Like many of you, I grew up watching the original Star Trek series. I came to love The Next Generation as well, and got enthused when I saw Deep Space 9.
When Star Trek: Voyager came along, it held a lot of promise. This was the ship that was on its own in an uncharted part of the galaxy, trying to get home. The journey would take decades, and the Federation and Maquis crews would have to learn to live together.
This produced what should have been an excellent story, yet it couldn’t get past several boundaries. Where was the Maquis mutiny? It never happened, yet the possibility was mentioned by Tuvok on an episode. The Prime Directive. I wanted Janeway to have to struggle with breaking the Prime Directive, then doing so for the sake of her people. Yeah, they benefited, but she would have to live with the guilt. The opportunity was there, but in the end, Janeway is a goody-two-shoes. It was an opportunity lost, in my opinion.
Don’t even get me started on the Borg. There was an enemy that went from fearful in ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ (TNG 2-part episode) to just another alien on the block. I don’t know about anyone else, but I got tired of the Borg.
Where Voyager shined the best was in a two-part episode called ‘Year of Hell.’ This episode showed Voyager in a two-part alternate reality where the ship had been beaten up for an entire year. By year’s end, it was unlivable. The storytelling was great, and this was the sort of turmoil I wanted Voyager to go through! It was a shame that, at the end, the timeline is fixed and none of it happened. That kind of cheapened the efforts of the crew. However, I can overlook this
The cast was formulaic. We got to see our first female captain, which was awesome. Yet I felt like she was designed to be “she-Kirk.” Anyone else notice the initials? JK (James Kirk) and KJ (Kathryn Janeway). Uh…yeah. Then we have our gratuitous Klingon in the form of B’Elanna Torres. She doubled up as the gratuitous half-breed. The humans were largely forgettable. Harry Kim was so generic it wasn’t funny. Tom Paris could have been the bad boy, but that was hardly touched. I always felt that it wasn’t the actors’ fault here. Rather, the humans were not allowed to shine.
Tuvok was the gratuitous Vulcan, yet I’m not too critical of him. Tim Russ did an excellent job of portraying a Vulcan whose focus was security, not science. Was it realistic having a black Vulcan? Not every Earth race has a duplicate on other worlds. Yet despite this, I have to applaud Paramount for showcasing that there could be more than one brand of Vulcan.
Neelix was a fun alien, though the writers had to think about his purpose after he was no longer useful as a guide. And did Kes have a point? She was nice, and a short-lived race was cool. Still, she could have grown further.
Then there’s Seven of Nine. She was nice eye candy. I’ll give her that. However, I think they made the Borg to human transition way too quickly. Had it happened in the span of a year, I could see it more. I really could not believe that she was once Borg.
Of all the characters, Chakotay was my least favorite. I had a hard time believing he was Native American. My take is that he should have been one of the Native Americans that Picard ran across, who now live in Cardassian territory. Add more spiritualism to him, and he would have been fine.
Of all the characters, my favorite has to be the Doctor. Yes, he’s the gratuitous artificial life form looking to become more human. That being said, his character was a novel concept and Robert Picardo was so much fun. The mobile EMH transmitter seemed a bit hokey, but then again, he needed to get out of sick bay once in a while. My favorite aspect of him was when they added the emergency engineering and command subroutines so that he could take on new roles.
Two more items: the ship and the theme song. I have to say that I truly enjoyed the theme song. Very nice composition. The Intrepid-class Voyager was a nifty design, though I didn’t care for the miniature warp nacelles. Still, I liked watching them fold ala the Klingon Bird of Prey. All in all, a good design.
Between the subpar goody-two-shoes writing, the ‘greatest hits of Star Trek’ casting, the idea that they were going in the wrong direction (to Earth, not away!), and not allowing the cast to really shine, Voyager had many faults. It took what could have been a phenomenal series and dumbed it down to a so-so Trek series at best. Even though I enjoyed Voyager, I kept re-writing it in my head.
While the suits shot for the elements of classic Trek and TNG that made both of them a success, the suits just weren’t able to achieve that kind of magic. That being said, I still enjoyed Voyager, though it could have been so much more.