Voyager

So, now that I’ve gone through what I really wanted to talk about in Star Trek, I’m gonna wrap this up. Expect this and another update where I talk about the other series and movies. I haven’t read the books (hah) or whatever other stuff there is. 

This update is Voyager (VOY). I’m not going to say I like Voyager because I don’t. I think the consensus, rightfully, is that Voyager has all the wasted potential of every series of Star Trek, compounded right in one.

I guess I’ll start with the premise.

The Hook:

The starship Voyager is stranded 70 years away from home in a strange, new area of space. I used the word hook because this was supposed to be the big overarching plot of the series, the journey for home. Like how gods was the big one for DS9 (with the Prophets coming up in the first episode) or exploration for TNG (with Q’s dire warnings against humans exploring what they shouldn’t). However, that thread gets mostly dropped by the second and completely by the third season. Let me clarify. In this series, there are three stories going on (or that’s how it was pitched) at all times. The first is the journey home, which is what the whole series is about. The second is whatever season-long thing is going on, which I’ll explain later. The third is the monster-of-the-week thing I love so much in other series.

When I say that, the first and secondary plots go away. Not completely. They get lip service, but the show no longer is about the ship going home. It’s about exploring new planets, just new. And by this point the writers had run out of ideas so they recycle plots from other series. Or they just make the plot simplistic and about big explosions. The episodes seem way more structured (and that’s after watching TOS where you could time the plot beats of every episode), when there’s the introduction, the action, the complication, etc.

Characters:

Janeway is the captain. So you know how I was talking about how TNG is (neo)liberal and DS9 is progressive? A lot of that is decided (declared) by the captain and how they approach the problem and the people they surround themselves with. Voyager is conservative. And that all starts with Janeway. She starts off as basically Picard lite then by the end basically says that Federation values don’t work out away from Earth and where the society is created. It’s the traditional argument when the center cannot hold. DS9 is a split to the left, and VOY is to the right. But as in either series, the basic ideas are kept. It’s just sometimes the more bureaucratic elements are done away with. This could go into a longer diatribe, but I’m not going to point out the hypocrisy, mostly that the needs are an excuse most of the time.

Chakotay is the first officer with only a first name. So Chakotay starts off like Nerys and ends up much more like Riker. Let me qualify that: Nerys has some deeply founded and important spiritual beliefs that guide her actions. Riker’s spiritual beliefs are the Federation and culture in general, much like a white collar O’Brien. Okay, more explanation, but this time about Chakotay. He, like Paris and Torres are Maquis who were trapped with Janeway. They are the first real humanization of the mostly reactionary Maquis. I don’t know too much about it, but the Native American cultural advisor was supposedly a hack, but I think Chakotay’s beliefs are supposed to be an amalgam of various, actual beliefs. Or maybe not. Either way, he’s probably the most important ‘alternate’ to technology as a concrete, sincere belief. It actually impacts his decisions in a fundamental, important way. At least for the first season.

Kes is the most interesting character. Also a weird apologia for pedophiles, but uh, let’s address that first. She’s an Ocampa. They live to about 7 to 10. So they sexually/biologically mature very early. She joins the Voyager crew (along with Neelix, who I’ll briefly mention later), one of the not quite violations of Federation praxis. Her race was taken by a protective alien force, but now they have to take care of themselves. She has to realize, by traveling far away from home for the vast majority of her life, what her home is. She also gets unceremoniously exiled near the beginning of season 3 because her new role was taken up by Seven of Nine. Or who I’ll just call 7 from now on. After all, George Costanza liked it as a name.

The Doctor is a hologram and the ship’s doctor. Over the course of the first three seasons, he gets upgraded. Then all of his character progression is done so he just sustains (noticing a pattern?). He slowly has to grasp the concept of his own sentience when he was originally intended as a temporary solution if the ship’s doctor was killed. He gets to decide when he’s turned off and on, eventually interacts with objects (becoming effectively solid) and gets to go anywhere eventually and not just his dedicated zone. The series never has him give himself a name, a major setback from TNG (because he obviously contrasts with Data, whose development isn’t physical like the Doctor’s but emotional).

7 is a former Borg drone who gets deprogrammed and transitions slowly to human. I decided to talk about her here instead of later because she technically is in more of the show than Kes even if she is much less interesting of a character. She has about one interesting season, 3, and the rest is mostly coasting. If it sounds like I’m really praising season 3, I’m not. Season 1 is the only one that does a good job, but for half of season 3 and everything after, the series drops off a cliff of quality. She has conflicts about individuality and its value because, after all, she was part of technologically superior hive mind. I want to say something. I don’t think it’s wrong that 7 is basically ‘hot Kes’, but it’s annoying that doesn’t really go anywhere. That’s why I don’t like her as a character. She has some good potential, especially at the beginning, but Unmet Potential should be the subtitle for Voyager.

<b>Everyone else</b>: Harry Kim has no confidence and does nothing important (except season 1 in a few episodes); Tom Paris is whiney and angry that he’s a disappointment to his dad (that gets nominally resolved by the end of the Series); Neelix is a Talaxian and becomes the ship’s chef. He hilariously discovers that while there are many afterlifes that are true in Star Trek (Ferengi, Klingon, etc.), the Talaxian afterlife is a lie; Tuvok is the only dedicated character that’s a Vulcan, and he’s like Spock-lite. Vulcans are examined more interestingly in TNG despite only being in a few episodes; Torres is by far the most interesting character of the minors. She’s half Klingon and is constantly struggling to find her balance.

The Plot:

So, I said before that the story is nominatively about them getting home. The series has a bunch of episodes where they discover means to do so, but there’s obstacles to it. The last episode, where they finally succeed, has a deus ex machina in the form of time travel, which is kinda funny. This, what I called the primary plot or whatever, isn’t very important to Star Trek. The problem was they promised so much in the beginning! The first season has them keep track of precious resources (torpedos, energy supplies—please ignore the whole point of the ship having Bussard collectors—, etc.), but that part gets forgotten soon. I mean, I understand. It’s not compelling TV, and it creates the wrong mood. But it really shouldn’t have been introduced in the first place.

The secondary plot is where they dropped the ball the hardest, as surprising as that is. Okay, so between the first and second season they set up the conflict between Starfleet and the Maquis. It’s actually set up competently over the season through a bunch of smaller plot points. That said, it’s kinda hammy and overdone, especially near the end. That’s the last time they really care about a larger story, other than when they encounter the Borg. So, what’s stopping the Borg from just killing them all went hey encounter them? Well, err… nothing. But they needed to come up with something. So they flexed their early-90s CGI and made up species 8472, the perfect biological entity that the Borg can’t assimilate. They’re also basically even more all-powerful than the Borg. So Voyager helps them stop the new enemy for safe passage, and things go bad. Not important, but this is one when Kes becomes 7. One last complaint: they make the Borg have a queen (okay, this was in First Contact, but they could pretend it didn’t happen or was a thing they did for the situation). So effectively they’re a monarchy with some degree of individualism and not just a hive mind. Okay, yes, bees and ants and whatever, but c’mon. This doesn’t have to be realistic. Star Trek’s supposed to be idealistic and have actual, real life examples of philosophical maxims.

The first time that the series doesn’t just drop the ball but slap it into the ground is the Year of Hell. So through some time travel shenanigans, Kes learns that the ship will go through what they call the Year of Hell, where it looks like all those scarcity episodes will actually matter. There will be actual consequences! Characters will die! Well, one episode after the Year of Hell actually happens, it all means nothing. Everything goes back to how it was before. Then there are the Predator-lites, and there’s some development (they even openly call them Nazis, which takes some real balls), but it kinda just peters out.

Okay, whatever. Star Trek isn’t really good at this sort of stuff, so why not make it monster of the week? Well, the tertiary plot seems to be the standard fare. But it’s as if someone watched Star Trek, didn’t get the idea of why it was anything but a standard show and then made more episodes. I realize that these were the same writers for the most part, but that’s how it comes off.

I was going to write much less about Voyager than this, but that’s how much the show annoys me. It could’ve been good, almost within spitting distance of  the greatness of TNG or something! But it wasn’t. It didn’t have a coherent message, and it just felt like a waste of time.