Star Trek: The Wrath of Fans

[RumHam]

https://trekmovie.com/2020/05/29/bryan-fuller-describes-star-trek-voyager-serialized-year-of-hell-season-rejected-by-rick-berman/

Some interesting stuff about Voyager and how Rick Berman was terrible. 

[sifth]

10 hours ago, RumHam said:

https://trekmovie.com/2020/05/29/bryan-fuller-describes-star-trek-voyager-serialized-year-of-hell-season-rejected-by-rick-berman/

Some interesting stuff about Voyager and how Rick Berman was terrible. 

That was a really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, RumHam said:

https://trekmovie.com/2020/05/29/bryan-fuller-describes-star-trek-voyager-serialized-year-of-hell-season-rejected-by-rick-berman/

Some interesting stuff about Voyager and how Rick Berman was terrible. 

Ira Behr getting Berman to stop interfering with DS9 after Voyager launched was the best thing for the show and for the franchise. Unfortunately it didn't stick with the later shows. Berman was an able administrator (and he probably doesn't get enough credit for his relationship with Michael Pillar and Jeri Taylor that made mid-to-late TNG much stronger), but a terrible creative writer. His decision to start writing more and more with Enterprise really did not help that show.

Brannon Braga also made more spirited attempts to break free of Berman's strictures early on, but by late Voyager and into Enterprise he was just a yes-man for him, which was a shame (and caused Ronald D. Moore to quit and make a much better show). He should have quit himself.

[DaveSumm]

14 hours ago, RumHam said:

https://trekmovie.com/2020/05/29/bryan-fuller-describes-star-trek-voyager-serialized-year-of-hell-season-rejected-by-rick-berman/

Some interesting stuff about Voyager and how Rick Berman was terrible. 

The Year of Hell season sounds great ... right up until they mention that the time thing was still a feature. As fun as that season would’ve been, can you imagine if they erased a whole season of events? Better to steal the magic ship fixer from Enterprise and just have the ship fixed up for the next season (assuming they couldn’t carry over that much).

It’s frustrating rewatching Voyager and you realise that anything bold at all completely gives the game away that it’s gonna get undone. We knew where the episode Year of Hell was going as soon as Tuvok was blinded, because we knew there’s no way they’d have the balls to blind him permanently. It would’ve been a really cool thing for Tuvok to have to deal with long term (let’s assume they don’t have the Geordi visor technology to hand), and the hint of the relationship that he’s built with Seven because of it would’ve been good for both characters.

[felice]

4 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The Year of Hell season sounds great ... right up until they mention that the time thing was still a feature. As fun as that season would’ve been, can you imagine if they erased a whole season of events? Better to steal the magic ship fixer from Enterprise and just have the ship fixed up for the next season (assuming they couldn’t carry over that much).

Or do it in the final season, with Voyager being sacrificed to save the day at the end; or they have to acquire a new ship somehow to resume their journey.

[sifth]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

.

Brannon Braga also made more spirited attempts to break free of Berman's strictures early on, but by late Voyager and into Enterprise he was just a yes-man for him, which was a shame (and caused Ronald D. Moore to quit and make a much better show). He should have quit himself.

I'm have mixed feelings about RDM's take on BSG. On one hand I view it as a wise mans Voyager, but on another hand, I felt the ending was nearly as dumb as Voyagers. I also think Moore made BSG just a little too dark for my taste. I'm a fan a balance when it comes to good storytelling and I sort of like dark tones mixed in with lighter more fun ones. It's probably why Farscape still remains one of my favorite shows. I think lack of balance remains my biggest issue when it comes to New Trek.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, felice said:

Or do it in the final season, with Voyager being sacrificed to save the day at the end; or they have to acquire a new ship somehow to resume their journey.

Yea, maybe make season 5 Year of Hell and not season 4. I think 7 needed at least one 7 of her regaining her humanity, before putting it to the test, the way a season of Year of Hell, would have probably done it. Maybe even have a different ending, where all the events are just erased, though I suppose that would involve not going kill crazy when it came to Janeway's crew. I mean having Kurtwood Smith as a season long Trek villain alone would have been worth it in my book; I've been a huge fan of that mans work since I first saw Robocop.

[Werthead]

14 hours ago, felice said:

Or do it in the final season, with Voyager being sacrificed to save the day at the end; or they have to acquire a new ship somehow to resume their journey.

I think that would have felt a bit contrived, although they could have done that with the Equinox: have Voyager destroyed and the crew forced to endure on the much smaller, less powerful ship. Although given Voyager's ridiculous ability to withstand damage and be fine five minutes later, doing the same kind of storytelling on Equinox would have been difficult.

[felice]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think that would have felt a bit contrived, although they could have done that with the Equinox: have Voyager destroyed and the crew forced to endure on the much smaller, less powerful ship.

Another Federation ship being available to take over at the right moment would be a pretty extreme coincidence. I'd have them salvage something made in the Delta Quadrant instead, with different strengths and weaknesses than Voyager, that takes them a long time to fully get to grips with. Some kind of auto-repair system might make sense - that way they don't need to understand the technology to recover from damage between episodes, and the ship could still be spaceworthy long after the loss of its original crew.

[Lord Varys]

That Year of Hell plot sounds ridiculous with the entire stupid time travel plot attached to it. I was glad that nonsense was over as quickly as it was - an actual Year of Hell with real consequences and no time travel nonsense could have been interesting.

I've just finished season 7 and I must say the episodes in the last season aren't much worse than those in the other seasons, the ending aside which is pretty much garbage.

I was surprised by how much I liked the characters when they are written well - but there are so many episodes throughout the seasons when just some stupid plot device causes the writers to write the characters completely contrary to what had been established before. This even extends to Seven of Nine who came pretty late but behaves hardly more human in season 7 than she did in season 4 - especially if you keep in mind how often they use her social awkwardness for a cheap joke at a point when earlier episodes clearly established she would have moved beyond that point by then.

But the greatest victim of that kind of thing clearly is Janeway herself, who is very often written as a stupid or weird just to create an artificial which makes no sense in broader context. This is especially glaring in episodes where the personhood/rights of the Doctor are addressed, but also whenever they deal with some sort of weird Prime Directive issue which usually makes no sense in this context - especially when they interact with a warp civilization they have no way to avoid or are obliged to help.

Worst of all are those episodes where they throw out caution and good sense just to go through with some weird plan to get home while in other episodes getting home fast isn't really all that much of an issue. There is no consistency there.

Robert Picardo is the best actor in the entire thing - and basically the only character who gets some real development throughout the series - although I think Jeri Ryan also plays very well, as does Tim Russ. Aside from very few episodes the character of Neelix is pointless after Kes leaves (whose return in that one episodes completely destroys her previous story and makes no sense in context), and his original role as 'jealous lover' was pretty much insufferable-

That Seven-Chakotay thing comes completely out of the left field and they don't even had the guts to properly establish this on Chakotay's side. What a cheap trick to start with their third date.

Metaphorically speaking, one could say the fake Voyager and its crew (those people made from that weird liquid from that seemingly lifeless planet) were more alive than the originals, especially insofar as character development is concerned. We only saw the wedding of fake Tom and fake B'Ellana, not the real one...

[Derfel Cadarn]

Voyager follow-up episodes were usually bad. The Kes one was horrible as you say and ruined thw character. Didn’t she evolve?

The end as such an anticlimax- BSG was a masterpiece in comparison. Voyager should have explored how the characters coped with being back home. They should have returned home when DS9 ended

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, felice said:

Another Federation ship being available to take over at the right moment would be a pretty extreme coincidence. I'd have them salvage something made in the Delta Quadrant instead, with different strengths and weaknesses than Voyager, that takes them a long time to fully get to grips with. Some kind of auto-repair system might make sense - that way they don't need to understand the technology to recover from damage between episodes, and the ship could still be spaceworthy long after the loss of its original crew.

Congratulations, you have just invented Blake's 7 

[Lord Varys]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think that would have felt a bit contrived, although they could have done that with the Equinox: have Voyager destroyed and the crew forced to endure on the much smaller, less powerful ship. Although given Voyager's ridiculous ability to withstand damage and be fine five minutes later, doing the same kind of storytelling on Equinox would have been difficult.

I hated that Equinox nonsense. What are the odds that they would meet such a ship at this time and at that place?

Would have been a good plot for, say, season 2 with there being another Federation/Maquis/Cardassian ship being brought in by the Caretaker they only find months later, but at the time this story came it was far too late.

And, man, did I hate all those episodes where some species from back home showed up.

Oh, and by the way - do you by any chance know why Jennifer Lien left? Weren't her breasts not big enough? They had her in a quasi-Seven attire in the last episodes of season 3, and I must say I'd have much more enjoyed it if they had kept her and removed Neelix to bring in a new character (or just added one more without throwin anyone out) since her story was certainly the most interesting in the early seasons.

Similar question - what about Ensign Wildman? Any reason why Naomi's mother never came back for the later seasons?

31 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Voyager follow-up episodes were usually bad. The Kes one was horrible as you say and ruined thw character. Didn’t she evolve?

Yeah, she turned into a higher noncorporeal being - that's why they had to get her off the ship. The episode where she comes back got the fact that she was still corporeal wrong as well as her looks - we know from the season 3 episode which foreshadowed the Year of Hell that the Ocampa only start to physically age shortly before their deaths. Kes was about six or so in the episode she came back, meaning she would have looked exactly the same way as she did when she left.

They did the same thing when that time travel guy from the 29th century showed up again - the time line where he spent years in the 20th century on the streets and in mental asylums was erased. He never went through that, so his anger towards Voyager made no sense at all.

31 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

The end as such an anticlimax- BSG was a masterpiece in comparison. Voyager should have explored how the characters coped with being back home. They should have returned home when DS9 ended

Something like that would have been great - but it would have been enough to simply give some sort of buildup/arc for the final grand plan to get home more quickly. And give the actual Janeway a strong incentive to get things going because of issues she and her crew had with the situation.

I mean, whoever wrote that completely destroyed the similar episode from earlier in that season where Chakotay was stuck in the temporally fractured Voyager - an episode I greatly enjoyed because it showed that these people actually had become a family and where happy with being together in that ship. They wanted to get home, sure, but they liked what they did, too, and this wouldn't change for a Janeway just because a couple of people didn't make it.

Not to mention that Janeway could have used the device from the finale to fucking prevent that the ships go to the Delta Quadrant in the first place. She didn't have to contact them where she did. How fucked-up a person she would have to be to not give two cents about, say, Kerry who they arbitrarily killed shortly before the finale is beyond me - and this kind of obvious issue is not even addressed in the episodes.

Have to say, though, I don't find the Borg that problematic. Yes, the Queen talking to her underlings is nonsense, as is she talking about *herself* in the first person. But the Borg never became the monster of the week or some kind of boogieman you could easily outrun or fool. Even in the finale it is established that the Collective doesn't really care about Voyager and only targets them when they become an annoyance or a danger.

And the Unimatrix Zero plot was pretty interesting - although the background made no sense (mutation??? how can a species like the Borg who don't really procreate like normal species develop mutations???) nor the insistence of the Queen to crush irrelevant stuff that happened only in dreams, but the idea of the Borg preserving something of themselves in dreams was pretty interesting.

I'd say the biggest issues with the Borg came in TNG and FC - that's where they switched from a species interested in technology to acquiring said technology by turning people into members of their own species, and it is where they were given their Queen. Neither of which was a very good concept.

[Werthead]

 

Quote

I hated that Equinox nonsense. What are the odds that they would meet such a ship at this time and at that place?

Would have been a good plot for, say, season 2 with there being another Federation/Maquis/Cardassian ship being brought in by the Caretaker they only find months later, but at the time this story came it was far too late.

I think that's a good idea. The problem is that they met Equinox way too late in the series, after they'd found lots of shortcuts home, including the big Borg one, of which there is absolutely 0% chance that Equinox would have done the same thing. Voyager should have shot past Equinox and never come close to meeting them, at all.

BSG's Pegasus is basically Equinox done right and far, far better.

Quote

Oh, and by the way - do you by any chance know why Jennifer Lien left? Weren't her breasts not big enough? They had her in a quasi-Seven attire in the last episodes of season 3, and I must say I'd have much more enjoyed it if they had kept her and removed Neelix to bring in a new character (or just added one more without throwin anyone out) since her story was certainly the most interesting in the early seasons.

Reportedly Rick Berman wanted to add more sex appeal to the show and they ran around for ideas and came up with the notion of a reformed Borg drone. I think they might have been inspired by DS9, which had also shaken up the ante by bringing in a new character in Season 4 (in that case an old character in Worf) which had worked well. For whatever reason (probably budgetary) they decided to keep the number of regulars at the same level so someone had to go and they decided that it was between Kes and Harry. They kept Harry because - I kid you not - Garrett Wang had gotten onto some list of "Sexiest Men in the World" or something at the time.

Jennifer Lien went a bit off the deep end after leaving the show, so it might be that if she was showing that behaviour before she was forced out, that may have also played a role. We do know that Kate Mulgrew went ballistic, because she really liked Lien and saw her as a friend (Lien also saw Mulgrew as a mentor of a kind; people tend to forget that she was only 18 when she was cast on Voyager and going into a show like that, 26 episodes a year, at that age is insane), and also that Mulgrew had fought tooth and nail to make sure that Janeway and Kes were not presented as sex appeal characters. She and Jeri Ryan had a horrible relationship for a couple of years because of that, but eventually that kind of died down and Mulgrew realised she was being unfair.

Quote

Similar question - what about Ensign Wildman? Any reason why Naomi's mother never came back for the later seasons?

They didn't write scripts for her, so the actress got bored and went off and formed a rock band. She was supposed to come back in Season 7 but couldn't because her band was opening for Meat Loaf on his 2001 European tour. How's that for random trivia?

[Aemon Stark]

I mean things like Wildman’s absence or Carey’s random return late in season 7 just to die exemplify Voyager’s problems. This was a ship with a hundred and some crewmembers - yet we almost never get much with secondary characters.
 

DS9 had Dukat, Garak, Winn, Keiko (and Molly), Bareil, Shakaar, Ziyal, Damar, Martok, Eddington, Kasidy, Nog, Rom, Zek, Ishka/Moogie, Brunt, Weyoun, Admiral Ross, Vic Fontaine, the Female Shapeshifter, and, of course, Morn (to say nothing about significant yet less present characters like Tain, Sloan, or TNG characters like Lwaxana or Gowron). Voyager had... Samantha Wildman, Joe Carey (rarely seen after season one), Seska (RIP), that guy who betrayed them to the Kazon, the one-note Kazon villain Cullah, and Icheb and the Borg kids. But we really should have known every single Voyager crewmember by the end of seven years, and we didn’t. I don’t know that we really knew much about Harry, Tom, or Chakotay either...

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I think that's a good idea. The problem is that they met Equinox way too late in the series, after they'd found lots of shortcuts home, including the big Borg one, of which there is absolutely 0% chance that Equinox would have done the same thing. Voyager should have shot past Equinox and never come close to meeting them, at all.

BSG's Pegasus is basically Equinox done right and far, far better.

Yeah, definitely. But the idea of having such a ship in season 1-2 could have worked pretty well. As far as I recall the Equinox wasn't brought into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker - or if it was they did not mention that or I didn't catch it.

By the time of season 6 the way to go would have been to go with a deep space exploration ship sent to explore decades which suffered severe hardships on the way - like their original ship being destroyed, etc. But even in such a scenario it is still an unlikely plot for them to chance on such a ship in the middle of nowhere. Hence, it may have been a better idea to do that kind of thing earlier in the show, where they could also have played with the Starfleet/Maquis thing in addition to the tensions with the new arrivals.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Reportedly Rick Berman wanted to add more sex appeal to the show and they ran around for ideas and came up with the notion of a reformed Borg drone. I think they might have been inspired by DS9, which had also shaken up the ante by bringing in a new character in Season 4 (in that case an old character in Worf) which had worked well. For whatever reason (probably budgetary) they decided to keep the number of regulars at the same level so someone had to go and they decided that it was between Kes and Harry. They kept Harry because - I kid you not - Garrett Wang had gotten onto some list of "Sexiest Men in the World" or something at the time.

LOL, really? Considering the nonexisting story potential for Harry - and the, at times, outlandish episodes he got (the worst were the one where he is back home and wants to get back to Voyager and the one where he is not allowed to have sex with the alien woman) it was certainly a waste they kept him. At times they tried to make a forceful and changed character - a man who evolved due to his experiences (like when they have him offer his opinions freely and directly in briefings and such) - but he always reverted back to his old self.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Jennifer Lien went a bit off the deep end after leaving the show, so it might be that if she was showing that behaviour before she was forced out, that may have also played a role. We do know that Kate Mulgrew went ballistic, because she really liked Lien and saw her as a friend (Lien also saw Mulgrew as a mentor of a kind; people tend to forget that she was only 18 when she was cast on Voyager and going into a show like that, 26 episodes a year, at that age is insane), and also that Mulgrew had fought tooth and nail to make sure that Janeway and Kes were not presented as sex appeal characters. She and Jeri Ryan had a horrible relationship for a couple of years because of that, but eventually that kind of died down and Mulgrew realised she was being unfair.

I knew the stuff about Jeri Ryan and Kate Mulgrew - that is must have been really unpleasant. And in relation to Ryan pretty much uncalled for. She turned out to be one of the best characters in the show.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

They didn't write scripts for her, so the actress got bored and went off and formed a rock band. She was supposed to come back in Season 7 but couldn't because her band was opening for Meat Loaf on his 2001 European tour. How's that for random trivia?

Pretty good ;-). Just found it very odd they would have the daughter and sort of erase the mother. That made no sense.

[DaveSumm]

15 hours ago, Werthead said:

The problem is that they met Equinox way too late in the series, after they'd found lots of shortcuts home, including the big Borg one, of which there is absolutely 0% chance that Equinox would have done the same thing. Voyager should have shot past Equinox and never come close to meeting them, at all.

In terms of routes, in theory there’s no reason at all why the Equinox and Voyager computers wouldn’t give the exact same answer when asked to plot a course home. So of all the absurd coincidences (and there are many), I don’t think this is one of them. In terms of timing, wasn’t the Equinox crew’s whole ethical transgression that they were using the creatures as a fuel to get home quicker? So they were travelling trans warp essentially? So really, they were going to bump into one another at some point. As to why they’ve had completely different experiences and met different aliens ... dunno. 

[Denvek]

14 hours ago, Aemon Stark said:

I mean things like Wildman’s absence or Carey’s random return late in season 7 just to die exemplify Voyager’s problems. This was a ship with a hundred and some crewmembers - yet we almost never get much with secondary characters.

I always heard that Carey's absence was because they thought they'd killed him off in an earlier season and then he returned because someone pointed out they hadn't.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

In terms of routes, in theory there’s no reason at all why the Equinox and Voyager computers wouldn’t give the exact same answer when asked to plot a course home. So of all the absurd coincidences (and there are many), I don’t think this is one of them. In terms of timing, wasn’t the Equinox crew’s whole ethical transgression that they were using the creatures as a fuel to get home quicker? So they were travelling trans warp essentially? So really, they were going to bump into one another at some point. As to why they’ve had completely different experiences and met different aliens ... dunno. 

Getting the optimal route home is one thing, but Voyager was only able to steal a Borg transwarp conduit because they had Seven's help to infiltrate a cube. Without her, that's impossible, so Equinox couldn't have done it, so even with the "a bit better than Voyager's top speed" thing, they should still be far behind Voyager.

[sifth]

15 hours ago, Aemon Stark said:

DS9 had Dukat, Garak, Winn, Keiko (and Molly), Bareil, Shakaar, Ziyal, Damar, Martok, Eddington, Kasidy, Nog, Rom, Zek, Ishka/Moogie, Brunt, Weyoun, Admiral Ross, Vic Fontaine, the Female Shapeshifter, and, of course, Morn (to say nothing about significant yet less present characters like Tain, Sloan, or TNG characters like Lwaxana or Gowron). Voyager had... Samantha Wildman, Joe Carey (rarely seen after season one), Seska (RIP), that guy who betrayed them to the Kazon, the one-note Kazon villain Cullah, and Icheb and the Borg kids. But we really should have known every single Voyager crewmember by the end of seven years, and we didn’t. I don’t know that we really knew much about Harry, Tom, or Chakotay either...

Man the recurring characters on DS9 were just the best, in some ways they even out shinned the main characters; this is especially true when it came to Garak. I often wonder just how better of a show Voyager would have been if they kept Seska alive and didn't make her a villain. I really do consider that character as Garak in the hands of stupid writers. Instead of making her a loyal crew member who's always willing to get the job done in the most scummy way possible, they just made her into a straight up villain, which sadly made the character less interesting.