I’ve just started a Voyager run through with my kids. Dare I say S1 of Voyager is a much better introduction to “modern” Trek than the fairly uneven S1 TNG? I think Janeway is underrated as a Star Fleet captain.
I’m rewatching TNG and season 1 was pretty… Off. Most of the characters seemed to be cheap knockoffs of their established personas. The most distinctive for me was Brent Spiner (Data), where, I can’t put my finger on it, but he just seemed off the the data that I know and love.
I chalk it up to him coming off of being a comedic bit actor and he was still finding himself for the more dramatic role of data. He hadn’t really nailed down the robotic methodology of his actions and speech that really makes data stand out. His responses were often quick, to the point of speaking over others, and his actions were fairly fluid and organic, which isn’t Data at all.
It really didn’t take long for him to work his way into the role (and into our hearts), I’m not criticising Brent by any stretch. He was and I’m sure still is, an incredible actor… Judging by his fairly recent role reprising Data on Picard, he really hasn’t lost his touch.
There’s plenty of other things about season one that are odd, but I found Data to be the most notable. Still, worf was a lot more brooding, Picard seemed almost more timid, Riker didn’t have a beard… The only person from season one who I can point to with certainty and say that they didn’t seem off from season 1 (compared to how I know the character), was Dr. Crusher. She was hitting it out of the park from day 1.
No matter the oddity, almost all of it was simply gone by the end of season one. I’m partway into season two now and I wouldn’t be able to differentiate the characters on screen from any other season of the show, or from their movies.
Oh man. It’s the only one where they actually don’t boldly go anywhere. I’ve always had trouble with that and probably actually need therapy because of it. It took me a long time to even accept it as real star trek.
I love character-driven narratives, so DS9 is easily the best Star Trek for me that I’ve seen. I think the only series that I haven’t seen is Lower Decks.
I would claim that Voyager is objectively worse than DS9, though. A big part of it is how many terrible episodes come from each series. With DS9, there are only a few episodes sprinkled here and there that are terrible. With Voyager, it had to be at least 1 out of every 3 episodes that were terrible.
Of course, these two series have completely different standards. Both standards are about whether they deliver an episode that is fulfilling and makes sense.
DS9 is completely serial. A good show has character development and progresses the main plot due to some event or other intrigue that happens. If you don’t like Star Treks where they “boldly stay home”, then all of the Vic Fontaine episodes would be terrible, but Vic was like this perfect tool to try to round out all of the character development at the series end.
On the other hand, a good Voyager episode is a sort of alien of the week. That’s what would make sense, because they were traveling in a straight line home. Yet they nonsensically had all sorts of recurring characters that they came across. Recurring races is fine. In fact, you’d almost expect to have like one or two major races that are the villains per season… but recurring characters? Really??
Voyager could have been the perfection of Roddenberry’s ideal Star Trek. Almost purely episodic. Heroic cast solving problems every episode. They even have the best excuse for taking the ship into the most stupidly dangerous situations. They were desperate for supplies to get home. I don’t know that any Star Trek had such an easy set up. How did they have so many bad episodes??
Janeway didn’t get hate as much as it was criticism of the writers for making her inconsistent. One week it was “Prime directive no matter the consequences”, the next was “Lets do whatever to make drama.”
For all of Roddenberry’s faults, his presence for the early years of TNG kept TNG consistent instead of allowing the writer of the week to change characters for their personal story. By the time he was gone, the formula was set such that writers wouldn’t mess with characters.
Voyager has no singular authority so consistency of character was rare.
Edit: Except for Ensign Kim. He was born an Ensign and died one. Nobody messed with perfection.
You might be right, the inconsistency was well around. But it still was a good show. I always perceived her as a more “indecisive” captain. Or one being able to change her opinions. Whatever. It’s what it is. The best female captain we had so far 😊
I’ve actually come to think of Janeway as someone consistently written to be an inconsistent Captain, rather than 100% inconsistently written. Others are nowhere near as inconsistent as Janeway.
Once I started thinking of her inconsistency as being the result of trying to walk a tightrope of sticking to Starfleet ideals, as well as maintaining order in a demoralised crew in unfamiliar territory where they don’t have the support and full might of the Federation and its allies behind them, Janeway’s inconsistent and contradictory behaviour starts making a lot more sense and feels a lot more organic.
They’re not quite as terrible as their reputation. Yeah, they’ve definitely got some of the worst episodes of Trek ever, but there are good ones in there, too.
You’re right, I probably should go rewatch that episode where the crew triggers a Cardasians trap, and the station captures them, and Dukat comes to gloat.
For now. My guess is it’ll be DS9 for all of this quarter. It’s already gone through all of DS9 once so far. It just restarted this morning. Then I assume next quarter and I’ll switch back to Voyager. I think that’s what they’re doing with the other Star Trek channel as well bouncing between the original series and next generation.
Because when it cut over from Voyager to DS9 it wasn’t at the end of Voyager. It was up to the episode where they find the ship with the neural interface that sort of takes over Tom. And then immediately following that was the first episode of DS9, and that was January 1st. It was 2:00 a.m. my time but midnight Pacific Coast.
I and my wife have both watched all of Star Trek individually before we met. When new trek appeared we rewatched everything before watching all of new trek, good and less good, together
Because they can’t find it? It’s tiny, it flew off into the distance…for all we know, there are a dozen science ships looking for it during the entire DS9 run.
Lol the entire enterprise crew needs some deep therapy after all the traumatic shit they deal with on the daily. The most unrealistic part of that show was how none of them became became grizzled after 10 years of life altering experiences and losses though they often showed others who did. I want to assume they had access to more than troi and just didn’t show it because an entire crew probably couldn’t be supported by one therapist similarly to how whichever physical health doctor on board had lots of help and even other doctors.
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