Voyager vs. Enterprise: the Final Viewing

This is an interesting thread. I was never much of a Trekkie. I kind of enjoyed most of the movies and watched a bit of TNG and DS9 when they were on TV on a Friday night and thought they were okay, and I've never seen either of the shows this thread is about, so I've always been mystified about why the new movies enrage people so much.

Recently though I saw a few episode of the first 3 seasons of TOS and I can say I get it now. Sure the effects are cheesy to modern eyes and the acting is largely not good, but it really was a ballsy show not scared to take on messy philosophical human issues. Even when the dialogue is weak and cheeseball the plots were tightly scripted and underlying issues were pertinent and thought provoking.

I still think the new movies are better than people give them credit for, especially in the context of the other Trek films, but TOS really was something special.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

This is an interesting thread. I was never much of a Trekkie. I kind of enjoyed most of the movies and watched a bit of TNG and DS9 when they were on TV on a Friday night and thought they were okay, and I've never seen either of the shows this thread is about, so I've always been mystified about why the new movies enrage people so much.

Recently though I saw a few episode of the first 3 seasons of TOS and I can say I get it now. Sure the effects are cheesy to modern eyes and the acting is largely not good, but it really was a ballsy show not scared to take on messy philosophical human issues. Even when the dialogue is weak and cheeseball the plots were tightly scripted and underlying issues were pertinent and thought provoking.

I still think the new movies are better than people give them credit for, especially in the context of the other Trek films, but TOS really was something special.

Up until I watched the whole series last year, my view of TOS was based mostly on the things people were making fun of it for (Shatner's acting, the alien costumes). It was actually a lot better than I was expecting, although it still had some major problems (its attitude towards women was pretty awful on a regular basis).
I think the new movies are good sci-fi action movies, they just completely ignore what made Star Trek special.

Here's a twist I loved about Voyager - when they got a rep for disaster following them around, since it kinda did!

Voyager suffered from great ideas that were not followed through well, like the one above, and The Year Of Hell, which could have been a great mid-series game changer, and turned into a time travel retcon thing instead. I get that they couldn't have killed off half the main cast, but a whole season of disasters followed by a season of limping recovery, with the compromised principles and drama that would have brought, would have been terrific.

I wouldn't have wanted Voyager to turn into the Equinox, but greater concentration on that point would have been better.

I admit I wasn't even aware that Voyager was considered a failure. I'm watching a bit of it again and even though it might not be the best thing I've watched I still enjoy it, which is how most of Star Trek is for me. Aside from the insufferable ones (Neelix) I like most of the crew and I think Janeway is a pretty good captain. Maybe I just like it because I watched it as a kid, but I'm okay with that.

I'm loving the reviews. This kind of critical analysis is great.

spider_j wrote:

Here's a twist I loved about Voyager - when they got a rep for disaster following them around, since it kinda did!

Voyager suffered from great ideas that were not followed through well, like the one above, and The Year Of Hell, which could have been a great mid-series game changer, and turned into a time travel retcon thing instead. I get that they couldn't have killed off half the main cast, but a whole season of disasters followed by a season of limping recovery, with the compromised principles and drama that would have brought, would have been terrific.

I wouldn't have wanted Voyager to turn into the Equinox, but greater concentration on that point would have been better.

It's mostly down to the narrative structure between episodes rather than any individual episode. Partially that's becauses TV serialization has developed a lot in the past couple of decades; Voyager started at the same time as the third season of DS9. There were a lot of shows pushing the boundaries (Babylon 5 had just completely shattered its premise) but it was still possible to think of a TV show as mostly steady-state episodes like Next Gen. Though it really didn't help that they picked a premise that implied greater serialization than they intended, creating a kind of structural-narrative dissonance.

That, and Star Trek uses time travel to erase entire episodes way too often.

Voyager isn't a bad series, it just has a few more weak episodes then previous series. Enterprise on the other hand, is totally underrated and just came at a time where the Star Trek franchise was getting a bit stale. I truly wish they had gotten a 5th season. The huge arc in the third season was incredible and a very interesting experiment.

Stele wrote:

Speaking of Ronald D Moore, there's a 7-part interview that I saved probably a decade ago. Have it in my backups, and it still has a link, which surprisingly worked just now. So here you go. It will take a while to read. But basically it tells you why Voyager sucked, and why he left Star Trek.

To be fair, Moore didn't exactly exactly follow his own advice when it came to BSG.

Very few episodes were focused on what would have been the reality: people fighting over supplies, dying from starvation because there's 45,000 people and only one FTL capable Botanical Cruiser, and ships continually getting left behind because something breaks and there's no spare parts (or people trained enough to make repairs).

Even simple things--like why they never ran out of paper with the corners neatly cut off; the never-ending supply of high quality booze; why they never ran out of Vipers and Raptors even though several would be destroyed every time they tussled with the Cylons; and, why characters showed up in brand new, neatly tailored outfits--were never explained.

Part of that is because being that "rough" gets in the way of telling a compelling story.

OG_slinger wrote:
Stele wrote:

Speaking of Ronald D Moore, there's a 7-part interview that I saved probably a decade ago. Have it in my backups, and it still has a link, which surprisingly worked just now. So here you go. It will take a while to read. But basically it tells you why Voyager sucked, and why he left Star Trek.

To be fair, Moore didn't exactly exactly follow his own advice when it came to BSG.
[...]
Part of that is because being that "rough" gets in the way of telling a compelling story.

True. And, at least for me, it's not any realism or roughness I'm looking for. It's the verisimilitude you find when the structure of the premise is reflected in both the individual episodes and the overall arcs. Which BSG also failed at, in the end.

1 - Any of the other captains could take Kirk.

2 - I love the new movies.

3 - I don't give a sh*t about continuity. I care about entertaining stories.

4 - Voyager rules.

5 - Enterprise had some startling good episodes but lagged. The big story arc of going into the Expanse was kick ass though.

Gremlin wrote:

It's the verisimilitude you find when the structure of the premise is reflected in both the individual episodes and the overall arcs. Which BSG also failed at, in the end.

I think it was you that mentioned the ending to BSG previously, I really don't get that. The ending was grand and I feel they had been leading up to it from the beginning.

edit: Moore: "they're uniforms are neatly pressed wtf?"
Me: They put their dishes in the replicator the way you put yours in the sink! They don't have trash cause it gets unmade. Sci-fi 101, imagining new scenarios and ideally new societies based on the existence or absence of particular technologies.

What's wrong with Seven's costume? I've never stood close to Jeri Ryan at any time, much less when she was wearing her one-piece, but he acts like the fabric was transparent or incredibly thin. It definitely wasn't, I looked. Deanna Troi's sometimes looked awkward though.

RolandofGilead wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

It's the verisimilitude you find when the structure of the premise is reflected in both the individual episodes and the overall arcs. Which BSG also failed at, in the end.

I think it was you that mentioned the ending to BSG previously, I really don't get that. The ending was grand and I feel they had been leading up to it from the beginning.

I didn't start this derail but I'm gonna ride it like a mofo. I apologize for the oddly placed spoiler sections.

The ending of BSG was bull-plop but only for one reason. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND

Spoiler:

WOULD SPLIT UP INTO SEPERATE TINY GROUPS.

Jesus, they've gone through HELL. If Adama

Spoiler:

ordered the split

, and I was there, I would have machine gunned him and his supporters into the dirt. F*** that noise. Let's

Spoiler:

build a city, a community, for security and family

.

"What about the

Spoiler:

other cro-magnon-ape dudes

over there?" someone asks.

My response. I kill that someone for being an idiot and say,

Spoiler:

"Too f***ing bad! This ain't Star Trek! We've EARNED THIS. They can just cope."

RolandofGilead wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

It's the verisimilitude you find when the structure of the premise is reflected in both the individual episodes and the overall arcs. Which BSG also failed at, in the end.

I think it was you that mentioned the ending to BSG previously, I really don't get that. The ending was grand and I feel they had been leading up to it from the beginning.

Fair enough; BSG was a bit of a gratuitous example here.

edit: Moore: "they're uniforms are neatly pressed wtf?"
Me: They put their dishes in the replicator the way you put yours in the sink! They don't have trash cause it gets unmade. Sci-fi 101, imagining new scenarios and ideally new societies based on the existence or absence of particular technologies.

Yeah, that specific instance I don't mind, though I'd agree with the idea that Voyager could have been a lot rougher than it was, since they're away from their traditional command structures and all. Still, Next Gen is one of the few TV attempts to portray a post-scarcity society, which Voyager continued, though occasionally the Star Trek writers would forget that or would come up with a plot that didn't really work with it. "Caretaker" actually has a nice bit when they realize that their replicator technology lets them trivially solve the water shortage.

Strangeblades wrote:

The ending of BSG was bull-plop but only for one reason. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND

Spoiler:

WOULD SPLIT UP INTO SEPERATE TINY GROUPS.

Jesus, they've gone through HELL. If Adama

Spoiler:

ordered the split

, and I was there, I would have machine gunned him and his supporters into the dirt. F*** that noise. Let's

Spoiler:

build a city, a community, for security and family

.

Spoiler:

They split into smaller groups because they were trying to break the cycle of "everything happened before and will happen again."

On New Caprica they'd stuck together in one big city and that had ended poorly, so this time around there wouldn't be one honking big city. The fleet (and the Cylons themselves) represented what Apollo said was science and technology always racing ahead of man's heart and soul, so to break the cycle they crashed all the ships into the sun.

Besides, it wasn't that big of deal. All those people had already broken up into smaller groups: the ships they were on.

Strangeblades wrote:

"What about the

Spoiler:

other cro-magnon-ape dudes

over there?" someone asks.

My response. I kill that someone for being an idiot and say,

Spoiler:

"Too f***ing bad! This ain't Star Trek! We've EARNED THIS. They can just cope."

Spoiler:

[quote=Adama's Decommissioning Speech]
You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question "Why?" Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed and spite, jealousy, and we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done, like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. And when that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore.

[/quote]

I disagree. But that's OK.

Strangeblades is a Cylon.

Stengah wrote:

Up until I watched the whole series last year, my view of TOS was based mostly on the things people were making fun of it for (Shatner's acting, the alien costumes). It was actually a lot better than I was expecting, although it still had some major problems (its attitude towards women was pretty awful on a regular basis). I think the new movies are good sci-fi action movies, they just completely ignore what made Star Trek special.

I know it seems kind of obvious, but the reason TOS had that attitude towards women was really because society did. Horrible now was du jour 45 years ago.

I have to say, there are a few too many "maybe we can use this to get home" moments. They don't have any impact because of course they can't get home. Also, the arbitrary nature of what the medical hologram can / can't heal sure is a nice plot device to have, isn't it?

kyrieee wrote:

I have to say, there are a few too many "maybe we can use this to get home" moments. They don't have any impact because of course they can't get home. Also, the arbitrary nature of what the medical hologram can / can't heal sure is a nice plot device to have, isn't it?

That evolves. Spoilers, so I won't say, but one of those harebrained schemes finally, actually, for realsies does work, signalling the end of the series.

Gravey wrote:

Strangeblades is a Cylon.

Albeit a prototype with some crash-prone subroutines.

AnimeJ wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Up until I watched the whole series last year, my view of TOS was based mostly on the things people were making fun of it for (Shatner's acting, the alien costumes). It was actually a lot better than I was expecting, although it still had some major problems (its attitude towards women was pretty awful on a regular basis). I think the new movies are good sci-fi action movies, they just completely ignore what made Star Trek special.

I know it seems kind of obvious, but the reason TOS had that attitude towards women was really because society did. Horrible now was du jour 45 years ago.

I know, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch. I was impressed with how Uhura was treated (compared to the other women on the show), but since apparently Roddenberry was having an affair with her at the time, it makes sense that he'd want to have her character treated better.

LiquidMantis wrote:
Gravey wrote:

Strangeblades is a Cylon.

Albeit a prototype with some crash-prone subroutines.

Not being perfect makes me more human-appearing.

Voyager: "The Cloud"

My girlfriend watched this episode with me. When it ended, she turned to me and said, "I swear they're not all this terrible." While not quite as mindbendingly terrible as "The Phage", this episode is just kind of below average bland in so many ways. Long story short, Voyager tries to mine a gas cloud which turns out to be a sentient being, and must repair the damage that it caused in the course of mining. I don't want to go too in-depth with this one, so I'll just mention some highlights.

Neelix gets super passive-aggressive about not being able to dictate his need for safety on the entire ship. At a critical moment, he shows up on the bridge aggressively hawking snacks. One of my favorite things to do with Neelix scenes is imagine how other Starfleet captains would deal with his shenanigans. Picture Sisko, dangerously still, speaking in a tight voice: "Get. This. Person. Off of MY BRIDGE." I suspect Picard might have had him keel-hauled by now. Worf would have been glad to do it.

During this episode I kept thinking that Neelix reminded me of a Saturday morning cartoon character. A specific type of Saturday morning cartoon character: the comic relief that nobody, not even small children seem to like. A little later on in this episode, I realized he reminded me of a very specific cartoon character:

IMAGE(https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/5117344000/h826C9DFB/)
(I'm apparently not the first person to notice.)

Janeway complains to Chakotay that there is no ship's counselor on board, since this was supposed to be a very short mission. Chakotay's solution is, or course, to get her to find her "spirit animal". That sharp pain you just felt was from your eyes rolling back into your head. Janeway approaches this, not as a sane person with a healthy degree of skepticism, but with the enthusiasm of a Santa Fe suburbanite at the Mystical Healing Center. I swear Robert Beltran wasn't playing this scene straight at first. He's got such a goofy expression on his face when he first makes the suggestion. Janeway eagerly pulls Chakotay back to her quarters, where he uses his "medicine ball" to send Janeway on, I swear to god, a vision quest to find her spirit animal. Now, when I say, "vision quest" you might understandably think that this is simply an awkward way of describing a deep state of meditation, and that by "spirit animal", I mean a metaphorical engagement with subconscious emotional states. But no. I mean that Janeway suddenly appeared in the Arizona desert all holodeck style, and that she talked to a lizard. She was delighted about that lizard. It must have saved her hundreds in starship insurance. Me, I would have been kinda disappointed if my spirit animal was a lizard. What sort of personality or wisdom are we supposed to intuit from a lizard? I grew up in the southeast. I know about lizards. Lizards are mostly good for sitting in the sun, eating bugs, and getting slaughtered by cats. The best wisdom you're likely to get out of a lizard is, "Quick, disconnect your tail and spray blood in his face!"

I'm curious if they bothered talking to any Native Americans at all before they wrote some of this crap. Yeah, Beltran's supposed to be a member of a Native Mexican tribe, but he clearly wasn't in the writing room. Various members of the crew keep calling Chakotay "The Indian", as if this was not a word fraught with all kinds of terrible associations. From what I understand, some Natives don't mind being called "Indian" at all. For others it's the Native version of the n-word. Tom Paris has a bit in the pilot where he's rescuing Chakotay while constantly spouting racial insults. I think it's supposed to be kind of funny, like that really uncomfortable scene between Will Smith and Kenneth Branaugh in Wild Wild West. But no, it does not manage even those giddy heights. He also keeps telling Chakotay that "I own you now," because that's apparently not super-problematic either. It's referencing some sort of belief Chakotay has that if you save a person's life they...I'm not quite sure...become your slave I guess? Most of this was introduced via Tom Paris in between his Opie and Anthony bits, and Chakotay didn't really have much to say about it. You could hardly have made a better metaphor for Native American oppression if you tried. Where did this stuff come from? Were they looking at a specific tribe when they wrote this? I'm noticing that even Memory Alpha doesn't seem to know the name of Chakotay's tribe, which suggests they went seven years without bothering to let that slip. Oh, don't bother, it's only the single most important aspect of his personality so far. That sort of suggests that they were making it up as they went, and that by not naming a tribe, they could just go, "Oh, that's from some other tribe," when people criticized them.

A brief jaunt to Memory Alpha clears up some of my questions. I'll let Memory Alpha explain:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jama...

Jamake Highwater (1942–2001) served as a consultant on Native American culture to Star Trek: Voyager. Though he claimed American Indian ancestry, he was in fact Armenian. Highwater was heavily criticized by actual American Indians for his writings, which typically contained stereotypical and inaccurate depictions of Indian culture.

I can see how you might mix up "Native American" and "Native Armenian", but goddamn, that's one hell of an oversight.

Apart from the terrible racism, the biggest problem I have with this is that Chakotay the (sigh) medicine man is a far less compelling character than Chakotay the rebel freedom fighter. In fact, they're not even the same character. Chakotay the medicine man is calm and peaceful, open about his religion and eager to share it with even his opponents. Chakotay the rebel freedom fighter fought a bloody guerilla war against both Federation and Cardassia. There should at least be some internal conflict between those two sides of the character. In fact, there should be a lot of internal conflict going on with this guy, but he's arguably the most stable and settled member of the crew.

Voyager: "Eye of the Needle"

I was beginning to get pretty discouraged with Voyager. Up to this point, it was a disaster. A relatively strong pilot followed up by a string of almost incoherent episodes. So when this one turned out to be pretty good, I was both shocked and delighted. There's a lot to like here. The crew grapples with the idea that they might be able to send messages home, then that they might be able to go home, and then that none of it might happen. Robert Piccardo (I refuse to call him The Doctor. Doctor Who? Exactly.) continues to develop the idea that he might have desires and drives beyond that of a simple hologram program. And the plot twist is completely unexpected and is a total gut punch to the crew. For once, all the technowizardry is germane to the plot, and not a mad libs of Star Trek vocabulary. It really was a solid episode, and holds up relatively well with comparable TNG and DS9 episodes.

I'm sad to see that the writer for this one, Hillary J Bader, apparently never wrote another Voyager episode. I hope that's not a sign of things to come.

Wow, I feel like I should just watch the pilot and skip straight to Eye of the Needle.

The Doctor does get a name eventually.

Oh man... Armenian... Hah!

That's awesome. And by awesome, I mean terrible.

I've gotten to season 2 and so far I think it's a lot better than the first one, I guess I will have to wait and see if kazooka agrees :D. The episodes that focus on specific characters work pretty well and even though they still use a bit of technobabble to resolve their problems it's not that bad, it follows more naturally from the premise. I thought the doctor's episode was particularly good. Harry Kim's could've used some denouement, it didn't feel appropriate to take what happened there as just another day on the job. Maybe it should've been a two part episode.

I loved them all -- just finished watching Enterprise, which was the only one I ever missed in its entirety. I always looked at watching these episodes as being hit or miss, but when they hit, the payoff was always worth it... I kind of liked the 'miss' episodes as showing the trivialities of space travel at times and a moment to rest and watch the crew just deal with whatever. It also helped with the character development and the character connections to each other.

By Season 3 of Enterprise, I loved that it seemed that every episode was a cliffhanger... I'm glad I didn't catch it when it was on TV and I would have to wait for a week for each episode. And finally... f*ck that intro song. The producer should've been executed by airlock for that sh*t.

BlackSheep wrote:

By Season 3 of Enterprise, I loved that it seemed that every episode was a cliffhanger... I'm glad I didn't catch it when it was on TV and I would have to wait for a week for each episode. And finally... f*ck that intro song. The producer should've been executed by airlock for that sh*t.

If you squint you can kind of see how the sentiment...yeah, there's nothing that can redeem that choice. The imagery was cool, though. The mirror universe deconstruction of it was good, too.

I think that intro made me way more critical of everything in the show than I otherwise would've been.

kyrieee wrote:

I think that intro made me way more critical of everything in the show than I otherwise would've been.

Naming the ship Enterprise and pissing all over history did that for me.

Could have called it anything else and I would have at least given the show a chance.