Star Trek Voyager - Is It That Bad?

Myrddin

Riskymove wrote: »

I suppose the flip side is that if Equinox had been a larger warship it probably wouldn't have ended up in such trouble or desperate situation that made them do the things they did!

Yeah good point. Though something like a Defiant class ship would be a fair bit slower than an Intrepid (outside of a limited emergency burst of warp speed), and yet would still have tactical superiority

helimachoptor

Myrddin wrote: »

Yeah good point. Though something like a Defiant class ship would be a fair bit slower than an Intrepid (outside of a limited emergency burst of warp speed), and yet would still have tactical superiority

hard to know and not to open the debate again but the big plus of the defiant is its agility, its not going to have have such a big edge over an intrepid.

Voyager also had quantum torpedos, wouldnt fancy being on an defiant for any length of time

Kiith

Stick the cloak, pop into statis for for 70 years, job done :P

I was thinking about Janeway's decision to help the Borg against Species 8472 earlier, and i still don't quite get it. Ok, they were powerful, and planned on wiping out all life...but that's pretty much what the Borg planned (without the assimilation part). I'd take a potential war with them over a very real war with the Borg any day. And it's not like the Borg were ever going to agree to stand down, or stick to the bargains they made...they're the Borg. "All life will adapt to service us" and all that.

Then they absolutely neutered 8472, and it all became pointless anyway.

seamus

helimachoptor wrote: »

with the story not being on screen, would have been easy to craft

- Some type of spacial anomaly
- Attack by 8472 etc etc

Massive ship, loss of crew, unable to maintain all basic functions etc

It brings more complexity though - you'd have to invent reasons why the crew would all gather on Voyager to continue to their journey rather than salvage Voyager to repair the larger ship and fly that one home.

helimachoptor

seamus wrote: »

It brings more complexity though - you'd have to invent reasons why the crew would all gather on Voyager to continue to their journey rather than salvage Voyager to repair the larger ship and fly that one home.

warp core breach :cool:

Myrddin

helimachoptor wrote: »

hard to know and not to open the debate again but the big plus of the defiant is its agility, its not going to have have such a big edge over an intrepid.

A Defiant would obliterate an Intrepid imo, on all counts (manoeuvrability, ablative armour, shields, pulse phasers, quantum torpedoes).

Voyager also had quantum torpedos, wouldnt fancy being on an defiant for any length of time

You sure? I know it had a small supply of tri-cobalt torpedoes (it used to destroy the Caretaker array), but not once has a quantum torpedo been mentioned in the show to my knowledge.

Kiith wrote: »

Stick the cloak, pop into statis for for 70 years, job done :P

I was thinking about Janeway's decision to help the Borg against Species 8472 earlier, and i still don't quite get it. Ok, they were powerful, and planned on wiping out all life...but that's pretty much what the Borg planned (without the assimilation part). I'd take a potential war with them over a very real war with the Borg any day. And it's not like the Borg were ever going to agree to stand down, or stick to the bargains they made...they're the Borg. "All life will adapt to service us" and all that.

Then they absolutely neutered 8472, and it all became pointless anyway.

8472 were way, way more powerful than the Borg. They posed a far greater threat than the Borg ever have, destroyed whole planets, billions of Borg, thousands of ships...all with very, very little effort. A war with 8472 would have been very, very bad for any Quadrant in the Galaxy.

However, at that time, Janeway believed (with reason) that 8472 started the conflict, & this was a large scale incursion within the galaxy. It made a lot of sense to prevent a beachhead situation, with an enemy so powerful.

Personally though, I feel Janeway made the alliance because of what it offered her crew. I feel by then, she was wrestling with guilt caused by her decision which stranded the ship in the Delta Quadrant, though this guilt wasn't shown until the next season. She couldn't ask the crew to add another three years on to the journey, & was set on travelling through Borg space.

helimachoptor

Myrddin wrote: »

A Defiant would obliterate an Intrepid imo, on all counts (manoeuvrability, ablative armour, shields, pulse phasers, quantum torpedoes).



You sure? I know it had a small supply of tri-cobalt torpedoes (it used to destroy the Caretaker array), but not once has a quantum torpedo been mentioned in the show to my knowledge.



8472 were way, way more powerful than the Borg. They posed a far greater threat than the Borg ever have, destroyed whole planets, billions of Borg, thousands of ships...all with very, very little effort. A war with 8472 would have been very, very bad for any Quadrant in the Galaxy.

However, at that time, Janeway believed (with reason) that 8472 started the conflict, & this was a large scale incursion within the galaxy. It made a lot of sense to prevent a beachhead situation, with an enemy so powerful.

Personally though, I feel Janeway made the alliance because of what it offered her crew. I feel by then, she was wrestling with guilt caused by her decision which stranded the ship in the Delta Quadrant, though this guilt wasn't shown until the next season. She couldn't ask the crew to add another three years on to the journey, & was set on travelling through Borg space.

Sorry yes tri cobalt, got them mixed up.
Defiant would win every time imo, but it would take beating in the process.


Would 8472 have left our galaxy alone if janeway had teamed up with them?

also as an aside, it looks like Tony Todd is in with a chance for a role in the new series

Myrddin

helimachoptor wrote: »

Would 8472 have left our galaxy alone if janeway had teamed up with them?

Well she eventually put things right later on, she explained she wasn't aware it was the Borg who started the conflict, & 8472 seemed to respond to diplomacy (see extreme neutering). I'll say one thing about Voyager, bad guys don't stay bad guys for very long!

also as an aside, it looks like Tony Todd is in with a chance for a role in the new series

That'd be sweet, he's excellent

helimachoptor

Myrddin wrote: »

Well she eventually put things right later on, she explained she wasn't aware it was the Borg who started the conflict, & 8472 seemed to respond to diplomacy (see extreme neutering). I'll say one thing about Voyager, bad guys don't stay bad guys for very long!



That'd be sweet, he's excellent

nope! and such a shame with the hirogen, borg and 8472

For me in the beginning anyway, despite the Kazon having numerical advantages while tech inferiority, Voy never felt under threat.


Yeah, if Todd gets in, i'll watch for that alone tbh

Kiith

Myrddin wrote:

A Defiant would obliterate an Intrepid imo, on all counts (manoeuvrability, ablative armour, shields, pulse phasers, quantum torpedoes).

Defiant would definitely take an Intrepid down. Pound for pound, it's the toughest ship in the fleet (i'd assume).

Myrddin wrote:

However, at that time, Janeway believed (with reason) that 8472 started the conflict, & this was a large scale incursion within the galaxy. It made a lot of sense to prevent a beachhead situation, with an enemy so powerful.

Ah, i'd forgotten about that. Makes sense if Janeway thinks they are the aggressor.

helimachoptor

the damage a fleet of defiants could do.

tbh in DS9 not sure why we didnt see hundreds of them in the various fleet engagements, they were really the only ships that could match the Jem Hadar fighters for maneuverability

They started building more of them once the Klingon war started iirc purely because they were quick and easy to build

Myrddin

helimachoptor wrote: »

the damage a fleet of defiants could do.

tbh in DS9 not sure why we didnt see hundreds of them in the various fleet engagements, they were really the only ships that could match the Jem Hadar fighters for maneuverability

They started building more of them once the Klingon war started iirc purely because they were quick and easy to build

Yeah strange alright. The real answer is because they likely wanted to show variety & variation of Starfeelt ship design for the battle shots. The 'canon' answer, is probably something like they were caught off guard by the Dominion, & never really felt they needed extreme manoeuvrability, instead favouring capital ship design. Then factor in the ship building rate of the time being slow, shipyards being destroyed, blah blah blah...yeah, I dunno really

Kiith

And to be fair, the Defiant was considered a failure until Sisko finally got it sorted (too much power for it's size if i remember right). That was only just as the war was starting, so it would take a while to get more then a small fleet of them setup.

Rawr

Myrddin wrote: »

Yeah strange alright. The real answer is because they likely wanted to show variety & variation of Starfeelt ship design for the battle shots. The 'canon' answer, is probably something like they were caught off guard by the Dominion, & never really felt they needed extreme manoeuvrability, instead favouring capital ship design. Then factor in the ship building rate of the time being slow, shipyards being destroyed, blah blah blah...yeah, I dunno really

Add to that Starfleet's apparent single-mindedness on policy and overall mission. With probably many years since the Federation's last major war, and a long running armistice/alliance with the Klingons (with a break right before the Dominion Way) Starfleet seemed to be gearing itself to be mostly a galactic police force with an exploration mission, and were content to stay there. There was no Federation 'Navy' to speak of, and when the various major threats arrived, Starfleet had to re-learn how to be a pure military force.

If they had been thinking about their military strength during the reconstruction after Wolf 359, there would have indeed been many more Defiant Class vessels in the fleet (or similar). Alas, there wasn't, they went back to 'police-mode'.

However, some later Starfleet vessels do seem to have been geared for war. The Sovereign Class 'Enterprise E' for example appeared to be far more streamlined with much of the design focused on the forward facing Quantum torpedo bay. Compared to the lines of the Enterprise D, 'E' really looked like a warship.

Going back to the original thread of this; it would have been interesting if the Equinox had been a tactically superior Federation warship. That would have produced a new level of conflict between a warship captain who fought themselves through the quadrant vs. Janeway's strategy of exploration & pure dumb luck (c.o. Kes, the Borg, etc...)

Cookie_Monster

Kiith wrote: »

Defiant would definitely take an Intrepid down. Pound for pound, it's the toughest ship in the fleet (i'd assume).

I doubt it, couldn't even outdo an ageing excelsior. granted they weren't actively trying to destroy over disable but I still think an intrepid would outmatch it on power alone.

helimachoptor

Excelsior had been upgraded and it's a bigger ship than an intrepid class

Myrddin

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

I doubt it, couldn't even outdo an ageing excelsior. granted they weren't actively trying to destroy over disable but I still think an intrepid would outmatch it on power alone.

The Lakota? A ship that had been heavily upgraded with the latest shields, ablative armour, phasers & torpedoes? It did outdo it too...."one more good shot should finish them off". The Defiant would make minced meat out of Voyager, in fact, Voyager isn't a ship I'd have ever considered very tactically strong...it's fast, & can take a beating, but certainly no match for something like a Defiant class (not in its stock state anyway, as Voyager was).

Myrddin

Season 6 done, nearing the end now

• Equinox, Part II - Fantastic conclusion to the season 5 finale. It was a bit of a stretch to believe Ransom had a change of heart so suddenly after killing so many life forms, & not long after leaving Voyager for dead, but very good episode nonetheless.
• Survival Instinct - Not a great episode really. I found it odd that nobody from Voyager questioned why there was a Bajoran in the Delta Quadrant too. It didn't portray disconnected Borg very well at all either.
• Barge of the Dead - Kinda fond of this one for some reason, something about spectral ships I guess! I like the concept of a Klingon barge ferrying the souls of the dishonoured to Gre'thor.
• Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy - Love this one, aliens spying on the Doctor get to spy on his daydreams! Brilliant concept for an episode, & I loved the aliens who had to run everything by 'the hierarchy'. The opening sequence of this episode is brilliant
• Alice - Yeah another good episode, Tom becomes obsessed with a little shuttle that seems intent on getting back to the inside of a particle fountain, no matter who stands in the way.
• Riddles - Tuvok is attacked, & left with a brain injury. This causes his whole personality to change, & he struggles to come to term with it. A really good episode, & Russ is fantastic in it as always. In a somewhat similar fashion to "Tuvix", Tuvok is again to be 'fixed' against his will, at first. Neelix convinces him that the crew needs him as he was before the accident, & he goes through with it.
• Dragon's Teeth - This puts an end to any theories of V'Ger from TMP creating the Borg. Not a great episode, feels very rehashed, very Kazon like or something.
• One Small Step - Enjoyed this one, an ancient Ares Mars Mission craft is found inside a graviton ellipse, & the attempt to capture it goes wrong. They end up pulling it off though, & giving the astronaut a proper sendoff.
• The Voyager Conspiracy - Another good episode, Seven upgrades her alcove and is able to assimilate much more data during regeneration. This leads to all sorts of wrong conclusions etc that convince her there is conspiracy everywhere on the ship.
• Pathfinder - Bit of a goosebump episode, when they finally make contact with Starfleet. Great to see Reg & Deanna back in the fold.
• Fair Haven - Absolute torture to watch, beyond redemption.
• Blink of an Eye - Really clever and original concept. Voyager gets stuck in orbit of a planet where time passes much faster than normal. As a result, a short time being stuck in orbit was the same as millennia for the people below, who could see Voyager as a star. Really cool watching the civilization progress and develop in such a short space of time.
• Virtuoso - Love this one too, the Doctor hits fame & wants to leave the ship to become an opera singer. His fame is short lived however.
• Memorial - Meh, didn't enjoy this one. The crew have memories of events that didn't happen. It was the result of a memorial thingy that sends these memories out into space, which was malfunctioning.
• Tsunkatse - Not a big fan of this either, could have been done better. The Rock makes an appearance :rolleyes:
• Collective - Voyager encounters a malfunctioning Cube, only to find it is manned by Borg adolescents. Goes against the premise of the Borg recovering their technology. Not great, not terrible though.
• Spirit Folk - Two in one season? Seriously. Every bit as painful as Fairhaven.
• Ashes to Ashes - Yeah decent episode. The plot has kinda been done before though (someone arrives on the ship & they want to stay, their people want to home, in the end they go). Interesting concept of a species propagating by reanimating and converting dead bodies.
• Child's Play - Icheb returns to his parents reluctantly, and they try to use him as a weapon against the Borg against his will. Slow and dull episode.
• Good Shepherd - Nice to see Deck 15! A band of poor crew members is rounded up by Janeway in an attempt to make them fit in better and perform better. It's an ok episode, not great, not brilliant.
• Live Fast and Prosper - Don't really like this one, never have. A group of con artists impersonate the Voyager crew & swindle people out of resources...who then go looking for vengeance.
• Muse - Dull, boring episode where B'Elanna crashes and is forced to give a playwright story ideas.
• Fury - Interesting idea, but not executed very well. Kes just doesn't come across as a decent 'bad guy', never has, never will.
• Life Line - Meh, I just don't like the Zimmerman character...I found this episode fairly dull and boring to watch too.
• The Haunting of Deck Twelve - Another not great episode, unless you're a 10 year old.
• Unimatrix Zero - Poor. Consider the Borg officially well & truly neutered by this point. Janeway, via a mind meld with Tuvok & Seven, attacks drones to have infiltrated Unimatrix Zero...ugh, come on....

Yeah, more meh than good this season I felt. The two Fairhaven episodes are utterly deplorable too, I mean, seriously, really really bad stuff. What were they thinking?

Myrddin

A quality little clip from a con in 2011 here, Picardo is actually sings a lot of the opera himself (not sure about in Virtuoso though...but this is from Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy)

Thargor

Myrddin wrote: »

Season 6 done, nearing the end now



Yeah, more meh than good this season I felt. The two Fairhaven episodes are utterly deplorable too, I mean, seriously, really really bad stuff. What were they thinking?

Time for a rewatch, I dont remember 2/3 of those!

Quandary

Voyager was probably my least favourite Star Trek series. That being said I still enjoyed quite a lot of it. Some really great episodes in there but could never warm to Janeway. Her voice, facial expressions and idiosyncrasies kept grating on me. Neelix was also a thoroughly gimped character.

overall it was an enjoyable series though

Justin Credible Darts

neelix was up there in the top 3 worst characters ever.

TNG was a decent show despite if having the other 2 most boring bastards in the history of trek in geordi and wesley

Rawr

Myrddin wrote: »

Season 6 done, nearing the end now



Yeah, more meh than good this season I felt. The two Fairhaven episodes are utterly deplorable too, I mean, seriously, really really bad stuff. What were they thinking?

Fair Haven & Spirit Folk

Few things make me want to throw heavy items at my TV screen. Few things make be scream in anger towards that screen with a vitriol that would make a docker blush. Those few things...are these two episodes. I am at a loss at what they were thinking. Had any of them ever spoken with Colm Meaney during this to get his input, or indeed anyone else on set who were from Ireland?

"The harp was the wrong way" folks. Good thing we had Janeway there to point out what was apparently the only thing wrong with Voyager's holodeck take on Ireland :mad:

You all know these episodes...there's nothing to redeem them....nothing....


Collective & Child's Play

Borg children...but not only Borg Children...but we also get Borg Wonder-Twins too! They become friends with Wildman and play 'Blockbusters' in Seven's room. Gripping stuff...which just further wrecks the image of that once great Star Trek Villain. The Borg were lame before this...now they are just silly.


Unimatrix Zero

They tricked me. For a short wonderful patch of time, I was fooled into thinking that the Borg were bad-ass again. We start off with Janeway taking on an awesome looking 'War-Cube' and then the episode finishes with her, Tuvok and Torres assimilated into Borg. Awesome!

...until Part 2. Then it is not awesome...it is the very opposite to awesome.
Remember the trouble Picard had after his spell as Lucutus? Remember Hugh and all is problems? Remember the past few season's worth of Seven-material where she's getting over what has happened to her and trying to become human(ish)?

Well...never mind all that. The Doctor has a hypo-spray vaccination that stops the whole 'assimilation' thing. So if you are going to fight the Borg, just remember your shots, and you'll be fine. The Borg are now a pointless threat. If you can hypo the Borg away, they are pointless...

Rawr

Pathfinder

Every notice that Reg and Diana almost always appear in the same VOY episodes together? No matter what old 'Broccoli' is up to, Troi somehow always manages to turn up. (Or he goes to her).

Were Dwight Schultz and Maria Sirtis the only TNG actors that they could coax back to appear on VOY? (Frakes doesn't count, he's appears everywhere)

helimachoptor

Rawr wrote: »

Pathfinder

Every notice that Reg and Diana almost always appear in the same VOY episodes together? No matter what old 'Broccoli' is up to, Troi somehow always manages to turn up. (Or he goes to her).

Were Dwight Schultz and Maria Sirtis the only TNG actors that they could coax back to appear on VOY? (Frakes doesn't count, he's appears everywhere)

Geordi was in it too

Myrddin

Rawr wrote: »

Unimatrix Zero

They tricked me. For a short wonderful patch of time, I was fooled into thinking that the Borg were bad-ass again. We start off with Janeway taking on an awesome looking 'War-Cube' and then the episode finishes with her, Tuvok and Torres assimilated into Borg. Awesome!

...until Part 2. Then it is not awesome...it is the very opposite to awesome.
Remember the trouble Picard had after his spell as Lucutus? Remember Hugh and all is problems? Remember the past few season's worth of Seven-material where she's getting over what has happened to her and trying to become human(ish)?

Well...never mind all that. The Doctor has a hypo-spray vaccination that stops the whole 'assimilation' thing. So if you are going to fight the Borg, just remember your shots, and you'll be fine. The Borg are now a pointless threat. If you can hypo the Borg away, they are pointless...

Pretty much this. A weird Borg version of 'The Matrix', Voyager & the Delta Flyer going up against a tactical cube, anti-assimilation hyposprays, & again, Voyager & a Sphere going up against a Tactical Cube (and winning!!!). Appalling stuff, real jump the shark material. The Borg by this stage have officially been reduced from overwhelming, foreboding, undefeatable and oppressive, to the equivalent of a mere nuisance.

Greyjoy

Myrddin wrote: »

Fantastic conclusion to the season 5 finale. It was a bit of a stretch to believe Ransom had a change of heart so suddenly after killing so many life forms, & not long after leaving Voyager for dead, but very good episode nonetheless.

I felt that 'Equinox' was a good example of both the strengths & flaws of Voyager. It was an interesting way to explore what could have happened to the Voyager crew without resorting to alternate timelines or mirror universes. But the story gets wrapped up in a neat bow at the end with no lasting impact.

Writer Ronald Moore worked on Equinox pt II (but not pt I oddly enough) and you can see how he brought ideas that frustrated him on Voy (no lasting impact, no dispute over chain of command) over to Battlestar Galactica (eg Pegasus).

_Kaiser_

Myrddin wrote: »

Pretty much this. A weird Borg version of 'The Matrix', Voyager & the Delta Flyer going up against a tactical cube, anti-assimilation hyposprays, & again, Voyager & a Sphere going up against a Tactical Cube (and winning!!!). Appalling stuff, real jump the shark material. The Borg by this stage have officially been reduced from overwhelming, foreboding, undefeatable and oppressive, to the equivalent of a mere nuisance.

This is true.. in reality the Federation would have been destroyed after Wolf 359 had the Borg sent more than one ship (same in First Contact).

Obviously that was never gonna happen unless TNG season 4 became Star Trek: Borg, but that scene in Parallels where thousands of Enterprises break into our reality and one of them has a terrified and barely sane Riker begging for help against the Borg that did just that in their reality is what would have happened in ours as well.

Myrddin

...and I'm done Season 7 was largely poor, & you could tell the show was seriously running out of steam, and fresh ideas. The heights of Season 3 and 4 were never recaptured, and the show felt somewhat stale through season's six and seven.

• Unimatrix Zero, Part II - Continuing on from the previous cliff hanger, anti-assimilation vaccines, Voyager taking on tactical cube's, madness Ted. Consider the Borg well & truly ruined by this stage.
• Imperfection - Seven's cortical node begins to fail, & the only other available one is in Icheb's head...a pretty meh episode really.
• Drive - The Delta Flyer II enters into a race. It's more about Tom & B'Elanna's relationship, which to be fair to her, seems pretty one sided at times. The threat of it ending brings Tom to his senses. An ok episode, but nothing special at all.
• Repression - "Pagh t'em far, B'tanay - This is a Holy time" - one last hurrah for the Maquis members, as previous brain washing comes into effect. The only highlight is Tuvok here, who once again is masterful at playing a Vulcan battling with emotion.
• Critical Care - An episode some might consider middling, but when you think about it, social issues are the very core of Star Trek. Here, the issue of inequality and two tier health systems is explored, and done fantastically well. The Doctor is excellent in this, as always really.
• Inside Man - Pretty good episode featuring a hologram of Reg sent to Voyager, but who has been tampered with my the Ferengi, in order to get some nanoprobes back to the Alpha Quadrant.
• Body and Soul - The Doctor has to hide in Seven's cybernetic systems, essentially occupying her while there. Fantastically acted by Jeri Ryan it must be said...a solid enough episode.
• Nightingale - Kim takes command of a ship on a mercy mission. It's a bit meh this one, nothing that hasn't been done a hundred times before.
• Flesh and Blood - The Hirogen loose control of some holograms. This is a far, far, stronger episode in comparison to the awful holodeck one the Hirogen were in before. Pretty decent one, featuring a delusional leader of the holograms.
• Shattered - Enjoyed this one a lot. Different parts of Voyager are split into different time frames, from before leaving the Alpha Quadrant, to the Kazon, to the Macrovirus, to the Borg, etc. Only Chakotay has the ability to travel between times, & he has to convince Janeway he's telling the truth.
• Lineage - B'Elanna finds out she's pregnant, & after seeing the baby via hologram projection, she wants the Doctor to get rid of the baby's Klingon DNA so she won't have ridges. Not a great episode it must be said.
• Repentance - The crew rescue the crew and prisoners of an alien prison transport ship. One things leads to another and one of the prisoners gets 'fixed' by nanoprobes, & is no longer psychotic. Queue an appeal against the death sentence. Again, nothing special here.
• Prophecy - The Klingos are back, thinking the child of B'Elanna is some kind of prophetic saviour...turns out she is!
• The Void - Yawn, all been done before.
• Workforce - While the concept of the crew being taken from the ship has been done before, the idea of giving them new lives etc I guess hasn't. It's a decent two parter, & good the see the ECH back once again. Janeway actually cries in this one near the end, never noticed that before.
• Human Error - Seven tries to perfect her social skills using the holodeck, & starts to malfunction. It's a somewhat cruel twist that without surgery, she can't devlelop herself any further without risking her life. At the end she's left disappointed and hurt, because the Borg continue to keep a piece of her.
• Q2 - Voyager can't do Q episodes.
• Author, Author - Interesting one. The issue of holographic rights is explored. It's actually bad to see so many EMH Mark 1's consigned to manual menial labour at the end. The Doctor though has struck the first blow for their rights.
• Friendship One - Nothing new whatsoever. Carey is killed off rather pointlessly too.
• Natural Law - Chakotay & Seven crash on a planet who are normally protected by an energy field. It's a bit of a meh fest.
• Homestead - A fitting end to the journey of Neelix. He found what is was he had lost, a family, and a true sense of belonging. Yeah, I like Neelix..so what!
• Renaissance Man - The Doctor has to imitate various crew members secretly, in order to secure the relase of a captured Janeway. Only for Picardo, there's nothing to see here.

To answer the question, "is it that bad?" I'd have to say no, definitely not that bad. It got off to a great start, stalled a little, then reached the heights through seasons 3 and 4. It did decline a little from Season 5, and significantly then from Season 6 through to 7. The writing got repetitive, and very safe...but there were more good episodes than bad ones for me.

Top Twenty Great Episodes in no particular order (there's many more fantastic ones too):

1) Scorpion
2) Revulsion
3) Year of Hell
4) Message in a Bottle
5) Hunters/Prey
6) Drone
7) Tuvix
8) Timeless
9) Bliss
10) Relativity
11) Equinox
12) Phage
13) Eye of the Needle
14) Projections
15) Meld
16) Non Sequitur
17) Jetrel
18) Hope and Fear
19) Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy
20) Pathfinder

Top 12 Absolute Stinkers, again in no particular order. These are the only stinkers I can really say are absolute stinkers. Everything else at worst is just 'meh'. The bold text ones are without doubt, some of the worst Star Trek ever put to television imo - coincidentally, all holodeck episodes. The only even remotely ok holodeck episode was Heroes and Demons from the first season...everything after that set in a holodeck was bad, everything.

1) Unimatrix Zero.
2) Fair Haven
3) Spirit Folk
4) Bride of Chaotica
5) Lifesigns
6) 11:59
7) Concerning Flight
8) The Killing Games
9) In the Flesh
10) Once Upon a Time
11) The Fight
12) Memorial

So yeah, Star Trek Voyager...a show that gets a bad wrap, but in reality, is nowhere near as bad as is made out. It can be disappointing at times given how safe the writing is, but bad, truly, actually, bad? Rarely.

Myrddin

I was too harsh on Endgame, now that I've watched it fully and let it sink in. So I'll have another go at it:

Endgame

The actual episode itself, if watched as an episode and not the series finale, is a damn good one. The scope is huge, and the whole thing ties together very very well. It's easily the best episode of the last two seasons, & ties up a lot of the ongoing arcs in the show.

As the finale, it's not as good as All Good Things (TNG), or What You Leave Behind (DS9), but it is vastly, vastly, better than These Are The Voyages (ENT). It's still good though, and while disappointing in that the actual final scenes were quite sudden...having watched it again those scenes have real impact. Perhaps not if you just pick up & watch an episode here or there, but watching the show continuously and constantly, the ending does indeed hot you, like it should.

Yes, future Janeway broke the temporal prime directive to get Voyager home, but when you look very closely at the show from Season 4 onwards, there's a subtle but growing shift in the writing, that suggests the crew are becoming more a family, than a crew. This is true, all through the last three seasons there are references to the crew being a family, & Voyager being a home. Janeway was all set to reject future Janeway's plan, until she heard that Seven is going to die, along with 22 other crew members, along the way. This is why she chose to go along with it, because rules & regulations matter to her, but nothing matters more than her crew, her family...which is something that grew naturally over the last few seasons.

The writers could have done more to shine light on this, & I feel this is why some people have difficulty understanding Janeway's decisions, particularly in the finale...they're missing the whole family concept, & that they actually moved away from being a Starfleet ship, to a ship of people she felt were her family, & indeed, when you see it, things make so much more sense.

In the end, she saved everyone. She got her family home, and what a way to do it. I've watched through Voyager several times over the years, but this time, I actually see now what happened to the Borg. Previously, I just thought Janeway destroyed one of six transwarp hubs, & future Janeway damaged a few Borg unicomplexes....but this time, for whatever reason, I let with the feeling that Janeway destroyed the entire Borg transwarp network, and indeed, future Janeway succeeded in destroying the entire Borg collective. What a way to get home, emerging from the explosion of a Borg Sphere...right on Earth's doorstep. In reality, the writers destroyed the Borg a long time ago anyway, so it's kind of fitting that they're now properly gone, or at least, the collective is gone.

"We did it...", whispers Janeway...as we see the familiar blue glow of the nacelles of Starfleet ships on the viewscreen, and that's a major goosebump moment. I imagine that final scene were the very last to be filmed, as there are tears in Garret Wang's eyes...and the whole final scene was hugely successful at conveying the complete shock, and emotion, of them achieving the impossible. The journey is over, Voyager is home, and it's all very sudden, and surreal.

The disappointing thing about it, is when I think about it, that they didn't give us more. I'd have loved to see what happened after Voyager got home, not with the new tech they had, but to the people...Harry, Seven, Chakotay...all of them. I guess the writers too the old adage very literally, "always leave them wanting more...", and this they did. A thoroughly enjoyable, and actually, emotional, ending. While seasons 5-7 weren't as strong as seasons 3-4, I will miss the show. I'll miss the characters.