What's My Problem With Star Trek: Voyager?

so the first thing I want to say is thanks everybody for making the most recent episode of the trek actually series such a success the berkeley video that i put up last week has already passed 50,000 views which for a small channel like mine is a big deal so thank you all so much if you watched that video and those of you who not only watched but also shared it or subscribe to my channel or became a patron on patreon as a result of that video thank you extra to those of you i appreciate you so much as well one of the things i did notice however and going through the comments of the berkeley video is a lot of folks were a little put off or in some cases like seemed really really upset or offended by how hard I was on Star Trek Voyager and I can understand if if that was the first Star Trek video of mine that you've watched if that was the first video of my period that you've watched you've never heard of me before and I spend a you know a nice heartfelt video talking about how great Barclay is and then I throw in a cheap shot at Star Trek Voyager right at the end I can understand why if you're a Voyager fan why that might have rung a little wrong for you and you might have thought what the hell was that it was nice up until then so I completely get that if you are a more frequent viewer of mine if you've seen some of the other trek actually videos that I have done you probably know that Voyager is my least favorite of the Star Trek shows but I've never really talked at length in a single video about why I have a problem with Voyager more so than the other Star Trek show so I thought for this video I would talk about something more directly that I've referenced and hinted at and joked about in previous videos but I would do I would tackle it head-on and spend an entire video just talking about why I have such a problem with Star Trek Voyager and I'm gonna do it in this video which is technically not an episode of Trek actually it's more like not actually Trek actually because as you can probably tell already I didn't script this one so it's not gonna be as good the first thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that I don't hate Voyager Star Trek is something that I love that brings a lot of joy to my life it's brought me uncounted hours of entertainment I love Star Trek I love all of Star Trek I don't love all of Star Trek equally I don't view it as all equally great I view Voyager is sort of near the bottom of the General Star Trek franchise and my enjoyment of it but I don't have any hatred in my heart toward any of it if Voyager is your favorite Star Trek show it's not how I feel but hopefully we can still be friends now then there are two main aspects of Voyager that I can identify as why I rank it at the bottom of the Star Trek shows and I'll try to go through both of those and and hopefully I'll explain in a way that makes sense why I don't like the show and those of you who do like the show hopefully you'll understand why I don't like it the first thing and this is the big one the other thing is is important but not as important the biggest problem I have with Voyager is that with a few exceptions throughout the 7-year run of the show nothing that happens in any particular episode matters after that episode is over and that's not that unusual because that was actually status quo for TV shows back in the day particularly like Adventure shows and and action shows and sci-fi shows including the original Star Trek and including Star Trek The Next Generation if you look at the characters in Star Trek The Next Generation even though there's some of the most beloved characters and the franchise and even though I love those characters do I love me some Captain Picard and data and Geordi and Worf and crusher and even counselor Troi even though that's a whole different video where I could get into my problems with that character but I love all those characters but they're pretty static right they're pretty static characters they don't really evolve or change all that much and as I mentioned in my Berkeley video they don't really seem to be that affected by the things that happened to them in the episode once the episode is over so Voyager a static show isn't new it isn't something that it does that no other show does but the way Voyager rigidly maintains a status quo and and doesn't allow anything to really alter it for almost the entire run of the show it gives the events in each given episode a feeling after a while once and once you catch on tat that that's going to be the deal it keeps things from having gravity it keeps things for meaning something if Captain Janeway goes through this traumatic experience in one episode you know that by the end of the episode or at least by the start of the next episode that everything's going to be fine if the ship goes through a terrible battle that rattles everybody and the bridge is exploding and then one of the engines is damaged and there's scars and burns all over the outside of the ship you can't really get that invested in it or that worried about it because you know by the start of the next episode the ships gonna look brand new because everything in Voyager was so static when you watch especially when you watch it in a short period of time if you watch it on Netflix and you watch the entire series in a couple of weeks it really feels like the whole exercise is pointless again to me maybe you maybe you feel differently but to me when I watch episode 1 of Voyager and I watch all the way through to the final episode of Voyager when the last episode fades out when the ship is flying toward Earth flanked by the other ships which is a nice image and a nice idea and a nice concept for ending the series you know the the ship that has been all by itself for the entire series is finally part of the fleet again like that's a nice image I like that and then it fades to black the characters are virtually the exact same people that they were when they started the show can you honestly tell me that Captain Janeway is all that different in the last episode than she was in the first episode maybe a little not that much has she really grown or changed all that much from her experience in the end the Delta Quadrant Harry him come on poor Harry has there ever been a more underserved character in such a prominent place in a Star Trek show than Harry the poor guy never even gets promoted never even gets moved to a different position the only character development the guy gets that sticks beyond one episode is that he switches musical instruments he switches from a clarinet to a saxophone oh boy they're really changing things up with Harry the doctor goes through some character growth I'll give them that and actually seven of nine even though she's introduced late in the show they develop her pretty well for the most Brooke especially compared to some of the other characters they're so committed to maintaining that status quo in terms of the premise of the show and in terms of the characters that nothing ends that really feeling like it means anything nobody's really affected by anything that happens to them and some really heavy [ __ ] happens to these people I mean some really heavy [ __ ] happens to these people they have near-death experiences they are brought home and then cruelly whisked back into the Delta Quadrant come this close to making it home and then they can't make it they're involved in multiple alternate futures where future versions of themselves come back in time to rewrite their own history they do that two or three times during the series that's a drastic dramatic turn of events for a show like this and they do it a couple of times and it always ends up where everything's exactly the same as it was it always goes right back to one and those kinds of time-travel stories where characters return to the present of the show from a future to reset things is especially irritating on a show like Voyager that is so stubbornly dedicated to returning to that status quo at the end of the episode I mean think about the use of that device on a show with so little character development a show that is so static as Voyager they're basically teasing you by saying oh yeah there's a future that you're never actually going to see for these characters where things actually do change where things are radically different than they are on the show but those future versions of themselves are going to time travel back to the show to set things back to the way they were these characters are never going to escape this status quo things will never change even if things do change in the future beyond the era depicted in the show they will come back and they will fix it they will make it so that it doesn't change it's it really draws any sense of meaning or consequence out of what happens in the show when you establish that even if things do hypothetically change in a drastic way in the future for these characters it can always be undone it can always be rolled back it can always be canceled out very very rarely does Voyager have an episode where the events of that episode echo throughout the series in a consistent and recurring way the episodes tend to occur in isolation and what happens in one episode has nothing to do with what happens in another episode and vice-versa the most notable exceptions being when a character leaves the show like when kes leaves the show or when a character joins the show like when seven joins the show other than that for the most part once the episode is over it's like it never happened the other thing that Voyager does that is a lesser problem in the long term inand doesn't have as much of a negative impact on the show but it's still a problem for me and it's sort of a Bugaboo for me is Voyager acquired what I think is the very bad habit of borrowing things that worked in the next generation and just sort of adopting them as its own just sort of claiming things that worked in next generation and importing them and saying we have this here now the most obvious example of this is the Borg the Borg were terrific villains in the next generation series because they were used very sparingly Voyager brought the bohr again and they became kind of a recurring antagonist for the second half of the series and not only did they over expose the Borg and bring them in so often that they became just another alien and they weren't as scary and they weren't as important as they used to be but they even took away a lot of the things that made the Borg scary and unique in the first place instead of the Borg being part of a collective where their ship just had to think and it would move we see the opposite of that we see Borg crew members operating consoles pushing buttons you know talking to each other like like other species and it's it's it takes away the specialness of the Borg and it takes away what made them so formidable in the first place which is that they could just plug themselves into their alcoves and the ship became just like a giant brain and it could just think that it wanted to do something and do it and nobody had to push a button and nobody had to go anywhere else to do anything it just did it it was immediate it was at the speed of thought that's what made them so scary and Voyager just does away with that that's the most prominent example in the most egregious example taking something that worked really well in next generation and just sort of porting it over to Voyager and then screwing it up but they did the same thing with QED the first QED episode of Voyager I have to give him credit the first QED episode of Voyager was pretty darn good they they used cue in a very good way they used him in a way that he hadn't been used in his next generation appearances it wasn't a perfect episode they went to that again a very well worn Star Trek trope of let's have a hearing to decide it but it also has some really interesting stuff as well it explores the Q continuum in a way that hasn't been explored before it shows the Q in a way that is more inventive and exciting it does things with them that weren't done in next generation but are exciting and inventive and creative and entertaining in their own right it's a really strong episode and then from then on it's just diminishing returns q keeps coming back again and again and again and it feels like they do the same thing with Q that they did with the Borg where they take old arch enemies of Picard's and they give them to Janeway because they weren't ever able to give Janeway a compelling antagonist of her own throughout the show and it feels borrowed and it feels cheap and it feels like misguided kind of desperate fanservice like hey you all remember the Borg remember Q everybody loved q he's here now he's on this show now and of course another example of this would be Berkeley which I joked about at the end of the Berkeley Trek actually video and a lot of you commented on that video that Berkeley stuff in Voyager was some of your favorite Berkeley stuff because he accomplished such amazing things and that's true within the universe of the show Berkeley did accomplish an amazing thing he was the one responsible for first establishing radio contact with the Voyager while it was still trapped or stuck in the in the Delta Quadrant that's a big deal good for Berkeley but I feel like having Berkeley appear on Voyager is a cheat I feel like it's the show reaching outside of itself to pull in something from another show to try and borrow goodwill so those two things are the biggest issues that I have with Voyager the biggest things that keep me from enjoying it as much as I enjoy other Star Trek shows but there are other things too that I think really detract from the show and contribute to me regarding it as the least of the Star Trek TV shows for instance the over-reliance on technobabble and all of the next generation era Star Trek shows have this problem to a certain degree they all have scenes where it's supposed to be a big dramatic moment but the characters are just trading meaningless made-up technobabble back and forth but Voyager really really leans on it heavily where there are many many episodes of Voyager where the main problem of the episode the thing that is threatening the ship is diffused through the employing of technobabble where instead of doing something that has some kind of meaning or some kind of real-world reference or has any kind of dramatic weight to it it's Janeway turning to B'Elanna and saying can you try uncoupling the Cochrane muffler and she does that she says oh no that didn't work and then Tuvok says reverse the polarity and then she says oh that did it we're breaking free it there's not a lot of drama there and Voyager does that a lot more so I think than other trek shows of its era all so a lot of just sort of plain old sloppy storytelling within the episodes not just the problem I was saying about before where the episodes don't have consequences for the larger series but a lot of episodes seem to have very abrupt endings like they just sort of ran out of time like they were writing the script and they thought oh should I'm on page 44 I've got I've got to wrap this up and they just have a very abrupt ending another example of bad writing or a sloppy storytelling would be when really important events in the lives of the characters take place off screen when they could have easily taken place on screen the most egregious example of this would be the marriage of Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres which is one of the only really big exceptions to one of my big complaints about the show that which is that there's very little long-term character development Tom and B'Elanna get married and then they stay married for the rest of the show that changes them that shakes up their status quo that's a big deal especially on a show is static as Voyager so I applaud them for doing that for at least taking some kind of chance to develop their characters and put them in a different place than where they started the series but their actual marriage that by that point has been built up like four years they've been dating for a while and they finally get married and the marriage happens off camera off screen they cut from before they get married to after they get married and you just see the Delta flyer with a little just married sign in the the tin cans following you know trailing behind it and the official explanation for that was from the producers they said well we had already done a wedding scene with Tom and B'Elanna that turned out to be a fake out so we didn't want to do a BB we didn't want to do another wedding for Tom and B'Elanna for real when we had already done it in a fake out so that to me that's just shitty writing you can't show us the real wedding because you already showed us the fake wedding so this event this major event in the lives of these characters that we've been building up to for years we're just gonna have to not show that to you because we already showed you the fake version that's just shitty writing the show also has a problem with not only static characterization but weak characterization vague characterization with a lot of the major characters in the cast even after seven seasons it's difficult to get a handle on exactly who they are Chakotay is probably the the best / worst example of this he's the first officer on the ship he's written as a very prominent character in the show and by the end of the seven seasons a Voyager I don't really feel like I know him any better then I knew him in the pilot it's a very vague characterization he's a character that they they kind of just throw darts at oh yeah he's a boxer by the way that's a nice little thing that they add about more than halfway through the show oh yeah by the way he's a boxer he loves boxing okay sure it doesn't really change his character or give us any insight into him but yeah there you go he's a boxer oh hey and remember Captain Picard's mentor from the Academy Boothe beat oh yeah we forgot to mention Boothby was also like his Mickey his trainer when he was a boxer so there you go there's another thing to add to the pile of borrowed things from next generation very weak characterizations which puts Voyager at a level beneath something like next generation which yes had static characters for the most part but had very strong characters very clearly drawn characters characters where you could tell who each person was they all had easily definable recognizable personalities which helped to make up for the fact that they didn't really change or grow that much Voyager has both problems voyagers characters never really change and grow and also many of them are very poorly drawn to begin with Voyager was criticized at the time when it was still on the air for being kind of a watered down uninspired retread of next generation and for the most part I think unfortunately that's fair any given episode of Voyager unless you're talking about one of the handful of really really like super terrible ones it's probably okay it's probably pretty good it's not something that's gonna you know disappoint you all that much if you're a Star Trek fan you'll watch it and you'll think oh that was alright but unless you're watching one of the handful of really standout episodes you're probably not going to think that that random episode of Voyager is all that great either you're just gonna think huh okay that was fine and that's why I say it's my least favorite show of the Star Trek franchise it's not that I think every single episode is worse than every episode of every other Star Trek show there are some voyagers that are pretty good even close to great and then most of them are just kind of okay that's fine it's what I call perfectly acceptable Star Trek so if you enjoy it if it's your favorite if you love it then more power to you I'm glad that you loved it I'm glad that it gives you happiness and joy but for me if I had the choice I would get my Star Trek form elsewhere oh hey wait one more thing sorry I know that you thought the video is over because I transitioned to black but I wanted to make sure I didn't forget this time in this video to mention that I co-host a Star Trek themed podcast and if you like the trek actually videos especially if you like the bits where I'm goofing on the episode and kind of making jokes and taking the piss out of Star Trek hopefully you will enjoy our podcast it's me and Jason Harding who is one of the most brilliantly funny people I've ever known and the show is called the ensign slogs and we play low-ranking sort of junior officers on the original enterprise Kirk's enterprise and each episode of our show begins with an episode of the original series and then we kind of go off in our own direction and it's sort of a chronicle of what goes on in the lives of our characters who are low ranking junior officers on the show while the episode that everybody knows is kind of going on in the background and it's been a lot of fun we've done 12 episodes so far which means we are 12 episodes into the original series as well and it's been so much fun it's been one of the most creative and exciting and enjoyable things that I've ever done and Jason is a genius and it's all his baby it's his idea and he sort of guides the creative direction of the show and it's not just riffing on the episodes it's also original stuff we have our own storylines and our own ideas and our own direction that we want to take things but it's tied in to the Star Trek universe and it follows the general path of the original series as we go from planet to planet and mission - mission so it's a lot of fun I hope that you check it out the address is in the description box of this video down there if you're watching it on YouTube it's let me listen podcast.com is the website it's part of the let me listen podcast family which is a whole family of podcasts that jason produces and co-hosts and they're all great but specifically for this video for my fellow Star Trek fans give a shot to the ensign slogs because it's really really great if I do say so myself and take that for what it's worth considering I'm one of the guys on it but I just wanted to make sure to mention that check out the instance logs if you enjoy the Star Trek videos that I do and that's it now this is the end of the video for real this I'm not kidding when it goes to black it's not coming back until the next one I mean it's not the end forever just in for now just go go go go [Music] you

Channel: Steve Shives

Views: 380,709

Keywords: Steve Shives, progressive youtubers, star trek, trek actually, star trek voyager, voyager

Id: 6ACVGYdNQzQ

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 04 2018