Why Star Trek: Voyager Failed

Or, the Revenge of Forehead Aliens

David Fuchs, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Mar 3, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

Ah, Star Trek: Voyager. If we had known the next Star Trek series we would be seeing was Star Trek: Enterprise, we would have wished you had stayed around. Yet the series, which ran from 1995 to 2001, often highlighted the worst the franchise had to offer. Why? It started when some writer said...

"Forget the premise"
Each Star Trek series has brought something different to the table. The Next Generation was the true expression of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's enlightened future. Deep Space Nine dealt with evolving issues as its action focused on a stationary space station, not a roving starship. Voyager's main driving force was a crew stranded on the other side of the galaxy, trying to get home. What rules would they break? How would they interact with those they were formerly at odds with? This last point involves the Maquis, basically an anti-Federation resistance cell. The USS Voyager was sent to find a Maquis vessel and both ships ended up 70000 light years from home. To get back, the two crews would have to work together. With a Maquis as first officer and another as chief engineer, the Voyager's captain would have to balance her Federation ideals against a group who would be willing to do anything to get home.

An intriguing premise, which the writers promptly seemed to ignore. Chakotay, the Maquis first officer, never really played up any sort of discontent about being under a Starfleet officer, where he had previously been a captain of his own ship. He should harbor some sort of resentment against the characters of Tuvok and Tom Paris, who betrayed the Maquis. He has to deal with his own crew who feels like the Starfleet way isn't cutting it--would a mutiny break out? Yet by the end of the first episode Chakotay's grudges with Tuvok and Paris are solved, and by the end of the first season Chakotay is often championing Captain Janeway's plans, even when he disagrees with them. What?

Short and sweet, the writers killed a central conflict of the show. The Maquis and Starfleet crews pretty much became best buds overnight, save for a few inexplicable episodes where the writers suddenly decided to dredge up the old hostilities again (for example, "Repression"). Sorry, but if you kill a concept, you can't lamely try to bring it back for one episode and not expect it to seemed forced. Speaking of forced characters...

Not everyone got the attention they deserved
Voyager's characters never really worked out properly. Some became well-rounded and dimensional, more or less, while others simply remained hazily sketched-out caricatures. Chakotay got some early season face time, but for much of the rest of the series he only got real meaty lines when talking with Janeway or when he's crashed a shuttle, again. (Literally, he does this all the time. I can think of "Future's End", "Initiations", "Coda", and "Nemesis" as such occasions off the top of my head. It's a good thing the crew built the Delta Flyer, because it seemed to be Chakotay-proof. That's not to say the rest of the crew didn't knock their own fair number of shuttles out of the sky, they just didn't seem to have the flair Chakotay did.)

Even more troubling than the lack of characterization was the sudden contrivances to serve plot. For instance, a character might profess that they loved archeology (Chakotay again) when no previous indication had ever been given. It became painfully obvious that there were strings pulling the characters about. If crewmen weren't suddenly gaining another hobby, they were acting remarkably out of character. The only people who seemed internally consistent were Tom Paris and Harry Kim, who didn't get to do much besides act like Stooges. Part of the reason was that the later seasons (Season 4 onward) became dominated by a newcomer to the show, Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan.) Acting as a cold and passionless ex-Borg drone wasn't a tough acting job, so I can't criticize her acting, but she was way overused. It seemed every three episodes had her getting into another jam, or else focusing on her well-nigh exclusively. Was she occasionally a compelling character? Sure. But the main reasons she got so much screen-time was her figure and the skintight bodysuit and heels she ran around with (how could she run around in those?) Speaking of ridiculous costumes, that leads us to...

Lazy Trek conventions
Most of Star Trek: Voyager's writers were alums from other shows, and the producers (Berman and Braga) had worked on the show since The Next Generation. Apparently after a while the creative well went dry for these chaps, because Voyager kept on running into spatial anomalies on a frighteningly usual basis. If it wasn't an anomaly that provided the conflict, it was generally hostile or stupid aliens. To make this cliche even worse, they all happened to look the same (one reviewer refers to them as generic "bumpy forehead aliens", due to the forehead designs being the only major difference between species) courtesy of rather uninspired makeup (especially in later seasons) by Michael Westmore. After a while, if you'd seen a few episodes, it seemed like you'd seen them all. What was even worse was that this lazy conventions hurt otherwise good episodes. For example, in "Shattered", the ship is broken up into different time periods, and Chakotay actually has to do something--that is, bring the ship back together. But the fact that there were evil forehead aliens, a spacial anomaly, etc., turned what could have been a special event into a "seen this premise iteration before"-type episode. Resistance to really shaking it up resulted in intruiging premises turning into half-baked rehashes. But perhaps the most agregious issue was the...

Big, Giant Reset Button.
This is undoubtedly the worst offense. I'm not going to even list episodes, it's such a common occurrence, but the main thrust of the issue is that nobody learns. Ever. Watching too many Voyager episodes back-to-back and you'll cause severe whiplash from watching characters act the same. Consistent and believable character growth was largely killed because at the end of each episode, there was the "reset"; everyone survived, or else there was a slight moment of touchy-feeling. But by the next episode there's no reference to what happened and no tangible effects to be felt. While some might have disliked the serial nature of, say, Deep Space Nine, at least things didn't magically go away. Deus ex machina endings were often the nature tendency of the writers. Voyager would keep throwing themselves at harmful anomalies, Harry Kim wouldn't learn anything about relationships, and the Doctor would do something incredibly stupid, Janeway would give a speech about how he let her down, and then everyone would forget about it. This didn't just kill continuity, it stretched the incredulity of the series already bonkered by poor plots and technobabble to new lows.

If there is ever to be a new Star Trek television series, my suggestion is look at what Voyager could have been... and then do the opposite of whatever the series ended up doing.

Published by David Fuchs - Featured Contributor in Technology

David Fuchs is a writer, editor, and artist. View profile

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Why Star Trek: Voyager Failed

Or, the Revenge of Forehead Aliens

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