Star Trek: Voyager was launched 25 years ago and continues to have a strong fan base, but it never achieved the same level of ratings as its predecessor, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Bryan Fuller, who had worked on Deep Space Nine before writing for Voyager and eventually becoming a staff writer (then story editor, then co-producer), was the guest on the latest episode of the excellent Inglorious Treksperts podcast to celebrate Voyager‘s 25th anniversary, where he revealed some of the show’s inside drama.
Voyager chasing The Next Generation
Fuller spoke about how from its start, Voyager was “very much a reaction” to the more serialized Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which had premiered two years before, adding the show was “in some ways an antidote to the vision of Deep Space Nine.” Fuller talked about how Voyager was pulled in different directions, trying to recapture the magic of TNG, while differentiating itself from DS9:
I think Voyager initially was trying to be The Next Generation and finally decided what it was going to be around season four. I think part of that in a strange way is we lost very quickly the dynamics of the Maquis interacting with a Starfleet crew. They were terrorists and committed terrorist acts and everybody was like, “It’s okay, let’s all go together.”… That’s not good storytelling. You need to know these characters are coming from a place that is culturally different, so they can’t just be regular members of the crew which it fell into very quickly to solve the problem of Deep Space Nine.
The podcasters and Fuller acknowledged that eventually Voyager found its voice and delved into some high-concept science fiction ideas. Fuller gave a lot of credit to showrunner Brannon Braga and Braga’s writing partner Joe Menosky, while pointing out their struggles with Voyager co-creator and executive producer Rick Berman:
Brannon Braga should be given a lot of credit – Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky – and it really was their two voices more commonly than anybody else’s. I think what was interesting in the evolution of the show was you could sense the creative struggle. I witnessed the creative struggle when I was working there. There was an appetite for these bigger, bolder science fiction stories. And there was a lot of resistance from Rick Berman in embracing them because he was chasing The Next Generation and was not allowing Voyager to be the show that it could be.
Season one publicity shot for Star Trek: Voyager
The “Year of Hell” season
The season four episode “Year of Hell,” written by Braga and Menosky, is considered one of the Voyager‘s best. In the two-parter, the crew was split apart and facing its greatest threat yet, from Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) of the Krenim Imperium, who used time itself as a devastating weapon. During the podcast, Fuller talked about how the writers were originally hoping for the Krenim to form a much longer serialized arc, but the idea was rejected by Berman:
The “Year of Hell” and the behind-the-scenes drama not only to craft episode, but that season, was fascinating because we wanted “Year of Hell” to last the entire season. We wanted to see Voyager get its ass kicked every episode and through that season was going to be marbled the story of Annorax and the time ship that was changing things. So, we would go back to it every once in a while to remind the audience that is the larger story. But [it was rejected] because Deep Space Nine made Rick Berman allergic to serialized storytelling, violently so.
Fuller spoke enthusiastically about how the longer serialized arc “charged up” the writers:
We are really going to be on the outskirts of the galaxy and we are going to be fighting enemies that are kicking us when we are down. The crew is going to have to separate and we are going to be following episodes that are going to deal with people on shuttlecrafts with escape pods that are electrically buoyed together. There would be an episode where you never saw Janeway and never saw Voyager because you are with the people who are on the escape pods trying to find a new source of power or safety. It was like creative crack for the writers’ room, because all of a sudden there were so many opportunities.
Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway in “Year of Hell”
Fuller then talked about the letdown when the “Year of Hell” season idea was rejected:
I remember Brannon going over to Rick’s office with all of this enthusiasm and coming back broken and his head hanging low and having to break it to the writing staff. We all felt like we were doing it, we are making great Star Trek. For him to come back and say we can’t and we can only do two episodes as opposed to twenty-two, it was heartbreaking. There was an interesting division between what Rick Berman wanted the show to be, which was episodic and for the syndicated audience, and how we wanted to be creative storytellers playing with the Star Trek toy box. “Year of Hell” is such a fascinating point in Voyager history.
As for why Deep Space Nine didn’t have the same struggle, Fuller explained that DS9’s showrunner, Ira Stephen Behr, “didn’t give a fuck what Rick Berman said.”
Ira was like, “I don’t care, this is what we are doing and if you don’t like what we are doing, fire me… If you are not behind it, then I suggest you find someone else to do my job.” He was kind of fearless about it. He was righteous creatively and knew that this was the right direction for Deep Space Nine.
Kurtwood Smith as Annorax in “Year of Hell”
Listen to Fuller talk Voyager with the Treksperts
There is much more from Fuller about Voyager, so it is worth listening to the full episode. Inglorious Treksperts is available via Apple Podcasts, the Electric Now App, or your preferred place for podcasts. You can also listen to it below via Stitcher.
Keep up with all our stories involving Star Trek: Voyager here at TrekMovie.com.
A full season Year of Hell would be interesting, only if there was no reset at the end of the season. Just like the reset at the end of the 2-parter.
Indeed the reset is the main reason why I don’t even think it’s a very good episode. UPN virtually telegraphed how it was ending (“Time’s up!”) in the Next Episode teaser.
Agreed. Year of Hell never happened to our characters — so why should I care? The two episodes are bad enough. A whole season of that would be unwatchable.
@plastics Only assuming there would be a reset button. I find it difficult to believe the show as Braga envisioned it would do that after a whole year and not have characters remember it all at the very least. The reset button was clearly there to appease Berman and probably UPN, wipe away any hint of a storyarc.
This is the first I’ve even heard of Braga actively pushing for more serialized storytelling. Prior accounts from Ron Moore seemed to portray Braga as being in lockstep with Berman. (Moore specifically felt betrayed by this during the brief time that he worked on VOY)
To defend Braga, Moore joined Voyager in Season 6, so by that point, I’m sure Braga would have been demoralized and acknowledged what would be approved and what wouldn’t.
@sam This is not the first time I’ve heard it mentioned that Year of Hell was meant to last longer, Braga has brought it up in the past.
He’s brought it up many times. And Moore was only briefly on the show toward the end of the run.
Well, “Dallas” did that and got away with it. (Pam waking up and finding Bobby in the shower. Entire previous season in which he was dead never happened.)
Younger people may not understand that reference!
Even Dallas watchers at the time, who were not too discerning, whined about it.
Hey! Some of us are moderately discerning. — I think I remember being disappointed with the, ‘it was all a dream’ shower scene because I wanted to know how they were going to get out of that. And what the fallout was going to be, and when it was ‘all a dream’, I got no satisfaction. — as other commenters have said about the year of hell, If it never happened, and they don’t learn anything and they don’t retain anything, then why do I care. And that’s a very disappointing and dissatisfying feeling.
There were many bad choices made in Voyager. I looked forward to them getting home (for the entire series!), and when they did, it just…ended. No epilogue, no anything. Very disappointing. Voyager was disappointing and pointless.
That was soo when Dallas jumped the shark…
@Ian Yes. We agree about the reset button being a critical factor to whether it would work.
It would have, however, if they were upfront about the plotline to the audience, I mean, if they openly made the plotline about Voyager trying to destroy the time machine in order to revert time to a pre destructive state, then it would be a watchable year.
We would all be hooked for a year wondering if and when Voyager would be able to destroy the time machine, and I think the audience would feel a sense of collective accomplishment when they succeeded after a year.
Albeit a bittersweet victory if there were no memories about what happened. Though a record of the events of “year of hell” could always be written in to the conclusion using some type scfi magic, like a subspace data stream that survived the revert, so the crew of Voyager might not remember the Year of Hell, but they could read about it in their own words, or see images. Just a thought….
I suspect the season would have concluded with something like ENT “Dead Stop,” where the ship gets repaired or even improved by advanced technology.
I would think that the very existence of the time weapon and the idea that Annorax was repeatedly altering the timeline would sufficiently predict and reveal to the audience that this was probably all going to be undone. Start killing off main characters, permanently wipe out Voyager’s Warp Drive at some point… I think Trek audiences are smart enough to go, “Hmmm.” ;)
Just my two cents.
Great ideas start with a thought….Now how did the borg evolve? Cellular Automata maybe?
Eh, I would have been fine with a rewind button, if that was what the crew set out to do.
Like if fe. after half a season they had lost so much, so many people that they decided the only way to fix this is to make it all go away, even if we lose our memories of it, and then have them work the rest of the season to accomplish that.
I think it might have worked better if it were done in the final season.
I’m so glad you wrote this, Zaid. You’re absolutely right.
I think it shows Fuller’s deficiencies as a writer if he thinks you can gave a whole season only for the reset button to be hit at the end. At least Timeless had alternate Harry send a message back.
The more I read of Fuller, the more I think he’s a bit of a hack, who got lucky a couple of times early on and is dining out on that for his whole career. It explains why Discovery is such a mess.
Yeah I have to agree. I was bitterly disapointed with the reset button at the end of Year of Hell. I would have LOVED a season-long year of hell arc. But ending it with a reset button would have been terrible.
Good discussion here.
I didn’t mind the reset button after a two-parter, and I might have even enjoyed the situation running a few more episodes, but not for an entire season. It would probably have lost me and many others in the audience.
Whenever I hear this kind of either/or, I think about Farscape which was able to land multipart serialized episodes in the middle of a season and then revert to episodic with longer-term arcs. I’m not sure why this seems to be such a rare format, but that’s about as far as I would have been comfortable with for Voyager.
I mind it (in principle) because I’m a firm believer in the theory that a really good idea only works once. ST in general rarely seems to understand this.
Yesterday’s Enterprise was already Star Trek’s (and Berman Trek’s) “it happened but nobody really experienced it” time travel story. It’s no coincidence to me that no subsequent Berman Trek time travel story (except for some of the comedies) has rated as strongly, and certainly none of Berman Trek’s subsequent “reset” stories.
No one thing is ever an automatic deal-breaker, but Year of Hell ultimately did something that Berman Trek had already done on quite a few occasions, and they had already done it both better and worse. Not to mention UPN’s own advertising gave away how the second part was going to end.
For anything longer than a two-parter, I think they would definitely have needed to avoid the reset ending.
Interestingly, Farscape’s Season of Death (S3) was what came to mind while reading Fuller’s description of what Berman ultimately shot down.
There would have to be some sort of reset, you couldn’t leave voyager in the state it was.
The reset button ending for the two parter I think is a great dramatic irony and works really well thematically with what the story is about. Would that be as satisfying to reset a whole season? Probably not but I quite like it for the two parter ending.
I don’t mind the reset that much. In my head canon, since the Borg have some sort of temporal sixth sense, Seven becomes vaguely aware how much of a family or “collective” the Voyager crew is and is drawn a little closer to them. This being still early in her development.
Interesting division here between Ira Behrs and Brannon Braga’s reactions to Rick Berman. Would have been interesting to see Year of hell as a whole season.
Brannon was just out a few years out of college, and looked up to Rick, so he probably didn’t feel he could challenge him the way Ira could.
Imagine if Behr had run Voyager instead.
c d,
uhh, no thanks. The talented writer folks on DS9 would not have gotten the opportunity to shine so brightly and bring their visions closer to fruition. I say closer because there was a lot they didn’t get to do, even with Behr, but he clearly made a huge dif, probably why DS9 is the only series that matters to me outside of the original 66-69 show.
maybe he could’ve run both and kicked berman off the staff!
Not a good idea. Behr would have had to split his attention between DS9 and VOY. Also he would have had to waste his time fighting with the network and DS9 most likely wouldn’t have been able to kind of fly below the radar and do what they did.
That’s why I said ‘imagine’. It did not appear to be possible in reality.
I find all of this rather typical and not surprising. Look fwd though to hearing the podcast though when there’s time.
At least Rick Berman’s Klingons were watchable! Honestly, I find it difficult to take Fuller’s criticism of anyone when he was fired from “his” Trek show for not giving it full attention.
Great point! He’s a mess of a show-runner and couldn’t plot his way out of his own house.
His career is mirroring Bob Orci’s…a lot a bling for a few years, then you find out he’s a bit nutty and his on-screen material is not all that good.
Interesting that Kurtzman, also with on-screen material not all that good, was able to pivot and take over all of Star Trek, especially after his failure at creating the Universal Dark Universe.
Kurtzman is kind of lowest-end form of Berman (who I thought was the lower end), mediocrity is king. The folks at Universal were smarter (slightly) than the CBS ones, they knew to torpedo that ship once it demonstrated its malformed keel was going to steer it into more and more trouble.
And yet, Rick give us a lot of years of good Star Trek. Fuller give us a crappy pilot with Klingons Orcs.
At least the actresses are being respected now
What did Berman do that was disrespectful? I’ve not heard any accusations?
Terry Farell has spoken out against Berman in multiple interviews, and Marina Sirtis and Patrick Stewart called him out on gender-based pay disparities. Those would be the two off the top of my head; the DS9 documentary and the fan wikis that cite recorded interviews are decent sources.
I posted a youtube link further down that goes much more in depth into Berman’s behavior, as well as his limitations as a creative force for Trek and his restrictions over more creative people. Doubt I could get away with posting it again in the same talkback.
He did not bring us a lot of years of good Trek. Middle-phase TNG with Mike Piller was when Rick was most in his element. That and his largely ignoring DS9 (and apparently allowing Behr to ignore him in turn).
Oh yeah I knew about that, he was a hard ass as far as being a show runner goes, hell he was probably a lot better than a lot of other producers at the time, he was a product of his era and I still think he did a solid job given how much work he had to do combined with the studio pressure.
I don’t think he ignored other creative forces either, just showed them why their ideas wouldn’t work for Trek, I agree though if they were going to take risks on a show it should’ve been Voyager not DS9. IMO Voyager should’ve been the darker show, DS9 should’ve remained the more Roddenberry’esque show because of where they were located.
Typical Disco fanboy reaction. Evreything that is not Disco is a rapist, misogynistic, bla bla bla.
For your information, Voyager put the firs FEMALE MAIN captain of a ship. It was not Disco.. it was VOYAGER under RICK BERMAN.
Yes, Marina earn less than the rest.. but guess what.. she was and still is a BAD ACTRESS.
And the issue with Terry was not about female or male, it was an issue of an actror or actress demanding more money from the studio and been rejacted.
Stop acussing and trying to ruin other ppl life with out any proof.
Maybe Voyager’s producers should have acted more like Ira Behr. It seems like the less involved Berman, the better the stories were.
I think VOY was the main reason Behr got away with what he did.
Behr has said as much. I don’t know if I read it somewhere or if he said it in What We Left Behind, but basically he’s of the opinion that once Voyager came along, no one paid attention to what DS9 was doing anymore, so they were able to get away with a lot of things.
Voyager was more scrutinized than DS9 from everyone. It was the number one show on a network rather than a syndicated show with no fixed time slot. Paramount and UPN had their say, so Berman was probably feeling that on top of his own preferences, good and bad, and as it’s been said, Braga appeasing him probably saved DS9 from his asserting more control. It also got him the job of co-creating Enterprise, a big notch on his resumé but another victim of network interference and the show where Rick Berman was then trying his hand at writing. Braga never had it easy after TNG.
Berman had his moments. The middle seasons of TNG were his, and those were outstanding. But he must have burnt out or something and just got stuck in “I want more of the same” pedestrian stories with Voyager and Enterprise.
This is a very interesting listen. I was actually very surprised by the overall tone of it, even though most of the purported facts agree with things that have been said before.
Renegade Cut channel — Berman Trek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE
I always thought Michael Pillar had more of a hand in the middle seasons of TNG than Berman.
Creatively speaking, I think he did.
Berman had more authority, at the end of the day his was the final word, the combination of a good producer like Berman combined with a gun writers room and Pillar was a match made in heaven. Unfortunately Star Trek hasn’t been good since Season 4 of Enterprise
Berman’s input on those middle season (overrated IMO) was still mostly negative, writing on BROTHERS, making sure the music was creatively neutered and vetoing risky choices (Frakes wanted to have a male actor play opposite him in the Melinda Culea single-sex-race episode.)
Sounds like the Zindi storyline which I think ruined any possibility of Enterprise actually being an epic series. Just got tired of it dragging on and on and on….
Now, if that had been the Earth/Romulan War instead of the never-mentioned-before and mentioned only once since Xindi, we might have had something.
They were leading to that… Had they stuck around. According to Manny Coto.
That is not a common take on season 3 of Enterprise. The general consensus is that season 3 was a large improvement.
Seasons 3 and 4 of Enterprise were great, seasons 1 and 2 were good, they were probably more solid than TNG’s first 2 seasons.
No argument from me regarding S1 & 2 of Enterprise vs TNG’s 1 & 2. But I did like Enterprise from the start. Never warmed up to Bakula, however.
I must’ve been one of the few that liked him all the way through, it was an interesting character arc from naive explorer to troubled military hero then back to a blend of warrior/leader/explorer by Season 4.
I like what they did with the character. But I never like Bakula in the role. He always seemed forced to me. He never felt natural. He felt like he was acting.
Ehhh, agree to disagree I guess. I liked him as much as all the other Captains, Pike, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Gerogiou.
Fair enough. I didn’t mind the character. In fact, I liked the character. Just felt that Bakula was not right for the role. Conversely, I never liked the Picard character. But Stewart held massive charisma and played the part brilliantly.
Xindi, not Zindi
Looking back, to the chagrin of the writers, based on the two episodes in question I am glad they didn’t get the go ahead to do the 22 episode Year of Hell story arc – although I have to admit, maybe the writers could have come up with some really great stories. We shall never know. Considering Fuller was one of the leads in creating Discovery, it’s not surprising that S1 was a serialized Klingon War year-long story arc. If Fuller was never brought on for Disco, I wonder if there ever was discussion of making Discovery episodic? In the end, fans now have multiple series to watch and it looks like SNW will be more episodic so I guess everything is turning out just fine, but I am sure they could have saved themselves a lot of heartache.
The way I heard it was that Discovery was never thought of being episodic, but more like an anthology series where every year there’d be a different crew or different part of Trek being focused on.
That was Fuller’s take on it. Different centuries, different crews.
and I believe fuller wanted to have uniforms more in keeping with TOS, so the visual change wasn’t rly his idea? I don’t know if it would’ve looked like SNW or not but it’s interesting to ponder.
These guys were amazing. Writing 22 episodes each Season!? That must be Hell! Very talented what they did with Voyager. I enjoyed the show very much. Timeless and Blink of an Eye are my favorite episodes.
Ahem, 26 episodes. :)
And this is what it has come to. People being impressed with what used to be the norm. It’s like thinking if a staring pitcher goes 5 innings and gives up 3 runs today it’s a “good outing”. When 30 years ago it would have been seen as not very good.
The high episode count is one of the main reasons for a lot of frustratingly average to mediocre episodes.
That has been proved to not be the case. There are a LOT of short season shows out there that are not very good in ANY episode. Most that I have encountered in fact.
And yet there are a lot of such shows that are consistently good. In fact I don’t know of any series in which a shorter season didn’t benefit the production.
I also don’t know of many FX-heavy genre shows that performed consistently at 22-plus episodes/season.
Farscape and Buffy both managed it, after a rocky couple of seasons. I don’t think BSG ever did, even at 20 eps (its 13-ep 1st season will always be the strongest).
And Star Trek? Outside of TOS season 1, not a change. For Berman Trek, the middle seasons of TNG and MAYBE DS9 come the closest, but still with plenty of weak episodes every season.
As for VOY and ENT, forget it. You were probably lucky if you found 12 good VOY episodes out of 24. Same with most of ENT, same with early/late TNG, and even very early DS9.
I’d say the Stargate shows did consistently well with having at least 20 episode seasons and those were especially FX heavy series.
Long seasons of episodic shows will always produce dog episodes. But shortening the season doesn’t help. In fact short season story arcs are HEAVILY relying on the story arc. They are essentially one giant episode. If that one story doesn’t work, then the entire season sucks. Perfect example… Star Trek Discovery. And I have seen some Netflix originals that were pretty darn bad from the beginning. And I’ve some others that were interesting. The fact is, short seasons do not increase the odds of good shows or even episodes. At all.
Star Trek has WAY too many “dog” episodes. When up to half a season (or more) can be dog episodes, its’ a problem. Having to churn out 26 episodes has rarely worked for ST; they’ve proven time and again they can’t do it. The writers’ room needs time to fracking breathe between coming up with stories — and without being told they’ve used up their seasons’ budget in two episodes and everything else has to be bottle shows.
Whether episode count encourages or discourages serialization is neither here nor there. So what if the overall arc doesn’t work? That’s going to blow the whole season no matter how many non-arc episodes you have. Yours sounds like an argument for not taking any risk at all (Safe Trek). STD’s a bad example because they’ve either got too many people in charge or just bad people (one of the two). There is nothing to show that giving them more episodes would produce better results when they can’t even manage what they have.
TOS didn’t have a lot of dog episodes until season 3. In fact, their good to bad ratio was pretty high. Do not confuse this with saying there were none in the first two seasons. Just saying the ratio was good. TNG is the show that had a lot of dog episodes. They did have some that shined but the majority were mediocre to bad.
I’m not saying don’t take chances. The concept of Secret Hideout to do different genres of Trek as well as the short Treks is a good idea and in theory should encourage new ideas. But in three seasons of short season shows they have not fared very well at all.
My point was not that traditional longer seasons will give you good shows. Only that shortening the season does not guarantee the shows will be good. It doesn’t even increase the chances any.
Where was Jeri Taylor during all of this? Wasn’t she still technically the showrunner in season 4?
I thought she was being mildly steamrollered out to accommodate Braga, though it was peddled as an early retirement. Hard for me to feel sympathy for her, I think that even for what she brought to the show in terms of female perspective, she still harmed trek with her cramming meat-eating throwaways into scripts and playing it safe and non-edgy a la Berman. She even helped trash GEN’s open by telling Berman you can’t go from one action scene directly to another, which scuttled the transition from century 23 to century 24 and instead landed us the lame boating scene.
honestly I consider myself an intersectional feminist and a lot of the opinions she pushed were pretty regressive, even back then. like the mother who tells you a short skirt is “inviting trouble”.
Kaitlyn,
I was trying to be polite and not knock her too hard, she did write THE OUTCAST. Personally (well personally/professionally) I have issues with her because I wound up having to pitch to her instead of Piller when something came up with GR on TNG and I think she didn’t know her stuff yet (12/90.) Even the pitch I made that Ron Moore defended and championed (when the other guy in the room stayed quiet) just got ‘picard wouldn’t do that’ from her, without much in the way of elucidation.
that sucks, I’m sorry you had that experience. Also personally I hate The Outcast lol. It was trying to be “the gay episode” but it ended up being about gender instead, and very clumsily so I might add. Honestly Profit and Lace was closer to a trans experience, and that’s ALSO awful, lol. Such gems in The Outcast as “there’s no gender neutral pronoun in English” (hello, “they”), or conversion therapy actually working and being defended by the main guest star at the end.
Hey, on a series where SYMBIOSIS was supposed to be their AIDS metaphor show, THE OUTCAST reads like CRIME AND PUNISHMENT! Very good point about the conversion therapy aspect, I guess I was swayed by the show doing a downer ending (about the only good takeaway on SYMBIOSIS as well, and my giving passes to un-good TREKs with downer endings goes all the way back to TOS and A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR.)
I guess I’m one of those odd fans who never love the Year of Hell story line and was happy it was only two episodes. People talk so much about this story and it definitely is an interesting one but I can only imagine how messy that story line would’ve felt by the end of the season with so many alterations. But maybe it would’ve came out great. I just didn’t want an entire season of the Krenim being the villains because no offense they weren’t exactly at the level of the Dominion either. I think I would’ve got tired of them fast.
That said I agree with pretty much everything else he said. The ball was dropped hard between Starfleet and the Maquis where people always point out Chakotay as an example. Not five minutes he’s made first officer he’s become loyal as a puppy. Realistically he can’t be battling Janeway every episode or have the Maquis take over the ship because they are on the other side of the galaxy. But there should’ve been MUCH conflict and tension in those relationships besides just Seska.
And yeah Voyager should’ve been more serialized but I don’t think its Berman alone who was against it as the network people were also very much against the idea and an executive from Paramount on the What We Left Behind documentary said just that. They didn’t want the shows serialized at all because hey were afraid of losings audiences every week. DS9 only got away with it because it wasn’t on UPN and was allowed more freedom than Voyager. But yes it became a MUCH better show because of it as well.
I enjoyed the episode but an entire season on that storyline is unnecessary.
“I just didn’t want an entire season of the Krenim being the villains because no offense they weren’t exactly at the level of the Dominion”
That’s the whole problem with VOY’s premise: *nothing* can be at the level of the Dominion, because the lone Federation ship would be outgunned. So all antagonists need to be technologically unsophisticated (the Kazon) or implausibly neutered or magically defeated (the Borg).
I really fear we’re going to see a repeat of this problem in DIS season three. Thousand-year old technology is not going to be a match for anything. Even the Battle of Agincourt and the longbow was only 700 years ago; how would longbows compare to Civil War or WWI technology, much less today’s?
“Even the Battle of Agincourt and the longbow was only 700 years ago; how would longbows compare to Civil War or WWI technology, much less today’s?”
This is a fascinating analogy and I have frequently brought up these past comparisons to illustrate why there are too many “anachronisms” particularly in the new series, yet we have to admit that there is no guarantee that history always progresses upwards. As for what is happening (or rather, has happened) 930 years in the future of Discovery, the more apt historical comparison may be the 500 years between the retreat of the falling Roman Empire from Britain, and the (re)unification of Anglosaxon kingdoms. If the Federation has fallen and the galaxy has entered a dark age (especially if the nadir has been reached close to the 31st century, as other, unimpeded excursions into the future seem to suggest), all bets are off.
That is one of the reasons why that far in the future has often been depicted as dystonian or where a society has fallen apart. That way writers don’t have to come up with what tech might be around in a 1000 years. That is an awfully long time….
That was my one real beef with Voyager. That the Maquis merged so very well in with the star fleet crew so very quickly. It reminded me of how quickly Burnham when from pariah to beloved crew member in just 3 episodes. They started off with a few problems but they faded out pretty darn fast. I would have thought that the bad feelings might have stuck around a little longer. Although to play devil’s advocate here a bit… If they did that story element might get pretty old pretty fast. And if they wanted to survive they would have HAD to work together. But it would have been nice if it took a little time for the Maquis crew to learn that lesson.
The Maquis were made up of former starfleet officers, that was made clear from when they first appear in STNG. They were only against the Federation because of the deal they struck with Cardassia. As soon as that disappear their no reason why wouldn’t integrate back into being good officers. Many many people in starfleet was against the deal as well.
The Year of Hell was a good opportunity for the Marquis side to come out again, as they fight the newly restored Krenim empire, greatly expanded even beyond Annorax wildest dreams. As they have to teach their non Marquis friends to be rebels an terrorists. That could open up a lot of storylines.
wow that thought is so good i may actually watch Hell straight through to think about the Maquis angle. More of a V-miniseries feel.
@david knowles That is a lovely idea. A bit like Kira teaching Damar her techniques, but giving much needed development to what was supposed to be a core element of Voyager. After season 2, apart from the odd reminder like Worst Case Scenario, Hunters or Shattered, they just dumped that aspect of Chakotay and Torres and certainly never bothered to develop any new recurring guests. Chakotay going rogue to stop Seska in Maneuvers and Suder’s untimely demise were basically the last vestiges.
Year of Hell is a awesome episode.
Just commenting to say that I can’t believe these post-games on Inglorious Treksperts podcast eps don’t go up sooner. It’s essential listening for pre-2009 Trek fans.
Despite these restrictions that Berman enforced, he did eventually relent and I would still have Berman era Trek over what Kurtzman is doing
I wouldn’t. I’ve seen enough Safe Trek for one lifetime. I’ve mostly lost faith in Kurtzman, but he’s still required to succeed the Berman stuff if his is to be the only Trek game in town.
I agree with you bro.
Sadly I agree with you as well Captain Neil. I don’t hate Kurtzman and support him but funny 20+ years later I still watch all the Berman shows no problem and still really enjoy them. In fact I’m watching a Voyager episode as I type this. Maybe future seasons will bring more interest in the Kurtzman shows but so far none of them has been a huge draw after watching them the first time.
Ironically maybe because they are probably too serialized (and not very strong serialized stories so far).
Funny I feel the same way about most of season one of Discovery so even though the local SciFi channel was showing Choose Your Pain this week,I was going to pass on it. I relented of course and surprisingly it was actually quite good as a standalone episode. Same thing happened regarding the music, there is a new YT posting of a violinist playing the themes from all 7 tv series. She got to Discovery and Picard and surprisingly I have a newfound appreciation for Russo’s two themes – I really liked hearing them! I could take or leave them before – this pandemic must be making me soft haha!
Yes I saw that violinist video here and commented on it. I’m not in love with the Discovery and Picard themes but as you said listening to her play them made you appreciate them more.
As for rewatching the new shows, yeah for me its really first season of Discovery I have the least interest in rewatching. I have watched a few in the last few years but I have zero drive to watch them, but mostly because I just felt very let down by season one in general. Season two does fare a little better for sure and I actually forgot I rewatched Brother just recently, the day we found out Pike was getting his own show. I was so excited over the announcement I wanted to watch his first introduction again and its still VERY good. But generally speaking outside of a few episodes I don’t really feel the need to rewatch anything although I will try and rewatch all of season 2 before season 3 starts. But I said that about season 1 before season 2 startes and I never did.
At this point in time, Fuller sounds downright anachronistic, a broken record from the past… I saw what Fuller’s vision of “serialized grimdark Trek” looks like in Discovery; I say NO THANK YOU to that and welcome back escapist episodic storytelling in Strange New Worlds!
Ironically Fuller answered his own question. Voyager was not allowed to be serialized and dark because DS9 was. Even back then Berman was trying to strike a balance for a diverse audience, as Kurtzman is (belatedly) now!
VS, I really think that this is the key point.
To every “Oh, wouldn’t that have been cool” sentiment, I’d like to point out that a grim or even grimdark endless loop was not the premise/concept for Voyager.
With so many fans calling out for a return to episodic Trek where it doesn’t take an entire season of darkness to get to the optimistic/aspirational conclusion of a storyarc, can we not see why Berman would have said, NO this is not within the format for this show, especially when our other Trek offering is leaning into that format.
Voyager was promised to fans as a premise to get out and see the new and strange and to get out of complex political and diplomatic stories.
Let’s step back and think how the Trek audience would have felt to have Voyager move to week after week of hell, while DS9 was in its final seasons.
Or, let’s think of what it would be like if they did something like that with Strange New Worlds a few seasons in.
Fortunately, one thing that has come out clearly from Goldsman and Kurtzman is that they know what the format, concept and premise for each show is. There have been times when I’ve winced and thought that they were too locked into “this is what you have to do in a serialized story structure”, but if they give the same commitment to maintaining an episodic foundation for SNW, I won’t complain.
You know I will say while I was genuinely excited to see what Fuller would do with Discovery, I think it probably would’ve been even darker if he stayed on. I appreciated Voyager because it WASN’T overly dark and cynical. And now thinking about it that’s why I didn’t love Year of Hell so much. Yes, as a two part episode, fine, but I don’t know if I want see that brutal future for 20 episodes either. I think that’s why Fuller liked it, its kind of what attracts him looking at all the work he’s been doing since he left Star Trek. And its good work, I like both Hannibal and American Gods, but I don’t need Trek that dark either.
DS9 was a darker show but it was never bleak or cold like how I felt Discovery was in season one and thank Kahless they did much less of that in season two. If Frakes is right about season 3 and its suppose to be more upbeat and optimistic then that’s a big positive but I’m still guessing its going to be a bit dark.
The year of hell was an amazing episode. There was even a indication that they were going to meet such an enemy through a previous episode involving Kes when she went through that whole bizzare time/age jumping phase who remembers that at the end she wants to write down what she remembers about her experience. However disappointingly that part was never used. The Krenem story was very interesting, so unusual, using time as an actual weapon, the time ship looked incredible. Temporal weapons and shielding all were cool. But I agree with most others here that a reset at the end of an entire season would just have made it all seem pointless. Avoid that and it could have been aswesome.
This post should be a wakeup call for those folks calling for the Pike series to be episodic.
VOY is the only failed Star Trek series. It had some impressive acting from Mulgrew, Ryan, and Picardo (and mediocre acting from everyone else); it broke ground with a female lead; and it did have some high-concept episodes after Ryan joined. But on the whole, it suffered from very poor writing, and the militantly episodic nature of the series was a huge reason why.
An episodic SNW risks creating this situation on steroids: a cast with real chemistry squandered on pointless forehead-of-the-weak aliens and simplistic, 40-minute, commercial-friendly plotlines. Hell, throw in some 1980s cliches like an endless parade of divorcee characters-of-the-week portrayed by celebrity guest stars. This is not the recipe for success in the second Golden Age of Television.
SNW needs to be serialized. The excellent casting will not save it otherwise.
SNW fail from the start, another precuel from the same guys that did Discovery and Picard.
I would assume that they’ve leavened their lesson, furthermore Goldsman even stated that events will follow characters from episode to episode
He said it will be less serialized than DS9, which is already more episodic than I think most fans are willing to acknowledge. It will almost DEFINITELY be less serialized than, say, Buffy.
Buffy was the first time I saw a show be serialized all season long. Although about the first half to 2/3 of the season were mainly stand alones that contained small elements of the season’s arc. Towards the end of the season it become all about the overall story. Enterprise kinda worked that way too. A lot of stand alone stories up front but they were more in line with the overall arc than Buffy was.
Buffy I believe illustrates the ideal balance for a serialized episodic television show.
Yes, and I think the Xindi arc worked pretty well, too. You just have to find a way for a stand alone episode that has an element of the overall arc in it. Good writers are able to do that.
“VOY is the only failed Star Trek series.”
Stopped reading after this.
Yeah… That didn’t earn much respect from me, either.
Yeah. There are other failed Star Trek series.
It’s not even reflective of reality. One can only take the assertion as a statement of River Temarc’s personal opinion.
ToS lasted 3 seasons before cancellation, and much of the last season is pretty bad (due to the change in showrunner). But it’s remembered for its success in syndication.
Voyager is the most streamed on Netflix globally. It’s ratings in first run on UPN, a marginal network at best, weren’t great. Now however, it’s outperforming other Trek offerings.
We hear of fans, including physicist and Trek science consultant Dr Erin MacDonald, who were brought to the franchise by Voyager. I’ve reported here that for a long while, it was our kids favourite and one of them still goes back to rewatch Voyager again and again.
So, despite the inconsistent commitment to its original concept and format, there is something about Voyager that really works for many people. It’s it’s own thing. It filled it’s own niche in the menu.
Perhaps it was never fully appreciated even by its own writers room, but these ‘if only’ stories from creatives and fans who still don’t understand that Voyager was and is one of the most successful Trek offerings, is getting tiresome.
Yes, getting very tiresome indeed.
I think it’s fair to say VOY was the weakest of the ST shows prior to Kurtzman Trek, by virtue of being the most derivative ST series overall. Might even have remained the weakest if Kurtzman Trek could have retained the consistency of STD’s first eleven episodes.
TOS is balanced by one having one of ST’s all-time strongest seasons in its first. Overall its balance of great to terrible is about equal with TNG. Whereass VOY is the show that offers the least of what we didn’t already have from TNG.
I don’t claim to account for how well it performs in streaming. Except I’m more likely to stream it just because I already own almost every other ST on physical media.
Enterprise was much weaker, in my opinion.
ENT at least tried to be different. It was the NASA version of Berman Trek.
VOY was like a diluted version of TNG’s finally phase, the kind of bizarre “high concept” sci-fi that characterized Braga’s and Taylor’s rising influence over TNG. Only without the TNG chemistry.
“ENT at least tried to be different.”
I think the premise was meant to be different, but the show failed to be different. In the end the vast majority of episodes could have been told on TNG or VOY with very few changes. That’s not different, that is same ol’ same ol’. VOY was diluted TNG. ENT was diluted VOY.
There’s no such thing as diluted VOY. Such a statement would require that VOY and ENT share characteristics in common with each other that neither shares with TNG (they don’t). You’re literally attempting to one-up what I said using my words.
However you’ve highlighted the core problem with Berman Trek, which is that everything’s a copy of a copy. VOY was just a vehicle for making TNG-styled episodes. ENT started out as a vehicle for making more TNG-styled episodes. Even DS9 was originally intended as a vehicle for making TNG-styled episodes.
And don’t forget… TNG was trying to copy the lightning in the bottle that TOS captured.
My response is Discovery season 1 & 2 and Picard. Strong evidence Secret Hideout seems to have a problem mapping out even a short season story arc. There is no reason to think SNW would be better off being serialized. And every reason to think it may be bad no matter which direction it goes because the same staff is running this show that is running the others.
I really want to be wrong because Mount was a shining star in STD S2.
Akiva Goldsman will be heavily involved with SNW so I am not hopeful. Even Mount, Romijn, and Peck may not be enough to save it.
Way too bold for Rick Berman. Berman weirdly didn’t like DS9, and so with Voyager and Enterprise we got “TNG incrementalism” types of series instead. So this bold and creative concept was NEVER to going to happen under him. The latter Berman area was disappointing, to say the least, and eventually went down the shitter with Enterprise and those awful two final TNG movies.
I know it’s filmed and won’t happen, but sounds like a good season of Discovery… 900 years in the future, like a caveman with rocks and a club going up against Stealth bombers.
this is why i quit voyager and ds9 is my favorite show… i was just telling my friend who has been watching ds9 with me for the last year… (we only have 8 to go) and explained the premise of voyager then after all that i say none of it really maters they just want to be tng.
I liked what he said about Behr. That he didn’t care what Berman said. Classic.
Yeah, that was refreshing.
Ronald D Moore was annoyed with Voyager for the same reasons. He felt it should have treated its premise more honestly. He wanted photon torpedoes and shuttle craft counted and checked, for example.
Thankfully, he got to do what he wanted to do with Voyager on Battlestar Galactica.
Yeah BSG is very much Moore’s answer to Voyager. There are so many similarities on a surface level, but changed up where it counts.
Starfleet and Marquis having to coexist is very much Adama and Roslin for the first half of the show. Equinox is Pegasus. Deaths are common and the ship getting progressively more damaged are things he wanted in Voyager too. It’s even about a ship(fleet) trying to get home to earth.
BSG is my favorite sci fi show of all time.
BSG was a mess especially season 3 and 4. Great mini series, good season 1, went rapidly down hill from their when they realise they didn’t plan out a story and just through random crap onto our screens.
“Instant Shuttle: just add water.”
>:>}
I have said and will always maintain that Berman and Pillar duohandedly tried to kill the franchise!
Pillar?
Pillar saved Star Trek. Without him the franchise would not have survived another year. It was barely hanging on after season 2. Everyone involved agrees Pillar saved the franchise by making show about the characters and story and not just high concept plot.
Incidentally, high concept plot and underdeveloped characters are what held back Voyager and especially Enterprise.
What? Michael Piller turned the ship around for TNG in season 3. There’s just too many stupid comments on here lately.
What are you saying? Pillar literally saved the whole franchise after he joined TNG and turned the show around during season 3.
No they didn’t try to kill the franchise. Paramount as a company did.
Voyager did perfectly fine. It lasted seven seasons! A show doesn’t go that many seasons without doing something right. But there were always signs that the creative juices were running dry all throughout Voyagers lifetime, with glimmers of goodness, interspersed with a lot of tired stuff done over and again since TNG.
Piller was there with Berman in S1 and S2 and it was basically a continuation of where TNG left off in S7 of that show.
Personally I enjoy Voyager. It’s sometimes just nice dip in and out of show without having to watch entire seasons in order to understand what’s going on. These were the days before catch up and internet streaming. If you missed an episode on TV then it could be weeks or months until you might’ve been able to find that episode again.
DS9 didnt go overboard with serialized tv, it sort of pushed the boundaries for it’s time. It’s still an overall episodic series.
Star Trek has suffered for the last few decades with bad producers, Berman and Braga previously and Kurtzman now. Could you imagine how good Star Trek could be with someone who knew what they were doing?
I dare to dream.
I understand this guy opinion as an expert writer that wanted to make a name for himself. But he forgets what Star Trek stands for & for why it is loved my its many fans: original ideas of Rodenberry and Rick Bergman. The show is about hope and a bright future for humanity. So, Im going to stand as Ira Behr: this is Star Trek, if you want something else then leave! Why do you think DS9 failed? because it wasn’t ST.
And I believe many things think the same way about ST.
I don’t think ds9 failed, it’s the only post TOS show that didn’t fail.
And I think you’re going to confuse a lot of people by suggesting Berman had any decent original ideas in his head, let alone that fans loved them.
Well there we have it again, proof that we need different formats of Trek shows for different tastes.
Why does this thread bring out such pronouncements of ‘This Failed’ or ‘That failed’ from so many on this board as opposed to ‘That series never engaged me, but I get that it has its audience?’
I won’t look to you kmart for any openmindness about new Trek offerings.
I loved ToS as a gradeschooler when it was in first-run, and as a teen when it was in early syndication, but are at least half the episodes that I find mostly unwatchable now (and I’ve been trying because of the kids).
For me TNG, and the Berman-era shows in general revived my interest, and I happily watch them again and again, with the exception of Enterprise.
But pronouncements about overall success or failure based on personal preferences doesn’t make for a conversation.
TG47 not sure if this ruins your op of me but BEYOND for all its faults (and act 3 is one big fault) is still the closest I’ve been to being entertained by a TREK feature in three decades.
It was wise not to make that story into a season. It was interesting, but too depressing and not in keeping with the optimism otherwise seen in the show.
This is exactly why Voyager failed as a show in my opinion. I don’t hate the show, but I can’t watch it again because I am constantly reminded of all the wasted potential. Voyager starts off with a decent premise and then throws it overboard within the first few episodes.
Does half the crew (that we see, anyway) being Marquis even matter beyond the first few episodes? There never is any sort of power struggle, not even the slightest tension aboard the ship. If you start watching the show a few episodes in you might not even notice that this isn’t a regulation starfleet crew.
Are the resources actually scarce, as the characters claim? The only consequence we see is that the use of replicators is rationed. But still, the ship has enough energy to spare to have the holodecks running 24/7 to give us an unholy amount of awful holo episodes that move us even further away from the premise and tend to not even develop the characters in the slightest. The endless supply of shuttlecraft and torpedoes are obvious and often mentioned (rightfully so), but it goes beyond that. Hull plating, technical components, hell even crewmembers … are never gone for good. At the start of the next episode, the ship will look like fresh out of the drydock.
Why even bother with the premise of Voyager being isolated, low on energy and supplies, incorporating the enemy into its crew to even barely function, if none of that really matters and the show desperately tries to be a clone of TNG? Nothing that happens in Voyager has any consequences due to its strictly episodic format. A more serialized approach would have helped the show tremendously.
The Podcasts have no meaning to me as long has there seems to be No ReRuns Anywhere …
Aol.com
Where are the ReRuns
I personally dislike serializing a story for a whole season, that is why I am not a fan of the new Star Trek Discovery.
One thing I never understood about the Year of Hell-two-parter was that they pretty much ignored the fact that Kes warned them about these upcoming events. In the “Kes-time-jump-episode”, Janeway approachs her at the end, saying “Tell me more.”, yet in Year of Hell, they all act like they never heard of this. Did Annorax erased the Ocampas?? That would be the only explaination I could think of.
@startrick Real world explanation is that there was a Kes line in Year of Hell that ended up getting cut, not sure if it was actually filmed.
argh i hate details like that getting cut. it’s less bad when stuff is formatted for streaming – though they presumably know where they will cut when they sell it to TV broadcasters in a couple of years – but even that has weird things, like a few seconds of narek getting re-jailed cut in the finale :/
@Ian Thanks for this, I never heard of that before. I have a feeling it was disregarded because they feared the audience who missed the previous episode would have been confused or something. Too bad, though – I always found the two-parter confusing just because of that. I wondered what I did miss.
(…and I just realised that erasing the Ocampas from the timeline wouldn’t have helped matters. After all, without them, no reason for the Cartetaker to warp the Voyager into the Delta Quadrant.)
@StarTrick Of course it would not have been an issue if they’d done their original plan and had Year of Hell be the season 3 finale/season 4 premiere. Making Scorpion was a relatively last-minute decision.
Lost interest in voyager.
I have never been a big fan of Rick Berman. Compared to Gene Rodenberry, Berman just doesn’t get it. He seems to be a typical Hollywood stereotype who lacks the vision necessary for a show like Star Trek. Star Trek under his oversight had thousands of star systems and planets to explore yet he seemed to be stuck in a search for self in way too many episodes.
And in hindsight DS9 is a cult hit that is still thematically relevant and watchable today, while Voyager is overall unmemorable.
Then years later the new Battlestar Galactica did not just a year of hell but four, with the exact premise of lost in space must find home, and is one of the best sci-fi series made.
I think a full “Year of
Hell” would’ve been great. Only perhaps without the temporal plotline? Just going through an area of space that’s inhabited by “space pirate” types and being continuously attacked. Or if the temporal reset button plot was included, then later episodes could reveal “impossible” consequences to those events like Yesterday’s Enterprise did with Tasha Yar/Sela. It’s a shame because the last shot of part 2 revealed Annorax was still working on Temporal Mechanics. Could’ve been some good follow-up stories either way.
That was an extreme idea being considered there!
Having suffered through Season 3 of Enterprise I am glad a season long arc of Year of Hell was not green lit. I hate to think of the amazing single and double episode stories that would have been cut to make way for such a season. That said, it would have been good to have a 3 or 4 episode story arc as Year of Hell was ripe with potential. A season long story arc is not my idea of Trek as it is the diversity of stories that is a key element of TV Trek’s greatness.
Hm…? If you ask me, Enterprise’s 3rd season still had plenty of stand-alone episodes. DS9 wasn’t much different in that regard, so I don’t think it would have changed Voyager’s episodic approach as much as some people might fear.
I think what would have changed the most would be the impression that the Voyager is really all alone there, and the Delta Quadrant is a dangerous place. They have to think twice how to use all available ressources. The stakes would have been higher.
In the actual show you never really got the impression that the stakes are high, ressources are low – or that they were in any real danger – it just felt like TNG. “Set a course for starbase 177. They not only have coffee but also new crewmembers, new shuttles, new photon torpedos. We will be fine!”
I agree Richard Lutz.
2 episodes was a bit too little given the Year of Hell had been foreshadowed the previous season. A whole season would have lost me though.
Some seem to forget that what we got on discovery was Not what fuller would have done.
He left before and the treatment burnett mentioned sounded a lot different.
Discoverys wrong doings are not Fullers fault.
indeed!
Unfortunately I think most fans like to gripe about the conceptual/pre-production design work (especially the Klingons) and just park there. So that everything bad = must be Fuller’s doing while everything good = must have been done afterward by the revolving hired-then-fired creative teams that “saved” the show.
I mean, I’ve even heard Nick Meyer’s contributions to the GOOD classic movies (you know, the even ones) trivialized, citing peoples’ idle speculation about whatever happened to him and his work (we don’t even know) on STD.
Nevermind that STD has been without a real identity since Fuller left, or that Kurtzman Trek in general (no matter who’s in the writing room) seems perpetually unable to block a fully-realized and meaningful story ever since 2/3 the way through STD’s season 1.
ST was ready for an overall retroactive facelift after DS9 (which I think at least benefited from being styled after TNG just because so many fans were already having trouble accepting it). And TNG’s by-then-tiresome “Ka-Pa-Cha!” Klingons were also already due for a retroactive facelift in my opinion.
Yeah its like blaming Alex Kurtzman for all the Writing of all of NeoTrek.
People seem to not even know that there are a ton of writers included in these Shows.
Fuller has ruined shows wherever he’s gone — he a disorganized mess that always blows up the production budget. And he couldn’t plot his way out of his own house. His horrid Klingons re-design just stunk, and his handpicked special effects company had to be replaced to to subpar work, causing a 6 month delay. He creates good atmospherics, but that’s about it. He should go work on Westworld at HBO — that’s the perfect show for him — great looking, but makes no sense.
Thank goodness Moonvies stepped in with some adult supervision (Not that Moonvies was a good guy of course)
Methusalem. Thing is, your claims are pure speculation. You cant know the Les monves stepped in. Or that fullers “handpicked” vfx company created bad work. Or even if Fuller was fired. He said he left…. because he wasnt able to do what he wanted to do.
But still you judge, based on purely speculative claims.
And thats something so odd with fandom. This you jump on the train because of some stuff someone said and IT suits your needs for gossip. Regardless if true or Not.
Midnights Edge Syndrom
One thing is for certain though, Fuller seems to have trouble working within a studio system. He needs to have full control otherwise he just gets dismissed. He seems a bit egotistical in that regard. While his Hannibal and Dead Like Me were very good shows, I think him not being consistent in the business is not a good sign in general.
Well Jako,
What became Discovery’s spore drive engineering annex was originally supposed to be a photon torpedo loading bay (!??) built at great expense. This and other preproduction decisions were taken fairly early on, so Fuller can fairly be critiqued for them.
Production Designer Tamara Deverell who was brought on board 4 episodes into season 1 has talked about being really surprised by the size of the bridge and how she needed to come up with ways to repurpose some of the original designs.
Whats the Problem with a Torpedo loading bay? I dont see the point. We dont know what excactly it would have been.
we only got what we got and dont know what could have been. So citisizing Fuller for something we dont know what it would have become is fairly odd.
We saw a version of the torpedo loading bay in Star Trek 2009.
You can seen the relationship in the design. The wall that held spore canisters was likely intended for munitions. Tamara Deverell made it clear that there was just a modest redressing of the set.
I found it bizarre to see 23rd century ships with manually loaded torpedoes. While I like thhe submarine warfare of older Trek, manual loading (except as a specialized adaptation or retrofit) in an age of robotics is darned anachronistic.
What we saw in 2009 was not a version of Fullers Torpedo loading bay. It was just a Torpedo loading bay.
I don’t think a season would have worked. Enterprise did this with the Xindi, and that was a failure. Today it makes more sense, but in the 90s?
I miss Voyager.
dont be sad. They will back back in some hundred years!
A year of hell series, or half series would have been awesome.
I’m watching the DVDs now.
And seeing them get attacked and 10 minutes later have a shiny new ship seems implausible.
There should have been Mark’s on the walls and carpets.
Panels missing, damaged and not replaced.
Broken doors.
Everything none essential cosmetic should not have been replaced.
The ship should have become utilitarian in nature.
So the year of hell series would have really shown voyager off as a starship very much far from home.
Voyager was great, but there was a lot that wasn’t right.
The marquee members were too quick to join the crew. The ship remained too shiny and new.
Where did all the shuttle craft and torpedoes come from?
Why wasn’t there any damage marks on the ship’s hull?
It should have been so much better.
Don’t feel too bad for Braga. He got to screw Jeri Ryan.
OMG, seriously?? I never understood why fans needed to give him shit over that.
Same reason they read tabloid. They want to feel better about theire own lifes reading shit about others and judging the hell out of it.
DS9 was my least favorite of the Treks. It was ok, but no TNG, Voyager, or Enterprise. I am very happy with mini stories being done in 2 episodes. Maybe they could be stretched to a third episode, but after that I want a different thread. I’m SO glad they didn’t do the whole season on Year of Hell.
Doesn’t surprise me that Rick Berman was the biggest issue with Voyager. I wish Braga stood up to Berman the way Behr did. Voyager really could’ve been a great show.
Berman would’ve just demoted him, or had him let go. Never a fan of Braga’s nutty “high concept” sci-fi, but I think I’ve more sympathy for him now.
Rick Berman is an idiot if he didn’t like deep space 9. It ended up being one of the best of trek
In your view Ryan.
There are a lot of us here who like and appreciate DS9, but don’t agree that is the unequivocal best. Certainly most would agree it has among the best moments, but so do other series.
It’s also a matter of balance in Trek offerings though.
Both Voyager and Enterprise were conceived as responses for those fans who wanted to have ships that got out and explored, that bumped into new species and phenomena.
Many fans were weary of diplomacy, long mysteries (Odo, Dominion) and political arcs. They wanted less serialization. They wanted captains and crews who met situations beyond coping with in a civil Starfleet way. Once TNG was shifting to cinematic features, the chorus for “let’s get out there” became more shrill.
Presently, we see Strange New Worlds announced as an episodic show to balance the heavy serialization of Discovery and Picard. However, if Secret Hideout had started with an episodic series, there would have been derision from those who see serialized drama as the apex.
Since he created the thing he can’t hate it that much lol.
And what he was saying at the time WAS very true. Star Trek never really focused on war before. Yes, plenty of TALK about past wars but on the shows themselves it never went beyond showing a conflict over an episode or two and were usually wrapped up after that. DS9 changed the game in so many ways and why Discovery first season could be about the Klingon war.
And I think he was against serialization because frankly many producers, writers, network executives were at the time. Yeah it was starting to be done more in a few places and of course soap operas were always a given but for old school TV people it was still something you just don’t do because all it took was for someone to miss one episode and if they felt too lost they were probably not bothering the week after that. We just live in a very different time today. You don’t have to worry about missing episodes to anything anymore. But back then it was a risk.
But then of course by the time Enterprise came on the air things were changing more. Berman and Braga were the ones who decided to do a season long Xindi arc in third season. But that was nearly ten years later after DS9 first did it so clearly he was coming around to it and actually saw just what it did for DS9.
The funny thing now is if they remade Voyager that show wouldn’t get green lit UNLESS it was serialized from the start. It’s crazy on the 180 TV has done on this.
Voyager was always better than DS9. And more successful. Serialized storytelling is one of the things that are ruining Star Trek. Remember that God awful last part of Enterprise? I kept waiting for it to be over so it could return to some good episodic adventure, but it never did. The Xindi arc ended and the show was cancelled. So much more could have been said and done with that last season, so many adventures. Instead they beat that one story to death episode after episode, week after week. Berman was proven right in the end. While there was always an overall progression to the best Trek, it always worked best as an episodic show. If this week’s story or approach is not your cup of tea, no worries, there’s always next week. No need to be locked in to a particular concept for and entire season run. TOS and TNG are still the most popular, followed by Voyager. That says something. Most Trek fans never wanted it to be a space soap opera. Leave that to another show. Space Above and Beyond or something……..
As an aside,for the same reason, the comics industry is suffering. Not enough one-shot or short issue (3-6 installments) runs. They are obsessed with “arcs” that just go on, and on and on…..until they run out of gas. Or get cancelled. Sound familiar?
You Do know enterprise did Not ended with the xindi arc…. Right?
Just once I would’ve loved for Kurtwood to call one of his officers a Dunb-ass. Lol!
kurtwood?
Voyager could have been so much more if Berman had been tossed aside. He was the worst thing about the 80’s-90’s Star Trek.
Pure speculation.
could have been worse too…
but we got what we got.
And as trek from the 80-90 is what defined trek…. Do you actually like trek? There is Not much more than what berman gave is.
I’ll bite this one.
I absolutely love ST. I love Classic Trek, I love Roddenberry Trek (especially The Motion Picture), I love Bennett~Meyer Trek (particularly Meyer’s Nautical Trek). I like Kelvin Trek (and even love the first movie).
I don’t love (or even “especially” like) Kurtzman Trek, so far, save for a few of the Short Treks and maybe the first 3/4 of STD season 1.
And I’ll never love Berman Trek, unless I can have my TNG (see Roddenberry Trek) and DS9 a-la-cart.
I don’t acknowledge Berman Trek as having any particular “authority” over how to do ST — any more so than any other version of ST I have just named. (And if you tell me some rule of quantity determines otherwise, I’m not listening).
“Really, seriously? We went from Nautical Trek to this? Homogenized Trek is to be the future from now on?” That became the frustrated experience over the years with Berman Trek.
I don’t mind being told I’m not a “real” fan because I don’t love Berman Trek. At that point I’ll choose to take it as a compliment.
Its just that basicly TNG,ds9, voy anf ent plus the TNG movies are berman trek. And thats the majority of trek.
Its not about being a real fan or not. It should never be about that. Every fan is a real fan.
Personally I have no big opinion on berman himself. I just think that under his eyes trek was defined and shaped the most.
Yeah only us fans makes these odd distinctions. For most people Star Trek is just Star Trek. I don’t know anyone personally who could tell you the difference since they only watched some of the shows or movies. They may know them by the characters and show names but that’s about it.
I don’t care who made what, I only care what I enjoy and I enjoy most of it. A lot of it comes from Berman but some of it doesn’t, who cares? I don’t love the new stuff that much now but I didn’t love all the old stuff that much in the beginning either, especially TNG and DS9, now my top two favorite shows.
Trek was defined under Berman the most for sure, but Star Trek will continue to grow and evolve, its never going to be about one show runner or director anyway. It’s all one beautiful universe (or multi-verse) and I’m happy all the characters and stories from the past moves on with new iterations and story tellers which is why I still like Picard even if the execution was a bit off (but just so happy to see this era and characters again) and I hope is done well with SNW. That’s what Berman did for a very long time, but as we are seeing now others are doing it. How successful it will be will be up in the air for awhile, but the beauty is there is SO MUCH Star Trek today there is plenty of something for everyone to enjoy.
A REAL fan just cares about Star Trek, period, and don’t spend time putting people in boxes of what Trek they like, which is sadly done here allll the fucking time.
I love nearly all of them and I appreciate Voyager so much more today than I did when it started. We’re all talking about the show like it just came on yesterday and clearly still has a big fanbase 25 years later that its still talked about, shown everywhere and plenty of cast events, specials and merchandise still being made. When the top 7 of the 10 most rewatched episodes on Netflix are from Voyager 20+ years later, it’s doing something right. ;)
But yeah it’s not everyone’s cup of black coffee either and completely understandable.
Rich berman is the reason Voyager was taken off.a big headed arse who was and is full of himself.he put great actors out if work,crew,series back workers.he needs to be taken down from anything in making a series.we fans of Voyager knew there was more material that could be in the show.but not with a Hitler that wants to destroy something that he doesn’t want to do.hateful hateful little man
Voyager ran 7 years – the same as TNG or DS9.
In fact, I believe that the expectation of a 7 year run was built into the contractual agreements of the creatives.
While I can agree that Voyager had the potential for a longer run, railing at Berman seems misplaced.
Paramount/UPN had its own bigger strategy and Voyager was sacrificed for that from the beginning, with a premature launch through significant meddling from network executives.
Berman would have had to have made a compelling strategic case to UPN to keep it going. Voyager’s ratings on UPN were not great (however much of the problem was UPN itself and it’s sluggish rollout beyond major metropolitan areas.
So, while I appreciate the irony of Voyager’s success in streaming (much like ToS’s in syndication), blaming Berman for not fighting Paramount to get an 8th season for Voyager when Roddenberry couldn’t keep ToS on network television for more than 3 seems unfair (and the tone of your post very certainly is).
What I love about you TG47 is how balanced you are about all of this, for every show. I wish I could be that way lol.
But I agree with your view about Voyager completely. It had its problems but that was mostly being on a network that wanted things done a certain way like all networks did. VOY and ENT were lesser shows than TNG and DS9 but because the demands were harder on them being flagships of a new network that never really thrived. It says a lot when it was basically gone a year after Enterprise left and barely last longer than a decade. I imagine if Voyager was syndicated it would’ve had more freedoms to do other things. I’m not saying it would’ve been better, but it could’ve been a different show in many ways UPN clearly was not allowing it to be.
Thanks for the cheer Tiger2.
I really do find things to like about all of the shows, but neither will I hold any of them up as perfect, or the ideal for every audience.
What I can say is more Trek has held more of my attention over more than five decades than anything else. So, all of the series have more than earned my respect.
I agree with that. I love all the Star Trek shows. The newer ones, not so much, but they are still very young and I’m still very excited to see where they go next.
I said this before but I treat all of Star Trek like my children, some are just better behaved than others. ;)
And its weird I love Voyager more today than I did back when it was airing. I always loved Voyager, but yes not at the level I do TNG, TOS or DS9.