can get rid of Seven’s Borg implants for the duration of the program…
Also Seven comes up with overwhelmingly generic and clichéd gifts for her holodeck scenarios: a logic puzzle from the guy who values logic; a diaper from the youngest guy in the bridge crew; and a dream catcher from the Indigenous dude. Sigh.
Favorite No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: From “Body and Soul”: Let’s see, Ranek has the hots for Seven, the EMH has the hots for Jaryn, and Jaryn has the hots for Ranek. Cha cha cha. Also Tuvok really misses his wife right around now…
Favorite Welcome aboard: This season has a bunch of recurring regulars for their last hurrah on the show: Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, Marley McClean as Mezoti, Kurt & Cody Wetherill as Azan and Rebi, Derek McGrath as Chell, Jad Mager as Tabor, Dwight Schultz as Barclay, Marina Sirtis as Troi, Richard Herd as Owen, Richard McGonagle as Harkins, Marva Hicks as T’Pel, Martin Rayner as Dr. Chaotica, Nicholas Worth as Loznak, Martha Hackett as Seska, Scarlett Pomers as Naomi, Juan Garcia as John Torres, John deLancie as Q, Josh Clark as Carey, Tarik Ergin as Ayala, and Alexander Enberg as Vorik.
The Borg Queen bookends the season, played by two different people who’ve played her before. She appeared at the top in “Unimatrix Zero, Part II” played by Susanna Thompson, who played her in Part I and “Dark Frontier,” and then at the end in “Endgame” played by Alice Krige, who originated the role in First Contact.
In terms of letter-perfect casting, we’ve got Jeff Kober playing a psychotic murderer in “Repentance,” Keegan deLancie (the son of John) playing Q’s kid in “Q2,” Joseph Campanella playing an arbiter in “Author, Author,” and Lisa LoCicero looking very much like she could be the offspring of Roxann Dawson and Robert Duncan McNeill as Miral in “Endgame.” Plus we’ve got James Read (the “Workforce” two-parter) and Julianna Christie (“Homestead”) doing excellent work as romantic interests for, respectively, Janeway and Neelix.
We get some past Trek guests: Brian George, Patrick Kilpatrick, Ciya Batten (all in “Drive”), Gregory Itzin, John Durbin (both in “Critical Care”), Frank Corsentino (“Inside Man”), Megan Gallagher, Fritz Sperberg (both in “Body and Soul”), Paul S. Eckstein (in both “Flesh and Blood” and “Prophecy”), Cindy Katz, Spencer Garrett (both in “Flesh and Blood”), Tim de Zarn, F.J. Rio (both in “Repentance”), Wren T. Brown, Sherman Howard (both in “Prophecy”), Jonathan del Arco (“The Void”), Tom Virtue, Iona Morris (both in “Workforce, Part I”), Robert Ito, Barry Gordon (both in “Author, Author”), Bari Hochwald, John Prosky, Peter Dennis (all in “Friendship One”), Neil Vipond (“Natural Law“), Rob LaBelle, and John Kenton Shull (both in “Homestead”).
Several Robert Knepper moments: Keith Szarabajka (“Repression”), Larry Drake, William Daniels (both in “Critical Care”), Ron Glass (“Nightingale”), Robin Sachs (“The Void”), Don Most (both parts of “Workforce”), and Robert Joy (“Workforce, Part II”).
But the niftiest guest is Vaughn Armstrong, who solidifies himself as the master of Trek guest appearances by making both his seventh and eighth roles on Trek as a Hirogen in “Flesh and Blood” and a Klingon in “Endgame.”
Favorite Do it: From “Repression”:
“Let me get this straight. You’ve gone to all this trouble to program a three-dimensional environment that projects a two-dimensional image, and now you’re asking me to wear these to make it look three-dimensional again?”
–Torres, expressing dubiousness about the whole 3D movie thing
Favorite Trivial matter: The one for “Endgame,” just because there was so much to unpack in that one…
Set a course for home. “Must be something you assimilated.” In many ways, the seventh season of Voyager is the show in a nutshell: there are some very good ideas here, but only some of them are executed well.
While I appreciate that Kenneth Biller tried very hard to address some things that had gone unaddressed, they half-assed it to such a degree that you kind of wish they hadn’t bothered. Plus there was a certain level of not thinking things through that was maddening. Like addressing the Maquis-Starfleet divide in “Repression,” but doing it in a totally absurd way that defies credulity and makes absolutely nothing like sense. Like finally acknowledging the number of casualties among the crew over the past seven years in “Repentance” and “Renaissance Man,” but not actually addressing it in any kind of logical, emotional, or interesting manner. Like continuing to not promote Kim beyond the rank of ensign and repeatedly drawing attention to it and trying to explain it away even though that explanation is inconsistent with both Tuvok and Paris being promoted at various points.
On top of that, the marginalization of the lead character that has been a feature of the show since Jeri Taylor stopped being show-runner continues, as Janeway is barely a presence throughout much of the final season. Voyager was often accused of being the Seven of Nine show from season four onward, and while that exaggerates the case, you can argue that it’s the Seven-and-EMH show, as they get the lion’s share of the episode spotlights and character development.
Meanwhile, the captain and first officer are barely even presences on the show in this last season. It’s incredibly disappointing and, frankly, appalling that the show in the end did so little with the first female captain and the only Indigenous regular character the show has had. In particular, one of the most interesting features of Kathryn Janeway as a character is that she’s a science nerd, and the only time this season that was even really evident was in the “Workforce” two-parter where Janeway wasn’t herself.
(I will give this season credit for making me realize that I don’t hate Paris anymore. I still don’t like him, and my absolute favorite thing this entire season is his being forced to take piloting lessons in “Natural Law.” The relationship with Torres has been really good for him.)
And then we have the rancid cherry on top of the mediocre sundae, the appalling “Endgame,” which fails on pretty much every level as a series finale.
One of my goals with this rewatch was to reconsider Voyager, which I did not enjoy when it first aired, and on which I pretty much gave up on early in season two, only going back and watching specific episodes I needed for research in Trek fiction I was writing.
Having rewatched the whole thing again over the past twenty-two months, I find myself on the one hand being very glad I watched and having truly enjoyed going through the show twice a week for the better part of two years—and on the other hand, having many of the same problems I had with it in the late 1990s…
Let’s start with the good. I totally get why so many young women growing up in the 1990s loved Janeway. For all that she was marginalized somewhat after the female co-creator of the show retired from being show-runner and was succeeded by two men, Kate Mulgrew still managed to instill her with an impressive charisma, a superlative sense of compassion and duty, and—for all that this was downplayed in the later seasons—a delightful science-nerdishness. She’s definitely worthy of joining the captain club with Kirk, Picard, and Sisko, and helps keep the bar set high for future members Archer, Lorca, Saru, Pike, Burnham, and Freeman.
One hardly needs to mention the greatness of Robert Picardo, who became the breakout star of the show pretty much from the moment he first stated “Please state the nature of the medical emergency” in “Caretaker,” and Jeri Ryan, who took a part that could’ve been pure male-gaze awfulness and turned her into one of Trek‘s most complex characters (a characterization she has magnificently continued on Picard).
However, one needs to mention two other actors who don’t get anywhere near the credit they deserve: Roxann Dawson and Tim Russ.
More than anyone in this rewatch, Dawson impressed me with the complexity and personality she imbued Torres with, especially when given a spotlight. Some of the show’s best hours were ones that dug into Torres’s psyche and/or gave Dawson a chance to stretch herself, particularly “Prototype,” “Dreadnought,” “Remember,” “Extreme Risk,” “Juggernaut,” “Drive,” “The Killing Game” two-parter, the “Workforce” two-parter, “Day of Honor,” “Lineage,” “Author, Author,” to name but a few.
And Russ provides the best Vulcan we’ve gotten since Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and up to this point he was arguably the only good one since Nimoy. (Jolene Blalock, Gary Graham, Zachary Quinto, and Ethan Peck have all done quite well as Vulcans since, however.) Russ brought a gravitas to the proceedings, giving Tuvok a complexity beyond the simple emotionless Vulcan. I especially loved how he was shown to be an excellent parent, teacher, and mentor, the former particularly in “Innocence” and the advice he gave to Paris in “Lineage,” the latter mainly in his work with both Kes and Torres. He also proved an able investigator (from “Ex Post Facto” to “Random Thoughts” to “Repression”) and a strong advocate (“Death Wish,” “Author, Author”). Russ perfectly combined the brilliance, the control, and, more than anything, the sass that is a critical part of any portrayal of a Vulcan.
And yet the show was frustrating in how quickly it ran away from its premise. After setting up a ship struggling to find its way home with a mixed crew, they proceeded to spend seven years doing very little struggling, with none of the promised conflict between Starfleet and Maquis that Paramount spent most of 1994 hyping. Their attempts to do that conflict and that struggle were almost always failures.
Plus, a show like this really cried out for some manner of character arcs. While Voyager didn’t have to embrace a continuing story arc the way is predecessor DS9 did, there are a couple of cues it could—and arguably should—have taken from its sister show, most notably building a larger supporting cast. This is supposed to be the same 100+ people stuck in the same tin can for the entire run of the show, yet people outside the opening credits were barely acknowledged, and even the recurring supporting characters like Icheb and Naomi were barely a factor. “Redshirt” deaths have been an unfortunate part of Trek ever since Gary Mitchell strangled Lee Kelso in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” but more than any other show, Voyager should never have had any kind of redshirt, because everyone on board the ship was literally irreplaceable. Each death should have had major consequences to the structure of the ship, with more people having to take on more tasks as the crew complement whittled down.
So many storytelling opportunities were not taken or not dealt with particularly well. Character developments would be provided and then ignored, whether it’s the events of “Tuvix” inexplicably having no effect on Tuvok and Neelix’s relationship to Kim learning the same coming-of-age lessons over and over again.
Having said that, once you accept what the show wasn’t, you can admire it for what it was: a good, if not great, science fiction show that, at its best, told some excellent stories. “Jetrel,” “Resistance,” “Before and After,” “Distant Origin,” “Living Witness,” “Nemesis,” “Bride of Chaotica!” “Gravity,” “Survival Instinct,” “One Small Step,” “Pathfinder,” “Memorial,” “Critical Care,” “The Void,” and the Hirogen trio of “Message in a Bottle,” “Hunters,” and “Prey” are some of Trek‘s finest hours. It gave us some worthy new alien species to explore, from the Ocampa to the Voth to the Hirogen to the Vaadwaur, among many others, it gave us Trek‘s first woman lead (and thankfully not its last), and it gave us the Captain Proton holodeck program which, let’s face it, is worth it all by itself…
Warp factor rating for the season: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to be on the lookout for his reviews of Star Trek: Prodigy starting this coming Thursday as well as the Enterprise Rewatch, which will kick off in November.
Looking over the series overview I wrote back in 2001, I see that I considered season 7 fairly middle-of-the-road, with no great episodes but a run of relatively strong ones mid-season. Only “Repentance” and “The Void” stood out enough for special mention, though. I wrote, “Overall, this season felt better to me than the last one, because it at least tried to be Star Trek again. [Not sure what I meant by that.] But in review it was rather weak. I guess the final-season staff deserves credit for trying, but the level of talent just wasn’t there.”
My wrap-up for the series as a whole was as follows:
…There were many fine episodes, but they were self-contained, isolated, with little basis in what came before and no effect on what followed. VOY could almost be considered an anthology with continuing characters, each story occupying its own little universe. It was nothing more than the sum of its parts.
Why didn’t it work? UPN’s regime was a large part of it. But basically, the premise was weak. The characters’ goal was selfish and small, and so the series never had much ambition. They always pulled back from taking chances. Which makes sense. The first three series were all chancy, experimental. TOS was the first attempt to do an adult SF drama with continuing characters, and to bring the substance of prose SF to TV. TNG was an attempt to see if lightning could strike twice. DS9 was the first divergence from the starship format, and an experiment to see if two Treks could coexist. But VOY was groomed for success, its place prepared. It was created to take over TNG’s slot, and a whole network was built around it. VOY started out coasting, so they never had to try that hard.
I’m glad you do, because I never did, and I was a girl in the 90s. I had a really hard time relating to Janeway, and it always seemed *very* obvious to me that Janeway was who I was “supposed” to relate to, the “this is the character we made just for you!”. But I never found her to be all that interesting as a character (note: this is nothing against Mulgrew, who I think did exceptional work with what she was given), and because they were so worried about her being the “Strong Female Captain” she didn’t get to have the kind of interesting character conflict that would have made me really invested in her. The person I *actually* loved and related to was Major Kira, who got to be a real, flawed, conflicted, strong woman who kicked butt and still had moments of incredible vulnerability. She was just a better written character, IMO, totally aside from the fact that she also happened to be a woman.
Season 7 had some good episodes, but I think they suffer on the rewatch. Catching them on their own when they are on TV there are a lot that I actually enjoy a lot. Put back into context, my whole impression of Season Seven is “day late, dollar short”- which admittedly was better than Season Six, which didn’t even bother showing up at all a lot of the time. And Endgame….Prophets save us.
Hi Krad
I’ve never commented before but I had to thank you for this wonderful rewatch. The passion and sincerity with which you’ve written about Voyager was always compelling, even when I’d find myself disagreeing. And, frankly, it’s been a comfort to read your return to these voyages during this horrible year and a half. I know you’ve not been inclined in the past, but I feel the community would warmly welcome a rewatch of Enterprise from you.
Thanks again.
@3 @krad Hard agree. This rewatch has been a real spark of happiness over the past two (very rough) years, and I appreciate all your effort, KRAD.
Great rewatch as always… Have been reading these ever since the TNG rewatch…
Thanks from me as well!
And up next? ENT?
To add onto the Janeway discussion, Voyager also gave us the best variety of female characters up to this point. Janeway, Seven, Kes, and Torres all have distinct, interesting personalities and are fully fleshed out throughout the series’ run. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten so many women in the main cast before.
I don’t love Voyager, but it does have my favorite opening theme. There are plenty of good Star Trek themes, but they don’t hold a candle to this one IMO. Even if the rest of the episode sucks, at least I get to hear that music.
I really love these rewatches and your other ongoing Star Trek reviews. Looking forward to the Enterprise rewatch in November!
One issue which I think exemplifies Voyager’s uneven quality is the title ship’s relationship with other species. On the one hand, it was refreshing to see the title ship be distrusted by, or have an (at least initially) adversarial relationship with so many species. This was a good change from TNG, where 7 out of 10 species seemed to like, or at least depend on, the Enterprise crew.
On the other hand, “Voyager” also saw a major de-mystifying, and de-toothing, of species such as the Borg and the Q.
Which leads me to a criticism of “Endgame” which I’m not sure was pointed out (from an episode with which, I admit, there was a lot to criticize): with so many species on the Federation, why on, well, Earth, should Earth signify Arriving Home? (The answer, of course, is that they needed a brief shot to establish being back home. But it’s very un-Star Trek thinking.)
I like that Torres, a former Maquis, and Paris, a Starfleet officer, married and had a child, because that’s a nice symbol of the two adversarial organizations coming together.
In any event, KRAD, I second those who say it’s been a bright spot to read Trek re-watches from you again, and I’m glad you’ll be reviewing “Enterprise” (a show I enjoyed as often as I could, but have definite opinions about the music. But we’ll get there when we get there).
Nobody ever reads the bio…..
Yes, an Enterprise Rewatch is next!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@1. ” [Voyager] was created to take over TNG’s slot, and a whole network was built around it.”
That’s an interesting point. No matter what they tried to do in terms of premise and scripting, perhaps there was an extent to which “Voyager” always was going to be TNG: The Next Next Generation.” That’s why it was good that “Enterprise” takes place in a different time, and that probably needed to be the case one series earlier. The writers simply were running out of ways to keep the 24th century universe feeling fresh.
CLB: I wonder if your comment about the season “feeling like ‘Star Trek’ again” was a reference to episodes like “The Void,” as well as the exploration of social/political issues (such as health care and the death penalty).
Thank you again krad / Keith for the rewatch! It was fun to be a part of the journey after having missed the previous re-watches.
@8: Sorry… ‘t was so small…
Anyhow. Greatly appreciated!
@9/Don S.: “CLB: I wonder if your comment about the season “feeling like ‘Star Trek’ again” was a reference to episodes like “The Void,” as well as the exploration of social/political issues (such as health care and the death penalty).”
Hmm, you’re probably right. Season 6 did focus more on high-concept plots and character stories than social commentary or morality plays.
I also would like to say how much I’ve enjoyed these rewatches. I watched along until season 7 but I might try to pick up Enterprise since I only saw Season 1.
I wonder if Enterpise will have the same amount of lamenting lost potential
There’s not much else I can add to what’s already been said.
I grew up with the TNG era and so I’m more nostalgic towards VOY compared to ENT.
But VOY is still unquestionably my least favorite of the original 24th Century-era shows. So much potential and so much waste.
Thank you for running this weekly program, Keith. As other people have pointed out, it’s one of the things that’s kept me sane and that I’ve looked forward to since the pandemic began.
And to everyone else, heh, thank you for putting up with my replay of SF Debris’ greatest hits. I promise I won’t be doing it nearly as much for the ENT Rewatch.
@13 This probably will sound harsher than I mean it, but I frankly think that Enterprise just didn’t have as much potential to lose. A lot of the behind-the-scenes people seemed pretty burnt out, September of 2001 was (in hindsight) a hard time to start a Star Trek show, I think prequel series are always kind of tricky to do, some of the casting just never jelled, and it just didn’t have the charm that Voyager (for all of it’s problems) had. It has some good ideas (and picked up steam in later seasons), but where Voyager had a lot of potential that it never lived up to, Enterprise was always kind of just… there for me. It didn’t really disappoint me because I didn’t expect all that much from it from the outset.
First, let me say to you, Keith: thank you. I know you had expressed reservations about doing a Voyager rewatch and your misgiving were amply clear in some of your more scathing critiques.
A brief explanation as to why I appreciate the effort. For many years, my wife and I unwound at day’s end by watching the day’s episode of Star Trek we had recorded off what was then Space. At the time, Space was airing only two of the franchise, NG and V. This meant we were more then familiar with both series. What first drew me to Tor’s website was your rewatch of NG; I didn’t always agree with your evaluations, but I always found the comments and insights of great interest. It’s also prompted me to keep checking this website daily.
Now I can say the same thing about your critique of Voyager. I didn’t always agree with your evaluations (although we are as one on “Tuvix”), but I found a fresh insight – and those of the commentators, especially the ‘regulars’ – to be useful. Even in today’s summary, I discovered something new, that many of my favourite episodes are ones featuring Torres – I hadn’t realized how many of them there were.
I look forward to whatever project you choose to tackle next.
@9 Except that Voyager isn’t really trying to be the next TNG either. It doesn’t want to have the conversations TNG does about what it means to be part of a Galactic Community and the politics of cultural friction.
From the jump, Voyager’s deciding to be a retread of TOS, where we’re just telling largely disconnected stories about the same ship & crew with a loose mission. 5 year deep space exploration vs. blown off course, long haul for home.
The show that Paramount claimed to pitch – A mixed Maquis/Starfleet crew on a ship spreading Federation principles through the Delta Quadrant, connecting friendly species together would have been the Next Next Generation and a counterpoint to DS9. There, we make contact with the Gamma Quadrant but Oh No Dominion, here we should have encountered a politically fragmented region that Voyager knits together like a Phoenician trade ship of the future.
If I had my druthers, by the end of the show, Voyager should’ve barely looked like a stock Starfleet ship, having kitbashed & incorporated a bunch of random alien tech together into a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts.
@8. krad: Dahar Master, clearly you must hunger for the headpiece of a Grand Master to soldier through VOYAGER and then plunge right into ENTERPRISE – truly songs will be sung of sufferings manfully endured in your pursuit of these Heroic Labours! (-;
Please be assured that I’ve enjoyed your reviews from start to finish and will be interested in seeing which elements from ENTERPRISE you consider worthy of attention and which you are pleased to see added into the TREK mosaic (The more mischievous part of me also looks forward to seeing how much more Mr Bennett will have to add onto his usual post-review remarks, now we enter onto what one might call his home ground – his RISE OF THE FEDERATION novels were what pulled me back into TREK after a cooling off period, so one assumes he’ll have some especially interesting thoughts to add).
@1. ChristopherLBennett: Having said – and wholeheartedly meant that – one would be remiss in not admitting that one will never, ever agree with your attitude to Voyager‘s goal; self-centred though their ambition may well be, the ambition to win home through something between a quarter and half the Galaxy can hardly be called small.
By your logic Odysseus should have looked over at Calypso, shrugged off the image of fair Penelope and Ithaca, then settled down to be consort to a demigoddess rather than become a Legend.
@18 ED – “By your logic Odysseus should have looked over at Calypso, shrugged off the image of fair Penelope and Ithaca, then settled down to be consort to a demigoddess rather than become a Legend.”
Erm, I don’t know what version of the Odyssey you’ve read, but settling down to be consort to a demigoddess was pretty much what he did. For seven years. Calypso had more children by Odysseus than Penelope ever did (according to Hesiod, anyway).
He complained about it a bit, but he also repeatedly claimed to be “grieving at heart for the loss of our dear companions” whenever his own poor leadership got some of his men killed (which was worryingly often; the original Redshirts, those guys) and that grief was in no way shown in his subsequent actions, so you can’t really take anything he ever said with more than the tiniest of pinches of salt.
Odysseus didn’t get away from Calypso through his own agency; Zeus sent Hermes to tell Calypso she’d had her fun, and that it was time for Odysseus to go home now (total coincidence that the seven years used up the necessary time to make his nostos take the same amount of time as the Trojan War despite the fact that any muppet could have got from Troy to Ithaca within ten years just by sailing randomly around the Mediterranean and hoping…).
Here’s the primary issue with Voyager that it simply could not overcome, IMHO: it’s essentially Gilligan’s Island in Space. Once they get home, the story is over. Having the show essentially be a 7-year second act only works if there are interesting challenges along the way – and it demands a kind of linear storytelling that Trek just was NOT going to be allowed to do on UPN at that time.
That made skipping it pretty easy for even a diehard Trekkie like me. I could just tune in when I knew something big (Sulu, the Borg, etc.) would happen – and skip right to the finale to see how they got home
@18/ED: “The more mischievous part of me also looks forward to seeing how much more Mr Bennett will have to add onto his usual post-review remarks, now we enter onto what one might call his home ground – his RISE OF THE FEDERATION novels were what pulled me back into TREK after a cooling off period, so one assumes he’ll have some especially interesting thoughts to add.”
If I remember. It’s been a few years since I thought much about it.
“By your logic Odysseus should have looked over at Calypso, shrugged off the image of fair Penelope and Ithaca, then settled down to be consort to a demigoddess rather than become a Legend.”
But Star Trek is not The Odyssey. What works for one story won’t automatically work for another. Odysseus was a warrior who fought for what he believed to be the good of his home and country, and wanted to get back to it. Starfleet officers are explorers who want to discover new things, who see new lands not as obstacles to their goal of getting home, but as the goal in their own right.
Plus, what Muswell said. For a dude supposedly desperate to get home, Odysseus didn’t seem to mind being Calypso’s love slave for a length of time equal to Voyager‘s entire run.
@19/Muswell: “despite the fact that any muppet could have got from Troy to Ithaca within ten years”
Okay, now you’ve made me want to see The Muppet Odyssey. With Kermit as Odysseus and Miss Piggy as Calypso. (Or should Piggy be Circe? That would explain a lot…)
@20/twels: “Here’s the primary issue with Voyager that it simply could not overcome, IMHO: it’s essentially Gilligan’s Island in Space. Once they get home, the story is over.”
That’s the perennial weakness of any series driven by the pursuit of a single quest. That’s why it was good that Stargate Atlantis resolved that quest in one season and then redefined the mission. That’s why I think VGR should’ve had the crew get back in contact with Starfleet much earlier, use holodeck telepresence for “in-person” reunions with family, and get assigned a new mission by Starfleet to explore the Delta Quadrant.
I have my issues with the modern overuse of serialization in TV, but I do like the practice of having a different story arc each season, so that the arcs actually get resolved and the story changes over time, and you no longer need to drag out a single quest year after year. Constant, repetitive failure is not a very satisfying thing to watch.
That’s the perennial weakness of any series driven by the pursuit of a single quest. That’s why it was good that Stargate Atlantis resolved that quest in one season and then redefined the mission.
And even there, I always liked how even re-connecting with Earth didn’t automatically solve all the Expedition’s problems/crises.
Yes, they had a supply line reopened and yes, adding the Daedalus did for the show what adding the Defiant did for DS9: Allowed true space combat and plots you couldn’t have done with the Puddle Jumpers (or Runabouts).
But it was still a limited safety net and there was the added hurdle of keeping the city’s survival secret from the Wraith
@21 What would be the basic arcs of the 7 Voyager seasons, if it’d played out that way?
Season 1 – Integrating the crews
Season 2 – The Kazon / Seska
Season 3 – Unknowingly approaching Borg space
Season 4 – The Happy Hirogen Hunting Grounds
Season 5 – Experiments in Quantum Slipstream Transwarp Singularities
Season 6 – Voyager Phone Home
Season 7 – See? I TOLD you it was a shortcut!
I guess this is a good place to agree with the thoughts that the entire premise of Voyager was flawed. @21 took the words right out of my mouth. In my re-imagining of the series, they would have somehow made contact with the Federation during season 1, and basically took up roots in the DQ until the Federation could find a way home for them.
Or, if they insisted on doing the whole voyage home thing, I would have made it to where they didn’t have all the creature comforts of the AQ. No replicator, no holodeck, etc. I envision them finally getting back in the end, but so radically different from when they left that they really don’t have much in common with the Federation anymore. The ship is basically a hodgepodge of DQ parts and, with the central conflict of the Maquis and the Federation, they eventually don’t even wear uniforms or go by ranks. I picture this scene of the crew of Voyager meeting with Federation officials when they get home and both sides are silent, looking at each other like, “What the heck?”
I envision them finally getting back in the end, but so radically different from when they left that they really don’t have much in common with the Federation anymore.
Not to mention that the UFP and the entire AQ status quo had been thoroughly upended in the interim.
Not showing their reactions to a post-Dominion War AQ and the drama of realizing home wasn’t really home anymore for some of them was a major missed opportunity.
Thanks for the rewatch of Star Trek: Voyager. You have already highlighted most of my complaints about the show. I am going to highlight what I believe was the biggest mistake the show made from the very beginning. The show at the start needed to show how the Starfleet and Maquis crew were able to work together. I would believe that at the start there would be some tension between the two crews, not that I wanted anything like the fights between crew persons depicted in the episode Living Witness. Since Voyager was far from any starbases the Marquis crew being mostly Federation colonist should have been depicted as very good at stretching limited resources as well as finding new resources. Also I would have liked many of the Marquis crew to not adopt to wearing Starfleet uniforms. If the show had started as I proposed we would have fixed the issue of not having recurring cast members. I never understood why Voyager running concurrently with DS9 didn’t see how DS9 with characters like Elim Garak, Gul Dukat, Keiko O’Brien, Rom, Nog and others really enriched DS9.
#24
If memory serves, I think that was the idea Ron Moore pitched for Voyager, transforming the ship along the way so it becomes a unique culture for the Federation to “discover” once they reach home. It’s a cool idea, and they sort of did it a little here and there, what with Seven’s Borg alcoves; but, as so often happened, Voyager was a lot of half-hearted things thrown together.
I love the idea of stripping down the ship from the beginning so they’re forced to use alien tech and all the weird situations that would cause. Oh, what could’ve been…
I’m pretty sure I managed to watch every episode of Voyager. I think disappointment sums up my feeling. So much potential, never realized.
I remember a season 1 (likely) episode where Torres and Janeway are bouncing ideas off each other while the rest of the team looked on and let them solved the problem. That wasn’t lived up the rest of the series especially with Janeway. I was disappointed the Starfleet-Marquis conflict never materialized. That the Borg were defanged. That everyone thought the EMH and Seven were great that it became their show because I didn’t like either character that much.
That it never followed through on the potential to “explore strange new worlds, seek out new life civilizations” for a ship that’s the first Starfleet ship in an unexplored quadrant. Instead Voyager fought aliens, were robbed or conned and needed to get their stuff back, or needed to make a trade for something critical. There was such potential for wonder and exploration and they made it boring
@17 – “A mixed Maquis/Starfleet crew on a ship spreading Federation principles through the Delta Quadrant”
And that, in a nutshell, is a big problem I have with the Star Trek concept. As much as I love the show (and I have since the 60s), it’s basically a feel god version of on imperialistic, colonizing, expansionist power. Shire, they say that they won’t interfere with the natural progression of other species but we all know all too well that it usually ends up doing that very thing. If they don’t measure up to Federation principles, then they’re in the wrong and its up to our intrepid crew to set them right.
The Delta Quadrant doesn’t need someone showing up and solving the problems that they see. Voyager should lead by example, not by imposing a solution onto people they’ve just met. But that doesn’t lead to lots of pew-pew space battles.
In Prime Factors, Voyager gets to see what the Prime Directive looks like from the other side so Tuvok and Torres decide to simply throw privples out the window and steal what they want. For that, Janeway gives them a slap on the wrist. She even tells Torres that she’s not going to the brig because she’s irreplaceable. Yet she has no problem locking up Paris, supposedly their best pilot so a breach of the PD.
The biggest problem with Voyager is that it didn’t know what sort of show it wanted to be, so it just became all sorts of different ones smushed together.
I will note that Voyager is my least favorite Trek. Enterprise season 1 is tough (pretty sure that the terrible, awful MPreg episode was season 1), but it improved even as it lost viewers, I think. I have more excitement about an Enterprise rewatch than Voyager. I personally don’t ever expect to rewatch Voyager, I wouldn’t mind rewatching Enterprise
Thank you for doing the rewatch of Voyager Mr. DeCandido. Looking forward to Prodigy.
I was expecting a 5 as a final grade. The difference between seasons 6 and 7 is that while season 7 tries to rectify some omissions from previous years as well as give a greater sense of growth and continuity overall, the end result is a season made up of episodes that are just there. Aside from a few select decent ones, most are either middling or otherwise unimpressive – if not mediocre.
It somewhat reminds me of DS9‘s first season. Aside from the pilot, that season’s first half had these decidedly average to mediocre episodes that went nowhere. It wasn’t until the second half when we got Progress, Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets that things picked up. Season 7 Voyager reminds me of that early going, plus a terrible finale.
Season 6 may have been a sharp decline in quality, but season 7 didn’t do nearly enough to remedy that, and season 6 had higher highs and lower lows overall. More of a rollercoaster in terms of quality. In the end, I’d argue that season was better. Season 6 may have had crap like Fair Haven and Spirit Folk, but it also had Survival Instinct and Blink of an Eye, masterpieces that rank up there with the best of the franchise, and were nowhere to been seen in this final season.
Kenneth Biller was never a writer with a distinctive voice. To me, season 7’s blandness is a reflection of that. His goal was to do 26 shows and get out (and his work didn’t stand out on Dark Angel or Smallville either). And, as seen with that interview over the development of the episode Exteme Risk, he never had much respect or understanding of contnuity and serialization – he wasn’t a fan of using the Dominion exterminating the Maquis as a springboard for B’Elanna’s story on that episode. Brannon Braga had a distinct voice. Michael Piller was always pushing to find the theme in each story. And Jeri Taylor had a command of the show and a commitment to making Janeway a real protagonist. Overall, I find Biller to be the weakest head writer/executive producer.
(and I have issues with producers who hog story credit to this extent; Biller was credited with about a dozen episodes this season alone, forcing other writers to share in the residuals and credits – you didn’t see that on any other season. A good EP would never do that; an issue I also somewhat had with Berman and Braga on Enterprise – but at least that was still in season 1, when they were still developing everything from scratch)
I very much agree on Russ and Dawson. Both perfectly cast who always elevated the material. I’m certainly glad we got to spend more time with Torres in this final stretch.
To me, season 5 is still peak Voyager, with season 4 very close behind. That’s when the show really sparkled for me. The grades seen here seem to mostly reflect that. Overall, I’m glad to have watched VOY in its entirety. It took me years to commit to it. It certainly had highs and lows, carrying some major issues that didn’t plague the other Berman-era Trek shows, but it had enough good in it to make it worthwhile.
@26/ra_bailey: “I never understood why Voyager running concurrently with DS9 didn’t see how DS9 with characters like Elim Garak, Gul Dukat, Keiko O’Brien, Rom, Nog and others really enriched DS9.”
DS9 was freer to take chances because it was syndicated and didn’t have a network looking over its shoulder, and because it got less scrutiny overall. And Voyager was not just any network show — it was the flagship show of the fledgling UPN network, the anchor for its very existence. The network’s entire success was pretty much riding on its success. (It was the only show in UPN’s inaugural 1995 season that made it to a second season.) So that made the UPN suits very, very cautious, reluctant to let the show take chances or do anything really daring that might scare off the viewers. They wanted a show that played it safe, that told crowd-pleasing adventure stories but didn’t take any real narrative risks.
@33,
So that made the UPN suits very, very cautious, reluctant to let the show take chances or do anything really daring that might scare off the viewers. They wanted a show that played it safe, that told crowd-pleasing adventure stories but didn’t take any real narrative risks.
Exactly. They wanted TNG without having to do the work and it became a self-fulfilling failure.
Compare this to the risk Sy-Fy took with BSG a decade later and imagine the dividends UPN could’ve harvested had it been more flexible.
My first Trek was ENT, and I’m still around and have watched all the other things. For me, at least, it did exactly what it was intended; introduce Trek to a new audience. Looking forward to the rewatch.
Minor typo: “Martin Rayne as Dr. Chaotica” should be “Rayner”.
Voyager was a victim of competing interests, IMHO.
1:] Jeri Taylor had a messianic superheroine view of Kathryn Janeway. She even said, “I can identify my flaws. I couldn’t identify Janeway’s.”
2:] Ron Moore wanted to do a serialized story about conflict and a ship with limited resources far away from Starfleet command with hard moral choices. He drove this up to the 11 in Battlestar Galactica’s remake.
3:] Ron Moore said the writers generally didn’t like the premise of Voyager. They liked writing for TNG with the Ferengi, Klingons, and established Starfleet methodology like the Prime Directive. All of the things that excited Ron irritated them and were often subject to being ignored.
4:] UPN didn’t want Star Trek: Voyager. They wanted Star Trek: TNG 2.0 and the episodic scifi show that appealed to the widest audience possible.
5:] Braga had his own vision that was an episodic marketable Trek.
6:] A lot of the problems of Voyager became metastasized in Enterprise.
“Set a course for home.”
Keith doesn’t hate Tom Paris anymore. That alone means this rewatch achieved something.
CLB’s digging out his younger self’s reviews has prompted me to look up my 21-year-old self’s first impression of “Endgame”. (Or second impression technically, I first saw it at a convention the previous year.) Oh boy…
“‘Maybe it’s not the destination that matters. Maybe it’s the journey.’ A fitting end to the saga. The ending is a bit abrupt but the previous 90 minutes are fantastic, from the carefully crafted future to Kate Mulgrew’s wonderful dual performance and the final Janeway-Queen confrontation. Marvellous.”
I don’t know if that’s a sign that my critical faculties have improved in the last 20 years, or a sign that you can actually enjoy the episode if you don’t think too hard about how dumb the premise is or how it flies in the face of the moral of the previous seven seasons. Maybe a bit of both. But I did still hate “Renaissance Man” back then and I don’t really fancy going back any further…
Voyager was perhaps tapping into a particular zeitgeist with its “trying to get home” theme. It was a concept used by SF shows of the 90s from Quantum Leap to Sliders. (It feels like there was more, but the only thing that springs to mind is Ulysses 31. Which was a bit earlier…but ironically the one closest to Voyager’s handling of the subject.) Quantum Leap, like Space:1999 and the original Battlestar Galactica, never really resolved it except in a hasty unsatisfactory tagged on ending. Sliders kind of resolved it at the end of the third of its five seasons, but promptly replaced it with a near identical “trying to get home” plotline that meant they could just carry on telling the same type of stories. On the whole, I think Voyager did a decent job with the storyline. The “shortcut” episodes could be formulaic, but there wasn’t too many of them.
Thank you to Keith and everyone else who’s been part of this journey. This must be the first time I’ve watched the show all the way through more or less in order since it was on BBC2 all those years ago and it’s been an interesting experience.
So…when are we embarking on Enterprise exactly? I’ve got a feeling a date has been mentioned but I can’t remember what. Is it November as in next week or later in the month? I’ve got to dig out the VHS of “Broken Bow” at some point…
Krad, I appreciate and enjoy that you reviewed this show that you were hesitant to spend the time watching again. I hope you feel it was time well spent, even if many if the individual hours were hardly worth it.
Voyager is a strange show in my own experience. I was born a couple months before TNG debuted and so literally grew up with Star Trek. It’s the first show I remember watching, it’s one of the most crucial influences on the development of my personality as a child. Star Trek will always be my show, even if I’ve since seen shows I’d say are better.
So as a 7 year old watching Voyager replace my favorite show I really really wanted to love it. So I did. And in a sense I still do. TNG is the most nostalgic thing to watch. DS9 is the most engrossing and fulfilling Trek to watch. Voyager is like comfort food. I can put on almost any episode and feel like it’s a warm blanket, but when I finish the episode I often have to admit it wasn’t great.
Not that Voyager doesn’t have many great stories. Too many to name here in fact, but some of the shows they did are magnificent, up there with the best of the other Treks. But so many are lackluster, or basically flawed, or failures to fulfill their premise. It’s a disappointing show to watch as an adult with more complex tastes than I had 25 years ago. But it’s still something I will watch when I want a nice 45 minutes of familiar, comforting tv.
One thing this review series has done is help me appreciate the acting more than I did. I always figured that TNG and DS9 had stronger casting, for some reason. Probably because Kim was always boring and Chakotay was a badly written character. But seeing your praise of Dawson and Russ especially really made me realize that they were excellent, consistently, for 7 years. Even Ethan Phillips, whenever he had a chance, was really good. Mulgrew, Picardo, and Ryan on top of that makes a really quality cast overall.
Looking forward to the Enterprise rewatch. THAT should be interesting, reading your thoughts on the first bad Trek show. For the first 2 seasons at least. I guess we’ll get to that.
I will join the chorus of the majority in agreeing this was a good, but not great, Trek series and a major disappointment in regards to the unfulfillment of its promise and potential. The whole Maquis/Starfleet integration/conflict thing was pointless as it was practically non-existent. And the premise of the ship being lost in the Delta Quadrant wasn’t nearly well as explored as it should have with philosophical and logistical questions that needed to be addressed on a regular basis but often were just paid brief lip-service to. It was always a given that the crew would get home one day but the manner in which it happened was so bad that one needs not to suffer through it as it’s not integral to one’s enjoyment of the series. Voyager is best enjoyed in isolation of particular strong or good episodes. The overall arc of getting home isn’t important because the series itself doesn’t take it seriously. Voyager was basically TNG in the Delta Quadrant. I would be happy to have Voyager in my collection if it ever came out on Blu-Ray as there are plenty of individual episodes I could watch over and over again from “Deadlock” to “Relativity” to “Timeless” and more. But Voyager does mark a decline in the franchise after the commercial peak of TNG and the critical peak of DS9.
I learned a new today from Krad: “antepenultimate.” So thanks for that and for doing this rewatch of course!
So long Voyager and now on to Enterprise! Yikes!
How fitting though that this rewatch ends just as we see the glorious return of Janeway (and Chakotay) with this Thursday’s premiere of Prodigy.
“Redshirt” deaths have been an unfortunate part of Trek ever since Gary Mitchell strangled Lee Kelso”
Sir, I protest!!! No one saw me do it, and Lee was not wearing red!
;)
Thank you KRAD and the Tor team for this rewatch of Voyager. As long time (TOS as an impressionable child) Trekkie I have a love/hate affair with this Trek series which had such great promise at the start.
During Christmas of ’94 I was with my girlfriend at her friend’s house, surfing the Star Trek website (I was a little bored) and got into a discussion of Voyager’s first season with the Trekizens. I allowed as to how I liked the premise and cast (a female Captain in StarFleet? Why was that even a discussion?! It’s not our culture, fool!) but had some reservations about the direction it was taking. Specifically the ‘snatch the hope of getting home away every episode’ trope which I had grown up with in Gilligan’s Island, a show with that same depressing premise. During the discussion I called it the: Gilligan’s Island Syndrome and allowed as to how it went against the very nature of Star Trek, the optimism and forward thinking that Roddenberry had instilled in the original. Hey: the world’s depressing enough, I don’t want my escapism to be a downer also.
Fast forward to February?-March? I’m thumbing through the magazine stacks and come across an article on Voy in Starlog (maybe?) and the ‘new direction’ the producers have promised for the show after fan complaints. It credited an unknown ‘internet wag’ for coining the term ‘Gilligan’s Island Syndrome’ to describe the show’s shortcomings and I dropped the mag…
Needless to say I payed very close attention to the series after that and was gratified that (some…) changes had been made.
But, as we’ve seen here, Voy soon got the short end of the stick again and ended up one of the most disliked of the Trek series (but I still like it more than DS9 or Enterprise…so sue me!)
But it’s nice to know that an ordinary fan can have an impact on one of your interests and I was gratified that I could make even a small difference in the world of Trek. Even if it’s (extremely) difficult to measure. So all these years later I still have a fond place in my heart for the adventures of Janeway and crew.
In spite of the show’s troubles kudo’s to the cast and crew for making the best of their characters and for bringing Trek alive for us.
Thank you all again, and looking forward to the Enterprise rewatch (yes, it’s still Trek. Even if Bakula’s constant frowning drove me to distraction [Hey, he’s a nice guy and I loved him in Quantum Leap!]).
@21/Christopher L. Bennett: “Okay, now you’ve made me want to see The Muppet Odyssey. With Kermit as Odysseus and Miss Piggy as Calypso. (Or should Piggy be Circe? That would explain a lot…)”
No, Piggy as Penelope. That would explain a lot. (Actually, though, Piggy would have to be Calypso, Circe, Penelope, Nausicaa, Helen and Athena. She wouldn’t sign the contract otherwise.)
@42: You couldn’t have gotten into a discussion of Voyager’s first season in Christmas of ‘94…The show premiered on Jan. 16, 1995!
Maybe you meant Christmas ‘95 but the series would be on its second season by that time.
“And Russ provides the best Vulcan we’ve gotten since Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and up to this point he was arguably the only good one since Nimoy.”
@Keith/krad I totally understand and agree with your points about Mark Lenard’s portrayal of Sarek in “Journey To Babel” — his being a jerk and dismissing human emotions besides being emotional himself. I couldn’t find any disapproval of his portrayal in any other of your re-watches, unless I missed something, so I was wondering what else — if anything — prevented him from being a “good” if not “great” Vulcan in your opinion. Or does that pretty much sum it up?
@19. Muswell: Hesiod? Pffft! Who listens to Hesiod anymore, man’s so lost in the past he doesn’t even like doughnuts! (-;
On a more serious note, I really should have been more cautious about tapping into the mythos that gave us Pandora’s box before pulling an example from it; still, my case stands – if Odysseus had stayed on that island, he’d be the Classical equivalent of a cabana boy instead of the etymological root for one of our language’s more interesting words for “Well that was a trip and a half, wasn’t it?”
Also, in all fairness, any random Muppet wouldn’t have had to contend with the Wrath of Poseidon LORD OF THE OCEANS … it just struck me that Odysseus might have had a much shorter journey if he’d just hopped off the ship and walked instead (on the other hand Poseidon was also the master of Earthquakes and horses, so one suspects he’d have had some room to make mischief on dry land to boot).
@21. ChristopherLBennett: Mr Bennett, I’ve read your blog – if you’ve forgotten anything in your life I’m pretty sure it’s in there somewhere! (-;
That doesn’t mean they don’t want to GET Home every now and then; even in the STAR TREK galaxy there’s nothing shameful in what the late Rosemary Sutcliff called “the homing-hunger”, not even when it crops up in the ranks of Starfleet (and its worth pointing out that Voyager is going to be seeing more that is new, strange and sometimes even alien than any Starfleet ship since the days of NCC-1701, possibly even since NX-01 set off into the Delphic Expanse, whether she makes a bee-line for home or decides to wander along the way).
I want to see this almost as much as I want to see MUPPET DRACULA! (Though this being Miss Piggy, the answer to your question is almost certainly “BOTH” and she’ll probably want to play Penelope too, assuming dear old Kermit will be playing the Son of Laertes – though I’m tempted to suggest that Odysseus should be played by the only non-Muppet in the cast, so that he’s clearly out of his element even when not out of his depth).
As pointed out above, isn’t Voyager exploring the Delta Quadrant just by heading for home?
@35. SaintTherese: For the record, I have a soft spot for ENTERPRISE – I may have typed this out before, but any TV show that has a Starfleet vessel dogfighting with laser shooting Nazi warbirds can’t be all bad! (Also, Doctor Phlox might well be my favourite Starfleet doctor – I would absolutely LOVE to see Doc McCoy’s reaction to reading about his predecessor’s veterinary tendencies – and Jeffrey Combs speaks for himself. Also, PORTHOS!).
@43/Anthony: Penelope is the one Odysseus wanted to get home to, though. Sure, modern Muppet stuff tends to treat Kermit and Piggy as a couple and a One True Pairing, but I grew up with (and am currently rewatching) The Muppet Show, where Kermit wanted nothing to do with Piggy and her pursuit of him was the kind of comedy sexual harassment that was often a thing back then (cf. Pepe Le Pew). He did occasionally get jealous when she showed more interest in a handsome guest star than in him, but it played less as having feelings for Piggy and more just as his ego being bruised that he wasn’t the most desirable male around. So I’ve never really bought the retcon that Kermit actually loves her back. Calypso seems a more fitting role.
@46/ED: “That doesn’t mean they don’t want to GET Home every now and then”
Of course they do, but just because that interest exists doesn’t automatically make it the best topic to build an entire 7-year series around. It’s a self-centered desire, while previous Trek series were about people putting themselves on the line for the good of others, to defend the Federation or expand its horizons and alliances, and to help other cultures in need. In VGR, helping others was just a distraction from their overriding self-centered goal. That just seemed petty in comparison.
“As pointed out above, isn’t Voyager exploring the Delta Quadrant just by heading for home?”
Only in the most cursory way possible, like stopping it at the occasional local diner while driving cross-country along the freeway. That’s not serious exploration. Admittedly, neither is most Trek series’ planet-of-the-week approach, but TOS always implied, and Lower Decks has confirmed, that Starfleet and the Federation would follow up on the hero ships’ initial discoveries. As Voyager had no supporting infrastructure but was all by itself, any real exploration mission would’ve required more in-depth attention and involvement.
@47. ChristopherLBennett: As mentioned above, you make fair points but I don’t think we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on this one; a burning desire to get home certainly isn’t the most altruistic driving motive, but it’s a powerfully human one (and it doesn’t, of itself, bar Our Heroes from showing an altruistic spirit or taking an interest in their surroundings).
If anything it’s an interesting foil to the core concept of DEEP SPACE NINE which, at least in theory (though definitely not in practice), leaves Starfleet looking a bit too much like Bajor’s sugar daddy for comfort (“I say, the Bajorans are finally freed of those pesky Cardassians” “Huzzah!” “Alas, the poor darlings are a complete basket case and need a helping hand from Uncle Starfleet” “To the frontier then, tally ho!” “Wait a minute, wait a minute, did anyone remember to bring the white man’s burden?” “…”).
Which is to say that what seems a poor STAR TREK hook can be highly subjective.
In any case I’ll quit here before embarrassing anyone further with my slightly-worry efforts towards insightfulness; ROLL ON ENTERPRISE so we have something new to chat about. Thank You for your patience with me & Best Wishes – see you in the Cornfields! (-;
It’s really only self-centered to get home by hurting others, like with the crew of the Equinox and time-traveling Admiral Janeway. But wanting to get home in and of itself isn’t selfish, at least not in the extreme.
What they needed to do was strengthen the reasons for getting home, beyond the sentimental. It’s just my humble rewritin’ opinion, but I would’ve made it where they never make long-range contact with the Federation, that they discover such amazing inventions, ideas, and new species (dinosaurs!) they’re compelled to share it with everyone else back home. After all, what’s the point of being an explorer and a scientist if you can’t enrich your own culture with knowledge? Darwin wasn’t going to educate anyone had he stayed out at sea or kept his theory to himself.
Nah, they should’ve been a bunch of space Indiana Joneses wanting to get a shipload of cool stuff back to the museum. Anyway, that’s just my two quatloos.
@49/Harvey: It’s not about whether it’s selfish in the abstract. It’s about whether it works as well as a premise for a Star Trek series. There have been plenty of series about people trying to get home or clear their names or achieve some other personal quest, but Star Trek is usually about more outward-looking goals. Voyager just seemed conceptually smaller and more timid, because it was about trying to get away from the unknown frontier rather than trying to get deeper into it.
Your idea about wanting to bring the info and artifacts back home to the Federation is in that spirit, true, but it smacks a bit of British imperialism, all the cultural artifacts they stole from other nations and new species that they shot and stuffed to put on display. I prefer the idea of going out into the frontier to make connections and alliances and learn to respect other cultures in situ rather than wanting to acquire pieces of the frontier to take back home as prizes.
Let’s say they renew contact with the UFP early on, then discover there’s something in the DQ that the UFP decides it’s urgent for them to explore fully due to its great cosmic importance or threat. So they want to go home, but Starfleet orders them not to because there’s a more urgent need to stay where they are. Maybe the hints about the Borg’s presence in the DQ could’ve been dragged out for longer as the ship tried to seek out Borg territory, or maybe try to discover their origins and weaknesses, or look for species that had survived Borg conquest attempts to learn how they’d done it.
I want to chime in with the thanks for the rewatch. It has been something to really look forward to twice a week. I loved Voyager as a kid, but now in my 30s I find that I enjoyed it much less than I used to. Maybe I’m more critical of its flaws, or maybe it’s centered around having actual cultural awareness now, I’m not sure.
I’ve been slowly reading the TNG rewatch, because I missed that when it was ongoing, and I’m really looking forward to the Enterprise one. I only ever watched the first two seasons of that show, so I’ll have to make sure to watch along!
@46 ED – Odysseus mostly brought Poseidon’s wrath down on himself by being an eejit (what do you mean, “polumetis” means “cunning”? The man’s clearly a moron of the highest order) and telling Polyphemus his real name. At the beginning of his journey, Poseidon was only mildly peeved with him as he was with all the Achaeans, Poseidon having supported Troy, and slightly more because Poseidon didn’t get on that well with Athena, who was Odysseus’ patron. Odysseus was guaranteed a slow and uncomfortable journey home, but it was his own smug self-satisfied idiocy that made it as bad as it was.
Janeway was like Odysseus in all the bad ways. Repeatedly revealed something that would give other people power over her (oh, so you tell me this pretty ship of yours with shiny new technology is completely unsupported and out of contact with home? Yoink…), got people killed and only intermittently showed any sort of remorse about it (Fine fine fine fine ANGST fine fine ANGST fine fine fine…) and missed a golden opportunity to get home because her crew were incompetent (looking at you, False Profits).
Christopher, ED, Muswell, etc.: Hilariously, back around 2010 or so, I pitched The Muppet Odyssey to BOOM! Studios. They had a Disney license at the time that included the Muppets, and besides Roger Langridge’s ongoing The Muppet Show series, they also were doing miniseries that put the Muppets in various public-domain stories.
For The Muppet Odyssey, which I still regret was never done, I did indeed have Kermit as Odysseus, with Piggy as Penelope. The 108 suitors who were trying to convince her that she should remarry, that Odysseus was dead, were lead by Link Hogthrob. Janice was Circe (backed up, natch, by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem).
My favorite gag in the whole thing is when Odysseus meets Aeolus the scientist (Bunsen Honeydew). In the original, Aeolus provides Odysseus with a bag of wind so he can continue to sail. In this version, Aeolus tells his assistant Beaker to fetch a bag of wind, and Beaker comes back with Sam the Eagle. “No, no, the other bag of wind!” Beaker gets the actual bag, while Sam mutters, “I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”
Really wish I could’ve written that…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#50
You’re being a bit too literal. I wasn’t actually suggesting they be conquerors taking or stealing artifacts, rather they engage other cultures as equals and take back knowledge and whatever else others would be willing to share with them. Come on, you know, like Star Trek. Indiana Jones was simply the nearest pop culture adventure comparison I could find in the moment. Museum as a repository of knowledge being my point.
But no, there’s nothing wrong with returning to base to share what you’ve discovered. Many a Starfleet ship does it. Many a real ship does it. They simply needed to increase Voyager’s importance to the rest of the Federation in some way, be it cultural, medicinal, tactical, technological, or, better yet, all the above.
***
On a lighter note, I also like the thought of Voyager being cut off from the Federation up to the moment they make it back home because I’m always a sucker for someone showing up to their own funeral or memorial ala Tom Sawyer… or that TNG episode with Geordi and Ro. Might’ve made for a fun ending.
@54,
My favorite gag in the whole thing is when Odysseus meets Aeolus the scientist (Bunsen Honeydew). In the original, Aeolus provides Odysseus with a bag of wind so he can continue to sale. In this version, Aeolus tells his assistant Beaker to fetch a bag of wind, and Beaker comes back with Sam the Eagle. “No, no, the other bag of wind!” Beaker gets the actual bag, while Sam mutters, “I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”
LOL!!! XD
@54/Harvey: “But no, there’s nothing wrong with returning to base to share what you’ve discovered.”
But it’s not necessary, as you can send the data back over subspace.
@47/CLB: Are you publishing reviews of your experience re-watching the original Muppet Show? I’d be interested in reading that!
@53/KRAD: That would have been a great Muppet piece!
@57/Don S.: No reviews, no, just for recreation. What I’m currently reviewing on my Patreon is the mindbending 1998 anime Serial Experiments Lain.
@44/Garreth Good point! But it’s been so long ago I remember only the general circumstances, not the specific dates. I kept the magazine (of course) for many years but have no idea what happened to it. It’s just as well.
The best way to sum up Voyager’s issues, to me, is that two of the main cast of characters fell in love and got married over the course of a seven-season run… and I still wouldn’t call that happened there a “story arc”.
Yeah, this whole rewatch sums up pretty much where I ended up with this show when I finished showing it to my wife for the first time, and when we did a rewatch last year during lockdown: I don’t hate it, its disappointing, but at the same time I liked it for what it was: harmless Star Trek.
@60/Texactly: “The best way to sum up Voyager’s issues, to me, is that two of the main cast of characters fell in love and got married over the course of a seven-season run… and I still wouldn’t call that happened there a “story arc”.”
I don’t think it needed to be a story arc. It was a character arc. TV today has become so obsessed with serialized plotting that we’ve forgotten that plot is not the only ingredient of storytelling. There’s also character, theme, and setting. Following the growth of a relationship between characters over the years, or just one character’s growth as a person, doesn’t need to have a single unifying plot, and it doesn’t need to be planned out in advance. Real life isn’t that organized anyway. It just has to evolve, to show that the characters’ experiences have a lasting effect and aren’t forgotten between one episode and the next.
At least Tom and B’Elanna’s relationship did grow and evolve. That was the only character arc the later seasons had that wasn’t about Seven and/or the Doctor. For most of the back half or so of the series, Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Kim, and Neelix didn’t have any character growth to speak of — just occasional single-episode focuses that reset at the end.
KRAD thanks for all the work you’ve been doing and will continue to do on the re-watches. I enjoy them every week. I don’t always comment but I do read the entries. My biggest problem with Voyager was the great re-set button. Every show always went back to the status quo. There was no character growth or arcs of any kind. Everything on tv today is a giant conspiracy theory of some sort which is a big swing in the opposite direction that drives me just as crazy. Also Harry should be at least a second Lieutenant by now if not 1st. Looking forward to the next re-watch .
The only evolution that Janeway underwent over 7 seasons was her hairstyle (I kind of missed her bun by the end). Her character was severely gipped.
@64 Yea, I’ve said it before, but I think Janeway as a character was really cheated out of being interesting by the reluctance to portray her as anything other than the Strong Female Captain- which wasn’t helped by the fact that “main characters who are almost always right” had started to go out of style at the time anyway, and makes her seem less like the Archetypal Hero and more of a two-dimensional character. One of the things I liked about DS9 was that Sisko felt like a real person- with strengths and weaknesses that were not only apparent to us, but apparent to him and the characters in-universe as well. Janeway either made decisions that the show didn’t seem to understand were horrible, or were so out of left field that it didn’t feel organic to the character. I always think of the difference between Sisko going after Eddington and Janeway going after Ransom. The former had been set up by lots of lead-up with the Maquis, and with Sisko’s own personality. When he starts hunting down Eddington beyond what is required we know he isn’t right, but we also know what brought him to that point. Sisko is a proud man who is used to winning, and his scene with the punching bag shows exactly why he is so obsessed- because it isn’t just that Eddington betrayed Starfleet and the Federation, it is that he betrayed Sisko personally. On the other hand, when Janeway goes all White Whale on Ransom (to the point of putting her crew in danger) it comes out of absolutely nowhere and makes her seem like a crazy person (I pointed out back in the Equinox review that it is amazing no one thought she was being possessed by aliens and relived her of command). And because of the episodic nature of the show, Voyager just moves on and literally nothing about Ransom, or the Equinox, or her crew is ever brought up again. Janeway doesn’t learn anything from that encounter, it doesn’t change how she acts or how her crew views her, it is just there because the script requires it.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about this re-watch is how much respect it has given me for Kate Mulgrew- who I really think manages to bring nuance to her character while being given very little to work with. But with the absolute refusal to let Janeway change in any meaningful way, there was really only so much she could do.
I just want to say a big thank you to Keith and everyone who commented. I enjoyed all the reviews and comments. I’m looking forward to the Enterprise rewatch! This was the first Star Trek show I ever watched (apart from a few TNG episodes when I was a kid) so it holds a special place in my heart.
Just like to add my thanks to krad for doing this rewatch. I saw Voyager when it was first shown on the BBC and by then was suffering a bit of Star Trek fatigue (owing to the BBC’s refusal to start the next iteration of the franchise until every episode of the previous one had been shown, so we had gone through every episode of TNG and DS9 before Voyager arrived). It was the first of ’90s Trek where I didn’t make very sure that I saw every episode. This rewatch has shown me that it was, on the whole, a better series than I had remembered with a higher hit rate of excellent episodes, plenty of solid ones but too many either boring or seriously bad ones. So it’s been a fun rewatch for me and once again, thanks to Keith and to all the regular commenters.
There’s no good reason that Tom and B’Elanna, Seven, and the EMH should have the only character arcs on this show. With Harry, Chakotay, and Neelix being unmarried men we should have seen them going on dates and having inter-ship relationships themselves. Harry had his girlfriend back on Earth, but being stuck on Voyager for presumably decades he’d know he’d have to move on which is what he did on the show anyways. But all these characters ever did was have one-off flings with the alien love interest of the week. At one point the Delaney sisters were finally introduced and Harry expressed interest in one of them but it was the other twin that liked him instead. That could have been an ongoing thing and perhaps comic hijinks aplenty could have resulted but obviously that was not to be. It’s just unfortunate the writers never even tried and it would have given that particular character and actor more to do.
Season 7 was also when Robert Beltran just completely gave up and started shamelessly phoning it in. The author mentions regret that Janeway and Chakotay didn’t get much screen time, but for the latter half of that duo, that’s probably a good thing!
I guess I’m alone in loving Voyager. Yep, it sure had its flaws, but I loved all the characters and felt that they were all very real people. A lot of things could have been better, but I felt a kinship with them that to me is the heart of the best Star Treks.
Oh, and one simply cannot ignore Mark Lenard’s portrayal of Sarek. His first episode was rocky, but then so was Nimoy’s. You cannot disagree that his portrayal of the character grew to a masterful one, especially as seen in TNG episodes. I like Russ a lot, but he’s number 3 to me.
I just watched Voyager for the first time over the last…six months, I think and I really think the last two seasons were comparatively weak.
I always wondered about the other people on the ship and what was happening with them and how no one seemed to really be upset by Janeway’s insistence on…not really getting home as quickly as possible? That doesn’t really track for me.
B’Elana/Tom got so boring and “let’s get married because we’re having relationship problems”-y. Heck, it’s not until Seven says something about taking an interest in Tom’s hobbies that B’Elana is like, “Oh, maybe I should do that,” and like??? Relationship 101 there.
Harry also deserved way more than the show ever gave him, IMHO. In no universe does he not end up in a relationship after being on that ship for that long and the fact that he’s constantly portrayed as awkward and unable to approach women? I only buy that for so long.
The finale also made me wildly upset. The characters deserved so much more than whatever that was and I felt like fans really got cheated out of an interesting return home story. (The weird final pairings didn’t help, either.)
I am also confused, along with others who have mentioned it, why Krad doesn’t include Mark Lenard in his list of actors who’ve ably played Vulcans since Leonard Nimoy debuted the first member of the alien race and led the gold standard. After all, Krad seemed to have nothing but praise for Mark Lenard’s performance in both “Journey to Babel” and “Sarek.” Sarek himself may have been a thoroughly unlikable character but that doesn’t mean Lenard didn’t do a good job in portraying this particular member of the Vulcan race. So I think his acting ranks right up there along side Nimoy, Russ, Quinto, Peck, Blalock, and Graham.
It was lovely to read your reviews and reflections on Voyager, thanks for all the hard work!
I grew up watching Voyager reruns in syndication on SPACE channel after school, and this was “my” Star Trek show. I will always love the characters… Janeway, Tuvok, the Doctor, Seven, Torres and Paris, Kim, and even poor Chakatoy – Neelix, well, they could have left him behind. It was a show with a lot of wasted potential, but it still charmed and intrigued me as a kid, and holds up on a re-watch as, for the most part, heartfelt Trek.
Cheers!
Regarding Sarek and Mark Lenard’s performance — mea culpa. He totally slipped my mind when I was waxing rhapsodic about Tim Russ. Apologies to the late Mr. Lenard, who did indeed do an excellent job. (Certainly a better one than either Ben Cross or James Frain managed…..)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I disagree about Janeway being a strong female character, or even a good role-model. Her character was all over the place – from week to week, you never know if she’d be the curious scientists, the warm mother figure, the hard-tact leader, or the obsessive tyrant.
One of the things I do to make the series more palatable is to pretend it’s a 29th-century retailing of Voyager’s journey, where the facts have been muddied by lost records and lost time.
One note about “Bride of Chaotica”–it was broadcast one day before the final Senate vote on President Bill Clinton. The line, “My performance was unimpeachable” nailed it *and* predicted the final result.
Also, Tuvok’s tiny soft shoe toe wiggle for saying good-bye to Neelix in “Homestead”? Especially after Janeway’s tactless joke about it? Priceless.
@67/a-j: “the BBC’s refusal to start the next iteration of the franchise until every episode of the previous one had been shown, so we had gone through every episode of TNG and DS9 before Voyager arrived”
Sorry, but that’s not right. The BBC started airing Voyager in 1996, coinciding with the 30th anniversary, when DS9 was still in production. (Similarly, they’d started airing DS9 a year earlier, simultaneously with the last two seasons of TNG as per original broadcast.) They actually seemed to be steaming ahead with Voyager as the favoured child at one point: They started on Season 5 when DS9 was still struggling through the early stages of Season 6, produced a year earlier. (It was a bit strange watching Voyager Season 4 and hearing the characters chatting about the Dominion War when we hadn’t seen any of it bar “Call to Arms”.)
So when you say November, are we talking about Nov 1st? Or Nov 29thish?
It looks like we’ll be kicking off the Enterprise Rewatch on the 8th of November, and it will run on Mondays thenceforth.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Season one 5 out of 10
Season two 4 out of 10
Season three 5 out of 10
Season four 7 out of 10
Season five 7 out of 10
Season six 5 out of 10
Season seven 4 out of 10
I think the rewatch that I have just completed confirmed my memories of Voyager, unlike TNG or DS9 I had never gone back and watched a single episode again so there was a lot I had forgotten but I did remember the middle seasons after seven first arrived as being the strongest but the early and final seasons being rather weak and that’s how it has struck me again.
I started doing a rewatch on TNG in January 2020 not sure how far I would get, and then the Pandemic struck so with more time on my hands I included DS9 and then Voyager and in almost two years I have completed what I would call the “next generation” time line.
I am not going to do any Enterprise rewatch, a much as I like Trek and am glad it’s back on our screens in reasonable shape I am not putting myself through the Enterprise disappointment again.
@75 Jewahe
So like a real person then?
Janeway’s not perfect, I don’t even like her too much, but she strikes me as a strong leader who is inspiring – maybe by showing some mistakes to avoid.
I think the characters in Voyager are the strong part (well, not Chakotay, but it wasn’t the actor’s fault), obviously the plot’s absurd at times. Some people have commented on some characters getting more attention than others – to be fair, they are the interesting ones. Who cares about normal people in Star Trek style science fiction though?
Well some obviously do – no offense. Just my opinion.
@2. / wildfyrewarning
and @75. / Jewahe: Yeah, I very much dislike the character. Mulgrew seems to be a really good actress, so she’s able to keep the character bearable, but as a captain? A super directive person with questionable morale and integrity and giving almost no space to her crew. In best case they can grow and learn in the directions where she sets them to…This was especially annoying for me to see how she tried to push Seven at the beginning.
There are few cases when she’s willing to change her opinion and almost every time it needs to be a huge fight, because she does not like to listen when she’s in her dictator mode…
The scientist aspect of her is nice though, and there are good things about her, but yeah, Kira is a thousand times better female character, a series with her in the lead could have been lovely…but now after Picard I can still hope for a Seven of Nine focused new spin-off. :)
And then decades later we get Burnham, who seems to be also a better character and better captain to me, except for her tendency to do endless crying-and-whining especially in critical situations, not after them…:)
Thanks a lot @krad for this rewatch, i’ve finally managed to rewatch most episodes in the last months and follow through the rewatches here. :)
You’re very welcome, th1_!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This was a bit better than Season Six, but not very much better, still nothing I’d call a really good season of television, and that’s even though I didn’t hate Endgame (though I didn’t really like it either). In fact, there weren’t any episodes that I actually hated, which by itself is an improvement, and four I absolutely loved (Critical Care, The Void, and Workforce Parts I and II). However, there were five I disliked and seven I thought were either mediocre or very mixed bags, which is fully half of this 24 episode season. So not exactly an amazing way to go out.
As for the series as a whole, I have to admit I probably like it more than most (largely due to my almost inexplicable love of Neelix), but I admit it only had three really good seasons. However, I still enjoyed rewatching it. It had its fair share of classic Trek stories, and even thogh it also had its fair share (or more than its fair share) of disappointments, I can count on only two fingers the number of episodes for which I could find no redeeming characteristics at all (Fury and Spirit Folk).