Voyager revisited - this time it’s Neelixy

I've reached the point in Season 2 with the 'kazon collaborator' storyline and there's a minor crewmember called "Jonas". They keep using his name so often I've now got this song from Guitar Hero stuck in my head :

Typical Harry Kim luck. Finally about to hook up with a woman (3 at once for that matter), only for the sex itself to actually be fatal on the wedding night.

The only other time he gets lucky with a woman he catches a space STD. Our Perennial Ensign just can’t catch a break, can he?

It almost feels like we got 7 Seasons of….Seven, and while we had Kes for 3, but you’d forgiven for feeling like she was just a special guest character in the first couple of seasons.

The difference is that they actually used Seven and got some character development with a decent amount of focus on her. Kes on the other hand barely got anything. In some episodes it almost looked like they were cooking up scenes for her as an after-thought in order to her give her at least one line per episode. I think there was one instance where her only line in the episode involved giving coffee to someone in the mess hall.

I think this was a rule in Trek production at the time for the head-lining actors, that everyone got at least one line per episode. On TNG that was easy to fix in the Conference Lounge, but on VOY & DS9 they had characters who wouldn’t fit into that. They even did it for Quark on DS9 if there was no good reason for the story to go to Quark’s bar. Suddenly Quark would turn up a someone’s door with an order, which wasn’t completely beyond what he’d do, but it kind of smaked of «Crap, we didn’t give Shimmerman a line this week. Quick…he’s delivering (spins wheel)…Andorian Diamonds…to (spins wheel) Sisco….ok then…» Main diference between Quark & Kes being that Quark was already a fleshed out main character by the end of Season 1, while they failed to do this with with Kes even after 3 seasons.

They could have easily gone down the route of trying to get her to train to be a Starfleet medic. None of this «Doctor’s assistant» messing about, but her actually trying to earn a blue uniform. Then you could build on her training with Tuvok & Janeway to pass the Academy exams and eventually get up to a point of her earning a Provisional Ensign tag and that uniform. You could even cook in the personal challenge of her knowing that she’d never live long enough to see the Federation but still wanted to join Starfleet Medical on principal.

Oh don't mention them. So annoying and the Borg baby that just disappears.

Kind of linking back to Kes, Year of Hell even got forshadowed in the episode featuring Kes jumping through time thanks to the Doctor trying to extend her life with Kronotons. We get to see the Krenim and even the torpedo hitting Voyager in YoH is a direct reference.

Kind of intesting that Janeway didn’t heed Kes’ warning about the Krenim, but I guess if she did the episode couldn’t have happened.

Trek production was nearly at the point where I think they could have tried a longer Year of Hell. This was a year before the multipart ending of DS9, but also coming right after the multi-part beginning of the Dominion War arc. Both of those were excellent, but I suspect that Berman was still so set in his ways that he didn’t want to risk his TNG Clone with what he probably saw as some kind of gamble.

If not a season, Year of Hell deserved at least a multi-episode arc, as well as finishing without the Reset Button. The Year should of been allowed to leave an impression on the crew and the show as a whole.

Pretty much alas. Voyager actually has some really excellent episodes, but even those are a little weighed down by the show's own shortcomings. Year of Hell for example has some very good moments that resonate more that a lot of what we got on a regular Voyager episode. Things like a blind Tuvok trying to hold onto a normal life after loosing his sight. Seven of Nine having to share quarters with normal people and the "Odd-Couple" comedy you'd expect is happening off screen there.

And of course Janeway becoming more and more like Capt. Ransom as time moved on (which just adds my annoyance of her behaviour to the Equaniox would be a season later).

Much of Voyager lacked this sense of "scarcity", so much of which was ditched in Season 1. Everything becomes so very vanilla outside of these event episodes where the ship is spotless and pretty much everything works. They even have reasouces to throw at a huge Astrometrics Lab and a fancy new Super-Runabout (with custom Flash Gordon controls). I feel this why it's so forgettable. It's TNG, but not as good.

I have a lot of time for Janeway as Captain. In the beginning I wasn't sure at all, but she grew on me.

Kes I just found intolerable. A yellow-pack Troi.

I don’t think they ever managed to create a decent sense of Voyager being screwed without Starfleet support beyond maybe Year of Hell and Basics. Morals-wise they never seemed to make their mind up with Janeway. Some weeks she’d be solid “Starfleet way or no way!” Then other weeks she’d be “Ensign, We’re 75000 light years from the Alpha Quadrant. We need to bend the rules sometimes”

I guess bargaining with The Borg is probably the trickiest thing she’s done morally beyond Tuvix and torturing Equinox crew members.

Otherwise I guess the only main difference between TNG and Voyager is that if a local belligerent wrecked the Enterprise they’d be inviting a visit from a Starfleet Task Force in the near future. Voyager never had that luxury.

Yes and Voyager could and should have been so much better. The one thing that really bugged me about TNG was nearly at the end of every episode they woukd go back to a starbsse for repairs even when the ship barely took any damage at all.