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Voyager Eulogy
When Voyager first came out I sort of considered it the red-headed stepchild of the franchise. It's premise, that the Voyager had been thrown 70k light years into the Delta Quadrant by "The Caretaker" and that it would take 75 years to return, was in my mind contrived and inconsistent with the model of physics that the Franchise had embraced. (There is no way it would have taken that long to return using high warp, remembering the restriction of high warp speeds was enacted by the federation only after Voyager was deemed lost).
So, like many, I ignored the show until much later in the franchise's lifespan. (It wasn't a coincidence that I started "catching up" with Voyager only after I purchased a Tivo.) I figured, what the heck, and put a season pass on the show. After watching it, I noticed that, like many of the Star Trek series, it had just needed to get its legs and have its characters get comfortable with the roles and the mixed bag of writing that came from the incredible hunk of crap that is Berman/Braga's idea clump (I won't grace them by saying they have brains).
That said, I started to enjoy Voyager, and I even came to like and look forward to watching it. I still do look forward to seeing the episodes I missed, as I'll just continue to exercise my denial over what the evil bastards at Paramount have done to the franchise to service my need to watch starships blowing stuff up. (Something DS9 served well in it's later seasons).
Seeing the season finale, I realize now that while I enjoy the series, I wish you could thumbs down particular ideas in the Tivo. Specifically, I'd like the ability to make it impossible to watch any Star Trek show that has anything to do with:
- Time Travel
- The Holodeck
- Super Smart/Psychic characters
- The Doctor getting reprogrammed by the nebbish aliens.
What happened to the writing that brought us The Wrath of Khan, for god's sake?
My beef with modern Star Trek aside, what made this particular episode of Voyager so disappointing? The use of time travel in the season finale, combined with reminding us of the logically inconsistent existence of the Borg Queen (played by the really great and terrifically creepy Alice Krieg, from First Contact), and frankly a lazy approach to ending the series, having the characters do things counter to their established ethics and morals to bring the ship home and wrap up the series.
Slight Spoiler
Also, the use of advanced weapons of the
future to make it easy to deal with the borg was like playing Doom in god mode, pretty but boring, and in the end, pathetic.
End Spoiler
A pretty concise description of the poorly titled Endgame can be found here on the LogBook.
In the end, you'll feel like Voyager deserved a better ending and the Franchise, a better show. I think the tombstone on the series should read "Selectively enjoyed, despite itself." I'm afraid the same will be said about Enterprise, 7 seasons after its debut.
That episode also ruined Trek for me too - but not for the same reason. It was the first time I realized there's such thing as fanwank. Scotty is cool and seeing him interact with the 1701D crew was cool, and the retooled Old Enterprise bridge on the holodeck was cool, but aside from that, the episode was a particularly low-rent Next Generation dealing with an abandoned Dyson sphere and not a damn thing else. It wasn't a BAD episode per se, it just... by having Scotty there, it should have been a masterpiece, a classic, like "Best of Both Worlds" or "City on the Edge of Forever". Instead it was an ordinary episode disguised as a classic by Scotty's presence. Some fans can't tell the difference. But eventually I noticed the difference - and the episode became "less real" as a result.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I find it amazing that Voyager had an entire season to hit every bullet point in your list, but instead came up with nothing more than ten seconds of Voyager and Earth, then cutting to credits.
DS9 was taken by surprise when they found out they weren't going to have another season, and still, they did a better job of wrapping up loose ends. It was rushed, but the well-informed fans knew why, and those who weren't still got a damn good story. What would you prefer: Particle-of-the-Week Torpedoes, or the Cardassians turning on the Dominion, and the Founder responding with a scorched-earth attack on Cardassia Prime?
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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Voyager wasn't such a bad concept, it had the potential to REALLY open up the Star Trek universe by showing a part of the galaxy that had never been explorered by the protagonists. The trouble was in the writing. TNG started off pretty weak, most of the stories felt like rehashes of ideas from the original series. THen season three hits and they've got a much larger budget, cooler looking uniforms and you've got Mike Piller and Ron Moore busting off some badass sci-fi. The end of season three/beginning of season four was some well written sci-fi drama, one of the most often acclaimed. Same with seasons 4/5. DS9 had Ira Steven Behr who practically single handedly fleshed out some of the most memorable characters from the series namely Quark and the Grand Nagus. Voyager started strong with some good writing by Piller but slowly Bannon Braga seemed to end up doing alot of writing and Rick Berman just sat back and let teleplays cross his desk that involved little character development or plot. There was no analog for Best of Both Worlds or Redemption in all the years Voyager aired. It was pretty sad because they had had some excellent writing, Braga was the co-writer of All Good Things for chrissakes. I was disappointed that Voyager couldn't seem to retain decent writing but I think alot of that had to do with Rick Berman being in charge of it all. He just let crap get produced. Then again maybe he was as odds with Paramount because they were shelling out beacoup dollars for a show that didn't really compete against any of the other networks offerings. Anyways, I hope Paramount follows the Fox gameplan and releases the series' seasons on DVD (as been done with x-files).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
After the second viewing, I feel even more strongly that the finale brings out the worst in the series. It relies entirely on inventing all-powerful future technology while abandoning Janeway's (already horrible) character. Let's count the number of things fabricated to make this episode possible: tachyon immunizations, anti-tachyon pulses to close temporal rifts, Klingon time travel technology, retractable armor for ships (which mysteriously malfunctions at one point, so that the future Harry Kim must help Janeway), transphasic torpedos (while Voyager used its supposed allotment of 32 torpedoes in the first season alone), transwarp hubs, nueral interfaces, a quick allusion to future stealth technology, Borg adaptations against various aforementioned technology, a borg-killing virus, and the ability to hide inside Borg spheres. Am I still missing anything? Oh, at the last second they realize they can destroy the hub and get home, with no explanation, overcoming another plot obstacle. I bet that if I watch it again, I'll find more.
And then there's Janeway. The future Janeway is great - devious and cunning, and she appears to have been truly scared and changed by her experiences. On the other hand, the present Janeway is an entirely different person than she was in the beginning of the series -- she abandons the Temporal Prime Directive, after numerous occasions in which she refused to allow the ship to get home because of Prime Directive issues. I sure hope that she gets Court Marshalled and jailed when she gets back (anyone who saw the last Captain Braxton time travel episode: "You are hereby placed under arrest for crimes you will commit"). It's completely, 100% out of character for her to do these acts, let alone for her to accept Admiral Janeway as really being a future version of herself. She's too damn stubborn to listen to anyone else.
Not to mention the inherent time travel issue that comes up all the time and is never explained: now that Janeway's home, you can be sure that Starfleet will make sure she can't try to go back in time again. If so, then she won't guide the crew home, and we'll revert to the alternate future. In that one, Janeway does help the crew, and we go to the "real" future, which then brings us to the alternate future again. . . etc, etc, etc. This issue comes up in many episodes, where the actual time travel negates the reason for time travel in the future, which leads to this temporal paradox.
By the way, did anyone else notice that Ron Moore was cited in the credits as Visual Effects Supervisor? Wasn't he the writer who left the show because he saw that putting Berman and Braga in charge was stupid?
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
There are a lot of reasons why Trek is in the state that it's in, but the main ones are Rick Berman and Paramount itself. In some ways, the death of Trek started in its own popularity.
Trek is a massive cash cow for Paramount, a major franchise for them. Because of this, they were far less likely to do anything that would cut off that revenue flow. Basically, they couldn't take risks whith the story, because that might cause people to stop buying Trek stuff, and take a few precious pennies away from Paramount.
Rick Berman is equally afraid of losing that income, because it would mean him losing his job. Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps this is because higher-ups have tied his hands. He's not the kind of person who can revitalize the franchise.
By far, the best thing to do was to end Voyager gracefully and end the Trek franchise for a while. Bring it back with new blood in a few years, and bring it back to the spirit of the original, episodes and characters that actually take chances and make the audience think. Then, maybe, Trek can get back to where it should be.
He was just obeying his Evolutionary Prime Directive.
The restriction of high warp speeds (speeds above Warp 5) was made in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode called "Force of Nature" (originally aired 11/15/1993, so this would place it in the "middle" of the last year of Next Generation). In it, they explain that continued usage of warp fields, particularly the stronger ones created at the higher warp factors, on the same area of space gradually breaks down the fabric of space and makes it unstable, and that this unstable space would, if exposed to warp fields enough, break into a permanent hole into subspace.
.25 below that for about 6 hours, and about .75 below that for about 18 hours, before ripping itself apart or needing serious repairs. I would think Voyager would follow similar rules.
Thus, the Federation decided to put a restriction on their ships that the highest speed they could travel would be Warp 5, unless prior permission was granted or an emergency occurred. This limit would be in place until research was made to either fix the damage to space or make modifications to new and existing drives not to damage subspace so much.
(Yes, this sounds an awful lot like some of the stuff the EPA and various environmentalists come up with from time to time... and that's the message the episode was trying to get across)
Now, Star Trek: Voyager was started in the fall of 1995 (or, in the universe of Star Trek's terms, about a year and a half after the events of "Force of Nature"). There was a line in the pilot episode, I believe while Lt. Stadi was taking Tom Paris to Deep Space Nine to board Voyager, where it was stated that Voyager had been equipped with engines that were more friendly to subspace and allowed them to bypass the Warp 5 restriction set by the Federation.
Now, I may be wrong about the point at which they stated it, but they did say it. Also, this being a year and a half after the events of "Force of Nature", it is possible that they had already done enough research to produce the correct kind of engines.
As to the point of Voyager taking 70 light years to get home:
In the first episode of Voyager, as Lt. Stadi was taking Tom Paris to Voyager, she stated Voyager's top speed was Warp 9.975. Now, I don't have the Voyager Tech Manual (Shame on me, I know!), but I do have the Next Generation tech manual, and in that manual they state that the Enterprise can withstand it's highest speed for about 15 minutes, about
To keep Voyager from ripping itself apart or stopping every so often to do extensive repairs (which are required at a Federation Shipyard, which Voyager didn't have access to), Janeway probably had them traveling about Warp 7 or 8. That, of course, would still be much less than the 70 years they stated.... more like about 55-60 years or so, but still a long time. However, remember, Voyager was designed to be a short range ship, and probably wasn't stocked completely full of enough fuel (Dilithium) or supplies for a trip that long. In fact, I highly doubt if the supplies they had on board if even fully stocked would take them much more than 3 years at continuous warp. That, and think of the effect you have during a long trip (I know you probably haven't traveled 3 years continuously, or even one year continuously, but seeing nothing but blurs of stars going past month after month gets awfully boring!!)
They probably factored in the possibilities of meeting new species, shore leave, finding species to trade with, stopping and fixing the ship in the middle of nowhere when it broke down, and maybe even stopping for a year or so to set up a mining operation to mine more fuel (which they'd have to do this at least a few times during their trip). If you think about it, those tasks, multiplied by about 20 or so times each (and that's being very modest, if you've seen the series), would ultimately end up adding about 5-10 years on their trip (and add in the mining operations, another 10-15 years). That's about 70 years.
OK, so you say that isn't so. To put it in easier terms: How much time does the average person (worldwide, not just US) sleep in a day? Let's say 7 hours. 7*365 is 2555 hours, or 106.46 days. That's a little less than a third of the year, spent snoozing.
Let's say Voyager meets one race every 2 months, and spends a week with them, exchanging information, trading, getting some R&R. That's 6 weeks a year. Keep that up for 9.6 years, you've actually only traveled 8.6 years of that time, and actually spent 1 year worth of time stopped.
It is possible to see Voyager spending 70 years out there, unless you wanted the crew to be insane by the time they get back. Remember... "All work and no play make Homer Something something". "Go Mad?" "Don't mind if I do!"
icanneverbereached@sogoaway.com aint my address.
One of the biggest problems in the last episode was with some of the ideas they brought in with the last seasons.
...
For instance, in a number of episodes in the 29th century there is a whole part of the federation devoted to keeping the timeline from being disrupted. They have atleast 2 vessels capable of traveling through time to prevent violation of the "Temporal Prime Directive". So where were they when Admiral Janeway went on her little trip?
This episode also ruins anyone wanting to watch Star Trek 10. Do you think the most powerful warship in the fleet (this is the concept behind the movie), the Enterprise, is going to have any of these cool new weapons that Voyager now possess? I seriously doubt it. Voyager could take out 5 borg ships whle the Enterprise works on one of them
I actually feel kind of sad that the borg are now virtually gone
For anyone who hasn't seen the episode or missed it: Admiral Janeway eventually travels to the Borg home base [Unimatrix 1] and infects the borg with a virus. It completely destroys the home base and virtual cripples them. It doesn't destroy them completely, however, which leaves room for them to make a comeback.
Now the federation can deal with more pressing matters, like the Romulans (Star Trek 10). Good thing they have those super advanced weapons! They can smit thier enemies now!
Its also too bad that Voyager won't become that really cool museum that Admiral Janeway told us about. The Federation is gonna rip it to shreds! Come on! Borg technology, future Federation technology, Slipstream Drive,...I think there was even something called a Delta Drive from earlier episodes.
I'd certainly have a field day.
Voyager had its ups and downs. To be honest Voyager had a really good final episode. It was very entertaining, but I think it has ruined Star Trek. At least for the future side of it.
I hope Enterprise is going to go alot better. They already taken care of the Baywatch side of things to make sure 7 of 9 finatics are happy. "Enterprise" Vulcan 2nd officer in Maxim. Funny I have never seen a Vulcan which such a big chest.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
They should have cut the (lame) subplots -- the romances -- the baby -- and had a 10 minute "coming home ceremony" scene at the end where the crew was honored with medals and stuff :) this might have given that sense of accomplishment you seek ... -- that would have cost ALOT of money to do that correctly -- lots of extras -- lots of matt paintings -- lots of difficult effects shots -- and I don't think they wanted to spend on the last episode.
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It's awesome when a main character is killed off.
Why?
Because it puts the audience in disbelief and uncertainity. This is what made Babylon 5 so interesting. Imagine if Picard was killed off at the end of season 1. Happened in B5 (Sinclar was reassigned off station).
It makes it interesting, and makes those oh-no-is-he-gonna-die moments better. I never expected Tasha to be killed. And she was. BAM! Major surprise. Good drama.
While that was also the day I realized Trek sucked, because they took a Dyson sphere and made it into a little 1-episode filler thing with a neat guest star. I hate in when writers read about some cute little concept, say oooooh, lets make an episode about that, and then not follow through with the research. The Dyson sphere would probably have enough surface area to remap every inhabited planet in the Federation and beyond onto its surface. I remember someone saying that the size of the earth to the sun is like a single pea 80 feet from a 3 foot beach ball. Imagine replacing that pea with an 160-foot sphere, and you can realize the scale of this thing.
And they made it a little side trip. Those bastards.
Allegedly, high warp speeds send you back in time (see Star Trek IV: Save the Whales) just like light speed would mess you up without wormholes. So then they invented the trans-warp bullshit which is to warp as warp is to normal space.
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Seriously, when Star Trek was started people were overly idealistic and special effects were limited. Those two things have been bogging the franchise down ever since. And frankly, I thought DS9 was the best of the bunch, simply because it actually had a plot and characters that went somewhere, even if the station did not.
In any case, Farscape is by far the best SF on TV yet in all ways, much better than trek, and consistently so. (The only things that came close were Alien Nation, which was very subtle and thoughtful, and Babylon 5, which was epic and diverse).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Quite. The Borg are basically zombies, and zombies are basically stupid and lame. However, it is possible to make a good zombie film, by showing them as relentless and inexorable. You can knock down a hundred of them, but they'll still keep coming, never tiring, never sleeping, always assimilating. Eventually, they'll wear you down.
Star Trek forgot that. "Resistance is futile" should not be open to debate. The moment they started talking to the Borg, they become a stumbling, moronic joke. By the end of Voyager, the Feds were figuratively tweaking their noses and giving them wedgies. Frankly, I had a lot more sympathy for the industrious Borg than I did for the annoying Feds and their incessant lucky breaks and changing of the rules.
Rot in Pieces, Voyager.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Actually, it's not exponential, it's a hand-drawn function that has an asymptote at 10, where it takes infinite energy to go at infinite speed and occupy every point in the universe simulatenously.
That was the model until Voyager's Threshold, which establishes that going at warp 10 simply makes you turn into a giant lizard.
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If we really want to debate how many Starfleet angels can dance on the head of a warp 10 pin, here’s some fodder from Star Trek Chronology. If we’re gonna geek out, we should geek out with authority. :-)
So ST:TOS warp 9 would be 9=729 times the speed of light, and Voyager warp 10 would be the speed at which Voyager got back to the Alpha Quadrant and ended things so abuptly.
What's the 25rd century again? :)
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If you recall the last episode of STTNG, Picard was struck with some syndrome, and was operating in 3 time periods ...
The voyager finale was kindof a low-power copy of that same structure -- Janeway operating in 2 time periods simultaneously, TUVOC was sick (as opposed to janeway/picard).
The real difference was, the STTNG episode was one of the best episodes they ever made ... the Voyager episode was such a hack its obvious the writers weren't even trying -- they tucked in the loose ends with a sledgehammer -- manufactured drama -- and tried to end with a bang by destroying alot of the borg which you know will come back eventually in some episode/movie/series -- and ALL done while relying on their "techno babel" ... somebody explain why the ship that got janeway BACK in time, couldn't take the whole crew forward again?
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How many episodes don't end with specially engineered nanoprobes, or shield modulation, or a special retro-virus designed by the doctor, or some such nonsense solving the problem.
A lot of episodes end like that, which is why I concluded that tech-driven Voyager isn't as good as TNG, which did it less frequently. Even when they did use tech, they often used it with a strategy we can all understand and apply.
However, I disagree that tech deus ex machina is inherent to all sci-fi. Just because something is set in a sci-fi universe, doesn't mean a sudden invention has to resolve all the character conflicts.
For example, Darth Vader lies in the arms of Luke Skywalker after (spoiler!!) throwing the Emperor into the Death Star pit.
He says, "Luke... help me take this mask off."
Luke says "But you'll die."
Since it's character-driven sci-fi, Vader simply says "Nothing can stop that now. Let me look on you with my own eyes."
It it were Star Trek, Vader would have said: "Maybe if you tried recalibrating my helmet's obtronic resequencer to generate an isometric pulse, it'll restore your crushed lung with a isomorphic replacement."
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In TNG and DS9 (excluding the first few DS9 seasons) -- and now Andromeda, another great show -- most episodes consisted of a problem which was usually overcome by wit, intelligence, or skill from the crew. For instance, in TNG, the Borg were always these physically invincible enemies, and the crew had to come up with some intricate plot to overcome them. DS9 also made viewers think, usually using displomatic issues (the various alliances formed by the various races) or religious ones (the role of the prophets, as God or fate, affecting the lives of the characters). DS9's resolution of the many, many plot arcs in the last 7 episodes showed great planning and the great character development throughout the series, and it was a very fitting sendoff that ended the series in the proper spirit.
TNG and DS9 also relied heavily on continuity of certain plot arcs. In DS9, this is obvious. In TNG, it was a bit more subtle, but after rewatching most of the series and reading through the Star Trek Encyclopedia, I think that realizing the small way in which each and every episode was somehow connected to the larger themes makes the show seem even better. And the TNG and DS9 characters showed growth and development while still remaining consistent to what we knew of them.
Voyager abandoned all of this. The only concerted effort to maintain a story arc, with Voyager and the Kazons, was abandoned three seasons into the show. The rest of the series was just isolated episodes -- I could miss any one, and not care at all because it had no bearing on the larger outcome of the series. There were a few small attempts at bringing back some old characters toward the end, such as Lt. Carey and the aliens who blackmailed the Doctor in the next-to-last episode, but only fans who truly followed the series (especially online) noticed these links, and they were not at all important to the plot of the individual episodes.
Voyager also abandoned continuity by completely forgetting about their limits on shuttles and photon torpedoes. I found several sites online a while ago tracking those, and they lost the amount they started with many, many times over. Characters -- except the Doctor -- almost never developed, either, as an experience in one episode would be forgotten the next (this was fixed a bit in the last season).
Worst of all, Voyager was not a "thinking" show -- every episode was solved by what many call the "particle-of-the-week." Every time Voyager was in a seemingly inescapable predicament, they didn't come up with a witty solution like in TNG -- they just inverted a new particle, or pulse, or weapon. This formula was used in 90% of the shows, including the finale. Chris DiBona picked up on this a bit in his review -- the producers have made the Borg weak and feeble with the paradoxical Borg "Queen," weapons from the future, and a magical Borg-killing virus. Whatever happened to TNG's Best of Both Worlds, when one Borg Cube took out the entire Federation fleet? The Enterprise solved that with intelligent characters outwitting the Borg systems (Data "hacks" in), not powerful uber-weapons.
The largest continuity issue with the Voyager finale was that they were able to take a transwarp conduit right home to Earth -- if the Borg could do that, why didn't they transport right to Earth in The Best of Both Worlds? The Borg are no longer menacing; they're weak and stupid.
Voyager's finale also exploits the worst lapse of character yet. Janeway's always been a goodie-two-shoes since episode one, opting to follow the Prime Directive while her people suffer and die. Why is it that she's now willing to accept help from the future? If the character refuses every opportunity to get home with even the slightest repurcussions, why is it she's willing to accept such a blatant violation of her own principles in this episode? The future Janeway in this episode showed that she had changed and developed enough to accept this, but the past Janeway has totally abandoned her character. Finally, the series has backed Star Trek into a corner. There's little chance of another future series, because Voyager keeps inventing magical technology to solve everything. Worst of all is Time Travel -- as soon as one race gets time travel, they can just go back and do what they like. If any race beats the Federation to it, they'll go back and take over history. And there are many races more advanced than the Federation; if not, the ships would face no challenges and the show would have no premise. If the Federation develops time travel, then there's nothing to stop their peaceful existence, and there's nothing left to drive Star Trek. That's why they need to go back in time now; I just wonder what they'll do after the new series.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
One of the writers, Rob Grant, basically stopped writing episodes (he only did one in S7) and it's clear he is the talented one able who actually came up with original and funny jokes and episode ideas. Seasons 7 and 8 have, if they're lucky, one or two mildly funny jokes per show, the and premises just aren't nearly as original. Legion, Inquisitor, Wax World, Quarantine, Demons and Angels, and of course the hilarious Gunmen of the Apocalypse. Each of these episodes is more memorable than season 7 or 8 in their entirity, not the mention the fact that they're so desperate for ideas that they are stretching single episodes into three instead. It's a deep shame that I have to say this, but I'd rather they ended what was once a superb series that I adored and watched almost religiously rather than continue to milk it and further tarnish its image. Star Trek is, IMO, average, switch-brain-off-and-kinda-enjoy-it TV viewing, and while it's not doing the world any good it ain't doing any harm either. Red Dwarf, unless you're watching a series 1-6 re-run, is now almost unbearably bad.
Is there really anything in the Star Trek universe worth saying that has not been said a dozen times in each series, five dozen times total, and at least twice in a movie? The pseudo-physics of the ST universe suffered the same fate as the pseudo-technology of Dr. Who, snarled up in contradictions and failures of vision that kept turning everything into metaphors for modern events. However, while Dr. Who dealt with its 20-year albatross of a history with tongue in cheek and a certain amount of wit, ST is so deathly serious about everything that it has ended up looking ridiculous.
Let's remember, kids, that the original concept was Captain Hornblower in Space according to Gene Roddenberry himself. Anybody remember Captain Hornblower? Let's just say that the number of episodes where Kirk and Spock end up in a dungeon stripped to the waist was in theme.
So we've lost the charming elements that made ST such a hot item with the K/S ladies and replaced them with, hmmm, let's see, androids instead of Vulcans. Boy that is so imaginative. And now we have the technology to show the Holodeck (always in the specs, not filmable in 1967) and the Earth (from the original ST bible, according to David Gerrold: we do not show the Earth, that's why we have starbases). But what has really been added? NOTHING .
No more series, no more episodes, no more movies. I'm sorry to say it but, while ending ST in its original incarnation was a premature mistake, bringing it back has turned out to be a much, much, much bigger mistake. Let's bury this dog before it completely skeletizes and think of something new.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Spoiler warning. After seven years, that's how Voyager ended, in my opinion. Did the crew use their years of experience with the Borg to get past them? No... they were blessed with a visitor from the future, who brought weapons to make them invincible to every enemy. They were then free to use Borg transwarp conduits (which didn't bother me as much since they've been established since season 6 of TNG).
Put another way, what did you want to see out of the finale? Here's what I've been imagining for seven years:
- The crew arrives home
- Emotional farewells between crew members and uncertaintly about their future
- Commendation or other acknowledgement by Starfleet
- An investigation into the psychological effect of unexpectedly seeing one's loved ones after seven years of isolation
- Will Seven of Nine be accepted by humanity and be able to live alongside billions of humans?
- What role will the Doctor play in liberating repressed sentinent holograms, as referred to in recent episodes?
- Whatever happened to Kim's fiancee?
- etc.
The producers, however, assumed that I had only one question, and wrote the entire episode under that assumption:- Will they make it back?
I wanted an hour or more in the Alpha quandrant providing closure to the series. But instead they held out the contrived suspense to the very last minute, giving us only one single shot of Voyager approaching Earth. Completely unsatisfying end to seven years' anticipation.I mean, all in all, it was just another episode. How many episodes were there that had them spend an hour getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE to getting home and then be thwarted? This episode was about getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE for two hours, and then being successful. I didn't want to see another episode about getting really really close. I wanted to see an episode about returning home!
Sigh... well, it's not important enough to get too worked up over. But still, their priorities were in the wrong place. It's that kind of substitution -- giving us more phasers, nebulae, and "transphasic torpedoes" instead of human drama, that makes Star Trek suck today compared to the days of TOS and TNG.
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