By Zoltan on Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - 9:14 am:
I, for one, am certain that Voyager wouldn't have lasted 3 or 4 years if it weren't for the fact that Janeway & co. didn't inhabit the same universe as Picard, Sisko, & their respective crews.
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By Polls Voice on Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - 9:56 am:
If Voyager could have started itself at the beginning of season three, it would have been able to go for another seven years. But because it started at season one, it would have been assimulated. ha ha ha
It's some kind of sad too, you would think a Star Trek series would be able to have a decent first and second season by now.
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By Blue Berry on Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 2:49 am:
Yes.
It was on UPN. It needed anchor shows. In later years it had the WWF, but a non-sports(?) show would be good. Don't compare the ratings with the Superbowls or anything. It was #1 or #2 on UPN until the end. In fact, the Star Trek label hurt it as it had no coat tails that another non-Star Trek show could ride on. It also had no possible spin offs. (This week on a very special Kes.)
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By mike Brill on Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 10:07 am:
The thing that makes a difference is NOT "whether it's a Trek show"; the thing that makes a difference is "whether it can stay in production long enough for the producers/writers/etc. to start improving the series". Back in 1988-1989 or so, I was at a convention where people associated with producing "Star Trek: The Next Generation" were actually requesting feedback from the audience in the room. I pointed out that, in The Original Series, you had episodes like "The Doomsday Machine", "The Balance of Terror" and so forth, where military action was necessary to save the day; somebody else suggested that they get Wesley Crusher out of the show. Lo and behold, they got rid of the "Federation Starfleet is too good to have/be a military" nonsense, brought in the Borg and started having more action-oriented stories, they got Wesley Crusher off the Enterprise, and the show's popularity increased. Point being that they were ABLE to do this FOR ONE REASON: the show was produced to go DIRECTLY into syndication, so it DID NOT depend on ANY network executives to keep the show in production, so they COULD keep trying to improve the show. Compare this with The Original Series, which was an NBC Network show: During the 2nd year, the NBC Network said they were going to cancel the show, and were surprised at how many letters they got asking them to keep it, so they decided to get a 3rd year of the show; during the 3rd year of the show, the NETWORK EXECUTIVES decided that they didn't care how many people wrote them letters, they were going to cancel it anyway. After Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, et al, PROVED (with Next Gen) that they could make a Trek show as long as they wanted, AND that they could be successful in first-run syndication if they couldn't be on a network, everybody knew that getting a Trek show off of any network would not end Star Trek.
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By Scott McClenny on Sunday, July 13, 2003 - 1:27 pm:
I think as long as you have the elements of good story telling,a cast that has great chemistry,
a good stable of writers and directors that any
show can be a success.
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By Matt Pesti on Friday, March 24, 2006 - 12:26 am:
Yes. Voyager was a high quality show, it was just really poor quality trek.
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By LUIGI NOVI on Friday, March 24, 2006 - 1:43 am:
You think it was a high-quality show? Sheesh. To each his own.
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By Will on Friday, March 24, 2006 - 10:02 am:
Well, the special effects were high quality.
And so were the alien forehead bumps!
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By Mr Crusher on Friday, March 24, 2006 - 7:54 pm:
it was more high quality than the third season of the oringinal Star Trek!
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By Matt Pesti on Saturday, March 25, 2006 - 4:47 pm:
Well, it had great acting, and it had great Emmy award winning special effects. The Alien makeup was uncreative, but it was good alien make-up none the less. It had great music, and as a whole was a very high quality production. The problem was with the writting, which was heavily reliant on technobable, amoung other things. The remaining problem is the continuity, which annoys us Trekers greatly, but that is really not a production problem, and wouldn't be a problem if it was another show. So, I didn't really like voyager, I thought the show had problems as a Trek franchise and agree with Ron Moore's assessment that it never really belived in it's self. But I can't say it was a bad show. And it is important to have high quality science fiction production out there, as it raises the standreds for the medium.
Well, I think I will get this out of the way now, before my world comes crashing down and I'm cast out. Only a matter of time. It's not if, but when, doncha know.
Much like the U.S. version of "The Office" basically became "The Jim & Pam Show" after she got pregnant, they got married, and their kids were born, and most episodes centered around them (admit it, you who saw it noticed that too), and much like "Red Dwarf" basically became "The Arnold Judas Rimmer Experience" (like I said before, the show was supposed to be about Dave Lister being the last human in the Universe but eventually centered primarily around Rimmer and why he was the way he was) this Star Trek spin-off became "The Seven Of Nine Show" after the third season.
Ohh, really, AMR? That's amazing! I never noticed THAT! Tell us something we don't already know!
Anyway, I knew it had happened when a NON-Trekfan said that in a letter to TV Guide in 1998. And if the people who didn't even follow the show and were not diehard fans of the franchise could pick up on that unfortunate happenstance, how bad did that look for the creation itself as a whole?
And when Twin Bags Of Mostly Implants started sleeping with the executive producer, we knew for sure that all the primary storylines would inevitably center around Seven. All there is to it, basically. And that is some sad s*** right there.
The show had no stability, it had no consistency, it lacked continuity within even itself, let alone the rest of the Trek Universe, and it just plain was a lame, lousy, and mediocre attempt at storytelling in the SF genre as a whole. That I now finally realize after all this time, and I accept it. And I will now move on.
Someone said on the Rick Berman board I started a while back that the "dumbing down", "oversaturation", and "watering down" of Trek in general was Paramount's fault and that their executives were the ones to blame for the franchise becoming stale and stagnant, with nothing else more to say. TNG was a hit which brought the franchise back from the dead, so they then became full of themselves and for some reason believed that they could do no wrong, Gene died and Berman took over and ordered DS9 and a bunch of feature films of varying quality, and the market became flooded with inferior knockoffs like VGR and ENT, and eventually had nowhere to go but down as a result of the oversaturation of saubstandard product on the TV and movie screens. Finally, it all exploded in their faces, they were boldly going nowhere and it seemed like it was all going to end once and for all.
But then still other different people took over control, and we now have what we have today. And I have absolutely nothing to say about any of that.
LLAP.
I absolutely agree. It started off as such a fantastic new version of Trek, particularly for those viewers who hadn't liked certain aspects of DS9 - and especially the fact that the 'boldly going' bit had been lost. Voyager was the absolute epitome of 'boldly going' and the first couple of seasons were really interesting and exciting. Sadly I felt that it then started to fade and eventually drizzled to a halt.