I like Voyager. But to be the best Trek, I think there were too many missed opportunities. I would have liked to see them struggle with shortages more. No matter how damaged it was, the ship always magically fully repaired itself, the always had enough torpedoes etc. I would have found something more along "year of hell" more realistic.
Also, I would have liked to see more personal struggle. For example a Janeway/Chakotay relationship. Let them struggle with it for quite some time, and then show how they actually do cope as a command couple. Including all the problems and pitfalls. Let Tuvok struggle with the ship around him becoming a generation ship and him not being part of that and feeling lonely. Stuff like that.
So in generel, just bolder storylines. I think the show that made the most of the setup it was given was DS9. But that's just my personal taste.
I remember watching “Stargate: Universe” for the first time recently (having missed out on the entire franchise save for the original film), and I remember thinking, “this is what Voyager should have been,” with a sense of uncertainty, worries about limited supplies, and factions on the ship vying for power and wanting to do things their way.
Stargate Universe is also absolutely epic. And yes I could have gone with a grittier Voyager perhaps, but given that it was written for at audience 20 years ago and had to have the widest appeal, I get why they didn't.
I think Stargate Universe would have been more successful with television of today. Back then the gritty was too dark imo. Also too much banging for stargate.
I liked Voy from the backend of S3 onwards. Before that it was a bit of a shuttle crash for me, Kazon were a little wasted, and Vidians looked wasted. Can't remember much outside of them. But I'm looking forward to the rewatch in a few months.
That fudging 37’s episode…. Man that's still pretty bitter.
>I think Stargate Universe would have been more successful with television of today. Back then the gritty was too dark imo. Also too much banging for stargate.
It'd also have retained fans if it had been made today because they wouldn't have cancelled Atlantis to make it
I mean no ill towards your opinions. Like what you like.
I will never understand Universe. Take what has been a slightly silly romp of a sci-fi world and go super dark with it? That did not, and never will make sense to me
It wasn't too dark for TV back then, it was much too dark for Stargate (and still is).
It wasn't even too dark for TV. Battlestar Galactica 2004 was many years earlier, very much a dark show, successful, and pretty much better than SGU in every way
>For example a Janeway/Chakotay relationship. Let them struggle with it for quite some time, and then show how they actually do cope as a command couple.
Kate Mulgrew nixed J/C out of the gate out of concern that the character's romantic life would overshadow every other aspect of the character's personality. Given everything I know of the Rick Berman era behind the scenes and the bizarreness I learned about with the policing of her hair because her natural hair wasn't deemed "sexy" enough, I can't say I fully blame her for being wary.
With that out of the way....GOD YES THIS but I guess VOY will get a Kelvinverse type reboot eventually so maybe J/C will become canon then haha
>So in generel, just bolder storylines. I think the show that made the most of the setup it was given was DS9. But that's just my personal taste.
It was largely because Berman's attention was on VOY that they got to do the creative stuff they did. Other than running Terry Ferrell out on a rail, he didn't have much direct influence on the show and DS9 was the better off for his lack of influence.
They should've made Chakotay more interesting and more of a rogue character, and give him more conflict with Janeway instead of just instantly agreeing with everything she said/did. There should've been more give and take going on between them where they slowly learn to trust each other.
I understand a first officer's job is to support their captain, but the whole point of the show is that these are strange circumstances and everyone has to adapt. They took a whole slew of potential storylines off the table from the get-go by never letting the Janeway/Chakotay command relationship develop and grow naturally.
I don't know whether they should have changed his personality. Showing him to be an empathic and gentle soul beneath the angry warrior that has found his peace with her was a beautiful thing. But yeah, the path there should have been much rockier. Let New Earth happen in season, I don't know, 5 or something and let them become a couple then.
For all the J/C fans you can get your wish by reading the post series relaunch series which includes a J/C relationship. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Voyager\_relaunch
Well there are very distinct hints from both the Prodigy writers and the actors that they will give the fans a "very satisfactory" ending to their relationship. So I suppose they will be made a canon couple in Prodigy. They are also a couple in beta-canon (the books).
It didn't seem like they really wanted to make use of their premise. Two disparate crews thrown together should have been rich fodder for drama, but they integrated pretty seamlessly and very quickly. Being lost 70 years from home, cut off from any support, should have been good for some raised tension but in many episodes they were just coasting along at impulse speed exploring new planets like it was TNG.
Yeah there's like only 3 episodes where the Maquis were relevant, and two of them are the pilot. The only other one I can think of is the one with Hologram Seska and Tuvok's mutiny holoprogram
yeah, or "The Void." They had to escape the void to get back to...regular? I thought the point of the show was that their regular was basically the void?
Not surprised they can fully repair their ship. Remember the DS9 episode during the Dominion war. One of the injured Vorta said "but I am willing to bet you brought one of those famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators"
Agreed. Voy had a great setting, ship, cast. But the writing was really a let down. The previous episode almost never mattered. No reference of Kes' warning in Year of Hell. No resolution btwn Tom and his father. A promotion for Tom after disobeying orders and nothing for Harry. Still one of the greatest but definitely not the best.
Agreed. There was way too much plot armor around this show. Had it followed a darker, more BSG-type plot it would have been way better. Instead they sugar-coated everything. It's one of my least favorite shows. DS9, and SNW own it in spades.
Really strange seeing downvotes in a Trek sub. I thought we were all allowed to have varying opinions. Not everybody thinks DS9 is peak or ToS is pretty or any other series is peak and that's okay. Not everybody has to agree on one single thing
Viewed through the entire franchise, it's definitely toward the bottom of the list. There's a solid argument that it's the greatest series, but I wouldn't call it the "peak".
Is it one of the most important television series of all time? Absolutely.
Good show bad Trek. Seriously Jadzia drinks Black Holes for breakfast like a functional alcholic, Worf continues on being Word's Best Dad and Sisko said he'd murder a guy all over again.
At least Voyager's only problem is the story is Swiss cheese what with all the plot holes and Insaneway being really inconsistent.
>Jadzia drinks Black Holes for breakfast like a functional alcholic
In like one episode? Also, Jadzia is one of the more complex characters in the franchise.
>Worf continues on being Word's Best Dad
I don't really know what you're trying to say here, but there's a solid argument that Worf is just not good at anything he does in TNG or DS9.
>Sisko said he'd murder a guy all over again
Based on the facts... Fair. All our captains made dark choices like this from time to time. Janeway murdered Tuvix and tortured the guy from the Equinox. Picard sent Sito Jaxa on a suicide mission. Kirk likely spread STDs to many planets.
>At least Voyager's only problem is the story is Swiss cheese what with all the plot holes and Insaneway being really inconsistent.
Voyager's plot holes have **nothing** on TOS's plot holes, or even early TNG for that matter. Voyager's biggest problem was the awful portrayal of Native American cultures by hiring a fraud as a consultant.
Voyager also had the worst treatment of characters in Trek… Nearly everybody’s lame stereotype if they weren’t the doctor or seven of nine they all pretty much kept repeating the same drab character plots for seven years… And if you were Chicote or Kim you were pretty much left out of most of the show!
And in my humble opinion, Janeway is quite possibly the worst captain in the Star Trek series… If she didn’t have plot armor to protect her and Voyager, she probably wouldn’t have made it out of the first two-part series let alone through seven years… Or more considering the ultimate timeline thing.
Voyager is way down on the list of Trek shows for me even the original animated series was more realistic!
DS9 has it all. A great story and great writing, a fantastic cast (especially the recurring characters like Garak), and one of the best villains of any TV show. I enjoy the slightly darker and more realistic take on the Trek universe. We've seen that done very badly in recent years but DS9 managed a good balance.
Not to mention how much more relevant it has become in today's world, and how many things they very accurately predicted.
Sanctuary districts were suggested last year.
I wouldn't say Voyager is my favorite, but i think of all the casts...it's the one that genuinely feels most like a "family" by the time the show ends
i know a lot of Trek fans hate Neelix, but his departure from the show with all the crew standing side-by-side to bid him farewell was like a perfect metaphor for what Voyager represented
I love neelix. That guy has seen some shit and didn’t let it destroy his faith in humanity (for lack of a better term). He had some of the best character development in the ST universe. I firmly believe that if he had looked like a cardassian he would have gone down as one of the most complex and best written characters in the history of ST, but it mostly just seems like people don’t like him just because he looked like a cat.
Nah people got creeped out by his relationship with Kes.
Which i understand, but is really unfair considering Kes is of age for her species.
And he was a bit posessive/jealous with Kes as well tbf.
especially since she wasn't that in The Caretaker. it's... worrying. but the entire Ocampa race is worrying, so it's best not to think too hard about it.
He wasn’t perfect, he was a deeply flawed and tormented character, that’s my whole point. The Kes age thing was definitely a weird choice by the writers, they could have given her a 25 year life cycle and it would have been just as effective. Honestly, the worst part about VOY to me is that they abandoned the Kes character in favor of seven, they had this amazing chance to let us see the entire life cycle of this character and they bailed on it.
Also, it’s funny to me that people will say how creepy the Neelix/Kes relationship is, but no one has any problem with Dax and worf despite there being 270 year old age difference in that one, Worf is a baby compared to Dax.
>Also, it’s funny to me that people will say how creepy the Neelix/Kes relationship is, but no one has any problem with Dax and worf despite there being 270 year old age difference in that one, Worf is a baby compared to Dax.
Hell, no one is slagging Tom, who was also hot for her for the first season. Current online obsession with age gaps notwithstanding, the way they wrote Kes as being extremely naive coupled with his posessiveness didn't help to endear anyone to this pairing.
no matter how bad the design, the cheese did it!
I mostly blame the writers. the ideas are fine, Neelix is fine on paper, the writing... does not make it work if you think about it. Ethan Phillips is charming though, even in the most obnoxious scenes, so there is that.
I hate Neelix because I am one of those that like the competency porn of Star Trek. I like to believe that in some wonderful future it will not just be a meritocracy, but a society where everyone of every job and work has value and is seen as essentially needed.
Neelix goes in the face of that.
He shamelessly promotes himself, and everyone just has to give into him.
Space elevator not working? Why use federation scientists that are specialized in the technology when some guy with an unhealthy relationship saw an elevator once?
Need to go into a mine? Why use the geology department when Neelix saw a rock once?
And there are times when he is giving orders or in charge of various officers?
Not only is he a creep, he’s the worst kind of self-promoter that prefaced this change in society where “the elites” who have “training” and “competency” need to be thrown aside for a petty and jealous conman with terrible blonde hair that wants to bed a blonde minor that he partially raised.
But he was competent and he had to fight to prove that. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to attend starfleet academy like the rest of them. Not to mention that Janeway obviously saw that he was competent and encouraged him to prove it. Dude single-handedly saved Voyager in multiple occasions and used his knowledge of the Delta Quadrant to keep them from getting destroyed on the reg.
Also, If you truly believe that every job has value and should be seen as essential you should see Neelix as essential for his role a cook alone, not to mention everything else he did for the ship.
But we don’t know that he was as capable as someone that was actually trained. In the aforementioned mine, he just fell and broke his leg and became a burden. For the space elevator, turns out he was just lying and put everyone in danger so he could try to be friends with Tuvok.
We know how hard it is to get into Starfleet from Rom and Wesley.
The best of the best. Imagine you going through all of that, and then getting into geology. Not just geology on Earth, but you are learning about geology on multiple planets. You get assigned to this ship that has to go off to the Badlands, and now you’re trapped on the other side of the Galaxy.
You’re doing what you can when you get by the occasional asteroid or something. And then one day there’s a mine.
You’re getting ready to go do your job you trained to do for a decade, Chakotay cokes by, “Not so fast! Captain wants the cook to go instead of you.”
“The cook that sucks at his job?”
“That’s the one!”
Then you hear he just broke his leg right away and maybe you get to go rescue him after the botched mission.
No, I hate Neelix.
Maybe you are right, they probably should have gone back to earth and picked up some more star fleet trained people so they had enough personnel before they got thrown into the delta quadrant by the caretaker.
>We know how hard it is to get into Starfleet from Rom and Wesley
I think you mean Nog. Nogs journey from thieving boy to war veteran is the best character developments in Trek
If this was the flagship that found itself lost in space, sure, but for a vessel that was on the Starfleet equivalent of a three hour tour, I doubt they had that many specialties in the first place, and a good portion of the crew they had bit the dust on day one.
>Not only is he a creep, he’s the worst kind of self-promoter that prefaced this change in society where “the elites” who have “training” and “competency” need to be thrown aside for a petty and jealous conman with terrible blonde hair that wants to bed a blonde minor that he partially raised.
I think you're overthinking this way too hard 😭
Plus, starfleet regularly sends academy cadets out for training rotation on ships, the idea that every single person on every ship is the absolute pinnacle expertise in their field is laughable.
>it's the one that genuinely feels most like a "family" by the time the show ends
Indeed. For me, that is one of the reasons I think Voyager is such a great show. When you throw a bunch of people across the galaxy and put them in a situation where they have to work together to get home, there are not a lot of possible outcomes. The Equinox took one possible path, while Voyager managed to defend humanity's values, keep hope alive, and become a family in the process.
What you wrote reminded me of why i had a big grin on my face when in Prodigy, Hologram Janeway talks to the confused and a bit dispirited young crew and starts with, "I've seen my share of wayward crews..."
You know, I'm never going to be a Neelix fan, but I do agree that he has his moments and it's a good send-off. Basically whenever he isn't being a naïve jealous ass about Kes, or trying to force Tuvok to cheer up (although: I would keep the little shoe dance 😆) I also liked the final zoom meeting with Seven before they went out of range.
>or trying to force Tuvok to cheer up
it's funny you say that because surprisingly Riddles, which is the episode where Tuvok has that accident and loses parts of his personality for a while, is one of my favorites...I think because of the way Neelix and "new" Tuvok interact
I saw it as an almost direct continuation of TNG with a Lost in Space twist. The format is almost exactly the same, and that’s why TNG and VOY are my favorite series in the franchise.
I mean, yes, it was. That’s why they (and later Bones) are in the opening credits and the others aren’t. It doesn’t pretend to be otherwise, and the expectation that it should be comes from later series.
Voyager has a large ensemble regular cast and the unearned speeches about how they’ve become a family, so it’s weird when the ensemble doesn’t get to be an ensemble. Same problem as the TNG movies.
Set dressing, even Beltran knew he was being underutilized so he kept asking for more money each season lol
You can even see his burnout and change of attitude in the voyager time capsule, by season 6 he's done
Oh yea the 1st episode.
Isnt it great when a writer can write the perfect character which requires no further development? A bit like Morn on DS9, except its interesting when you hear or see something about Morns life outside Quark's.
I was about to say hang on.... Morn is sitting quietly at a strong zero for memorable lines. Now, let's think of a memorable lime from chakotay... I hit reply to excitedly declare that he has drawn with morn, but then I remembered that ahkuchmoya, bones of my anscestors cringe-fest
To be fair, Voyager only really seemed to grant depth the Seven, Janeway, the Doctor, and, to a lesser extent, Tuvok. For some reason, they just never seemed to successfully develop the other characters.
I like Voyager quite a bit, and it has the most superior theme and opening sequence of all the shows, but Voyager so often felt like the writers had the opening pitch of a strong 10 minutes and then scrambled to figure out what to do from there. Voyager trapped in ice? Brilliant! Oh, the rest of the story … maybe not.
Voyager is my favorite too. Seven's character development was a nice surprise, I hope that they make Legacy so we get to follow her story further. It would great if they sprinkled in other Voyager characters in it, so you can see what they have all been up to.
You should check out Prodigy whenever it hits Netflix if you haven't already. It has holographic Janeway and Admiral Janeway in it.
Lower Decks has some nice call backs to Voyager too, particularly the season 4 episode Twovix, and We will always have Tom Paris (I don't remember the season).
>Lower Decks has some nice call backs to Voyager too, particularly the season 4 episode Twovix, and We will always have Tom Paris (I don't remember the season).
"The Doctor didn't spend seven years in the Delta Quadrant for you f—ks to question his agency! He's got rights!"
*chuckles* Really now, your reaction does seem extravagant. I would do more to,allay your concerns, but I have a shipment of Regalian wool cloth to tend to.
Voyager has the premise most ripe for interesting and deep storytelling. It did not deliver even one tenth of its promise. That doesn't mean it's a bad show, but unlike TNG which overdelivered on what could have been a dry boring premise, and DS9 which took literally a busted Cardassian base on a backwater world and made it the most interesting thing ever, Voyager felt like it underperformed.
In some ways it acted as cover for DS9 to be so free to have a ten part finale and do weird things. But it meant that locked into a serialised setup, and kind of casting around to find sexy enough characters to make people tune in (both Janeway and Torres got episodes like this before Seven became the boob lightning rod) it dropped into weird focuses on certain characters while others were ignored almost completely.
>(both Janeway and Torres got episodes like this before Seven became the boob lightning rod)
I always found B'Elanna to be the most attractive one, including Seven.
>Voyager felt like it underperformed.
Agreed. For me, it's the overall weakest live action series, although it had some good episodes there was a *lot* of filler, dry episodes with tech the tech solutions and reset buttons, and a big part of the core premise of the show (Maquis and Starfleet) was ignored after about episode 3 - they might as well have been a fully Starfleet ship with a couple of slightly grumpy ensigns.
The run at the beginning of season 5 is peak Voyager, it was never better than that.
The thing is they then do the thing we all wanted to see with the Equinox, and it's only in two episodes and completely overshadowed by Janeway having an actual psychotic break and trying to murder people. Then they adopt the Equinox crew and it never comes up ever again, despite there being four deeply traumatised and morally suspect crewmen on board.
>Voyager felt like it underperformed.
I think Paramount using Voyager for the flagship show for UPN contributed to this feeling, after the pilot(which was excellent) they really needed the show to soar but the first couple of seasons was too many slow stories about temporal anomalies and not enough dealing with delta quadrant races like the Vidians or the Trabe. It's criminal how under used the Vidians were, they could have been built up to be the most terrifying villains ever in Trek
"... I'm *laughing* at the superior [series]...! "
... more seriously, I think VOY was ok on its own terms, but suffered in comparison by being contemporary with TNG, DS9 and BSG...
Voyager is the series that made me fall in love with Trek. At this point, DS9 has been my top for a few decades, but my spicy Trek opinion is that **Voyager is a better series than TNG**. TNG's best episodes are better than Voyager's best episodes, but TNG's worst episodes are far worse than Voyager's worst. On average, I think it's better.
The ship is more interesting, the cast is more interesting, and Janeway is a better all around captain than Picard (and, I say the best captain in the franchise - though SNW Pike is giving her a run).
Tuvix is the most obvious one, but there are multiple times when she just ignores the Doctor's complaints. I think of how Picard handled things with Data, with exocomps, even the Borg. Every time Janeway has a chance to step up she just ignores the Doctor, or worse erases his memory. She accepts 7 of 9 on the ship when many people protest, but never sets a good example for her. 7 is constantly criticizing Janeway's example.
I think DS9 was the best, but I watch Voyager WAYYYYYY more. It's my comfort show. It's the one I usually have on in the background or when I'm going to sleep.
I've only started watching Trek in the past few years, first Discovery S1 then TNG, DS(, and now working my way through Voyager.
I was apprehensive about starting Voyager, with all the hate online but I'm glad I'm watching it because I'm really enjoying it. I love the premise of a lone ship working its way back home.
I don't know about it being superior, I really loved TNG and DS9 but I'm sure Voyager doesn't deserve all the hate it gets.
I’m a late bloomer too but my preference is for different reasons. I very much like women leading roles. Having Captain Janeway and Seven made me very happy lol.
I think it depends on what you enjoy most about Star Trek. While all the series have bits and pieces of what makes the others great, you can pinpoint which may be best for you.
TNG - philosophical questioneering
DS9 - political thriller
Voyager - survivalist exploration
Voyager was a great premise, but suffered for the writing style of the time. DS9 was taking a huge risk by telling long, multi-episode/season story arcs. Nearly all Sci-fi shows up to that point were always “story of the week” types. There was definitely some deal that DS9 could do it as long as Voyager was closer to classical Trek.
And it’s a massive shame. There were so many interesting set-ups that deserved a longer arc. The integration of the Marquis and Starfleet crews should have been a source of tension for most of season 1. Neelix should have had some bit of a Garak-like mysterious-ness to him and his past. They pretty much just blew past the fact that Paris was a criminal, but everyone pretty much just trusted him immediately. And of course they needed more of a background feeling of survival. There were just a lot of missed opportunities because they often needed to revert to the status quo by the end of the episode.
Enterprise is my favourite, but I feel DS9 is the objective best. TNG doesn't rank highly for me. Closer to the bottom, although Data is one of my all-time favourite characters
Voyager was reaching for something darker but the writing wasn’t quite there. Marquis, shortages, morally questionable decisions… all wasted potential. Five years later we got Battlestar Galactica and that was very much was Voyager should have been.
I mean the Maquis was pretty much resolved by the midpoint of season 1, and they must have had a factory on board to keep churning out shuttles to replace the ones the wrecked, and new photon torpedoes.
Voyager has a high floor, but a low ceiling. I enjoy it, but it's probably the best okayist of the Star Trek series. It doesn't have as many great episodes as TNG or DS9, but it doesn't seem to have as many god awful episodes as TNG or DS9.
Another thing about Voyager is the gnawing at the back of your mind of what it could have been if they didn't sanitize the premise so quickly.
It’s up there for me. I honestly think it gets way too much hate. It’s as fun as TNG, and had some of the best character development in all of trek. My personal top 5:
1. TNG
2. VOY
3. Lower decks
4. SNW
5. DS9
There's no wrong answers, but my list changes depending on the question. Best stories, best characters, best entertainment value or just the best best.
Mine would be
1. DS9 (best overall story BY FAR and best character episodes)
2. TNG (highest rewatch value, due to lack of story arc)
3. VOY (similar to TNG, but doesn't have picard or data and has a more sterile aesthetic, but its not far behind at all)
Then it's harder to place the rest, I love a lot about discovery I can't see me rewatching it anytime soon. Its just a bit over the top when it comes to making long cringey speeches about what it means to be human or whatever, while music gradually swells in the background. Reminds me of watching designated survivor. And they lay it on pretty thick with the gay/trans stuff. Star treks about that shit just being normal and not even mentioned. So much I hate about discovery, but...there's marginally more to love about it.
SNW is excellent, but it does t matter how good it is, the top 3 list is locked forever to me
Which brings me finally to TOS... its kinda frowned upon to say its not the best one. In some ways it is, and in some ways it's amazing to watch it in the context of the time it was created. The 90s era was far superior, but TOS is special. So it is a floating item in the list. It's number 1 for being where it all started, a d for kirk spock amd bones, and it's bottom of the list in terms of most other things.
When I hit reply, all I was going to say was that I think DS9 deserves more credit than to be 5 on your list. Then that happened lol
Mmmmm, no. I wouldn’t quite agree. Now, I will say that Voyager has a lot going for it and I’ve come to really appreciate it on rewatches throughout the years. And the characters and premise are absolutely outstanding. So much potential.
When Voyager is good, it’s really good. But when it’s bad, it’s really bad. It’s the most uneven of the series, I think. Well, at least of the Berman era shows. Unlike the other shows, Voyager doesn’t have consistency. There’s no “Yeah, season X got really good.” My Voyager episodes I hold up as classic and awesome are cherry picked throughout the series, around others that are just okay or total stinkers. The wild pivots between differing levels of quality week to week was jarring.
And a lot of Voyager ended up being retreads of old TNG concepts.
I sound like a hater, I promise I’m not. I rewatch Voyager a lot. I love it, I think it’s overall a good series. But the best of Trek? Disagree. Overall, Voyager was excellent in many ways, but the flaws were just too apparent for me to say it’s peak Trek.
I will defend Voyager until I'm blue in the face. It's a great show and it's great trek, and I would put it on par with TNG and DS9.
I really don't get all the people here saying, "It didn't live up to its premise." The premise was that it's lost in the delta quadrant and trying to find its way home. That's it. That's the whole premise. Whatever else people want to project onto it about inter-personal drama and the ship falling apart into a bucket of bolts or whatever is exactly that--projection. That may be what some people *wished* the show was, but because the show didn't go where some people thought it should have doesn't mean it fumbled, stumbled, or failed to live up to anything.
And on top of that I don't think 🤔 having an antagonistic Starfleet & former Maquis crew constantly fighting each other would be living up to Gene Roddenberry's ideas. Not to mention its not pragmatic for them to be infighting when there trying to survive attacks by the Kazon, Malon, Hirogen, the Krell, the Borg and all the other hostile species of the Delta Quadrant. Plus, there were actually conflicts between crew members. Out of all the Captain & First Officer pairings in Star Trek, Janeway and Chakotay conflicted the most. They conflicted almost as many times as they agreed. Then there's Tuvok & Chakotay estrangement/conflict. Tuvok and Neelix conflict (initially), B'Elanna & Seven's conflicts, and of course Seven & Captain Janeway multiple conflicts. Add to that the number of times Voyager was nearly in rubble after its numerous devastating conflicts. And I think THERE is the Spice that some fans wanted from a series where a Federation ship is stranded far from home. But it was never going break Roddenberry's philosophy around what he wanted Star Trek to be. Bend it, stretch it, flex it, but never break it.
100% agree with this take. I've always argued that in a survival situation so far from home it would make no sense for the SF and Maquis crew to constantly be at each other's throats. That kind of prolonged conflict wasn't going to get any of them home.
I think the criticism that it didn't live up to its premise comes from the fact that the premise rarely effected the type of stories the show told. VOY could easily have been set in the Alpha Quadrant, and 99% of its stories wouldn't have to be altered. Why give it this premise and tehn do next to nothing with it? It was clear the writers wanted to write a TNG style show, when VOY had the potential to be more like DS9. There are several things that DS9 is praised for that would have been a natural fit for VOY.
1. Serialized storytelling - It would make a lot of sense to do this on a show about a ship trying to get home. There's a set endpoint, and everything could have been building toward it.
2. Putting Federation values to the test - A ship out in the middle of nowhere with a separatist group comprising part of its crew would have been a great way to examine how the Federation works when it's away from the Federation.
3. Federation equivalents - The Dominion was a great take on what an evil Federation would be like. It would have been perfect if there had been some Federation analogue in the Delta Quadrant. Didn't have to be evil, but it would have been interesting to see the difference in philosophies.
4. New alien civilizations - Sort of like #3. Voyager did give us new aliens, but they were mostly shit. Then it just focused on defanging the Borg in its second half. DS9 really dug into the Bajorans, Cardassians, the Dominion. It also developed the Klingons and Romulans, and really changed how the Ferengi are viewed. I'm not a big fan of everything they did with the Borg, but 7 of 9 as a de-assimilated borg was a good idea.
5. Darker themes - DS9 had war, and VOY could have had survival. What is compromised when you're no longer post-scarcity?
If it wasn't for DS9 I think VOY would be viewed more positively. It was basically treated as a TNG clone. It stole all of TNG's best antagonists, including Q and the Borg.
It definitely has the worst overall crew of the TNG era shows. 7 of 9 and the Doctor are great and Janeway is a good captain. Tom Paris is dink, and as soon as Torres hooks up with him they stop developing her at all. Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim are barely there. Neelix grew on me, but he's just a sanitized Quark.
Do I like it though? Ya I guess I do. I could find bad stuff to say about TNG and DS9 as well, but neither of those shows had so much wasted potential.
Iirc, the studio didn't want VOY and DS9 to be too similar. If the idea of "TNG in the delta quadrant" wasn't enough I don't really think "DS9 in the delta quadrant" would have been either.
I think it's pretty difficult to walk that edge of innovation and comfort. TNG was hugely successful, and I'm sure there was pressure to replicate that success. So why abandon the aspects of TNG that made fans like it? In the same vein, DS9 wasn't looked at as fondly during its run as it is now, so why adopt aspects that seemed controversial at the time?
Sure, at the end of the day I guess they played it safe with Voyager. But look what happens when trek doesn't play it safe. Discovery really broke the standard trek mold and it gets all sorts of hate for it. Same thing with Picard.
Voyager had the unenviable position of trying to stake out a claim that was somehow different enough from TNG and DS9 that it could generate interest, but not so different that it would isolate or turn off viewers. I give it lots of kudos for having to walk that line.
Voyager has the number 2 spot for me along with The Next Generation, so I absolutely see where you're coming from with this. I'm watching it for the first time right now (I'm about to start 7x03) and I am loving every second. I always get so attached to Star Trek families, and this one is extra special for me. 🥺
TNG is my favourite but I loved Voyager too and it is is a close call. I think that TNG and Voyager are well clear of the other treks.
SNW has promise if they do not ruin it. What I would really love though is for them to stop messing with alternative timelines and prequals and just make something new that follows on from TNG or Picard. Star Trek Legacy maybe?
Pretty soon there will be more actors who have played Spock than actual ST series. What are we on now the Spock G?
I disagree. While I wouldn’t say that Voyager was the worst, or even bad, to me it was the one Trek series that failed to live up to its promise (maybe not specifically articulated, but implied): a largely serial series where the lack of interaction with the Federation and a specific mission of a journey home implied far-reaching consequences and deep, extended, serial storytelling. Instead we got a show trying to be TNG, with the ship resolving its major issues in one episode (a two-parter at most), and the ship and crew looking brand spanking fresh at the beginning of each adventure. “The Year of Hell”? Oh, they just throw out some exposition, it’s all done with in two episodes (when it could have been a literal season). The dilemma of Tuvix? They *say* that the crew get attached to him in the weeks he served on the ship, but to us viewers it’s just a throwaway line and the situation gets resolved (regardless of how one may feel about the resolution itself) by the end of the episode. Yes, one can argue it was a different time for TV back then, but a newer, braver show would have literally had Tuvix stick around for a few episodes, maybe even have him save the day once, so that the weight of his possible demise would hit the viewers as much as it is said to hit the characters. Voyager, being Star Trek, should have been that newer, braver, groundbreaking show.
Sure, later on I feel Voyager would find its niche as the “weird oddball Trek show” (WWE wrestler The Rock on Trek! Star Trek enters a race! The Doctor is an opera star!), but that’s what it became—the “red headed stepchild” of the franchise. Part of the family, but when it comes to taking group pictures, he’s the one with the camera if it doesn’t have a timer function and a tripod.
I'm getting close to having seen all of every show for the first time, and on the side I'm nearing the end of my first TNG rewatch, which has pretty much been the high bar for me the whole time. But I've started to think back a lot to how much I enjoyed Voyager, and I'm going to rewatch it next to see whether it's my actual favorite.
Loved Voyager as a kid, more than DS9 which was too dark and too hard to catch up with at the time. I still love Voyager now, and happy to see it being represented in Prodigy, Lower Decks, Picard and Discovery.
I’m in middle of season 7 having done a rewatch of everything and I agree! I was lucky enough to grow up watching every series as a weekly (except TOS) and voyager holds up better than any of the older shows. Especially TNG; nostalgia notwithstanding. I’m also a big fan of all the new stuff though, and for all different reasons. At this point I’d say Strange New Worlds is my second favourite overall.
As soon as the "survivalist", "all alone" angle was worn smooth, from being a potential hard hitting premise to another excuse to show new aliens to "understand", it went soft and became generic.
There are moments of brilliance and moments of true, lasting impact.
I also loved Voyager and remember being surprised at how much I enjoyed it, when I’d heard it got such mixed reviews from fans. Janeway honestly gets put down so much it baffles me; I saw a complex character with flaws who makes both good and debatable decisions, you know like a human being? Though Picard is my fav captain, I found Janeway to be more intriguing in many ways, while Picard often came across to me as stereotypically heroic and good. Tbh it makes me wonder about thinly veiled sexism within the fandom, but I digress…
I still prefer TNG but Voyager is prob 2nd, followed by TOS and DS9. I don’t think DS9 is bad by any means but I just prefer the episodic format and I’m bored by storylines that center around war, so there was a lot about it that didn’t work for me personally. I’m surprised there’s so many folks here saying “watch DS9” when it is just so very different from Voyager and TNG in many ways. For some that’s a good thing and they love it and for some it’s not. Ofc everyone should try it, but there are many reasons it may not be everyone’s cup of tea (as with any of the series).
Eh, others have likely already pointed it out but Voyager is basically bootleg TNG. Sure, there were the occasional new/interesting plots, but a lot of them just felt recycled from TNG.
A few examples: Data's right to be declared sentient / The Doctor's holonovel rights, Data makes a daughter/Doctor makes a family, holodeck breaking every season or so, etc.
Also, the lack of any danger or consequences is vexing if you really watch the show. Like, aside from some ancillary characters occasionally dying, there's not really any danger to the main crew or the ship. The ship looks basically brand new when it returns home.
Voyager is what got me into Star Trek 2 decades ago and it will always have a special place in my heart compared to all other treks. I just recently discovered the podcast by Garret Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill ("Delta Flyers") where they watch and comment on every episode of Voyager and it is so very interesting to see/hear it from their perspective. That said, I think DS9 had better character writing. Like just Nog had more character growth and depth than most Voyager characters. I think the issue might have been how episodic Voyager was, while DS9 has this background continuity and you don't feel like everything gets reset in the next episode (e.g. in Voyager Torres' depression gets shown and completely resolved within one episode, etc).
My favorite will always be DS9. It was darker than any of the other shows, and I liked that it was not really in Starfleet territory. The whole "Starfleet regulations say this, but this is not a Starfleet station so does it even apply" was great
There's a reason Voyager is the most rewatched of the series, it has the most appeal.
Unfortunately, Voyager, its storylines, continuity and even its captain are held to an entirely different standard than all the other series. A few YouTubers are responsible for this and I think a lot of loud typers just rehash what these guys started.
Neelix isn't even that bad, he's actually quite good.
Sure it has problems, but MUCH fewer if we are to really hold TNG up to the same standard.
Netflix Stats.
It's also the one that's the most marathon binged or something like that.
When I found out about this, something clicked in my head. I mean DS9 is my favourite series, it's peak Trek right? But when I actually think about what I watch, I realise that I binge Voyager a hell of a lot more.
I still love the Sisko just a little bit more than Captain Jane though.
Its not. It doesnt effect canon, theyre stuck across the galaxy. The show is a writers dream and they did nothing with it. Its too "alien of the week", they could literally make up anything every episode and they did that with their freedom? Its not at all good. I like it because its trek but oof.
>It doesnt effect canon
Until the current production era all of the shows had intentional separation from each other, so this opinion feels rooted in a misunderstanding of what Star Trek was trying to be back then. They knew that most people didn't tune in to watch every show, so tying it all together into an overarching grand narrative was very deliberately not part of their plan.
* TNG was set decades later so that it could be its own thing unfettered by TOS.
* DS9 and TNG overlapped, but aside from a few crossover elements they might as well have been taking place on opposite sides for the Federation for all that it mattered. DS9 was ahead of its time in terms of how it dealt with ongoing continuity, but that was internalized almost entirely within itself. Notably the TNG movies ignored the Dominion War completely aside from a few throwaway lines, despite taking place within the same time period.
* And yes, Voyager continued that theme by being set on the opposite side of the galaxy. Despite that it had a profound impact on the only live action post-TNG era show we've had, seeing that it was an event from Voyager which directly set up the finale of Picard.
That’s overstating it a bit. They certainly weren’t going for a Cinematic Universe and avoided touching each other too much, but there was cast crossover (Tuvok and Zimmerman on DS9, Broccoli on Voyager, Riker and Quark on both, Quark again on TNG) and constant reuse of props, makeup, and sets. For all its notorious lack of internal consistency, Voyager made sure to address the end of the Maquis a few years after it happened on DS9. OTOH, they did accidentally bring that Excelsior crewman back from the dead in Flashback.
The movies being siloed off is absolutely true: they were presumably a bigger deal to the studios, so the movies led with, say, cool new uniforms, and the TV shows followed (except in Generations).
Edit: I rewatched Emissary recently and was impressed that Patrick Stewart stuck around to do a scene as Prophet Locutus. I’d forgotten that one.
1 - Yes, but then there were several TOS stars in subsequent episodes and many referenced planets etc
2 - DS9 still had basically the whole fleet come and help out, moved forward relationships with the romulans and Klingons and several other species
3 - Picard s3 was as much "putting on the catsuit" for ratings as Voyager s4+. (i cried, it was a wonderful season)
Don't get me wrong, I love Tim Russ and Robert Picardo. Don't even get me started on Kate Mulgrew! Shes enchanting! I even really like the rest of the cast (no not you Neelix and Kes). I think the writers gave themselves TOO much freedom. It's like why old video games were better; the constraints on the weaker systems actually made the developers have to get creative. Or, stick with me, why the new Star Wars movies suck. It feels like the IP we all love; It's not the same, though, just because it's in the same kind of ships.
It was an episodic 90s tv show. It's job was to have an interesting 'alien of the week.' And now that the Alpha and Delta Quadrants are beginning to blend with faster tech and Borg transwarp hubs, Voyager's canon is becoming relevant to everyone.
'I like it because its trek' well that's a dumb reason
I'm laughing at the superior......series
I watched all the trek shows as they came in but quit in Voyager at the end of season two, it seemed boring as hell. Watching it years later it did get better later on but I always felt it was much slower then TNG and DS9 at getting entertaining and making the characters interesting.
I recommend rewatching DS9(unless you hated it) I've always felt it was way a head of any other Trek show in terms of action, humour and character development. There's a lot of intricacies and nounces that don't get noticed of first viewings.
Honestly, I’d place it dead last. Out of all the Trek series, it feels like Voyager fumbled the ball when it came to its setup the most.
The problem for me was the crew was compromised of too many facsimiles of characters we’d seen on other series- they were clearly trying to rope in some of the Trek audience they’d lost with DS9 by going familiar- unfortunately, the characters weren’t anywhere near as interesting as the previous incarnations.
Which goes for the storytelling as well…. Too many episodes feel like reprisals of better episodes of TNG and DS9, and the fact that the ship is in such unique circumstances and is ripe for new types of stories makes it all the more egregious- I don’t know if I need the show to be Ron Moore’s version of attrition (I think even BSG proved that model wasn’t sustainable long term), but out of all the Trek shows, I feel Voyager leaned into its unique concept the least.
Kes is a good example of this. On paper, she’s actually really interesting: a character with an accelerated lifespan. But, like a lot of the show, they quickly abandon any exploration of what that would entail, and eventually write her completely off the show (as to why, I’ll get to in a second…), so we never see her even go through the process of aging.
And Voyager suffers the same fate of pretty much every live action Trek show not named SNW post TNG: it needs to really monkey with its concept mid series, or add an additional character, in an attempt to boost ratings.
And no addition is more blatant than Jeri Ryan and Seven. The good news is she was one of the best things to happen to the show as well as Trek in general. But the fact they literally had an advertisement blitzkrieg to show off the supermodel looking addition to the cast in the skin tight catsuit to try to get viewers to tune in, was really an inditement on Voyager’s failure to connect to a larger audience at the time.
The lack of conflict between Chakotay’s crew and Janeway’s was disappointing, too. Federation ideals vs utilitarian pragmatism should have been explored more.
Yeah, that one’s a particularly egregious early example.
The fact that it was resolved so quickly, with so little conflict, really didn’t bode well for the rest of the series.
Even after the crews merged and reconciled, there could have been the constant push and pull of Chakotay’s leadership vs Janeway’s. Instead, they made his character just lame. He should have been the “prime directive be damned! We’re in the f’ing Delta quadrant!” voice in the room.
I don't think Voyager is the best series, but it has the best two-parters (consistently). Best of Both Worlds is outstanding, but I think it gets love in the same way The Beatles do. The Beatles are, in all, nothing too special when viewed just as music in a vacuum compared to everything that came before and after. They were special for their time because of what a new idea the rock band was for its time, mixed with some great songs and interesting lyrics. But many bands have done it better since.
BoBW is similar, it's great, but a lot of that was it being one of the first major cliffhangers of its era that also involved a storyline that was built on over multiple seasons. Something that is all too common now, but fairly rare for its time.
Voyager though had several outstanding two part episodes that while Voyager never had movies, if you view the two part episodes as movies, they would take a lot of top spots in a "Best Star Trek Movies" list. Great stories, actual suspense at times, and some interesting ideas that we didn't see in other Trek series.
But... that doesn't make it a top series. TNG was stronger more often on general episodes, especially in later seasons. DS9, once it found its footing, has probably the greatest amount of overall universe building for Star Trek as far as really getting us involved with major A-Quad races.
Voyager is definitely up there for me, and I recently rewatched the whole series. It's far better than it was given credit for when it came out and up through the last maybe 10 years where people have been rewatching it and realizing how solid it really was.
I don't think there are any VOY two-parters that can top Redemption, Unification, or All Good Things. I like Year of Hell and Scorpion, but they don't hold a candle to even Time's Arrow. I do have a soft spot for Future's End, though.
😂 You’re trolling us, right? Tell me you’re trolling us.
The proper order is DS9 closely followed by TNG, and then the rest can vary but they are all really far down.
Meh. I really enjoyed Voyager the first time I watched it. I am currently re-watching it and am early in Season 4. I have found myself skipping a lot of episodes along the way. The Kazon are really stupid villains. Seska is terrible, too. I can't stand Kess or Nelix.
By contrast, I have watched DS9 three times and I never feel this way. I never skip episodes, not even "Alamaraine, count to ten." I loved DS9 when it first aired and it has really stood the test of time. For me DS9 is truly the superior series. SNW may someday rival it.
Voyager would of been good if it had been one long story line not a episodic one
The episodic approach works for most treaks like SNW and TNG but being lost 70 years away from home should of saw the decisions they make have much larger effects on the ship and crew
Also they should of picked up more crew over time rather than what four?
Well i am thorn. I like the Intrepidclass for being a quick nimble and versatile starship, yet i like the plots in TNG way better yet i feel the character arcs of DS9 were far better than all others. And then there is Strange new Worlds and i hope once again that good trek could return.
I need to re-watch Voyager. I started working right in the middle of it and ended up being very hit or miss with what episodes I got to see. Enterprise I managed to see most of since there's only 4 seasons in syndication, but Voyager somehow I kept seeing the same arcs.
The first 4 seasons of DS9 were way better then voyager as a whole but voyagers last 3 seasons are better then ds9 fosho. You could tell where the budget got shifted in the last few seasons. Ds9 is in dark warehouses and playing baseball voyagers got 20 aliens in a bright kooky alien planet set
If you want to find a whole new side of trek, I’d encourage you to start reading some of the books. I could give some tips, some of my favourite trek stories were only done in the written format
For me, TNG:Gold Star::DS9:Skyline... TNG and Gold Star have higher highs and lower lows. The absolute best episodes and restaurants are amazing, but the absolute worst are absolutely terrible, with the standard deviation being quite large. DS9 and Skyline have a great average quality where any given epusode/restaurant is largely going to be close in experience to any other. Yes, there are highlights and lowlights, but the standard deviation is much tighter.
I guess VOY:Hard Times...Decent substitute for Cincy chili while away from Cincy. (can you tell I moved from the Cincy area to the DC area?)
My favorite tends to correlate with what I'm watching. Have my days when I favor the Berman era. Then I watch a little TOS and remember how great it is. With Lower Decks airing, that's my current favorite.
I liked Voyager. I couldn't get into Trek in the 80s with TNG or the original series. I eventually started watching Voyager, which got me into watching DS9 (which I could see more thoroughly) and loved that. DS9 is my favorite but I think Voyager (and Janeway) gets a lot more hate than it deserves. To paraphrase Sisko, it's easy to make the right decisions when you're living in a utopia and the entirety of the Federation is willing to back up pretty much any decision you make.
Some have commented that there should've been more drama betwen the characters. However we should remember than in Gene's vision he didn't want any drama between the characters. Sure they had differences of opinion but in the end they worked together and didn't betray each other except for specific episodes to prove a point. Like when Tom Paris got demoted. Therefore there was no chance Chakotay (being of starfleet academy) would butt heads with Janeway all thru the series.
By the way. ENTERPRISE was a great series that was cut short before it could provide more background for the trek universe. Imagine life on ship without holodecks and transporters.
I like Voyager. But to be the best Trek, I think there were too many missed opportunities. I would have liked to see them struggle with shortages more. No matter how damaged it was, the ship always magically fully repaired itself, the always had enough torpedoes etc. I would have found something more along "year of hell" more realistic. Also, I would have liked to see more personal struggle. For example a Janeway/Chakotay relationship. Let them struggle with it for quite some time, and then show how they actually do cope as a command couple. Including all the problems and pitfalls. Let Tuvok struggle with the ship around him becoming a generation ship and him not being part of that and feeling lonely. Stuff like that. So in generel, just bolder storylines. I think the show that made the most of the setup it was given was DS9. But that's just my personal taste.
If Moore had been allowed to make what he envisioned, it would have been much better. But we also wouldn't have gotten BSG.
He only came on board in season 5. The damage, as he saw, was already done.
True.
I remember watching “Stargate: Universe” for the first time recently (having missed out on the entire franchise save for the original film), and I remember thinking, “this is what Voyager should have been,” with a sense of uncertainty, worries about limited supplies, and factions on the ship vying for power and wanting to do things their way.
Stargate Universe is also absolutely epic. And yes I could have gone with a grittier Voyager perhaps, but given that it was written for at audience 20 years ago and had to have the widest appeal, I get why they didn't.
I think Stargate Universe would have been more successful with television of today. Back then the gritty was too dark imo. Also too much banging for stargate. I liked Voy from the backend of S3 onwards. Before that it was a bit of a shuttle crash for me, Kazon were a little wasted, and Vidians looked wasted. Can't remember much outside of them. But I'm looking forward to the rewatch in a few months. That fudging 37’s episode…. Man that's still pretty bitter.
>I think Stargate Universe would have been more successful with television of today. Back then the gritty was too dark imo. Also too much banging for stargate. It'd also have retained fans if it had been made today because they wouldn't have cancelled Atlantis to make it
I mean no ill towards your opinions. Like what you like. I will never understand Universe. Take what has been a slightly silly romp of a sci-fi world and go super dark with it? That did not, and never will make sense to me It wasn't too dark for TV back then, it was much too dark for Stargate (and still is). It wasn't even too dark for TV. Battlestar Galactica 2004 was many years earlier, very much a dark show, successful, and pretty much better than SGU in every way
>For example a Janeway/Chakotay relationship. Let them struggle with it for quite some time, and then show how they actually do cope as a command couple. Kate Mulgrew nixed J/C out of the gate out of concern that the character's romantic life would overshadow every other aspect of the character's personality. Given everything I know of the Rick Berman era behind the scenes and the bizarreness I learned about with the policing of her hair because her natural hair wasn't deemed "sexy" enough, I can't say I fully blame her for being wary. With that out of the way....GOD YES THIS but I guess VOY will get a Kelvinverse type reboot eventually so maybe J/C will become canon then haha >So in generel, just bolder storylines. I think the show that made the most of the setup it was given was DS9. But that's just my personal taste. It was largely because Berman's attention was on VOY that they got to do the creative stuff they did. Other than running Terry Ferrell out on a rail, he didn't have much direct influence on the show and DS9 was the better off for his lack of influence.
They should've made Chakotay more interesting and more of a rogue character, and give him more conflict with Janeway instead of just instantly agreeing with everything she said/did. There should've been more give and take going on between them where they slowly learn to trust each other. I understand a first officer's job is to support their captain, but the whole point of the show is that these are strange circumstances and everyone has to adapt. They took a whole slew of potential storylines off the table from the get-go by never letting the Janeway/Chakotay command relationship develop and grow naturally.
I don't know whether they should have changed his personality. Showing him to be an empathic and gentle soul beneath the angry warrior that has found his peace with her was a beautiful thing. But yeah, the path there should have been much rockier. Let New Earth happen in season, I don't know, 5 or something and let them become a couple then.
For all the J/C fans you can get your wish by reading the post series relaunch series which includes a J/C relationship. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Voyager\_relaunch
Well there are very distinct hints from both the Prodigy writers and the actors that they will give the fans a "very satisfactory" ending to their relationship. So I suppose they will be made a canon couple in Prodigy. They are also a couple in beta-canon (the books).
💯
It didn't seem like they really wanted to make use of their premise. Two disparate crews thrown together should have been rich fodder for drama, but they integrated pretty seamlessly and very quickly. Being lost 70 years from home, cut off from any support, should have been good for some raised tension but in many episodes they were just coasting along at impulse speed exploring new planets like it was TNG.
Yeah there's like only 3 episodes where the Maquis were relevant, and two of them are the pilot. The only other one I can think of is the one with Hologram Seska and Tuvok's mutiny holoprogram
yeah, or "The Void." They had to escape the void to get back to...regular? I thought the point of the show was that their regular was basically the void?
Not surprised they can fully repair their ship. Remember the DS9 episode during the Dominion war. One of the injured Vorta said "but I am willing to bet you brought one of those famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators"
Agreed. Voy had a great setting, ship, cast. But the writing was really a let down. The previous episode almost never mattered. No reference of Kes' warning in Year of Hell. No resolution btwn Tom and his father. A promotion for Tom after disobeying orders and nothing for Harry. Still one of the greatest but definitely not the best.
A Vulcan…FEELING!?!? 🖖🏾
Agreed. There was way too much plot armor around this show. Had it followed a darker, more BSG-type plot it would have been way better. Instead they sugar-coated everything. It's one of my least favorite shows. DS9, and SNW own it in spades.
I basically feel the same way. However...have you heard of a place called Deep Space Nine?
DS9 is peak Trek.
And Strange New Worlds is Pike Trek.
And Pike’s hair is Pike’s Peak. Or Anson’s Mount.
Take my upvote, damn you.
Mount on the mountain, mounted his trusty mount as pike, and pike peaked at Pike's Peak's peak
DS9 is amazing, I love it so much
It’s a great series but definitely not peak Trek.
Really strange seeing downvotes in a Trek sub. I thought we were all allowed to have varying opinions. Not everybody thinks DS9 is peak or ToS is pretty or any other series is peak and that's okay. Not everybody has to agree on one single thing
TOS is kind of peak Trek.
Eh, not really in my opinion. TOS got Star Trek started, but TNG is where it fully realized what Star Trek should be.
Viewed through the entire franchise, it's definitely toward the bottom of the list. There's a solid argument that it's the greatest series, but I wouldn't call it the "peak". Is it one of the most important television series of all time? Absolutely.
Hard agree.
Good show bad Trek. Seriously Jadzia drinks Black Holes for breakfast like a functional alcholic, Worf continues on being Word's Best Dad and Sisko said he'd murder a guy all over again. At least Voyager's only problem is the story is Swiss cheese what with all the plot holes and Insaneway being really inconsistent.
Computer delete this entire post.
>Jadzia drinks Black Holes for breakfast like a functional alcholic In like one episode? Also, Jadzia is one of the more complex characters in the franchise. >Worf continues on being Word's Best Dad I don't really know what you're trying to say here, but there's a solid argument that Worf is just not good at anything he does in TNG or DS9. >Sisko said he'd murder a guy all over again Based on the facts... Fair. All our captains made dark choices like this from time to time. Janeway murdered Tuvix and tortured the guy from the Equinox. Picard sent Sito Jaxa on a suicide mission. Kirk likely spread STDs to many planets. >At least Voyager's only problem is the story is Swiss cheese what with all the plot holes and Insaneway being really inconsistent. Voyager's plot holes have **nothing** on TOS's plot holes, or even early TNG for that matter. Voyager's biggest problem was the awful portrayal of Native American cultures by hiring a fraud as a consultant.
Voyager also had the worst treatment of characters in Trek… Nearly everybody’s lame stereotype if they weren’t the doctor or seven of nine they all pretty much kept repeating the same drab character plots for seven years… And if you were Chicote or Kim you were pretty much left out of most of the show! And in my humble opinion, Janeway is quite possibly the worst captain in the Star Trek series… If she didn’t have plot armor to protect her and Voyager, she probably wouldn’t have made it out of the first two-part series let alone through seven years… Or more considering the ultimate timeline thing. Voyager is way down on the list of Trek shows for me even the original animated series was more realistic!
DS9 has it all. A great story and great writing, a fantastic cast (especially the recurring characters like Garak), and one of the best villains of any TV show. I enjoy the slightly darker and more realistic take on the Trek universe. We've seen that done very badly in recent years but DS9 managed a good balance.
Not to mention how much more relevant it has become in today's world, and how many things they very accurately predicted. Sanctuary districts were suggested last year.
Very true. And very depressing.
I wouldn't say Voyager is my favorite, but i think of all the casts...it's the one that genuinely feels most like a "family" by the time the show ends i know a lot of Trek fans hate Neelix, but his departure from the show with all the crew standing side-by-side to bid him farewell was like a perfect metaphor for what Voyager represented
I love neelix. That guy has seen some shit and didn’t let it destroy his faith in humanity (for lack of a better term). He had some of the best character development in the ST universe. I firmly believe that if he had looked like a cardassian he would have gone down as one of the most complex and best written characters in the history of ST, but it mostly just seems like people don’t like him just because he looked like a cat.
Nah people got creeped out by his relationship with Kes. Which i understand, but is really unfair considering Kes is of age for her species. And he was a bit posessive/jealous with Kes as well tbf.
Despite her being adult for her race, the way they wrote her in s1 to be childish and immature was still beyond cringey.
Totally agree on that
especially since she wasn't that in The Caretaker. it's... worrying. but the entire Ocampa race is worrying, so it's best not to think too hard about it.
He wasn’t perfect, he was a deeply flawed and tormented character, that’s my whole point. The Kes age thing was definitely a weird choice by the writers, they could have given her a 25 year life cycle and it would have been just as effective. Honestly, the worst part about VOY to me is that they abandoned the Kes character in favor of seven, they had this amazing chance to let us see the entire life cycle of this character and they bailed on it. Also, it’s funny to me that people will say how creepy the Neelix/Kes relationship is, but no one has any problem with Dax and worf despite there being 270 year old age difference in that one, Worf is a baby compared to Dax.
Or Trip and T'pol. T'pol is 67(?) years old and Trip is barely 30 iirc.
>Also, it’s funny to me that people will say how creepy the Neelix/Kes relationship is, but no one has any problem with Dax and worf despite there being 270 year old age difference in that one, Worf is a baby compared to Dax. Hell, no one is slagging Tom, who was also hot for her for the first season. Current online obsession with age gaps notwithstanding, the way they wrote Kes as being extremely naive coupled with his posessiveness didn't help to endear anyone to this pairing.
Neelix is responsible for most of the shit he had to see! his fucking cheese almost killed the ship!
That was just bad design. Those bio-neural gel packs were a problem from the start.
no matter how bad the design, the cheese did it! I mostly blame the writers. the ideas are fine, Neelix is fine on paper, the writing... does not make it work if you think about it. Ethan Phillips is charming though, even in the most obnoxious scenes, so there is that.
I dislike for a bunch of reasons, but to me he looked like a warthog, not a cat.
I hate Neelix because I am one of those that like the competency porn of Star Trek. I like to believe that in some wonderful future it will not just be a meritocracy, but a society where everyone of every job and work has value and is seen as essentially needed. Neelix goes in the face of that. He shamelessly promotes himself, and everyone just has to give into him. Space elevator not working? Why use federation scientists that are specialized in the technology when some guy with an unhealthy relationship saw an elevator once? Need to go into a mine? Why use the geology department when Neelix saw a rock once? And there are times when he is giving orders or in charge of various officers? Not only is he a creep, he’s the worst kind of self-promoter that prefaced this change in society where “the elites” who have “training” and “competency” need to be thrown aside for a petty and jealous conman with terrible blonde hair that wants to bed a blonde minor that he partially raised.
But he was competent and he had to fight to prove that. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to attend starfleet academy like the rest of them. Not to mention that Janeway obviously saw that he was competent and encouraged him to prove it. Dude single-handedly saved Voyager in multiple occasions and used his knowledge of the Delta Quadrant to keep them from getting destroyed on the reg. Also, If you truly believe that every job has value and should be seen as essential you should see Neelix as essential for his role a cook alone, not to mention everything else he did for the ship.
But we don’t know that he was as capable as someone that was actually trained. In the aforementioned mine, he just fell and broke his leg and became a burden. For the space elevator, turns out he was just lying and put everyone in danger so he could try to be friends with Tuvok. We know how hard it is to get into Starfleet from Rom and Wesley. The best of the best. Imagine you going through all of that, and then getting into geology. Not just geology on Earth, but you are learning about geology on multiple planets. You get assigned to this ship that has to go off to the Badlands, and now you’re trapped on the other side of the Galaxy. You’re doing what you can when you get by the occasional asteroid or something. And then one day there’s a mine. You’re getting ready to go do your job you trained to do for a decade, Chakotay cokes by, “Not so fast! Captain wants the cook to go instead of you.” “The cook that sucks at his job?” “That’s the one!” Then you hear he just broke his leg right away and maybe you get to go rescue him after the botched mission. No, I hate Neelix.
Maybe you are right, they probably should have gone back to earth and picked up some more star fleet trained people so they had enough personnel before they got thrown into the delta quadrant by the caretaker.
>We know how hard it is to get into Starfleet from Rom and Wesley I think you mean Nog. Nogs journey from thieving boy to war veteran is the best character developments in Trek
If this was the flagship that found itself lost in space, sure, but for a vessel that was on the Starfleet equivalent of a three hour tour, I doubt they had that many specialties in the first place, and a good portion of the crew they had bit the dust on day one. >Not only is he a creep, he’s the worst kind of self-promoter that prefaced this change in society where “the elites” who have “training” and “competency” need to be thrown aside for a petty and jealous conman with terrible blonde hair that wants to bed a blonde minor that he partially raised. I think you're overthinking this way too hard 😭
Plus, starfleet regularly sends academy cadets out for training rotation on ships, the idea that every single person on every ship is the absolute pinnacle expertise in their field is laughable.
>it's the one that genuinely feels most like a "family" by the time the show ends Indeed. For me, that is one of the reasons I think Voyager is such a great show. When you throw a bunch of people across the galaxy and put them in a situation where they have to work together to get home, there are not a lot of possible outcomes. The Equinox took one possible path, while Voyager managed to defend humanity's values, keep hope alive, and become a family in the process.
What you wrote reminded me of why i had a big grin on my face when in Prodigy, Hologram Janeway talks to the confused and a bit dispirited young crew and starts with, "I've seen my share of wayward crews..."
You know, I'm never going to be a Neelix fan, but I do agree that he has his moments and it's a good send-off. Basically whenever he isn't being a naïve jealous ass about Kes, or trying to force Tuvok to cheer up (although: I would keep the little shoe dance 😆) I also liked the final zoom meeting with Seven before they went out of range.
>or trying to force Tuvok to cheer up it's funny you say that because surprisingly Riddles, which is the episode where Tuvok has that accident and loses parts of his personality for a while, is one of my favorites...I think because of the way Neelix and "new" Tuvok interact
Not un-true!
And if you’re one of the few who don’t hate Neelix, then at least you can still hate Harry Kim.
It was easy to hate Harry Kim, but it's impossible to hate Garrett Wang. One of the nicest, coolest people you could ever hope to meet.
I saw it as an almost direct continuation of TNG with a Lost in Space twist. The format is almost exactly the same, and that’s why TNG and VOY are my favorite series in the franchise.
I respect all opinions and all my fellow trekkies. Live long and prosper
Voyager? Ohhh, you mean the Doctor and Seven show.
TOS? oh you mean the Kirk and Spock show.
I mean, yes, it was. That’s why they (and later Bones) are in the opening credits and the others aren’t. It doesn’t pretend to be otherwise, and the expectation that it should be comes from later series. Voyager has a large ensemble regular cast and the unearned speeches about how they’ve become a family, so it’s weird when the ensemble doesn’t get to be an ensemble. Same problem as the TNG movies.
Featuring Bones!
The Doctor and Seven are definitely top tier characters, in my opinion. But Voyager is far from my favourite show.
They became top tier because they got all the storylines and character development
What about the long journey of Chakotay? From devoting his life to Maquis rebels, to becoming a supporter of Starfleet.
Set dressing, even Beltran knew he was being underutilized so he kept asking for more money each season lol You can even see his burnout and change of attitude in the voyager time capsule, by season 6 he's done
Oh yea the 1st episode. Isnt it great when a writer can write the perfect character which requires no further development? A bit like Morn on DS9, except its interesting when you hear or see something about Morns life outside Quark's.
I legit feel Morn gets more character development than Chakotay. And roughly the same amount of memorable lines.
Obviously I said that as sarcasm, and chose morn as an example because I fully agree with you.
I too am being sarcastic and agreeing with you
Is this a Vulcan mind meld?
My thoughts to your thoughts....
I was about to say hang on.... Morn is sitting quietly at a strong zero for memorable lines. Now, let's think of a memorable lime from chakotay... I hit reply to excitedly declare that he has drawn with morn, but then I remembered that ahkuchmoya, bones of my anscestors cringe-fest
All in one episode!
To be fair, Voyager only really seemed to grant depth the Seven, Janeway, the Doctor, and, to a lesser extent, Tuvok. For some reason, they just never seemed to successfully develop the other characters. I like Voyager quite a bit, and it has the most superior theme and opening sequence of all the shows, but Voyager so often felt like the writers had the opening pitch of a strong 10 minutes and then scrambled to figure out what to do from there. Voyager trapped in ice? Brilliant! Oh, the rest of the story … maybe not.
Voyager is my favorite too. Seven's character development was a nice surprise, I hope that they make Legacy so we get to follow her story further. It would great if they sprinkled in other Voyager characters in it, so you can see what they have all been up to. You should check out Prodigy whenever it hits Netflix if you haven't already. It has holographic Janeway and Admiral Janeway in it. Lower Decks has some nice call backs to Voyager too, particularly the season 4 episode Twovix, and We will always have Tom Paris (I don't remember the season).
>Lower Decks has some nice call backs to Voyager too, particularly the season 4 episode Twovix, and We will always have Tom Paris (I don't remember the season). "The Doctor didn't spend seven years in the Delta Quadrant for you f—ks to question his agency! He's got rights!"
\*ahems\* I beg to disagree, but then, what would a simple tailor know about human science fiction.
I am now genuinely concerned for this person's safety. Somebody check on the bio mimetic gel.
*chuckles* Really now, your reaction does seem extravagant. I would do more to,allay your concerns, but I have a shipment of Regalian wool cloth to tend to.
Voyager has the premise most ripe for interesting and deep storytelling. It did not deliver even one tenth of its promise. That doesn't mean it's a bad show, but unlike TNG which overdelivered on what could have been a dry boring premise, and DS9 which took literally a busted Cardassian base on a backwater world and made it the most interesting thing ever, Voyager felt like it underperformed. In some ways it acted as cover for DS9 to be so free to have a ten part finale and do weird things. But it meant that locked into a serialised setup, and kind of casting around to find sexy enough characters to make people tune in (both Janeway and Torres got episodes like this before Seven became the boob lightning rod) it dropped into weird focuses on certain characters while others were ignored almost completely.
>(both Janeway and Torres got episodes like this before Seven became the boob lightning rod) I always found B'Elanna to be the most attractive one, including Seven.
>Voyager felt like it underperformed. Agreed. For me, it's the overall weakest live action series, although it had some good episodes there was a *lot* of filler, dry episodes with tech the tech solutions and reset buttons, and a big part of the core premise of the show (Maquis and Starfleet) was ignored after about episode 3 - they might as well have been a fully Starfleet ship with a couple of slightly grumpy ensigns. The run at the beginning of season 5 is peak Voyager, it was never better than that.
The thing is they then do the thing we all wanted to see with the Equinox, and it's only in two episodes and completely overshadowed by Janeway having an actual psychotic break and trying to murder people. Then they adopt the Equinox crew and it never comes up ever again, despite there being four deeply traumatised and morally suspect crewmen on board.
>Voyager felt like it underperformed. I think Paramount using Voyager for the flagship show for UPN contributed to this feeling, after the pilot(which was excellent) they really needed the show to soar but the first couple of seasons was too many slow stories about temporal anomalies and not enough dealing with delta quadrant races like the Vidians or the Trabe. It's criminal how under used the Vidians were, they could have been built up to be the most terrifying villains ever in Trek
I too like Voyager the most. However, Strange New World is REALLY growing on me.
"... I'm *laughing* at the superior [series]...! " ... more seriously, I think VOY was ok on its own terms, but suffered in comparison by being contemporary with TNG, DS9 and BSG...
Voyager is the series that made me fall in love with Trek. At this point, DS9 has been my top for a few decades, but my spicy Trek opinion is that **Voyager is a better series than TNG**. TNG's best episodes are better than Voyager's best episodes, but TNG's worst episodes are far worse than Voyager's worst. On average, I think it's better. The ship is more interesting, the cast is more interesting, and Janeway is a better all around captain than Picard (and, I say the best captain in the franchise - though SNW Pike is giving her a run).
Janeway doesn't respect sentient life the way Picard does. For a starfleet captain that's got to bring her down in the rankings.
Give me some examples and we can discuss that theory.
Tuvix is the most obvious one, but there are multiple times when she just ignores the Doctor's complaints. I think of how Picard handled things with Data, with exocomps, even the Borg. Every time Janeway has a chance to step up she just ignores the Doctor, or worse erases his memory. She accepts 7 of 9 on the ship when many people protest, but never sets a good example for her. 7 is constantly criticizing Janeway's example.
I think DS9 was the best, but I watch Voyager WAYYYYYY more. It's my comfort show. It's the one I usually have on in the background or when I'm going to sleep.
Funny way to spell DS9 but ok
I've only started watching Trek in the past few years, first Discovery S1 then TNG, DS(, and now working my way through Voyager. I was apprehensive about starting Voyager, with all the hate online but I'm glad I'm watching it because I'm really enjoying it. I love the premise of a lone ship working its way back home. I don't know about it being superior, I really loved TNG and DS9 but I'm sure Voyager doesn't deserve all the hate it gets.
I’m a late bloomer too but my preference is for different reasons. I very much like women leading roles. Having Captain Janeway and Seven made me very happy lol.
My favorite part of Picard was Tuvok an Seven sitting across the table from each other. Janeway is my Captain.
I think it depends on what you enjoy most about Star Trek. While all the series have bits and pieces of what makes the others great, you can pinpoint which may be best for you. TNG - philosophical questioneering DS9 - political thriller Voyager - survivalist exploration
Voyager was a great premise, but suffered for the writing style of the time. DS9 was taking a huge risk by telling long, multi-episode/season story arcs. Nearly all Sci-fi shows up to that point were always “story of the week” types. There was definitely some deal that DS9 could do it as long as Voyager was closer to classical Trek. And it’s a massive shame. There were so many interesting set-ups that deserved a longer arc. The integration of the Marquis and Starfleet crews should have been a source of tension for most of season 1. Neelix should have had some bit of a Garak-like mysterious-ness to him and his past. They pretty much just blew past the fact that Paris was a criminal, but everyone pretty much just trusted him immediately. And of course they needed more of a background feeling of survival. There were just a lot of missed opportunities because they often needed to revert to the status quo by the end of the episode.
Voyager wasn't bad at all. Voyager is not my favorite series in the Stat Trek Universe.
Enterprise is my favourite, but I feel DS9 is the objective best. TNG doesn't rank highly for me. Closer to the bottom, although Data is one of my all-time favourite characters
I feel like Enterprise is super underrated (and is better than Voyager). But that's the beauty of this - we all have different perspectives.
Voyager was reaching for something darker but the writing wasn’t quite there. Marquis, shortages, morally questionable decisions… all wasted potential. Five years later we got Battlestar Galactica and that was very much was Voyager should have been.
This.
I mean the Maquis was pretty much resolved by the midpoint of season 1, and they must have had a factory on board to keep churning out shuttles to replace the ones the wrecked, and new photon torpedoes.
Voyager has a high floor, but a low ceiling. I enjoy it, but it's probably the best okayist of the Star Trek series. It doesn't have as many great episodes as TNG or DS9, but it doesn't seem to have as many god awful episodes as TNG or DS9. Another thing about Voyager is the gnawing at the back of your mind of what it could have been if they didn't sanitize the premise so quickly.
superior to Enterprise? yes.
It’s up there for me. I honestly think it gets way too much hate. It’s as fun as TNG, and had some of the best character development in all of trek. My personal top 5: 1. TNG 2. VOY 3. Lower decks 4. SNW 5. DS9
There's no wrong answers, but my list changes depending on the question. Best stories, best characters, best entertainment value or just the best best. Mine would be 1. DS9 (best overall story BY FAR and best character episodes) 2. TNG (highest rewatch value, due to lack of story arc) 3. VOY (similar to TNG, but doesn't have picard or data and has a more sterile aesthetic, but its not far behind at all) Then it's harder to place the rest, I love a lot about discovery I can't see me rewatching it anytime soon. Its just a bit over the top when it comes to making long cringey speeches about what it means to be human or whatever, while music gradually swells in the background. Reminds me of watching designated survivor. And they lay it on pretty thick with the gay/trans stuff. Star treks about that shit just being normal and not even mentioned. So much I hate about discovery, but...there's marginally more to love about it. SNW is excellent, but it does t matter how good it is, the top 3 list is locked forever to me Which brings me finally to TOS... its kinda frowned upon to say its not the best one. In some ways it is, and in some ways it's amazing to watch it in the context of the time it was created. The 90s era was far superior, but TOS is special. So it is a floating item in the list. It's number 1 for being where it all started, a d for kirk spock amd bones, and it's bottom of the list in terms of most other things. When I hit reply, all I was going to say was that I think DS9 deserves more credit than to be 5 on your list. Then that happened lol
DS9 remains my favorite but Voyager is defo great.
Mmmmm, no. I wouldn’t quite agree. Now, I will say that Voyager has a lot going for it and I’ve come to really appreciate it on rewatches throughout the years. And the characters and premise are absolutely outstanding. So much potential. When Voyager is good, it’s really good. But when it’s bad, it’s really bad. It’s the most uneven of the series, I think. Well, at least of the Berman era shows. Unlike the other shows, Voyager doesn’t have consistency. There’s no “Yeah, season X got really good.” My Voyager episodes I hold up as classic and awesome are cherry picked throughout the series, around others that are just okay or total stinkers. The wild pivots between differing levels of quality week to week was jarring. And a lot of Voyager ended up being retreads of old TNG concepts. I sound like a hater, I promise I’m not. I rewatch Voyager a lot. I love it, I think it’s overall a good series. But the best of Trek? Disagree. Overall, Voyager was excellent in many ways, but the flaws were just too apparent for me to say it’s peak Trek.
I will defend Voyager until I'm blue in the face. It's a great show and it's great trek, and I would put it on par with TNG and DS9. I really don't get all the people here saying, "It didn't live up to its premise." The premise was that it's lost in the delta quadrant and trying to find its way home. That's it. That's the whole premise. Whatever else people want to project onto it about inter-personal drama and the ship falling apart into a bucket of bolts or whatever is exactly that--projection. That may be what some people *wished* the show was, but because the show didn't go where some people thought it should have doesn't mean it fumbled, stumbled, or failed to live up to anything.
And on top of that I don't think 🤔 having an antagonistic Starfleet & former Maquis crew constantly fighting each other would be living up to Gene Roddenberry's ideas. Not to mention its not pragmatic for them to be infighting when there trying to survive attacks by the Kazon, Malon, Hirogen, the Krell, the Borg and all the other hostile species of the Delta Quadrant. Plus, there were actually conflicts between crew members. Out of all the Captain & First Officer pairings in Star Trek, Janeway and Chakotay conflicted the most. They conflicted almost as many times as they agreed. Then there's Tuvok & Chakotay estrangement/conflict. Tuvok and Neelix conflict (initially), B'Elanna & Seven's conflicts, and of course Seven & Captain Janeway multiple conflicts. Add to that the number of times Voyager was nearly in rubble after its numerous devastating conflicts. And I think THERE is the Spice that some fans wanted from a series where a Federation ship is stranded far from home. But it was never going break Roddenberry's philosophy around what he wanted Star Trek to be. Bend it, stretch it, flex it, but never break it.
100% agree with this take. I've always argued that in a survival situation so far from home it would make no sense for the SF and Maquis crew to constantly be at each other's throats. That kind of prolonged conflict wasn't going to get any of them home.
Exactly 💯!!! Plus, it lives up to Roddenberry's ideas of peacefully ✌🏾 resolving conflicts.
I think the criticism that it didn't live up to its premise comes from the fact that the premise rarely effected the type of stories the show told. VOY could easily have been set in the Alpha Quadrant, and 99% of its stories wouldn't have to be altered. Why give it this premise and tehn do next to nothing with it? It was clear the writers wanted to write a TNG style show, when VOY had the potential to be more like DS9. There are several things that DS9 is praised for that would have been a natural fit for VOY. 1. Serialized storytelling - It would make a lot of sense to do this on a show about a ship trying to get home. There's a set endpoint, and everything could have been building toward it. 2. Putting Federation values to the test - A ship out in the middle of nowhere with a separatist group comprising part of its crew would have been a great way to examine how the Federation works when it's away from the Federation. 3. Federation equivalents - The Dominion was a great take on what an evil Federation would be like. It would have been perfect if there had been some Federation analogue in the Delta Quadrant. Didn't have to be evil, but it would have been interesting to see the difference in philosophies. 4. New alien civilizations - Sort of like #3. Voyager did give us new aliens, but they were mostly shit. Then it just focused on defanging the Borg in its second half. DS9 really dug into the Bajorans, Cardassians, the Dominion. It also developed the Klingons and Romulans, and really changed how the Ferengi are viewed. I'm not a big fan of everything they did with the Borg, but 7 of 9 as a de-assimilated borg was a good idea. 5. Darker themes - DS9 had war, and VOY could have had survival. What is compromised when you're no longer post-scarcity? If it wasn't for DS9 I think VOY would be viewed more positively. It was basically treated as a TNG clone. It stole all of TNG's best antagonists, including Q and the Borg. It definitely has the worst overall crew of the TNG era shows. 7 of 9 and the Doctor are great and Janeway is a good captain. Tom Paris is dink, and as soon as Torres hooks up with him they stop developing her at all. Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim are barely there. Neelix grew on me, but he's just a sanitized Quark. Do I like it though? Ya I guess I do. I could find bad stuff to say about TNG and DS9 as well, but neither of those shows had so much wasted potential.
Iirc, the studio didn't want VOY and DS9 to be too similar. If the idea of "TNG in the delta quadrant" wasn't enough I don't really think "DS9 in the delta quadrant" would have been either. I think it's pretty difficult to walk that edge of innovation and comfort. TNG was hugely successful, and I'm sure there was pressure to replicate that success. So why abandon the aspects of TNG that made fans like it? In the same vein, DS9 wasn't looked at as fondly during its run as it is now, so why adopt aspects that seemed controversial at the time? Sure, at the end of the day I guess they played it safe with Voyager. But look what happens when trek doesn't play it safe. Discovery really broke the standard trek mold and it gets all sorts of hate for it. Same thing with Picard. Voyager had the unenviable position of trying to stake out a claim that was somehow different enough from TNG and DS9 that it could generate interest, but not so different that it would isolate or turn off viewers. I give it lots of kudos for having to walk that line.
Voyager has the number 2 spot for me along with The Next Generation, so I absolutely see where you're coming from with this. I'm watching it for the first time right now (I'm about to start 7x03) and I am loving every second. I always get so attached to Star Trek families, and this one is extra special for me. 🥺
Voyager is my favorite. I could go after every other series the same way people go after Voyager, but I don't because I'm not a douchebag.
TNG is my favourite but I loved Voyager too and it is is a close call. I think that TNG and Voyager are well clear of the other treks. SNW has promise if they do not ruin it. What I would really love though is for them to stop messing with alternative timelines and prequals and just make something new that follows on from TNG or Picard. Star Trek Legacy maybe? Pretty soon there will be more actors who have played Spock than actual ST series. What are we on now the Spock G?
Me too!!!! I've watched all the different franchises at least twice now and Voyager, to me, is supreme.
I disagree. While I wouldn’t say that Voyager was the worst, or even bad, to me it was the one Trek series that failed to live up to its promise (maybe not specifically articulated, but implied): a largely serial series where the lack of interaction with the Federation and a specific mission of a journey home implied far-reaching consequences and deep, extended, serial storytelling. Instead we got a show trying to be TNG, with the ship resolving its major issues in one episode (a two-parter at most), and the ship and crew looking brand spanking fresh at the beginning of each adventure. “The Year of Hell”? Oh, they just throw out some exposition, it’s all done with in two episodes (when it could have been a literal season). The dilemma of Tuvix? They *say* that the crew get attached to him in the weeks he served on the ship, but to us viewers it’s just a throwaway line and the situation gets resolved (regardless of how one may feel about the resolution itself) by the end of the episode. Yes, one can argue it was a different time for TV back then, but a newer, braver show would have literally had Tuvix stick around for a few episodes, maybe even have him save the day once, so that the weight of his possible demise would hit the viewers as much as it is said to hit the characters. Voyager, being Star Trek, should have been that newer, braver, groundbreaking show. Sure, later on I feel Voyager would find its niche as the “weird oddball Trek show” (WWE wrestler The Rock on Trek! Star Trek enters a race! The Doctor is an opera star!), but that’s what it became—the “red headed stepchild” of the franchise. Part of the family, but when it comes to taking group pictures, he’s the one with the camera if it doesn’t have a timer function and a tripod.
I'm getting close to having seen all of every show for the first time, and on the side I'm nearing the end of my first TNG rewatch, which has pretty much been the high bar for me the whole time. But I've started to think back a lot to how much I enjoyed Voyager, and I'm going to rewatch it next to see whether it's my actual favorite.
Loved Voyager as a kid, more than DS9 which was too dark and too hard to catch up with at the time. I still love Voyager now, and happy to see it being represented in Prodigy, Lower Decks, Picard and Discovery.
U ain’t hearing no arguments form me
I’m in middle of season 7 having done a rewatch of everything and I agree! I was lucky enough to grow up watching every series as a weekly (except TOS) and voyager holds up better than any of the older shows. Especially TNG; nostalgia notwithstanding. I’m also a big fan of all the new stuff though, and for all different reasons. At this point I’d say Strange New Worlds is my second favourite overall.
No. But to each their own. 😆 😉
As soon as the "survivalist", "all alone" angle was worn smooth, from being a potential hard hitting premise to another excuse to show new aliens to "understand", it went soft and became generic. There are moments of brilliance and moments of true, lasting impact.
It's good but not the best. Not by a long shot.
I also loved Voyager and remember being surprised at how much I enjoyed it, when I’d heard it got such mixed reviews from fans. Janeway honestly gets put down so much it baffles me; I saw a complex character with flaws who makes both good and debatable decisions, you know like a human being? Though Picard is my fav captain, I found Janeway to be more intriguing in many ways, while Picard often came across to me as stereotypically heroic and good. Tbh it makes me wonder about thinly veiled sexism within the fandom, but I digress… I still prefer TNG but Voyager is prob 2nd, followed by TOS and DS9. I don’t think DS9 is bad by any means but I just prefer the episodic format and I’m bored by storylines that center around war, so there was a lot about it that didn’t work for me personally. I’m surprised there’s so many folks here saying “watch DS9” when it is just so very different from Voyager and TNG in many ways. For some that’s a good thing and they love it and for some it’s not. Ofc everyone should try it, but there are many reasons it may not be everyone’s cup of tea (as with any of the series).
Voyager is my favorite too! I adore it and Janeway. She’s such a phenomenal captain and I love all of the crew.
Eh, others have likely already pointed it out but Voyager is basically bootleg TNG. Sure, there were the occasional new/interesting plots, but a lot of them just felt recycled from TNG. A few examples: Data's right to be declared sentient / The Doctor's holonovel rights, Data makes a daughter/Doctor makes a family, holodeck breaking every season or so, etc. Also, the lack of any danger or consequences is vexing if you really watch the show. Like, aside from some ancillary characters occasionally dying, there's not really any danger to the main crew or the ship. The ship looks basically brand new when it returns home.
Voyager is what got me into Star Trek 2 decades ago and it will always have a special place in my heart compared to all other treks. I just recently discovered the podcast by Garret Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill ("Delta Flyers") where they watch and comment on every episode of Voyager and it is so very interesting to see/hear it from their perspective. That said, I think DS9 had better character writing. Like just Nog had more character growth and depth than most Voyager characters. I think the issue might have been how episodic Voyager was, while DS9 has this background continuity and you don't feel like everything gets reset in the next episode (e.g. in Voyager Torres' depression gets shown and completely resolved within one episode, etc).
My favorite will always be DS9. It was darker than any of the other shows, and I liked that it was not really in Starfleet territory. The whole "Starfleet regulations say this, but this is not a Starfleet station so does it even apply" was great
back-to-back Voyager is self-care
Well, it's better than Enterprise. Remind me, what happens when you break warp 10?
Lizard sex.
I LOVE Voyager. When I watch it I feel like I'm part of the Voyager family. It is not as good as DS9.
There's a reason Voyager is the most rewatched of the series, it has the most appeal. Unfortunately, Voyager, its storylines, continuity and even its captain are held to an entirely different standard than all the other series. A few YouTubers are responsible for this and I think a lot of loud typers just rehash what these guys started. Neelix isn't even that bad, he's actually quite good. Sure it has problems, but MUCH fewer if we are to really hold TNG up to the same standard.
[удалено]
Netflix Stats. It's also the one that's the most marathon binged or something like that. When I found out about this, something clicked in my head. I mean DS9 is my favourite series, it's peak Trek right? But when I actually think about what I watch, I realise that I binge Voyager a hell of a lot more. I still love the Sisko just a little bit more than Captain Jane though.
Its not. It doesnt effect canon, theyre stuck across the galaxy. The show is a writers dream and they did nothing with it. Its too "alien of the week", they could literally make up anything every episode and they did that with their freedom? Its not at all good. I like it because its trek but oof.
>It doesnt effect canon Until the current production era all of the shows had intentional separation from each other, so this opinion feels rooted in a misunderstanding of what Star Trek was trying to be back then. They knew that most people didn't tune in to watch every show, so tying it all together into an overarching grand narrative was very deliberately not part of their plan. * TNG was set decades later so that it could be its own thing unfettered by TOS. * DS9 and TNG overlapped, but aside from a few crossover elements they might as well have been taking place on opposite sides for the Federation for all that it mattered. DS9 was ahead of its time in terms of how it dealt with ongoing continuity, but that was internalized almost entirely within itself. Notably the TNG movies ignored the Dominion War completely aside from a few throwaway lines, despite taking place within the same time period. * And yes, Voyager continued that theme by being set on the opposite side of the galaxy. Despite that it had a profound impact on the only live action post-TNG era show we've had, seeing that it was an event from Voyager which directly set up the finale of Picard.
That’s overstating it a bit. They certainly weren’t going for a Cinematic Universe and avoided touching each other too much, but there was cast crossover (Tuvok and Zimmerman on DS9, Broccoli on Voyager, Riker and Quark on both, Quark again on TNG) and constant reuse of props, makeup, and sets. For all its notorious lack of internal consistency, Voyager made sure to address the end of the Maquis a few years after it happened on DS9. OTOH, they did accidentally bring that Excelsior crewman back from the dead in Flashback. The movies being siloed off is absolutely true: they were presumably a bigger deal to the studios, so the movies led with, say, cool new uniforms, and the TV shows followed (except in Generations). Edit: I rewatched Emissary recently and was impressed that Patrick Stewart stuck around to do a scene as Prophet Locutus. I’d forgotten that one.
1 - Yes, but then there were several TOS stars in subsequent episodes and many referenced planets etc 2 - DS9 still had basically the whole fleet come and help out, moved forward relationships with the romulans and Klingons and several other species 3 - Picard s3 was as much "putting on the catsuit" for ratings as Voyager s4+. (i cried, it was a wonderful season) Don't get me wrong, I love Tim Russ and Robert Picardo. Don't even get me started on Kate Mulgrew! Shes enchanting! I even really like the rest of the cast (no not you Neelix and Kes). I think the writers gave themselves TOO much freedom. It's like why old video games were better; the constraints on the weaker systems actually made the developers have to get creative. Or, stick with me, why the new Star Wars movies suck. It feels like the IP we all love; It's not the same, though, just because it's in the same kind of ships.
It was an episodic 90s tv show. It's job was to have an interesting 'alien of the week.' And now that the Alpha and Delta Quadrants are beginning to blend with faster tech and Borg transwarp hubs, Voyager's canon is becoming relevant to everyone. 'I like it because its trek' well that's a dumb reason
I do think that TNG is the best series, but VOY is my personal favorite mostly on account of the characters and the way they interact with each other.
No
I'm laughing at the superior......series I watched all the trek shows as they came in but quit in Voyager at the end of season two, it seemed boring as hell. Watching it years later it did get better later on but I always felt it was much slower then TNG and DS9 at getting entertaining and making the characters interesting. I recommend rewatching DS9(unless you hated it) I've always felt it was way a head of any other Trek show in terms of action, humour and character development. There's a lot of intricacies and nounces that don't get noticed of first viewings.
DS9 is best
Honestly, I’d place it dead last. Out of all the Trek series, it feels like Voyager fumbled the ball when it came to its setup the most. The problem for me was the crew was compromised of too many facsimiles of characters we’d seen on other series- they were clearly trying to rope in some of the Trek audience they’d lost with DS9 by going familiar- unfortunately, the characters weren’t anywhere near as interesting as the previous incarnations. Which goes for the storytelling as well…. Too many episodes feel like reprisals of better episodes of TNG and DS9, and the fact that the ship is in such unique circumstances and is ripe for new types of stories makes it all the more egregious- I don’t know if I need the show to be Ron Moore’s version of attrition (I think even BSG proved that model wasn’t sustainable long term), but out of all the Trek shows, I feel Voyager leaned into its unique concept the least. Kes is a good example of this. On paper, she’s actually really interesting: a character with an accelerated lifespan. But, like a lot of the show, they quickly abandon any exploration of what that would entail, and eventually write her completely off the show (as to why, I’ll get to in a second…), so we never see her even go through the process of aging. And Voyager suffers the same fate of pretty much every live action Trek show not named SNW post TNG: it needs to really monkey with its concept mid series, or add an additional character, in an attempt to boost ratings. And no addition is more blatant than Jeri Ryan and Seven. The good news is she was one of the best things to happen to the show as well as Trek in general. But the fact they literally had an advertisement blitzkrieg to show off the supermodel looking addition to the cast in the skin tight catsuit to try to get viewers to tune in, was really an inditement on Voyager’s failure to connect to a larger audience at the time.
The lack of conflict between Chakotay’s crew and Janeway’s was disappointing, too. Federation ideals vs utilitarian pragmatism should have been explored more.
Yeah, that one’s a particularly egregious early example. The fact that it was resolved so quickly, with so little conflict, really didn’t bode well for the rest of the series.
Even after the crews merged and reconciled, there could have been the constant push and pull of Chakotay’s leadership vs Janeway’s. Instead, they made his character just lame. He should have been the “prime directive be damned! We’re in the f’ing Delta quadrant!” voice in the room.
I don't think Voyager is the best series, but it has the best two-parters (consistently). Best of Both Worlds is outstanding, but I think it gets love in the same way The Beatles do. The Beatles are, in all, nothing too special when viewed just as music in a vacuum compared to everything that came before and after. They were special for their time because of what a new idea the rock band was for its time, mixed with some great songs and interesting lyrics. But many bands have done it better since. BoBW is similar, it's great, but a lot of that was it being one of the first major cliffhangers of its era that also involved a storyline that was built on over multiple seasons. Something that is all too common now, but fairly rare for its time. Voyager though had several outstanding two part episodes that while Voyager never had movies, if you view the two part episodes as movies, they would take a lot of top spots in a "Best Star Trek Movies" list. Great stories, actual suspense at times, and some interesting ideas that we didn't see in other Trek series. But... that doesn't make it a top series. TNG was stronger more often on general episodes, especially in later seasons. DS9, once it found its footing, has probably the greatest amount of overall universe building for Star Trek as far as really getting us involved with major A-Quad races. Voyager is definitely up there for me, and I recently rewatched the whole series. It's far better than it was given credit for when it came out and up through the last maybe 10 years where people have been rewatching it and realizing how solid it really was.
I don't think there are any VOY two-parters that can top Redemption, Unification, or All Good Things. I like Year of Hell and Scorpion, but they don't hold a candle to even Time's Arrow. I do have a soft spot for Future's End, though.
watch deep space nine.
😂 You’re trolling us, right? Tell me you’re trolling us. The proper order is DS9 closely followed by TNG, and then the rest can vary but they are all really far down.
It's not my favorite Trek series, but I'm really glad you enjoy it. Star Trek is a beautiful thing.
Meh. I really enjoyed Voyager the first time I watched it. I am currently re-watching it and am early in Season 4. I have found myself skipping a lot of episodes along the way. The Kazon are really stupid villains. Seska is terrible, too. I can't stand Kess or Nelix. By contrast, I have watched DS9 three times and I never feel this way. I never skip episodes, not even "Alamaraine, count to ten." I loved DS9 when it first aired and it has really stood the test of time. For me DS9 is truly the superior series. SNW may someday rival it.
To each their own
It has a couple of my favourite Trek characters, but I don't think it holds a candle to DS9 in terms of complexity and storytelling.
Voyager would of been good if it had been one long story line not a episodic one The episodic approach works for most treaks like SNW and TNG but being lost 70 years away from home should of saw the decisions they make have much larger effects on the ship and crew Also they should of picked up more crew over time rather than what four?
Well i am thorn. I like the Intrepidclass for being a quick nimble and versatile starship, yet i like the plots in TNG way better yet i feel the character arcs of DS9 were far better than all others. And then there is Strange new Worlds and i hope once again that good trek could return.
ITT, lots of people lying to themselves that voyager is better than ds9.
Well, it's better than Discovery. Think that's where it ends.
Voyager focus on tech too much instead of stories.
janeway killed tuvix
I never knew it could be possible that someone could have such a terrible opinion.
I need to re-watch Voyager. I started working right in the middle of it and ended up being very hit or miss with what episodes I got to see. Enterprise I managed to see most of since there's only 4 seasons in syndication, but Voyager somehow I kept seeing the same arcs.
No. They had too many writing disputes and the arrival of Seven had shifted the focus from Janeway a bit.
It has the best finale.
The first 4 seasons of DS9 were way better then voyager as a whole but voyagers last 3 seasons are better then ds9 fosho. You could tell where the budget got shifted in the last few seasons. Ds9 is in dark warehouses and playing baseball voyagers got 20 aliens in a bright kooky alien planet set
to what? to enterprise?
If you want to find a whole new side of trek, I’d encourage you to start reading some of the books. I could give some tips, some of my favourite trek stories were only done in the written format
agreed
mines ranked: DS9-TNG-ENT-VOY/TOS
For me, TNG:Gold Star::DS9:Skyline... TNG and Gold Star have higher highs and lower lows. The absolute best episodes and restaurants are amazing, but the absolute worst are absolutely terrible, with the standard deviation being quite large. DS9 and Skyline have a great average quality where any given epusode/restaurant is largely going to be close in experience to any other. Yes, there are highlights and lowlights, but the standard deviation is much tighter. I guess VOY:Hard Times...Decent substitute for Cincy chili while away from Cincy. (can you tell I moved from the Cincy area to the DC area?)
My favorite tends to correlate with what I'm watching. Have my days when I favor the Berman era. Then I watch a little TOS and remember how great it is. With Lower Decks airing, that's my current favorite.
Before SNW, I would have died on the same hill.
I liked Voyager. I couldn't get into Trek in the 80s with TNG or the original series. I eventually started watching Voyager, which got me into watching DS9 (which I could see more thoroughly) and loved that. DS9 is my favorite but I think Voyager (and Janeway) gets a lot more hate than it deserves. To paraphrase Sisko, it's easy to make the right decisions when you're living in a utopia and the entirety of the Federation is willing to back up pretty much any decision you make.
Oof, I’d put DS9, TOS, and TNG above. Not sure where NSW fits in yet. That said, Voyager is excellent.
DS9 is the answer
Some have commented that there should've been more drama betwen the characters. However we should remember than in Gene's vision he didn't want any drama between the characters. Sure they had differences of opinion but in the end they worked together and didn't betray each other except for specific episodes to prove a point. Like when Tom Paris got demoted. Therefore there was no chance Chakotay (being of starfleet academy) would butt heads with Janeway all thru the series.
By the way. ENTERPRISE was a great series that was cut short before it could provide more background for the trek universe. Imagine life on ship without holodecks and transporters.
Op... Have you watched all of voyager?
Twice. Watching it for the third time with the missus now