what do people have against star trek: voyager?

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: LongCoolMother

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: arod

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: yllus
The whiny, irrational captain did it for me, to be quite honest. In one episode she was willing to sacrifice heaven and earth to get home, but the next pride, a tiny argument or some other piddly sh!t would deny her a free trip back. MAKE UP YOUR FRIGGIN' MIND WOMAN.

Then there was the constant running away from everything.

The boring crew.

I could go on but I rather not. TOS > TNG > Enterprise > Shatner singing > Voyager

Fixed that for ya. I removed DS9 though, because I never saw anything past the first 3 or 4 crap episodes. I hear that the series later became one of, if not THE best Star Trek series once Berman got his lousy hands off it and moved on to ruin Voyager instead.

Frankly, I'm glad Star Trek finally DIED. Battlestar Galactica is 10 times better than anything Star Trek has done for the last 20 years, and even Firefly, which failed horribly thanks to Fox's random airing schedule, blew Trek's doors off.

We gotta face facts: Berman and Braga RUINED Star Trek.

Jason

Seconded... im almost glad ST is dead for a while. BSG is an interesing and good show but I dont see Star Trek working in the way BSG is told/shown. To me the better fit would be stargate sg1/atlantis. Its still somewhat episodic but still tells large stories and IMO is the best at this on TV right now....

hopefully BSG takes off like stargates have and the brass at paramount take notice because when ST comes back it needs to be a comepletly different look and stop dumbing it down.

Star Trek needs to be run more like BSG or, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By that I mean that instead of all these little disconnected episodes, each of which is entirely standalone, they need to write it in a *Context heavy* way. The cool thing about BSG or BtVS or Firefly is that things that happen to characters carry over from episode to episode and have long-term connotations. Planning is also done very long term (at least in the case of BtVS, and I suspect as much for BSG. In the BtVS example, they were planting seeds for the second and even THIRD season during the *first* season, and season 2 and 3 planted *heavy* amounts of seeds for seasons 5 and 6. Season 4 was a little more "standalone" in its episode styles, and it was the weakest season.

Storytelling has really become Trek's greatest *weakness*. They always get good casts, makeup artists, set designers, SFX designers, etc., but the writing is tepid at best.

Jason

agreed. i find that the episodes seem too "detached" from each other to be convincing. it really takes away from the story 🙁.

Yeah, it really does. Add to that the fact that they're utterly unwilling to do damaging, painful things to their characters and explore the ramifications of those events over a long story arc and you get mediocre character development to supplement the mediocre storytelling.

One of the things I fell in love with about BtVS is that they never revered the characters so much that they wouldn't be cruel to them. In the first and second season they lead you down the path of this intense romance building between Buffy and Angel, then BAM! He takes her innocence, turns evil and starts murdering people close to her. In the end she has to *kill* him only moments after he's been saved and restored to his "good" self. The ramifications of that arc went on for the next 2 seasons, and that doesn't even describe the cruel things they did to the other characters (Giles finding the woman he loves murdered and propped up in his bed, dead as a doorknob, with the setting all covered in rose petals and romantic ambience. It was beautiful and horrible and heart wrenching, and it changed the characters in a permanent and meaningful way).

With BSG they do very similar stuff as well, exploring for example Boomer's growing concern that she might hurt someone, eventually discovering that she's a Cylon and opening fire on Adama at pointblank range. The ending episode for the season had me *sobbing*. The genius twist of the Cylons being religious nuts on a crusade, and Six's psychological manipulation and abuse of Dr. Balthar is jsut mind boggling. While Star Trek doesn't necessarily need the darkness of some of these themes, it could be greatly improved by throwing some in and *meaning* it. For the most part in Trek, when they say that something is gonna be "darker and grittier" they end up meaning that the lighting is gonna be real low and the captain's gonna get dirt on his cheek. Not exactly compelling drama 🙂

Jason